What Is The Best Long Term Investment? Stocks, Real Estate, Or Investment Grade Life Insurance?
Posted October 31, 2009 – 4:26 pm in: structured settlements FAQStocks have a down side. Real estate may also have a downside, along with liquidty. Investment grade life insurance has limits.
Tags: Best, Estate, Grade, Investment, Long, Real, Stocks, Term, What
5 Comments
NEVER and I mean NEVER “Invest” in life Insurance! Thats an order! Best long term real estate investments are REIT’s, you want to find a fund that manages large office buildings and other commercial real estate that is rented or leased out because there is always demand for prime office space, check out Alpine realty fund or Ivey Real estate fund. Stocks, unless you have some inside info or know what your doing, day trading stocks is a losers way to get started in the stock market. Mutal funds offer the best protection from market fluctuations, or stocks that have been around a long time and that pay dividends, never by a stock that pays less then .50 cents a share and never buy a penny stock unless you know its a good investment. Shelter all investments from taxes, keep good records and use your investments to help generate bigger tax refunds that should be invested not spent. Any good tax advisor can help you with that, if you go to a CPA make sure they know how to do taxes, most don’t.
Property has a cycle of up and downs. I have doubled and more all my investments since 1984 or so.
If you look purely at the returns, then stock is the best long term investment. At least historically it’s been that way. However it can have very high volatility.
Real Estate has been on a tear lately, but bull market in real estate doesn’t come very often. Otherwise, real estate grows slow and steady. The illiquidity makes real estate less volatile.
Don’t know much about investment grade life insurance, but from what little I know, those tend to be rip-offs. You are better off buying the insurance and investment parts separately. Lower fees and greater flexibility.
Stocks.
I think we can pretty much scratch life insurance off the list. Although some policies do have a cash out value after some years, the policies are designed to give a return to the insurance company rather than the insured.
So the choice is between sotcks and real estate. Both have their pluses and minuses. The biggest minus with real estate is the maintenance, illiquidity, and taxes. The big minuses with stocks are they are investments in companies that very likely are mismanged by thieving CEOs. So pick your poison.