The Great Pensions Crisis - Channel 5

[Deleted User]

nigelbb wrote: »

Substitute "bet" for "investment". Studying the form book is no guarantee of success. There are people who make a living from betting on horses just as there are the who make a living from betting on stocks & shares & currencies etc

Are you opposed to any form of income other than salary or cash under the pillow? Fair enough. Except that salaries also have risks as people lose jobs. And cash under the pillow is guaranteed to evaporate long term due to inflation. So, using your approach, substitute “salary” for “bet”.

Incidentally, I still get salary, but my investment growth is far higher most years. Lots of people like me. Never met anyone who lives off betting on horses. That’s made up bs.

Talmud says: “Let every man divide his money into three parts, and invest a third in land, a third in business and a third let him keep by him in reserve.” Little has changed. Diversify between land, stocks and bonds and you’ll be alright under most scenarios.

Malthusian

GibbsRule_No3 wrote: »

With this talk about renting and secure tenancies I wonder if there is a gap in the market for BTL properties that can be rented to just over age, say 60+ people?

The gap has already been filled, there are plenty of retirement villages with properties available to rent. (Indeed if you absolutely must move into one, you should rent, because if you are going to buy a leasehold in a retirement village, you may as well lie on your stomach, tie your hands and feet together and stick an apple in your mouth. Service charges are usually crippling, secondary market non existent and the owner of the retirement village usually offers buttons to buy them back, knowing that the typical seller is an executor or attorney who doesn't have time to argue.)

Deleted_User wrote: »

Not sure why you would use scary quotation marks. Yes, all investments have risks. Nothing is risk free. The only way to avoid risk altogether is to die right now.

A theologian with a passing interest in maths (not enough to make them change profession) might argue that, in a very real sense, dying is the greatest risk of all, as there is no information available to allow you to construct a model of the possible outcomes. Or in god-botherer language, it's a leap of faith. :A

If you believe in the existence or possible existence of an afterlife, then the inherent uncertainty over whether you're going to Heaven or Hell or reincarnation as a dung beetle or something else entirely should put worrying over the stockmarket or the property market into sharp relief. If you fully appreciate the fact that after death you will cease to exist, it should demonstrate that life's too short.

(The non-theological reality is that dying is not a risk, as Mordko says, because based on observed outcomes the consequence is that you cease to exist with probability 1.)