Book: 20231111 to 20231227, "Just Keep Buying" by Nick Maggiulli

20231111 - Introduction 1
20231111 - 1 Where Should You Start? 7

Things are quite obvious. If there is no enough money saved, it's meaningless to invest it.

So, all people should focus on saving for quite a few years.

20231111 - I Saving 13
20231111 - 2 How Much Should You Save? 15

The major issue for most of people is that they don't have habit of saving money for investment.

As I know, most of people only save money for oversea trip or new car or house upgrade, etc. That means they will never get enough money for investment.

20231111 - 3 How to Save More 24

There are many ways to get higher income, but they are just symptoms.

I think the most important tip is to use spare time wisely. Reading may be the most effective way to improve ourselves.

20231112 - 4 How to Spend Money Guilt-Free 40

I like neither of the two ways.

The easy way is to avoid wasting money. We should not spend money on anything that we may regret in a few years.

For large purchase, we'd better wait for a few days or weeks before taking action.

20231112 - 5 How Much Lifestyle Creep is Okay? 48

It's better to make one time celebration, instead of changing our lifestyle.

I prefer to only buy what I need instead of what I want.

20231123 - 6 Should You Ever Go into Debt? 56

We can sum it up in one line: don't go into debt for consumption.

20231123 - 7 Should You Rent or Should You Buy? 67

Mr maggiulli made a big mistake here. If someone don't pay mortgage, then he has to pay rent fee. So the $280 per month saved from mortgagecannot be used to invest. The extra money could be less than $100.

I think the problem comes more from phychological part. If we don't save for paying mortgage, then the extra money is more likely to be wasted.

Buying home creates a aim for people: paying off the mortgage. When we get an aim in our life, less time and less money will be wasted, so our lives will be more productive.

20231123 - 8 How to Save for a Down Payment (and Other Big Purchases) 78

How to utilize spare time, decides how fast how fast our salary income will grow.

Apart from that, just don't waste money on goods and services we don't need.

20231123 - 9 When Can You Retire? 90

It's mainly about time, about the purpose of life.

Enough money creates options. It creates the rights to say NO.

20231124 - II Investing 101
20231124 - 10 Why Should You Invest? 103

Agree with all three reasons.

20231130 - 11 What Should You Invest In? 113

Why government bonds and stock market follow same trends now? Because they both all driven by interest rate (FED) under same economy enironment.

When economy goes down, FED would drop rates to stimulate economy. That makes long term government bonds more attractive, and the stock market full of flood of funds, which also push up the stock price.

When economy goes up, FED would increase rates to slow down economy. That makes long term government bonds less attractive, and the stocket market lose liquidity, which also press down the stock price.

So, stock market is no longer the indicator of economy, and the bonds doesn't hedge stock investment anymore.

When rate is up, all assets down. Vice versa.

If we think the rate is going up, the only thing we can do is to short the market (including buy puts, sell calls, etc.), or sell everything for cash.

Crypt assets are affected by interest rate most.

20231201 - 12 Why You Shouldn't Buy Individual Stocks 139

20231201 - 13 How Soon Should You Invest? 148

Nick Maggiulli doesn't explain the root cause of asset price changes.

It goes with economy in the end.

That means, we should only invest in real democracy countries. If possible, choose the one with less political correctness.

20231211 - 14 Why You Shouldn't Wait to Buy the Dip 167

If economy is growing, then the stock price is going up in most of the time.

Then, the risk of missing growth opportunity is much larger than the risk of possible market dip.

20231211 - 15 Why Investing Depends on Luck 180

Because the growth of stock index is mainly caused by a small percentage of stocks.

That's why index fund is better than individual stock. And, the trading cost is much lower.

20231211 - 16 Why You Shouldn't Fear Volatility 191

No risk, no gain.

But it's critical to find out the long term trend.

20231212 - 17 How to Buy During a Crisis 202

Unless we adopt the strategy from Warren Buffett, always keep 7% of cash, we are more likely that don't have money to buy during a crisis.

Government bond is not reliable, unless the crisis is a natural one, which is caused by economy itself. Or else, FED may increase interest rate when the economy is hot. In that case, share price and bond price fall together.

20231212 - 18 When Should You Sell? 215

Balancing is useless. I prefer to hold some cash which can support our current living standard for 2 years. It could be just 5%. If stock market goes up 9% per year, we may lose 5% * 9%= 0.45% per year. That's a relatively small number. Even NASDAQ 100 index fund charge 0.1% fees per year.

Then we don't need to sell during market downturn.

20231226 - 19 Where Should You Invest? 230

Tax-free retirement account vs Pretax retirement account vs Normal brokerage account

If income is high enough, it's better to max-out retirement account; or else, no much choice, we have to choose normal brokerage account, because the marginal tax rate is not too high anyway.

Same as leasing vs buying. We should only lease if the marginal income tax is too high.

20231226 - 20 Why You Will Never Feel Rich 249

"Rich" is illusion. Have more rights to allocate more resource doesn't mean much.

Life is a wooden bucket. The capacity of a bucket depends on the shortest board. Money is just one of the board.

20231227 - 21 The Most Important Asset 259

How to choose career wisely? It's more about understanding of ourselves and the world.

Reading and experiencing are the only way to improve our perception.

20231227 - Conclusion: The Just Keep Buying Rules 267

This book only focus on the technical tactics. But the really important one is to understand economy, how value is created.

For many people, this book could very helpful anyway.