“The two greatest enemies of the equity fund investor are expenses and emotions.” John Bogle

In This Edition
Spending Your Way to Wealth(s)
10th Annual Retiremeet Conference
Latest Podcast
Testimonial

If you look closely at the educational material we offer you will note a focus on teaching investors how to manage a variety of risks that can lead to much higher returns over a lifetime.

In John Bogle’s famous quote “expenses” is the first of the “two greatest enemies” investors face. There are at least 6 major expenses that investors can manage and those can easily cut your long term returns by more than 50%.

The obvious expenses are the commissions (loads) to buy and/or sell funds, the management expenses to manage the fund, the operating expenses to pay all the other vendors (accountants, attorneys, banks, custodians, distribution of information to shareholders), the costs of turnover (buying and selling of company shares in the portfolio), taxes on the fund distribution to shareholders (interest, dividends and capital gains) and taxes when the shareholder eventually sells shares at a profit.

These 6 expenses could literally reduce your equity fund annual returns by more than 3%. A 3% reduction, from 10% to 7% during the accumulation period and 6% to 3% during distributions could reduce your lifetime return by more than 70%.

Our Foundation is very good at making these threats to your financial future obvious. These return reducers are easy to identify, explain and measure. The Securities and Exchange Commission requires the reporting, the U.S. Government tells each of us how much we must pay in taxes and Morningstar (and others) record the outcome.

On the other hand the other enemy, “emotions,” are not easy to measure. Our work mentions the emotional challenges but with the exception of periodically discussing the importance of dollar cost averaging and buy and hold, we don’t make a major attempt at dealing with the emotional aspects of investing.

Our Foundation has three people on our Board of Directors. I think most of you know two of the directors: Chris Pedersen and me. But Paul Heys, our third director, is not directly involved in the day to day work of the Foundation so you may not be familiar with him.

There are three things about the other Paul that are important. He has been around the financial industry almost as long as I have, he has been educating investors almost as long as I have and his educational focus is on the behavioral aspects of investing.

Several years ago he wrote a book about the topic. "Spending Your Way to Wealth(s)" is a terrific read on the topic investor how to deal with the emotions of investing. Plus, he has recently agreed to make it free in a pdf format.

If you want a copy immediately you can get it here. But I hope all of you will join Paul and me in an upcoming podcast/video. In our conversation Paul and I will discuss how to close the gap between investor returns and fund returns.

If you have the time I hope you will send me (paul@paulmerriman.com) any questions you would like us to address on our podcast.

10th Annual Retiremeet Conference

I am thrilled to be part of the 10th Annual Retiremeet Anniversary.

They have stopped taking reservations for the in person presentation a they have over 300 guests signed up but there is unlimited online access. Here is the link to sign up. They are charging a $5 fee for the online access with all the proceeds ARE going to non profits focused on financial literacy in public schools. ( For the record our Foundation will not receive any of that donation.)

The second is I really enjoy making live presentations. It is way more fun being there to get the feedback that only a live audience can give.

Finally I get to address the topic with as much gusto as I want. If you watch this past Retiremeet presentation on "Habits and Attitudes of Successful Investors” I think you’ll get an idea of why Retiremeet is so special to me.

Latest Podcast- 10 Investment Decisions “Guaranteed” to Improve Your Financial Future

Paul looks at the guaranteed advantages of 10 different investment decisions. He also challenges one of the oldest claims about our expectations for returns.

During the presentation he discusses the important differences between investment success and investor success. He encourages all listeners to get the free pdf of Paul Heys book, “⁠Spending Your Way to Wealth(s).”⁠

Testimonial

"Thank you, Chris, for your working with the Merriman Foundation to educate investors like myself about asset allocation and small cap value - it has really motivated me to learn more about factor investing."

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In This EditionSpending Your Way to Wealth(s)10th Annual Retiremeet ConferenceLatest PodcastTestimonial

In This Edition
Spending Your Way to Wealth(s)
10th Annual Retiremeet Conference
Latest Podcast
Testimonial

Closing the gap between investor returns and investment returns