Growing up, I was always intrigued by money. I liked earning it, and I really liked saving it. In May 1997, about a month shy of my 14th birthday, I biked from our family’s home in Eden Prairie over to the Chanhassen McDonald’s – a grueling one-mile ride (uphill both ways).
Earlier this year, I took my daughter Evelyn to our first “Daddy/Daughter Dance” at Life Time Fitness. While I was merely an accessory as she twirled and twirled on the dance floor, it was a wonderful night for us. Evie turns 4 next month. About a month before the dance, my wife Krista bought a dress with Evie at Costco to wear for the dance. Evie called it her “ballet tutu dress”, and she proudly wore that dress nearly every day in the weeks leading up to the dance. Someday, I’ll be walking my little girl down the church aisle on her wedding day. [insert deep sigh] One of the habits outlined in Stephen Covey’s classic book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to begin with the end in mind. With our daughter, that means looking ahead to the day she leaves us and joins her life to her future husband. While our roles as father and mother won’t end at that point, we want to be thinking now about the kind of woman we hope she will be on her wedding day – and about the kind of man we hope she will marry.
In his recent book Everyday Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth – and How You Can Too, author Chris Hogan sets out to prove “The American Dream is Alive and Available.” To write this book, Hogan’s team at Ramsey Solutions surveyed and/or interviewed more than 10,000 Americans over the past year. His book follows the footsteps of one of The Wealth Group’s all-time favorite books, The Millionaire Next Door. Books like these are great at myth-busting the popular culture’s conceptions about millionaires in America. What most people think about millionaires in America is often incorrect.
You can’t time the market. At least I can’t. Market timing is an investment hypothesis that has been tried for the 240 years of stock exchange history in the United States. The basic idea is to buy an investment when it is “low” or undervalued, and then sell that investment when it is “high” or overvalued. The problem is that I don’t know when the “low” or “high” has truly occurred. I know when investments are “lower” and “higher”, because those terms are always relative to some reference point in the past.
My wife and I enjoy taking time to talk about what we want our life to look like when we reach the point of financial independence. It is exciting to do this exercise, as it helps keep the reason behind saving, investing, and other smart financial decisions at the forefront of your mind.
As a part of The Wealth Group’s systematic investing process we have developed and refined, we update and review your portfolio and the internal holdings on a regular basis. This is an update based on that process, and there is no action required on your end.
Competition can be a great motivator. One of the reasons I was able to excel in school growing up was because I simply wanted to beat all the other students.
Having good health while in retirement plays an important role in helping you achieve a long, successful, and fulfilling retirement. In a 2016 health study*, individuals were asked what they would want more of in the future. Health came back as the most popular choice at 37%.
My wife and I generally agree about money. We both want to give generously to our church and other charities, we both want to save at least 15% of our income toward retirement, and we both want to have our mortgage paid off in less than 9 years (which will have been less than 15 years from when we bought our home together).
I recently helped my mother purchase a 2015 SUV from a dealership. It was not a pleasant experience. Those of you that have purchased from a dealership know how long the process takes. Within 20 minutes of walking into the dealership, we were ready to pay all cash for the vehicle. We had done our research in advance, the test drive went well, and we were buying a reliable make and model.
Stock market drawdowns are normal. They’re never fun, but they are a routine occurrence. As of market close on October 11, 2018, the S&P 500 Index was only 6.9% off its recent high from September 20.
Most of us have said or thought something like: “If only I had invested in __________, I would have so much money today.” Whether it’s the stock of Amazon, Google, Netflix, or Apple, the growth of these stocks over a long period of time is incredible. But when we examine the historical price movement of these stocks, we see that early investors have endured a bumpy ride.