For me it was paying off my mortgage....After that I put money into low and non risk areas such as a GIC's, top up RSP's etc.....and, no chartered banks for me.

I worked too long and hard just to have a person lose it.... Everyone has "a guy" just know this guy.

Many a friendship and bankruptcy have occurred because you knew a "a guy"... Everyone knows a couple of people who thought they were financially smarter than everyone else.

I may not be a millionaire but I am not living in a cardboard box either....Learn to live within your means....I can't imagine having to starting over...

Like KennyAO said "People have to do what works for them. There is no formula".

IMHO

Good luck,

I agree, and thank you.

When the financial advisors are buying houses and vehicles and cabins and rental properties, do you think it is because they have invested 'their' money wisely? :thinking-006:

No, it is because they are taking a little cut off everyone else's money.

A farmer here was going around getting people to invest with him. Many went bankrupt. He is just fine though. Think he is real popular?

A kid here went bankrupt a few years ago, then was calling trying to get me to invest with him. :snapoutofit:

These are people that for the most part do not want to work, they want to sit behind a desk on a phone staring at a computer trying to figure out how they can make money off what you have saved.

Sometimes it works, sometimes you lose everything. They do not lose, as it is your money they are playing with.

May as well take your savings to the roulette wheel at the casino (when it opens) bet on black or red. You will either win the same amount back or lose it all, but you have a 47.4% chance. Bet green (investor) hoping for the 22x payout and watch it come out red or black.

Best analogy I can make. There is no such thing as a totally safe investment (gamble).

In 2007/08 3 friends of mine lost hundreds of thousands of dollars they had invested in mutuals. 2 guys and their dad. Their dad is 70 years old and forced to work until he dies because due to no fault of his own, all his savings investments disappeared overnight. It was his choice to not leave it in savings though.

Invest in yourself and take risks along this journey we call life... Many have seen the opportunities pass them by multiple times..

Worst you can do is learn from your experiences.

Jim

I have a pension through work, and have been making a point to educate myself in the world of investing. I really encourage you to learn about it as well. Its helped a lot. Canadian Couch Potato is a great resource.

For a few years I was with Tangerine, making a great return. Last year I switched to an investment manager, and its been a great experience.

There are experts out there who are honest, and great at what they do. Learn what you can, and ask their advice. I'd happily share my investors info, if you DM me.

I had to laugh, your comment reminded me of a fellow that used to work with me - he decided to become a financial advisor.

I perused his web site, and saw where he stated that he would help you take $x per month and build it to $y amount after z period of time.

Didn't take a swift person to realize that that was exactly the outcome if a person would have put that amount into savings every month... Not including the interest that you would have earned... :D

Sounds like your friends panicked near the bottom of the market and sold out. They would likely be ahead hundreds of thousands by now if they would of had some one with some experience holding their hand through the correction. Sad deal.

Stocks are volatile, all asset classes are volatile. People got to have the stomach for some volatility. Holding nothing but cash or cash like instruments/GIC's is a sure way to end up on the short end of the stick. Your wasting your most valuable commodity, TIME. You need to get your money working for you in something, equities, real estate, bonds, commodities and preferably all of these in some degree at certain times, for diversification. The biggest risk is not taking any risk, inflation will crush your cash over time.

Historical returns from US large and small cap stocks is around 11-12%, international equities and emerging markets 11%, REITS 12%, High grade bonds 6%, high yield bonds 8%. This is over the last 35+ years. But you have to be prepared for drawdowns. Depending on the particular equity market, stocks were down huge in 2008. REITS and high yield also got slaughtered. But 2009 was a banner year for folks who didn't panic or added during the drawdown.

To the op, a 50% weighting in crypto is way to high. I think 1-2% would be more than plenty. JMO

Talk to a retirement planner ( best thing I did ) also I let professionals manage by bigger investments. Same reason why I pay someone to do my electrical work or fix my vehicles Im not comfortable with it and they do it everyday. I do dable with some stocks in my TFsa just cause i like the rush of buying and selling smaller amounts. i've learned many lessons on what not to do btw ( buddy says buy this stock)

Cheers and good luck

Ever since dot.com bubble they have screwed things up so badly by keeping interest rates artificially low and bailing out the banks and Wall St.

Once upon a time Savings&Loans were just that....a safe place to keep your life savings.

You didn't make huge returns but you didn't lose much either

Then they de-Regulated the banks(especially true in USA) so the could invest in riskier assets.

That's what happened in 08/09....

There are still many in USA that are suffering from that....I cannot imagine many ended up losing pensions, jobs, homes business and suicides.

All owed to human greed and Crony-Capitalism.

Exactly.
The movie 'the big short' was a huge eye opener. Mostly true story too.
I am peeking into investments because I was given a tip recently, but imo some just go way too far. A 26 year old I know lost his mechanic job to covid, then was certain he was going to make millions making video game youtube videos, then teaching self defense, now investing in the stock market. He is completely absorbed in it, using money from overseas of course. He thinks he can retire, never have to work again because he took an online course from a financial advisor LOL!
I still think black or red are better odds, but you will never catch me losing my savings to that bs either.

Ken, I feel very badly for your friends & their dad. But they made some sort of catastrophic misjudgment call. How did they create that type of money in the first place? Every investor has ups & downs. To lose it all suddenly is quite unusual.

We pay truck salesman to tell us stuff we already know, we pay financial advisers to tell us stuff we need to know. Tax planning is huge once you've made some dough.

Blue chip Canadian companies can generate 5-6% compounded. The compounding is the key.

To the OP, there are definitely shysters out there, but there are decent advisers also. To do nothing or save cash only is a slow way to a very frugal retirement. Good luck!

It has been said before “ live within your means “ but that does not connect to the brain of some. And put away for the bad time. We were always taught! You see it now selling toys for next to nothing because you can’t afford it, and really you never could! :snapoutofit:

2008 was a market crash. To say it was their fault is well unspeakable.

Their money was in mutuals, and when 2008 hit they were gone. They put their money in the bank, who talked them into mutuals. Not sure how that is a catastrophic misjudgement call made by them.

found this online-

Based on the U.S. history of previous market crashes, investors who are currently entirely in stocks could lose as much as 80% of their savings if the 1929 or 2001 crashes repeat. If we have a repeat of the 2008 crash, the loss would be “only” 56%.

They would of had to panic and sell their MF. Whether was that the bank told them to do that or not I don’t see how else they went from a lot to nothing. If they stayed in the market it likely would have rebounded and then some. Or am I missing something? Either way that’s an unfortunate outcome.

They were just gone. There was no panic selling when the market crashed

Did you not hear anything about the crash in 08? $700,000,000,000.00 disappeared in an instant. Thats Seven Hundred Billion.

I'm guessing there are a ton of members, myself included, who had a lot of money invested in '08. Still have that money and then some

Mutual Funds are baskets of stocks. When there is a crash or correction, the real monetary value of the stocks inside the fund goes down.

In EVERY case of correction or crash, the market ends up higher than it was before the crash. It is just a matter of how long that takes to rebound, months or years.

If the investor holds the funds, some of the individual stocks inside the fund would recover quite quickly. If the investor sells, it is a huge misjudgment call that can be avoided.

Yep. Something seems odd to all be gone.
Guess not everyone understand mutuals/investing (and I am on the low end of the knowledge scale when it comes to it). But it all doesn't disappear.
Kinda like those I've heard complain how there is no money to be made with TFSA's......as they sit in a TFSA account in the bank

Well good for you.

Your point?

Not sure how this helps the 3 out of the millions that lost so much?

Didn't happen to you so it didn't happen, is that what you are saying?

Pretty sure myself and others are wondering how it actually happened. You said mutual funds?

Pretty sure it is just you, and I am not biting. Assume all you want about the others, but when they have a question they generally ask me. You on the other hand, tell me.

I am more than done with your bs in this and all the other threads.

x2

Ken I think you are misinterpreting what the guys are trying to tell you.

If your buddies were invested in mutual funds, like a vast majority of other Joe blow Canadians when the crash of 08 struck you only “lose” that money on paper. If you wait out the crash like most/many investors do the market has recovered and exceeded 08 levels so we are actually much further ahead now; even having experienced the same/similar “loss” on paper. Now if your buddies decided to get out or sell their mutual funds while they were dropping or down, they turned that paper loss into a real loss as they now cashed out. This is what others called a misjudgement. They say this because as the markets swing you never actually experience a loss (or gain for that matter) until you sell and take it in cash. Had your buddies rode it out they would be ahead today like the rest of us that saw the huge drop and big recovery.

Now, the father is who I truly feel for. In my opinion somebody in or nearing retirement should never have a large portion of their savings in the stock market as they may not have time to ride out a down-swing. That was very poor advice.

Now if their money truly just went to zero there is only a few explanations. They were robbed by a shyster, or they weren’t in a MF but possibly one stock that went bankrupt. This is a poorly educated guess mind you.

I can speak from personal experience.

I went through the crash of 2008. I lost about 10%.
By judicious investing I survived and 3 years later had double what I had before the crash.

I'm not saying I'm any smarter than anyone else, but that is what happened.

How some people could lose everything is beyond me. I would have to know more about the details.

Not sure what to say.

I just watched the fallout with these guys and their families. The Dad was set to retire yes, and then he was not.

I simply said that these 3 guys lost, and am being told I am wrong.

I called one of them yesterday, and told him according to AO the money is still there, or it was his fault because he did something wrong.

Their money was/is gone.

I'm done with this one, but appreciate your insight HyperMOA.

No problem Ken. I believe something went wrong no doubt, I feel bad for them, but I think we will need Paul Harvey to get the rest of the story though.

I think part of this story has been lost in translation. I find it hard to believe anyone would lose everything in a reputable mutual fund. Maybe 90%, but most banks will get out before they go to 0. I can entirely understand it if they invested on their own in individual stocks. Especially in Alberta where a lot of oil companies have disappeared.

Edit: Ken you should get the fund name, that way it's a warning to others not to invest with them.

100 percent it didn't disappear in a Mutual fund, stocks yes!
Maybe they are calling stocks a mutual fund? Or maybe the sons told there dad it was a mutual and they lost it on the stock market ?

I know some companies i invested in went bankrupt or got pulled off the market.

I can only advise the OP what has worked for me. I followed my own simple rules and they may not work well for others.

1. I always paid myself first - no matter what. I always set aside the retirement and investment money first and then figured out how to live and pay my mortgage on whatever was left over.

2. I read everything that I could find written by Peter Lynch when I started to get serious about investing. I am an avid reader so read many other authors as well - some good, some bad.

3. I used dollar cost averaging to my advantage - put the same percentage of dollars in each month. It works well but you need a long time horizon - 20 to 30 years. Buys more when the price is low, buys less when the price is high.

As I have gotten older, I have become more conservative. Capital preservation is starting to be more of a priority then the rate of return.

Here is some info from my spreadsheets indicating the returns year over year calculated at the end of December going back to 1999. I don't have anything saved from before that.

This is only my account where I have mutual funds and stock holdings.

Year Return %

1999 72.0%
2000 59.5%
2001 42.1%
2002 8.6%
2003 38.6%
2004 15.7%
2005 15.3%
2006 19.2%
2007 16.7%
2008 -11.1% Negative return
2009 34.9%
2010 30.3%
2011 2.1%
2012 13.5%
2013 7.5%
2014 21.5%
2015 14.0%
2016 14.6%
2017 11.0%
2018 0.6%
2019 21.8%
2020 17.2%

What stocks are you holding?

I know from your posts on here, that you have considerable insight in the markets.

If you invested $10,000 in 1999 and got returns of those numbers, you would have $627,844 in the account.
Not bad for not even breaking a sweat. Compound interest at work.

Of course, internet numbers are just numbers.