Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Economics
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 08-25-2012, 07:15 PM
 
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
9,767 posts, read 15,730,157 times
Reputation: 10865

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Malloric View Post
I assume you mean median. There's no way the average millionaire is only worth $4.3 million.
The article says that the average net worth of all millionaires is $4.3 million. It's not a median. However, it does specify "millionaires." Does that mean billionaires are not included in the study? Also, I question how they came up with how they define millionaires. They don't include real estate of any kind - there go all the real estate tycoons. And they count retirement accounts unless it's at your workplace. That seems inconsistent to me. So the person who saves for retirement outside his 401(k) would be counted, but the person who worked for the same company for 40 years and has over $1 million in his 401(k) wouldn't be counted? Makes no sense.

ETA: It says the household must have investable assets of $1 million, so I guess billionaires are included. However, it just says they must have investable assets not net worth. So, does someone who owns a $1 million investment property and pulls out a huge home equity loan on it count? Technically, that money is investable. But the person who keeps his money in the investment property and doesn't pull it out not count? And did it matter how much debt these people held? I could have $1 million in assets and have $900K in debt. That doesn't make me a millionaire.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 08-26-2012, 04:11 PM
 
Location: Central CT, sometimes FL and NH.
4,516 posts, read 6,758,345 times
Reputation: 5913
I really don't care about their definition. I will continue to invest in real estate and follow my plan. Having rental properties is a good source of income to supplement other sources of income once you retire. The key is keeping the debt minimized as a leveraged portfolio of properties can come crashing down if you run into a problem.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-26-2012, 05:29 PM
 
106,135 posts, read 108,118,136 times
Reputation: 79688
im going the opposite route. all real eatate hopefully will be gone when i retire in 2 years.

last thing i want to do amymore when i retire is deal with tenants anymore.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-26-2012, 05:31 PM
 
106,135 posts, read 108,118,136 times
Reputation: 79688
im going the opposite route. all real eatate hopefully will be gone when i retire in 2 years.

last thing i want to do amymore when i retire is deal with tenants ..
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-26-2012, 08:25 PM
 
178 posts, read 396,992 times
Reputation: 368
32. approaching 700k. will cross $1 million by 35, god willing

am significantly invested in equities. so everyday is a shot in the dark, really
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-27-2012, 03:35 AM
 
5,616 posts, read 15,489,617 times
Reputation: 2823
Quote:
Originally Posted by mathjak107 View Post
i say it all the time. to really accumulate wealth you are not going to do it with what you scrape up to save from your income.

huge capital gains over decades of compounding on those tid bits we save is what does it .

the problem is usually not the fact folks cant scrape up that money to save, the problem is most of america has no clue about how to invest and plan properly.

with me entering almost 30 years of investing a typical market year can increase in value up or down more than my wife and i even earn added together.
this is how I did it. Great post!!!
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-12-2012, 09:21 AM
 
4,175 posts, read 6,864,878 times
Reputation: 7160
27 now and my goal is to hit this mark by 40. I would be including the assets in my retirement accounts like 401ks and Roth IRAs of course. Of course in order to get there by that point that also means taking on a lot of risk that could also mean crash and burn :P
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-13-2012, 03:41 AM
 
106,135 posts, read 108,118,136 times
Reputation: 79688
im a goal oriented kind of guy.

the issue with a slight crash and burn is how close to your goal it happens.

as an example when i first started out one of my goals was to buy a house. since i didnt have the money yet to buy the house i invested very aggressively .

if i crashed and burned i was so far out of the money range i needed to buy that house that it didnt matter. so if it took me an extra few years ,so what.

but if i had the money for my goal and left it in the risk pool because i wanted to get a better return then buying that house then a crash and burn would be a bad thing since i met that goal but didnt act and now couldnt ..

the further from the goal the less thoughts of crash and burn would influence my investments since its really just playing with time that had no schedule date anyway..

to me there is a big difference in how i invest when i have the money for something vs dont have the money for something.

im getting ready to retire in 2 years and met all my goals.

at this point im running with less than 10% in equities and use a purely income oriented portfolio that has about 1/3 the volatility of the s&p 500 . my income goals as of now can be met with some outside income ill have coming in , social security plus about a 2% withdrawal rate from savings.

could i be leaving lots of potential gains on the table by just matching my allocations to my needs? sure i am. but my feeling is if you already won the game why keep playing?

now that i reached that goal and have the dough a crash and burn would be a far more devastating event since i already have established a date based on having met that goal. .

im no longer interested in growing richer, now my focus will be not growing poorer through retirement since those goals have now been met.

thats why you need long term, intermediate term and short time goals and to invest accordingly.

i found this way my plans that have a date are never put on hold because of events i cant control.

Last edited by mathjak107; 09-13-2012 at 04:01 AM..
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Economics
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top