Is investing for everyone?

>>1673850
Yes, investing is for everyone. your 401k is a type of annuity investment.

Investing is not just day trading, its putting your money in companies you believe in over the long term (20 or more years)

>>1673860
I understand. So what are short term gains from investing? Or is investing long term only.

>>1673881
The faster/larger profits the riskier.
Long term is the way to go my nigga

The best, laziest way to invest. Take whatever you need to survive for 6 months. Leave it in bonds or money markets, cash equalivents. Everything else stick it into an mutual fund that tracks an index. Dont get an actively managed mutual fund.

Then contribute whatever extra money you have into the account every month or every week. This is called dollar cost averaging.

Then ignore it until you need it. Since you buy fewer shares when the market is up and more when its down and it passively tracks an index, you ride through recessions and booms without it hurting you much.

Most people that play the stock markets do worse than a passive index like the SP 500 or Russell 3000.

>>1673929
I just heard about treasury bonds, notes and bills. Do you recommend them?

>>1673935
Yeah a 30 year t-bond is a cash equalivent because they are very liquid, people buy and sell them constantly. They pay barely enough to keep up with inflation so they are not really an investment per se. Nobody gets ahead on T bonds but buy them to conserve wealth.

So buy a 30 year t-bond as your emergency cash. The pennies the gov't mails you twice a year is a nice bonus the risk being is you may not collect your principle if the government collapses or is seized in a coup or conquered by invaders.

>>1673929
I always see the 6 months survival thing? what's that for?

>>1673971
Like you lose your job or get divorced or something. My personal benchmark is like minimum $6000 (but I have more in cash) because I can bail out of my apartment let them keep my $1000 deposit and survive in my RV hobo style for 6 months like that. It would be much higher if I had to pay rent or feed kids. So its up to you.

>>1673935
Bonds are for the scrubbest of scrubs. You're better off planting a tree, waiting 30 years for it to grow, and selling it. Guaranteed better ROI than a savings bond.

>>1673850

If you make over $40,000 a year you should be investing at least a little every year.

You're gonna need to retire one day. You don't want to be 50 and living paycheck to paycheck still. Gonna be one painful retirement.

>>1673929
This is pretty solid advice.

>>1673961
>buy a 30 year t-bond as your emergency cash
This is bad advice, particularly in the rising interest rate environment we're in now. As rates increase, the market value of your T Bond will go down. If you need to sell the bond before maturity, you could easily lose money. Keep emergency cash in a money market account.

>>1674240
Yeah people are expecting a crash in the bond market when they all go to sell bonds for prices higher than they're worth. Because the fed interest rate was so long and so low last several years. Thats a temporary thing.

Money markets are usually made up entirely out of bonds your bank owns so idk about that if you are bearish on bonds.

>>1674271
Money market account yields fluctuate along with short term bond yields, but they are federally insured deposits and you can't lose money on them. Your interest rate is just variable.

If you buy a 30 year bond and interest rates go up, you will not be able to turn around and sell your bond at face value. You will lose money if you need the liquidity.

If you'd bought a 30 year T Bond back in August, you could only sell it for 82 cents on the dollar today. If you'd put the money in a money market account, you'd have whatever you put in the account plus a very small amount of interest.

>>1674290
Yeah thats true but money markets are pretty lame since the managers skim profits from them but to be sure they are more liquid than a t bond and probably better if you suddenly need cash.