but then what? 35 years isn't enough to help me. it would still crash when I would be about 10 years away from retirement. I would probably do fine (or waaaaay better than fine) on my investments and assets, but a lot of other people my age that worked 9AM-5PM every day w/o investing would be totally screwed.

You can't rely on savings anymore, b/c savings in an IRA or 401K won't keep up with inflation by the time you are able to tap it. You would have the same ammount of cash on paper, but it would be worth a hell of a lot less.

Eliminating the payroll tax cap would be a terrible option. details:
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba470/

Good God. For someone who brags so much about his 'investments' and 'assets' and grandiose plans for being the next Donald Trump, you really have a piss-poor understanding of the most basic investment concepts.

IRA funds can be invested in anything: Stocks, mutual funds, bonds, money markets, treasuries, REITs, etc. The average annual return over the past ten years for VFINX--a typical index fund--is 12%. Even some money markets average at 4%, and 20-year CDs aren't much lower. If your IRA can't beat inflation, neither can your non-IRA investments, since both offer exactly the same options.

The fact is that if your investment goal is to accumulate retirement savings, it's pointless and idiotic to not use a tax-advantaged account like an IRA or a Roth.

That's a whole other issue.

I have written them and all they do is mail me back with a form letter and offer to put me on their email mailing list - it's a big joke if you actually think these people personally read anything.

My point in bringing up the 5 million they spent on art was to show how utterly irresponsible the government is when deciding how to spend our money. Scale matters not, they should not even be wasting their time budgetting money for PRISON ART. Or personal chefs. Just because they have "billions" to work with doesn't mean that they aren't doing wrong by skimming millions. EVERY government worker at every level should be held responsible for fraud, waste and abuse. I've been in the military, I've seen first hand how all that "defense" money is wasted. And on a much larger scale.

we all have to start someplace. No one taught me jack s*** about investing, so I had to learn it for myself from books and from people I've met. It takes awhile to learn this, but that's how it is with anything worth knowing. A lot of people never learn it. They go through life working every day making someone else rich, and then they die. I want to follow a different path.

IRAs are not really my area of knowledge. Putting your money into an account and having it passively sit there is slow, since it only grows as you deposit into it. (Or so I heard) I only know about more active forms of investing.

I plan to get into stocks, but mainly with small companies, IPOs, or new companies with cheap stock that has promise. The stock will either rise, which makes me a profit when I sell it at it's height, or it tanks but I don't lose too much money.

also, my main investment goal is not to achieve retirement savings. that is a secondary objective. What I really want is financial independence when I'm still young enough to enjoy it. What the hell good is it to have a lot of money when you are old and can barely take care of yourself? It just goes to waste. . You can't get financial independence with an IRA, or at least not in the way that I want. I want to live life at my own pace, not at an employer's pace. I can see the day where I won't need a job or savings because I will have a positive cashflow every month for each property.

Right, because it's really that simple. A guy who doesn't even know what an IRA is can just jump into stock investing and consistently beat the market, and then somehow acquire lucrative rental properties and retire a millionaire at 30.

Back in the real world, practically every investment professional will stress the importance of a diversified portfolio with ample tax-deferred retirement savings. If you're betting on becoming rich through securities investing, consider that over the long term a 12% average annual return is considered excellent. Real estate requires more time, effort, and money to get into, and unless you buy properties with cash or little financing, you're probably going to have a near-zero or negative cash flow.

The point is that if it were that easy to become rich, everyone would be rich. Investing doesn't make you any different or more special than the hundreds of millions of others who invest.

Indeed.

Those people you see on TV, selling their plans...

Guess how they ACTUALLY make money.

Yup, suckers like you.

dude, even people in the government hate beucracy. there is not a thing you can do about it.

umm, mabye they are used to peple telling them the pen is out of ink. they dont check those pens every hour, they do need people to help them by telling them.

umm, the law is the law. and you do realise that the world is not like law and order, the people that go after the criminals ony testify in court, they are not invovled deeply in the trial. if there was a crime show that correctly showed how the justice system works, it be unpopular because there would be no main characters and it would take 2 hours per show to go through all the things that happen.

and also, the reason why they have artwork is to try and keep the criminals calm, and also, why is it that people always seem to play the "real criminal" card when there is an arrest of a criminal who committed a non-violent crime.

also, the only time a child rapist would go free after 6 months would be in florida where they removed the parole system and the only way to make space in prisons is early, unsupevised release, instead of supervised release with servier limitations on what one can do.

If you want to learn about the justice system, documenteries are much better than television dramas.

Poloticians think that our tax dollars is a big fund of free money that they can use to spend on useless things to get them reelected.

he speaks the truth.

mr howard and his medicare safty-net, saying that it would stay the same and denies that it will cost in the billions, 6 months later, amount that has to be spent is increaded becasue it cost 1.1 billion instead of 440 million.

now jonny is breaking hius core promises as well.