While it has been a little volatile, the market has been really good this last month. The Dow went up by more than 7%. It didn’t seem so nice when we were living it at that moment, but that just proves that sometimes you can’t see the whole forest when you’re stuck in the trees. Sometimes you need to take a larger perspective and not get bogged down in the day to day dramas.
The main point of this newsletter will be cash. In particular, what it is and why it you should not keep too much of your assets in the form of it. Cash is a medium of exchange. It is simply a tool used to make the free market more efficient as cash is vastly superior to barter. What is important to know here is that cash has no inherent value. The value is only what you can buy with it. If you double your cash but everything becomes 4 times more expensive, then you are poorer even though you have more cash. That increase in cost of living is known as inflation and it’s critical to financial planning. When you keep cash in the bank and earn some piddly zero or almost zero rate of interest, you are losing buying power and potential quality of life. The reason is that the cost of everything you want to buy is likely going up at a higher rate than the interest you are earning. You need to keep enough cash on hand to cover your spending needs and a little extra to cover any unexpected emergency, beyond that amount, any extra cash is a mistake. It is an investment with a negative rate of return.
There are many ways to get a better rate of return than holding your wealth in cash. You can invest in the stock market, real estate, or if you are wealthy enough any of the myriad of investment options exclusive to wealthier individuals. You can also invest in bonds, which tend to not give you as nice of return as other investment options but they are still vastly superior to cash. For many people, the wealth they accumulate is the wealth they are going to live on in retirement. A 1% difference in annual return compounded for enough years could be the difference between comfort and destitution. Given the stakes, we feel it is essential to create the best financial plan possible. That financial plan likely has less cash in it than you are anticipating. We always are available to discuss these concepts further. It is your money and we will never do anything you are uncomfortable with. We want to give you the intellectual tools necessary to make the best decisions possible. It will always be your choice.
We sincerely hope you got value from this newsletter. Always at your service.
Dan and Eli
As I’m writing these to help my readers, I would be very appreciative of any input in regards to what I should write next. If you want me to write about a particular topic, please contact me. Please contact me if you would like to submit a post to my blog.
If anything that I mentioned above interests you, please consider downloading my free e-book. The book contains my thoughts on investment management and some information that I think everyone should know. You can also download it below.
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