Asian women and investing

[kimpossible]

I found this as I was doing a search for women and investing. Technically, it's aimed at women in Asia but the site is in English. Basic stock investment (http://www.women-in-asia.com/personal/personalinvestmain.taf)

How finance savvy do you consider yourself?

[John0101]

My mom checks her stocks every day the market is open and then she spends about an hour or two reading financial news about her companies. Ironically she rarely ever sell or buy so there is pratically no need to keep up with the latest headlines.

Oh yeah, my sister who recently got her first job just brought herself a 401k. However she hoping to go back for grad school within a few years so would it be wiser for her to just save up money for school instead of saving it for retirement?

[applehead]

i really should be more educated about stocks
and such. i have no idea how those things work.
i don't even have a checking account anymore.

but once i start having a fixed income i'll pay
more attention. but truthfully, i'm really hoping to make
enough money to hire someone to do it for me.
:redface:

i'll be sending the link to all my galpals
who are interested in that stuff though.

[kimpossible]

^Yeah, I really like that site. It covers basic finance planning and retirement as well. I've wanted to do a YW women's investment club just to see how we would do.

[mrazntre]

My mom checks her stocks every day the market is open and then she spends about an hour or two reading financial news about her companies. Ironically she rarely ever sell or buy so there is pratically no need to keep up with the latest headlines.

Oh yeah, my sister who recently got her first job just brought herself a 401k. However she hoping to go back for grad school within a few years so would it be wiser for her to just save up money for school instead of saving it for retirement?

That really depends.

Is she gonna save enough money in the next few years to completely pay off grad school right away? (I think it's highly unlikely). Take the loans, use the deduction when she gets a new job, plus it's a school loan so the rate should be low (there are also advantages as to what type of loan it is).

If she starts the 401k, she takes off the deduction on her taxes right now, pre-tax gross - might as well take it to the limit (i think it was 13k last year). Her paycheck will show a difference of less than a 100% of her contribution due to the above. In addition her company may match, which means more money for her into her 401k. And depending on how well the 401k does, she'll be set. The growth is exponential so the earlier you start, the better. Ask her if she needs to be vested because that will be a variable for consideration.

[artsfartsyjanet]

If i get hired at this company i'm applying for, it is mandatory for me to get a license to be a stockbroker.... even though I'm not interested in being a stockbroker BUT interested in stocks. I understand stocks in the liberal chartist sense, but not in the conservative sense. It will make more sense when i feel like explaining what i mean in the future. right now, i just don't want to type what i mean out....

[golden_buns]

Playing with stocks isn't good.

If you c good news about a company, everyone already bought them and chances of making profits are low.
And if you think you had insider information and you're about to make big bucks, think again cuz most likely all the top execs got the jucier part of the profit.

Just play it safe, and put your money on mutual funds, CD's, mkt index, when interest rates are high or invest it in real estate (when intrest rates are low).

A lot of house wives in korea lost shit load of money playing in the stock market in the mid-nineties

[mrazntre]

Playing with stocks isn't good.

If you c good news about a company, everyone already bought them and chances of making profits are low.
And if you think you had insider information and you're about to make big bucks, think again cuz most likely all the top execs got the jucier part of the profit.

Just play it safe, and put your money on mutual funds, CD's, mkt index, when interest rates are high or invest it in real estate (when intrest rates are low).

A lot of house wives in korea lost shit load of money playing in the stock market in the mid-nineties


and I heard a lot of korean women lose a crap load of money by doing a matrix thing (or whatever you call it). is it called a "kae"?

So yeah, don't do that.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Stocks are probably gonna keep going up until the postwar generation stops working. Then they're gonna be liquidating all their holdings like motherfuckers to continue to support their bourgeois lifestyle during retirement. There goes the stock market.

What really worries me is that they might then continue the grand American tradition of turning your home equity into consumption power and either sell, or do weird shit like put reverse mortgages on their houses too, which could drive down the real estate market.

[kasia]

please see title of thread :)

[nola]

i hear very dependable mutual funds like janus, etc. are safe.

[mrazntre]

i hear very dependable mutual funds like janus, etc. are safe.

Janus is an investment group that deals mutual funds (if I remember correctly).
By virtue all mutual funds are safe, but there's always exceptions, this is because mutual funds are low risk, low yield.

Low vs. High go hand in hand.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

A lot of people involved in small-scale real-estate investment in HK are women. Property managers, single-shop real estate agents, etc.

[SunWuKong]

A lot of people involved in small-scale real-estate investment in HK are women. Property managers, single-shop real estate agents, etc.

yeah. my mother was always interested in real estate investment back in HK. she just never had the money for it when she lived there. now she's a real estate agent and invests in real estate. she stays away from the stock market, bonds, money markets and such. she's convinced a few of her Asian female friends to also invest in real estate.

most of the Asian friends i have in the area are yuppies, so they invest like yuppies - 401K, roth IRAs, mutual funds, and maybe some technology and biotech stocks (something that i also have minus the mutual funds - i'm probably going to get rid of my stocks and buy index funds. regular mutual funds are only as good as the fund managers.). i only know a couple of Asian female friends in this area who invests in real estate. one of them is actually not a middle class yuppy and is lower-paid than most in my social circles. her boyfriend recently became a real estate agent after dropping out of business school. so she and her boyfriend started investing in real estate. another female friend also recently started investing in real estate with her fiance. i've been telling them to do so for over a year now, and they were always skeptical. she used to keep telling me to put more money in my 401K (i put only 3%) and about how much money they can get out of their 401Ks... in 30 years. i was like... "that's... great...". but both her and her fiance are in IT with great pay and no debt whatsoever other than a mortgage and a car payment, so they have a lot of money leftover even after investing in index funds and their 401Ks, so they finally decided to take the plunge to invest in real estate. but to be honest, her fiance was more of the skeptic than she was about real estate investment.

i'm probably going to think of some investment options for the girlfriend very soon, maybe in a month or two. i'm not sure she has thought about investing very much in the past couple of years or so, but her new job does give her a 401K and also a retirement fund - but that probably doesn't vest until she's been with the company for several years, as is the usual trend.

[moser]

There's a book called "Get a Financial Life" (targeted towards people in their 20s and 30s) which seems to have good advice.

Most of my female Asian friends havent really started working yet, or haven't thought of investing outside of possibly putting $ in 401ks or equivalent.