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Our expertise in financial, investment, and retirement planning will guide your path to financial fulfillment.
Do Not Consider Investing in Real Estate (Including Your Own Home) With More Than 20% of Your Assets
If you create a pie chart of all your investment assets and real estate is more than 20%, do not consider investing in more real estate. I understand that your home may, itself, be greater than 20% and I’m ok with that because it is much more than just an investment.
Sell Your RSU and ESPP As They Vest
Your Company Stock awards are part of your total compensation for work. They are not a bonus and they are not lottery tickets. You work hard for your company and part of your pay includes these stock awards.
Make No Predictions of Markets Over Short Periods of Time
Stock prices are determined by buyers and sellers, of course, but those buyers and sellers are entirely human. And humans are filled with emotions.
Rebalance Your Portfolio
Your Long-Term Portfolio has target percentages for each fund and asset class. We start investing by placing those amounts in each fund so that we are perfectly balanced. The day you initially invest will be the last day you are perfectly balanced.
Structure a Portfolio Whose Behavior in Market Crashes is Acceptable
If you are 40 years old, you will likely experience 5 to 8 more market crashes during the rest of your life. You can try to predict them and trade through them, but history says you won’t be successful as no one has ever done so through more than one or two.
Keep the Same Investment Strategy Regardless of Your Stage in Life
The markets do not care what stage of life you are in. I know that sounds funny, but we can sometimes think we should invest differently because of something going on in our own life.
Pay No Attention to the Financial Media
The old school big firms in the financial industry make their stock market money one way. By processing transactions. They don’t care if you are successful as long as you do something and pay them a fee or commission.
Invest Everything Above Your Savings Target in Your Long-Term Portfolio
Your Savings Target is the amount you want in savings so by definition, anything above this amount should be invested in your Long-Term Portfolio.
Do What’s Always Worked
When tying your future wealth to something through investment, be sure what you are doing has always worked in the past. Don’t be distracted by the odd strategy or “opportunity.”
Be Optimistic
Things will improve, we just don’t know how. That’s what I mean by being optimistic and this is most important when markets crash.
Be Patient
I’m so glad that today’s culture has finally given a name to something that has killed many investors in the past. FOMO. When you hear about the fear of missing out, doesn’t it make you realize that this is something you should not be concerned with?
Be Diversified
We’ve all heard that we should be diversified, but what does that mean? It means to own a lot of things that you expect to do well over time but that don’t always do well at the same time.