"Jim," wrote in message
...
John H wrote:
On Tue, 08 Mar 2005 21:06:20 GMT, "Jim," wrote:



He recorded all the payroll taxes he paid into the system (including the
matching amount from his employer), tracked down the return the Social
Security Trust Fund earned for each of the 45 years, and then compared
the result with what he would have gotten had he been able to invest the
same amount of payroll tax money over the same period in the Dow Jones
Industrial Average (including dividends).


Which explains why one should never put all their investment eggs in one
basket.
Even the Thrift Savings Plan allows diversification.

We can all find examples which would give a return less than the social
security
return.


John H

"All decisions are the result of binary thinking."

The Dow is composed of 10 companies supposedly representing a cross
section of American industry (loosely defined of late) and is updated
periodically -- so go back to 1950 and see just how many companies he
invested in. I believe the Dow is a good measure of the economy, and
lists the type of large cap conservative company one should invest in
for their retirement.

there are presently 30 companies that make up the DJ Industrials. They
started in the 1884 with 12.
http://djindexes.com/mdsidx/download..._Hist_Comp.pdf


And I think the total return for the DJ over the last 30 years is 9%. This
will sure beat the heck out of Treasuries over the same period. You have to
calculate dividends reinvested as part of the return. Motley Fool probably
has the returns on their site for total return with reinvested dividends.