What should retirement age westerners with investments do with them?
I’ve been soft launching to my parents that its only a matter of time before a devastating financial collapse hits. Beyond gold I have no other idea on what is a safe investment with minimal ethical implications. (Such as specific industries or companies as opposed to less conventional investments like commodities)
I just can’t get over the optics of (me) a broke bum telling their hardworking parents “yo you guys should probably sell most of your investments and buy gold”. Lol. I guess they could invest in the Chinese market somehow. I wonder how that would go over at the bank.
I’m trying to think of something that its more palatable to boomers than “just buy gold”. As in diversification. But basically everything else is either at risk or comically evil like repo stocks, defense ect.
Also generally how do you feel about the ethics of stuff like shorting the market ect. Generally its only the Bourgeoise that can or care to engage in that kind of financial fuckery to personally enrich themselves. But is there really anything wrong with that in and of it self? (Not considering this, just asking more broadly)
Degeneracy aside, is there anything wrong with a working class person buying puts with the small amount of money they do have. Western leftists would say yes because it would make a crash more severe/violent. Which primarily impacts other westerners. Fuck those people lmao. But a worse financial crash would fuel more fascism/imperialism. So they’re probably right for the wrong reasons.
The best investment for when the big economic crisis hits is a home on a plot of land with a garden where you can grow your own food and enough solar panels and batteries for minimal energy self-sufficiency. Everything else is really meaningless in a scenario where currency has lost its value and the financial system has broken down. Even gold will have very little immediate practical use value.
But will any of us be able to afford homes when the big crisis comes, or before?
No, unless you already bought it.
The issue with shorting the market is that you don’t know when it’s going to crash. Realistically it depends on the AI hype running out, but the aphorism about “it is hard to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it” applies economy-wide. Don’t look down and you won’t fall off the cliff. And if you guess wrong when shorting, you can be on the hook for an indeterminate amount of money, up to and potentially beyond the amount of money you have in the market. Gold is a safer bet but it can underperform relative to tech stocks in the meantime. I think the best advice for your parents would be to avoid unnecessary spending and diversify the portfolio if they haven’t done so already, which can mitigate some of the risk.
Of course, I’m not a professional at this stuff, so this should basically be treated as speaking without investigation.
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Ya of course. Plus there’s no way in hell my parents would do that. I’m more so interested in the ethics of it. Famously even Michael Burry started to doubt himself because the 08 crash took longer than he predicted.
Standard personal finance advice is normally to invest in a broad, ideally whole market, ETF, with a transition to bonds as you approach retirement age. What might happen to US bonds in the short to medium term is anyone’s guess, the only thing besides this boiler plate advice is just to constantly act against the neoliberals that made market based pensions a thing in the first place and moved away from a publically funded or employer funded defined benefit pension.
Physical gold, and a floor safe, if you convince them. Agree with land, housing or not. Watch some of the Amish videos on walking a piece of land on rainy and dry days, before purchase. Paper is a step above a blip. Beyond that, stock up on paper (or bamboo) products, TP, paper towels, soap for the body, dishes, clothing. Canned goods (I know), dried goods (rice, beans, millet, buckwheat, quinoa) and rat proof containers. Maybe some lime for sanitation, burying waste, if it comes to that point. I’m not in a place to do any of that.
Develop good relations with others, form enduring friendships which see the plus side of common denominators rather than the minus side of trivial differences. Together, by pooling resources, more chances to survive hardships than merely on your own.
