You seem to be operating under some theory like, "If it's true, it's useful."
Not so.
I for one am not one for recklessness.
Nor am I. Hence the necessity of keeping a grip on oneself when enthusiasm begins to overwhelm consideration. Owen is behaving recklessly and saying things (like the edit in particular) that will give him negative consequences (because it is obnoxious and ill suited to the context). Sure, we could skip the polite advice stage and go straight to the 'consequences' part but that isn't doing a kindness. If Owen happened to have the particular Berserk Button that you have described and so was unable to respond appropriately then it would be so much the worse for him. It would still be necessary to limit the amount of insanity on the site for the sake of everyone else.
Right, well the rest of my response still applies.
EDIT:
Sure, Owen has been behaving recklessly as well, but that doesn't mean we should respond with recklessness of our own. Instead, as is always necessary, a charitable attitude and a careful disposition is necessary for changing most people's minds about anything. (Notice though that in the thread with linkhyrule5, I admitted that I may be ascribing a harsher meaning to "calm down" than other people are.)
It's pretty uncharitable of you to call what I was describing a "Berserk Button". ...
[EDIT: Through conversation with Rolf Andreassen below, it has been brought to my attention that I am simply completely and irretrievably insane.
Sane and well-measured advice is therefore wasted on me, and I just wanted to edit in this notice here so that other well-meaning folks don't get tricked into wasting their time trying to talk sense into a total nutcase like me. :)
(I appreciate all y'all, though. ^^ ) ]
So my dad set up a trust fund for me when I was a kid, and I've got 13k (CAD) now, which I am going to be taking direct control of.
Now, I have no interest in making a deep study of investment. I have a life to live and dealing with money is boring.
The only thing more boring than dealing with money, is dealing with a lack of money, and so I want to optimize the time and thought I spend avoiding that down to a minimum.
Four things occur to me:
1) Taking the naive and sparse knowledge I have of this area, basically just stuff I‘ve randomly osmosis’d up, this is my train of thought:
Markets are essentially random walks with an upward trend?
“Index funds” are magic boxes that you put money in and your money will grow at the same rate of the market that the fund “indexes”?
“Developing world” economies generally grow a lot quicker than those in the “developed world”?
(This makes sense to me. Places like the US, Canada Europe, etc, already have mature transportation and communication infrastructure. You can't get much economic growth out of doing basic stuff like building a new highway here, but in, like, some African region that has previously been served by, I dunno, jungle-donkeys, it makes a proportionally much bigger difference.)
There are a few countries where “developing” is a euphemism for “totally messed up”, but in general it really does mean “growing”?
And there are enough of these places over the world, and they're independent enough, that natural disasters/political trouble/etc in a few of them still leave a consistent and high rate of average growth?
So shouldn't I just put all my money in a fund that “indexes” all these "developing" economies together?
2) My dad set up this trust fund with a bank that has a bunch of big expensive physical buildings for some reason. I recently read a letter from them saying that they will charge a $100 yearly fee for having less than 15k in an account.
Are there better options I should be taking than opening my own account with an institution that thinks it makes sense to charge me a hundred bucks for not being rich?
3) Me and muflax are actually going to go work full time on developing [this totally amazing educational technology that will completely revolutionize human civilization but you have no reason to care about that until you've seen a demo in action so nevermind].
We might spend as much as a year (yeah, that's outside-view calibrated) working on it until we have something we can make a living off of while continuing development.
We think we can get total living costs for a year down into the 5k..10k range… maybe even lower. We're going to be living in the UK, because of reasons.
So… can I leave this measly 13k in an investment account and still draw out of it for monthly costs?
4) Or is this whole “investing” thing something I should even be bothering with at all right now?
Should I just pop out the whole sum into a savings account that I can draw from as I need, and worry about reinvesting whatever is left over then, a year from now, after we have obviously started on our way to becoming rich and famous?