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I just walk to the 7/11 and buy a scratcher. I never win anything but I could make at least $100,000 in just one day!
I know you’re joking, but I used to work at a convenience store and the scratcher addicts were the most depressing part. I guess I should be grateful that the store I worked at wasn’t in an area where more depressing kinds of addicts would be around.
I remember one day walking into a 7/11, in maybe 2002, and there were 2 guys in suits, totally dishevelled, collars undone, looking like they’ve been awake for 3 days, depression coating their faces, and they had a stack of scratch tickets that they were silently just scratching off.
The story I have in my head is that their business fell apart and this was some past ditch desperate attempt to save it with the little money they had left. I have no idea what actually happened but here we are 20+ years later and I still think about them occasionally.
The one thing that going to a real casino taught me is that, despite what Hollywood would have us believe, casinos are not full of impeccably dressed classy people, but very old retirees that look like they only have a few years left to live, and disheveled men who look less well dressed than me in my PJs at home, who are gambling away large sums of money in a fit of anxiety and addiction.
Really depressing crap.
And yet Donald Trump still managed to lose money somehow, which should have really told us something about his supposed “business accumen”.
Oh yes. The bankruptcy of Trump’s casino was a thing to behold. I wish I could find the video of the people who worked with him back in the day as they all remarked as to just how absolutely ignorant he was about all aspects of both gambling and managing a casino.
But with the power of daddy’s money, he “earned” his position as CEO/owner nonetheless!
Which is already so cringe it hurts, but then to turn around and use that to prove how “well” Trump - not daddy, but himself - could run the entire nation…
As a nation, we deserve our fate I suppose.:-( We should do better. We need better. We won’t survive unless we aim to be better.
Maybe he had some morals about it…
For being a good sport I’m upvoting your comment to help balance it out:-).
Nope, 100% sarcasm.
Trump has no morals.
I associate my time in Las Vegas mostly with elderly people with oxygen tanks, chain smoking while they put coin after coin in the slot machine. Just sad.
Vegas is a good place to go if your idea of a good time is eating and hanging around the pool. Other than that, it’s a glittering shithole in the desert built on the losses of prior visitors.
https://www.pinballmuseum.org/
Also, the Hoover Dam is nearby.
Hoover Dam and Valley of Fire State Park are both cool stops that aren’t too far away. I’ve never been to the Pinball Museum so I’ll have to check that one out next time.
Now you just hook your debit card to the machine and you don’t even have to put a coin in!
And they took the pull handles away because they can siphon money out of retirement accounts much faster if the
victimplayer only needs to press a button.That’s sad. Pulling the lever was such fantastic part of the experience. Now we can’t call them “One Arm Bandits.”
We use to live in a society.
Oh for real. Walking through a casino is like being immersed in despair and obsession. I find no enjoyment in it at all.
And smoke. Don’t forget about the smoke
That makes me think of the chinese guys that took cash from the bank they worked at to buy lottery tickets. The idea was to use the winnings to pay back the money and keep the rest.
They got lucky and it worked the first time. Then they decided to try again and lost.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Bank_of_China_robbery
gambling is a helluva drug
The guy who started FedEx literally put his company’s payroll on a roulette table just to make enough to stay in business.
I know of a few small stores that owe their livelihoods to the local gambling addicts and the lottery machine. The entire business if dedicated to a few whales since selling snacks and coffee to randos didn’t work out and they would otherwise close. They even set up private rooms where they could sped the day scratching tickets as they would come in and blow and entire pay/welfare/retirement check.
The logic is always the same, “I’m up $500 today” not even calculating the losses and “I just need one big win”. People will farm gamblers like cattle.
That’s really sad. It’s the equivalent of putting lab rats in a cage with a cocaine/amphetamine button.
Perfectly legal since the state owned the equipment being used to ruin lives.
A similar establishment by me also diversified into bongs. A wall of bongs, a wall of lottery, a wall of smokes, a locked case full of smaller smoke accessories, half a wall of cooler, and three tiny islands of “food.” It’s very bright and clean but also sad as fuck.
Dude it was depressing stopping off at the beer store on the way home from work for a 6pack so I could kick it and relax on the couch…
…and there’d be a group of blue collars going there to cash their weekly paychecks, buy a couple 40s and $50 worth of scratchers. They’d win $10, and buy $10 more worth of scratchers. They’d win a TICKET, get another and win nothing, then complain that they were “so close” to winning 10-grand.
Work at a rutters. had multiple guys who were serious come in with like 20 $1 and 5 $20 every other day. We had one guy who’d buy $100-$200 every visit (up to 3 times a day). Must’ve been in his 50s but he said his wife didn’t know. Scratch offs scare me now I’ve only ever seen one $1500 win but I’d only work part time so.
Am I reading that right that they’d spend upwards of $600 in a single day on a scratch-its?? Holy shit.
As far as I know, I would get told he already visited by people in 1st shift and he’d come in like 6 and spent $100-$200 then come back an hour later
I used to work at a liquor store that had a lottery machine (scratch offs, state lotto) and yea the addicts were pretty depressing. This was a liquor store so we had sadder ones, but still.
I never understood the appeal of scratch offs, 100k? If you gotta dream, dream big, play the lottery
Instant gratification is a hellava drug
The keno addicts at the bar i work at are wild. They just keep silently putting in money and watching the drawings. I prefer that to the ones who try to explain their strategies to me or complain that some number appears in every drawing. Or the guy who came in Wednesday night and kept betting $10 that the first pitch of every at bat of the Mets/Brewers game was gonna be a strike. It’s bleak.
“No, you don’t understand! I have an angle!”
Our national betting company has started showing “stimulated” football games for people to bet on, with screens showing highlighted actions and all… It’s so depressing.
I remember hearing a story like twenty years ago about a person that figured out that serial number were disclosing payouts. They would buy a bunch, find the winners, scratch them, then return the losers for their money back. I think I heard about it on a planet money or this American life ages and ages ago.
Who in their right mind is accepting returns of lottery tickets, scratched or not???
Store clerks who just want to get through their shift without committing battery upon their customers and are definitely not paid enough to deal with that shit.
Not paid enough to say “no refunds” but given the ability to authorize giving out money for unofficial reasons? If it’s unauthorized, then they’re essentially stealing cash and assuming an extremely high risk of getting fired to avoid confrontation.
I’ve never worked a gas station, but I’ve worked fast food and I would have been fired soooo fast if I were giving out unauthorized refunds. Maybe even prosecuted if the amount was large enough. I’ve seen people fired for less.
I work at a gas station that does food, and we can refund almost anything at the whim of the cashier, sure there should be a reason, but you don’t ask a manager or whatever you just do it if it’s the right thing.
Lotto on the other hand belongs with things like phone credit and fuel. If the system even lets you, it’s going to log it and management will know and expect a good explanation on what the fuck you are doing.
I just quit after calling the police. Dude said they were too hard to scratch off and wanted his money back. Was dressed to the nines (as was his date), in a seedy movie rental store, trying to return lottery tickets by amicably dropping threats of coming behind the register.
I sure hope his date was impressed. Nobody else was.
Edit: also, this was about 20 years ago, so may very well have been a scam attempt.
I won like $250 on the first scratch off I got with my boyfriend. Broke my reality, I want to try it one more time to see if we’d win anything but I gotta stay safe
One of my best friends buys 4 lottery tickets a week. It’s like $20. Definitely worth it for indulging the fantasy.
Since when have treasury bonds gone above 6%?
Apparently this was a failed attempt at a joke.
https://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2024/04/cws-market-review-april-2-2024.html
Oh, I get it now! 8%! How droll!
(What the fuck is he talking about?)
Three million is the joke, 8% is the hint that it’s a joke. It’s the same sort of satire that Lemmy frequently reposts. “I became wealthy with hard work, determination, and a small loan of a million dollars.”
How I became a Tech VP at age of 30
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Wake up at 5am
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Only take cold showers
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Have a dad that owns a tech firm
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If you only have $300,000, just buy an 80% treasury bond and you should be good.
Well, both of us are socialists (I can’t comment on the other person). We think about money in such a different way that any money joke about investment is going to lose it’s humor. I don’t understand it as a joke either, but I definitely understood the financial advice. He selected some large, relatively uncontroversial companies that will pay you part of the quarterly profits based on the number of stocks you own. Tbh I’d avoid the day trading and choose high dividend ETFs instead. $100k is still very out of reach for most people, but it’s a reasonable investing portfolio.
I get conflicting information about high dividend ETFs. Some people swear by them, others say they’re terrible or at least should be avoided. I’m too ignorant to know why either way :/
By the nature of ETFs, you’re definitely going to make less income because your money gets put into an investment pool and returns are proportional. However it makes you less tied to the stock market, which is increasingly tied to a person’s ability to retire
Those are my main investments outside of my 401k from work, I was just curious about the high dividend ones but someone else answered what is going on there. Thanks for the info!
Many people in The US who are trying to save for retirement attempt to have fewer dividends since that becomes taxable income. They would prefer just a higher stock value and pay the taxes later when presumably they are retired and in a lower tax bracket. That premise is probably good but you never know how the government is going to change up tax rates in the future.
Thanks for the info!
It’s like those educational explanations of compound interest I remember from childhood that tried to encourage you to save money. They would always start with 1 dollar and a savings account with 20% interest, and end up retiring as a millionaire.
I remember getting really frustrated as a young man when I decided to take that advice, and wasted hours looking for these mythical 18% return accounts.
Yep those 10 percent accounts got me laughed out of the bank. One banker did helpfully ask how much I made though. Actually that was what set off the laughing. At any rate that was the year I learned rice stretches any food. No relation I’m sure.
In college I was frequently hungry without any food. One of my friends said “buy a 20 pound bag of rice and you’ll never go hungry again”, and he was right. Idk how I forgot that, considering I was raised on beans, rice, and government cheese. I just needed someone to connect the dots for me.
A treasury bond delivering 8% is probably one from a dangerous country to invest in.
US I bonds were at like 9 back in 2022.
I too would like to make 2024 investments at 2022 prices
Well, it fits.
I bonds have variable rates. If you buy an i bond at a certain rate it only keeps that rate for 6 months.
and 9% back in 2022 was about in line with inflation anyway.
Which is literally the point of I bonds. They match inflation exactly. That’s why the rate is variable.
(I’m pretty sure you knew this, just explaining for other readers)
Sweet, I just need a small, interest-free loan of 3 million dollars and I’ll pay you back $10,000 a month for 300 months. Don’t believe me? Here, check out my credit report.
Credit report: trust me bro
The remaining $10000 will only be worth 2500 in 30 years time, assuming 5% inflation per year…
Whose side are you on here, me the plucky underdog, or some multimillionaire with money to burn
I didn’t buy Twitter and saved over $40B now I don’t have to work my entire life
The real LPT is in the comments once again
What a silly post…
First, where are you going to find a 8% treasury bond? Even a few months ago, when they were giving record yields, it didn’t even get close to that.
Second, if you borrow $3m with high interest rates (needed to get high yield treasurys) you’ll also pay a high rate on your loan. Duh.
Pretty sure the post assumes you have $3m just sitting in your bank account.
Even then there’s no investment with guaranteed 8% interest.
The opposite end of “The most expensive thing is to be poor”.
It’s a common image for so many millionaires to have a Scrooge McDuck vault, but that’s the thing; so often their millions are out earning them further millions.
This is a person who doesn’t understand how the fixed income market works.
He’s assuming he’s buying $3m notional of a bond yielding 8% and paying for the face value $3m (i.e., he’s buying it at par). This is not how it works, even if you’re somehow subscribing at issuance as a retail investor.
You’re going to be buying the bond at bid, which is going to be higher than par when prevailing future yield expectations are lower than the coupon rate of the bond.
TL,DR: You can’t buy $3m of a high-yielding sovereign bond for $3m today. You’ll get less of the bond for the money if it’s yielding more than the market is expecting base rates to be in the future.
So let’s say I have the $3m and buy the bond. Will I have a monthly return and for how much?
It depends! Let’s say a 8% Treasury exists and you want to buy it today. To establish its price, you need to know:
- What is today’s yield curve? (i.e., what is the market’s expectation for interest rates at different points in the future?)
- When does the bond mature? (i.e., how long until the face value of the bond is paid out back to the bond holder?)
- How frequently does the bond pay interest payments (coupons)?
I’ve put together a quick calc based on Federal Reserve yield curve data as at 27 Sept, assuming an 8% Treasury maturing in exactly 20 years, with semi-annual coupons (as most government debt is semi-annual). Google sheet calc
If you bought $3m worth of this fictional bond today, you would own $1.95m notional of the bond. You paid $3m for $1.95m of US gov’t debt effectively because the bond was issued in the past at a higher yield that what the market is expecting the government to issue bonds at in the future.
Every 6 months, you would receive a coupon of c. $78,000, or effectively $13,000 per month. This is interest the gov’t pays you for having lent it money (or rather having bought the debt from whoever lent it money.) These payments are guaranteed as long as the US gov’t remains solvent.
Finally, in 20 years’ time, you would also receive the principal payment of $1.95m. This is the government paying back the amount it originally borrowed. Note that it will likely be worth significantly less in real terms in 20 years!
Importantly, you don’t have to hold the bond to maturity and wait 20 years to get your $1.95m. Just like you bought the bond at a bid price of $3m today because rates are lower than the coupon yield of the bond, if the yield curve decreases further, the price of your bond in the open market will increase. E.g., if yields went down 1% across the curve, your $3m investment would now be worth $3.4m and you could sell it for a tidy $400k profit!
Thank you. That was a really good explanation. I don’t know much about the way this shit works, and I probably would have tried what the original post suggests if I had that kind of money.
This is such bullshit advice. Instead of doing this, we could invest that money in a 16% bond and make 40k a year. Simple hack they don’t you to know.
Fuck. I invested it in a 24% bond. Time to start over.
Yes and good luck finding a 8% treasury (and please let me know if you do) 😆
The DOW grew 25% over the last year.
The S&P grew 30%
The NASDAQ grew 35%
What are you doing buying 8% Treasury Bonds?
Exactly. But keep in mind that those are different things. Treasury bonds carry very little risk of losing money whereas investing in index funds/ETFs can lose you money.
Treasury is pretty safe.
So is Berkshire Hathaway.
What’s their gain this year? 🤔
33% over the year
27% ytd
122% over five years
1824% over the last thirty
Time to invest!
The best time to invest was ten years ago. The second best time is now.
A year ago we didn’t know the market would grow so much, or at all.
Today we don’t know if these trends will continue, stop, or even reverse. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future returns, yada yada.
The whole point of bonds is that they be more stable and reliable than other securities. They’re a useful tool for investors looking for stability.
A year ago we didn’t know the market would grow so much, or at all.
A year ago, the expected annual yield on the NYSE was 6-8%. The treasury return for a year was 4%.
Today we don’t know if these trends will continue, stop, or even reverse.
“I don’t know if my plane will crash, so I drive everywhere in order to avoid that risk”.
The expected yield on market investments is higher than the expected yield on treasuries. The real value in treasuries is their convertibility to cash, hedged against the risk of inflation. You are losing money long term if you are putting your retirement income in treasuries.
The whole point of bonds is that they be more stable
The point of low-yield low-risk bonds is that they can be quickly converted to cash when better investment opportunities arise. Alternatively, to be spent on consumer goods and services.
Who said anything about retirement?
And if you know why people buy treasuries then why did you ask?
You’re using hindsight to pretend like there’s no reason to buy treasuries while also demonstrating an understanding of why people do. You’ll forgive my confusion.
Also, the NYSE had an expected return of 6-8%. That was not at all a guarantee; we didn’t know that. My statement holds true.
Set it and forget it. I dont have to worry about the dow contracting with a treasury bond. That’s the literal point.
I dont have to worry about the dow contracting with a treasury bond.
Point to a five year period in which the DOW ended lower than when it started.
If you’re operating at the scale of a high yield treasury, you’d be far better off in the market over the long term.
I dont disagree, but nothing about what you have said invalidates what I had stated. Set it and forget it is the point. Give it to your grandkids.
Set it and forget it is the point. Give it to your grandkids.
You could do the same with shares in Berkshire or a S&P index fund, to better effect.
Especially at the scale of “national economy”, if you’re betting on Treasuries you are effectively betting on the economy as a whole. Just at a lower potential yield.
This is why people be like “real advice is in the comments”
On the other hand, If I can get $20k a month with one of the safest investments around, I’m not screwing around with the stock market.
If I can get $20k a month with one of the safest investments around
8% Treasuries don’t exist. The current treasury rate is closer to 4.5% during a period of 2.5% inflation. Higher treasury rates tend to be paired with higher Fed Reserve rates, which tend to occur during periods of high inflation. So the hypothetical 8% Treasury will only be available during periods of 5%+ inflation anyway. You’re still only netting real gains of 2-3%.
Its a safe hedge against a downturn when you only care about preserving your liquidity. It’s a real risk when you consider the possibility of a bull run. You’re effectively losing money when equities surge while you’re setting on a cash-convertible.
At any point in time those could also shrink by 25-35% over a year
Over 5, they’ll rebound and exceed the trough.
Hey if you don’t have 3million stuck between your couch then that’s your problem.
I would simply inherit my father’s couch.
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Brazilian bonds are paying 10.5%
But I don’t have a Brazilian dollars :(
Bruh 3m Brazilian reais is only like $550k. That’s like, a middle-class house.
yeah i’ll get right on that
So I know this is satire but I wouldn’t buy a us bond. I would much rather buy one from a stable country.
The US economy is like the most stable economy in the world. And they don’t double tax you, depending on where you live and the tax treaty.
We have had 2 assassination attempts on someone running for the highest public office in the country in 3 months. One of the people currently running for office who has a chance at winning tried lost the last election they were in and then tried to take over the government by force.
Our country is not stable.
I would much rather invest in a more stable country like Sweeden or Switzerland.
Just 10 or 12 years ago or so, the US and EU had comparably sized economies. Today the EU economy is between 25% to 30% smaller than the US one. And yes, I include the UK in the EU calculations just to prove the point. The reason? Higher stability and growth on average. What might seem like small differences on a year-on-year basis add up and prove to be quite substantial in terms of decades.
So you can invest in Swedish and Swiss bonds and/or companies if you want, but chances are you’re gonna lose out compared to person investing in US-based entities.
Sincerely,
An EU citizens who is sick of hearing Americans bashing their own country based on ignorance. There’s plenty of reasons to be upset with and critical of the US. But an unstable economy is not one of them, relatively speaking. Get your facts straight.
Politically, maybe, but economically, the US remains a major powerhouse, and if nothing else, that might be the sole factor that makes them try to keep things stable.
It’s one of the few things much of the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy tend to both want, particularly for those who have a decent amount of wealth tied up in the American market, and a fair amount of money might be spent to that end.
Oh wow tell me more about Sweeeden. What knowledge do you have that makes you think that tiny economy is more stable than the US economy?
There is literally a gang war going on on the streets in sweden. How does that count as stable?
Oh and 3 seconds on Google proves you wrong. Switzerland is the best and most stable economy and country in the world… again. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-09-06/steady-switzerland-is-once-again-the-worlds-best-country
That article brushes over many things, like some of the big contributors to the economy being straight up amoral organisations that will do anything for money.
Nestlé, facing constant boycotts for things like the formula scandals, their damage to the rainforests, and so much more.
Big pharma running what you could call price rackets.
Banking sector which will happily take money from arms dealers and the like and turn a blind eye to that.
That all gets you a very profitable economy, sure, but not all is rosy.
Then you go to Geneva and somehow, despite all that sweet tax money, you still have buses from the 1980s and public buildings that haven’t seen a renovation in the last 60 years. The airport terminal is straight up run down if you compare it to European airports like Heathrow, Barajas, Schiphol…
Then people struggle with the cost of housing - median salary is around 6k CHF (monthly), with 2k of deductions that give you a 4k net. According to rentola.ch, the rental for a 1-bedroom flat in Geneva costs on average 3.2k CHF a month, meaning you need about 3x the median salary (!!) to be able to afford a 1-bedroom flat within the recommended 30% of your salary. Working hours are longer than the neighboring countries.
So yeah, they have a great economy because the numbers are skewed by many-million-francs salaries of the corporations in there. If you’re not in a C-suite or visiting as a Sheikh wanting to spend a few millions in Geneva, quality of life is absolutely nothing to write home about.
Yeah no, that’s not how information literacy works. An article on usnews.com proclaiming Switzerland as the best country in the world based on self-reporting is the opposite of objective. Making an international economics-based comparison takes more than a quick google search. And keep in mind some people actually live in unstable economies. So stop bashing your country for the sake of it.
Sincerely, An EU citizen who has lived in Switzerland and visited the US on numerous occasions.
Wait what, Federer is still playing?
And the article didn’t even mention the why behind the political stability, low corruption and respectfulness; the half-direct democracy: though not without faults (too influencable through media upheavals), even the 7 presidents are “just doing a special job” and can take public transport.
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It’s almost like not starting a war in 500 years and being as neutral as possible lead to being a stable country.
