Aug 09 Investment Advisor - Stock Market Roller Coaster

Written by John D. Buerger, CFP®.

John Buerger, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER professional and Wealth Coach from ALTUS Wealth Solutions in San Luis Obispo, CA presents the most important Wealth Health Tip - "Consume less than your produce (spend less than you make). That's It.

That's a Big "Duh." Everybody knows this, right (or at least they should)? A theme of these videos is to state the obvious, but re-framed in ways you can actually use to your advantage.

A sea-change in your behavior is needed ... but that won't happen by me telling you what to do (a mistake most advisors make). You already know what to do. My job is to help you find a way to actually do it.

Let's look at this personal finance tip -- Spend Less than U make. We all KNOW this is true and yet very few people do it. Why? It's really quite natural -- you're hardwired that way. Spending money FEELS GOOD. Saving money is PAINFUL

Your brain is faced with a choice - "Spend money now" (party time, fun) or "Save for the future" (yuch). Your brain picks party time, immediate gratification almost every time.

But what if saving money wasn't painful?

We're not talking budget here. Budget is a 6-letter 4-letter word. What if you could actually spend MORE on the things that are important to you and pay for it by spending less on the stuff that doesn't matter?

You CAN -- and it starts with being aware of EVERY DOLLAR you are spending. For the next week, with every purchase you make, ask "is this important to me?" Also remember that a dollar spent in one place can't be spent someplace else (which might be really important).

Give it a shot and see how this does for you.

I'm John Buerger reminding you ...

Get Control Over Your Money BEFORE it Takes Control of Your Life.

2011-08-09 - John D. Buerger, CFP® - The Wealth Coach checking in and I thought I would share some ideas about what's going on in the stock market. It has been a pretty wild ride. Yesterday, August 8th, 2011 the Dow Jones Industrials average lost about 5 1/2 percent, and the S&P 500 lost 6 1/2 percent. All told over the last couple of weeks, the markets are down anywhere from 18 and 24 percent - that's a lot of money to lose.

As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional, I do help people manage their investments. It's not everything we do in the financial planning world. In fact, managing cash flow is a much better way to build wealth often than through your investments. However, as we've seen over the last couple of weeks, you can lose and awful lot of money really quickly in the stock market so it is important to pay attention to it.

What's been going on? Mostly what we're seeing is that the stock market IS exactly what I've been saying it is all along - a big, mean, ugly and harry roller coaster. I know it's put out there as some kind of kiddie ride with some kind of guaranteed rate of return.

It's not guaranteed at all. In fact over the last five years you'd be losing money if you had been invested in the stock market. If you started investing in August of 2006, as of yesterday's close you'd be down 11 1/2 percent. That's if you could avoid transactions costs and advisor fees which are next to impossible to avoid. That's quite a loss for five years of working really hard at it.

So yes, the Stock Market Roller Coaster is really just that - the ugliest, harriest, meanest, most viscious roller coaster ride you could ever imagine ... and that's what I wanted to talk to you about today.

If you're feeling bad, really bad, gut-wrenching bad about your experiences the past couple of weeks in the stock market - and with losses of 18 to 24 percent, that would seem perfectly reasonable - If you're feeling really bad right now, maybe the Stock Market Roller Coaster isn't the best ride for you and your hard earned money. Maybe you need a different strategy.

Understand that investing is all about taking money, putting it at risk and hoping to get a return for that. This is what stock market risk looks like. You're not going to hear this from most investment advisors or those in the financial media because frankly, there IS a lot of money to be made in the investment world, just not (as I've said many times before) for people on your side of the desk. It is for folks who make money on your transactions. You may be losing money in the market but they're still making money.

So if you feel this gut-wrenching motion, that's OK. Understand it and try to understand how much risk is truly appropriate for you and then find the strategy that gets you the greatest amount of return for that level of risk that you are willing to take.

Hopefully you'll have someone helping you along who is honest about how much risk that particular investment has.

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