POLITICS Inflation /General Finance Insanity

See, this is what gets me. This is your (and many's) view point on money supply. Another group will say "no, no, no, no, a hard currency limits governmental response to crisis."

Who is right? Which is better? How do we run an experiment to see which is correct without ruining people's lives?

It just hurts my head.

 

Why must one be correct? Who says there is a way that doesn't ruin lives?

 

Both are right.

a hard money makes the government behave responsibly and not hid the cost on its citizens, and fiat currency allows the government to respond easier but at the expense of the currency and the standard of living of their people, but is a hidden tax.

 

After a few hours of reading and listening to podcasts, I just cannot handle it. I think I am a fairly smart guy, but this stuff just eludes me. Like trying to explain relativity to a 5 year old.

 

I think with our fiat setup it’s really important our education system start hammering home to younger people how in the long run inflation is always going to outpace the interest you will receive from socking away your money in a savings account. When I was coming up in school it was drilled into our head that if you just go to college and get a 60-100k a year job with 401k while saving your money in the bank you will be set up ok financially. Not sure that’s tremendously helpful advice anymore.

I know with YouTube and such a lot of folks are figuring out how to teach themselves about ways to more efficiently grow their money. However a lot of people are really ignorant about how the game of money is played in our fiat system and they still think storing all your money in savings is the smart/safest play. Investing in asserts overtime that will generate positive cash flows in addition to whatever your primary source of income is important. Everyone needs to be aware how only relying on a singular income source while saving the majority of your money is not the ideal way to navigate life financially anymore.

 

I know that I want about 3k in cash and the reset invested in stocks and some in bonds. One guy I was watching says in a fiat system, the money devalues, so spend it, don't save it. Spending it can be buying stocks or bonds. Just a different way of saving.

I just don't know how you maintain a hard currency in a modern society. What are you going to base the currency on? All precious metals are now industrial commodities, and even then, the sovereign governments would then control the value of gold to their currency standards, so why is to keep them from simply saying "OK, platinum is now worth $6000 an ounce instead of $4000 so we can buy this aircraft carrier"?

 

Put money in index funds.

 

Digitalizing a finite amount of hard currency (crypto) is one way to go about a hard currency economy down the road in modern day times. Plenty of cons there though too. Plus on boarding any form of crypto money slowly towards the mainstream is a volatile ass and scary undertaking for anyone with investments there

 

You’re doing a good job stay with this stuff and it will help you and change how you see things.

I personally don’t care about money besides for the freedom but I grew up poor as [uck fay] and will never forget my mom crying when I asked for a happy meal as a kid because she didn’t have the money.

If I wouldn’t have got into learning this stuff, my mom would have had to went on disability, but we’re in a position that we pay her very well to just baby sit for us

You will want more than 3k cash. Try to build up 6 months of all expenses that you can get to easy.

Low cost Index funds and I wouldn’t mess much with bonds unless you have a good guy helping you with them.



last part is why bitcoin will probably win out

 

But it doesn't really work if everyone is aware, does it?

 

The wife and I are in the position of discussing all this stuff right now as we try to figure out how to money. We both make good money, and we have quite a bit in the bank. We know the money in the bank needs to go elsewhere, just not sure where is best.

The two big things we've been discussing are whether to invest it or pay off her student debt. I have no idea where/how to invest it, but she would probably handle that. Our savings account gets 4.3% interest, so anything that can beat that would be good. She has a number of student loans in the 6-8% interest range, so paying those off seems like it makes a ton of sense. But I also feel like doing so may not be a great idea with how much debt forgiveness gets talked about. Would hate to pay off substantial student debt (not 6 figures, but a lot nonetheless) just to find out a couple years later it would have gotten forgiven.

And then we just need to figure out how much money we actually need to keep available at any given time. We have an HSA, so health related stuff isn't ever too much of a concern. House stuff is what it is. And then our normal expenses (which I'm sure we could cut down on quite a bit). Kid(s) are probably on the horizon, and we will need to buy a car when that happens.

I wish I lived in the time when just going to work and saving your money was the way to do things. I'm good at that. Not as good at all the other investing nonsense.

 

I'm paying mine off because I can.

 

Do you have a mortgage payment?

 

I do think there is some truth in saying that our public education system purposely has a vanilla as hell education on finances/making money.

 

Never had a public education, so can't say one way or the other. But I don't think my private education focused much on that stuff either.

 

[uck fay] ya I do. It is nasty.

 

Max out you and your wife’s 401K. Then max out an Ira for both of you. Then pay extra on student loan. Odds are your loan interest is less than the average market return. There’s nothing wrong with paying the student loan early for the psychological boost, but if you’re trying to maximize dollars pay it off after you’ve maxed out all available retirement accounts. Which means it could be a few years before you get there.

 

I haven’t stepped foot in a private school classroom a single day in my life. I was publicly educated kindergarten thru University of Tennessee, but I’d imagine financial education when we were going through wasn’t too dissimilar.

The old school mainstream financial education philosophy of go to college (even if that means putting yourself in crippling debt), get a job working for the man for 30-40 years, and save well along the way feels like basic universal concepts every American has been raised on for generations now.

A revamping of how we teach money to the next generations in our fiat monetary reality is highly necessary.

 

We paid off my wife's credit cards and student loans as fast as we could when we got married. Heck, I had started stocking cash away before then to throw at it. Best financial decision we could have made.

Get your debts paid off ASAP. I don't care if it doesn't make financial sense, the psychological rewards are worth it.

 

At a minimum, we will pay the minimum on her student loans until they're forgiven or paid off. I'm not advocating for skipping payments. Just suggesting that I don't know if it's a good idea to pay off the entire balance on the chance that they do get forgiven.

We "can" pay off her student loans entirely. But I'd rather that money go to my mortgage if the loans are gonna get forgiven anyway.