Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

shonette smith — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:05:07 GMT

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

mei — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 01:40:10 GMT

Can’t state enough how important the sacrifices that go into wealth creation are.

Curious if anyone has caught this book yet? “The Richest Man in Town” by W Randall Jones. I’ve read half of it so far and let me tell you it is well worth it. Would like to hear what everyone else thought of it?

www.richestmanintown.com

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

Don Sabatini — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:11:32 GMT

Very nice article.

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

F Masika — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:12:42 GMT

Okay, no need to judge anyone on this blog; just help them understand the phrase. Then you'd have taught someone a good thing for a lifetime; and you'll be rewarded indirectly.

Investing is not easy for many folks. Be lucky you have, others don't have much

Peace

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

Fortune Masika — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:06:08 GMT

Perfect timing for Yogi's message. Specifically though, where do we invest so as to get huge returns when the markets wakes up?

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

John — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:43:03 GMT

Yogi had more foresight than most of us. People in the Mortgage arena have forgotten the years past when interest rates were 18% and more depending on who you were dealing with at that time. Now the rates are going down but so is the sellers power and it is a buyers market. Every thing in life is cyclical you are born you die that is a given every thing in between is mash potatoes and gray. Live smart and be happy for every day that is given to you between cycles.

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

Arlene Starr — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:22:45 GMT

I'm long retired and wished I had skipped some immediate pleasure expenses along the way and invested wisely so I can better enjoy my retirement. Home maintenance and real estate taxes consume a large part of my savings.

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

Jeffrey Austin — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:11:31 GMT

Investing for the "long-term" works if you have a long term left. Older retired people don't. We don't even buy green bananas.

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

Elwood P. Suggins — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:31:16 GMT

The problem is that 90% of this country's investors have a knowledge about investing below the mean.

re: Yogi Berra's 7 secrets to building wealth

Richard — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:21:19 GMT

couturegal,

Take some, or a lot of money out of your house and invest it. You'll have more liquidity at worst, and you'll probably make more per year investing than what the money you borrowed against it costs you, especially considering the income tax deduction on mortgage interest. This is known as arbitrage - borrowing cheap money to invest in higher returning instruments.

Next, read _The Four Pillars of Investing_ by Wiliam Bernstein. If you are math friendly, read _The Intelligent Asset Allocator_, also by Bernstein. I think both are still available on Amazon.

Both books push Modern Portfolio Theory. In a nutshell, MPT says that for any particular combination of minimum risk and maximum reward, there is only one optimum portfolio. The problem is, you can't know what that portfolio was until its too late! Also, nobody else can reliably accurately pick the winners either, so don't try.

The best alternative is to spread your investments out among weakly, un, and strongly negatively (best) correlated assets by buying the appropriate index funds with a fixed percentage (adding to 100, or course) for each asset class.

You rebalance the portfolio once a year, selling the excess shares of the funds that did well, and buying shares of funds that tanked. This forces you to sell high, and buy low. It also reduces your portfolio's volatility because while some funds are going down, others are going up. There are some figures that show that except in a secular bull market, annual rebalancing will not only reduce your volatility, but increase your return.

In his books, Bernstein recommends 20% real estate, but I recently saw his actual portfolio percentages, and he only has 5% in real estate.