I have a question!

[murray hill farm]

i am retired..i own two homes..one in georgia and one in the mexican caribbean...i own land in michigan..on lake superior..which i am trying to sell..i am marginally invested in biotech stocks. now...for the question. I am trying to know when is the best time to sell..one the home in the caribbean...and two..when to sell the stocks. i believe with the peak oil situation, that the economy will not continue as it has..and that it is time to, in an investment sense, sell off when the market for what i have to sell is still viable, but then again..not too soon...and then again..not too late. anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Joebert]

1. I went looking for a finance group here tonight for similar reasons.

After proof-reading my post, I'm don't think I'm answering the whole question well, but I can give you my situation and plans.


I still have 30 years+ to retirement, if everything goes status quo.

Since that's not likely with the energy/water/military issues that are just going to escalate, I have begun to look into what I can do to stabilize myself.

I've been working on making sure I don't have too much debt. However, I haven't been very good at that.

I have quite a bit in home equity and car loans right now. If I sell my house, the profit will pay everything off, but I'd be back to zero.

I have been looking at ways to simplify. I am not in a huge house, but I have a lot of crap. I'm trying to donate/toss a lot of it.

If I can, I'd like to sell the house before the market goes to crap. Even if that means I live in an apartment for a while.

I have a lot of stock, most of which is in my employer (Yeah, I know, Enron should have taught me something, but it's bought cheap, and we're not going out of business)

I am hunting for some nice land in Canada. When I find the right spot, I am selling all of my stock to buy it. In my opinion, land, good land, will always be better than paper stock. (Especially if the market goes to hell/disappears over a PeakOil type situation)

As far as timing goes, I can't time any of it very well. We're on different investing schedules since I have lots of time for my stocks to come back if they go to crap. I can control my situation through debt control, buying hard assets like the land.

I currently put 30% - 40% of my pay away into investments. That realization got me to up my donations to more organizations.

I can cut my investing WAY back if I need to use it to pay down debt. I am trying to cut back spending on silly stuff. I haven't bought a DVD in months, music has been longer.

Since I can't use my 401k if the market crashes, nor would my Roth be all that useful, I am looking at decreasing that investment.

Bottom line, in my situation, I have too much debt, and am not very flexible because of it.

Hope some of that triggers some thoughts for you that are helpful.

(Side note, when you say on Lake Superior, are we talking lake front? How large, anything built on the land...) :-)

[murray hill farm]

2. re: lake superior property

This land is in the upper penninsula of michigan...heavily wooded..with 220 ft of high cliff ( a good thing on lake superior) lake frontage..it is really beautiful...but i dont think is the kind of place one could live on well year round...too cold..too much snow..and it is not farming land at all..lots of rocks and trees..no building on it...so cannot grow food there..too short a season..and just not the right kind of land for that..but lots of wood for fires..and lots of wild game and fish..i one is into that..as survival.