New member here,please help need some advice this is getting crazy!

[krimster2]

in most areas, it's not easy finding low cost foreclosures, cuz hedge funds are now bidding and driving up the prices on these
so ya gotta pay market price for a "fixer upper" which'll cost double what ya used to be able to buy a foreclosed home

rent collecting is another issue

gold is a "hedge" and not really an "investment" that's gonna give ya a cash flow
real estate is the most common passive investment

the best thing to invest in is ALWAYS yourself
for example I got GIA certification, and a swiss loupe which is just a few hundred $$$
so I am quite good at appraising and mounting gem stones in jewelry, (I know a WEIRD skill to have right?)

with a stack of us dollars, I can travel to Vietnam or Kasakhstan and buy raw gemstones for pennys in the markets there (which are AMAZING!)
and smuggle them back to the USA
and sell em EASILY on ebay
yur vacation is also yur income

when I was living in sevastopol, I helped an American I met there, setup a business buying art work from local Ukrainian Artists and selling it in the USA for about 300% markup
tons of ways to monetize stuff "made in Ukraine" in the USA

if sanctions go away on Russia in the next 90 days and credit cards, etc all goes back to the "way it was"
then OMG, the stuff I could bring outta Russia and sell here

like the dewds I know in redowood city, ca who bought Russian diamond making presses, and make make synthetic canary yellow diamonds

[Trenchcoat]

Well a lot may depend I guess on how smashed Western Governments are financially.

With big government debt they can try to inflate it away by printing more money, but too much and they get big inflation/hyper inflation that can destroy the economy. They can get debtors to take a 'haircut' as they call it and accept reducing the debt they are owed rather than risking a total default on the debt. There are likely other ways but potentially yes a government and it's finances might be so far gone that the economy is going to hit the skids big time whatever they do.

So if we take the situation as Weimar Germany with hyper inflation, a worthless currency then that's a real bad situation to be in. If the West as a whole goes that way then finding people wanting to buy anything much more than food could be a task. That's of course when new money is printed but probably still a big unemployment situation.

Difficult to know how a bad economic situation may go down in the future. If it's at its most extreme then the Army will likely have the power at the top since they gave the guns, and they will likely control the farmers since food becomes a most precious commodity. Objects and trinkets may become virtually worthless unless of a necessary practical nature.

So all depends how badly whacked everything becomes, if we end up talking about chunks of the population in a starvation situation? Or less extreme, the economy in a bad way and bad times but not quite as much a fight for mere survival as that.

I think the world has had a population situation since the around the 1980s onwards, even before in a way. If the population was 'reset' to earlier times when there was a lot less people in the world then people could have kids again without the world becoming overly full with people, at least not for some time. That's what I suspected might have been behind the Coronavirus, it's a terrible thing but with so many people on the planet and only so large a planet, what else? In the past wars, famine and viruses have kept population figures down and I guess ever still the need to this day.

[ML]

But then again, why are you investing at your age?  Shouldn't you be trying to avoid a big loss, since you don't have time to recover financially?  Look for low risk hedges against catastrophe, rather than trying to get higher yields.  With reward comes risk.

Yes, I know.  That's why I wrote that I have to think what to do with the cash that will cause the least hassle for wife.

[krimster2]

there's a lot of DIFFERENT WAYS to invest in RE to spread yur risk

one way, that I looked into, was buying raw land and set up a Trailer Park and build "hook-ups" and rent spaces to people
there is a "supply/demand" aspect of this, so do yur homework

in my area, you can get property managers under contract who manage yur properies in bulk for $100 mo/property
i'd go for the low end of the market, cuz there's ALWAYS gonna be demand there

annuities, stuff like that will have elevated risk in a MAJOR downturn
you need to assume worst case scenario in the 2030s

you can also buy US Savings bonds indexed for inflation, which are federally insured to diversify....
you need to see how much FDIC covers yur CDs
going forward, when ya see banks are in trouble, you better not have any cash NOT FDIC proteted ciz yur over the limit
cuz when the banks go down, then so do you!!!!

holding "real property" and not paper will be preferred, cuz it can't "evaporate" in a loss

yur wife will also have medicare and social security to cover her

[ML]

you need to see how much FDIC covers yur CDs

yur wife will also have medicare and social security to cover her

Of course . . . keeping CDs at any one bank under the FDIC limit is a no-brainer.

Wife won't be eligible for medicare or SS for a very long time.

I have to plan to have enough money for her for her lifetime.

It actually is already available, more than enough . . . I am just trying to figure out best risk/return trade-off to keep it growing.

Also worry that she might give a lot of it away to various Ukrainian needs.  I realize that is a good cause . . . but would undermine all what I have built up over a lifetime.

[Bee Farmer]

Of course . . . keeping CDs at any one bank under the FDIC limit is a no-brainer.

Wife won't be eligible for medicare or SS for a very long time.

I have to plan to have enough money for her for her lifetime.

It actually is already available, more than enough . . . I am just trying to figure out best risk/return trade-off to keep it growing.

Also worry that she might give a lot of it away to various Ukrainian needs.  I realize that is a good cause . . . but would undermine all what I have built up over a lifetime.

I would recommend you look at setting up a trust fund that pays her an annual (or quarterly) stipend for X years.  This ensures she has a reliable income without her being able to access the principal and blowing it.  Think about trust funds people set up for kids/grandkids when they are worried about the kid blowing all the money.  Maybe make a requirement that she has to be employed in order to get money from the trust fund too.  That way she is still earning money for herself.

[olgac]

Yes revocable trust fund is also a good idea to save on taxes if she sels a property: She would need to pay only on a difference in price from when she took the ownership to the moment of sale.
My parents have a trust on me and my twin sister. My husband and I made a trust for our 20 year old daughter.
I think we paid about 4K to setup the trust for her.

[Trenchcoat]

Just a thought here, if the West is going to be laid low, governments bankrupt and an economic catastrophe then what about places like Russia & Ukraine?

Under the Soviet Union in the 30s they suffered little from the economic problems in the West. However today they are a lot more dependent on Western funds & investment. Surely matters are going to be even worse in Ukraine & Russia particularly after both economies being walloped by the costs of war several years or so before? Could we be looking at complete breakdown there? With Russia & Ukraine becoming more like the Wild West.

[krimster2]

I have NO CLUE how Ukraine is gonna survive post war
Ukraine minus Donbas, Lughansk, Crimea is a bunch of poor steppes filled with people who were too poor to run away
how will ya make some kinda economy outta this?

a complete breakdown is possible
I can already tell the USA is not gonna be a contributor to Ukraine's rebuilding, and obviously Russia ain't
so it's gonna be up to Europe, who will be dealing with their own economic issues, and euro backers are handicapped by the euro
making a MAJOR marshall fund unlikely
I don't expect Ukraine to get much rebuilding money beyond seized Russian assets

Russia is dependent on Trump/Musk freeing Russia from Sanctions to survive
they'll have to pay them off to get rid of the sanctions

then the Russians will be happy, cuz they have the delusion "they won the war"
cuz they got land in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dead Russians and a $trillion dollar cost
the land they won, is full of nearly mined out coal mines filled with elderly people, and empty farms full of shell holes
Hur-rah!
2 years of fighting and ya captured an outhouse and a couple of dachas
Glory To Putin!!!

there will probably be a short term celebration of the war end
but the reality is
it's NOT REALLY gonna end
just delayed

I'm watching the watchers watch me