The Safest Way to Play it Safe While Still Growing Your Money

By Richard Greenbaum

This short book will not be marketed to the public, but should be required reading. The concepts presented are not unique, but it does bring the information together for a person to understand and further educate themselves, to help change their financial destinies. The world changed starting in 1933 and ending in 1971 when the US dollar broke

• Language: English
• Publisher: BG&EG Holdings
• Release date: Aug 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578965727

Book preview

Published August 2021

FORWARD:

I would like to thank my wife, and children, who have put up with my intense interest in financial markets for the last few decades, and allowed me to do my best to educate them in this area. It is my sincere hope that this information will help enable my children, and their future families to have a happy, healthy, and peaceful life always, without worrying about things they can’t control, such as the financial markets. I hope one day my descendants, who don’t even know me, look back and think that I was the one who planted the first tree on this journey. I would also like to thank the countless people I’ve worked with, and advised me, over the many years, who have allowed me to thrive and flourish in my career. I would like to thank my brother, who has taken his own time to read and criticize the many prior versions of this book, leading to a much better end result. And last, I’d like to thank my career mentor, and his wife. They have advised me, that despite having very different views on some of what I have written as to my personal approach to wealth management, they have stressed their belief that what I am advocating in this book, is while sound, a very conservative and a very low risk strategy, which they agree is fine. But they quickly add that, in efficient and functioning investment markets, and even with market volatility, low risk strategies correlate to lower returns over time. Individuals need to first understand and then consider the level of risk they are willing to take, and then what is an acceptable return for that risk.

I have 5 rules that I believe are a very conservative guide to achieve financial stability which are summarized below, as they will all work together to do what the title of this book promises: 

Focus on your career to generate your earnings. You are probably your own best financial asset. 

Contribute to your 401k or government plan, preferably a Roth, to not pay taxes later on your compounded money. Invest up to the company match to start. Then to the maximum when you’re able to. When you are close to retirement convert this money to a simple deferred or immediate annuity. 

Start a dividend paying whole life insurance policy with your savings in a mutual life insurance company. Effectively take the banking function back under yourself and recoup all the lost opportunity costs with your earned income by continuously compounding your money without interruption. You will learn money has a cost. 

Protect yourself with insurance for long term disability, long term care, medical and dental coverage, and create a Will and Estate plan. 

Have catastrophe insurance in the form of gold and/or silver coins that you keep in your possession. This has worked for thousands of years in severe crisis. These you hope are never used and pass down generationally. Effectively they are used if the above rules fail all at the same time. 

The financial concepts in this book are taken from some of the experts: 

John Bogle, Nelson Nash, Mark Spitznagel, and Mike Maloney, whose books I recommend for further reading at the end. Sometimes the expert’s books aren’t the easiest of writings to understand, so be patient and don’t give up, as the teachings are invaluable in providing a different way to think about finance for the very conservative individual. My intent is to bring you the concepts and action plan, but I am not a substitute for these experts and industry game changers. Some of the information that follows does fly in the face of conventional methods. These rules that I discuss, promote certain guaranteed outcomes and protection throughout one’s life. Please understand that I am a technologist, and I have no vested interest in anything I mention. I am not a financial planner or trained in any way to offer advice, but for those who take the time to read this book, my sincere hope is you will be able to have a non-emotional guide to safely grow, and have access in tax favorable ways, to your hard earned money. My intent is to give you my back story, and tell you honestly what I personally am doing with my money, based on my education and personal experiences. You MUST read the books I reference, and reread, until you fully understand the thought processes and financial simplification they can provide.  Do not just blindly follow my opinions, and execution of my own plan. Otherwise when someone tells you this doesn’t make sense, you won’t have confidence in your response. And perhaps my plan isn’t right for you.

This very short book is unique in that it starts with the premise that YOU are probably your best financial asset, and the need for families to discuss money in as simple a way as possible. Then, it brings together years of my personal education and passion, with a safe, actionable, and non-emotional plan, to serve you and your families for generations to come, in a way where you are in control. Diversification (ie: not putting all your eggs in one basket) is the key, but not in the traditional sense discussed in every book I have read where it is recommended that you diversify among different investment asset classes (there’s nothing wrong with this approach). In this book, diversification is between Savings and Investing, with a heavy emphasis on the former. Some people say in today’s times, cash is trash, earning no interest. If you’re a billionaire this might be true, but for the rest of us common folks, when the chips are down, cash is king! The real magic happens when you have access to cash, and can take advantage of great investment opportunities when they arise. In the words of my wife, you just want to keep what’s yours.

I have not seen this written out so simply anywhere in terms of a complete and different