Posted on June 1, 2008 @ 10:57 pm - Written by BawldGuy
This question haunts me sometimes. It’s understandable ‘cuz the stories folks tell me can bring on a strong and unwanted sense of helplessness. When people find themselves in their 50’s and realize their retirement isn’t gonna come close to what they planned 20-something years ago, panic can set in. The Wall Street Journal published a story 3-4 years ago. Among other things, it said the average American man, at 57, had less than $60,000 in his 401(k), a home with a mortgage, and hope that Social Security wouldn’t be in the history books as an idea that failed.
Given decent health and a ‘can do’ attitude, you can significantly improve that picture. Does the above describe you? Don’t despair. But do act quickly, ‘cuz as you might have already surmised, time ain’t yer friend at this point. You need to muster up some good old fashioned gumption, and get into gear — overdrive would be preferred. Your original fantasy might not be in the cards now, but you can sure make a new one come true.
Posted on May 31, 2008 @ 8:57 pm - Written by BawldGuy
Just looked at our next Texas location and it rocks. Too early to spill the beans, but we’ll be putting our boots on the ground very soon. Hint: It’s on the A-List of areas having appreciated more than 7% in the last 12 months.
Also, a buddy living in another region has convinced me to fly up there to check out the ‘unreal deals’ available. Gee, haven’t heard that one before. Worth a flight and a day or two to find out though. We’ll see.
Off the cuff — follow me on twitter, I’m @BawldGuy. Just go to twitter.com — it’s free, and you’ll like it. Go to my profile and see who follows me and who I follow. If you do the same, you’ll find out what folks in the business around the country talk about with each other.
Also off the cuff here — so many of my clients have been sorely disappointed by the performance of mutual funds in their 401(k) plans. They complain how they’ve heard most of their adult lives how the returns were in the range of 8-12% annually, when their real life results haven’t reached even 5% yet. Now we have a 20 year study which proves just that. (More on that this week.)
No time here to expand on the thought, but it’s nice to finally have a 20 year study on which to fall back, know what I mean, Verne? Verne’s not laughing — guess he’s in mutual funds. Here’s the last train to Capital Growth for those San Diegans interested.
I’d love to talk with you about getting started with your own Purposeful Plan — one heading straight for a very cool retirement. You can find me by clickin’ here, then waiting for my always quick response. I need a fix, so hurry up, wouldya? Much appreciated.
So it’s Saturday, which means there’s a video, right? Then I put ‘train’ in the title, geez. Settled on The Monkees, a band for whom I’m still in the dark. How in Aunt Millie’s old robe did they ever do so well? Dateline should do an investigation, ‘cuz there’s gotta be a conspiracy buried somewhere. Anyway, it so happens they did have a song about a train, so that’s the one I’m usin’. Sorry in advance.
Posted on May 27, 2008 @ 3:44 pm - Written by BawldGuy
I’m proud to introduce David Shafer, a very smart guy. Today’s topic, EIUL’s have been a subject close to my heart. Though I’ve written about it several times here, and at BloodhoundBlog, I thought it was time to bring in an expert.
NOTE: David used numbers even more conservative than I would, which is just fine by me. For example, even though the performance of the S & P over the last half century is around 8%, David uses 6.5%. Why don’t I care? ‘Cuz I’ve never had a client complain when real life performance exceeds projections. Duh.
When BawldGuy asked me to blog on equity indexed universal life insurance (EIUL), I thought no problem, since I had been blogging on it for a couple of years on both my site and others. Then he asked me to look at the archives from Bloodhound to see his previous blogs and I knew I had to write something a little different. In order to make sense of EIUL contracts you really need to understand the misinformation that underlie the arguments being put out by folks in books, the mass media and blogs on both sides of the issue. You need to be clear on what your wealth creation plan is and what it isn’t. So bear with me for a few paragraphs as I burn down the straw-men arguments before we get into the mechanics of EIUL’s.
Usually these discussions surround a common theme, EIUL’s versus mutual funds inside a tax deferred wrapper (401K, IRA’s). First let’s talk about mutual funds. Mutual funds were designed to reduce risk or as financial experts describe it variance. They were a boom to Wall Street as mutual funds induced many folks to invest in stocks, something they were not inclined to do in the past. They have been around for 2 generations so we have plenty of data to tell us accurately how people do investing in mutual funds. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 10, 2008 @ 9:57 pm - Written by BawldGuy
Let’s take a trip in the WayBack Machine. We’ll set the controls to 1960, when my favorite uncle was 30. Back then the median income was way under $10,000 yearly. In fact, the median income for a 1960 American family was under $6,000 a year.
We’ll ask him to make an informed choice about his retirement, which will commence in 1995. Here are his two choices. His pick will dictate his lifestyle form the day he retires until he dies.
We’ll guarantee him $35,000 pre-tax income yearly for life.
Or — He can invest in that duplex around the corner for $8,500.
I wonder what the response would’ve been if we’d asked 100 30-something year olds back then the same question with the same two choices? What would you predict?
Consider that the guaranteed income is more than quadruple what he’s earning at 30 years old.
Take a married couple today with a couple kids and an family income of $60,000 a year. Let’s try to stay real with this and ask them the same couple questions.
Posted on March 8, 2008 @ 6:46 pm - Written by BawldGuy
Now that most of the country’s real estate is, uh, taking a breather, as is the stock market, I thought it was perfect timing to reissue a post I published about nine months ago. The post has been modified as little as possible to reflect the current times. None of the pertinent numbers have been touched.
I’ll make one comment before beginning: Remember the #1 factor in long term investing — Keeping your eye on the long term, the big picture. Know what I mean, Verne?
OK, let’s get going.
A long while back I published a post discussing the so-called debate, Real Estate VS Stocks as investment vehicles. It’s time to remind folks, as stock tips are flying everywhere again, that the stock market just doesn’t compare, especially for regular folk just looking to ensure the retirement they’ve been planning for years. Of course, this dovetails with what I was talking about the other day — 401(k)’s. They thrive or fail based upon the stock market. If in the last 10 years of your work life, the stock market takes a snooze, so does your retirement. Name the last time real estate took a decade off. Right, not even. Since the end of World War II, the next time real estate stays down, or flat for a decade — will be the first time.
Now that the stock market has done a solid imitation of the real estate market, I’m hearing more and more from folks who honestly think there’s a real comparison between their stock portfolio’s potential and their real estate investment plans. The whole, ‘We’ve reached the bottom, and now’s a great time to get into the stock market.’ Before I begin, there’s something I wanna make perfectly clear. You can get very wealthy in the stock market. Over the long haul, you can drag a bunch out of the vault for yourself. That said, you have to know which stocks to pick, when to buy, and who in management might undermine your long term plans. And much of the information on which you will want to base that info is zealously kept from you.
Your real estate portfolio is also subject to outside factors, but not nearly to the extent as the stock market. You can pick where, when, why, how, and in the end, do it all with reasonable confidence that the big picture will show you with an even bigger smile. One area is down, the next isn’t. San Diego is down now, while much of Texas is the real deal. Phoenix is waiting to bounce back, while Kansas City just keeps cooking along.
As I write this the DOW is just at or a touch below 12,000 — a hefty decrease compared to a year ago. Now everyone is trying to figure out if real estate measures up. This is predictable every time the stock market goes bullish or bearish in a big way. The mainstream media chimes in with their take on what investors should do. Those without a dog in the fight (read: any real understanding) offer the most humorous reading. The media often takes ignorance to levels air breathing mammals can’t survive.
The journalist usually ends up concluding the investor has to choose what’s better for their particular situation. That’s media-speak for “I had to write a piece on this topic and don’t know what I’m talking about, but it sure sounds good, doesn’t it?” Let’s put this subject to bed once and for all. We’ll put them in the most transparent way possible, side by side so anyone can discern which way is north on the map. Of course I’ve always maintained the media hasn’t ever done their research diligently on this topic, but we’ll give it a shot anyway.
Stocks vs. Real Estate
Here’s how we’ll do it. I contacted my Financial Planner as a source for an historically reliable annual growth rate in the stock market. I decided to use the S&P 500. For the past 55 years or so it has performed at a growth rate of approximately 8% annually. (It’s actually somewhat higher, maybe 8.5%.) Sounds impressive, but of course that’s not every year, just like real estate doesn’t always go up 40% a year. In fact, let’s be honest and say right up front that both real estate and stocks experience downturns from time to time as part of the normal business cycle. Duh. Don’t the current circumstances faced by real estate investors today speak for themselves? Ask your neighbor, the stock investor what he’s thinking about his portfolio these days.
Pick any growth region you want. Go to any 10 year period at random. In San Diego that’s a fun game I play with my new clients. They usually pick the period ending with a real downturn. It doesn’t matter. The rises have, historically speaking, given more than the downturns have taken away — by orders of magnitude almost. Nothing in San Diego has gone up as little as 5% yearly, in any decade you’d choose. It just hasn’t happened. I’m beginning with the year I got in, which was 1969. Almost four decades is long enough to make a point, don’t ya think?
Let’s set the parameters first. I’m going to grant annual growth of 10% for 10 years for the S&P. That’s about 25% over what they done over the last half century. We’ll use $100,000 as our opening capital investment amount. For real estate we’ll use an average annual appreciation rate of only 4%, buying small income properties using 10% down payments. (Note: This isn’t theory, I’ve been executing this exact scenario successfully for decades now, and have done so recently (How’s 14 times in the last few weeks?).)
As stated above, we’ll use an annual appreciation rate of only 4%. I’ll assume the stock’s annual return will be able to maintain a 10% annual growth by selling and buying different stocks as the professionals see fit. I’m also assuming the real estate investor will do one tax deferred exchange at the end of the fifth year. Though I won’t impute any costs to the buying and selling of stocks, I will burden the real estate investor with a selling cost of 8% when he exchanges.
Let’s see what happens.
After 10 years (rounding to the nearest $100) the stock investor has $259,400 — a profit of $159,400 over the 10 year period. A 10% annual growth rate on the originally invested capital.
Real estate has ended up with $458,000 - a profit of $358,000 for the same 10 year period. A 16.435% annual growth rate on the originally invested capital.
We gave stocks the benefit of 2.5 times the growth rate we gave real estate.
This still doesn’t take into account the benefits received from the real estate that don’t exist with stocks.
Any income derived over that period generated by the real estate would not be taxable because of depreciation.
All excess depreciation would then be allotted to the ordinary income (salary from job) of the investor, resulting in thousands of dollars in taxes not paid.
On the other hand any dividends derived from stocks are taxable. With rare exceptions the only way the stock market investor gains any tax shelter is when he loses his money, which is far more likely in stocks than in real estate, especially over the long haul.
Now imagine what this same $100,000 could have done for you, if you’d been pressing the right buttons for the last decade with your real estate investment portfolio. In my experience, even with some bumps along the way, 10 years of prudent and Purposeful Planning, (using the Flywheel Principle) almost always results in multiplying your original capital 5-20 times, depending upon the region, your timing, (sometimes lucky is good) and how vertical the rises were in that particular 10 year period. The immediate decade past would have resulted in your $100,000 turning into at least $1.5-2MIL — if you were paying attention and exchanging when it made sense.
Note: It’s my very strong belief the next decade or so will not bring us any huge run-ups in real estate. I think even the normally high appreciation regions probably won’t experience any significant upward spikes.
What’s really cool about real estate is the ability to buy based upon regional performance. For instance, if you bought investment property in Ohio in 1997 vs buying in San Diego, you’d have been very disappointed. Real estate is local, whereas stocks are, well, stocks. By understanding the fundamentals of different regions, an investor can more intelligently place his capital. A great example of this is when we took our clients out of San Diego five years ago, and exchanged them into other, lower priced growth regions. Many of them can now look back with 20/20 hindsight and see how their capital growth rate was significantly higher outside of San Diego. This doesn’t take into account the relatively lower prices, and the far superior price to rent ratios they enjoyed elsewhere. Their cash flow, if that’s what they wanted, was easily superior when the properties were not in San Diego, or areas like it (Palo Alto?).
Before anyone jumps in to defend stocks, don’t bother. You can make a lot of money with them. But the bottom line is, you can’t use leverage without going over the top with risk. Your weak dividends are taxable. You provide no tax shelter during the holding period. If you picked one industry leader over another, you might have made it big — unless of course, you picked wrong. Folks don’t need a crystal ball with real estate — plus they have prudent leverage.
Ah, leverage. Real estate without leverage, is like — buying stocks. It’s the difference maker.
This is why folks like Ben Stein, a man for whom I have almost unlimited respect, avoids any mention of leverage when he compares the two investments. (And he made himself wealthy almost exclusively through stocks.) He knows if he did, stocks would be embarrassingly left behind. Even conservative leverage puts the regular investor way ahead. Leverage is the unfair advantage we have. And we allow it to move Heaven and earth for us, until we arrive at our magnificently abundant retirement.
Then we bask in the glow of the life we’ve earned — through real estate.
Let all this percolate for awhile. Then ask yourself whether or not you should begin taking your retirement a lot more seriously. Contact me — I’m easy to talk to.
— a hefty decrease compared to a year ago. Now everyone is trying to figure out if real estate measures up. This is predictable every time the stock market goes bullish or bearish in a big way. The mainstream media chimes in with their take on what investors should do. Those without a dog in the fight (read: any real understanding) offer the most humorous reading. The media often takes ignorance to levels air breathing mammals can’t survive. 
Let’s see what happens.
