how much of your social security check are you willing to give up...

Usually referring to property and the diligence is searching for clear title, rather than finance.

Due Diligence is sometimes used as terminology when dealing in forensic audits. Usually then it is a little late.

The system is flawed but the assumption that most people can handle their own investments is also flawed.

 

While working for the government I started putting money into my retirement, but I have already withdrawn all that I had put in. But yeah, I really don't expect to be taken care of in my old age so I am busy right now trying to prepare to take care of myself.

 

people borrow money all the time to invest in real estate or a business. I glad you're still putting money into the market cuz we have to many people with big money just sitting on it and that was the problem we had in the 70's. I have about 60% in the market right now and the rest in bonds. I'm keeping a close eye on everything.
Houses, the bank will only loan so much, so 2 or 3 rentals and you can't get any more.
Business loans, you better have a lot of money backing you to get one of these.

yes DUE DILIGENCE has been around longer than I've been alive but I get the feeling you have very little experience in investing so you use acronyms. What would you do if you had $50,000 and had to invest it?

 

you're feeling is well founded considering im only 21 years old. i've been investing for less than a year. i started with buying unallocated pool accounts in metals, and right now that's all i have. I own mostly palladium, but also smaller amounts of platinum, silver and rhodium. In that time palladium has done the best, increasing by 38%. followed by silver and platinum. Rhodium has remained relatively flat. Rhodium has great upside potential I just have to hold onto it longer. I've more recently started looking further into trading stocks and commodities futures.

 

To sum up, the government has the right to get into your money for the same reason they collect taxes to improve other things for society's benefit. In fact the program's title is a full description, it's security for society. It's not good for society to have old people working until the day they die, especially given the fact people generally live until their mid to late 70's now, and at that age you're basically no good except as a walmart greeter. There is no bad part of social security unless you've spent most of your life with an extremely well paying job(which even if you did, if you're for example a person who lost most of their life savings in the stock market last year, you'd be happy it existed). I don't get why people these days have this notion that things would be fine without social security, and they'd be the special snowflake that managed to make enough money and save it correctly enough over the course of 45 years to retire in great condition. In reality before social security, and even after it for a lot of people until medicare came along, old people who either didn't have family to support them/had a really good job with a good pension plan worked until the day they died, often in terrible conditions.

*edit*
To sum up, we're not special snowflakes, most of us will lead average lives with average pay with average habits. Habits being the keyword. People like doing things, they like having fun, they like buying stuff for themselves, people have a habit of spending most of their income. Like this crisis, blame the banks and wall st all you want, and they deserve a good deal of it, but the fact remains millions of Americans took out loans that anyone sane adult should've known they ran the risk of not being able to pay.

 

sorry to be the one to break this to you, but if you anywhere under the age of say...40, you were never going to get a check to begin with. this has been a system-wide problem for decades.

no need to place all of the blame on the current administration.

 

mk get off my nuts.. it fine if you think ss is a good thing, but following my coattails touting it is pointless. social security is unsustainable.

 

Actually it's incredibly sustainable. For starters, remove the asinine $100,000 limit on what's taxed for social security, after that takes care of most of the problem, cut military spending and increase taxes back to their 90's levels, that would actually solve most of "unsustainable" problem.

People are in a rise over social security shortfalls 25 years in the future, yet we're about to spend the same amount of money to feed the rich.

 

So look at where those people are now; up to their eyeballs in debt, upside down on their properties, sometimes not even able to pay the principle much less the interest, threatened with foreclosure, and some living on food stamps. I say borrowing for investment is not smart.

IMHO the social security system is just as irresponsible as those people you describe. I paraphrase my earlier post - anybody who relies on ss to save their irresponsible ass in old age deserves what they get. We'd be a lot better off if, say, ss contributions remained compulsary (to protect the non-snowflakes) but let us invest at least 50% of it in some kind of self-directed account.

Granted, there would have to be some kind of phase-over plan to protect current retirees who didn't have that opportunity.

 

yes borrowing money with the idea of just paying on the interest is stupid. My investments are beyond IRAs and mutual funds so we may be coming at this discussion from different angles. I've borrowed money on more than one occasion for investing and make it work.

 

Oh I do blame banks and Wall St... people seem to be forgetting the government's role in "looking the other way" (at very best) to enable the critical mass that is the economic crisis to unfold. Much of this seems to suggest that it is the government that should fix the problem but my cumulative observation of what the government does screams otherwise... the government- or better, the people IN government are there for their own purposes... after all- as much as they look down on the general population as little more than livestock, they are only human- just like you and me... and they look out for their own interests- as well as their cronies- usually at our expense

The solution is in our court and Madcap is spot on that while the economic storm may be caused by outside forces, we've collectively put ourselves in a position to be badly affected by it... instead of regularly putting away money as a shelter against an economic dry spell, we've collectively been chasing fads and acquiring the latest and greatest new gadgets and otherwise creating the illusion that we're well of- the effort which ironically perpetuates quite the opposite.

Oh, and just to clarify, SSI was set up in 1933 to pay out a full benefit at age 65. In 1933, the average life expectancy for men was just under 60 years years and a touch shy of 64 for women... does anyone really thing that making the retirement age 65 was coincidence? The gamble was most likely that enough people would die before collecting that the fund would remain solvent. Most people would assert that SSI exists to provide support for them in retirement but I very strongly believe the government feels quite differently. The key to much of our current troubles is to find ways to address our own needs without depending on the government. the problem with social security is that we're just living too long... and the government can't possibly be oblivious to that.

The government is not your friend and does not want to help you- though it will cheerfully raise your taxes and tell you that the money is for your own good- but their track record suggests anything but. they are shoveling trillions of dollars to big banks and Wall Street but mostly just make speeches about mortgage relief and creating jobs for us. They want things to stay just comfortable enough for us to be lulled back to sleep so they can continue pursuing economic policies that will further enrich their elite cronies at the expense of the rest of us.

 

you mean it's incredibly sustainable IF

now, pay-out exceeded pay-in this year. the deficit panel has recently suggested higher taxes and raising the retirement age. this is not the first time social security has faced a finance crisis. i tell you what is sustainable, and that's spending less than you make.

 

Yep- if we used the same rationale as was apparently used at its inception in setting the retirement age to a few years past the average life expectancy, then the fund would be perpetually solvent.

 

Raising the cap on income that can be taxed for SS(by a lot) and moving up the retirement age to 68 would solve the good deal of SS shortfall me thinks.


Only problem is that statement included both raising taxes and raising the retirement age, such phrases send law makers shivering into the corner.

France had massive country wide protests last month over the government's plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, spoiled cheese eatin surrender monkeys

 

I'd raise it (retirement age) a bit more but otherwise you're spot on.

 

you leave that cap alone

 

But why?

 

Because I'm self employed so I pay my own SS but they call it self employment tax and it's more than enough

 

Yes but it's easy to make exceptions for those self employed, vast majority of people making over $110,000 a year are salaried, which means the tens of thousands of people bringing home over 7 digits a year are only paying SS tax up to just over $100,000. It's a pretty asinine way to collect taxes, there are different tax brackets but a cap on income that can be taxed for government programs is pretty regressive overall.

 

but then they would have to raise the amount you can collect when you reach the retirement age