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Comment by lolsal | Hacker News Reader

I'm interested in this also. As a 30-something I have no idea what to invest in for "retirement" or how to plan for the next 30 years.

edit: I should say I lack faith in traditional retirement advice/planning, not that I have no idea how to do it.

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Max out 401k, IRA if eligible, mutual funds for the rest, live below you means. Don’t finance more than 30% of your income (after taxes!) on house, cars, or boats.

Live in or plan to move to a lower cost location during retirement.

Don’t be too stingy and enjoy life!

I think you're misunderstanding what I was saying. I do all the normal things for investing/retirement. If nothing in the world changes I will retire comfortably and early.

My concern is that none of those things will matter in 30 years. Dumping money into 401ks/markets/property used to be sound investment advice. Today they feel more like speculation. Even holding USD/bonds is a gamble. I'm not talking about traditional risk tolerance like large/small cap or foreign markets.

They are probably still going to be relatively good, just be sure to avoid margin debt, options, etc, play it safe and expect lower returns.

If you haven't gone to a financial advisor, I highly recommend it. Best decision I made, I happily pay her annual fee because I am guaranteed to make/save more in the long run with her advice each year than without it.

I have been to a few financial advisors and still use one. The problem is I lack faith in all of our current financial systems and the "solid" advice of investing in mutual funds, indexes and property seem to be long-term speculation these days, not investment.

The only useful thing a financial advisor can tell you to do is nothing. So just don't do anything.

Besides that, they can and have been replaced by a few calculators and the reddit personalfinance wiki.

Well my experience was different. I was doing nothing. I was letting paychecks accumulate in my checking account, and just guessing at what percentage I should be contributing to my retirement. Turns out that wasn't the right thing to do, and her advice showed me why.

Buy land with water availability and growable soil, build small cheap place to live, try to pay it off asap. That’s all you can do to prep

I think you're over-simplifying - land with water access today doesn't mean anything in ten years with continued climate change. Unless you have water rights (and even if you do), that water won't necessarily be present (or potable) in ten years, and your water rights likely won't matter either.

The dead sibling to this comment is correct. I suspect, though, that it was flagged not because of its inaccuracy, but simply because it goes against the feel-good positive capitalism that is so pervasive throughout western society.

I suspect it may have been downvoted due to the ending "that's all you can do to prep". Dead uncle comment (parent's sibling eh?) is a good start, but far from "all you can do".

It wasn't flagged, it was killed by software. That's what happens to comments posted by banned accounts.

If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp, then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. There's a small karma threshold (> 30) before vouch links appear.

Did not know. Thanks.

China isn’t considered capitalist but if I were Chinese I’d have a positive outlook on the economic outlook of my Country, CCP issues aside.

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