#stockmarket
“Main Street” is dumping stocks.
Professional investors keep investing, as the market, as of June 2014, was hitting new highs. The Dow since has passed the 17,000 mark.
Adam Shell, in an article June 12, 2014 in USA Today, writes that average investors in mutual funds are getting out of the funds heavily weighted toward stocks and moving into bonds and bond funds. That obviously hasn’t stopped the stock market from hitting records.
Shell’s article theorizes that the average investor, after going through the downturn starting in 2008, believes that the stock market can’t keep going up forever. On average, Shell writes, the stock market goes through a correction every 18 months. So far, it’s been 32 months since the last correction.
Yet, professional investors pumped $5.5 billion into U.S.-based exchange-traded stock funds.
It’s true that professional investors are accustomed to the ups and downs of the market, and have plenty of money to lose. Average investors could lose everything, and are more cautious.
But perhaps it’s more than that. Average investors are probably having to dip into their nest eggs sooner than they had planned. Perhaps they’ve lost a job, and can’t find another that pays as well. Perhaps they were forced to retire early – before they could build a sufficient nest egg.
If you consider yourself an average investor, it’s certainly OK to be cautious. It’s certainly OK to take your profits if you are not comfortable with the risk. Still, it may be unwise to let fear govern your decisions.
Sure, your investment adviser may be a “professional.” But if you trust your adviser, let him or her guide you through this time. Interest rates and inflation are still low. The hyper inflation that the naysayers predicted a few years ago has not come to pass.
Make no mistake. Interest rates and inflation can’t stay this low forever. The Federal Reserve has stopped pumping as much money into the system as it has been, which may signal rising interest rates. Rising interest rates are not all bad. If you are not borrowing money, but have cash on the sidelines, rising interest rates will help you.
In short, if your trusted adviser is telling you to stay put, it’s probably OK. If he’s recommending that you move your money, he may have an inkling that something is coming, and may be exercising caution with your precious dollars.
If you are among those who is going through an economic pitfall, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You certainly won’t get investment advice, but you may find a great way to put more money in your pocket.
Obviously, the more money you have, the more risk you can tolerate. But try not to take what you believe is desperate action. Desperate action can just make a bad situation worse. Make sure you are making decisions rationally, rather than emotionally. Let your trusted adviser guide you.
No one wishes for another stock market crash. Still, they happen. But most advisers say that timing the market is unwise. It might be best to find investments you are comfortable with, and roll with the ups and downs. If it goes down, put more money in. If it goes up, let it keep growing. Most of all, follow your adviser’s guidance.
Investors operate on fear and greed. Make sure your fear is justified and rational. Try not to get too giddy with greed.
Peter
Author Archives: pbilodeau01
LIFE, DEATH AND DECISIONS
Heaven awaits, but one must die first.
There are many fates worse than death, but we view death as the ultimate bad fate.
We all want to live the best life we can, for as long as we can.
But reports of people who have seen death for a few seconds have talked about how beautiful it was.
We never know when death will come, but when it approaches, we must manage it.
When we are very much alive and competent, we must ask ourselves at what point have we lived enough? What diseases, injuries or prognoses are worth fighting? What potential outcomes may be worse for us than death?
Those with certain religious beliefs say we have no business managing our deaths.
Many of us believe in miracles, but we cannot plan on them. We have to take the best information we have and make decisions.
We can pray for miracles, but at some point we have to determine that the miracle we want is not coming, and decide accordingly.
Remember that there is no right or wrong decision. But there are consequences with each decision. We have to make these decisions with family and friends, but our loved ones have their own interests. We must do what’s best for us.
If we are not in a position to make that decision, make sure the person we designate to make that decision is clearly aware of what WE want. That’s why talking about this with loved ones while we are very much healthy and competent is crucial.
We are never ready to die, just like we are never ready for any other fate. But it’s not what one is ready for, but what one MUST deal with.
In the case of illness or injury, it’s wise to consult medical practitioners. But remember that some practitioners may not have the patient’s interest completely at heart. A surgeon, for example, doesn’t get paid as much for electing not to do a surgery. But the patient, or the patient’s designated decision-maker, must make that surgeon thoroughly explain the consequences of any decision.
When a problem arises, it’s crucial to get as much good information as possible to make the appropriate decision.
When life throws us curves, we find ways to straighten them out.
We learn to play the hand we are dealt. We learn not to give up.
We learn to live to the fullest. If you are looking for something to help you live to the fullest, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may find the one thing that will help make your time on earth as fulfilling as you can make it.
Don’t fear the reaper. He may not always be grim. Sometimes, it’s appropriate to fight the reaper. Other times, fighting the reaper may bring you something that would be worse than facing him.
Only you can decide which is best for you. Make those decisions when you are healthy and competent, so the person making those decisions when you can’t, knows what YOU want.
Sometimes, our best life is one lived to the fullest, until death quickly comes.
Peter
RAZING THE IDEA OF ANNUAL RAISE
#annualraises
“Better not start spending that big raise you might be expecting this year,” says Doug Carroll, a reporter for USA Today.
For the last few years, a raise has been hard to come by. In fact, a job was not easy to come by, so one may not have expected a raise. A steady paycheck was good enough.
But Carroll, whose article was published April 27, 2014, in the Tennessean newspaper of Nashville, says eight of 10 businesses say they expect subdued wage growth in the next three years. By subdued, they mean 0 to 3 percent, adjusted for inflation, Carroll quotes a survey by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE).
We can probably hear each other thinking the same thing: our cost of living goes up, but our paychecks don’t. And, if they do, they don’t go up enough to cover those extra costs.
Let’s put this in perspective. A salary was never designed to cover OUR costs. A salary is something an employer gave a person for work he does. What’s done with the money is the worker’s decision. In decades past, a worker figured out how to make a life with his given salary, and regular, if not annual, increases helped him better his life as time passed.
Combine the extra salary with the worker’s life efficiencies, such as paying off a mortgage, having children grow and leave the house etc. Now, examine today’s world. Raises are smaller. Those life efficiencies are getting fewer. Mortgages are more difficult to pay off because houses likely have dropped in value. In fact, foreclosures have skyrocketed in the last few years.
Children that grow into adults are leaving home later, if at all. Those adult children may be finding it difficult to support themselves, perhaps because they have lost a job and are having trouble finding another. If they do find another job, it is often for less money than they were making, compounding the difficulty of independence.
Financial upward mobility is more difficult to achieve because employment that may have been secure decades ago is far from secure now. We have to find multiple sources of income so that we are not so dependent on one job, or one employer.
The good news is there are many such income sources out there. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You’ll find financial assistance in two ways: spending less and earning more.
It’s logical that high unemployment keeps wages down. It’s also logical that as employers’ non-wage costs rise – 31% of those surveyed by NABE reported rising material costs, Carroll reports – employees will pay for it with flat wages.
We can curse out our employers for not paying us enough. One might argue that we almost never get paid enough working for someone else. But cursing or blaming your employer wastes energy.
We have to manage our own financial situations ourselves. We have to continually look for jobs or other income that will better our lives. We also have to spend what we have wisely.
In fact, living BELOW one’s means may be the first step toward financial independence. If one lives below one’s means long enough, and invests wisely what he is not spending, eventually he can live better, if not the way he wants, regardless of his employment situation.
So, to paraphrase Chik-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy, earn your money, however much or little, honestly. Spend it wisely. And, if you are fortunate enough, give the rest away to worthy causes.
Peter
RISK IS A GREAT TEACHER
#taketherisk
We have to start life somewhere.
When we do, our relationship with the future is, well, complicated.
Kate O’Neill, founder and principal of KO Insights, discussed this idea in a May 11, 2014, column in The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
O’Neill discussed a project she had worked on for a large firm. One of the executives asked her how long a particular feature would take. She told him eight months. He asked how sure she was in that projection. She answered, “70 percent.” He told her that the longer it takes to get something done, the more risk there is and the less certain we can be about it.
The lesson: “Every day could be your last,” O’Neill writes. “Whether it is or not, you can take intentional, meaningful risks today to build the future you might get to enjoy.”
We hear a lot of talk today about uncertainty, as if forgetting the old adage that the only things certain are death and taxes. Part of the uncertainty talk is about taxes, and the fear of rising taxes is keeping some potential employers from expanding, so they say.
No one can know what will come next, but it should never stop us from acting. If you know you have something good, go for it. If you are unsure that what you have is good, then it may be best to stop, think and evaluate. How can I make this idea that I THINK might be good a little clearer to me?
Fear, sometimes irrational fear, can sometimes prevent us from doing something that would be good for us. Don’t let fear, particularly irrational fear, stop you.
Don’t blow something off because you THINK you know it may hurt you, before determining for certain that it will. In other words, standing in front of a moving train certainly could hurt you, so don’t do it. But examining a new business venture, or interviewing for a job that you may have never done before may benefit you. The worst that can happen is failure that you are certain to learn from. The best that could happen is a very positive life-changing experience.
You feel great when you’re “in the zone.” But if that zone is a comfort zone, be wary. The comfort could disappear, then what?
O’Neill writes that our complicated relationship with the future can make us live our days in a balance of hope and impatience. Have you ever told your (pick one: parents, spouse, teachers) that you are onto something big, and they ask you when you expect to achieve success? Though you would like it to be tomorrow, success often doesn’t come quickly. You may have an idea of a perfect time, but that perfect time may come and go. If you know what you have, and what you are doing, are good, don’t give up because your predicted timing has come and gone. As O’Neill says: “try, fail, learn adjust. Try, succeed, learn, adjust. Then, try, fail, learn, adjust” etc.
If you are open to looking for something that could give you the future you want, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You will see how others are living their dreams, and how you could, too.
If you fear uncertainty, learn that uncertainty is a way of life. But don’t avoid positive action because you fear the uncertainty. Take, as O’Neill calls them, meaningful risks. Step outside the comfort zone if the comfort has disappeared. You will survive. You could thrive, if you maintain the drive. Forget the fret. It wastes energy.
You may not know the perfect time, but it is out there if you keep looking for it.
Peter
UNCERTAINTY: THE NEW NORMAL
Most of us just want to fit in.
We value community, rules, an education, a good job, a life box.
But what if we think outside the life box?
John J. Murphy did just that. The author of “Half Full: Your Perception Becomes Your Reality,” was born on Friday the 13th. His last name is synonymous with the law of things going wrong. He’s had many life-threatening mishaps, gave up a good job and got divorced. Yet, all of these things have made him look at life as “the only time that matters is right now.”
We were all taught to plan for the future. Make sacrifices now and reap the rewards later. That is great advice that has helped many people. But Murphy teaches us that life is filled with unexpected turns and unplanned moments. As he says, we must learn to let go, and let flow.
Murphy doesn’t advocate doing nothing and letting life happen. One cannot go through life with no purpose, no action and no ambition. But he recommends not getting attached to your situation to the point of being miserable, or unable to respond to an excellent opportunity that you may not have expected.
Murphy had a great job that he hated. He was willing to give up that job, take another that paid less, but that he enjoyed more. Today, he’s a well-regarded teacher, consultant and author. His divorce hit him like a ton of bricks at first. But as soon as he gained perspective, he and his ex-wife became, and are still today, great friends.
His message may boil down to being open for the unexpected. Your parents, teachers, bosses and preachers may have given you solid grounding throughout your life. But only you can know what’s right for you. Sometimes, you may not know what’s right, but you definitely know what’s wrong.
Are you not where you want to be financially? Do you have a job that pays you well, yet is killing you? Are you ready to find your way, but may not know in which direction your way is?
If you are open and ambitious, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. It could not only give you potential financial security, it may take the work stress away and could show you the direction of your way.
So don’t give in to life. Give yourself life. If you view your glass as half-empty, as Murphy puts it, you have to wonder whether what’s in the glass is worth having anyway.
It’s easy to need something, and not know what that something is. To find it, you have to keep looking. You have to go through a lot of what you don’t want, to find what you do want. Sometimes, what your elders and mentors thought was good for you, may not be.
Author and speaker Andy Andrews also talks a lot about perspective. When he was homeless, living under a beach pier and eating sardines, his mentor, Jones, taught him that he was enjoying seafood with an ocean view.
We hear a lot about clouds and silver linings. When bad things happen, good people always, eventually, see the positive. If they don’t see the positive right away, they know it will make itself evident. God may close a door and leave a window cracked. We may not see the cracked window right away. But we have confidence to keep looking.
Peter
POLIO DIDN’T STOP NICKLAUS; NOTHING SHOULD STOP YOU #jacknicklaus
Golfer Jack Nicklaus beat polio as a boy to become a champion.
Today, though he holds the record for the number of major tournaments won, he remains humble.
Bob Greene, a commentator for CNN and author of the book “Late Edition: A Love Story,” discussed the Nicklaus way of golf – and life – in an April 4, 2014, column in The Wall Street Journal.
Greene says Nicklaus’ theory for golf and life is to do your best, and everything else will take care of itself. He points out that Nicklaus played in the era of Muhammed Ali and Joe Namath, two athletes known for declaring their own greatness and predicting unpredictable victories.
Nicklaus, though, preferred to let other people declare his greatness, Greene says.
Humility is a scarce character trait in people today. Many who rise to power often tell us of their greatness, even before it is achieved. We need more people who don’t just act before they speak, but prefer not to speak at all. Their actions say all that needs to be said.
They may, or may not, object to having others verbalize their greatness. But they see themselves as a person just doing what he loves, or doing what he believes he was created to do – quietly.
It’s been said that one should put his money where his mouth is. Or, one should walk the walk if he talks the talk. Namath and Ali did that, but Nicklaus did it as he remained quiet.
Humble people don’t talk the talk. They just walk the walk. They put their money where it belongs, not near their mouths.
They give and get, and never take. They do their thing without expectation, though they expect much from themselves quietly.
Have you ever had a bombastic boss? How did he treat you, his employee? Did he take a lot from you, while giving you little? Did he make you feel as if he were doing you a favor by employing you? Did you feel that he was more comfortable being served, than serving?
We all have the ability to gain wealth and/or power. How we get it says as much, or more, about a person as the achievement itself.
Humble people accomplish things quietly, yet openly. They accomplish things honestly and give generously. They favor the accomplishment itself, and what it can do for others, rather than what it can do for them. They don’t talk of greatness. They Just Do It, to quote the Nike slogan – and do for others.
Do you consider yourself humble? Do you have goals that you don’t talk about with others, but hold deep inside? Are you genuinely kind to others, and eager to do for others, even when no one is watching?
If so, and are looking for a way to put that genuine goodness to use, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may find the best thing you can do to help others, and perhaps achieve what you’d like for yourself.
Successful people do more and talk less. Like Nicklaus, they take life one shot at a time. Then, go to the next shot. They do their best each time, all the time. They always give credit to others. As Greene put it, Nicklaus believed his major tournament record would have been broken by now. But, at age 74, he still leads in the clubhouse.
Peter
#jacknicklaus
#retirement bust YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE ALL SET, BUT …
History may judge the years 2007 to 2012, give or take a few years on either end, as the retirement bust years.
People not only lost jobs just before they were about to retire, but also their pensions shrank.
People who thought they were all set for retirement, with a nice, promised pension, got a rude awakening. The monthly benefit on their retirement documentation shrunk considerably.
It was a combination of the economy tanking, and companies contributing less, if anything at all, to their retirement accounts. Added to that, the stock market , which supports most retirement accounts, took a big tumble. The bottom fell out of thenNet worth of everything – companies and individuals.
Even the savviest investor could not prevent what happened in those years, short of taking his money out of the financial markets ahead of time. Any investor who withdraws completely is probably not that savvy. Savvy investors take the ups and downs of the market as an expectation, though no one expected what happened in those years.
So the question becomes not whom to blame for the mess. There’s plenty of blame to be spread around among Wall Street, government and, yes, individual decisions. But blaming wastes energy that should be focused on recovery.
We all have had to rethink retirement. Some of us have told ourselves we have to work until we die. Some of those folks may have other alternatives, but they are not seeing them.
Certainly, some of us have said we have to work past the age we thought we were going to retire. That’s fine if you are in good health personally. But don’t think for a minute that your job will be there for as long as you want it. Companies reorganize drastically and often. The younger generation of workers, when they retire, may brag about how many reorgs they survived, just as the older generation is thankful for the steady work they had.
Speaking of young people, they may want to think twice about ASSUMING they will survive every reorg. It’s great to believe, or even be told, how good you are at what you do and how your employer cannot possibly live without you.
But, you can’t always see into the future. The world changes quickly. Companies are constantly looking at ways to work more efficiently. Lots of good people have lost jobs they expected to have for as long as they wanted to work.
How do we avoid the instinct to cast blame and rethink retirement? First, work on you. Make sure you have a good and optimistic attitude. Remember, those who innovate are usually optimists. It’s tough to see the future properly without believing that all, eventually, will be good.
Secondly, think about the things you DON’T like to do – things that make you “uncomfortable,” or so you believe. Give them a try. Then, try them again, and again etc. This will take you out of your comfort zone, where you may have to go, eventually, to survive.
Thirdly, don’t be afraid to look at something different. The people who lament that they thought they were all set, are many of the same people who tell themselves, “oh, I couldn’t possibly do THAT!”
There are many ways to fight this. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. If you leave your comfort zone to look at something new, you may lose the instinct to cast blame for your troubles, and find a way out.
This may not be your dad’s way to retire, but the world has changed. We need to be part of our own solutions, rather than focusing on how we got into trouble.
Think of it this way: the federal government bails out some companies because innocent people would get hurt if they didn’t. But they won’t bail you out as an individual if you get hurt. You have to bail yourself out. You might not only bail yourself out, but prosper in many ways in the process.
Peter
#annualraises RAZING THE IDEA OF ANNUAL RAISES
“Better not start spending that big raise you might be expecting this year,” says Doug Carroll, a reporter for USA Today.
For the last few years, a raise has been hard to come by. In fact, a job was not easy to come by, so one may not have expected a raise. A steady paycheck was good enough.
But Carroll, whose article was published April 27, 2014, in the Tennessean newspaper of Nashville, says eight of 10 businesses say they expect subdued wage growth in the next three years. By subdued, they mean 0 to 3 percent, adjusted for inflation, Carroll quotes a survey by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE).
We can probably hear each other thinking the same thing: our cost of living goes up, but our paychecks don’t. And, if they do, they don’t go up enough to cover those extra costs.
Let’s put this in perspective. A salary was never designed to cover OUR costs. A salary is something an employer gave a person for work he does. What’s done with the money is the worker’s decision. In decades past, a worker figured out how to make a life with his given salary, and regular, if not annual, increases helped him better his life as time passed.
Combine the extra salary with the worker’s life efficiencies, such as paying off a mortgage, having children grow and leave the house etc. Now, examine today’s world. Raises are smaller. Those life efficiencies are getting fewer. Mortgages are more difficult to pay off because houses likely have dropped in value. In fact, foreclosures have skyrocketed in the last few years.
Children that grow into adults are leaving home later, if at all. Those adult children may be finding it difficult to support themselves, perhaps because they have lost a job and are having trouble finding another. If they do find another job, it is often for less money than they were making, compounding the difficulty of independence.
Financial upward mobility is more difficult to achieve because employment that may have been secure decades ago is far from secure now. We have to find multiple sources of income so that we are not so dependent on one job, or one employer.
The good news is there are many such income sources out there. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You’ll find financial assistance in two ways: spending less and earning more.
It’s logical that high unemployment keeps wages down. It’s also logical that as employers’ non-wage costs rise – 31% of those surveyed by NABE reported rising material costs, Carroll reports – employees will pay for it with flat wages.
We can curse out our employers for not paying us enough. One might argue that we almost never get paid enough working for someone else. But cursing or blaming your employer wastes energy.
We have to manage our own financial situations ourselves. We have to continually look for jobs or other income that will better our lives. We also have to spend what we have wisely.
In fact, living BELOW one’s means may be the first step toward financial independence. If one lives below one’s means long enough, and invests wisely what he is not spending, eventually he can live better, if not the way he wants, regardless of his employment situation.
So, to paraphrase Chik-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy, earn your money, however much or little, honestly. Spend it wisely. And, if you are fortunate enough, give the rest away to worthy causes.
Peter
WEALTH CONCENTRATED IN FEWER HANDS
The goal of past generations is to have the next generation be better off than they were.
Many of us can remember a time when, if we worked hard, we advanced. If we had a job and behaved on the job, we could work as long as we wanted, retire when we got older and have a few good years of leisure as a reward for our hard work.
By most accounts, this was called the American Dream.
The recession of 2008 may have changed everything. We now have a world in which the middle class is shrinking because hard-working people are losing their jobs, and having great difficulty finding another that pays as well – if they find one at all.
Lifestyles are being cut back. Pessimistic views of the future abound. Perfectly good, hard-working people are getting discouraged. Spirits are being broken.
Thomas Picketty, a French economist, draws a picture of consolidation of wealth in fewer hands in his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman calls the book a phenomenon. Krugman wrote about the book in an April 24,2014, column.
Picketty sees a world in which more wealth will be concentrated in a decreasing number of hands. He sees that as a dangerous trend.
No one wants anyone to get paid for laziness. Most people want to work, and want to be paid fairly for what they do. Krugman points out that more conservative economic policies of government are leading to wealth being spread more lavishly on fewer people, at the expense of a majority of others.
Without getting into a debate about the values, or evils, of socialism or capitalism, let’s look at what we have in front of us.
Many of us have gone through a downsizing at work. Companies are learning to operate with fewer people, thanks to technology advancements and other things.
When this happened in previous decades, those who got laid off were reasonably confident they would find work before too much time passed. Today, that’s not necessarily the case. There are millions of people who have been out of work for extended periods, and employers are not hiring them because they have been out of work for so long.
Hence, the capitalistic wealth distribution formula – work=money – is turned on its head. The socialist voice is getting louder. In other words: more heavily tax those few who have benefitted from this, to cover those that they injured in the process.
But there may be a better way than wealth redistribution through government. Make more widely known the available vehicles for a person to change his life. There are many opportunities out there for people to live their dreams, despite having been hurt by the current economic trends.
For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. At the same time, some people have to change. It was comfortable having a job, going to work, work as many years as a person wanted and retire not only with the means to meet needs, but perhaps to also enjoy leisure.
You can be angry at wealth concentration in a few hands, or you can find a way to gain more wealth for yourself, and help others do the same.
That’s the ultimate in people helping people. If more people did that, proper wealth distribution would naturally occur, without government interference.
It’s always better to earn your own wealth than to take someone else’s. Look for a vehicle that allows you to do that, without impoverishing others in the process. Look for that vehicle you and your friends could ride together — and work together to enrich each other.
Think of the good you can do in the process. Best of all, think of the fun you’ll have doing it.
Peter