If you get market returns I think you are doing alright. If you beat the market you’re a superstar and why do you care about index funds in the first place?

But overall I hear you. You’re just trying to find something better. =\

So let me qualify my statement that index mutual funds are great if you don’t have a lot to invest. I figure the average investor has a very small amount of money to invest each month. Let’s say you have $500 to invest every month. If you went the ETF route you would probably purchase $500 of a single ETF each month. This ETF might change from month to month to diversify. Assuming really cheap commissions of $7/trade you would be paying 1.4% in commissions. That’s awfully high considering the avg index fund expense ration is in the 0.20% range. I guess the question then is: “How much does it really cost you to buy $500 of mutual fund X?”. This part of mutual funds has always been confusing to me.

So another thing to consider is whether your employer will match contributions to your 401(k). If they do then it seems wise to at least put in enough to get the entire matching from them. If an employer will match 50% up to 6% of your salary can you really just let that money go? Let’s assume you make $100,000/year salary. You contribute 6% of your salary to the 401(k) and your employer will match that at 50% (some match 100%). That’s $3000/year you would be giving up if you did not contribute. We’ll assume that you are or will be fully vested for those contributions.

There are also various loop holes for getting your money out of a 401(k) (and maybe the same goes for IRAs too) before you are 59.5 years old without penalty. Here is the one that looks like it fits your “I’m super rich” scenario:

* You are separated from service and you have set up a payment schedule to withdraw money in substantially equal amounts over the course of your life expectancy. (Once you begin taking this kind of distribution you are required to continue for five years or until you reach age 59 1/2, whichever is longer.)

First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
— Mahatma Gandhi

AOLserver and Tcl are a perfect fit for rapid web application development. We’re still at the fighting stage, but winning is drawing near.

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The first session was similar two yours. About 50 minutes, 43 hands, and I saw the flop a whopping 13%. I never once had something worth playing. I’ll have to dig it up but I think I was down about $8 when I gave up.

The second session lasted exactly 1 minute and 58 seconds. I saw 2 hands (big blind, and little blind). The first hand I had A10o and flopped AA7. So I slow played it to the river and low and behold I rivered a 10! I was able to raise and re-raise to the max for a nice pot of ~$15. Turns out the other guy had 77 in the pocket so he was pretty sure he would win. Lucky for me the river was on my side and I didn’t fold away something great. Anyway, now I’m up $7.95 in the second session and I know its not my goal of $10 a session but heck I played under 2 mins for that $7.95. That and I’m actually more interested in going out and taking a few photos rather than playing poker all night.