FTW INVESTMENTS

Rethinking Your Financial Plan

You’re living life exactly according to plan. But whose plan is it? Is it YOUR plan, or is it the plan that everyone else is following mindlessly?

Ask yourself these questions:

Are you happy with your current financial plan and current life trajectory?
Is there anything you would change about it?
Is there anything you would rather be doing right now than waking up every morning and going through the same grind?
Would you like to spend more time with your family?
Spend more time giving back to your world, your community?
Would you like to take off whenever you want and to wherever you want without fear?

The author of the master plan – society at large – wants you to believe that you’ve got it made. You don’t need any other plan.

You’ve got it all:

Education. √
Good Bob. √
Good Benefits. √
401k Matching. √
Nice Family. √
Big House. √
Four Vehicles In The Garage. √
Savings For Kids Educations. √
Goal To Retire At 65. √

You’re entrenched in your job with your head down and working towards your retirement. All is good, right?

Wait, shouldn’t I be investing? All my friends are investing outside of their 401(k)s. Shouldn’t I? They’re into EFTs, mutual funds, some buzzy stocks, and some crypto. I’ll do what everyone else is doing. Why reinvent the wheel? That many people can’t all be wrong. Besides, you don’t have the time to look into anything else. You’re too busy putting your head down and grinding towards your retirement.

Most Americans are following the plan everyone else is following. They keep their heads down and put their shoulders to the wheel to keep chugging along. For many, they think that as long as you work hard, things will always work out. But do they?

If hard work is the formula to financial peace of mind, why are 64% of Americans ill-prepared for retirement? Here’s the reality… Hard work and keeping your head down alone will not get you where you want to go. You will not be able to see the road ahead or the opportunities that will pop up along the way if you don’t lookup.

Remember playing Monopoly as a kid?

There was no greater feeling than passing “GO” and collecting $200 after every turn. Then one day, you played with an older kid – someone who had played before and played the game completely different than you. You ridiculed them because they spent their money on silly little colored cards while you were piling up the cash. But, they weren’t collecting colored cards; they were buying real estate and picking up cash flowing businesses like utilities and railroads. These older kids saw the bigger picture.

As the game progressed with the older kid, something curious happened. You started landing on their properties, and according to the rules, you were required to pay them a fee for using their properties. You were paying rent, and the closer the property was to GO, the more you had to pay, and if the person held all the properties of one color (a monopoly), the rent you were required to pay compounded – the actual rent due equaling more than the sum of the individual rents because of the monopoly.

Now that you’re older, you see the wisdom of Monopoly. The winners were the players paying attention to the opportunities being presented to them as they rounded the board.

By keeping their head up, they could pick up prime real estate like Park Avenue and Boardwalk and charge premium rents. They may have initially fallen behind in their cash balances because they invested their money to acquire properties. Still, the balance of power shifted as the game progressed as your money slowly migrated to their accounts from rents charged for landing on their properties.

In the end, they ended up with all the money from collecting rents from people like you, whose two principal objectives were to pass GO and to avoid jail.

Keeping your head down is not a strategy for financial success – in Monopoly or real life.

If you don’t lift your head, you will miss the opportunities as well as the dangers ahead – and trust me; there are real dangers on the road ahead.

Here are a few:

Inflation is here for good.
Chaos is everywhere.
Rents are skyrocketing.
Wall Street and crypto are being manipulated more than ever.

Just like in Monopoly, the victors of the financial game ahead will be the ones owning the assets that everyone else will be paying to use.

So what do you do?

Invest in REAL demand in assets that you can understand (not crypto).
Invest in inflation-insulated investments.
Invest for income to buy back your time and your freedom.

Look, I cannot be more clear: Stop watching, reading, and getting caught up in all the financial porn of the day – CNBC, Bloomberg, Reddit, Twitter, and those best-selling “financial self-help” programs.

Stop focusing on just getting through the day and collecting your $200 every time you pass GO. You will be the one always paying someone else to use their assets when it should be the other way around.

Be like the property owners in Monopoly. Invest like the wealthiest who do not follow the news or hype.