General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: OMG the stock market! [View all]PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,927 posts)I am so tired of people trashing the stock market.
Honestly, over time, it goes up. It goes up at least two out of every three years. On average, almost 10% a year over time. And that includes the years everything goes bad.
I've been investing since the late 70's, and I'm doing, quite well, thank you for asking. The people who try to time the market are fools, because timing is essentially impossible. Buy good stocks, better yet a variety of good mutual funds, hang on to them, and eventually retire.
It can help to have a good advisor. I'm lucky in that I have had one for about 25 years now who is solid, stable, and honest. I have done very well by him. A while back he put some of my money into two annuities, which are sadly too often curse words here. I am now collecting an income from each of those annuities, which is somewhat more than I'd be getting if I were simply doing the 4% payout that I am currently taking from my other investments. Oh, and my most recent payout from one of them was about three dollars more than it had been because the annuity had made more money. Hooray!
I am also in the wonderful place that my income keeps on going up in retirement. Not a huge lot, but enough to be nice. My investments are doing well, and if I need to I could increase my payout from those. Social Security, after several years of zero increase, has gone up and it looks like it will go up a bunch in 2022. I am very fortunate in that my medical expenses are essentially trivial, and so the SS increase is nice.
Lucky me, I actually have more income than ever before. It's not a huge amount, I'm not exactly wealthy, but I've been relatively poor at various points in my life, including when I first moved here to Santa Fe after my divorce, and because I'd learned to live on very little, I feel rather affluent these days. Of course, it helps that I'm not spending much at all because of the Pandemic and staying home most of the time.