He has openly stated that he does not believe he should ever respond to people who criticize his Pit threads. The pit exists for him to rant into, period, much like one would should use a LiveJournal or a blog, he uses the Pit.
After he made that admission awhile back I have consistently failed to understand why people will spend 3-4 pages rebutting the stuff he says in Pit threads when he has admitted he will not engage in debate and doesn’t have any interest in “hashing it out.” He wants to make a stupid thread and move on, at least in the Pit. That’s why the most you should do is post a few lines telling him how stupid he is and move on, actually trying to break down his argument and argue it on the merits is a fool’s game, he has no interest in doing it on this particular sub forum, so why should others do it in his threads?
Can anybody provide statistics on what proportion of Americans actually do have $500K in investments?
In Australia a similar figure is bandied around as being necessary for a comfortable retirement yet in practice the average Australian enters retirement with less then $100K in retirement savings and about 70% of individuals end up being dependent on the government old age pension as their chief source of income. The average annual income in Australia is between 50-60K (or about $45K-55K in US dollars). The chief form of retirement saving is known here as superannuation which seems similar to your 401k schemes (you and your employer contribute to a fund, it isnt taxed, you cant touch it until retirement)
I’ve just been lurking in this thread, but I wanted to say that I would be very interested in such a thead, fruitbat. While there’s all kinds of information available, I’d be very interested in some general info from a professional–not just for the free advice (although that would be nice ;)) but I wonder what are some crazy misconceptions people generally have, and good ways to learn more about investing, or of course the bizarre stories that sometimes come up in “Ask the…” threads. I hope you start one.
But under VCO3’s plan, beheading the couple would simplify the costly nursing home expenses by thousands and thousands of dollars, and the money could now go to free pie eating contests for the poor who were unable to save. That just makes more sense to me, don’t you agree?
What Exit?, I believe VCO3 subscribes to my favorite parable, the parable of the grasshopper and the Octopus.
“All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also, he got a racecar.”
It amuses me that people think being able to live out 15-25 years of your life living off the extra you earned qualifies as anything but rich. Face it, guys, even the poorest of us are rich as hell.
True, but people looking at these numbers should look at the comment at the bottom - doing better than the median doesn’t mean you’re doing well, just that most are doing even worse.
I think this has only been said a dozen times in this thread. Yes, that would make us rich by world standards, but not by US standards. That is the difference. I agree and I think almost everybody in this threads agrees that if you can save $500,000 or more for retirement, you are rich by World Standards. I think most of us are measure ourselves to US standards however.
Most of us probably have a picture in our minds that “Rich” = servants and a giant house and expensive luxury cars. I hope you can see from where us “well off but not rich by US standards” posters are coming.
Note that if you remove the house from the equation entirely, most people look an awful lot poorer. I’ve seen some houseless net-worth figures somewhere that showed that the medians were close to zero at the 30-39 range, and only around $40,000-$50,000 by the 40-49 range. Again showing that perhaps a lot of folks are banking on selling their house as their path to retirement. Wish I could find those figures again.
I think a lot of people do plan on selling and moving somewhere smaller/less expensive. Whether they stay or sell, though, a major advantage to owning a home is that you (presumably) have paid off the house by retirement age, and therefore now have a place to live rent/mortgage free for the rest of your life. Imagine how much cheaper it would be to live right now if your housing cost was removed from your budget!
Some things in this thread have been a real eye-opener, especially **spoke-'s ** links. I didn’t realize how little people saved. I started accumulating wealth much later than most and although in a slightly higher-than-average income industry not near the top end yet I’m still well ahead of $500K. I had always assumed I was below average, maybe my dream of retiring early can be a reality.
I believe it is much better to own than rent but folks shouldn’t be banking much on house value. It seems to me too many people need to keep up with the Jones and live beyond their means. I live modestly and our house is only 20% of my net worth. I somehow recall that your house should only be about a third or so of your net worth.
To directly answer the OP, I don’t believe I’m anywhere close to rich and prefer to keep my head, thank you.