$3500 to Invest

[go for the gold]

Wanted to get some ideas on some mid range (10-15 year) mutual funds that would get decent (3-5% avg) returns. Any ideas? I've done some searching, but am fairly young and would like to make the right decision.

[twistitup]

Put your money in a mason jar, bury it in your backyard.....that is the safest thing to do. Our economy is about to be in a double dip recession, hold onto your money.

[HawgWild]

CenterPoint Energy, Inc (CNP) is currently paying a 4.1% dividend. Their stock price is up quite a bit this year and may pull back some but the dividend should be "safe".

Nucor Corporation (NUE) pays a 4.3% dividend. Their stock price has dropped quite a bit this year as have all steel stocks. if you think that we're going to see an increased investment in infrastructure then this stock could really jump.

FWIW - I own both.

[OldPoop]

Put your money in a mason jar, bury it in your backyard.....that is the safest thing to do. Our economy is about to be in a double dip recession, hold onto your money.

If you go the burying in the backyard route, bury silver or gold, not paper.  The faith based paper money is losing more believers every day, so when you dig it back up it will buy less than when you buried it, maybe an unbelievable amount less.

[Verge]

Put your money in a mason jar, bury it in your backyard.....that is the safest thing to do. Our economy is about to be in a double dip recession, hold onto your money.

You mean to bury printed pieces of paper?


I would bury gold, or bullets.

[twistitup]

You mean to bury printed pieces of paper?


I would bury gold, or bullets.

True....gold, bullets, copper, - anything BUT invest it in the stock market is really what I was getting at...

[Ftsmithmike]

This may sounds crazy but I would look into putting up food. I would plan on six months at this point. I believe you will need it in the coming year. After that look into body armor. Class three with face and head protection as well as a ballistic blanket for your family and a breach shield. That should leave you with enough to buy a gun that has the power to defeat class 2 body armor and enough bullets to get your family through a crisis period. Also consider a safe room with underground storage and water and fuel.

Any thing left should go into gold for the long term. Good luck. Let's hope Arkansas uses it's unique geography to maintain peace and order and good manners.

[OldPoop]

That's actually about as far from crazy as you can get.  I would classify it as basic common sense and almost boringly rational. 

The grocery store has to be resupplied every 2-3 days.  Any interruption in delivery for very long would cause starvation to begin in a matter of days. I heard on the radio today that 50% of Americans don't cook, so I guess they have 0 days of food at home and their starvation would begin day one.  Also, any interuption of electric power in your area could mean no water and only days to survive without outside relief, and if it's a big enough problem there will not be any outside relief.

People don't realize how tenuous our food supply is.   So many things could interupt it, earthquake, flood, solar flare, EMP attack, terrorist attack, strikes, collapse of the dollar and the economy.  Nearly everyone has car insurance, health insurance, life insurance, and home insurance, but I bet that way less than one in a hundred has food insurance.  If there is a disruption in the food/water supply you can be certain that things will get real ugly real fast.

I guess I'm out of touch.  I've never heard of a ballistic blanket or a breach shield.  But I will sure be looking them up now.  Thanks.

[OldPoop]

How about investing in incandescent light bulbs, 60 - 100 watts?  You have just 3 1/2 months to load up.  When they're no longer available people will be willing to pay top dollar, and they will become more rare and valuable the longer you hold them.  Some people with health, immune, or eye sensitivity problems will probably pay any amount you ask.

http://www.naturalnews.com/033499_LED_light_bulb_expensive.html

[JaketheSnake]

Check out Cornerstone Financial.  Trades under CLM.  Ill let you do your own research, but pays a nice dividend and has been holding pretty steady.

[OldPoop]

This may sounds crazy but I would look into putting up food. I would plan on six months at this point. 

This is another threat to our food/water (and investments) that I forgot to mention;

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/cyber-attacks-will-target-physical-infrastructure-commerce-transportation-systems_09142011


It is estimated that up to 90% of Americans could die from an EMP attack.

http://www.onesecondafter.com/pb/wp_d10e87d9/wp_d10e87d9.html

[snoblind]

This may sounds crazy but I would look into putting up food. I would plan on six months at this point. I believe you will need it in the coming year. After that look into body armor. Class three with face and head protection as well as a ballistic blanket for your family and a breach shield. That should leave you with enough to buy a gun that has the power to defeat class 2 body armor and enough bullets to get your family through a crisis period. Also consider a safe room with underground storage and water and fuel.

Any thing left should go into gold for the long term. Good luck. Let's hope Arkansas uses it's unique geography to maintain peace and order and good manners.

Our problem here is being so close to I-40.  I hadn't even thought of the body armour angle.  Do the prep web sites have that stuff too?  Guess I was counting on shotguns/hunting rifles to keep out the riff-raff.  I figured that if I'm dealing with mutliple bad guys with automatic weapons I'm dead anyway.   

[Ftsmithmike]

Our problem here is being so close to I-40.  I hadn't even thought of the body armour angle.  Do the prep web sites have that stuff too?  Guess I was counting on shotguns/hunting rifles to keep out the riff-raff.  I figured that if I'm dealing with mutliple bad guys with automatic weapons I'm dead anyway.   

You don't have to be. Or at least you can take them with you and leave the family safe.

[OldPoop]

This thread is hilarious. 

Okay, to get back on topic.
The real inflation percentage is much closer to 10% now than the 2% or 3% or whatever the current government lie is, and it is going up a little more every month.   If it hits 15% next year and 20% in 2013 like some are predicting, a 3-5% return might not be the best way to go.

My advice is to get all your laughing in now while it's still very easy to do.

[hawg23]

Put the money "on the street" and juice gamblers, druggies, whatever 4 points a week on the loan.

I could help you collect...I need a job.


But really... I think I would INVEST some of it on the hogs this weekend. You can get +12. Seems like a lot of equity in that line.

[OldPoop]

Not that I really care but to clear the air,  do you think that the U.S. will become the Somalia of the World within the next year?

No

But why do we have to be on the level of the worst country in the world (except maybe for Haiti) before it wouldn't be stupid to invest in some food insurance?

Why do we need to be on that level before it might be wise to plan on defending your family?  I don't know how old you are, but I can remember riots and temporary mob rule in a couple of major American cities back when the economy was much better than it is today, or will be in the foreseeable future.  The cops didn't even attempt to go into large sections of L.A., the rioters ruled.  People were killed by the rioters.  If you're young the pc police and history revisionists have probably kept you from knowing about it.

The government is purposefully debasing the dollar to try to pay off the unpayable debts it continues to run up.  Do you expect millions of people to play nice when their government checks no longer cover the cost of living?
I don't. 

[aristotle]

Buy individual Blue Chip dividend payers on dips. Let the 'end of the world' panic create predictable volatility in the market, and buy the dips. Look for 3.5% yield and higher.

Inflationary fears have subsided and the dollar is in bullish momentum right now due to the Euro cluster.

[OldPoop]

Inflation will occur.  I believe that is one way that the fed will attempt to correct the housing market.  You may be paying 12 dollars for a six pack of coke but at least your house isn't underwriter. 

Financially speaking, it may be rough and it may only get rougher for the next decade but the comments that some people have made regarding the total collapse are way overblown.  Most of these comments that are made are made by people who are victims of the 24 hours news cycle.

Imagine that Fox news was only interested in covering earthquakes.  The network would have to fill 24 hours of earthquake coverage without putting everyone to sleep.  The more fear they could create about the threat of each viewer dying in an earthquake then the more viewers that apparently they would have.  They would do exactly what Fox news does and trigger fear in you so that the viewer actually felt impending doom was near.  Round the clock coverage of impending earthquakes or in Fox news case, the impending economic collapse as the result of the Democrat and Obama.  Roger Ailes knows how to push his viewers fear button.  He basically controls them through fear.  I feel bad for them but I am not creative enough to come up with a different boogie-man to distract the right wing masses.

What in the world are you talking about regarding Fox?  I don't watch the news very often anymore, but when I do it's Fox News, and maybe O'Reilly once or twice a week if nothing better is on, and I don't have a clue what you are talking about.   Do you?   Just how often do you watch Fox News?  And I can't imagine anyone trying to plan their families' future from the clueless phony talking heads on any newscast.

Wow.   As far as the rest I don't even know where to start.  The response would have to be so huge that I feel inadequate to even attempt it.   If I was a Christian I would say you were in my prayers, but I'm not, so I will just shut up and end that discussion here.

However I will comment on housing, that shouldn't take a month out of our lives.

I don't know if it's the work of the banksters, the government, or both, but Americans have been misled into believing that their house is an asset.   Unless you rent it out for more than what it cost you, it is a liability.   You have to have a place to live, so it's better than renting because you build up equity over the years, but as long as it takes more money out of your pocket than it puts into it, it is a liability.  It's not an investment that should need the government to guarantee that it increases every year, it's just a shelter from the elements.   One day if you're able to sell it for more than you paid for it great, if not, that's part of the cost of living indoors.

High home prices are not good unless you think that house flippers, speculators, and mortgage companies making bigger profits are more important than the next generation getting an even break like all the generations before them.   Forcing current young people to live at home with mom and dad is not fair to either side.  If you look at a graph of home prices for the last couple hundred years or so you will see a slow steady rise in average home prices (with dips and blips for wars and depressions) until the later part of the 20th century when they began a parabolic rise created by speculators and flippers.   It was completely artificial and abnormal to the rest of history.  That's why whether you like it or agree with it or not, home prices will continue to decline until they once again rest on that gradually increasing graph line, the level they would have been without the temporary mania of the housing bubble.

To have our government officials use tax payer money (it's actually worse than that, we are negative 14 trillion+, so they just print it, enslaving our children and grand children to our debt and further devaluing the purchasing power of the dollar for us) in a hopeless and idiotic attempt to prop up these artificially high prices is way beyond stupid.   This needs a new word added to the English language to describe it.   

[mj4president]

BUY FORD

[OldPoop]

Sorry Oldpoop.  I didn't think that my comments were that hard to follow.  I was saying that Fox News attracts viewers by scaring them and then those viewers overreact and will then sometimes come post on message boards. 

You just can't be nice to some people.   I'm sorry my response was over your little head.   Let me try 6th grade level.

I watch Fox News.   

I haven't seen any of the bs you are spewing. 

So obviously you do not watch Fox News. 

You are just dutifully repeating the talking points that you have been told,

just like all superior little libs that look down their noses on anyone else with a different opinion.

This is the Finance Forum.  There is a forum on Hogville for personal political bias, I'm sure you can find it.   

[OldPoop]

I watch Fox news too.  I like getting others perspectives on issues.  My comments were related to the finance forum.  Fox news creates fears by exploiting it's viewers ability to reason and then those viewers come to an online forum and repeat the Fox news doomsday scenarios.  The OP ask a simple question and then he is told the following:

LOL   You're lucky to be so smart that your ability to reason is not as easily exploited by Fox News as the rest of us poor dimwits.  Let this be fair warning to the rest of the dimwits out there, stay away from Fox News, you can't handle it.

You're right, food storage and protecting your family does not qualify as Finance.   However the posters on this forum are trying to help fellow Hog Fans, not attack them like in some of the other forums.  If you think of it as people looking to the Finance Forum as a possible aid in preparing for and protecting their future and their children's future, then it's not as far off base.  (Telling people you don't know that all their knowledge and thoughts on a subject comes from being too stupid to handle a newscast that many probably never watch, could be a little farther off base.)  I had never heard of a ballistic blanket, but since I have 2 & 4 year old grandbabies to worry about, I was appreciative for the info.

But this is all just a waste of your time.  You know there is no possibility of the food supply ever being interrupted, and you know that the government can continue to debase the dollar and run up unpayable debt for as long as they need to without any consequences or changes to our current lifestyle.  The Unions as well as the millions of people currently depending completely on the government for for their income will continue to be happy and docile no matter what.  Civil unrest will not reach our shores.  Therefore what some misguided, dimwitted lowbrows and nutjobs do should be of little concern to such an intelligent rich guy.