The plan is built
Good morning!
Well, the plan is built...
Lillian Lifestyle's financial plan build reaches a conclusion in the 3rd installment of my financial planning in public series.
And now that her plan is put together, we can start to explore some core concepts around how I approach financial planning as well create some scenarios to consider.
Stay tuned, and if you have any questions or suggestions, please just reply to this or any future emails.
Next up, I'd like to say thanks.
Every week I send out one of these emails to my 750+ subscribers, I consistently get a handful of replies.
Some of these replies offer comments or personal perspective on the topic discussed.
Others share a personal story about how they've experienced or addressed an element of the week's topic in their lives.
And a few offer some constructive feedback or other suggestions.
All of these replies are sincerely appreciated, so don't hold back.
However, I want to recognize a couple of recent emails from readers & clients.
First up, thanks to Mike who emailed me with a "teaser" suggesting a phone call where he offered a thoughtful and detailed suggestion on how I might consider improving the delivery of financial advice to my clients.
I appreciate it, Mike.
And I'm still thinking through all we discussed.
Next up, my thanks to Ann Marie.
In response to a personal email, she shared this story about her experience going to the bank to wire funds to pay down her mortgage balance:
Thought you would be interested in this little tidbit .... I went to my Chase Bank branch to have the $XXXk wired to XXX, and the officer who handled the matter told me that I was making a big mistake since my mortgage's interest rate is only 2.9990%. He then told me that I should drop you and talk with one of their JPMorgan people. I thanked him for his concern but told him that I was quite happy with my Atlanta advisor. I also told him that I will be 63-years old in December and do not wish to be carrying any debt. He didn't have a response to that. Needless to say, I wanted to hurry up, sign off on the wire, and get out of there. I always dread having to walk into my branch because that particular officer always puts the hard sell on me about talking with their guy, who he claims is the most successful advisor in the entire JPMorgan Corporation. The only reason I stay with that branch is because that location is the nearest one with safety deposit boxes. This year Chase announced that they are doing away with safety deposit boxes but that any customer that already has one may keep theirs. From now on, though, I will only go into my branch to access my safety deposit box and will handle all other matters at a different location so as to avoid "Mr. Hard Sell".
The story above mirrors similar stories I've heard from clients and other folks over the past several years. And even if you're immune to the sales pitch, consider whether your family & friends know better. Especially if they're older.
I guess banks ain't what they used to be.
If you've been following along for any length of time you'll know that I don't believe in "stock picking" or "market timing."
No need to compete with the market. It's much better (and less expensive) to simply capture the market as efficiently as possible.
And then just give it time. Not months or years.
Decades. Give it decades.
Or put another way, rather than looking for a needle in a haystack, when it comes to investing I believe (and research supports) that it's best to just buy the whole damn haystack.
And that's what I do for my clients and with my personal investments.
And while the US stock fund we use (VTI) and the non-US stock fund we use (VEU) have over 7,700 underlying global companies between them, some clients have asked if or how we're participating in global innovation.
To put some perspective around this and with the help of some folks at Blackrock, they ran an analysis for me that shows how each of our diversified stock funds maps against their "megatrends" approach to investing.
Thought some of you might find this of interest.
So here's their analysis of our US Stock Fund and our non-US Stock Fund.
To be clear, I'm not endorsing nor will I be using their megatrends approach to investing. But I do think it provides an interesting lens through which we can look at how a diversified approach to investing includes some of the more ground-breaking areas of the economy.
Would love to know what you think about this... hit reply and let me know.
Links & things
I expect we can all agree that we need to rest and recharge our batteries from time to time. But in addition to physical and mental rest, this Guardian article suggests there are an additional five types of rest. What do you think?
Some good lessons and reminders from this AARP article from Allan Roth about:
And to follow up one of last week's links to the "Enough" article by advisor Jeremy Walter, here's some additional perspective from John Lim:
Thank you, as always, for reading.
And if you have any questions or an idea for a future newsletter, blog post, or YouTube video, I'd love your input.
Just hit reply - I read (and appreciate) every email you send.
Until next Wednesday,
Russ