I've got a serious financial question in light of the falling dollar

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

and T-bills going haywire. I am hoping some of those stock report guys and gals from LBN see this.

ALL of our daughter's college money is in Treasury Bonds. What should we do?

I'm really looking for some sound advice here. Financial advisors just want to sell you their products and so are more salesman than true advisor, so I feel I can't trust them....

I don't know what to do....

Help?

[Solitaire]

1. t-bills

I'm in t-bills too and personally plan to stay there.

I am just not trusting the market atm. Of course, I don't normally trust it very much anyway, but especially now.

[Mister K]

2. Ever think about foreign currencies?

[unblock]

3. isn't there some college deal where you prepay tuition years in advance?

i thought some colleges, or maybe it was a group of colleges, that basically let you prepay your kid's tuition over the course of 15 years or so, effectively guarding against tuition hikes?

you might want to look into this, perhaps for a portion of the tuition.


as for investments, foreign currencies, or foreign denominated funds, are good when the dollar's dropping. more than half of my money is in russian and latin american funds.

and treasuries are prudent, too, though stick to short term bills, not the bonds. rising interest rates will kill bonds, but allow for higher returns of reinvestments when your bills mature.


finally, start brainwashing your daughter now about how much fun your state university is!

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

4. Unfortunately (or fortunately)

she is interested in Ivy League schools. And she's got the smarts and the ambition to do it, too, that scares me even more.

We're thinking she's probably not going to go to school in state or even a public university.

:scared:

[ramapo]

7. Don't panic

The Ivy schools offer plenty of financial assistance for qualified students who cannot afford to pay. It is a combo of grant, loan, and work.

You should not speculate. Conservative, protected investments are the way to go. Govt bonds, insured bonds, treasuries are ok. Bonds will fluctuate in price but that doesn't matter if you hold to maturity. Ladder the bonds. Short term now with the low rates.

If the economy really goes in the crapper to the point where the govt defaults then you'll probably have a lot more to worry about than tuition.

Gold, silver, etc is very speculative. You could make a killing or be killed. Speculate with money you can afford to lose.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

9. Thanks your words help!!!!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. The Ivies have a high "self-help"* requirement, but most of them

still try to make it possible for the students they want to attend.

However, attending an Ivy isn't the only way to get a good education. Every part of the country has highly selective colleges that provide a superb educational environment.

*Self-help requirement: how much the student has to pay from family money, summer/part-time jobs, and loans.

[ConsAreLiars]

13. The top schools set fees according to ability to pay

My daughter got full tuition at one college; parents paid room and board, which we could manage. Took a couple years off to do good work, then one of the top grad schools (her first choice) offered her tuition plus a stipend for living expenses.

[Starlight]

5. I'm starting to worry about US treasuries, too.

Even though everyone teased him about it when he started doing it a few years ago, I'm thinking maybe my co-worker was right to invest in gold & silver bars.

[0007]

6. Buy gold.

[AP]

10. I think the feds are going to have to start offering mad interest rates

on those T-bills to get people to buy them. Just another tax on future generations. I wonder if we'll be able to pay it?

[Peak_Oil]

11. Diversify.

Large cap, mid cap, small cap domestic stock. Large cap, mid cap, small cap foreign stock. Domestic and international government bonds, domestic and international corporate bonds. Gold and silver. Natural resources funds. If you're old enough to use annuities, use them.

If all that fails, I doubt it matters much what you did.

I'm a financial advisor, if that helps.

[Braden]

16. seconded from another financial advisor

own a broad portfolio of stock and bonds. Allocate your assets based on your time frame and risk tolerance. When US Treasuries carry default risk we are all F*****. That said if you want to pay for Ivy League you need more than inflation protection.

[Flammable Materials]

12. I'm now converting a portion of each paycheck into physical Euros.

The dollar is sinking so fast, it's frightening.

[DeepModem Mom]

14. kick

[Shopaholic]

15. I've moved a lot of my 401K funds into foreign stocks

I just had to do a research project for work on the deficit and the implications of that debt on the economy and it positively scared me to death. But most Americans are so uninformed that they have no idea what it means that this country has a staggering deficit.

[Yupster]

17. As long as your bonds are set

to mature when you need them, don't worry.

If you but a 10,000 bond that will mature on 11-1-2012, then you will get your 10,000 on that date. The price of the bond may swing all over the place until that date, but on that date, you will get the full maturity value regardless of what interest rates do.

This is not the case at all with bond mutual funds though.

Individual bonds have a day of reckoning where you get your promised value. Mutual funds never have that day of reckoning. They are priced day to day depending mostly on interest rates.

[ventvon]

18. Bush is destroying the dollar

Once people dump the dollar for the EURO, which other countries are doing, it will destroy the U.S. economy, and U.S. global hegemony, and the United States of America and the United States of Europe (EU) will more than likely switch roles in the global hierarchy and in global influence.

Enough people voted for Bush for them to steal the election again, and therefore, they have virtually ensured that this will happen.

That means that the major player in the world will be the anti-Israel EU, which most on this board (not me), have no problem with the EU being.

Michael C. Ruppert predicts that oil prices will hit $100 a barrel in 2005. Before it even gets that close, you'll probably have people running away from the dollar as fast as olympians run in the 100meter dash.

The dollar not looking good means that the momentum towards the EURO and from the dollar will contiune. That's one of the reasons we are in Iraq and have a handfull of other countries that these crooks in the government are considering going into.

Since Bush is too freaking pathetic and selfish to fix the economy and cause people to want to stick with the dollar, he'll invade OPEC producing nations who dump the dollar for the EURO like he did to Iraq. After Saddam switched his reserves to the EURO, that was the last straw. Now Iran is on the verge of going even further, as William Clark details:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CLA410A.html