investments lose value

When Your Investments Lose Value

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Here is a question about your retirement plan and when your investments lose value. Whether it’s your 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA, or other financial accounts. It could be stocks, mutual funds, REITs or other investments. How much better off would you be today if you had never experienced losses from the last market crash? Or any crashes for that matter? I mean, folks that work with us at Crown Haven, they’ve been investing some of them 35, 40, 45, 50+ years, sometimes. That means they experienced at least at the very least 1987, the late 90s tech bubbles, 911, great recession 2007, 2008, and March 2009. Most lately 2015, the 2018 20% loss at the end of December. Lastly, the Coronavirus correction in early 2020 knocked 33% off the Dow. That’s eight different crashes in the matter of what 87 to 2019 2020. How much better would you be off today? If you’d never experienced losses from any of those? I believe you know the answer?

I want you to time travel back to when you were a child. Your very first roller coaster now when you hear a roller coaster when it’s being pulled up the track, you can hear a clicking noise, can’t you? Now each time you hear a click, there’s a mechanism that locks that coaster so it can’t go backward. If the machine pulls the coaster up, the track fails, the coaster stops, but it won’t reverse.

In our retire shield strategies, this is called an annual reset. Any market growth pulls your money up that steep track, and each year, you hear a click that sound is your money being locked in place. So it can never go backward due to market losses. You only go up from market gains, and you never go backward from a market loss. Every year your account value gets locked in place.

So how is that different from investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, variable annuities, muni bonds, REITs, or other risk-based investments? In risk-based investments, you don’t hear the clicks. If the market machine breaks, you get thrown in reverse. It dumps you over onto the other side when you get pulled to the top. In a risk-based investment, there are no clicking noises, no gains are being locked in. Instead, you hear nervous laughter on the way up and screaming on the way down.

So the question is, what do you hear our clients saying about our RetireSHIELD® retirement plan? If you hear anything at all, it’s a quiet sigh of relief. Look at our reviews online and you will see our clients love us. They’re only growing, they’re never losing. No nervous laughter and no screaming.

Our clients get to keep their gains, and their account balance doesn’t decrease one penny due to a market loss because their coaster only goes up. We’ve done this for 1,000s of clients protected hundreds of millions of dollars. Not one of those clients has ever lost money in the market with our RetireSHIELD® secure income strategies. It’s more like an escalator that may stop now, but it never goes backward. Escalators are also safe because they can never break. They can just become stairs and then you just walk up.

If you want to learn more about the security our RetireSHIELD® plan offers. Schedule a virtual or in-person Free consultation today

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Listen to Casey Marx, Smart Money episode “Definition of Insanity, Cliff Young Shuffle, Fake News and Underliving Your Retirement” on the player below or on your Apple Podcast App or Android device.

Financial Planning Insanity Defined

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You have seen over and over again that every few years, the market crashes. Sometimes it crashes hard. For most of your life, you didn’t really care. In fact, if you’re like me, I wanted the market to crash back in those days. Why? Because it was a buying opportunity. Besides, I knew the market would recover. And I was young enough that I wasn’t going to use the money anytime soon.

Remember the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. The truth is that nothing has changed. Your portfolio was at risk when you were 25 years old, just as much as it’s at risk today. So what’s the difference?

Your age, your time period for any new recovery. The very thing that makes putting your retirement money in the stock market bonds, real estate variable annuities, or any other variable investment crazy is that you’re doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. I can tell you, the results will not be any different. Your investments will go up and your investments will go down. They will do great, then they will crash. What is different is that now it can happen when you are near or in retirement. At the very same time you need your money to live. If you’re at or near retirement, it’s time to stop the insanity and look at an option that’s appropriate for retirement goals.

If want to learn how to stop the insanity with your retirement, we invite you to work with our financial planning team. Through our RetireSHIELD® program we can provide you with a lifetime of income you will never outlive.

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Listen to Casey Marx, Smart Money episode “Definition of Insanity, Cliff Young Shuffle, Fake News and Underliving Your Retirement” on the player below or on your Apple Podcast App or Android device.

Misconceptions About Retirement Planning

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I need to share with you misconceptions about retirement planning and how people think of their retirement. Many people have been taught by educators and even financial planners to think of their retirement dollars as a pile of money. For example, you might have $200,000 in your retirement account right now and be thinking that to retire, that you need $500,000 or some other made-up figure. Now I have to tell you that this type of thinking ruins more people’s retirement than our volatile stock market and all of the scam artists combined. It’s not about how big that number is. It’s about how much income you have.

I know people that have almost nothing in their retirement accounts and are living very comfortably in their golden years. So the question becomes how do they do that? The concept is called passive residual income. Now passive residual income is money that comes to you every single month, regardless of how much money you have in your bank, or your ability to work. It comes from not thinking of your money as an account value, but rather as an income value.

To the extent that you work, you have a secure source of income, but when you retire, you need to replace that secure source of income with secure sources. So that could be social security. It could be a pension if you’re lucky enough to have one. However, most people are going to have what we call an income gap that they’re going to have to fill from their asset base or their retirement accounts.

Now the question becomes, do we want to look at those assets those retirement accounts as one big pile of cash. Do we want to leave that pile of cash in the world’s greatest Casino? The stock market… susceptible to upward and downward volatile market swings? Or do we want to use that pile of cash and transform it into something that will provide you with the same reliable income similar to what you had while working?

So it’s essential to think that your assets are an income-producing vehicle rather than just a number in an account. Now, some sources of passive residual income can be commercially leased property that pays you a positive cash flow month after month. Other people have oil wells that pay per month royalties, then there are those of you who have become my clients at Crown Haven.

Over the last decade, I’ve shown my clients at Crown Haven, how to take their IRA 401k or other retirement accounts and turn them into income accounts that will grow until they’re ready to retire so they can enjoy it for the rest of their life guaranteed. Our mission statement at Crown Haven is to ensure our clients worry less about their money and spend more time enjoying their lives. And that begins with building a secure foundation for income. My customized RetireSHIELD®retirement plan will help you to change the way you think about your retirement money.

If you want to do something, we invite you to work with our financial planning team and open an account that will give you up to a 10% bonus on your initial deposit up to 7% compounded interest. Most importantly, we will help provide you with a lifetime of income you will never outlive. You can even make sure your lifetime income lasts for the life of your spouse. Part of our RetireSHIELD® Wouldn’t it give you peace of mind to know that your spouse also won’t outlast your money?

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Listen to Casey Marx, Smart Money episode “Smart Money – Sledding Analogy, Guessing Game, Noble Soldier, and ABCs” on the player below or on your Apple Podcast App or Android device.

Is Your Retirement Money A Parked Car?

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I was watching a car auction on the TV the other day. One beautiful car after another went over the auction block, some selling for more than $100,000. The commentators kept on referring to the cars as either a driver or a trailer queen. Now for those of you who are not familiar with classic cars, let me explain. A driver is a vehicle you can use to drive daily. A trailer queen is a car you don’t drive because you’re afraid to use it.

How do you see your retirement? Are you going to use it and enjoy the next phase of your life or be afraid to use it? Is it polished and shiny sitting in the corner? Your nest egg will be safe, but will it be doing anything for you?

Inflation and missed opportunity can have a deteriorating effect on your retirement like a parked car. There’s nothing wrong with CDs, and money market accounts for the money you need for emergencies. In fact, every time I meet with someone, my first and foremost priority is to make sure they have money set aside for emergencies. If they don’t, then I have to respectfully let them know that I can’t work with them until they do, I believe having emergency money on the side. Many of you are treating your retirement money like your emergency money. It’s time to make that money working.

If you have a broker, he’s probably giving you the same message. He’s probably telling you that you need to keep your money active and working for you. Let me be very clear, so you don’t get confused. When a broker tells you to get your money active, he’s most likely telling you to put your money at risk. That’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m telling you is that you need to get your money participating in contractually guaranteed returns without any market risk. In other words, I want to put your car in drive, but at the same time, keep your car from crashing. Don’t let your retirement get into an accident or rust away sitting in the garage. Let’s work together to put your retirement into action, providing you with guaranteed growth and a lifetime of income.

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Listen to Casey Marx, Smart Money episode “Smart Money – Parked Car, Deal or No Deal, Black Swan, Sledding Analogy” on the player below or on your Apple Podcast App or Android device.

Playing It Too Safe With Retirement Planning?

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Are you someone playing it too safe with retirement planning? In our financial planning, we see many people at or close to retirement spending way too much time being worried about what’s going to happen with their retirement money instead of planning what they’re going to do with it. The entire concept of retirement is the phase of your life where you are supposed to enjoy the fruits of all of the hard work. Unfortunately, many of you spend your mornings and days reading or watching the news trying to figure out how to keep your dreams from being killed by the market taxes, inflation, and political events.

More recently, most people have been worried about the Coronavirus. Some of you have decided enough is enough. You ignore this part of your life and stick your head in the sand like an ostrich, hoping your investments will get better. Many of you have your entire life savings parked in money markets, CDs, or even under your mattress. After all, it’s safe, right? Well, you are right, it’s safe, but it’s doing nothing to guarantee you a lifetime of income.

It’s our mission to point you in the right direction based on your goals. That should be every financial advisor’s job. You see, there’s one thing that I know that many financial professionals don’t. I know that your retirement money belongs to you, not me. Working together, we can secure your guaranteed growth and a lifetime of income you can’t outlive. You can do something else, work with us or do nothing.

If you want to do something, we invite you to work with our financial planning team and open an account that will give you up to a 10% bonus on your initial deposit up to 7% compounded interest. Most importantly, we will help provide you with a lifetime of income you will never outlive. You can even make sure your lifetime income lasts for the life of your spouse. Part of our RetireSHIELD Wouldn’t it give you peace of mind to know that your spouse also won’t outlast your money?

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Listen to Casey Marx, Smart Money episode “Smart Money – No Losses, Annuities, Guessing Game, Black Swan” on the player below or on your Apple Podcast App or Android device.

Longevity Annuities For Retirement

How Much Money Do You Have In The Market?

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How much money do you currently have in the market? All of it? 50% 80%? Did you make a conscious decision to have that particular percentage exposed to market risk? How did you decide stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, bonds, annuities, or maybe a professionally managed wealth management account? Or… Did it just sort of happen?

Why would I be asking this question? I say it all the time, markets go up, and the markets go down. So how much of your life savings/retirement is exposed to market risk is a very important consideration. That is why I strongly encourage everyone to think of their money in terms of red money, and green money.

Now, those terms might sound a little childish or funny, but I believe they help us understand a very important concept. Let me explain. Red money is money that we are willing to expose to market risk, and we are willing to do this in hopes of a higher return. We accept the possibility of losses even significant losses in hopes of greater gains. Red money is exposed to upside, and downside market risk. Now green money is about safety and security. With green money, we are not willing to accept the risk of losses. So we’ are willing to accept a lower return in exchange. Green money does not have downside market risk. So if red money is exposed to upside, and downside, and green money has only upside, which one is better?

That is probably the wrong question to be asking, because neither one is inherently good or bad. It all depends. The very important questions we should be asking ourselves are these, what percentage of my money should be in red money? And what percentage of my money should be in green money?

Now, if you are at or near retirement, you should ask yourself if any of your money should be in red money? Can you afford to lose any of your retirement funds? Would you rather take two steps forward and three steps back or just take one step at a time and never take a step back?

Hear the rest of my thoughts and listen to the Smart Money podcast below.

If you believe you could better navigate retirement with the help of a team that has 40+ years of experience with financial and retirement planning in the Indianapolis area I would like to invite you to schedule a complimentary meeting to see how we can help.

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Smart Money Podcast Resources

How Do You Measure Investing Success?

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How Do You Measure Investing Success? I was talking to one of my listeners the other day, and we’re gonna call him Joe. He was mentioning how his friend made a 22% return in the stock market last year. For many reasons, I usually don’t give a statement like that much attention. I don’t even ask what they were invested in, because claims like that are rarely true. The 22% return rarely accounts for fees, taxes, other things that bring the real return down. People love to talk about a 22% return in reference to one investment they have with just a portion of their money.

Someone has a million dollars and invests 50 grand into an investment they get a 22% return on, guess what they talk about at parties. So a 22% return on 5% of their money might make a good story over some cocktails. But mathematically, it’s really not that impressive.

More importantly, people never talk about the money they lost. They definitely don’t talk about the total return they made on all of their money.

For some reason, this time, I didn’t let it slide. I had what you would call an impulsive epiphany and asked Joe if his friends spent all the money as soon as the year ended. He asked me, what do you mean? I asked Joe again. Is the money gone? Did he spend it? Joe said no, I don’t think so. So I asked Is it still invested where he made the 22% return? He said, I don’t know, but I think so.

I asked a question that Joe will never forget. I said, Joe, then how do you know he made a 22% return? The phone went silent. I could hear the gears turning in his head. And then quietly, humbly, Joe answered. I don’t know, Casey.

Some of you have already figured out why a 22% return is not a 22% return if it’s still invested. Let’s illustrate this with some other questions. If you’re married, and you have one really good year of married life, is that a successful marriage? If you have children, and you win father or mother of the year for one year in that child’s life, does that make you a successful parent? If you have a job, and one year you exceed in every expectation your boss had for you. Does that mean that you’ve had a successful career?

Hear the rest of my thoughts on how to measure investing success, the purpose of money, and the guessing game by listening to my Smart Money podcast below.

If you are one of those people that don’t want to see their entire life’s efforts disappear overnight, because of something you have no control over. If you still want to grow your money with generous growth opportunities with the help of a team that has 40+ years of experience with financial and retirement planning in the Indianapolis area I would like to invite you to schedule a complimentary meeting to see how we can help.

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Smart Money Podcast Casey Marx

Red And Green Retirement Money

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This week’s Smart Money podcast is about red money and green money and how you should diversify your financial portfolio to prepare for retirement.

Here’s a question, how much of your money is currently in the market? All of it? 50%? 80%? Did you make a conscious decision to have that particular percentage exposed to market risk? Or did it sort of just happen? Why would I be asking this? Now, as I’ve said before, the markets go up, and the markets go down. So how much of your life savings, that is exposed to market risk, is a very important consideration. That’s why I strongly encourage everyone to think of their money in terms of red money, and green money.

Now, those terms might sound a little childish or funny, but I believe they help us understand a very important concept. So let’s explain this. Red money is money that we’re willing to expose to market risk, we’re willing to do this in hopes of a higher return. We accept the possibility of losses, even significant losses, in hopes of greater gains. Red money is exposed to upside, and downside market risk. Now green money is about safety and security. With green money, we’re not willing to accept the risk of losses. So, we’re willing to accept a lower return in exchange. Green money does not have downside market risk. So if red money is exposed to upside, and downside, and green money has only upside, which one is better? Well, that’s probably the wrong question to be asking because neither one is inherently good, or bad. It all depends.

The very important questions we should be asking ourselves are these: What percentage of my money should be in red money? And what percentage of my money should be in green money? Now, if you’re at or near retirement, you should ask yourself if any of your money should be in red money? Can you afford to lose any of your retirement funds? Would you rather take two steps forward, and three steps back? Or just take one step at a time, and never take a step back? If you’d like to learn how to step forward and never backward, call for my free, Baby Boomer Retirement Boot Camp book, and my free RetireSHIELD® kit. Both of these could change your financial life for the better.

The guy that sits down at the blackjack table and freaks out when he loses, should not have been betting with that much money. The guy that sits down at the blackjack table, and loses, and gets up, and has a great evening for the rest of the night, you know it didn’t matter to him that he lost the money. So if you’re at all concerned when the market drops, shouldn’t be in red money. You don’t go to Vegas and put $500,000 on red. You just don’t do that. So it makes it easy to decide, you have to ask yourself this question. If I were to lose some, most, or all of my money in my accounts, would I be upset? If the answer is yes, then your money should be in green money.

Let me tell you what red money is good for… the young and the rich. Now, the young have time on their side, they can afford to lose money in the hopes that they’ll make it back in the future. The rich can afford to lose a little bit of their money and still live comfortably. But I’ll tell you, even our clients that have means, the folks $5 million, $6 million, they don’t want to lose it either. Because the reality is, if you’re at or near retirement, you should definitely be in the green, you don’t have a lot of time to make it back. Green money is money that cannot be lost due to market declines.

Many people, economists, well-known advisors believe that all retirement money should be green money. Personally, I think that makes a lot of sense. Many people I work with, regardless of age, want 100% green money because they know they can have upside market growth without accepting any downside losses. And they understand math. They’ve looked at it. If you go forwards and never backwards, you’re gonna go farther, quicker, than if you get a huge gain and then take half of that away. Isn’t it time for you to go green with your retirement?

Not only can you have some upside growth without any downside market risk, but you can get a first year bonus of 10% on your entire deposit, all your money, just for opening the account. You can also lock in guaranteed growth of up to 7% on the lifetime income account. How about that? No downside market risk, a bonus, and guaranteed growth on the lifetime income account of up to 7%. Contact us today and I’ll arrange to show you how it works.