Are you optimistic about the stock market this year? Investor sentiment turned negative last week and the stock market sell-off has begun. Will the stock market decline next week? Nobody knows, but the valuation is high and we had a lot of negative news recently. I’m not optimistic. Inflation rose. Core CPI rose to 3.3% year over year. Consumers expect prices to increase and we are reacting accordingly. Consumer sentiment plunges over inflation and tariffs concerns. US economic growth falters. Companies are cutting back on spending due to uncertainties from recent US government policy schizophrenia. Trump is saying all kinds of stuff and businesses don’t know what’s really coming. Trump is alienating all our allies and completely capitulating to Russia. This can’t be good for the US economy. Federal austerity measures will cause more problems than any of us expected. Thousands of federal workers are getting forced out by Musk and his tech bros. Federal funding for wide-ranging services is uncertain. Higher education and many nonprofit organizations are already cutting back. I’m growing more fearful every day. There is too much chaos and uncertainties. Who knows what Trump will say or do next? At this point, I’d be ecstatic with a 5% gain this year. If I’m okay with 5% gains, why not sell all our stocks and put the money in bonds? I have been an investor for over 30 years and I have never been this fearful. I kept investing through the Dot Com Bubble collapse and the Great Recession. Back then, a 50% market decline didn’t faze me. I was young and I could power my way through a bear market. However, I’m at a different point in life now. My active income is very low and Mrs. RB40 probably will retire soon. We won’t be able to put much money into the stock market when it crashes. Also, RB40Jr will head off to college in 4 years. The cost of higher education will inflate our annual expenditure for 4-5 years. I’m already starting to stress out about it. I need to be more conservative with our investments. Timing the market Investors should know timing the market is a fool’s errand. You have to be right twice – when to sell and when to get back in. The market dropped last week because we are all getting fearful, but is it the right time to sell? The market might recover and go up 20% this year. Getting out too early can be costly. Getting back into the market is even more difficult once you’re on the sideline. Nobody knows when the market will hit rock bottom. Most people wait too long and they miss out on a lot of gains. Professional money managers can’t get it right even with all their advantages. It is easier to stay invested. That’s why time in the market beats timing the market. If you’re a long-term investor, just keep buying and you’ll do very well. This was

The stock market outlook remains in an uptrend, although Friday’s sell-off damaged bullish sentiment.

Send us a text Join us on Average Joe Finances as our guest Joe Downs, CEO of Belrose Storage Group, shares his 17-year journey in commercial real estate. Joe recounts his early career as a financial advisor, the impact of 9/11 on his career shift, and his ventures, including owning a bar and moving into […] The post Podcast 289. Discovering the Storage Goldmine with Joe Downs appeared first on Average Joe Finances.

Between 1985 and 2012, a total of 84,350 pension plans disappeared within the United States. In 1970, 45% of private sector workers had a defined benefit pension plan. Today it’s only 15%. Could the same thing happen to the 401(k)? It might seem like a crazy question to ask given the widespread adoption of the 401(k), but imagine I had asked the same thing about pensions back in 1970. This would’ve seemed like a crazy idea at the time too. I would’ve heard things like, “Pensions are the backbone of the American retirement system,” and “How could we live without them?” But guess what? Things changed and we found a way. I have a feeling that a similar change is on the horizon today when it comes to 401(k)s in America. With the rise of AI/LLMs, the future of human labor has never been more uncertain. And with this added uncertainty, do we need to rethink how we save for retirement? Before we answer that question, let’s briefly review what almost killed the pension and how the Congress tried to fix it. What Almost Killed the Pension (and how ERISA fixed it) In December 1963, the Studebaker-Packard Corporation closed down a plant in South Bend, Indiana. Normally, such an action wouldn’t have caused much of a stir, but Studebaker had a sizable defined benefit plan covering thousands of its workers. Following the plant’s closure, Studebaker “terminated the retirement plan for hourly workers” and defaulted on all its pension obligations. This article from the Journal of Accountancy noted the chaos that ensued shortly thereafter: At the time, the [Studebaker] plan covered roughly 10,500 workers, 3,600 of whom had already retired and who received their full benefits when the plan was terminated. Four thousand employees between the ages of 40 and 59 received approximately 15 cents for each dollar of benefit they were owed. The average age of this group of workers was 52 years with an average of 23 years of service. The remaining 2,900 employees, who all had less than 10 years of service, received nothing. Despite the financial fallout from the Studebaker pension failure, nothing changed in the years that followed. It wasn’t until a NBC documentary titled Pensions: The Broken Promise aired in 1972 that the national mood began to shift on pensions. The documentary highlighted the flaws in the U.S. pension system and interviewed individuals who had been deprived of their benefits. The popularity of the documentary and the public outcry that followed pushed the U.S. government to begin working on a solution. Two years later, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) was passed and signed into law in 1974. ERISA fundamentally changed how private-sector retirement plans were regulated in the U.S. Following the passage of ERISA, every private sector retirement plan had to follow certain rules regarding funding, benefits, vesting schedules, and much more. ERISA also created the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (“PBGC”) to be a government guarantor of private pensions. The PBGC ensured that employees with

Today, I will try and answer the question about whether or not backlinks to your business’s website will help you rank higher with Generative AI Search. In my recent post about Generative Engine Optimization (GEO,) I linked to a white paper that talks in depth about how backlinks could influence GEO best practices, you can […]

                         The month of January 2025 is another month of dividend income landing in my accounts.  Due to becoming debt free, I changed my pay myself model. Starting the beginning of August 2021, I am paying myself 30%, just like before. This will now consist of 24% to investing, and 6% to savings.  The investment portion is going to my TFSA. Any money left […]

St James’s Place – Wealth ManagementThe first time we heard of St James’s Place (SJP) was whilst running Rebel Finance School. Someone popped up in the chat asking whether they were a good place to invest your money. We googled them, discovered high fees and actively managed funds and immediately said “Avoid! Avoid! Avoid!”. High fees alone are enough to send us running for the hills. Fees are the only statistically significant predictor of long term performance. i.e. the more you pay the worse you will do. We knew this as we had exactly the same experience when Katie invested through The Penny Group when she first started investing. You can read about the impact of fees on investing here. Over the years of running Rebel Finance School, St James’s Place kept coming up and people asked us to review their numbers. We were shocked at how badly they performed compared to a global index fund. We had the proof but we never quite got around to pulling it together into an article showing the data. At Rebel Finance School we endlessly talk about doing the maths, knowing the numbers and the results. Don’t believe the hype, do the maths for yourself. Whether it is knowing what the actual return on equity is for your investment property or the performance of your expensive wealth manager over time or some other decision you’re making. Finally an awesome couple came forward willing to share their numbers publicly. They were shocked at what SJP cost them and what it would have meant for their finances in the coming years. Please meet Mark who is going to tell you all about his experience with St James’s Place and the real numbers behind his investments. Don’t believe the hype. Believe the numbers and the maths. St James’s PlaceA cautionary tale: The dangers of high fee platforms and funds! My name is Mark and I have had an SJP problem. A bit of background, I’m in my late fifties and have been working in the technology industry (in data and analytics) for 40 years. I’ve been very lucky in that each of my employers have provided an employer contribution pension over that time (and the first took the time to explain the benefits of saving for my retirement). Rewind 8 years or so from today, I’d had an Independent Financial Advisor and he’d consolidated all my pensions into a single pot, but he’d pass on and I was currently IFA-less. I was in a high/medium risk investment strategy, reasonably diverse but including some gilts and bonds, some cash and for all I knew some of Alan’s favourite fruit too! (sorry, RFS in-joke). I was a bit concerned that my retirement pot wasn’t working for the future as well as it could, I worked out that it was averaging about 4.5% growth, and I wasn’t sure that that was great, then someone I know introduced me to a St James’s Place (SJP) advisor. She (the SJP advisor)

Karin Capellan stood in her yard, arranging balloons for a company party — an event she hosted just to get promotional photos. She had no paying clients, no experience, and no idea if this could become something real. But a few weeks later, a father on Facebook Marketplace hired her for a birthday party — and just like that, she was in business. Her first rental? A $40 order for 20 chairs. Her first balloon […]