Kathy is a personal friend of mine. She is a kind sweet Santa Barbara surfer girl. (And truly one of the most stunning natural beauties of all time, if you like sweet California girls) Her success and wealth was not fake. She never sold her soul to the devil like most everybody else in her position did. They trusted the wrong people and quelle surprise got ripped off. My guess is those people were based in SB or Montecito, the evil capitols of the world where countless generationally wealthy people lose it all to charlatan wealth managers and lawyers. Often.
Yes this was an incredible mistake trusting the wrong people, but the empire and success was very real at some level, just stolen from them. This can happen to Christians who assume they are dealing with high trust people like themselves, and later find out (((they))) were not working in their best interests.
But to say she was not successful and created a lot of wealth is totally wrong. It is altogether possible tho that the powers that be that helped her become successful, or used her to create the wealth, also implanted the people to "manage" her wealth and take it back. Because I do understand that all the successful people and their wealth is fake. And for those who drink the blood and join the cult and make the deal I have no sympathy really, but for Kathy and Greg, well, they are kind sweet people and got taken for a ride so to speak.
Every person who amasses cash wealth through the work they do should read one book and one book only.
"A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton Malkiel. That's it. Full stop.
Learning how the market works is really not that hard. Asset allocate. Have a cash pool. Invest the rest mostly in the broad market -- set it and forget it. Maximize all your tax advantage accounts with, again the market index related ETFs. If you want to catch the next Apple, Amazon, Nvidia -- sure, take some JUST some of your money and put it in there, recognizing it could all evaporate...or skyrocket.
I learned in college economics that it's essentially impossible to beat the market and that you should just invest in a fund that tracks a major stock index.
Multiple times I have read wealth management funds brought forward that underperformed CDs as though they were some kind of genius offering you a brilliant portfolio.
I spoke to a wealth manager who gave me no hard math. No proof of success. Only her hard word that she would try to get me a theoretical percentage. When I asked pointed questions about certain types of risk management she could not answer any questions and responded with "so what you are saying is."
She did not get my business, but she makes a nice living off of getting other people's business.
I come from a wealthy family where we have had lots of people trying to get their hands on our money for my whole life. Let me give some examples of common ways that people try to separate you from your money, examples of good ways to invest in yourself, dating and marriage relevant examples that I've seen. This might end up being a pretty big wall of text but I hope that it isn't too gamma and I believe that it will be useful and insightful.
First of all there are always vultures out there even at the entry level of going up the wealth pyramid. People running scam businesses target people buying starter homes in nice areas. You know that new style of home that's about 2,000 sq/ft with no yard. Yeah those neighborhoods are huge targets. The scam businesses know that the people living in those homes between family and home equity can easily raise about $50,000 and when they lose it not have it destroy them enough to start making huge complaints. It will just cause family drama and the scammers don't care about that.
When my wife and I bought our first house we had neighbors who had a business and they wanted to be friends with my wife and I and more importantly to meet my parents. When my wife and I wouldn't make the intro they stopped wanting to be friends. A few years later the wife was arrested for running a scam business and she actually went to jail where I think she still is. So watch for that. A lot of people set themselves back a lot by investing 50g's in these one step above a ponzi scheme "opportunities."
Next when you move up into the neighborhood where the houses are in the $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 range, you get a new set of scammers. These people will be "investors" or "entrepreneurs" and they have an opportunity for you. They want between $150,000 to $300,000 for whatever. They might even have a real company that is about to be listed on the NASDAQ. These ones you get real stock shares that you can track but you have a restriction on when you can sell. They are basically pump and dump scams that barely stay 1 step ahead of the SEC. On these, if you are careful and if you sell the instant the restriction lifts, you can usually come out ahead because the targets aren't the ones who know the game, they are the ones who think that they've bought the next huge tech stock or huge oil stock.
My dad gets mixed up in these from time to time. He had one where he invested like 50k and it went up to $2,000,000 with his restriction lifted but he wasn't paying attention and it went to 0. Now whenever I hear that he's gotten mixed up with one of these, I take over management of it and I sell the instant the restriction lifts. My dad things I'm a genius who is good at investing.
You have to understand that the moment you start moving up the economic totem pole even on a basic level the Sharks are going to start to hunt you. They are at your church. I'm Mormon who grew up in California and lives in Utah but it doesn't matter if you are Mormon, Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical the sharks are waiting for you the moment you step foot in a church in a well off area. I know that the sharks are waiting for the good Catholics at St. Isidore church in Danville, Ca. When you start going to a church in a good area, you have to be on your guard.
One of the ways that you can quickly identify the scammers and thieves is when a new family moves into the congregation and they immediately get involved. This new perfect looking family shows up and they are volunteering right away and of course they magically happen to have a business or a "wealth" management consultancy or whatever. You see that one a lot.
Higher up the economic totem pole relationships become complicated and have a lot more interest in them. One of my family's closest friends is a family where the husband is a shady finance/real estate guy. He hasn't had any run-ins with the SEC that we know of but some of his friends have. One day my dad was bragging at church that he had just gotten a really big check for a certain amount. We go home and the friend comes over and says that he has a great investment that is a sure thing for the exact amount of my father's check. My mom was gave him the "oh hell no." And here's where it get really complicated, he really is our friend. One of his sons is one of my closest friends and my children refer to him as their uncle. He certainly is a better brother to me than my own brothers. You have to understand with some of these people is that they are sharks and its just in their nature
When it comes to investing some of the things that my family has done that have worked well are: buy a nice home and keep it up to date. In our inflationary environment real estate tends to go up at least at the rate of inflation. When you upgrade the kitchen or master bathroom you can get a dollar for dollar increase to the value of the home plus it won't affect your property tax. You upgrade your home and you get to enjoy it while storing your money in it. You can use your home as a piggy bank. My parents have used their home to fund other real estate ventures, purchases or assets, funding for an extra business they founded, etc. Houses are really great that way.
Next invest in your children. Get them out of public schools. Even well off public school kids are public school kids. Have your kids around a higher quality of kid and family. Plus this gets them around well off kids and helps them build up a social network of people going somewhere. Invest in your kids playing sports and daughters in dance or whatever. This gets them active, off screens and social while building their bodies and teaching them to compete.
Build relationships and use them for your children. Be absolutely shameless about calling in every favor you've ever done to get your children a good job out of college or whatever. The elites and wannbe elites don't believe in the whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps nonsense. That narrative exists to get suckers to sell off their assets to the sharks. I've seen families be absolutely ridiculous the ways that they pushed their children to get hired and guess what? It worked. Now those kids are in their 40's and doing very well. This is doubly important today because White men only get hired to premium jobs if they have major contacts and support ramming through their hiring.
Those are the best investments. House, sports, education, useable relationships.
Now when it comes to dating and marriage this is another place where the sharks will show up. From my family, one of my brothers married an insane gold digger, one of my sisters married a gold digger and career advancer guy but they do seem to love each other and my other sister has 2 gold digger husbands on her resume and is likely looking at becoming a single mom because her current gold digger husband and father of her 3 children is too blatantly stealing the money probably to run away and he's losing interest in keeping up appearances.
When your family starts moving up you are going to pick up people who want a piece of the action along the way. This very much applies to relationships. My family's California house is impressive looking. When my siblings brought their boyfriends or girlfriends over it always made that person want to escalate the relationship. With my wife, I never took her to the California house until after we were engaged. My other brother did the same with his now wife. They didn't go to the house until after they were married. We are the 2 siblings who don't have ridiculous gold digger spouses.
When it comes to dating you should try to marry within your race, religion and economic class. This is even more important if your family is successful. Marry close to your economic class. If your family is well off, marry a girl who's family is similar. This is important because you can also leverage your father in law and your in laws to help you advance. It is a good way to build your rolodex.
If you marry up financially be prepared for a couple of things. First of all she is going to have certain expectations. If you can't meet them it's going to cause problems in the marriage. Second, if she has expectations and her family expects you to provide them, what are they doing to help you get the means to meet them? There's a great line in the movie Limitless where Deniro says, "You didn't have to do that shitty first marriage to the girl with the right father." So if you marry up and your inlaws expect certain things from you then they better be pushing you to their friends to get you a premium job.
Let me say one last thing about the article. Never sign power of attorney to anybody who isn't your spouse and only if you are sick and a threat to be incapacitated soon. Never let anybody borrow money in your name. That always ends in a disaster. There are legitimate financial advisors who will keep your money growing at or slightly above inflation. There are semi legitimate ones who can usually keep your money growing faster than that but there's more risk. If a financial advisor ever asks you for power of attorney or the ability to borrow in your name, run away fast.
That's everything in my wall of text. I hope it wasn't too gamma and that it was helpful. It's based on a lot of stuff I've seen over the years and can keep you out of a lot of trouble.
Given my age and current position in life I don't expect I'll ever need to put any of that to use in a direct way, but DAMN, that's some fascinating insight.
Yes. I would've said do not sign the power of attorney and do not let him borrow in your name. I then would've said to fire the guy because asking for those things indicated that he would be up to no good.
"...marry within your race, religion and economic class."
Thank you for including economic class. I was one of the few in my circle to go to college. After college I moved to the northside and hung out in the more exclusive north and northwest suburban neighborhoods of the Chicago area. It was a completely different world with much higher female expectations (i.e. $$$). I was a fish out of water. Southside? Well, southside women were content if you weren't a bum and a drunk.
A much shorter way to say most of this, although it doesn't let you point out that you come from money, would be: if you're searching for the deal and find it, it's likely legit. But if the deal comes looking for you, watch out.
Yes. Its constant. Every day we have to watch for somebody who wants to get to know us. Even family. A few years ago a cousin was hitting us up for money. One of my brothers in law got 200k+ out of my parents a few years ago for some trucking software and a big rig truck. Who knows when my dad is going to meet somebody? It's 24/7/365 vigilance. Then the family business. Somebody always wants to partner with us. It never ends.
Once you hit a certain liquid net worth, it's like all the algorithms find out about you. My house isn't even that expensive relatively, but my neighborhood skyrocketed during the time I've been here, so that by itself has sent the scammers over.
I had to camera up my home's exterior, which was tough when you refuse to get a google/apple/amazon version.
I’m a wealth manager so I obviously have a dog in this fight. But I’m legally obligated to act solely in my clients best interests. I make more money as my clients’ assets go up and less if and when they go down so that our interests are as aligned as I can make them.
There are definitely terrible, selfish, even evil wealth managers out there. But not all of us are.
It’s true I still make money even when my clients’ assets go down. My income goes down (and my own assets too since I am invested in the identical investments) in lock step as their assets go down but I am still earning money from them in those moments.
In those moments our job is to keep them from panicking out of their long term investments at the worst possible moment since there has never been a downturn in the market from which it did not fully recover. Historically that advice has been extremely valuable.
Come on, now. The problem is that you still make money when your clients' assets go down. You win proportionately but you don't lose disproportionately.
I'm not saying that you're not honest. Perhaps you are. But the fact that you may be able to ignore the perverse incentive system doesn't mean that most of your colleagues can.
The problem stems from people outsourcing their responsibility for good stewardship to supposed “experts” with a finance degree and no skin in the game. When the house of cards begins to fall, the charlatans will cash out, pay themselves, and leave families in ruins, as we see in this post. The Ireland family might have avoided this disaster if at least one of them took ownership of their family’s financial future.
I had to laugh, I used to have a poster from a SI magazine of her in our platoon room for a while.
My wife looks like her but with red hair.
My wife signed the poster….hilarious!
I never knew anything about wealth management. Neither of us did.
I grew up in the military, had my first child of 4 at 17 years old right out of basic training.
I didn’t realize not having any money and spending every penny on my family, making sure my wife had everything she needed to raise and educate our kids and eventually the kids had enough money to get their first home without any debt or student debt, would eventually 40 years later make me one of the richest men on earth. I still have no money in my savings account. I have a decent pension now and I’m grateful for everything I have and don’t have.
We only have 4 grown children and 6 grandkids currently. We were always lean on the money side, today we are still lean but I’m rich and blessed.
Only a small percentage of people are able to beat the S&P 500 index funds. And if you just invest in that for a longer term, and don’t pay fees, you’ll come out better. Real estate, gold, even bitcoin are fairly stable investments. Land is a solid investment. Buying a business and improving it is a good investment. Direct investments into a business you believe in. You can also invest in farming. Literally none of these require a wealth manager and it’s just as easy to invest yourself rather than involve someone.
I worked with Kathy Ireland and her furniture brand in the 2000’s. A company I represented was trying to sell her furniture. She was very pretty and nice but was not smart. She was already taking advice from business managers.
The easiest way to play this game is to play with house money.
Put enough money to keep you in modest comfort for the rest of your life in gold or silver or cash or land and invest the rest. Keep a significant portion of it somewhere where it can't reallt be lost.
Kathy is a personal friend of mine. She is a kind sweet Santa Barbara surfer girl. (And truly one of the most stunning natural beauties of all time, if you like sweet California girls) Her success and wealth was not fake. She never sold her soul to the devil like most everybody else in her position did. They trusted the wrong people and quelle surprise got ripped off. My guess is those people were based in SB or Montecito, the evil capitols of the world where countless generationally wealthy people lose it all to charlatan wealth managers and lawyers. Often.
Yes this was an incredible mistake trusting the wrong people, but the empire and success was very real at some level, just stolen from them. This can happen to Christians who assume they are dealing with high trust people like themselves, and later find out (((they))) were not working in their best interests.
But to say she was not successful and created a lot of wealth is totally wrong. It is altogether possible tho that the powers that be that helped her become successful, or used her to create the wealth, also implanted the people to "manage" her wealth and take it back. Because I do understand that all the successful people and their wealth is fake. And for those who drink the blood and join the cult and make the deal I have no sympathy really, but for Kathy and Greg, well, they are kind sweet people and got taken for a ride so to speak.
Every person who amasses cash wealth through the work they do should read one book and one book only.
"A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton Malkiel. That's it. Full stop.
Learning how the market works is really not that hard. Asset allocate. Have a cash pool. Invest the rest mostly in the broad market -- set it and forget it. Maximize all your tax advantage accounts with, again the market index related ETFs. If you want to catch the next Apple, Amazon, Nvidia -- sure, take some JUST some of your money and put it in there, recognizing it could all evaporate...or skyrocket.
But a lot of people are stupid
I learned in college economics that it's essentially impossible to beat the market and that you should just invest in a fund that tracks a major stock index.
No skin in the game for them
Pedophiles go where the children are. Crooks go where the money is.
Multiple times I have read wealth management funds brought forward that underperformed CDs as though they were some kind of genius offering you a brilliant portfolio.
I spoke to a wealth manager who gave me no hard math. No proof of success. Only her hard word that she would try to get me a theoretical percentage. When I asked pointed questions about certain types of risk management she could not answer any questions and responded with "so what you are saying is."
She did not get my business, but she makes a nice living off of getting other people's business.
If they were so awesome at it, how come they don’t have enough not to work?
Believe it or not, productive people enjoy being productive.
I come from a wealthy family where we have had lots of people trying to get their hands on our money for my whole life. Let me give some examples of common ways that people try to separate you from your money, examples of good ways to invest in yourself, dating and marriage relevant examples that I've seen. This might end up being a pretty big wall of text but I hope that it isn't too gamma and I believe that it will be useful and insightful.
First of all there are always vultures out there even at the entry level of going up the wealth pyramid. People running scam businesses target people buying starter homes in nice areas. You know that new style of home that's about 2,000 sq/ft with no yard. Yeah those neighborhoods are huge targets. The scam businesses know that the people living in those homes between family and home equity can easily raise about $50,000 and when they lose it not have it destroy them enough to start making huge complaints. It will just cause family drama and the scammers don't care about that.
When my wife and I bought our first house we had neighbors who had a business and they wanted to be friends with my wife and I and more importantly to meet my parents. When my wife and I wouldn't make the intro they stopped wanting to be friends. A few years later the wife was arrested for running a scam business and she actually went to jail where I think she still is. So watch for that. A lot of people set themselves back a lot by investing 50g's in these one step above a ponzi scheme "opportunities."
Next when you move up into the neighborhood where the houses are in the $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 range, you get a new set of scammers. These people will be "investors" or "entrepreneurs" and they have an opportunity for you. They want between $150,000 to $300,000 for whatever. They might even have a real company that is about to be listed on the NASDAQ. These ones you get real stock shares that you can track but you have a restriction on when you can sell. They are basically pump and dump scams that barely stay 1 step ahead of the SEC. On these, if you are careful and if you sell the instant the restriction lifts, you can usually come out ahead because the targets aren't the ones who know the game, they are the ones who think that they've bought the next huge tech stock or huge oil stock.
My dad gets mixed up in these from time to time. He had one where he invested like 50k and it went up to $2,000,000 with his restriction lifted but he wasn't paying attention and it went to 0. Now whenever I hear that he's gotten mixed up with one of these, I take over management of it and I sell the instant the restriction lifts. My dad things I'm a genius who is good at investing.
You have to understand that the moment you start moving up the economic totem pole even on a basic level the Sharks are going to start to hunt you. They are at your church. I'm Mormon who grew up in California and lives in Utah but it doesn't matter if you are Mormon, Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical the sharks are waiting for you the moment you step foot in a church in a well off area. I know that the sharks are waiting for the good Catholics at St. Isidore church in Danville, Ca. When you start going to a church in a good area, you have to be on your guard.
One of the ways that you can quickly identify the scammers and thieves is when a new family moves into the congregation and they immediately get involved. This new perfect looking family shows up and they are volunteering right away and of course they magically happen to have a business or a "wealth" management consultancy or whatever. You see that one a lot.
Higher up the economic totem pole relationships become complicated and have a lot more interest in them. One of my family's closest friends is a family where the husband is a shady finance/real estate guy. He hasn't had any run-ins with the SEC that we know of but some of his friends have. One day my dad was bragging at church that he had just gotten a really big check for a certain amount. We go home and the friend comes over and says that he has a great investment that is a sure thing for the exact amount of my father's check. My mom was gave him the "oh hell no." And here's where it get really complicated, he really is our friend. One of his sons is one of my closest friends and my children refer to him as their uncle. He certainly is a better brother to me than my own brothers. You have to understand with some of these people is that they are sharks and its just in their nature
When it comes to investing some of the things that my family has done that have worked well are: buy a nice home and keep it up to date. In our inflationary environment real estate tends to go up at least at the rate of inflation. When you upgrade the kitchen or master bathroom you can get a dollar for dollar increase to the value of the home plus it won't affect your property tax. You upgrade your home and you get to enjoy it while storing your money in it. You can use your home as a piggy bank. My parents have used their home to fund other real estate ventures, purchases or assets, funding for an extra business they founded, etc. Houses are really great that way.
Next invest in your children. Get them out of public schools. Even well off public school kids are public school kids. Have your kids around a higher quality of kid and family. Plus this gets them around well off kids and helps them build up a social network of people going somewhere. Invest in your kids playing sports and daughters in dance or whatever. This gets them active, off screens and social while building their bodies and teaching them to compete.
Build relationships and use them for your children. Be absolutely shameless about calling in every favor you've ever done to get your children a good job out of college or whatever. The elites and wannbe elites don't believe in the whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps nonsense. That narrative exists to get suckers to sell off their assets to the sharks. I've seen families be absolutely ridiculous the ways that they pushed their children to get hired and guess what? It worked. Now those kids are in their 40's and doing very well. This is doubly important today because White men only get hired to premium jobs if they have major contacts and support ramming through their hiring.
Those are the best investments. House, sports, education, useable relationships.
Now when it comes to dating and marriage this is another place where the sharks will show up. From my family, one of my brothers married an insane gold digger, one of my sisters married a gold digger and career advancer guy but they do seem to love each other and my other sister has 2 gold digger husbands on her resume and is likely looking at becoming a single mom because her current gold digger husband and father of her 3 children is too blatantly stealing the money probably to run away and he's losing interest in keeping up appearances.
When your family starts moving up you are going to pick up people who want a piece of the action along the way. This very much applies to relationships. My family's California house is impressive looking. When my siblings brought their boyfriends or girlfriends over it always made that person want to escalate the relationship. With my wife, I never took her to the California house until after we were engaged. My other brother did the same with his now wife. They didn't go to the house until after they were married. We are the 2 siblings who don't have ridiculous gold digger spouses.
When it comes to dating you should try to marry within your race, religion and economic class. This is even more important if your family is successful. Marry close to your economic class. If your family is well off, marry a girl who's family is similar. This is important because you can also leverage your father in law and your in laws to help you advance. It is a good way to build your rolodex.
If you marry up financially be prepared for a couple of things. First of all she is going to have certain expectations. If you can't meet them it's going to cause problems in the marriage. Second, if she has expectations and her family expects you to provide them, what are they doing to help you get the means to meet them? There's a great line in the movie Limitless where Deniro says, "You didn't have to do that shitty first marriage to the girl with the right father." So if you marry up and your inlaws expect certain things from you then they better be pushing you to their friends to get you a premium job.
Let me say one last thing about the article. Never sign power of attorney to anybody who isn't your spouse and only if you are sick and a threat to be incapacitated soon. Never let anybody borrow money in your name. That always ends in a disaster. There are legitimate financial advisors who will keep your money growing at or slightly above inflation. There are semi legitimate ones who can usually keep your money growing faster than that but there's more risk. If a financial advisor ever asks you for power of attorney or the ability to borrow in your name, run away fast.
That's everything in my wall of text. I hope it wasn't too gamma and that it was helpful. It's based on a lot of stuff I've seen over the years and can keep you out of a lot of trouble.
Given my age and current position in life I don't expect I'll ever need to put any of that to use in a direct way, but DAMN, that's some fascinating insight.
What specific advice would you have given Kathy Ireland about her wealth?
Yes. I would've said do not sign the power of attorney and do not let him borrow in your name. I then would've said to fire the guy because asking for those things indicated that he would be up to no good.
This is a grade a comment as someone who is also upper middle class. Id add one thing Mostly hide your wealth
I usually don't like long posts but damn
That was quite insightful, thank you for posting
"...marry within your race, religion and economic class."
Thank you for including economic class. I was one of the few in my circle to go to college. After college I moved to the northside and hung out in the more exclusive north and northwest suburban neighborhoods of the Chicago area. It was a completely different world with much higher female expectations (i.e. $$$). I was a fish out of water. Southside? Well, southside women were content if you weren't a bum and a drunk.
Excellent contribution. That's not a Wall of Text, that's a gold mine of genuine experience.
A much shorter way to say most of this, although it doesn't let you point out that you come from money, would be: if you're searching for the deal and find it, it's likely legit. But if the deal comes looking for you, watch out.
How often did your family get targeted by scammers? Was it so common that you had to always be vigilant?
Yes. Its constant. Every day we have to watch for somebody who wants to get to know us. Even family. A few years ago a cousin was hitting us up for money. One of my brothers in law got 200k+ out of my parents a few years ago for some trucking software and a big rig truck. Who knows when my dad is going to meet somebody? It's 24/7/365 vigilance. Then the family business. Somebody always wants to partner with us. It never ends.
Once you hit a certain liquid net worth, it's like all the algorithms find out about you. My house isn't even that expensive relatively, but my neighborhood skyrocketed during the time I've been here, so that by itself has sent the scammers over.
I had to camera up my home's exterior, which was tough when you refuse to get a google/apple/amazon version.
“If you are so fortunate as to acquire or inherit wealth, manage it yourself.”
This! Again and again and again!
Life is a crapshoot.
There is no guarantee one won’t end up living under a freeway overpass broke and alone.
Better to do so because of your own stupidity, moral failings, or bad luck than someone else’s greed, stupidity, or thieving nature.
As I tell my kids all the time, “Who is the individual best equipped to look out for you? It’s you. God gave you a brain. Now use it.”
I’m a wealth manager so I obviously have a dog in this fight. But I’m legally obligated to act solely in my clients best interests. I make more money as my clients’ assets go up and less if and when they go down so that our interests are as aligned as I can make them.
There are definitely terrible, selfish, even evil wealth managers out there. But not all of us are.
It’s true I still make money even when my clients’ assets go down. My income goes down (and my own assets too since I am invested in the identical investments) in lock step as their assets go down but I am still earning money from them in those moments.
In those moments our job is to keep them from panicking out of their long term investments at the worst possible moment since there has never been a downturn in the market from which it did not fully recover. Historically that advice has been extremely valuable.
"Legally obligated."
Come on, now. The problem is that you still make money when your clients' assets go down. You win proportionately but you don't lose disproportionately.
I'm not saying that you're not honest. Perhaps you are. But the fact that you may be able to ignore the perverse incentive system doesn't mean that most of your colleagues can.
Yep, me too. Kathy Ireland was my favorite SI model so this is a double gut punch!
The problem stems from people outsourcing their responsibility for good stewardship to supposed “experts” with a finance degree and no skin in the game. When the house of cards begins to fall, the charlatans will cash out, pay themselves, and leave families in ruins, as we see in this post. The Ireland family might have avoided this disaster if at least one of them took ownership of their family’s financial future.
I had to laugh, I used to have a poster from a SI magazine of her in our platoon room for a while.
My wife looks like her but with red hair.
My wife signed the poster….hilarious!
I never knew anything about wealth management. Neither of us did.
I grew up in the military, had my first child of 4 at 17 years old right out of basic training.
I didn’t realize not having any money and spending every penny on my family, making sure my wife had everything she needed to raise and educate our kids and eventually the kids had enough money to get their first home without any debt or student debt, would eventually 40 years later make me one of the richest men on earth. I still have no money in my savings account. I have a decent pension now and I’m grateful for everything I have and don’t have.
We only have 4 grown children and 6 grandkids currently. We were always lean on the money side, today we are still lean but I’m rich and blessed.
The experts and most will disagree with me.
I hope what I wrote makes sense.
The happiest man is he who is content with what he has.
How many millions of Americans are counting on the federal government to be their wealth managers?
Only a small percentage of people are able to beat the S&P 500 index funds. And if you just invest in that for a longer term, and don’t pay fees, you’ll come out better. Real estate, gold, even bitcoin are fairly stable investments. Land is a solid investment. Buying a business and improving it is a good investment. Direct investments into a business you believe in. You can also invest in farming. Literally none of these require a wealth manager and it’s just as easy to invest yourself rather than involve someone.
I worked with Kathy Ireland and her furniture brand in the 2000’s. A company I represented was trying to sell her furniture. She was very pretty and nice but was not smart. She was already taking advice from business managers.
The easiest way to play this game is to play with house money.
Put enough money to keep you in modest comfort for the rest of your life in gold or silver or cash or land and invest the rest. Keep a significant portion of it somewhere where it can't reallt be lost.