Is anything legitimate?Is anything legitimate?…I am 64 years of age…I have college degrees, 43 yrs of work experience…was selling $1 million or more/year in 4 industries. As I lost jobs due to the economy, 9-11-01, and other economic reasons, my salary dropped from a high of $57,000 per year to making $18,000 per year, working FULL TIME in retail. I started collecting SS at 62 because it was $1500 per month rather than the $600 per month I was earning standing on my feet 12 hrs per day in retail.
Can you recommend anything….ANYTHING a poor person, like me…can invest in that will actually pay off?
Respectfully,
Disgusted American…waiting for the collapse of the Socialist States of America.
R.I.P…..U.S.A…..1776-2008
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I like to watch the infomercials of Armando Monteleon. It seems like bull but somehow he is doing this and making big money. I think people just want to have the hope that they can do this.
Whoa….better stop collecting that Social Security immediately. That is pure socialism. You also might want to stop driving on roads that were built with tax dollars or eating food that had FDA inspectors make sure it was safe for your consumption. And without the Socialist States of America operating as usual, be prepared to just watch your house burn to the ground if, God forbid, it ever caught on fire. There won’t be any firemen their to help you.
“Whoa….better stop collecting that Social Security immediately. That is pure socialism. You also might want to stop driving on roads that were built with tax dollars or eating food that had FDA inspectors make sure it was safe for your consumption. And without the Socialist States of America operating as usual, be prepared to just watch your house burn to the ground if, God forbid, it ever caught on fire. There won’t be any firemen their to help you.”
You do realize that he paid for all those things for over 40 years, don’t you? Legitimate government functions include infrastructure and defense. Social Security is a ponzi scheme towards which he contributed for decades. I’m sure he’d be glad to get a lump sum payment from the Federal government for the 15% of income contributions he paid over 40 years. Assuming an average pay level of $40K, that’s $240K, without even considering compound interest. Add in an S&P rate of return, and we’re looking at $1m Uncle Sam owes this gent, conservatively-speaking. $1m invested in high quality long-term muni bonds today would yield $50K a year in tax-free income. But he has to make do with $18K a year from the wastrels who robbed him of 40 years of SS payments.
Noddy, don’t bother, your talking to another socialist. They will never get it.
Although I am about 20 years younger, I have had similar concerns and questions. First, I think you have found a great resource here with Stock Gumshoe. The readers are knowledgeable and usually provide great insight in addition to the valuable work Travis does. I also am well educated, changed careers & income from $40-50k/yr due to the economy and recently quit my $19k/yr retail job of the past 8 years. I actually made less than the previous year several recent years in a row and my family suffered. Corporate cares about itself & reducing payroll/benefits each year. I got an offer from the folks at Stansberry for some books by James Altucher. The primary one is titled Choose Yourself and he will actually reimburse you for your purchase price (I think it’s less than $30 wherever you get it), if you want after you read it. His website is http://www.jamesaltucher.com He has had much more extreme ups & downs than I have and provides a practical way to invest in yourself. In my opinion, his honest presentation is SOMETHING that, if applied, can help anyone willing to work. You are intelligent, experienced, and have much to offer. You just need some ideas about how to go about making a living in today’s market which no longer revolves around “the company that takes care of its employees after faithful service”. This is not your ordinary “self-help” book (a genre which I’ve never found practical for myself). James is cut from the same cloth as Travis and truly wants to help people help themselves by sharing his personal experience and research.
Noddy, it sounds like you do not know what socialism is. Paying taxes and then reaping societal benefits such as firemen and police, libraries, schools, hospitals, roads, Social Security, Medicare, etc. is exactly what socialism is. Socialism exists to one degree or another under all forms of government. The only form of government under which there is no socialism is actually not a form of government: anarchy.
yes, invest in “Financially Educating Yourself”, first. Go to “Babypips.com”, complete the tutorials/lessons in “the school of “Pip-ology”! Create demo account to actually practice live trades until you’re ready to execute your very own strategy……….like one-half hour daily trading to the tune of $1,500.00 daily profit, on average!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Deploying currencies: they do exactly as they’re told, they dont take vacations, they dont take medical leave, they dont take paternity leave, they dont take smoke breaks, most importantly is, they dont talk back!
Pay close attention to “Reserve Banks” manipulations, usually they’re sniffed out by the nets worlds bank watchers. so the “games” more transparent.
Complains about the “socialist” government then goes around and collects SOCIAL security…..
On another note answering your questions and ignoring everything else you said… there is a lot of money to be made trading on the stock market, swing trading and day trading. No long term investments.
I too have similar concerns. The financial markets are an excellent proxy for global tensions and troubles, breakdowns of all sorts of systems we are seeing. But you have to do what you can every day in your own world to make it happen, make it better. For example, today I cancelled my scrip to PBL. Yeah for me!!! What a waste of time and money. Also cancelled their Income service two weeks ago. Travis, I keep asking you about this – I think the PBL people and SIA are in cahoots, or at least sharing the same info or almost the same company. Anybody on this??? I would say SIA has more value where PBL is just a few lousy reco’s with tonsoverbage and bs. Yes, I love to hear from Mark Ford waxing on about his art collection and how you too can be a big owner. yeah right. Kinda like the Scottrade CEO in the old commercials flying around in his helicopter telling you about his discount brokerage service. LOL. Anyway, thanks for letting me rant. Will try to contribute something useful next time. BTW – SBOTF has really taken off. Sorry I missed the boat on that one!
Alot of the newsletters I have subsribed to many of them have promoted companies only based on receiving compensation. Those people pay out to a lot of different newsletters to try and spread the promotion as far as they can. Don’t trust anyone that gets any sort of money for their picks. Most will not disclose it though.
The only newsletter I am with now is http://www.stockservicereviews.com/jasonbondpicks
Has anyone thought of the difference between social programs and socialism? Police, fire, and schools are paid for with tax dollars. The free gift is to those who do not or have not paid taxes and therein lies the socialism. Most of us are paying into the programs which benefit us constituting the social programs of our capitalist society. If I had paid my SS dollars into a private account (as Reagan had proposed in the mid-eighties), my retirement benefits would be a lot more than what they will be in a year when I start collecting. How about the Fair Tax which would solve multiple problems from more money for the gov’t (which should be smaller anyway), immigration and funding of what social programs we have. Sorry for waxing political but money and politics are very much entwined. Great site here with a lot of information.
I am turning 40 this year and have to say that the gentlemen who posted should be glad that he is retired and at the end of his career. I have managed to start looking out for myself in recent years instead of being ‘loyally blind’ to the companies I have worked for. The biggest misconception if you work for a corporation is that hard work will yield success these days. I’ve been in medical sales for the past decade and I have experienced decent success at times but always seem to lose traction due to companies I work for constantly moving the goal posts because they are completely beholden to Wall Street. The Bain Capital’s of the world and ‘consultants’ have ruined the work environment for the average employee out there because everything has been scrutinized to the tiniest detail. When everything ‘extra’ has been cut, they start cutting employee compensation and bonuses as another tool to help make $ for the shareholders. Now yes, that is managements job – but many of us are starting to reach the tipping point that working twice as hard for less money is becoming less and less worth the effort. At this point one of two things happen – productivity suffers because employees just don’t care because they know that whether they work 35 hours a week or 70 hours a week that their income is not going to change all that significantly, and employee turnover will eventually lead to less business in a given area because companies continue to discount the value of the employees relationships with the customers (after all, it is the employees that drive the business for a company selling products, not management). The end result is that when the position is next filled that the consultants hire someone for less money to begin with in the hopes that managment can somehow maintain and grow revenue by paying this individual less than the previous employee and micromanaging that individual to ‘work them to the bone’ and work them twice as hard while paying out much less in compensation.
This trend is spirolling downward to the point that companies will get what they pay for and eventually won’t be able to cut their way to better earnings reports. The funny thing is that when upper level management and the ‘consultants’ are done cutting, they all move on to better opportunities elsewhere leaving the poor employees with the mess they created because the only place they won’t cut is their own compensation packages and perks.
Middle class workers at many companies used to receive stock options as part of their compensation packages too – consultants were the ones that told upper level management to ‘keep those for yourselves’ and let your employees purchase company stock at a 5% or so discount. All that does is give static monthly purchase volume to the stock to help hold the price steady for those holding the options. Oh, yeah, you make 5% instead of the wealth building compensation you used to receive in the form of options… It’s no wonder that the income gap in this country is growing at an astounding rate.
As for me, I’ve made $80k – $100K in compensation a year doing what I do, BUT, I work in the northeast where the cost of living isn’t cheap. I too will probably end up in a lower paying job when my current opportunity disappears. This is unfortunately the way of the world. However, I don’t blame gov’t for taxes and regulations – most of the corporations we all work for pay 10% or less in taxes because of all of the loopholes – this is why we’d never get tax reform in this country – they are actually OK with the taxes they are paying!
I think that the only silver lining here is that you may see more and more companies going the path of Best Buy and Dell, or at least trying to go back to being private. After all, what is wrong with a private company where single digit growth is OK with positive revenue because you don’t have to please investors and Wall Street?