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Stronghold has a network of independent advisors in all 50 states who are aligned with the same principles and have access to some of the unique solutions we will review in the pages ahead.
National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA).
automatically transfer your accounts to one of the recommended third-party custodians (such as TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, or Schwab). From there, the team will implement the recommendations and provide ongoing account
Tom and his team have built a powerful online “Fee Checker” that can pull up your company’s plan (from the company’s tax return filing), and within seconds, it will show how your company’s plan stacks up against others and what you are really paying in fees.
website: http://americasbest401k.com/401k-fee-checker.
“Absolutely pour as much money as you can into that Roth because you’re going to be paying little or no taxes on it, and then someday you could have the greatest income ever.”
You can start a Solo 401(k), which is a 401(k) for an individual business owner and his or her spouse.
WHAT IS A ROTH 401(k), AND HOW CAN I USE IT TO MY ADVANTAGE?
3. SHOULD I SET UP A ROTH IRA? Yes!! You can set up a Roth IRA account and contribute $5,500 per year ($6,500 if you’re 50 or older). You can even do so if you are already maxing out your 401(k) contributions. Opening a Roth IRA is as simple as opening a bank account. TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and Schwab are three firms that make the process incredibly simple. You can do it online in less than ten minutes.
am increasingly nervous about target-date funds with each passing day. —JACK BOGLE, founder of investor-owned Vanguard
Or they would get nervous if the market dropped (or sell when the market was down) and sit entirely on cash for years on end.
Asset allocation, where to park your money and how to divide it up, is the single most important skill of a successful investor.
in section 5, you’ll learn a specific asset allocation from hedge fund guru Ray Dalio that has produced extraordinary returns with minimal downside. When a team of analysts back-tested the portfolio, the worst loss was just 3.93% in the last 75 years. In contrast, according to
As I conducted my interviews, Dr. David Babbel was a name that was continually “rising to the top” during my research.
The annuities he used also gave him a 100% guarantee of his principal, so he didn’t lose in 2000 or in 2008 when the market crashed.
Dr. Babbel for a “one-hour” interview, which turned into four hours. His strategy, which we will highlight in the “Create an Income for Life” chapter, was powerful yet simple. And the “peace of mind” factor really came through, as I could see the freedom his strategy afforded him. I left with a completely different view on annuities! Or at least certain kinds of annuities.
“not all annuities are created equal.”
As Jack Bogle says, “I remain a recommender of the annuity conceptually, but you’d better look at the details before you do anything.”
VARIABLE ANNUITIES ARE INVARIABLY BAD
FEES ON TOP OF FEES
“Freedom: Creating Your Lifetime Income Plan” and “Time to Win: Your Income Is the Outcome,” we will clearly examine traditional income annuities as well as a relatively new type of annuity (the fixed indexed annuity) that provides some of the highest and most compelling income guarantees of any financial product, while also providing 100% principal protection.
By the time you are done with this book, you can have the certainty and peace of mind of knowing that every month when you walk to your mailbox, you will be receiving a paycheck (that you won’t have to work for).
By taking a portion of our money and combining the power of a Roth IRA with the power of a lifetime income annuity.
This means that no matter what the government does with tax rates, you can rest assured that the entire amount you receive is spendable income. That’s right: a legal and secure tax-free lifetime income, with no moving parts or worries about market volatility.
An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.
If there is one common denominator of successful insiders, it’s that they don’t speculate with their hard-earned savings, they strategize. Remember Warren Buffett’s top two rules of investing? Rule 1: don’t lose money! Rule 2: see rule 1.
Following the 2008 crash, when people didn’t have much of an appetite for stocks, some very innovative minds at the world’s largest banks figured out a way to do the seemingly impossible: allow you and me to participate in the gains of the stock market without risking any of our principal! Before you write this notion off as crazy, I personally have a note, issued and backed by one of the world’s largest banks, that gives me 100% principal protection, and if the market goes up, I get to keep a significant chunk of the gains in the market (without dividends).
But if the market collapses, I get all my money back. I don’t know about you, but I am more than happy to give up a percentage of the upside in exchange for protecting myself from stomach-wrenching losses on a portion of my investment portfolio.
WHO DOESN’T WANT TO EAT THE CAKE TOO? In the investment world, having your cake and eating it too would be making money when the market goes up but not losing a dime if the market drops.
entire section of this book to it: “Upside Without the Downside: Create a Lifetime Income Plan.”
1. Structured Notes. These are perhaps one of the more exciting tools available today, but, unfortunately, they are rarely offered to the general public because the high-net-worth investors gobble them up like pigeon seed in Central Park. Luckily, the right fiduciary is able to grant access for individuals even without large sums of investment capital. So listen up. A structured note is simply a loan to a bank (and typically the largest banks in the world). The bank issues you a note in exchange for lending it your money. At the end of the time period (also called the term), the bank
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3. Fixed Indexed Annuities. Let
Fixed indexed annuities (FIA) are a type of annuity that has been around since the mid-’90s but have only recently exploded in popularity. A properly structured fixed indexed annuity offers the following characteristics: • 100% principal protection, guaranteed by the insurance company. This is why we have to pick an insurance company with a high rating and a long history of making good on its promises—often a century or more! • Upside without downside—like structured notes and market-linked CDs, a fixed indexed annuity allows you to participate when the market goes up but not lose if the
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some fixed indexed annuities offer the ability to create an income stream that you can’t outlive. A paycheck for life!
Think of this investment as your own personal pension. For every dollar you deposit, the insurance company guarantees you a certain monthly income payment when you decide to t...
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by using low-cost market-mimicking index funds, we can outperform 96% of mutual funds and nearly as many hedge funds.
You could have more than twice as much money when you retire or cut years off the time it will take you to get to financial freedom.
We have learned the difference between a butcher and a dietitian—between a broker and a fiduciary.
We learned about the Roth 401(k) and how we can protect against rising taxes by paying the tax today and never paying tax again
We learned that variable annuities are a mutant evolution of a 2,000-year-old financial product but that other more traditional (fixed) annuities can provide what no other product can: a guaranteed lifetime income stream!
No matter how successful we are as human beings, no matter how high we reach personally, professionally, spiritually, emotionally, there’s always another level. And to get there, we have to be honest with ourselves; honest about our unconscious fears.
We come up with stories. Stories about why we’re not where we want to be.
Our stories almost always relate to something outside our control, or
You can get the skill if you can get beyond the mental limits of how hard, difficult, or “impossible” it may be to master something.
The final obstacle to face is ourselves. That’s
helping people to break through from what holds them back—to help them get from where they are now to where they want to be, and faster. My whole life has been committed to helping people create breakthroughs.
Whether you make excuses about what you don’t have or whether you get to enjoy the life you deserve.
A breakthrough is a moment in time when the impossible becomes possible—when you don’t just talk about something, but you finally take massive action and do whatever it takes to make it happen.
Often it’s frustration, anger, or stress that triggers a breakthrough. We hit our threshold: a point where we say, “Never again and no more.”
It’s amazing what you can do when you decide to draw a line in the sand, commit to a new goal, and set a new standard.
