Gone Flying

I think with the exception of AA and UA after 9/11, it seems like 10-15% has historically been where the cutoff line is.

COVID would have been ~18% for us

after 9/11 AA was 3,000 out of 13,000. But that was with a very recent TWA merger

Gunfighter

Rental property, business ownership and investments outside of a retirement account are all excellent buffers. Any time is a good time to start creating an income stream outside of Delta. Back when companies offered permanent employment and pensions after retirement "moonlighting" was frowned upon. Now it is a requirement.

*My personal favorite is rental property (houses, apartments, self-storage, light industrial, mobile home park, RV park, medical office, single tenant net lease). I started buying income property when I started interviewing for airlines in 2007 and closed on the first house the month before getting hired. It was a defensive move because of guidance from several mentors who warned me about the cyclical nature of the job. Now I freely (over)share that advice at any opportunity. Say what you want about the headaches of being a landlord but after a decade (or less) of investing, DAL can become a secondary source of income.

SonicFlyer

What books / advisors do you recommend on the subject?

Gunfighter

Start with getting your finances in order. An emergency fund of 3-6 months and no consumer debt is the minimum starting point.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad & Cashflow Quadrant - Robert Kiyosaki
Loopholes of Real Estate - Garret Sutton
ABCs of Property Management - Ken McElroy
*These are all a couple decades old, but thankfully RE investing moves at a glacial pace.

Lifestyles Unlimited - basic membership until you have 6 figures for apartment investing. They spoon feed all of the basic info via online courses and in person case studies.

Check out your local RIAs to meet other investors in your area. You aren't there to buy the advanced program if the RIA is run by the local guru. You may learn how to buy with 0 down, but that doesn't make it a good deal.
I joined a few local groups and went to several meetings 'til focusing on Lifestyles Unlimited passive investing.

Check out a few websites and podcasts. They are great for the commute or DH.
-search self storage podcasts and rotate through a few of them. Scott Meyers and AJ Osborn are a couple to start with
-Jason Hartman has some good single family podcasts, but I haven't listened in a year or two.
-Lifestyles Unlimited has a weekly podcast with rotating hosts and radio show featuring the founder Del Walmsley.
-biggerpockets.com is a wealth of info on several asset classes in real estate. Dig around and find your niche. I landed on self storage prior to passive investing with apartments.

Understanding the basic finances of real estate is the foundation you will build your portfolio on.
Property management weather self managed or contracted with a 3rd party is where you make or break your business. Almost every trashed house, eviction, etc story I've heard started the day before the lease was signed because the landlord didn't screen properly. NTN is a good screening service for DIY landlords.

Self storage and RV parks avoid many of the pitfalls of residential real estate. The leases are short term and lean more toward landlord vs tenant.
Commercial tenants require screening as well, so you will want a reputable broker who will help with due diligence on the business tenants. Be careful you aren't overpaying for a lease just because of the tenant. I've seen a Starbucks, Walgreens, etc sell for $500-$1000, when replacement cost is about $200. You gotta know what you are buying with net-leased properties. Don't overpay for "sticks and bricks" just because of a shiny tenant.

Real estate investing is packaged collection of commodities that provide cash flow. You are buying a basket of wood, copper, drywall, concrete and steel. Unlike buying gold and silver, where you paying for vault storage, you are collecting rent on the prepackaged commodities.

#1 rule when starting out. IT MUST CASH FLOW. Negative carry will crush you as a newbie.
#2 see rule #1

Construction and development can be hugely profitable, but you need massive excess cash flow before you can think about carrying a development deal. Borrowing for lease carry is a great way to go broke.

JustNarced

It looks like #1 is in play.

Most countries in the EU are willing to carve up Ukraine vs hold a line in the sand. If so, expect Russian oil back on the market, cruise and airline stocks to soar. China still an unknown, but the US is increasingly stepping back from direct military conflict with China over Taiwan, adopting an approach more like they did in Ukraine.

This explains the bearishness on oil. I am always amazed how traders stay ahead of official US policy shifts.

https://rmx.news/european-union/publ...ussian-defeat/

JustNarced

It looks like they are going to wind down the EU war. I expect oil to return to markets by end of year. I also think the dollar is going to lose most of its legitimacy after the A-stan pullout, Russia winning in eastern Ukraine and the US dialing back its willingness to confront China over Taiwan. As we disengage, the dollar will also lose relevancy which means that it will also drop over time, making us labor and exports cheaper and cheaper. I would always make decisions like I was going to get furloughed until at 15%, no matter what, but the probability is decreasing by the day.

chrisreedrules

Maybe? I think Russia wouldn’t have bothered pushing into Ukraine if they didn’t have a larger strategic plan at play. Russia suffers from a lack of geographic features that would act as a buffer between it and an invading army.

At the height of the Soviet Union they did have those geographic barriers that prevented potential aggressors from easily accessing the Soviet core, but after the collapse and their sphere of influence becoming shattered that changed.

Fast forward to the year 2000 when Putin took power and looking at what he’s done since then, you can see he’s trying to restore Russian territory to what it was (or as near as he can achieve) during the Soviet Union days. And if you look at where those natural geographic barriers exist, the overall Russian strategy becomes more clear.

Ukraine doesn’t have one of these geographic barriers, but it is on the road to the 2 largest ones located in northeastern Romania (the Bessarabian Gap) and in Poland (the Polish Gap). I would also argue that given some of the recent speeches from Putin it would seem that Estonia and Latvia on the Baltic coast and Moldova are also in play here.

The reason in my opinion that the west is so focused on Ukraine is because of how poor Putin is doing in conventional warfare. IF Russia continues its expansion beyond Ukraine it is evident that they do not have the ability to fight a sustained ground war with western nations, especially not the U.S. So that makes the use of nuclear weapons by Russia much more likely if they push outside of Ukraine, as they know they can not win otherwise. So the goal of the west is to stop Russia in the Ukraine, because to fail at this would equal a much larger expansion of the war.

SonicFlyer

Bingo. Putin likely sees this maneuver as a step in self defense and preservation against an aggressive and expansionist NATO:

chrisreedrules

That video does a good job of explaining much of the nuance here. But suffice to say, if Russia is not stopped in the Ukraine things get much worse from here. Much of the fate of this war hangs on the next few months.

gloopy

They don't care at all about a conventional land invasion. EU is a paper tiger, China is too plus they'd never invade them anyway and the US would go Ch 7 quickly if we even attempted an unwinnable blunder as stupid as that.

I don't think its so much territorial restoration for the reasons you mentioned, but a combination of egotistical manifest destiny...he fancies himself a modern day Alexander the Great (among others)...and an socio-economical desire to protect that he (and many in his country) see as their countrymen as well as getting control of any additional amount of food or energy materials and infrastructure.

He very well may think that but he'd be wrong. The clear military blunders he made were the direct result of the long obsolete military-industrial/war college insanity that still thinks old school armor and artillery is how future wars will be won. All they are in reality are nation/economy busting, resource draining, supply chain and logistics nightmares that only serve to present extremely expensive and comically easy targets to be busted by asymmetrically cheaper opposition. Gary Heart of all people tried to warn us of this nonsense decades ago but also warned that its an expensive, obsolete paradigm that will take a very long time and die very hard.

I don't think so. This is just another big statist war machine version of the "domino theory" that tried to justify the insanity of the US going into Viet Nam and even WWI. There is zero danger of him trying to roll tanks into (actual) Europe and "taking over the world" and even if there was such a danger (which there isn't) why aren't the imbeciles in Europe who have been leeching off our military for 3+ generations finally capable of defending themselves from a significantly depleted obsolete conventional force that one ill equipped nation is giving them an extremely hard time with?

There's zero chance either could defeat the other and still have a standing economy. And even if we "won" we'd lose as threatening to take over their nation with a Western dominating victory (even if achievable which it isn't) would push them deep into the envelope where people in bunkers or subs would be turning keys.

Right. And likewise if we threaten to "defeat" them and back them into a corner.

Again, disagree. There is no credible "domino theory" at play here. Moving toy tank and artillery pieces around on a WWII style map is played out nonsense. No one is on the verge of taking over the world here. Both economies are fragile, but every move we're making is ultimately weakening the vulnerable petro-dollar we've desperately become dependent upon for our very existence.

Good times make weak societies and we've had it ridiculously good for a long time and have gotten very arrogant, ungrateful, soft, hyper dependent and entitled about it.