Originally Posted by bonvoyage

Finally! My pool-noodle-rental business is bound to take off!

Originally Posted by sourdough44

For most of us, picking up an extra trip is likely the best ‘side hustle’, to make $$ anyway.

You have all read ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, right? I’m getting at the ‘offense’ & ‘defense’ with $$. It can get to the point, that an extra $8000 doesn’t matter, when it just goes into that higher dollar car, or whatever.

Then we can get to life expectancy, one needs to prorate the savings. No need to either save everything for the future that may never come, or blow it all today. BWTHDIK.

Originally Posted by DeltaboundRedux

Chinese savings rate in the 45% range. (They're probably screwed though, because their real estate market is insane)

Japanese in the 25% range.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

There's such a thing as too much of a good thing.

In the event of a big downturn, all of that savings can readily be converted to smoke by the circumstance, or the powers that be if it's in their interest.

If everybody thinks they can live off their savings while nobody works, you have another thing coming. Guess you could burn piles of cash to stay warm in the winter.

Savings (investments, etc) is best considered to be markers in a game, and the markers only have utility if enough folks are playing the game (ie participating in the economy).

Originally Posted by Big E 757

I have been involved at some level with stock, options, currency, and futures trading for years, and have had some good runs, but would always have something go sideways, and get out too late, and then I’d take a break, or slow down for a while. When Covid hit, I used that time to get more into automated systems for futures trading. I even learned how to write the computer code so I didn’t have to rely on a programmer. Not because I’m too cheap, but often my ideas evolve, or I want to try to add a function ( like I recently added a trend bias filter to keep my mean reversion system out of the way in a trending market, until the price advance or decline slowed down again).

I launched my newest strategy August 1st with real money and as of January 31st, I was up 500% without taking any big risk. I’ve since given back a bit, I’m only up 250ish% with the current market volatility but I’ve reduced position size and trade smaller until things stabilize. It’s been incredibly rewarding learning something like writing computer code, even though it’s not a difficult language (I use TradeStation and their Easylanguage has a lot of built in function and all the indicators are already coded in so easy to reference.) It’s not something I ever would have tried to learn had Covid not happened.

I really enjoy it and running an automated system on 8 different commodities, while it requires more time than I expected, fits me perfectly. I’m not in front of the screen all day, it’s something I can check on once or twice a day, and I run it on a VPS so if things seize up, which does happen if an order doesn’t get filled in 3 minutes, or the VPS just loses its connection, I get a text and email alert so I know to go on and reboot the program. It requires little time, but I do spend time backtesting every couple weeks, and I’m always testing different commodities to find the ones that would trade really well with my system. Other than the last month and a half, the profitability and stability where better than anything I achieved manually trading.

There have been a ton of posts about real estate investing, but only the one about trading, so I thought I’d share my experience. I do love these types of threads too. I’m always interested in what everyone does in their non flying time and how they manage it.
Great posts so far.

Originally Posted by DeltaboundRedux

If everyone in the US suddenly put away 10% of every paycheck, the economy would probably collapse overnight.

You're certainly right about the "live off savings" prediction. A huge, underappreciated looming problems for countries with aging populations. Someone has to do the heavy lifting.

Originally Posted by NuGuy

What would happen to the stock market if people were not forced to put untold billions of dollars into the stock and other markets?

Originally Posted by NuGuy

What would happen to the stock market if people were not forced to put untold billions of dollars into the stock and other markets?