Want to know how to TRIPLE the returns Wall Street offers for that part of your portfolio that absolutely, positively must stay safe?  I’m Bryan Ellis.  I’ll tell you how to do that EASILY right now in Episode #244 of Self Directed Investor Talk. ----- Hello, Self-Directed Investor Nation!  Welcome to the podcast of record for savvy self-directed investors like you, where each and every day, you learn how to DECLARE INDEPENDENCE from Wall Street as we teach you how to find, understand and PROFIT from exceptional ALTERNATIVE asset investment opportunities! It’s Monday again and I don’t know about you… I love every moment of the weekend, but I definitely look forward to Monday morning, too… it’s good to be back at it with you today! Ok, let’s jump right in.  I’m going to tell you how to TRIPLE what Wall Street offers for money you need to keep safe.  What’s more, you’re going to understand it perfectly and quite easily, before the end of this show. So here’s the deal:  Sooner or later, everybody gets to a point or a life circumstance where you need to make sure that money you have now, you’ll definitely have later.  Yes, of course, we all expect to never lose on an investment, but I think you understand what I’m saying.  The way you invest when you’re well into retirement years, for example, could look very, very different from the way you invest in your 20’s and 30’s. So how do you make THAT money – the “safe” money – continue to grow while minimizing risk? And what would be even BETTER is to enjoy rates of return that are MULTIPLES of what Wall Street offers. Turns out, we can do that.  So first, what does Wall Street recommend for low-risk investing? The primary choices are: Standard bank savings accounts & CD’s Money market accounts Treasuries Historically, all of those are quite safe, and that’s a great thing.  But there are two additional things we need to consider about them:  Their RATES of RETURN and whether there are BETTER OPTIONS. First:  Rates of Return.  I just looked at Wells Fargo’s CD rates, and right now, they range from an interest rate of ZERO up to a WHOPPING 0.55%.  That’s not 55%, that’s 55 one hundreds of ONE percent.  Savings account rates are even lower. Then there’s Money Market Accounts, which are basically just a checking account where your money is invested into a collection of high-quality bonds, like government treasuries, municipal bonds, etc.  I stopped by BankRate.com to see what was available, and money market accounts reach into rare air… one of them reached as high as 1.15%  Big time! And then there are bonds issued by Uncle Sam, aka Treasuries.  While most options are at or below 1%, BankRate tells us the ten-year constant maturity option reaches all the way to a bit over 2%.  Yowzha! So now we know the rates of return.  Thus the question becomes:  Is there a better alternative? Well, yes. For context, understand this:  Every one of those 3 “safe” investments that the conventional financial world loves – CD’s, money market funds and treasuries – every single one of them is a “debt” investment.  In other words, they’re just loans that you’re making to somebody.  In the case of CD’s, you’re making an unsecured loan to a bank.  In the case of money market funds, you’re making unsecured loans to the underlying bond issuers.  And in the case of government treasuries, you’re making unsecured loans to the US federal government. So let’s do better, shall we? We’ll imagine you’ve got $100,000 to invest that you know you’re going to need in 5 years.  My humble, but entirely correct, opinion of what to do here is this:  Invest your money in DEBT… yes.  That makes sense because a smartly-structured debt investment can have one thing that makes your money very secure:  COLLATERAL.  Collateral is what you have to fall back on if the loan you make doesn’t get paid, so this is CENTRAL to keeping your money safe. But what’s conveniently missing from CD’s, from Money Market funds and from Treasuries?  Yo