Is it already worth starting to sell the sugar loaves stored in the sauna?
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I’m not quite sure if this should have been posted in some meme thread, preferably with some illustrations, but that was quite the exchange of thoughts. 
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Tell me already what happened to the sugar price? I’ve been holding my breath for an hour just to find out.
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I started writing an investment plan this evening; I’ve had some thoughts in my head, but I thought I’d write down some kind of strategy that would bring long-term focus and clarity to my actions.
I’ve already received a bit of help with this project from a couple of people, and lately, I’ve especially been reading various sources on drafting an investment plan, which have been very helpful.
While doing this, I find myself asking a lot of “why” questions—for instance, why I am saving—and when asking myself that, I realize that my investment horizon is very long.
I intend to work on this investment plan diligently so that it becomes something that truly helps my investment activities and something I’ll actually follow, though of course, it shouldn’t have too rigid a framework either.
Hopefully, by drafting this investment plan, I can make my approach a bit more rational and analytical, which will serve me well especially in the long run in the form of returns. 
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Something occurred to me—a “roadmap” style strategic plan can be created for corporate business development. It’s worth reading up on how to draft one and how it could be applied to creating your own investment plan.
In broad terms, a Roadmap strategy is followed roughly like this:
Pick a few key factors that can be systematically developed and whose progress can be tracked.
Create long, medium, and short-term plans.
- Short-term could be 1 year
- Medium-term 3–5 years
- Long-term 10+ years. In investing, for example, retirement age.
Find an intermediate milestone for the first year, as a year is a short enough period so that progress doesn’t remain just talk, but long enough that things can always be fitted into the schedule if the will is there.
For the 3–5 year range, you can set a goal that already has significant impact.
When you see the destination of where you want to be in over 10 years, it provides motivation for the short and medium term.
It’s important for goals to be appropriately challenging but achievable. The timeframe helps in reaching these goals. It’s also good to consider that goals should be such that you can commit to them even if circumstances change.
So, rather “I will save X amount per month” than “I want YTD X for 2023.”
This is still goal-setting related to corporate management. Investing doesn’t have to be this disciplined. I don’t have this kind of investment plan myself.
Just a tip.
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Your message was excellent, and while I have considered similar things in broad strokes, your message also provided a lot of new food for thought.
I’ve been training at the gym for about a quarter of a century, and there the target timeframes are naturally often different for practical reasons. I had goals I wanted to achieve, but I knew they would be difficult to reach in five or even ten years (if ever). Well, in the end, I reached even my wildest goals, which I’m very happy about, but there were various milestones and targets etc. in between.
Of course, the gym world is very different, but there I learned to set goals (in my opinion) quite well so that I could get more out of myself. I like to be very goal-oriented and work hard both at the gym and in investing – I enjoy that. Well, at the gym I don’t try for PRs anymore, because I’m still injury-free and I’ve already hit my toughest PRs, but I still go hard and sometimes there can be mini-goals.
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I’m curious what those goals of yours were :)? Squat, deadlift, bench, (weighted pull-ups) performance goals? No need to share if it’s too personal
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This is true. The number of games in the NHL is quite staggering considering how physically taxing the games are at the absolute top level. Constant traveling on top of that 
The high volume of games diminishes the importance of individual matches enough that I don’t really follow the regular season, but the playoff spring is 
The NFL, on the other hand, is exciting action all season long 
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Thanks for the questions!
I’ll say right at the start that I wouldn’t have stood a chance in real competitions and I’m not some kind of mega-level lifter.
As a teenager, I had a dream of benching 150kg, then as I got a bit older I thought 200kg in the squat would be nice, and deadlifting was always part of it, but then when I thought about a goal later on, I dreamed of a 220kg deadlift. For pull-ups, the goal was thirty. I achieved all these goals and even more; I exceeded them especially in the deadlift.
At 14, I was doing some reps with 20kg, but then it got stuck on my chest. The first max result I got was 27.5kg. It took a little under 20 years to hit 150kg. I lifted that weighing under 75kg, but if it had to be a competition-style lift, I’d probably have had to take about 10kg off.
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Impressive! Long-term work usually pays off one way or another in the end 
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Thank you so much!
I haven’t taken breaks from the gym (only some “mandatory” rest weeks) and I constantly had goals and aspirations towards new PRs. It was only a few years ago that I realized those records don’t really improve much anymore even with a good coach and I’m at my absolute limits + I’m uninjured, so I stopped goal-oriented training in terms of chasing max PRs. On the other hand, I still train hard, but safely — I want to stay injury-free and in shape.
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For a long time, I approached savings and investment planning with a sort of short / medium / long-term mindset, where long-term was 10 years or more. It worked quite well for goals in the coming years. For longer-term planning, I basked in the sweet allure of compound interest calculations.
Sometime last year, I began to think about investment planning more deeply. I defined a very long-term goal (wealth upon reaching retirement age) and started thinking about what is actually required to achieve it. I specifically looked for American material on the subject, as retirement saving is a much more serious topic there than it is here. I also read FIRE writings, even though “FIREing” is not one of my goals.
I came across some quite sobering thoughts. Would you aim for, say, a million in wealth even if the required methods carried a real risk that, upon reaching retirement, you would only have about a hundred thousand? This is based on a concept I haven’t encountered in Finnish investment discussions.
Sequence of returns risk (tuottojen järjestyksen riski) refers to the fact that stock market returns fluctuate significantly. In the very long run, market returns are very likely to be positive in real terms and very likely to be significant. In the short term, there is a real risk of freezing losses. What happens to a retiree if a 90% stock market crash occurs right around the time of retirement? That million-dollar pot is suddenly a hundred thousand.
I found a research article (which I can’t be bothered to dig up right now) stating that the long run, where real stock market returns are almost certainly positive, is by no means less than 30 years and is likely significantly more, something like 40–50 years. That’s fine for those who manage to create significant wealth in their twenties, but uncomfortable for a middle-aged person like me, with less than 30 years to retirement.
In the same context, I learned how important allocation between different asset classes is. I studied Modern Portfolio Theory and adopted its basic ideas (though I don’t really believe in quantitative planning). I actively started looking for asset classes that wouldn’t correlate with stock market shares to level out the portfolio’s risk. The goal here is to try to protect against sequence risk without significantly hurting the expected return.
I can’t claim to be satisfied with my current plan, but it is better than before as a result of these thoughts. In addition to the stock market, the current plan includes an investment in an unlisted company, several different fixed income instruments, real estate investments (both equity and debt-based), and a cash position. I also count my owner-occupied home as part of the portfolio (an equity investment in the real estate sector).
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Well written.
This is key.
We have reached our first milestone, which felt quite surreal in the early stages.
My husband’s first home and first investment property have been paid off by the tenant over the course of this year and are starting to generate genuine positive cash flow. 
Time just flies and things happen.
The kids are already so big. I remember being 10 years old myself when my parents got their house paid off by selling their investment property and moved on to spending their savings in the stock market. Our own home is still unpaid, but that’s in good shape too.
Now would be a perfect time to start rolling the real estate investment snowball effect again, if only I could talk the hubby into taking a bit of a risk with me.
Usually, he goes along with my crazy ideas pretty easily.
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I am closely familiar with this private pension system and its allocation, which is popular abroad, as I recently joined a Swiss pension fund program offered by my employer. Here in Ireland, the state pension is ~€13,000 per year regardless of career earnings, so Big Tech companies offer these quite diligently to their employees.
When there are 15 years left until retirement, your investment advisor starts recommending an allocation change from a 100% stock index gradually towards bonds, cash, and other safer investment vehicles. By selling steadily over this 15-year period, that nightmarish “bottoming out” on the doorstep of retirement is avoided, which is the most important risk management for the rest of one’s life and retirement.
At 25 years old, retirement dreams are still quite far in the future, but I doubt I’ll regret this when I’m old.
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I have to vent a bit about this Fortum remuneration mess, and there’s no point in playing the envy card here, but I can certainly play the “pissed off” card. I’m sure there are fellow low-income earners who find such fleecing beyond comprehension. My last pay slip showed a net of €1078 for 50% working hours; I completed 34 years in municipal work in February, with that 50% being for health reasons. The only pittance I applied for out of sheer frustration was just over €17 in housing allowance from Kela, which I donated to those less fortunate. My employer remembered me last Christmas with a lapel pin and a single rose, and I probably wouldn’t have even gotten that if I hadn’t mentioned in a newspaper letter that the municipality hadn’t recognized, for example, the completion of 30 years of service at any point. It seems to be common that low-income people and those forced to live on benefits have a significantly stronger moral backbone than these d…warts (kyrvänsyylät) popularized by the “Brushwood Man” (Risumies), and this doesn’t apply solely to Fortum. I’m soon not going to care about even the little bit of work I’m still capable of doing.
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@LakeBoodom, you’ve got a nice new profile picture.
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I am bringing this article to the attention of the forum members for two reasons. The first is that while most people here probably avoid these kinds of payday loan debt traps and know how to manage their money well, this is not the case for everyone. In this case, a young woman had fallen into a payday loan trap – due to her own foolishness – but the point of the story is that even with hard work, she could not get out of it. The counterparty did not play fair.
The second point is that there are immoral ways to get rich. If I recall correctly, the first Finn who, during the markka era, came up with the idea of lending a hundred marks via text message on a Friday night (which would cost 120 mk on the next phone bill), became very wealthy. I sometimes wonder how many ruined lives and finances lie behind that wealth?
Stories like these are the consequences of these payday loan operators. There are surely several people on the forum who are touched by this story, if not personally, then through a loved one or an acquaintance. A close relative of mine experienced almost the same thing as Emma. That is why this story resonated. And made me angry. I recommend reading it.
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Thanks @Sijoittaja-alokas 
I made it using Midjourney. A stock investor frog looking at a falling price with concern. There’s a lot of truth in it 
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Was that 150kg with a shirt or without?
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It was without a bench shirt.
But with competition bench requirements, 150kg would NOT have gone up, and likely not even 145kg.