Sea Level Rise ! Property value solutions !

our solution was to sell our waterfront estate back in 2012, while it was still water 'front'

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interior_Seaway

 

yep, ours has increased greatly in value in the last ten years, while the water is still in the same place.

who knew?

 

60K....invested in the right index fund in 1977 "might" have grown a little bit too......

It takes a little while for climate change to cause measurable sea level rise.........and one "presumes" that building codes in Bastan reflect about 400 years worth of experience in dealing with coastal weather patterns.

 

Zero emissions?

 

i better lay off the beans

 

60k in an S&P500 index in 1977 would be around 2.5M now, not counting any dividend reinvestment, but also not loaded down by property taxes, maintenance, utilities, insurance, ...

Including dividend reinvestment, it would be over 9M. But real people need to pay taxes on those dividends annually, dragging the return down quite a ways, but still far above 2.5M.

But then there is inflation. Today's 600k is worth only 134k in 1977 dollars.

 

On the shuda - cuda - wuda score where 20/20 hindsight clearly reveals what opaque crystal balls didn't --

Long ago, I figured what the money I used to buy my '86 Accord, which I didn't really need (kept a previous car), instead of putting it into the stock of a local startup called Microsoft. By the turn of this century, the opportunity cost was in the millions.

Well, we have had more 'startups' since, which I could have switched into during MS's doldrums. The last time I figured, that opportunity cost was in the several $billion$.

Well, at least, that Accord was an excellent car, sufficiently reliable and low-trouble that I kept it 23 years, until swapping it for a 2010 Prius for modern safety reasons, not for wearout. Then some neighborhood kid kept it at least 7 more before moving out of my neighborhood. That takes off a little bit of the sting of the missed billion$.

The S&P500 gains path doesn't require any crystal ball, just some long term investing discipline.

 

We have people in DC working on that.....

 

and they're doing a fine job. we were going to get up to 7 rate increases this year to curb it.

but ukraine happened, and wall street is the feds all encompassing concern. we don't want to lose any american oligarchs

 

Stock Market returns over the long term are very impressive when you look at them.

When you translate them into real world situations it starts to get a little messy.

Inflation - tax implications - fees etc are easy to ignore when a person talks of their investments.

There are also situations that are easy to accidently forget - Enron - Bernie Madoff - Prudential Building and Loan crashing out in the 60's- Lehman Brothers and many of their fellow companies screaming and pleading for government bailouts not too long ago.

There are also so many individual situations that it is almost impossible to make blanket statements about the stock market always coming back - try to explain that one to Enron investors.

Let say an individual is retired and has all his money in the Stock Market -$1,000,000, an actual millionaire! He is living the high life off his investments and withdraws a cool $50,000 grand a year. The stock market goes through a down cycle and he withdraws his cool $50,000 a year for 5 down years. The Stock Market goes down a total of 25% for those 5 years. So he now has $750,000 - $250,000 he withdrew or $500,000. Now the stock market goes up 30% in the next 5 years so he now has $650,000 in the Stock Market. He will never recover his full value because he had to make withdrawals at the low end of the Stock Market valuations.

The Stock Market is a component of any sensible Investment plan. Anyone who is invested wholly in the Stock Market should be very young or very foolish. Most retirees would have an anchor of fixed income to live off of and money invested in the Stock Market hoping it will continue its trend of always growing and taking out money at opportune times to further supplement their fixed income. Nowadays retirees can live up to 30 years in retirement and should plan to have fixed assets to support that as well as growing assets maybe in the stock market to eventually supplement their fixed assets.

I like the Stock Market to hopefully supplement my fixed income- not so crazy about walking into the Wall Street Casino with all the retirements savings. I am going to guess the people who make the most off Wall Street are the actual Wall Street enterprise itself.

 

yep, the house never loses

 

^ considering publicly traded equities only, no crypto.

 

I just heard a podcast on 'managed retreat' of a problem area....and it was quite interesting hearing about how communities do ( or don't ) deal with it.
The Fight Over 'Managed Retreat' From Sea-Level Rise In CA Coastal Towns Makes It to 'This American Life'

Yikes! I'm not sure I'd want to live with the possibility of my house falling into the sea from a steadily eroding cliff!