I know I have been slacking on my Friday posts about building wealth but to tell you the truth, this is one area I really struggle in. I can talk to you all day about budgeting and personal finance as a whole, but when it comes to investing & retirement, I don’t feel that confident.
One thing I’ve been trying to do this year is educate myself more on investing and retirement. I’m trying to read and learn as much as I can so I can write about it and hopefully you can learn with me too.
Earlier this year, I started subscribing to a newsletter called Crashproof Prosperity for the investment education. The newsletter is written by Kip Herriage who was a financial advisor on Wall Street for over 15 years but was fed up with the way Wall Street worked so he decided to do his own thing. Kip has written a newsletter since 2006 called The Vertical Research Advisor (VRA). This is where I started to educate myself more on the topic of investing.
What I get out of Crashproof Prosperity
The two things I get out of Crashproof Prosperity are 1. a subscription to the Vertical Research Advisory Newsletter (education) and 2. commentary on what is going on as it relates to investing and economics from Kip Herriage, Gerald Celente and Wayne Allen Root. I won’t go into great detail on who those people are in this post but I’ve linked to their websites if you’d like to learn more.
How it Works
Once I was a member of Crashproof Prosperity, I was able to have access to the “core portfolio” recommended by Kip. This core portfolio is a list of 8-10 stocks that Kip feels like are the ones to invest in. You might be wondering how he picks the stock he recommends:
“How do we select our stocks”? A significant amount of research has been done over the last 20 years in order to perfect the system of stock selection…and the research is extensive. After a company has been selected as an interesting possibility (we speak with hundreds of company insiders and industry experts each year), we then begin a two-pronged approach. While we are speaking and meeting with the company’s top insiders, we are also researching their competitors, carefully analyzing SEC filings, and using proprietary fundamental and technical screens. This approach allows us to uncover companies that fly under the radar screen of most Wall Street analysts (who operate to a large degree based by what the company will pay in investment banking fees) and mutual fund managers. Ideally, we enter a stock 1-3 months before it is “discovered” by Wall Street and the global markets. Members are updated on a regular basis with news, proprietary analysis, or a rating change on recommended companies.
Remember,Kip was on Wall Street for 15 years and has been researching this and picking stocks for years. Is he always right? Not always, but I feel confident in his choices. Currently, the whole VRA portfolio is up 35% in the past month.
No one at Crashproof Prosperity or Kip manages your money. You do this on your own by opening your own brokerage account with Scottrade or Etrade – or whoever you prefer. This was one reason why it was so appealing to me. I was able to get the financial advice and do what I want with it. I could buy if I wanted or not. It was up to me.
What I do 
While I admit, this was scary at first, now I’m loving watching and learning how this all works. There was one particular stock listed in the core portfolio I was interested in. Kip calls it “the stock of the century” so I sat on it for a long time (about 5 months ) before actually buying any.
After I got laid off, I transferred a portion of my retirement account from my employer to my own retirement account at Scottrade to buy this stock. I call this my “play money”. It makes up about 13% of my whole retirement portfolio – which I know isn’t a small amount but I’m willing to use it to learn with. ( The other 87% of my portfolio is managed by a trusted broker). Call me crazy but I feel like it’s one of those things it’s best learned by doing, not just observing.
The “stock of the century” is on the move this week and my account is up $1,759.19 this week. Yes I know it is stock and it can fluctuate depending on the market but it was really exciting for me to see this because it was the first thing I’ve really every done on my own with investing. Instead of just sitting on the information and assuming I couldn’t do it, I did the following:
- I sought out investment information
- I educated myself and didn’t make an impulsive decision
- Then I acted on it
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