I’m staggered at how many career-successful friends pay so little attention to their left-over wealth.
They do great managing their careers, earning huge amounts each year and paying huge ordinary income taxes each year.
Yet one simple decision — once — like automatic dollar cost averaging into an ETF or mutual fund reflecting the S&5 500 would make a huge difference to their wealth, and the peacefulness of their retirement.
At 65 or so, successful lawyers who are partners in their firms, often get kicked out. Left on the street with no income. It’s cruel, but predictable.
Here’s a no-brainer. Buy an S&P 500 index fund. Put money into every month. Go back to your lawyering work. Here’s the S&P 500 over the past ten years. This is comforting growth for your nest-egg.
You might also consider picking a few stocks you or your family do business with — like Facebook, Google, Netflix, and Amazon.
This is Amazon over the past ten years:
This is Amazon over the past ten days:
Am I worried? No? I’m a daily Amazon customer. I just bought a box of these:
They’re called Swingline Finger Tips. They’re really useful for going through wads of paper. You get 12 Finger Tips for $2.99. Such a bargain. Another order for Amazon from Harry, big spender. Click
here.
Prologis king of the warehouse REITs
Prologis (PLD) is king of the warehouse investment REITs. It’s not cheap — P/E of 29 and dividend yield of 2.73%.
But, as a result of online shopping and the exploding demand for Swingline Finger Tips, the demand for warehouses is exploding. The New York Times just did a piece on the trend:
For the full article, click
here.Why you need to keep hitting “SAVE”
I got this nice message this morning while writing today’s blog:
Despite what it said, it never did save. I had to re-write. Drat. Not nice.
Save. Save. Save. Good advice. Almost as good as CHECK. CHECK. CHECK.
Cell phone speeds are improving
We’re updating Newton’s Telecom Dictionary. And Steve Schoen writes a definition for the newest in cell phone technology. Read this. It will blow you away:
5G
A future, fifth generation (5G) mobile network, whose specification the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has not been fully defined, as of Fall, 2017. Still, that hasn’t stopped some mobile equipment manufacturers and network operators from saying they are running 5G network trials. 5G is expected to support 10 gigabits per second data rates and higher. Commercial 5G deployments are not expected until around 2020.
“5G will be a dramatic overhaul and harmonization of the radio spectrum,” says Prof Rahim Tafazolli who is the lead at the UK’s multimillion-pound government-funded 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. To pave the way for 5G, the ITU is comprehensively restructuring the parts of the radio network used to transmit data, while allowing pre-existing communications, including 4G and 3G, to continue functioning. 5G will also run faster, a lot faster. Prof Tafazolli now believes it is possible to run a wireless data connection at an astounding 800 Gbps — that’s 100 times faster than current 5G testing.
A speed of 800 Gbps would equate to downloading 33 HD (high definition) films — in a single second. Samsung hopes to launch a temporary trial 5G network in time for 2018’s Winter Olympic Games.
800 Gbps equals 800 thousand million bits per second. How fast is that?
I ran a test on my Verizon FiOS today. My speed isn’t shabby:
Then I ran the same test on my iPhone 6 using WiFi on the same Verizon FiOS network. This the miserable result:
Mbps is a million bits per second.You can see how much faster G5 cellphone service will be. About nine thousand five hundred times as fast. What’s also amazing is how slow my iPhone 6 is on the same Verizon FiOS network that my laptop is — my thinkPad laptop is six times as fast. You should watch movies on your laptop. Not on your iPhone. Weird! I wonder if the iPhone 8 will be faster? I haven’t heard anything.
You can do your own test here, using Speakeasy.net. Click
here. A senior view of facebook
I am trying to make friends outside of Facebook while applying the same principles.
Every day I walk down the street and tell passersby what I have eaten, how I feel at the moment, what I did the night before, what I will do later, and with whom.
I give them pictures of my family, my dog, my new garage door, and of me gardening, taking things apart in the garage, watering the lawn, standing in front of things, driving around town, having lunch, and doing what everybody does every day.
I also listen in on their conversations. I give them the “thumbs up” and tell them I like them. It works just like Facebook:
I already have four people following me: Two police officers, a private investigator and a psychiatrist.
Harry Newton, who played the best tennis today he’s ever played. That gave him great pleasure that today’s price drops in Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba and Google didn’t. Tomorrow is another day. I’ll sacrifice tennis for a bounce in the market. Does it work that way?
Harry – do you mostly play singles or doubles also?
My singles game is in the pits this year – usually I am in the top 10 on my ladder; this year I cant get out of the basement. But my doubles is holding up decently, which is good because I like that better anyway.
Singles.
Harry,
Do you really feel your downloads have been as fast as 84.3 Mbps? I get similar readings, but when I am really web browsing I don’t think it “feels” that fast. Pictures that are only a few kilobytes may take a second to download. I think the cable companies are aware when we browse to a speed test site and up their service speed at that time so they look good. The rest of the time they are throttling you.
Ron
I’m on FiOS. It feels fast. But I’m aware that the speed I feel is also determined by the speed of my browser, of the processor running my computer — and the distant server I’m dealing with and how busy it is… So there are many factors. The middle of the night is pretty good for fast speeds.