It’s my belief that your financial success is so much more than just investments. That’s why I named my company “Generosity Wealth Management” instead of “Generosity Investment Management”. I feel 80% of acquiring and preserving wealth is behavior, not chasing after the home run investment.

A colleague here at the office said “funny, the harder you work the luckier you seem to get”. I couldn’t agree more.

My video this week is about the importance of finding the “one thing” that you’re doing that is holding you back from financial success. It’s also about the “one thing” that you’ve done to make yourself successful–continue doing that!

Link to blog I reference in my video

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there, Mike Brady with Generosity Wealth Management, here in Boulder, Colorado. And I this week I want to talk about finding your one thing!

And I was inspired to do this video by a friend who writes a blog, which I think is just wonderful and I’ll post the link up on this video and in my newsletter. But he was quoting City Slickers, where Curley, who’s this kind of older cowboy, and he’s asked what the, you know, what the secret what is the secret of life is, of happiness, and he says, “it’s just one thing.” And the person says, “What is that one thing?” And he’s like, “that’s for you to figure out.”

And it’s my belief that so much of being successful in life and being successful financially is behavioral. You need to find out what you’re doing if you’re already successful, if you’re well on the way to saving for your retirement or you’ve retired, and there’s just, you know, you’re going to be fine for the rest of your life, and because you’ve accumulated a good amount of money for your retirement, then continue doing what it is that’s gotten you this far. If, on the other hand, you are hoping to retire, or you look at your finances and you say to yourself, “gosh, what am I doing wrong? Why is it that I’m making one hundred thousand dollars a year and I have a bunch of credit card debt and I have a piddly saving, and I just can’t seem to get ahead…” Well, you know what, it’s probably not that you’re making the wrong investments, which, that might be one of them. But really you have to ask, why are you spending too much money? OK? And so, inside your life there is probably one, maybe even two things that you’re doing that’s holding you back. You’ve got to figure out what it is.

And I can help you find that out, if you need some guidance. But what is that one thing that’s going to make you successful? What is that one thing that has made you successful? And it’s probably not this investment or that investment, but it was something that you did behaviorally. It was your attitude, it was the relationship that you had with money. It was something that was probably not that sexy. You know everyone likes to talk about this stock and that stock, you know, around the old barbeque, neighborhood barbeque, but you know what really makes you successful, many times, is something that you’re doing, consistently. And you’ve got to figure that out for yourself, and if you need some help, some guidance, in figuring out what that is, what could hopefully propel you towards reaching your goals, please give me a call and we can try to uncover that.

Mike Brady, Generosity Wealth Management, in Boulder. I’m serving the Boulder, Denver, Longmont area in Colorado- although I have clients in probably ten or elven different states. If you’re in another state and you’re wondering if I’m interested in having you as a client, the answer is, let’s have that conversation and I can always get registered in that state. 303.747.6455.

You have a wonderful, wonderful week! I’ll talk to you later, bye bye now.

]]> http://www.generositywealth.com/videos/find-your-one-thing/feed/ 0 http://www.generositywealth.com/monetary-theory/japan-slowly-awakening-to-debt-situation/ http://www.generositywealth.com/monetary-theory/japan-slowly-awakening-to-debt-situation/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:58:34 +0000 GWM http://www.generositywealth.com/?p=1444 One of my goals in my newsletter is to bring to your awareness things that I find interesting or alarming.

The article below is in the “alarming” category.

Japan borows more than it raises in taxes, and its debt amounts to two years’ worth of Japan’s economic output.

Japan has the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world. Half of the country’s tax income is directed to simply servicing it’s debt.

In addition to Europe and China (which I’ve written about in the past), Japan is one of the next huge players we’ll be unraveling in the future. I have great concerns about investing in Japan, and a Euro-Pacific investment is the most troublesome to me.

Be careful if you have that allocation in your portfolio.

Click for the Full Article

The most recent Greek agreement is a joke (in my opinion) and makes a significant number of overly optimistic assumptions about the future.

As I view it, there is no way the European Monetary Union can survive in it’s current form, and definitely not with Greece in there.

Where is the money to be made for investors like us?

I continue to advise a higher allocation to the United States and avoid Greece and the whole of Europe for at least 2012.

Open Questions Surrounding the Second Greek Bailout

A recent study found that cells deep in the brain calculate a sort of moving average of past events, giving the greatest weight to the most recent outcomes.

So, even after a long term upward trend, or long term downward trend, a few months in the opposite direction can prompt impulsive investor decisions towards or away from stocks.

Avoid the knee-jerk reactions.

This is Your Brain on a Hot Streak

This post only makes sense if you watch the Simpsons or have kids that watch the Simpsons. I’m 43 years old now and I’ve been watching it since I was about 18 and in college. Hard to believe it’s been on that long.

Anyway, the fictional Duff Beer is now available in the UK. If anyone is going over there soon, can you buy me some?

This is to be expected.

As an investor, one of the reasons we diversify and modify our allocations throughout the year is to try to minimize these fluctuations.

What should you do when there is one of these expected declines? It depends on the situation at that time.

Please click on the video below for a 4 minute discussion I give on this topic……

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there, Mike Brady with Generosity Wealth Management, here in Boulder, Colorado. And I this week I want to talk about intra-year declines, and frankly, the correlation they have with the end of the year returns. Because, I talked about this just a little bit when I did my end of the year video (kind of beginning of the year video) where I said that on balance, I’m optimistic for 2012. And at that time I said, “listen, it’s common for there to be volatility,” but volatility has increased in the last couple of years and I believe that volatility will continue going forward.

It is common for there to be, within the year (intra-year), declines that we seem to forget after the year is over. Negative, kind of from the high to the bottom, within a year of you know, eight, nine, even double digits, but that doesn’t mean the year is going to be horrible. So as 2012 unfolds, we’re going to find some times where it’s not as high as it used to be, OK? That the market has declined, and that is part of the process, part of the journey and the travel. Now that being said, the reason why we diversify, and we adjust our allocations throughout the year is to try to minimize the impact that we have. But we know that it’s going to happen.

So the question that we ask ourselves at that time is, “why is this going down, you know, why is the market going down like that?” Is it event driven, where there’s a lot of emotion around it? Is it value driven? What’s the cause of it and at that time, do we believe it will continue to go down, or do we think that this is just going to be one of those normal, you know, fluctuations, and staying invested is the right thing to do? I don’t know what we’re going to do at that time, but I’m preparing you right now for that, you know, almost inevitability. OK?

I’m going to throw up on [screen] here… here are some intra-year returns and then declines and then the annual return. And you’ll notice even in the last two or three years, a twenty-eight percent decline in ’09, sixteen in 2010, and even last year there’s a nine-teen percent decline and it ended up the year, and that’s on the S & P 500, which is an unmanaged index, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the year ended on a decline.

So, you know, one thing I want to talk about is as well, that when I say that I’m more optimistic because I look at the value of the market and I believe that the prices are…, I believe it’s an underpriced market right now, that does not mean that I discount all of the negatives out there. The way I like to think of it is, there’s a scale, there’s all these things on the negative side, and all these things on the positive side, and which way is it going to tilt? And it is still acknowledging that there are negative things. And someone else, another analyst, might take the same data and say, “no, I’m going to weigh all the negatives a little bit more than the positives.” And so there are always positives, there’re always negatives out there and the question is- how do you weigh them? And which one is a little bit more than the other? And of course, you might adjust your opinion as the year unfolds.

So anyway, that’s one thing I wanted to talk about this week. I hope that you’re doing well. The Super Bowl was a couple of days ago, and frankly I’m recording this right as we’re going into the weekend so I don’t know who won but you do, so hopefully your team won.

Mike Brady, Generosity Wealth Management; I’m a comprehensive, holistic, wealth management firm, with tax planning, estate planning, investment management, retirement planning, I really try to do all of those in order to help my clients meet their goals. Mike Brady, Generosity Wealth Management-303.747.6455.

You have a wonderful week! I’ll talk to you later, bye bye now.

Participation Rate of the work force at 30 year lows. Bad.

In my opinion, we’re at a time in history where there is a dramatic shift in the employment make-up, skills needed, globalization, etc.

This relatively short term (1 to 10 years) transition will not be without pain for many, but the market does eventually adjust.

Click for the Full Article

Here’s a great interactive comparison website.

CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE

See graph to right.

Europe, China, Deleveraging, etc. are the forces against this we have to watch out for.

Admit it, how many of you had one of these when you were a kid? How about your kids?