Your Wealth Reserve: Will our hubris or egos ever let us win?

Will our hubris or egos ever let us win?

Like the children of Lake Wobegon who are ALL above average, we think we can outsmart the stock market and Wall Street. Again we are proven wrong but we keep trying and lose our shirts and pants and …. Over the past year and for periods of five, 10, 20 and 30 years, the average mutual fund investor has underperformed the markets for both stocks and bonds, according to Dalbar. Bond investors have generally failed to even keep up with inflation. In the 30 years through December 2018 the average bond mutual fund investor earned 0.26% compared with annual inflation of 2.49%. Over the course of an entire generation, bond investors’ money shrank more than 2% A YEAR. If you had held an index fund that simply tracked the bond market--Vanguard started such a fund in 1986--you would have earned about 6%, fees included. Instead of earning over 11% in stocks, the average fund investor earned just 4.1%. “What’s shocking is that simply by investing [with an advisor], most people actually made themselves poorer.”

Stop Trying So Hard: https://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett-Your-Investment-Advisor/dp/1518690963

How can a millennial learn to save and invest?

Financial literacy programs in high school have failed. Only when we need the information do we act on good advice. How can we understand the greatest lesson in personal finance? I think this chart says it all: http://www.saferchild.org/power/.

You can see that over time (not weeks or months), your savings can grow many times over. Starting just 8 years earlier makes our money grow 64 fold: $16,000 to $1,000,000. We all have TIME—we don’t all have money. We don’t need a broker or stock-picking genius to grow our nest egg. In fact, paying someone to manage our money reduces our overall accumulation. The only way to reach our money goals is to invest in a broad array of stocks and stock mutual funds at cost. It is TIME and the power of compounding that grows $16,000 into $1 million. We earn over 11% a year not 3.79% with a ‘managed’ account. Warren Buffett recommends we use a low-cost index fund for wealth. Look at the annual earnings of the market here: moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm

Use Vanguard’s Best: https://www.amazon.com/Vanguards-Top-Ten-mutual-funds/dp/150073909X

Major firms losing advisors/brokers: What if your advisor leaves?

Wells, Merrill and UBS have lost their better people. Over the past decade wirehouses have experienced a steady flow of advisers and assets leaving for other financial advice platforms. Advisers at wirehouses are typically paid in the neighborhood of 40% of their annual revenue, and they can double that portion at an independent broker-dealer. Or, if they open a registered investment advisory firm, they become independent business owners and control the equity in their practice. Changes to their pay grid is described as ‘death by a thousand cuts.’ Since the financial industry wants to keep taking $ billions from us each year, it must change with the times. RoboAdvisors and other discount vendors try to keep the Wall Street windfalls churning. However, unless you have money to burn, you are better off without the gurus and ‘money managers.’ When others handle your money, you lose. Fidelity found that the most successful customers were those that had ‘forgotten’ their account. They left it alone to compound. Money compounds at 11% when left alone. Let your advisor take from the wealthier folks who can afford it.

Let your money work: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Robo-Advisor-Ultimate-Automatic-Management/dp/1537111957

Is your vehicle on the ‘hit list’?

My ’12 Camry is NOT on the list. In fact, there are no Toyotas or Hondas on the list. These are the most plentiful cars around and should be the cars for a quick ‘joy’ ride--a young person’s spur of the moment choice. Do we consider the cost of insurance when we shop for a vehicle? We should since rates are based on the risk of loss. If your ride is one of the chosen ones, you may be paying more for insurance. Funny, I would not expect all the pickups on the list. Perhaps stealing a pickup for a joyride is something I don’t understand or those starting a new construction job just need a tool for work. Also, why are there no Miata or Porsche or Maserati sports cars? Even Corvette is absent. Since there are a lot of 4 wheel drives—even a 4 door Benz—perhaps the list is mostly from hill country. However, there were only 65,000 of these top line jobs produced in Mexico so they must have been chosen for theft to hit # 10 on the list.

Save $22K with your discounts: https://www.amazon.com/Vehicle-Insurance-Beware-Double-Coverage/dp/1480027634

New York moves to make annuity sellers act in our ‘best’ interest

Sellers must provide customers with ‘best interest’ service going beyond the lower standard of ‘suitable.’ The law requires that financial services providers consider the interests of the consumer above everything else when making the annuity recommendation, mandating that any advice be “based on an evaluation of the relevant suitability information of the consumer and reflects the care, skill, prudence, and diligence that a prudent person acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use under the circumstances then prevailing.” However, a broker or producer cannot sell the best products unless the firm makes them available. Most firms are for profit and so we must pay for the commissions, fees and charges that are added into the contract. Most of us do not know a ‘best interest’ product if it hit us in the face. Certainly the sellers have never seen ‘best products’ professionally unless they buy one themselves. (Sellers don’t offer Ukrainian US annuities, for instance.) New York & New Jersey are on the right ‘fiduciary’ track but most consumers can’t buy an ‘at cost’ annuity from a broker or bank or agent. Their firms wouldn’t allow it.

Buy one yourself: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Buy-That-Annuity-Guaranteed/dp/1466494573

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How Govt wastes our money: Congress spends another Trillion we don’t have!

Russia helps prez and still sways our votes + obstruction: Mueller’s team $12 million.

Lobbyists tell Congress: employers can sell expensive broker annuities to workers: TDA

More wasted $ million in Afghan war: US fears ‘losing’ guerilla war—2,400 dead so far!

SCAMS/SPINS:

Will Trump exonerate another convicted criminal because Obama didn’t?

Trump not mind vermin in his own Trump Grille (sp) and The Bronx Golf Links

Trump cuts money to expand Medicaid—no help for poor sick folks: Kills 15,000.

Trump still thinks

China