In today's lousy interest rate environment, what is a saver to do? When scraping together pennies over a long time to pay for some future large expense, I like the idea of investing in some sector that is at least remotely similar. For instance, my (meager) real estate savings goes into a REIT fund which hopefully will keep pace with any property I might like to buy in the future. What about capital for trucks and equipment? That stuff is all going up fast too and I'd like my money to try to keep pace with it somehow. Unfortunately you can't easily buy shares of trucks and equipment like you can shares of a REIT. What you can buy is broad industrials, materials, energy, industrial metals, etc. I wonder if one or all of those would be a "good enough" approximation? I am strongly averse to debt so financing does not really get me excited. If it could even be procured for the old junk I tend to buy. Or other ideas?
I'm too poor a money manager to have any investments, but if you're thinking of long term investments, use the Warren Buffet approach. Look for some companies that have consistent dividends over long periods, even if they're not star performers, buy some shares and don't ever sell them unless you absolutely have to. Especially companies that deal in fundamentals, raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, etc. My $.01 (didn't have two cents worth)
I think that may be sound for general investing, but I'm looking for something that would track with the price of a truck, for instance. If truck prices go up then ideally the investment would go up also. And fairly liquid so in a few years if the right deal comes out, pull it out and put cash down for the truck. Of course it could go down as well but hopefully the truck would too. I gave up trying to make money in savings a long time ago. You generally just can't park money in anything that earns interest since interest is effectively zero. I guess inflation protected securities would be one place to go.
I don't think anything tracks with the price of trucks, or equipment, or health care, or college tuition, not even real estate except virtually until the TPTB decide to deflate the balloon and gobble up even more of the asset value in the world. We're closer to the Matrix than most folks know, the reason babies are issued a Social Security number with their first breath is so the corporate government (not the constitutional government) can borrow against that child's calculated future earnings. Sixteen tons, whattaya get.... Current National debt is over 19.8 and may exceed 20 Trillion by the time Obama leaves office. Federal Reserve=Bilderberg Group=Rothschilds (Not their true name) and No, I am nowhere close to being a conspiracy theorist, but I am a bit paranoid.
I take ownership of conspiracy theorist and we think a lot alike .
OK, I know that systematic change will wreck the best laid plans, but I'm just trying not stuff money in a mattress for a couple years while I save for a truck, a house, some tools, etc.
Gold. And not the paper stuff. Gold eagles are easy to get and are pretty liquid.
I hadn't really considered that angle. Most people consider that a long term buy and hold type investment. You think it is the right way to go just saving pennies for 3-5 years too?
I don't look on it as in investment as such, more a storage of wealth. As you know, there's not many assets giving any sort of short term return and, IMO, the best you can do with any small amounts of cash you have is to put it somewhere where the government can't steal it. And that includes theft through inflation.
silver is also something people buy like gold not as costly but still has the same effect