48 years old, currently have no investments. My net worth is my car and the clothes on my back, and I don’t ever want to be in this situation again.
(Edit: I don’t need to buy a house or anything whatsoever related to a house, so please don’t mention the “h” word in your response, it’s triggering me for tangential reasons. Let me be clear, I will NEVER care about real estate whatsoever, mmmkay? Just trust me when I say I have a roof over my head and it’s completely paid off, no property taxes, and No, I will never sell it, so the whole h-word" aspect of life is not a concern for me, k?)
Just looking for guidance where to invest this relatively small amount of money every month so in a few years when I’m older & frailer I’ll have enough for retirement. I don’t want it to just sit in my bank account, I want it to grow.
For reference, I’ve been living on approx $1500 per month for as long as I’ve noticed, so I don’t need much per month, and the sooner I die, the less retirement fund I’ll need, but we can never predict when anyone’s death will happen, so let’s assume I’ll live to 100 because I’m ridiculously healthy & an exceptionally good driver, never been in an accident, one speeding ticket in my entire life, no social life so I never get into risky situations, so let’s just plan for the possibility I’m going to live another 50 years.
Crypto’s volatility is akin to gambling, and gambling does sometimes pays off. On average it does not - ask the epidemic of people who lost everything in crypto how they feel about it. Regardless, past performance does not guarantee future returns - the crux of index funds is that finding “the right winners” consistently over time is impossible, and doing it for 20-60 years straight without getting burned once or twice is even harder. You may be up on crypto at the moment but if that money is part of your retirement fund you need to choose when to cash out or how to hold crypto through your entire life without getting burned.
The common advice I see relating to crypto and stock picking is to dedicate ~$1000 into those risky ventures and see how much ROI you can get. Most often, people end up trailing their index fund returns and giving up with a cheap lesson.
Or, even worse, doing much better than their index fund after a Crypto surge, but thinking “I’ll just wait a little bit longer”, and then watching it all crash. So you were better at one point, until you weren’t.
Remember, kids, you haven’t made any money until you sell.
It’s gambling if you play it like gambling. If you invest in the more established tokens and leave it as an investment, then ROI is pretty good.