best way to invest $75,000?

Quote from vaultaddict : I'd put 75k on your student loans and delay your house purchase then. You'll disagree, but that's the financially wise decision.

OP should look at the tax implication of owning a home too. Is the OP married and what is/are their total income? I'd say consider that during the pro/cons of paying off student loan because right now owning your own home gives you help with taxes.

Quote from vaultaddict : Have you run the numbers on this? I read it's 25 years, and see that your min payment at only 100k in income is around 1k per month. At 6.8 percent interest, that's 300k or so you'll pay back over 25 years before its " forgiven". Anyhow, I'd still pay it off, no matter what.

Using the $75k to save/make 6.8% interest over 25 years is a pretty good deal.

Quote from vaultaddict : Have you run the numbers on this? I read it's 25 years, and see that your min payment at only 100k in income is around 1k per month. At 6.8 percent interest, that's 300k or so you'll pay back over 25 years before its " forgiven". Anyhow, I'd still pay it off, no matter what.

My payment is 400-500 on ibr. If my income goes up And it will, payments increase.


I will double check on the 20/25. I think it was recently changed to 20.

The best you can realistically expect on $75,000 that you'll need in 12 months is about 1%, but you should be able to boost this by a few hundred dollars by taking advantage of new account sign-up bonuses offered by some banks and brokerages, but if you the latter, watch out for monthly maintenance fees and account closing fees. App-O-Rama and SignUpMoney have news about sign-up bonuses.

Fixed Rate in India 9-9.5% for 12 months. Find an Indian friend and get them to drop it in their NRE account.

Quote from kyotuosa : pretty sure gold went into a deep dive in 2008. QE brought it back to life. As for the guy who keep asking for what's deflation, again, people are usually speaking in general term. If you are talking about finance/economics, maybe looking up general def. of deflation in economics is a good way to start.

Deep dive? How's that? Gold hovered around the 680 mark for an entire year prior to it's run from that level to 1045 in late 2007 before retracing 100% and taking off again in late 2008. In fact, gold front-ran the QE1 announcement (11/25/2008) with a 22% gain after double bottoming. It was already "off to the races" before any such "save."

As for the people who don't make the distinction between credit deflation and asset price deflation, well they're either clueless or have an agenda.

Make no mistake, something like gold doesn't need QE to "save it." What I said above illustrates that perfectly. Markets price in "news" weeks and months ahead of time. Sure, gold loves anything to do with money printing or default, but that try to time the market based on a QE announcement (or a supposed one), I think they'll be a day late and a few oz short. Just sayin'.

Quote from 1stbuy : Fixed Rate in India 9-9.5% for 12 months. Find an Indian friend and get them to drop it in their NRE account.

That doesn't sound risky at all.

Quote from vaultaddict : That doesn't sound risky at all.

It's not THAT bad...worst case scenario, you don't get your money back, but at least you're alive?


Its certainly not a flawless procedure though. You MAY lose money if the rupee depreciates, and you are hit with exchange fee rates - that's with an NRE account. The way around that is you can keep the money in dollars but then you only get 3.05% in a different type of account.

Easy way for some people to hedge themselves in their home country as well as in the US, and still do it legally. Previously I was able to just shuffle money between my US & India PayPal accounts, and earn interest overseas, but the RBI cracked down on PayPal.

Quote from colgancm : I fundamentally disagree with the idea that gold is a real asset, at least to any further extent than paper money is. I've always viewed "real assets" as things with intrinsic value. To me, I don't believe Gold falls into that category, at least to any greater extent than Paper Money does. Like i mentioned in my first post, gold does not, by itself, provide food, warmth, shelter, etc. And because of that, I don't view it as a real asset.

Fine. So what's a real asset, then? Do stocks provide food, warmth, shelter? Bonds? Money market accounts? Can you eat T-notes? Can you eat paper money? You can exchange it for those things, but those things come into existence due to debt based money. In other words, you cannot feed yourself until debt is created [by your own definition].

Gold sure does have intrinsic value. It will never rust, it's highly conductive, malleable, fungable, etc. Gold does NOT come into existence as debt. It meets every requirement for money. Remember, just cause it's not circulated as a means of a change of debt or services doesn't mean it has no value as money. Ask a group of central bankers why tons of it are on their balance sheets if it's a fake asset. Actually, the bank of all banks (BIS) is moving toward making gold a "risk-free" asset on commercial bank balance sheets. What does that say about it's "risk" status and value? I'll tell you: it's good as cash.

Quote : Gold only has value because people say it has value - just like American Fiat. Its use in products is limited to jewelry and other cosmetic-type products. Which is another product category that will most likely not hold value/importance in an anarchy scenario.

Completely contradicted yourself there and are just repeating the same nonsense everyone else repeats in the same context. It also relies on a superfluous argument that can easily be extended to ANY asset.

Quote : I 1000% agree about the central banks and what they have been attempting to do recently, but I don't think that there is a perfect correlation between those bank's actions and the price of gold.

Actually, there is a near-perfect, strong positive correlation in CB-backed government debt and $US gold:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3EkDrzL...btgold.png

Quote : but I also think that some indeterminate portion of gold's run up is due to (always irrational) public investment sentiment that's been goosed along with all the commercials and stuff on television and every other public place.

True, but name one asset where this is not also true? Every heard of the tulip bubble? How about housing? Beanie Babies? Get real, man.

Quote : I don't believe I ever discussed deflation so I'm not sure how to respond to that portion of your message. Just let me know. And I hope this clears up my views and that now you can make sense of my argument (in the context of my personal views).

The point isn't to argue with you, the point is to clear up the erroneous misconceptions that are based on belief and not on actual fact. If everyone believed gold had no intrinsic value, was a worthless store of value, had no utility, etc then there would be virtually no reason for it's existence - it would be pulled out of the ground, discarded as useless dirt and thrown back in the hole. The argument of "what's a fair price in ____$$" is a totally different subject.