Your Survival Guy

Preparing your investments and family for when disaster strikes.

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This Fed Policy has cost Savers Billions

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A study of Federal Reserve policy has shown that savers have lost billions thanks to misguided actions by the Fed. CNBC reports: Various academic studies have shown that the low interest rates have pushed even more money into mattresses as savers have sought to make up for not getting returns by putting away more money. The overall savings rate went from 3.3 percent in 2006 to 5.2 percent in 2016, according to research from NerdWallet, a personal finance information site. NerdWallet took those rates, then applied them to average disposable personal incomes and used as a baseline a $25,000 … [Read more...]

Millennials Moving to the Burbs

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The best investment I ever made in my early 20s was buying a multi-family in Marlborough, MA when I was working out there at Fidelity Investments. I like this trend for Millennials. I have always believed that owning your home is the best investment you can make when you’re young. Here the Globe's Prashant Gopal explains that young millennials are fleeing the higher priced cities to buy in the suburbs: Cities may be the top choice for millennials who rent apartments, but young home buyers are moving in droves to the suburbs, where prices are lower and backyards are plentiful. The share of … [Read more...]

The Big Short and The Prudent Man

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If you want to lose even more faith in the big banks on Wall Street then see the movie The Big Short. It’s an excellent portrayal of what ignited the Great Recession based on Michael Lewis’ book of the same title. It never ceases to amaze me how little we learn from history—one that's littered with financial disasters. If you want to make money and keep it then you would be wise to focus your attention on the prudent man rule. Bevis Longstreth writes in the footnotes of Modern Investment Management and the Prudent Man Rule: Of course, it was early recognized that market manipulators could do … [Read more...]

Commit to a Life of Success

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You may be familiar with Shane Ellison from his book Over-the Counter Natural Cures and his action-oriented website www.thepeopleschemist.com. I’ve read his book several times and refer to it, and his website, regularly. Shane suffers no fools. He tells it the way he sees it, often times, with language not meant, shall we say, for the dinner table. Recently a client and I were talking about sports—wrestling in particular—and he was reminded of Shane’s blog: My New Year’s Resolution 2016. In it Shane talks about how he’s helping his 10-year old son Blair commit to a life of success through … [Read more...]

The Maximizers

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“Meltdown? Absolutely baked into the cake as I write to you, and becoming more of a deep midterm concern for me as time passes,” wrote Dick Young in Intelligence Report back in July 2015. And here we are a short way into 2016 and the speculative NASDAQ index is down over 8%. As Dick notes, “In recent issues, my goal has been to work especially hard at providing you intelligence that will keep you safe and dividend-centric during what I consider the inevitable coming meltdown.” Safe and dividend-centric—sort of has a ring to it, does it not? It does to me. Those words have been pounded into my … [Read more...]

Warren Miller: Your Search for Freedom Part II

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“You know I liked your piece on Warren Miller but he wasn’t the ground-breaking filmmaker on skiing,” said my client yesterday, from Jackson Hole, WY during our regular talk. “The first guy was John Jay. He lived in Williamstown, MA next door to my friend when I was a kid,” he said. “Years later, when I was president of my ski club John Jay put on a great show for us.” I wikipedia’d John Jay and according to Warren Miller, he “virtually invented the ski film in its modern form.” If you’ve ever skied Suicide Six in Woodstock, VT or have seen the skimobile at Mt. Cranmore in North Conway, NH … [Read more...]

How Retirement Affects Health

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You can’t afford to lose meaningful money in retirement. It is the one death blow that is almost impossible to recover from and in my observation it leads to: 1) An obsession with trying to “make” the money back which takes over one’s life or 2), shutting the world out and blaming the loss on someone else. Both scenarios lead to isolation and as it turns out are bad for one’s health. Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D. shares with readers the results of a study concluding that 10 to 25 percent of retirees don’t do well in retirement and are at a higher risk of dying within six years of retiring. According … [Read more...]

Roger Babson Quoted in Book: 1929

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Here’s a reminder about the markets, emailed to me by a client from the Greatest Generation over the weekend. What she sent was not only relevant because I went to Babson College, named after Roger Babson. The quoted passage below shows that with open eyes, a heavy dose of skepticism and abundant caution, you can prepare your portfolio for hard times, or “reef your sails” as Babson says. “Fair weather cannot always continue. The economic cycle is in progress today, as it was in the past. The Federal Reserve System has put the banks in a strong position, but it has not changed human nature. … [Read more...]

GOP Candidates: Trumped on Trade

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If you look at the back of your iPhone it reads: “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” And there in a nutshell you have a fortune cookie sized explanation of our service/design vs. China’s manufacturing/assembly economy. Which one is more perishable? How long will it take for a call center in India to turn another U.S. service into a commodity? For the U.S. to compete on a global scale she needs to be able to compete in a way that protects her self-interests. Donald Trump gets this as does Pat Buchanan where he explains: Yet, with the exception of Trump, none of the GOP … [Read more...]