How Confident Are You about Your Retirement Investments?

How confident are you about your retirement investments?

Indeed, after all your years of hard work and investing, you deserve nothing short of a relaxing retirement life that’s completely free from financial stress. However, the sad reality is that with each passing day, a large number of folks arrive at retirement only to experience mega disappointments - even finding themselves in an inadvertent cycle of poverty-  because their investment portfolios didn’t come anywhere near their expectations.

Some would have you believe this is simply because all of these folks didn’t save enough money, but I beg to differ, because the evidence says otherwise. In my humble opinion, the real culprit creating the financial nightmares in which so many people find themselves is the fact that these well-meaning folks fell into the deadly trap of having an unrealistic understanding of how to harness the stock market to prudently grow their hard-earned retirement money.

It’s sad, and also true, that the investment approach touted by most so-called financial advisors amounts to nothing short of myths and fantasy. To be a successful retirement investor, you should never try to predict the markets – because that’s an impossible goal. Instead, you must take reality into account and invest in a way that prepares you for whatever happens. When nearly every sector of the stock market is posting double-digit growth - just like we’ve experienced over the past five years - it’s easy to automatically presume that your current portfolio, however, flawed, can and will deliver your intended outcome.

No matter where you are in life, may I propose you seriously ponder these questions?

• Are you building your nest egg with the realistic understanding that the market could head in either of two opposite directions at any particular moment?
• Or you are simply hoping for the best?
• Sure the stock market is up today, but are you ready for the inevitable downturn that will occur? The reality is that it’s a matter of when, not if.
• Could you afford to lose any portion of your retirement investments?
• In a nutshell, are you certain at a gut level that you’re investing properly?

Okay, let me be crystal clear here that I’m not offering a doom-and-gloom prophecy about the stock market, or the economy as a whole. Neither, am I suggesting that you shouldn’t invest in the stock market.  In fact, there is undeniable evidence that the stock market has been the greatest wealth accumulation medium in the history of our planet. But here’s what you must understand: there is a right way to harness the markets to accumulate sustainable retirement wealth – and there’s a wrong way, too!

So, are you investing the right way? Or are you just guessing and hoping?

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Want to confirm that you are on the right track? Come in and let’s help you to independently and objectively evaluate your current approach. Visit LaserFG.com or call 877.656.9111 right now to book your complimentary session. 

Should you be worried about last Thursday’s DOW plunge?

Should you be worried about last Thursday’s DOW plunge?

Unless you were literally living under a rock, you already know that the stock market took a dive last Thursday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DOW) falling by 317 points and wiping out all of its gains since the beginning of the year.  

You likely have a few questions rattling around in your head:

• As an investor, should you be worried?
• Should you be thinking about exiting the equity market altogether?
• Is this the beginning of the next crash that some gurus have been predicting?

Without complicating things, let me put it this way. If you are losing sleep over what happened last Thursday in the stock market, you need to be extremely worried – not because of this drop, but because you have a flawed investing strategy. Of course I’m not happy that the DOW plunged by 317 points. In fact, I’d have preferred it to go the opposite direction and increase by that amount. For heaven’s sake, I manage equity portfolios for some of our clients, so I always want them to make huge profits.

But is it realistic for me – or anyone – to expect the markets to keep going up forever? Of course not! So here’s what you need to know about investing in the stock market.

First, it can and does go up, but it goes down, too.

Second, no one – and I mean no single human being on this planet (yes, including your trusted financial advisor and favorite media money guru) – can predict the exact future movements of the stock market. Again, no one knows where the markets are headed, beyond the fact we just established: that they might go up or they might go down. This may be difficult to swallow, because it’s tempting to actually believe that some of the talking heads in the media can actually predict the future of the markets. But they cannot. Consider this. Did anyone tell you or the rest of the investing world that Argentina was going to default on its debts last Thursday – and as a result, the DOW would plunge by 317 points? No!

Now don’t take this to imply that you should just throw your hard-earned money into some mutual funds and remain helpless, hoping you’ll one day get lucky and be in the right place at the right time, as far as the stock markets go. There is such a thing as an efficient and prudent strategy, when it comes to ensuring that your equity portfolio will yield tangible results over time. And it doesn’t involve worry or losing sleep about temporary fluctuations along way. In other words, if your portfolio is not prepared for these dips, then by all means you should be worried.

Our clients with equity portfolios were prepared for last week’s drop. You, too, can remove the speculation and gambling from your investment portfolio so that you can go about your life without being sucked in by the day-to-day fluctuation drama. Want to know how? Schedule your complimentary visit with one of our first-rate financial professionals today! Call 877.656.9111 or visit LaserFG.com to schedule your no-strings-attached consultation. You can take control of your investments!