talk, telling me that he was getting some stock certificates that he hadn’t accessed in years.  He was going to sell his stock.  He was an older gentleman, probably in his early seventies.  He then proceeded to tell me that he lost so much money in the stock market that he’d advise people to never invest in the stock market.  I made the remark that everyone tells me that I’m young, so I shouldn’t worry about the volatility of the stock market because I’ve got a long time to weather the ups and downs. He told me at one point he had been making $14,000 a month from the stock market alone.  He didn’t disclose how much money he invested, but that was his gain monthly from investing in the stock market.  Crazy. I can’t even imagine earning $14,000 a month without having to do any work to earn it. In 2001 after the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, he lost 50% of his investment value.  Instead of cashing it out, he decided to hold onto it and [...]

I logged in to check my 401k performance the other day and realized that about 35% of my 401k portfolio was in company stock.  I personally don’t allocate my contributions to company stock, so it was all from the company match.  While I am thankful for the 401k match, I also don’t like having that much of my 401k tied up in company stock.  I don’t know much about investing, but I do know that it’s not good to have your eggs in one basket, especially in your company stock. I am reminded of a couple years ago when the bank I work for was not doing so well.  At one point our stock was $45 a share.  Before we were bought out, our stock was down around $2.  Many people, including the branch manager and licensed investment adviser, had their entire 401k in company stock.  To say they lost money would be an understatement.  Unfortunately, I know this happened to many others as well, and not just those who worked at the bank. I sold all the stock and [...]

Investing for Beginners Getting started as an investor is essential in order to begin laying a foundation for financial success. The traditional approach to investing has been to open a retirement account and begin paying into it each month, and then after 30 years—voila!—a nice nest egg is ready for you. Generally, retirement accounts tend to have a heavy amount of exposure to U.S. equity markets due to the stock market’s very strong historical growth figures. But as many close-to-retiree-age folks discovered in 2008, a retirement account heavily exposed to the U.S. equity markets can be diminished in a matter of months if a global economic meltdown erupts. If you are just beginning to invest and you have 20+ years before retirement, it may be wise to speak with a financial adviser and seriously consider investing in a strategy that seeks to benefit from the explosion of growth in China and India. Let’s examine why. What should I invest my 401k in? Retirement planning and investing has a very clear stated goal—to make money over the long term. This goal [...]