Your Survival Guy

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If You Had a Million Dollars

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By Ilya Brin @ Shutterstock.com

If you had a million dollars, would you let a robot do the investing for you?

You probably wouldn’t. But that’s the direction companies are taking, including Vanguard.

When you invest a single penny of your hard-earned money, you need to think about it as if it were a million dollars. That’s the mindset you want to have at all times when you invest.

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There is NO SUCH THING as a “small loss,” or money that doesn’t matter because “it’s too small to worry about.”

Once you get into the mindset of growing your money, you become a serious investor and not a speculator. Leaving this work to a robot will always leave out the most important ingredient: YOU.

To me, they’re putting the cart before the horse. At the heart of the matter is, will you listen? Will you listen and act on a recommendation from an algorithm? Will you trust a recommendation that will impact your family’s wealth?

The robos save money on phone reps, have a big marketing spend, and a neat looking website.

But what if there’s a problem? A few years ago, when stocks were down 1,600 points, Bloomberg reported that the websites of robe-advisers Wealthfront Inc. and Betterment crashed. This is one of the MANY reasons robo-advisors will NEVER work for investors–NEVER. What a SHAM.

Also, it’s been my experience that investors want regular conversations about their savings, especially when they’ve made money over a lifetime and it would take another one to replace the losses.

If you’ve worked your whole life to save, and a robo-advisor lost your money, how could you expect to make back what’s gone? The arithmetic is not on your side.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West (RIP JB) and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.
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