Krueger & Catalano

It was one of those head-down dog days of summer, in blistering Houston, Texas. I couldn’t even raise my eyes leaving the building, under the blinding sun.

“Dirt never looked so pretty” read a text from the Texas hill country I just got.

When a shopkeeper solves a problem more customers arrive.

Then, even more people are rewarded. That’s the purpose.

“Daddy isn’t Economics what you do?” #3 asked.

“Not really honey,” I answered.

There are a lot of things I will never forget about April 2020, including my middle daughter studying Economics at our dinner table. All my kids know I do not help with homework. But, I love talking through each of our biggest challenges of the day, during dinner. That table got a lot of action this month.

We do not know what will happen next. We never know. That is why we build detailed income plans first -- before putting one penny at risk for growth.

If there are two recent charts that best illustrate what a crisis can cause in the Stock Market, these would be our nominations.

There are more than enough Tortoise and Hare investment products to choose from, and even more investment analogies drawn from this great race.

We ask a lot of questions. Managing money requires humility and punishes over-confidence. If there is one word that best summarizes what built our investment business, it would be this: curious. We are always curious, and never convinced.

The city of New York needed to build a canal in 1812. It borrowed enough money for construction and guaranteed the return of investors’ original principal with the full backing of the city’s taxing authority. That is how the General Obligation Municipal Bond was born.

After a long winning streak in Las Vegas, you might take a couple big chips off the table to slide deep in your pocket. If you don’t see them anymore, you won’t risk losing them. Conservative or aggressive, tourist or gambler, almost all can agree that kinda makes some sense.

A Health Savings Account (HSA) is the most underrated little planning tool with big upside. The first, second, and third reasons are that an HSA is the only triple-tax-free account in the investing world.

If it helps the best savers out there not cringe at the concept of spending more money, let me explain why I call vacations my Adventure Capital account. It may also help to know that I do not like spending it; I choose very carefully how to invest it, and the returns have been spectacular.

Here’s the reality. There is an over-crowded supply of things that can go wrong on expensive, commercialized vacations. I’m not talking about any of these, though you may have a similar memory as Chevy Chase in Vacation.

‘Tis the season for stock market year-end reviews along with 2020 predictions to get spread across investors’ tables. Our recommendation is to use a table with four legs.

Finding the next dollar of growth will get all the attention. But, that’s just one leg. There are three more that can put the same dollar in your pocket.

‘Tis the season for stock market year-end reviews along with 2020 predictions to get spread across investors’ tables. Our recommendation is to use a table with four legs.

Finding the next dollar of growth will get all the attention. But, that’s just one leg. There are three more that can put the same dollar in your pocket.

1. Risk

2. Cost

3. Tax

4. Growth

The dollars in your account from the first three are much easier to find because you already have them. All you have to do is keep more of them.

[Read Part 1 of our Year-End Financial Planning Series on Risk]

If the COST leg is just a little too long, then many of your dollars are sliding off your table and hitting the floors on Wall Street, perhaps without you even noticing.

‘Tis the season for fearless forecasts of where to find GROWTH in the stock market. Investor roundtables are recorded and written about, then distributed in several popular financial publications to be discussed and read all over the country.

Whether an individual or a small business owner, if you are confused about what to do with your 401(k), you are not alone. There is about $5 trillion of savings and confusion inside them. And, it all started unintentionally.

When someone is just starting to invest for the first time -- regardless of age and amount -- my best advice is to learn how to bank yourself.

Empowering yourself with solutions based on informed simplicity can provide independence from large brokerage firms and banks that are obligated to perform for shareholders first, then customers second.

This is not just a beginner’s guide, but the exact same approach I use in my own account to this day, as a professional money manager through multiple Bull and Bear Markets.

There are books, movies, and even dreams about climbing mountains like Everest -- in nature and in the stock market.

Edmund Hillary is known around the world as the first person to make it 29,035 feet to the top of Mt. Everest in 1953. Reaching the world’s highest peaks, in any industry, obviously makes for the best stories. But, what if it’s not true? Or, more importantly, what is a longer-lasting lesson?

“The secret of all victories lies in the organization of the nonobvious." -- Marcus Aurelius

Imagine if you knew ahead of time how your favorite mutual funds in the stock market were going to do.

Let’s say you are retiring within the next few years and you could subtract all doubt, news, and politics. You know for a fact that you will average more than 8 percent per year.

This is not a Back to the Future trick question, Biff, you actually hold the final score for each year for all mutual funds.

Here are three of the scores:

(+86%, -39%, and -21%) / 3 years = +8.7% per year.

There is only one problem with widely promoted “average rates of return.” They do not happen in the real life of your money. The math is very misleading.

Comparatively, think back to real periods of time that some of us lived through when real math was used (i.e. the Nasdaq Composite of 1999-2001), because that time will happen again.