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Originally Posted by ChrisTee
+1 and TIPS. Yesterday, Treasuries were paying a higher rate than FDIC CDs of similar terms. Easy to buy on Treasury Direct via Manaboutown's link above. Fidelity, Vanguard and Schwab are also easy places to buy Treasuries and then you can very easily sell or buy them if needed on the secondary market. Easy to create a CD or bond ladder on any of those last 3 sites.
Good luck - it's a golden period for cash investors right now, and TIPS may offer you additional piece of mind with their inflation protection as you are right - strange financial times. Are we sure that inflation is truly tamed? Not I, and TIPS may be helpful inflation protection for some here.
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You are right about how now at least we have places to get a little ROI on cash. I have always “maintained the moat” — meaning cash kept to protect the stocks — never getting in the position of having to sell stocks to pay taxes or to pay bills. Now the moat makes a little money……
About inflation, who really knows. But I think there are areas where merchants are waaaaaaay over-pricing things — as in get while the gettin’ is good and call it inflation……..
Two Examples:
I am back in Ohio now at the house where I do some flower gardening…..
While I have no gripe with businesses giving hardworking employees more money, I was not born yesterday, so I know there is no reason for the price of perennials to nearly triple. Gas prices are down. Increasing paychecks is OK with me, but c’mon, I don’t think that should mean I am supposed to pay almost 30 bucks for a pot of ordinary perennials.
I think the growers are stickin’ it to the retail nurseries who are stickin’ it to the consumers. It would be naive to think that these out-of-control, much higher prices are all about paychecks and gas. Looks to me like it is probably half about the opportunity to blame the bogeyman known as inflation while reaping higher than ordinary profit.
And some restaurants sure have cranked up the price of beverages like iced tea. When I am not ordering wine or a cocktail in a restaurant, I always at least order iced tea……
Yeah. Yeah, I know I could do the “water with lemon” routine, but I never do……
Maybe that’s because of being mortified more than once when dining out in TV with groups and having people order “water with lemon — extra, extra lemon.” One time, there was someone in the group who ordered water with “a bowl of lemons!” (I wanted to crawl under the table.) And then there”s the “Villages Cocktail” crowd who order water and then whip Crystal Light out of their purses and stir it in…..
I guess I have been scarred for life from some of my dining in groups experiences in TV and am now destined to spend my life savings on over-priced iced tea in sit down restaurants…….
But, I digress, as I am wont to do around here on some mornings when I should be doing actual work.
Inflation? The real kind? Well, yeah, the Fed has been giving away money for almost this entire century. I knew those ridiculously low rates would eventually get us — again. The Fed put itself into the corner with too little too late — or maybe it’s too much too late. But whatever it was, now we all must pay for the Fed history of subsidizing instant gratification by giving away money. Housing is in another kind of mess now because of those stupidly low borrowing rates. Housing drives so many parts of the economy, and I am wondering now if housing can ever normalize again. (But that’s a rant for another morning.
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Boomer