Your stock broker can’t tell you what he doesn’t understand and his ignorance is costing stock investors big time. Here’s the ugly truth behind your portfolio – even if you’re marking down a 10% return on investment (ROI) as profit each year on Wall Street, it’s a paper tiger. In reality, you’re not making a penny because inflation is eating you alive.
If you always dismissed inflation as nothing more than an irritant, something that existed but didn’t make much difference on ROI to an investor, you better sit up and pay attention if you want to spend your retirement doing something besides greeting customers at the local Wal-Mart to make ends meet.
This is serious.
The government reports an annual inflation rate that averages about 4% a year. This statistic is entirely mythical since, sometime back in the Carter administration, they redefined the formula used to calculate the inflation rate and threw out food an energy as factors. Do you throw food and energy out of your personal budget as negligible sources of expense? Ridiculous. The number is cooked to keep Americans from going into all-out panic mode.
Do an honest calculation and you can assume your cash, savings, and stock investments are losing real purchase value at the real rate of inflation at about 10% a year. That’s why you better be pulling a 10% ROI out of Wall Street every single year just to keep up. Chances are, you’re not. There’s only one investment that contains the particular characteristics that actually allow it to thrive in the face of inflation. If you’ve never seriously considered the idea of income property investing, it’s time you did. It’s the one portfolio asset that might allow you to actually stop working during retirement.
Contrary to the misconception of many people, it doesn’t take a fortune to get started in real estate, it’s not difficult to learn the basics, and the ROI could dwarf what stocks and bonds generate. You could finally be on your way to financial freedom wealth in this life.
Inflation is not going away, no matter what the government says. JasonHartman.com can teach you how to beat it for free.
The Creating Wealth Team
Flickr / chris.corwin
