Only if you pay cash for the property. You neglect to consider leverage and tax advantage.

To make it simple for you...I can buy a home for $100k today with anything from 0 to a max of $20K down. I can rent it out to cover the payments and probably write off about $4-$5K per year of my regular income from my taxes. In 15 years...it is paid off and I have at least $100K (inllation protected) if it has kept up with inflation as you suggest (although I suspect more). I can't think of a better investment

I dug up the coffee can in the front yard and moved it to the back yard.

Well, certainly don't keep it in the stock market. After making a rather impressive gain early last week, and after getting paranoid that the market was going to crash, I pulled my money out of the market. I had it all in TCB, a local bank.

I sold on Monday or Tuesday at a little over $19. I bought at $17.90 and $12.90, so I thought I had the market beat. The next day the stock lost a full dollar, and I was feeling like a genius. That day I watched Citibank (C) go down to 13, and I almost threw everything there, but with all the doom and gloom and everyone saying Citibank was going to go bankrupt, I thought that waiting a while would be a better idea. So with my cash on the sideline Citi closed Friday at over $20 after hitting $21 or so during the day. At least TCB only closed at $23.50 after hitting a high of $28 during the day. But hey, at least my money is safe, right?

My MMF has gone from 2.12% up to 2.54%. Things are looking up (it was at 5.04% last year :mad:).

My 401k lost about $40k form 1 Sep to 16 Sep. Gained it all back and am up about $100 in the last 3 days.