Stay fully invested in “good, growth stock mutual funds” throughout your retirement (never move some to cash or safer investments)

Cash out prepaid tuition plans and put it in the stock market (again, with a short horizon this is very bad advice)

Interesting in today’s WSJ an article on how bad the last decade for stocks has been – worst on record.

Dave Ramsey is the best debt counselor I’ve ever heard of. If you’re sinking–or even under water–he will do you a lot of good. But as an investment counselor, he’s a clown. “Good” mutual funds always out-perform the S&P 500. A Roth IRA always beats a traditional because it grows tax-free. You should put money into an aggressive growth mutual fund that you are going to want in five years for a car. Full-fee brokerages (that kick a percentage back to Dave for the referral) will give you superior returns. Yeah.

As for the 12% return, this is quite high. I thought I read somewhere that great brokers average and 8-9% return. Maybe I was mistaken.

-Little House

That means using your own personal control on your personal investments as much as possible, rather than than letting some so-called “expert” doing it “better” for you. You don’t personally know this “expert” yourself, and you probably don’t know in what this “expert” is “expert”.

Using good old common sense will be all the difference in the world. Start with what has the most impact. Buying your car should be pretty high in your list, because your car is the second highest expense you have in your life. Just after paying taxes, and before paying your house.

At least in Canada. This information comes from Statistics Canada and is pretty much the same for other industrialized countries, but your mileage may vary a little bit from one country to another.

Buying a used rather than a new car is a little work that has high returns for you. But is has the secondary effect of yourself getting used to make more use of your judgement, something that will be more and more in demand as the economy starts to other energy sources and different ways of doing in the future.

Uncle Sam earned a reputation of creativity and originality by something else than going to the mall on weekends and watching American Idol the rest of the time they’re not working.

Hopefully, the judgement of everybody will be put together again to create something good for the future again.

In the meantime there’s much worse to do than working on our individual skills and judgement to keep Wall Mart away from the creation of original solutions to our day to day problems

2>Any mutual fund I buy had better out perform the S&P. Dave would likely tell you the same.

Those two points should make up the yards you need to get from 7% to the 12% he’s quoting.

Now, just to blow your mind, I have one mutual fund that since inception in the 1960’s has averaged over 10% (again, nominal). And that’s after the 40% hit it took last year. So yeah, it’s out there.

On the other hand, my motor scooter defies the odds. Bought it brand new for $5000 over a year ago, have almost 8000 miles on it, and I’d still easily be able to sell it for $4000. About the only upside of Honda making so few Big Ruckus’s in only two model years.