I’ve been trying to convince my wife to let me pause retirement contributions for 2-3 pay periods to allow me to buy a Crystal Celebi and Crystal Ho-oH (Both Jp). She is against it and thinks it’s foolish. She says we don’t own a home - that is a goal of ours and we’ll get there eventually but it will take a minimum of 5 years. I say since we’d pause retirement contributions it would not interfere with cash flow. Plus, we are doing well saving for retirement given our age.
Soooo I want “cardboard that you can’t even play with” and she wants a middle class home that will cost hundreds of thousands. Anyone ever pause retirement to buy a stretch card? E4 thoughts??
I get the feeling of “having to buy soon or it will be too late” regarding the card.
But I think your wife has a point. Buying cards by not paying for retirement sounds like a bad idea in general.
My advice would be that if you really want those card, get some extra hours at work, or try to save some more money somewhere else.
This paints a scenario where your wife doesn’t understand why you’d want to spend money on cards. If that is the case then pausing retirement contributions to buy cards that she doesn’t see the need for will cause stress at home.
For this reason @handschoen’s solution is great.
Also you could consider getting a more affordable copy of the same card i.e. less mint.
Do you have your FI number identified? I’d think that taking the data approach here could be helpful and showing that retiring in March 2047 instead of January 2047 could help illustrate that.
Like you said, retirement savings are separate cashflow that you would be saving to use for a home purchase, so pausing one shouldn’t impact the other.
However, if your wife would see these points as “akshually” and it wouldn’t be recieved well, then agree that trying to find some extra income, or selling something else in your collection to fund these, may be your best bet.
If you really want the cards, and if they will make you happy, pausing your contributions for 2-3 months isn’t a problem - especially as you are already in a decent spot on that.
Collectibles are also becoming way more mainstream as an investment asset. It’s not like you are spending the money on a new car.
This is just my own personal preference and I don’t know the rest of your situation, but I’m with your wife on this one. Future financial/family security always has and always will take priority for me over everything else, Pokémon cards included. It means I will never be as dedicated a collector as many on e4, but likewise Pokemon cards don’t enamour me enough to take the number 1 priority slot in my life, and I’m ok with that. There’s added value not just in retirement and property planning, but in this case in maintaining the strength of the relationship with your wife. Worth mulling over.
If his wife won’t allow him these pleasures and trust his opinion that they will appreciate in value, then the relationship seems pretty one sided imo - especially as he said, he seems pretty financially secure already.
If he wasn’t then I’d understand.
Tough pill to swallow - Pokémon could also be part of any retirement portfolio.
We have a client who is a rare whisky investment service. Many people buy bottles to hold long term…
Alternative investments should be part of any portfolio imo.
I support the wife here. She’s thinking about long term well being and stableness. Just because you are doing well in retirement dosen’t mean you can always do better. Pausing your retirement plan for pokemon cards really does seem like a unwise move.
Either take the short term gratification or have paitence.
Alternative assets are definitely a valid and viable aspect of any investment portfolio, but it seems like this is getting into the differentiation between the numbers themselves, and the emotion behind the numbers.
Even if the numbers look great, but half of a partnership isn’t on board for whatever reason, seems like a no go. That’s part of the balance we strike as mentally ill people, uh, I mean collectors who don’t make decisions on their own.
I agree with this as Pokemon is a fine short term investment but to base a retirment on it is very risky it’s like stocks it could collapse at any point probably not right now but pokemon exploded in 10 years who says it can’t decline in another 10?
(Also how many of the cards are we going to want to sell after making an emotional connection to them?)
It’s important to have priorities besides Pokemon, Pokemon is a big part of my life but I try not to make it the focus of my life I sometimes have to step back and ask myself am I in to deep right now. I get the urge to buy a Pokemon card but at the end of the day it’s piece of cardboard
We’re talking about thousands of $ worth of Pokémon cards here, not a fancy coffee at the weekend.
Zubat can correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t believe his post was framed as an investment question, rather, as querying whether to pause retirement investments for the purpose of buying luxury collection items.
There are two people to consider here, particularly as they’re in a marriage. His cash is her cash, and her cash is his cash. His retirement is her retirement, and vice versa. Property and retirement planning are some of the most significant financial actions in a couple’s life, and should be mutually agreed on along the way. Of course, this situation is different if there’s a likelihood the card could be sold for their mutual benefit in the future, but I’m operating under the assumption this is for a collection and not to be sold for their mutual benefit at a later date. If that were the case, then the perspective becomes more nuanced.
In my opinion, a better alternative in this scenario that achieves both the desired collection goals and preserved mutual respect in the relationship would be to simply take the extra time to save up for the cards without forsaking any pension payments.
Yes, I like the slabs and appreciate their consistency of grading.
Plus even then, I don’t think BGS slabs will devalue if BGS suddenly dies without ever being revived (highly unlikely anyway as the brand is strong in the sports world).
Nowadays you can’t separate high end pokemon and investing - they are mutually inclusive at this point.
I don’t see the issue in pausing a retirement contribution temporarily to buy said vintage items (if it was to buy modern items to rip then that’s different).
Retirement is about assets anyway. Nothing is 100% risk free, even a pension account.
If it makes you happy and increases your net worth then crack on.
Yeah the best thing to do is just talk it through with her. If you feel as though you’re well ahead of schedule on your financial goals then that’s also something to consider. If this means a lot to you personally then she should take that into consideration too, of course. Make sure you know the math, the outlook for the future and how it might affect (or not) your goal timelines. Have the chat with her in that context but obviously mention that you’re mindful these are her assets as well as yours, and that you value that. You’ll be just fine
@charizardespana It’s not mutally inclusive, it’s a niche (and not mainstream) thing that news channels only talk about if it has a huge pokemon boom. Your not going to see a 60 year old saying, “oh, time to check on my pokemon stocks.”
Also telling a person (especially a grown man who did nothing wrong) to pull up their big boy pants is just immature asf.
