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New, Practical & Brief Newsletter
One of these newsletters could save you from making a big mistake. This is basic and "ready to act on" advice for those serious about making smart choices.
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By Luck or On Purpose?
We want to help you grow your wealth. To prove that, we are willing to show you how to implement these ideas on your own.
If you can invest with discipline and diversification over long periods of time, your returns will be higher than most everyone else. Your success will be purposeful; the few that exceed your results were lucky. Luck or on purpose? Your choice!
Discipline: 1) Stay
in the market, 2) stick to your strategy long term and 3) manage other aspects
of your finances so that your portfolio can grow undisturbed.
Diversification: Own a little bit of everything using low expense ratio funds. To accomplish this we use Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) which is available only to select advisors. The next best approach is using Vanguard index funds as your portfolio building blocks. We are willing to share our Vanguard portfolio designs, contact us.
Discipline and diversification are fundamentally sound and can be found
in lofty documents like the Uniform Prudent Investor Act (UPIA) and Restatement
3rd of Trusts (Prudent Investor Rule). There are many great articles on these concepts, click here for one of our favorites.
These complex concepts have been presented briefly. Not convinced; need more explanation? We would happy to help, just contact us.
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Common Mistakes
Typically mistakes can be traced to, you guessed it, poor discipline and diversification.
1) Poor Discipline.
Moving in and out of "hot" mutual funds. Continually switching advisors. Timing the market. Abandoning your long term strategy at a whim. Often these behaviors can be described as "chasing performance".
2) Poor Diversification: Individual stocks. Retail mutual funds with less than 500 holdings that overlap each other. Multiple advisors. All of the aforementioned hurt diversification which means greater volatility and lower long term returns.
3) The Allure of Active Investing: Active investing (to be covered more in a future newsletter) seems to make sense - I can "work hard, analyze and study my way to market-beating returns". However active investing lacks substantial diversification and/or relies on market-timing - common mistakes #1 and #2 above.
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What to Do Next
Our culture and media would have you believe that investing is 90% of personal financial success. Actually, it is 10%. The devil is in the details. If you do the other 90% poorly, the good investing work could be blown up.
Next steps on investing:
we offered above to show you how to implement a diversified strategy on your own. Contact us whether to seek our help, or to learn how
to do it yourself w/Vanguard.
Begin with The End
in Mind: For any successful journey, you need a compelling vision as THE FIRST STEP OVERALL.
We help people put their vision on paper using a tool called Financial Road Map for Living Your life on
Purpose. We facilitate Road Maps for individuals/couple as a community service, even knowing in advance that you may not be a fit to us. Contact us to schedule a Road Map meeting. We can also provide a 20-30 minute Road Map demo on the phone.
You may wish to read articles about how to choose an advisor. Be sure to understand their fees. Call us. We have a book we can share with you that includes advice on how to find a good advisor, what to ask, how to interview.
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