I stand on a street corner near Zoo Atlanta in biker shorts for tips.

Thinking of trying this at the Racetrac over near the landside employee lot.

 

Index funds are passive cheap and very diversified. I agree with the rest.

 

That is nearly an exact match of my first rental property purchase. It's amazing how good the numbers really are over decade or more. Splitting investments evenly between the DC plan and real estate for the last decade has created a buy and hold portfolio with more equity than the retirement plan. The portfolio also produces monthly cash flow that the retirement plan does not. I'm a huge fan of buy and hold real estate as part of a retirement plan.

 

There is plenty of liquidity in brick and mortar. Too many novices think you have to sell a piece of real estate to get liquidity. You can convert equity to cash with a cash out refi. As a general rule, this is non taxable event up to a cash out amount that doesn't exceed the original purchase price of the property. Liquidating mutual funds creates a taxable event when selling at a gain. If you sell at a loss, well, you lost money. When you liquidate a mutual fund all you have is cash. If you access the equity in real estate via a cash out refi, you still have the asset and the cash flow.

For small amounts of liquidity, cash or mutual funds are ideal, but don't be afraid of having too much tied up in real estate.

 

I’m not sure where you or Paul Winkler gets the numbers you quote. The S&P has increased by a mean of 11.7% over the past 60 years. A conservative index fund like Vanguard nearly matches that. Factor in that it cost next to nothing to manage the index fund and there’s not too many traders that can beat that performance. Plus the benefit of rarely looking at my account frees up my spare time to have fun on the lake and live stress free.

 

Latex is way better.

 

And there's also some civilian restrictions on flying and other aviation related things, including flight and duty time. But to say you can't do anything whatsoever "on the side" is completely unenforceable and so broad its slam dunk lawsuit material if even attempted.

The mil/USERRA issue is currently being challenged and I think they will probably prevail at least to some extent. But either way that's nowhere near a total and complete fantasy ban on 100% of all "side hustle" gigs.

 

I'll tag on to your thought. Over the years I've flown with a number of very good pilots who "weren't quite right" on a given trip. Most had personal/family issues, but often they were working hard on a side business, or doing projects for ALPA/DAL. There minds were somewhere else. I've had to ask a number of them to get off the cell phone so we could run the preflight checklist. Side businesses are great but you gotta set them aside when you get in the jet. OFG

 

Assuming it's true that Delta is going to impose a blanket restriction on other employment, I strongly suspect it's aimed directly at the military reserve guys.



One of the provisions in USERRA requires companies to treat military reservists exactly like other employees, so any restriction on outside work cannot be targeted only at the military. As long as it applies to everyone equally, it would be ok.


Delta isn't the only airline to get in a tangle over USERRA and military reservists. I remember seeing a lawsuit involving American from 10 or 15 years ago. Guys dropping trips, especially with little or no notice, for military stuff hits airlines hard and costs a lot of money in extra reserve coverage requirements, etc. Anything the airlines can do to minimize such disruptions, they're going to do.



I'm not picking sides here, just acknowledging reality. I retired out the reserves just a couple years ago, and was absent from my previous airline (a regional) for nearly 4 of the 10 years I was there. I've seen abuse from the company side, but I've also seen rampant and flagrant abuse from the pilot side as well. Actions by either party have consequences, and the proposed new FOM policy, assuming it's coming, is one of the consequences.

 

CFP is the gold standard of nothing. Aka "couldn't cut it in professional finance" or "scrambling for a job after partying through undergrad".

CFA and CPA are all that matter. Maybe CAIA if you're in some offbeat private equity profession. The rest are a joke.

Read "A random walk down wallstreet". It's all an airline pilots will ever need to know about investing.

-someone who worked in investment banking on wallstreet.