Interesting Tidbits About Today's Investors

1) USA Today polled adults "How will you save enough in 2011?"
The results are as follows:

Saving portion of income-51%
Cutting back on luxuries-25%
Winning the lottery-22%
Saving tax refund-17%
Selling items-17%

2) Could you come up with $2000 in 30 days for a major car repair?
This was the question asked by The TNS Finance Personal Risk Assessment and Risk Literacy Survey. In the United States only 46% of those polled could raise these funds through savings, borrowing, friends or family. Those in the UK and Germany scored similarly. However, in Mexico, only 42% of the population polled could raise these funds.

3) Yahoo Finance and Bankrate.com featured a story on lifelong investing, which highlighted the financial view of retirement for a Florida resident by the name of Leonard McCracken, who is presently 107 years old. Leonard has been retired since 1969, when he left a sales position with a now-defunct steel company in Ohio. For the last 41 years, he has been living on savings, Social Security, and a lifetime annuity purchased prior to retirement. His 73 year old son said, "Dad never made more than $10,000 a year in his life." At 107, and 41 years without a paycheck, Leonard is still paying his own bills and living off his own resources.

What most caught my attention about this story is that Leonard always avoided the stock market, preferring CDs and bonds instead. In addition to CDs and bonds, he consistently bought and sold real estate during his working career. In fact, he had bought and sold 35 houses during his life. He had very little debt, worked even when jobs were hard to find, saved religiously and made it a point to remain healthy.

Leonard is a man who has been completely self-sufficient for more than twice the average length of retirement. He did this by living within his means, and minimizing risks with his investments. How many people believe that they have to shoot for the stars in terms of investment performance to make up for the huge losses they have incurred in the stock market?

At Gann Partnership, LLC, we are all about growth but with strategies to minimize risk. We are about balancing offense and defense. We are about preserving principal and protecting gains. Leonard's son, Bob said, "when the economy tanked, he made a lot of us look real silly." Because of our defensive strategies, we might be missing some of the tremendous and unsustainable surge in today's stock market, but I am confident that we will endure and we will never look "real silly".

No one person has a monopoly on all the good ideas and strategies. Connect with us if you would like non-sales oriented, objective feedback or a second opinion.
Also, I encourage you to pass this along to anyone else who might appreciate these perspectives.



The opinions voiced in this material are for general information and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, you should consult a financial advisor prior to investing.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.