I’ve gone from poverty to having decent disposable income and it would take a lot to reverse all that effort. I have “loved” people who were dumb with money. It was very stressful and financial issues eventually overshadowed the positive aspects of the relationship.

@Little House
You sound like me. Each other’s company is so fun, and so priceless. But, we can do a lot of good for others with $100 million!

Check out the original Alexa challenge post. Seems pretty straightforward. If one can help others, eventually that help will be reciprocated. You’re welcome to join! Just follow the directions from the post.
.-= admin´s last blog ..Tax Refunds Are Good For Most People, Because Most People Can’t Save =-.

Congrats on your Alexa ranking. How do you do it?! Must be your controversial posts, always intriguing.
.-= Little House´s last blog ..Cheap Motels =-.

Your Samurai Challenge is going like gangbusters – you’re little cabal of blogs are really picking up traffic. This is really the best way for a lot of us to get ahead, way too much competition in the blogosphere to go it alone. Thanks again for the great idea.
.-= David @ MBA briefs´s last blog ..5 Ways to be happier – guaranteed =-.

You’re looking at individual securities, Sam. I’m looking at broad indexes. It’s not possible to effectively predict the long-term return of an individual security (unless you’re Warren Buffett). With a broad index, it’s easy.

Here’s what William Bernstein says about this in his book The Four Pillars of Investing: “Not infrequently, promising companies with large expected future dividend streams stumble and fall; nearly as often, companies given up for dead recover and provide shareholders with prodigious amount of future income. On the other hand, when you examine an entire market, consisting of hundreds of thousands of companies, these unexpected events average out. For this reason, the income stream of the market as a whole is a much more reliable calculation.”

The implications here are huge for the typical middle-class investor. Now that index funds are available to us, we no longer need to worry about the risk of stock investing. If we just look at valuations before setting our stock allocations, we avoid 80 percent of the risk that was present in the old days (and that is still present today for those following a Buy-and-Hold strategy).

I have a calculator at my site (“The Stock-Return Predictor”) that performs a regression analysis of the historical stock-return data to reveal the most likely 10-year annualized real return for stocks starting from any given valuation level. At the prices that applied in 1982, the most likely annualized 10-year return was 15 percent real. At the prices that applied in 2000, the most likely annualized 10-year return was a negative 1 percent real. Do you see why following a Buy-and-Hold strategy is going to delay your retirement by many years? There is no one stock allocation that makes sense both when your long-term return is 15 percent and when it is a negative 1 percent.

In January 2000, the choice was between stocks paying a most likely return of a negative 1 percent real for 10 years running and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) paying a guaranteed return of 4 percent real for 10 years running. The investor who started with $100,000 was $50,000 ahead at the end of 10 years if he went with TIPS. The investor with $500,000 was $250,000 ahead if he was willing to avoid a Buy-and-Hold strategy. It’s the losses that we all suffered by following Buy-and-Hold that caused the economic crisis — when $12 trillion of wealth disappears from a consumer economy, spending dries up and the economy collapses.

I have spoken with numerous big-name experts, who have acknowledged that I am right about this (sometimes in direct words, sometimes in cagey language). The problem today is that The Stock Selling Industry made hundreds of millions promoting Buy-and-Hold. There is a feeling that it would “look bad” if these big-name millionaire “experts” were to acknowledge having caused the biggest loss of middle-class wealth in U.S. history. My thought is that it ends up looking worse when the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold causes another crash, one that sends us into The Second Great Depression.

The wonderful thing is that middle-class investors now have the internet available to us. The Stock Selling Industry is not able to prevent us from sharing the realities with each other. My strong sense is that there are many in The Stock Selling Industry who would love to be able to tell people the truth about stock investing if only we would help them get out of this corner that they have painted themselves into.

We live in exciting times, eh, Sam?

Rob
.-= Rob Bennett´s last blog ..My E-Mail to Yale Professor Robert Shiller, Author of Irrational Exuberance =-.

Let’s say you put the entire amount into low risk investment that yields 4%
Letls do math… $100,000,000 *.02 = $2,000,000 annually, and with another 2% going back in to keep it growing…

I have to take the money elsewise I’d have to call my site AlmostMoneyReasons.com…
.-= Money Reasons´s last blog ..Stop Waiting For Magical Moments To Happen =-.