Cost of Living

[aaron]

take a look at sunny indianapolis, sittin pretty on short staxx.

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/02/2 ... -who-knew/

circle city ftw, booyah.

[dedalusdedalus]

What do you guys think about Certificates of Deposit (CDs)? I've been thinking about investing in one of those.

Bad idea. You'd essentially be running in place if you got those. Those yield like 1-2% per year. Inflation is generally equal to or greater than that, so you'd just be keeping pace with inflation if you're lucky. And the foreseeable future looks to be very inflationary.

I'm sure CDs have their uses, but "retirement investment" is not one of them.

[GSZX1337]

circle city ftw, booyah.

*derails thread*
Am I the only one that really hates it when someone says "booyah"? It doesn't really bother me much in text, though.

Bad idea. You'd essentially be running in place if you got those. Those yield like 1-2% per year. Inflation is generally equal to or greater than that, so you'd just be keeping pace with inflation if you're lucky. And inflation looks to be high the next couple of years.

I'm sure CDs have their uses, but "retirement investment" is not one of them.

Shit, my Personal Financing Class lied to me. I could've sworn that the return was 5-10%.

[MrPopo]

Shit, my Personal Financing Class lied to me. I could've sworn that the return was 5-10%.

In my experience the return on CDs is only a half point to a point higher than the return on a savings account, but your funds are locked in. Really, if you want to start retirement planning you should look into an IRA or consider investing in a mutual fund long-term.

[Pulsar_t]

Is inflation going to curb world population growth, or are people going to procreate anyway? With no major wars, famines or plagues to keep human numbers in check people should look into progressive methods to redress some balance. I wonder whether China was right about limiting families to one offspring? And then you have countries with negative population growth Not wishing to derail this topic but it seems raising nuclear families is becoming an increasingly unfeasible option.

[Limewater]

Shit, my Personal Financing Class lied to me. I could've sworn that the return was 5-10%.

Either they lied or you were mistaken in your recollection. A few years ago, the best CDs were giving in the neighborhood of 4.5%. Today, you're doing really well to break 2%. Fortunately (in my opinion), I think we're currently in a period of deflation, though I think there's going to be some crazy inflation on the horizon.

CDs are good for money you expect to need soon. They aren't volatile like stock or mutual funds. My wife and I keep a lot in CDs right now because we're planning on buying a house fairly soon and want to make a decent down payment.

But yeah, as a retirement vehicle, CDs suck.

[Octopod]

Is inflation going to curb world population growth, or are people going to procreate anyway? With no major wars, famines or plagues to keep human numbers in check people should look into progressive methods to redress some balance. I wonder whether China was right about limiting families to one offspring? And then you have countries with negative population growth Not wishing to derail this topic but it seems raising nuclear families is becoming an increasingly unfeasible option.

I agree with this. We can not continue to increase our population at the rate we currently are.

I have one kid and that is enough.

Of course people will get all butthurt about other people telling them they can't do something, but whatever.

[MrPopo]

Is inflation going to curb world population growth, or are people going to procreate anyway? With no major wars, famines or plagues to keep human numbers in check people should look into progressive methods to redress some balance. I wonder whether China was right about limiting families to one offspring? And then you have countries with negative population growth Not wishing to derail this topic but it seems raising nuclear families is becoming an increasingly unfeasible option.

<insert remark about Malthus here>

[DerekG52]

Is inflation going to curb world population growth, or are people going to procreate anyway? With no major wars, famines or plagues to keep human numbers in check people should look into progressive methods to redress some balance. I wonder whether China was right about limiting families to one offspring? And then you have countries with negative population growth Not wishing to derail this topic but it seems raising nuclear families is becoming an increasingly unfeasible option.

Don't be so sure that those things you mentioned won't happen... There are plenty of doomsday scenarios that can cause any of those situations, global warming (if it's true, there will be massive desert growth), wars fought over increasingly scarce resources, and the ever present threat of new or evolving germs to kill us off. If there was one thing that humans are good at its killing each other.

E: Back to financials, CDs will typically always be a poor investment choice because they are typically limited to a small premium over the fed rate. It makes sense if you were able to time the trends of interest rates, I had some longer term CDs until recently that were still around 5%. Interest rates will be rising, it remains to be seen what inflation does.

I am almost not a fan of mutual funds, they typically have so many holdings you would be better off just having an ETF that mirrors the market as a whole. Also they tend to have higher expenses related to them which cuts into your long term gains. Examples you could use are SPY or DIA which mirror the S&P and Dow respectively. Of course you need to thing long term (min 5 years) if you want to buy money into the market. If you need this sort of cash for a short term purchase keep it elsewhere.

If you are looking for something relatively safer, you could consider TIPS (Treasury Inflated Protected Securities) that will typically pay something on the lines of inflation % + 2%. They are typically backed with the full faith of the us govt, TIPS is an example ticker.

Disclaimer: I own none of these so I am not looking for any sort of boost in my wealth from your purchase.

[dedalusdedalus]

Is inflation going to curb world population growth, or are people going to procreate anyway? With no major wars, famines or plagues to keep human numbers in check people should look into progressive methods to redress some balance. I wonder whether China was right about limiting families to one offspring? And then you have countries with negative population growth Not wishing to derail this topic but it seems raising nuclear families is becoming an increasingly unfeasible option.

I'm going to continue to derail the thread with you. I completely agree that this world needs to curb population growth because--barring significant increases in food yield like in the agricultural revolution--the human population is bound for Malthusian deadlock.

Of course, taking any action is going to be a problem. What China did to limit its own population growth will pay dividends to the rest of the world, because those unborn Chinese children won't be eating or polluting, but it's really going to cost China sometime down the road. Because of the one child policy, China at some point is going to have a very old population with relatively few citizens who are young enough to be productive.

So this is the classic "problem of the commons": population control is needed for the good of the entire world, but bad for the individual state actors. Therefore, it's extremely hard to take the collective action needed to solve the problem.