Tag Archives: Investing

What do you do when there’s nowhere to invest?

nowhere to invest

Nowhere to invest? With a sky-high stock market, it often seems like there’s nowhere to put money.
Image courtesy Renjith Krishnan via FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

I had an interesting exchange with a reader named Bradley recently. Bradley’s basic question was “with the market at all-time highs, where do you put your money? It’s a good question because it does feel a bit like there’s nowhere to invest right now.

And it’s a particularly relevant question for me because I’ve been facing this exact dilemma with the recent windfall from the sale of my fourplex. Making matters “worse,” I just sold another piece of property so I have even more cash coming my way.

If you’ve ever made the mistake of reading any news site comment sections related to the stock market, you already know that there are two main contingents who both believe they are 100 percent correct: One says the market is headed for a crash very soon and only a fool would gamble his money in the stock market. The other group, equally sure their beliefs are correct, say the market will keep going up, up, up and only a fool stays out of the market worrying about a crash. (To get a handle on your investment portfolio, be sure to sign up for a free account from Personal Capital.)

Naturally, both sides are right and both are wrong. In reality, we all know that this market will undergo a significant correction at some point. We also know that the market will grow its way out of that dip. What we don’t know, of course, is when and we don’t know how long it will take to recover. That’s why the most important factor in any investment is the investor’s personal situation. For example, this is why people nearing retirement are typically advised to move to safer holdings as they age, although ironically people in this situation currently are among those who feel strongest that there is nowhere to invest. For some perspective, consider that my first money market account back in the late ’90s paid five percent!

There was a pretty interesting piece in CNN Money in January. While generally sticking with fairly standard allocations and advice, the writer reminds us that good ol’ cash also used to be seen as an asset class.

I recommend heading over and reading the whole thing. Lots of interesting data points pulled together, such as the fact that the market usually has a 10 percent drop once a year but hasn’t seen one in 2 1/2 years (at the time the article was published).  The writer suggests 10 years of disappointing returns await. And, oh yeah, the level of borrowed money in the market is already reaching pre-crash levels. So we’ve got a bubble again, inflated with Fed policy, borrowed money, greed and blind trust.

I might be the last honest blogger, because I’ll just tell you the truth: I have no idea what’s going to happen or when. I held my real estate winnings in cash at the end of last year, partly because I was expecting at least a small correction (which we’ve finally gotten a little taste of) and partly because I haven’t had time to really focus on it. (Which is not to say I didn’t do anything with my money last year. I actually was moving and reallocating funds quite a bit, which is still going on.)

So far this year, I have picked up a few individual stocks when I see a good value, but I’ve held off on buying much more in the way of mutual funds so far. And, in fact, I’ve been moving more money into cash, as I finally dump some stuff I’ve been packing around with higher costs. I’m dreading the tax impacts after this year, but I just want to clean up my portfolio.

My short-term strategy right now is to go ahead and sell my high-cost funds (I have seven of them left at this point with various amounts of money in them). Thus, my cash position is increasing. I’m selling those semi-quickly. Meanwhile I’ll be moving this cash back into individual stocks and/or low-cost Vanguard funds — however, this will happen much more slowly, basically dollar-cost averaging my way back in. By default, depending on how slowly I move these dollars back into the market, I’ll be effectively keeping significant assets in cash as well. I don’t want to say I’m hoping for a big market crash, but if one were to happen, this would be a pretty awesome time.

So that basic framework aside, let’s get back to the main question: what do you do when there’s nowhere to invest?

Let’s start by recognizing that, really, there is always somewhere to invest. Maybe with a sky-high market, now isn’t the time to move a large sum in all at once. But there are always a few undervalued stocks. But you have to be careful. It always rains after I wash my car and the market always dips when I make a purchase. And with the market so inflated, I have been thinking quite a bit about what options do exist outside the usual menu we typically think about. Here are a few things I’ve thought about.

Pay off debt

If you’re carrying any consumer debt at all, this is a good place to start. Whatever your interest rate is on the debt you’re carrying is your effective return by paying off that loan. Still carrying a car loan? Maybe instead of buying into an over-inflated stock market, you pay that car off for good. The free cash flow you now enjoy could dollar-cost average its way into the market or you could save it up so you’re ready to pounce when things drop.

Keep funds in cash

Why consider holding money in cash? Well, on one hand it’s a defensive move — you’re protected from a big crash. When everyone else is panicking, you’re kicking back on your pile of cash. That pile is, however, slowly disintegrating under you, however, as inflation eats away at your buying power. There is another advantage, of course. Imagine if you’d been sitting on big pile of cash during the real estate crash. I know if I didn’t have all my money tied up in, yes, real estate, I would have been on a shopping spree. Thus retaining cash can be an offensive move as well. Sit, wait for a big drop and start swinging your big weapon.

Pay off your house

If you don’t know where to put your money right now but you’re still carrying a mortgage, perhaps it’s a good time to increase your security by putting a bullet in your mortgage. If you’re worried about missing a big market dip, maybe open a HELOC on your now paid-off mortgage. If things look irresistible, you can pull out the funds from your house again and take advantage of market conditions. Remember the crash you’re waiting for could be two or three years away and you could be enjoying the cashflow improvement in the meantime.

Lower your overhead

Recently I wrote about forcing cashflow and how it can hurt you or benefit you. If you’ve got a sum of money and no place to put it, spending some of that money on increasing your cashflow situation can be a savvy move. For example, I’m still considering making the move on solar panels for our house (no-brainer if we’re going to stay in this house long-term). A $15,000 investment in solar would permanently remove our $75/month electricity bill. The downside is it doesn’t pay if we move. But the idea is the important part. For you, it could mean upgrading to a more efficient car, new insulation for your house, moving closer to work, buying new clothes that don’t need dry cleaning. You name it.

Increase your security

You could also tap your funds for  increasing your financial security as well. This might mean stepping up and paying for a few things now just so you don’t have to bother with it later. Maybe your roof is starting to fail — writing that check now while you have the cash not only removes a hassle from your list, but think about the alternative: Imagine you bought in big to the market at the top and suddenly find yourself with several years of waiting before you’re out of your hole. Then, while you’re waiting, the roof fails completely, leaving you in desperate need for cash. By making sure these aspects of your life are rock-solid now while you have this free cash, you’ll be in a much more solid position when crash time comes.

Be creative

People forget there are other places to invest outside the stock market. There are too many to list here, but for example a guy I used to work with owned shares in a local pizza place. There are always people looking for private investors — some people have friends or family who are interested in starting business for example. (Be careful!) You could even buy a small business if desired. Always wanted to own your own restaurant? Now is your chance! If you can think of it, you could probably make it happen. Have a great idea for a mobile app? You could probably hire a development team overseas for less than $20,000 and bring your idea to reality. In addition, there are online lending options such as Lending Club or Prosper where you can make a decent rate on your invested funds.

Jump in anyway

And, of course, where most of us will end up is back in the market, hoping any dip is not too deep or long-lasting. This is where I’ll probably end up as well. I’ll dollar-cost average my way in, at least, but more than likely I’ll limp my way back in and just wait out any dips, just like I always do. In the end, prudent, boring investing in low-cost index dividend funds is usually the best bet. But when you have a big chunk of cash you’re sitting on, it’d sure be nice to start out with a lower price.

What do you think? Any other creative places to put money while the market remains so high? What would you do if you had a large sum that needed a home?

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Forcing cashflow — when should you do it?

Image courtesy of renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Ever heard the term “forcing cashflow” before?

If you’ve done any real estate investing at all, sooner or later you’ll run into the concept but it’s a topic with implications well beyond real estate. It’s a tricky subject and one that I still struggle with today.

I faced the classic “forcing cashflow” situation a few years after I purchased my infamous fourplex. Regular readers might recall I actually bought two fourplexes at the same time from the same seller. After a few years of thin cashflow and pouring too much free cash in to feed the mortgages, I dumped the more problematic of the two and walked away with some decent appreciation profit.

I examined my situation. My personal monthly bills (outside of mortgage) totaled about $1,500 at the time. I was pretty obsessed with cashflow in those days so the math was simple based on my objective — specifically raising the monthly income from the property up above the amount I’d need to cover my bills. I talked to my friendly neighborhood mortgage broker and asked how much cash I’d need to bring in if I wanted to bring my payment down to $1,000/month (including escrow). Rents in the four units were around $650. So on paper I’d have $2,600 in revenue and after paying the mortgage my cashflow would be a sweet $1,600 (not counting maintenance, vacancies, etc.).  Not bad, right? Who wouldn’t want a free $1,000+ coming in every month?

Well, there are a few ways to look at forcing cashflow that complicate the matter. First we have to break out of the mindset that forcing cashflow is either “good” or “bad.” Rather there are various types of forcing cashflow that may or may not make it a good idea for your particular situation.

Old school real estate investors usually talk about forcing cashflow in the context of something amateurs do to make their numbers “work,” while they, the savvy investors, boast about their “cap rate” and similar methodologies to evaluate their purchases. And they’re quite right to do so because strictly forcing cashflow ignores the opportunity cost of putting the extra money elsewhere. For example, in my case, I would have been MUCH better off investing the money in stocks. That is to say the return I got on the additional funds was less than I could have gotten elsewhere. Thus my overall income situation would have been better by paying more attention to return and less to cashflow.

However! While all of that is true, there are other important ways to think about this. Let’s reverse things to help see this clearly. Imagine for a moment, I pulled some cash out of my property instead of putting cash in, say via a simple home equity line of credit loan (forcing a negative cashflow, if you follow me). Suddenly instead of the $1,000/month coming in, perhaps I have to feed it by $500. This could put an investor in an untenable situation, unable to keep up with payments and vulnerable in a crisis. Or to put this another way, if you were buying a rental property, how much should you put down? How could you know what the right amount is?

Cap Rate (along with GRM and GSI for you real estate investing nerds) is cashflow neutral — it only helps you determine whether the purchase (or sale) price is fair (based on revenue). Cashflow is profit-neutral, it just tells you how you’re structured. For example, you could have a 10 percent Cap Rate building (unheard of around here, we’re usually around 6 percent if we’re lucky), but if you bought it with 20 percent down and had some vacancy issues and repairs, you may have gotten a good “deal”, but the building could still be draining you every month. If you decided to force the cashflow, though, and put 50 percent down, you got the same good deal on your property and are enjoying some tasty cashflow. However, you’d have to examine your overall investment posture because you might have come out ahead by putting that additional cash into other investments.

Real estate makes a good example, but we face decisions on forcing cashflow every day, often without realizing it. Every time we’re faced with a decision on whether to pay for something up-front in order to save more over the long haul we’re making this kind of decision. Older car beginning to cost more and more in repairs — would a newer car put you ahead or behind? Worn-out refrigerator burning way too much electricity? Better to keep limping along or upgrade?

So how does one know how much to force cashflow? I have three ways I evaluate this kind of situation:

  1. Payback time – Identifying the time until you reach break-even can be a smart way to look at things. All else being equal, it can be a good idea to achieve the shortest possible break-even time with all invested money. Say you’re considering dropping $5,000 on new windows in your home to replace the drafty single-pane pieces of glass in your house. And let’s say your heating and cooling bill is $200/month and you estimate it’ll drop in half with new windows. So, “savings” of $100/month. Worth it? At a savings of $100/month, it’d take just over four years to break even. So it obviously comes down to how long you’d be staying in the house. If it’s your forever home, the sooner you get started the better. If you’re planning to move in two years, tape plastic over your windows and tough it out.
  2. Yield – Another way to look at forcing cashflow is to compare the income (or ongoing cost reduction) to what you could do in the market. In the above example we were considering investing $5,000 on new windows. What if we took that same amount and invested it in stocks? Using my 5 percent rule, we’ll assume we can make an annual 5 percent if we put our money to work in the market. Let’s compare that to our energy savings with our windows. Our energy bills drop by $100 in this example, so $1,200 per year. Making that on $5,000 isn’t too shabby. And if this is our forever house, we make that (24 percent!) into perpetuity (after year four). (Which is why it makes so much sense to make your house as energy efficient as possible. Although keep in mind saving $100 a month may not be realistic for quite a few of you.) But you do effectively make zero for four years so it’s a long term investment and that’s the way you have to look at it (although you’ll be warmer in the meantime, which is nice). And, of course, you’ll want to count the money you’re NOT making for four years in your math.
  3. Bar lowering – Traditional investors will scoff at me (rightfully maybe) for this one, but since my goal is pretirement, there is another way I look at things. I call it bar lowering and the idea is that even if your potential investment doesn’t make sense under the first two items, it may still be worth doing if it brings your pretirement closer. The idea is that it may be easier and simpler (and more guaranteed) to spend some money lowering your expenses to bring your needed income amount down. The most common example of this is paying off a mortgage. If your interest rate is only 3 percent, it may not make sense mathematically to pay off your mortgage when you could probably make more in the stock market. Let the stock market gains pay for your mortgage and keep the difference, right? Depending on your overall situation, especially your age, it might actually make more sense to take the guaranteed win of paying off your mortgage, which also lowers the amount of passive income you need each month. In effect, this is what we’re doing when we buy the new windows above as well. By dropping our bill by $100 a month, that’s $24,000 we don’t need to earn and invest (again based on 5 percent — $24,000 * 5% = $1,200/year). The basic idea here is that it’s easier and less risky to cut costs than to build up an investment portfolio. So it’s just another way of cutting “spending” even though it’s not the mindless consumerism we talk about so often here on Pretired.org.

So to me it’s not as simple as just comparing everything against what I could do in the market, although that’s become my main approach. And there are other things that complicate these decisions further. How do you really figure out what the savings could be on something like new windows? Basically it comes down to a guess. And then there are factors like resale value and your personal comfort to be considered.

For example, I constantly struggle with whether it makes sense to add solar panels to my house — something I really want. We currently budget $100/month for electricity (yes we have some of the lowest-cost power here in Seattle). I estimate it’d take $15,000 to solarize our house. That means the payback would be over 12 years! That’s hopelessly long — especially considering that we may not stay here forever. I really want them, but it just makes no financial sense. The only thing that tempts me is the bar lowering. With one up-front payment, I’d never have to pay for electricity as long as we stayed here. My share of the minimum monthly bills requirement would drop to a tiny $700!

Yet, the equivalent amount invested would only yield maybe $62/month (applying 5% to $15,000 again). And because I wouldn’t be paying a bill of $100/month, it’d be worth it, right? I don’t know! See? Confusing!

We make these choices every day without realizing it. Some are simpler than others. For example, we finally got smart and bought our own cable modem instead of leasing one from the cable company. It took nearly a year to break even but now we have the lower bill and every month is gravy. Not a big deal, but just another little hole to plug in our budget. We switched the gas furnace a few years ago at considerable expense. That was probably a 3-4 year payback timeframe, but we’re warmer and the ongoing bill is lower (lower monthly overhead).

Do I regret forcing cashflow on my old fourplex? I wouldn’t do it again. In retrospect, I think I would have been better off improving the building and increasing the rents versus trying to lower the financing overhead. But if I’m honest, if I could go back in time I’d sell that building much earlier and dive into the stock market head first. I became so obsessed with cashflow, I forgot to keep an eye on the big picture. Fortunately what I learned about cashflow and the positives and negatives of forcing cashflow help me greatly today as I put together the final elements of my pretirement.

How many times have you blown $1,000?

Ever wondered how many times in your life you’ve blown $1,000?

$1,000 x 300 = $300,000

Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In past posts, I’ve noted a few of my focus numbers for pretirement. For example I’ve targeted a goal of around $300,000 (plus paid-off mortgage) as my freedom number. (Think $600,000 for a couple.) I’ve also remarked on how many households pin their core monthly non-mortgage expenses at around $2,000 per month ($1,000 per person). This includes my own.

So if you’ve been aggressive and paid off your mortgage in record time, you are likely looking at monthly core expenses near that magical $2,000/month (for two people). And, of course, if that seems insane, you’ll probably want to examine your spending rates. However, if we accept that number, then we can safely say your Pretirement Fund number is probably somewhere around $300,000 for each person. It might be a little higher or a little lower based on your personal investment yield, taxes and other factors, but just to keep things simple, we’ll use round numbers for now.

In my own situation, I’m a little shy of that number, which is why I’m only semi-pretired today. I have too much net worth locked up in my house and, of course, made many dumb investing and spending mistakes over the years.

Which begs the question: How many times have I blown $1,000? It’s an important, but troubling question. Have I done it 300 times? More? It makes me want to go back and slap earlier me across the face.

Let’s take a look: (Making guesses at the exact amount in most cases.)

Over-improved my first home$30,000+30
Luxurious vacations over the past 20 years (At least $3,000/year on average)$60,000+60
Bought new car (Stupid, stupid)$40,000+40
Eating out (Maybe $40/week on average for the last 10 years)$20,000+20
Over-improving current house$30,000+30
Various electronics over past few years$15,000+15
Furniture purchases$10,000+10
Random other crap$20,000+20
TOTAL$225,000225

So because I’m Pretired Nick, you might assume I’m some sort of Frugality Ninja (hey, good URL, someone should snag that!). But, really, I’ve been just as much as a big American spender as anyone else. OK, maybe not as much as most people, but still pretty bad. But I’m not here to shame myself before all of you, but rather to show HOW EASY it is to reach pretirement by doing nothing more than staying employed and cutting back on the spending.

$100 x 10 = $1,000

So you don’t think you’ve blown $1,000 all that many times? Let’s break it down: how many times have you blown $100? Dropping a hundo is easy. I sneeze a hundred bucks into a tissue just about every week! My numbers above are definitely under-counting the drip by drip of small purchases. Gas for the car, art, gifts, new shoes I didn’t really need, tools purchased unnecessarily and so on.

Have you dropped $100 just 10 times in the past year? Month? If you dropped $100 per week, that’s $5,200 each year. Doesn’t sound like that much money until you realize that’s five $1,000 bills that could have gone toward your pretirement fund — nearly 2 percent of what you needed right there!

I listed out just my big, memorable purchases above totaling to $225,000. If I had cut back just by $100 per week on average for the past 15 years (something that would have been very easy for me at various times), I’d have more than the remaining $75,000 needed to reach my Pretirement Fund goal.

$30,000 x 10 = $300,000

Or to frame things in terms of time, let’s say you’ve realized 40 years in a cubicle isn’t for you and you’d like to tough it out through 10 more years of your career and then be done. You’d need $30,000/year ($2,500/month) for each of those years on average (again, ignoring your mortgage and growth on the money).

But $2,500 a month seems like an impossible amount to put aside month after month! The thing is, many households have monthly budgets of $6,000-$8,000 or even more. Obviously housing costs are by far the biggest drag on people, but it’s also TVs, vacations, clothing, random plastic crap, lattes and car expenses.

I realize it’s too late for many of us. We can’t go back and add many years of savings to our lives. But like the Chinese proverb says: There are only two times to plant a tree — 20 years ago and today. Regardless of where you’re starting, build a spreadsheet, decide on your goals and build a plan to get there.

$100,000 x 3 = $300,000

It always comes back to real estate with me. Like I have mentioned many times, we really have more house than we should have given our goals. Should we choose to downsize — something we’re seriously considering — that should free up at least $100,000 that I can put toward my Pretirement Fund, putting me over the top! Or I could work a couple more years and save that up quickly given that I have very low expenses.

Which way will we end up going? We really have no idea at this point. But you’ll be the first to know as we wrestle with this final step toward pretirement right here in front of all of you!

Hopefully the math lesson wasn’t too silly for everyone. The point isn’t to teach my readers basic division and multiplication, but simply to remind that breaking big problems into smaller problems always makes things easier and that small spending, even $1,000 here or there, can really add up and keep you working much longer than you want. I’m living proof on both the negative and positive sides of that equation.

So what do you think? Does breaking your goals into bite-sized chunks help you get there? And how many times do you think you’ve blown $1,000? 

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Guest Post: The Awesome Magic of Investing Like An 8 Year Old

Howdy everyone! Pretired Nick here. Both Pretired Baby and I ended up getting sick this week so I’m a little behind on my writing. I have some fun pieces I’m working on, but propping myself up at the computer hasn’t felt like a lot of fun. Fortunately, Joe Saul-Sehy of the very well-regarded Stacking Benjamins web site and podcast graciously offered to write a post about investing. Since I don’t consider myself an expert on investing (except for maybe in real estate), I jumped at the chance. Here is his post. Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments and hopefully Pretired Baby and I will be back in action next week! 

The Awesome Magic of Investing Like You’re An 8 Year Old

“Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.”
– Jackie Mason

Image courtesy of arztsamui / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of arztsamui / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of the biggest complaints I hear about money management is, “I just can’t get into it” or “I’m really not into checking investments and statements.” It’s as if these people think that money management is something geeks sit around and do after they trade baseball stats and Magic the Gathering cards.

The simplicity of the financial markets surprised me. Previously, I’d assumed they were filled with magical investments that moved in ways I’d have trouble grasping. That wasn’t the case at all.

Really, it’s more like an eight-year-old kid and a bike. Remember learning to ride? You’d jump on and were terrified that you’d fall. The first several times you wobbled and your biggest nightmares came true — you fell. Then you realized that the price isn’t nearly as hard as the payoff. Riding a bike is awesome when you’re eight years old. It’s a no-brainer when you’re an adult.

Are You An 8 Year Old With Your Money?

When I began road biking seriously I asked a friend if he’d ever been hit by a car. He answered, “The question isn’t if you’re going to get hit… the question is when.”

Just like when riding a bike, it’s always better to think about the payoff than the hurt. Sadly, the media generally focuses on the roller coaster economy and on the downsides of investing (“the Dow Jones Industrial Average today…” …plummeted? When else do you use that word?). You need to reframe investing if you’re afraid so the payoff climbs to the top.

Here is what investors know:

  • There is no way to meet your goals without investing. Don’t think about the funds — think about them as fuel for those goals.
  • Falling down is a part of reaching happiness. How will you know the magic of success if the goal isn’t just a little dangerous and exciting?
  • By keeping that long term goal in mind, sure you might miss your mark, but look at all that you’ll achieve on the road to 95 percent of your hoped-for dream finish!

Your Investments And You

When I was in middle school I started saving for a bike. It had a saddlebag on the back and I was going to put a tent in the bag and ride it across the state.

When you want something badly, that’s where you begin. Not with “what can I do with these dollars?” Start with the bike you want. How much is it going to cost? How much will you need to put away to buy it by next spring?

It’s the same with pretirement, retirement, a new house, a sabbatical, whatever. How much will you need to live a year? What income can you count on? How much do you need to save to get there?

Pretirement, retirement, college, a new house — they all work better with this approach. If you want something special for yourself, start with the vision, translate that to money, and then do the simple math.

If you tell me, “I don’t like math”, I’ll tell you that, like investments, you need to look behind the weird formulas and instead focus on the giggles math can bring you. There’s an awesome power in knowing the answer to the question, “How much” for an adult. While a child will just get back up on the bike 1,000 times until they finally ride, an adult thrives on the answer to “How much pain before I’m secure.”

Once You’ve Answered How Much, You’re Nearly Home Free

I asked my mother, how much further? She answered, you’ll know when we get there. She was right every time.

Here’s the question: can you afford the cost of the bike? Is it currently possible for you to save enough money to get it by next spring? If not, now you have to ask an important question:

How can I lower my other expenses or raise enough revenue to get the bike? Maybe I have to cut out Big League Chew. Maybe I have to sell a little lemonade along the street for a few weeks. Maybe I can negotiate with mom for a bigger allowance. Whatever. Raise income or lower expenses — pretty easy, huh?

This makes shopping decisions easier. If I have no goals, I might accidentally shop at J. Crew. With goals, I become laser focused on my budget.

If your goal is big enough you know that you’ll need to invest your money. To get my big goal, I’m going to need an 8 percent return to make up for the money I can’t save.

….and that’s when the magic of investing happens

See what happens there? By the time I get to the investments, I could care less about them — except as fuel toward buying the bike. I know it’s going to take 8 percent to reach the bike goal, so guess what I’m going to do?

I’m going to search for investments that reach an 8 percent return with the least amount of risk.

It’s equally as important to recognize what I’m not gonna do. I’m not going to pay any attention to investments that pay 3 percent or those that pay 12 percent Think about how much work I saved myself, especially if I don’t really care about investments!

Now, when I get my statements, I know what the bottom line represents. Not some meaningless investment but my new bike, retirement, a new home, an education, whatever.

Less time, more fun, and with a bike at the end. What eight year old wouldn’t be happy with that approach?

Joe Saul-Sehy blogs about earning, saving and spending with a plan at Stacking Benjamins.com and is the cohost of the popular podcast series Stacking Benjamins. His first bike had a banana seat. Don’t be a hater about it. 

Now, tell us what you think! Does it help you to think like a kid when approaching your investments? Have you thought about investing like an 8 year old? Can you use this idea to help alleviate some of your fears? 

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