Could an earthquake in Japan ruin your retirement?

Could an earthquake in Japan ruin your retirement?

There is a great book called "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. In his book the Author talks about how closely linked the world has become and how much we affect each other. We like to think that Greece going bankrupt won't have any effect on the United States of America or that the Euro struggling to hold value won't inversely effect the US dollar. The truth is that we are closely linked and our actions can and do affect the rest of the world.

"Before you finish eating breakfast, you've depended on more than half the world."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

I can't imagine having all my retirement funds in the market when it crashed in 2001 or in 2008. For many of the clients I work with, it cost them 30-50% of their retirement account. Many say it was a bubble that people could see if they chose to have their eyes open. While that may be true, there are cases when you could lose your shorts because of something completely unexpected.

Back in 2011 the news came on with an emergency update that Japan and been hit by a tsunami and then had subsequent earthquakes. This was a devastating time. I remember our company trying to help raise funds and make people aware of the true amount of damage these natural disasters had created. No one wanted to see another Katrina size devastation. What none of us expected is the drop that occurred in the different stock markets around the world. The US alone had losses of more than $300 Billion.

Read USA Today article here! 

"Right now, investors are justifiably worried," says economist Ethan Harris of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "The really big risk aversion (to stocks) started in the Middle East. With what's happening in Japan, the two have created dread and uncertainty. Nobody's done scenario planning for this type of disaster. It's terrifying."

It seems like these types of events are becoming more and more common and as they do, they seem to send out a disruptive wake that sends the world markets reeling. So as someone that wants to see their money grow, but also doesn't want to see it erode away every time something in the news happens, what do you do to protect your money?

As a recruiter for a private investment firm, I can tell you that there are a few places left that aren't affected by the stock market or world events. They are private contracts that have returned 10-14% for over 100 years. They performed during the Japanese earthquake, the 2008 real estate bubble, the 2001 tech company bubble, the 80's with high inflation, and even the great depression. They are insulated against stock market risk and they are spread over the strongest companies in the world.

Sometimes our investments end up far from where they should be and in a precarious situation.

These investments were primarily only available to investors with $50-$100 Million dollars. Since 2001 they have been available to collective groups with individuals able to finally participate. The largest investment institutions in the world have been investing in this Stable Value Asset, but haven't allowed their investors to partake in the winnings. To this day they still don't offer this asset class to their clients. Reminds me of a hypocritical parents telling their child to do as they are told and not as I do. Or in other words, invest where I tell you, but not where we invest.

To learn more about these incredible, market risk-free, principle protected investments, contact me and we can go over the information to show you how to realistically get a 10-14% return on your money.

Cheers,

Stephen Gardner
888-638-0080 

Choking On Our Debts

Choking On Our Debts

As someone that has been involved in personal finance for many years now, I have always recommended clients and prospects seriously look at their debt as one of the main things to attack while at the same time building a safe, solid retirement plan other than counting on Social Security. In November of 2012 a colleague of mine lent me a book named The Retirement Miracle by Patrick Kelly. This first chapter of this powerful book opened my eyes to the extent at which the US Government has pulled the wool over American Citizens eyes regarding our National Debt.

What if I told you our National Debt wasn't $16.5 Trillion, but was actually closer to $80 Trillion? I wouldn't have believed it without further research. Our country is choking on it's own debt and is slowly dying because of it.

“Congress doesn’t even know what the real numbers are,” said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tennessee. “The real national debt isn’t $16 trillion. I wish it were that low. The real national debt is closer to $60 or $80 trillion.”

Read Deseret New National Debt Article Here!

When it comes to generally accepted accounting practices the Government has required individuals and businesses to follow very strict practices and guidelines. However, like everything else politicians and Government enforce, they opted themselves out of certain rules. The reason was best explained in a USA Today article with these words:

"The reason for the discrepancy: Accounting standards require corporations and state governments to count new financial obligations, even if the payments will be made later. The federal government doesn't follow that rule. Instead of counting lifetime benefits for programs such as Social Security, the government counts the cost of benefits for the current year."

The article details more about how the accounting really adds up to $61.7 Trillion. Of course that was back in May of 2009 so things have gotten better, right? Wrong! The Government has continued to increase it spending while taking in less and less money from taxes. 

USA Today article here!

So how big is a Trillion Dollars? If you started trying to count to a trillion it would take you nearly 32,000 years to do so. That means a cave man back in 30,000 BC would have started counting until modern day to reach a trillion.

There are 86,400 seconds in a day, 31,536,000 in a year. Now times that by 1,000,000,000,000. These numbers are so big we have a hard time even wrapping our minds around them. Now times that by $16.5 Trillion and you have the perceived National Debt. That would take 500,000+ years to count out. Now do the math on what $72,000,000,000,000 would take. I will leave that up to you. After all I have an article to keep writing.

You can watch the amount add up on http://truthinaccounting.org/. Viewers discretion is advised and also don't look directly at the numbers for too long or you will go blind.

You might be asking yourself, what can I do about it? There are a few things you can do. First, make sure you are doing all you can to be someone that is pulling the cart and not sitting in the cart being pulled. Make sure you are contributing. Second, you can write your government representatives and demand they work to fix the problem. Third, and perhaps most important, you can work on your own debt situation. After all our nation is made up of hundreds of millions of households. Each house we strengthen, strengthens the Nation we love.

What is your personal and family debt situation? How long would it take to count out your debt? Is there a way to count faster and get rid of your debt faster? Yes! Did you know that most people can be completely debt free significantly faster than they believe? You see all debt is given based off ratios. So unless your income has significantly changed you can use these same ratios to get back out of debt faster.

Most debt plans I help people build get them completely debt free, including their house, in 12 years or less. It is all about ratios so the math usually works out about the same for everyone. Take a second to add up how much you pay in debt payments each month. Of those payments, how much is going to interest that you will never see again? Now imagine you are completely debt free, but you still have the amount of money you were putting towards debt to now do investing. How would that change your life? 

Are you ready to change your life? I have a client that simply wasn't ready to change. He was so embarrassed of his debt and circumstances that he put on a show about his lifestyle that made him feel like a huge hypocrite. Once we got his plan in place, he felt a huge burden lifted from his shoulders. 

Bring the future to the present with me for a moment. When you look into the future and you see the life you dream to have, are you really going to get there with all the debt you are carrying? Would it be easier if you unpacked some debt from your life? 

"I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they do their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change."  -Jim Rohn

There is a way to get completely debt free in one third the normal time and I am happy to show it to you. Strengthen your house and strengthen this great nation. 

Cheers,

Stephen Gardner
888-638-0080