• BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      It’s like those educational explanations of compound interest I remember from childhood that tried to encourage you to save money. They would always start with 1 dollar and a savings account with 20% interest, and end up retiring as a millionaire.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        I remember getting really frustrated as a young man when I decided to take that advice, and wasted hours looking for these mythical 18% return accounts.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Yep those 10 percent accounts got me laughed out of the bank. One banker did helpfully ask how much I made though. Actually that was what set off the laughing. At any rate that was the year I learned rice stretches any food. No relation I’m sure.

          • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            In college I was frequently hungry without any food. One of my friends said “buy a 20 pound bag of rice and you’ll never go hungry again”, and he was right. Idk how I forgot that, considering I was raised on beans, rice, and government cheese. I just needed someone to connect the dots for me.

        • WolfdadCigarette@threads.net@sh.itjust.works
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          8 hours ago

          Three million is the joke, 8% is the hint that it’s a joke. It’s the same sort of satire that Lemmy frequently reposts. “I became wealthy with hard work, determination, and a small loan of a million dollars.”

        • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          Well, both of us are socialists (I can’t comment on the other person). We think about money in such a different way that any money joke about investment is going to lose it’s humor. I don’t understand it as a joke either, but I definitely understood the financial advice. He selected some large, relatively uncontroversial companies that will pay you part of the quarterly profits based on the number of stocks you own. Tbh I’d avoid the day trading and choose high dividend ETFs instead. $100k is still very out of reach for most people, but it’s a reasonable investing portfolio.

          • Asafum@feddit.nl
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            9 hours ago

            I get conflicting information about high dividend ETFs. Some people swear by them, others say they’re terrible or at least should be avoided. I’m too ignorant to know why either way :/

            • sparkee@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              Many people in The US who are trying to save for retirement attempt to have fewer dividends since that becomes taxable income. They would prefer just a higher stock value and pay the taxes later when presumably they are retired and in a lower tax bracket. That premise is probably good but you never know how the government is going to change up tax rates in the future.

            • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              By the nature of ETFs, you’re definitely going to make less income because your money gets put into an investment pool and returns are proportional. However it makes you less tied to the stock market, which is increasingly tied to a person’s ability to retire

              • Asafum@feddit.nl
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                3 hours ago

                Those are my main investments outside of my 401k from work, I was just curious about the high dividend ones but someone else answered what is going on there. Thanks for the info!