Its comprised of 4 smaller loans whose interest rates are between 3.4% and 6.0%. The bond has averaged 7.92% return annually since 1994, but 1.45% year to date. Is the bond a good place to park this cash or should I move it to something else?
I would look into paying off the loans at the 6% rate. In the current low interest rate environment, it is very difficult / impossible to find a low risk way to approach 6%. If you want to take the higher risk / reward approach, I would suggest researching buying a stock market ETF such as SPY or DIA.
Personal responsibility has gone out the window. You're right that people can vote themselves all kinds of weath transfers from people who have worked not only hard but smartly, taken risks with their own capital, and been responsible. After all, it's those people who should pay for those who didn't bother to educate themselves or work hard enough to provide for their own retirements. And we wonder why we find ourselves in this condition?
Yup. Those tens of millions (hundreds of millions?) of Americans suck. When you see them as you go to your local grocery store/bowling alley/baseball game, don't you just want to punch them in the face for being lazy and stupid?
Go ahead and mischaracterize my point. Somehow generations before us managed to be self-sufficient, yet we're incapable.
It's every generation living that is no longer self-sufficient. Every generation has been less self-sufficient than the one before. At some point, it will end, and as the old saying goes, "chance favors the prepared mind".
Is it any surprise that more and more people are refusing to pull the cart and are hopping on instead? We are a charitable people, but we hate being taken for suckers. The political policies accelerated under the current Administration turn producers into suckers. It's better to stop working, enjoy the ride and then be bailed out.
I don't think it's exclusively some great moral failing that people aren't preparing for retirement. That 40% of people don't even know what a mutual fund is tells me that there's just a lot of ignorance about the topic. 30 years ago you could be ignorant, because the pension did all the thinking for you. Not anymore. But it's not just ignorance. It's also just life. My brother is a hard worker. Never been unemployed for long. He and his wife both have degrees. But at 42 years old, he doesn't have a dime in his 401k. Family emergencies and being underemployed (working crappy temp jobs) wiped it all out, or at least what was left after the economy tanked. He's not a free rider or a sucker. And he's definitely not the only guy I can think of in that boat. I think if you looked around at the people you know, you'd find a lot of people like that. Particularly among those you know without college degrees.
Yeah, I wouldn't characterize my dad as a free-loader; he gave the best years of his life working salaried overtime for that shithole company, but here he is, broke, 60, and with no retirement savings, all because he made one bad (very bad) move with stocks in 1999.
My brother does have a used Wii I sold him for $50 (he wouldn't take it for free) and he just got his first android. He does have a nice 36" plasma, though. His two sons seem to like it. I guess I should go tell him to stop being such a mooch on society. I have a feeling, though, that he'll tell me that socking away the $1500 or so he's spent on consumer electronics devices in the past 3-4 years into a 401k seems pretty hopeless. He had a lot more than that vanish seemingly in months. When you live paycheck to paycheck, year after year, and a little money comes your way, it's not hard to see how you buy something like a decent tv just to see your kids faces light up. You feel like somebody who is keeping up with society, enjoying life just a little, a provider, a man. Maybe the smart thing, the moral thing, is to put it all in a 401k or a college fund or a penny jar so you have it for the next uninsured medical expense that hits you like a freight train. But I don't look down on you if you can't bring yourself to do it.
