I went to college for 7 years with a final major in Business Admin and a minor in Finance. I went on to work in the field of Financial Planning for 11 years. What I saw there is what has lead me to where I am now. I was a young Financial Planner when the Dot Com craze hit and only about 3 years in when the Dot Com bubble broke. I was a more seasoned veteran when the "housing" bubble "popped". Here’s a question, how can the housing market crash the stock market? Many would go into a long technical diatribe about how asset groups affect one another. But any honest person would admit that one shouldn’t have had such an impact on the other. I watched the industry go through several changes but the more things changed the more they stayed the same.
When it comes to “market” investing there are 2 main schools of thought concerning "the Market". It's the Bulls vs. the Bears. No this is not an NBA, NFL crossover battle royale.
A Bull perspective is based on historical data, the market will "on average" increase in value over the course of time. If you are diversified properly over multiple asset groups,
you are protected from any one particular asset class collapsing your nest egg. A Bear perspective is that ALL short term markets are driven by fear and greed so by analyzing charts and trends, you can determine when to "sell short" assets groups to make money from a falling market.
One of the first things I was taught in college about investments is that 95% of ALL investments fail. "How can that be?" Inversely, if 95% of all investments fail, how could the market
continue to rise? Historically how could it continue to “progress”. Well the first thing that came to my mind was just be in the top 5% and then you don’t have to worry about it. (Talk about a redistribution of wealth.) If you think about this for a minute your pyradym should start to change. The Market is the biggest con game in the world, using crony capitalism dressed up like free enterprise to rob the 95% of it’s wealth and redistribute it to the top 5%. Just look at all of the world’s politicians that have aggrandized themselves “legally” from insider information and they are just the small fish puppets that get thrown some crumbs.
Advising several hundred clients through 2 bubbles, I quickly learned through observation that 95% of investors don't even have the risk tolerance to be in the market. But due to Federal Reserve and government made hyperinflation no one can "afford" to NOT be invested in the market if they ever hope to "retire".
I could tell you LOTS of stories about HUGE Mutual Fund companies with ponzi portfolios, or pre-market trading. Or how about the Credit Default Swaps which caused the mortgage bubble. All verifiable proofs that the markets are rigged at best. Each “crash” making the rich, richer and the middle class shrink into obscurity.
So if it’s all a shell game then what do we do? This is where homesteading, self-reliance and self-sufficiency enter the picture. If I can’t rely on the market for a return on investment, then where should I invest my assets?
I use the word assets, because your time, blood, sweat and tears are just as much if not more of an asset than any fiat currency.
My recommendation is investing everything you got into your homestead. A Homestead is REAL estate. It’s land, it’s real, tangible. When you make an improvement to that land it is relatively permanent. If you plant a fruit tree that tree if cared for will provide you with expensive, organic nutritional food for MANY years.
Diversify your portfolio. You don’t just plant one fruit tree, plant hundreds of fruit trees, not all at once but over the course of time, you invest your blood, sweat and tears. You dig the holes, you plant, you fertilize, you prune and you propagate your trees.
What if you just planted one tree a week? The average decent fruit tree costs about $15. Over the course of a year you could plant 52 fruit trees for a total cost of $780. How much fruit could those trees start to produce in the next couple of years? Now what if you learned how to propagate your trees through cuttings and grafting? In 10 years how many trees might you have and what would be the total amount of fruit produced from those trees? If you continued this process over the course of 20 years, you could literally turn that weekly investment of $15 into an almost infinite return. I say infinite because it would be impossible to calculate.
This is not even taking into consideration the fulfilment you receive from tending to your trees or to the clean nutrition and health your fruit will provide to your family for generations. Not to mention the effect hyperinflation is having on the costs of fruit annually.
Permaculture is another way to diversify your portfolio by literally diversifying your agriculture. Monocultures have systematically destroyed entire industries. Just look at the citrus industry in Florida.
After leaving the world of finance, I have owned several other businesses in the construction, remodeling, real estate market. This further reinforced my opinion that the best place to invest your assets is into a homestead.
I do hold other assets, such as REAL currency like silver and gold but they fail in comparison to the rate of return my homestead will provide my family and I.
As we witness the collapse of states like California, Illinois and New Jersey the handwriting is on the wall. What are you doing to prepare for what we can clearly see is coming?
Let me know your thoughts, what are you investing in?
If you enjoyed this article, please comment, upvote and RESTEEM.
Texas Dad.