Investing Habits of the Fairly Weathy: #5 Math

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Dear Fairly Wealthy Investor,

Life Comes at You Fast. Slow It Down with My Friday Email. It’s Free.

You might be better off staying in bed. It’s that bad. One morning, you wake up, and there’s a full-page spread in the Wall Street Journal on the perils of a balanced portfolio. It reports how owning stocks and bonds in a 60-40 mix is dead.

Nonsense.

And it’s not just them. When you’re in the business of selling newspapers, newsletters, or email subscriptions, it’s what gets attention that sells. Which is a disservice to you, my valued reader.

You and I know investing is hard because we know the work it takes to save ’til it hurts. These guys are about selling. Not investing. They need eyeballs today, tomorrow, and the next day, simply for their survival. That’s not my game.

I’m Your Survival Guy.

I tell you what I’ve learned over a lifetime of working in the trenches, taking live fire side by side with investors in real markets, and living to fight another day. Yes, I hope we get through these tough times together. But what I do isn’t for everyone.

Which brings me to investing habit number 5: Math. Investing is math. And like a math test in high school, you need to stick to your own work to understand the lesson. You need to do the math. Prices are not math; they come, and they go, like yesterday’s paper.

But not without doing a major disservice to the patient investor trying to live in dangerous times.

When you can’t even watch the six o’clock news because it gives your grandchildren nightmares—that’s not a good environment. When protesters fill the streets, that’s not a good environment. When tent cities litter sidewalks near the Children’s Museum, that’s not a good environment. When homeless zombies take over the Commons in your neck of the woods, that’s not a good environment.

Your Survival Guy offers you plenty of reasons why you want to understand that investing is math. It’s up to you to make the connection. It’s up to you to understand the path forward for your family.

Action Line: When you’re ready to talk, let’s talk. But only if you’re serious.

Warm regards,

Your Survival Guy

P.S. You don’t need to compound big numbers to get big results. With the T-bill paying over five percent, for now, you can double your money in no time. But will it pay.