21 car century insurance

It occurred to me the other day: I owe so much of my strategy for navigating a crazy and hostile world to the intellectual and political movement you and I have belonged to since long before I started writing this newsletter.

For instance, my eldest daughter attends one of the handful of sane colleges in the country, Grove City College, which takes no federal aid of any kind, and where there's zero wokeness. I found out about Grove City because the great Hans Sennholz taught there, and because two colleagues I met through the Mises Institute teach there. (The college also houses the post-1940 papers of Ludwig von Mises.)

In terms of money management, I have a big chunk of dough in Larry Lepard's fund that I've told you about, and I met Larry (who's a freak of nature as a fund manager) through the Ron Paul movement. He's the author of The Big Print, and the guy who took out full-page ads for Dr. Paul in USA Today in 2008.

I have another big chunk in a Schwab account for options trading (Low Stress Options), and I found out about that from Ben Settle, whom I discovered through Bob Bly, whom I discovered through Gary North, an old colleague of Dr. Paul.

I have some Bitcoin because I met Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver a long time ago at a New Hampshire liberty event. So long ago, in fact, that I can assure you it has worked out very well.

I have some gold because, well, all the world influenced me on that front.

Our family ditched traditional health insurance a couple of years ago and switched to a crowdfunding alternative, and that has worked out far better than I imagined -- not to mention saving us a bunch of dough. And guess what: the CEO is ideologically aligned with you and me, and that's how I found out about that.

In other words, my life has been enriched -- literally and figuratively -- because of the people I've had the good fortune to meet.

If I'd been a normie, I wouldn't have known about any of this.

Now a lot of this stuff involves finances. I do not trust the U.S. government, or anything it influences. I want a retirement strategy that touches it as little as possible. I am also skeptical of strategies that rely on hoping the future is like the past. Maybe it will be, but maybe it won't, and if it isn't, I want to be ready.

The standard advice nowadays, mainstream for about the past 30 years but available 20 years before that, is to put your money in an index fund. And don't get me wrong: the index-fund advice has generated good results.

The thing is, even if that does work over the long haul, what if I'm stuck in a down market for 12 years at the very time I need the money?

In fact, an index investor who bought at the 2000 peak earned roughly nothing in real terms for about a dozen years. Someone who bought Japan’s index in 1989 waited 34 years to break even.

Remember, too, that the index fund launched near the bottom of a long bear market, when valuations were low. In the early 1980s the S&P traded at under 10 times earnings. Then interest rates fell for about 40 years, from 1981 to 2021, which raised the value of every future dollar of earnings. Index investors received both the economy’s growth and a large one-time revaluation.

And investors often earn less than their funds. People tend to buy after rallies and sell in panics, so the returns investors actually collect trail the fund’s published returns. Indexing removes manager risk but not this behavioral risk.

Well, it so happens that yet another colleague from our wonderful liberty world, with whom I have worked very closely over the years, advocates an approach that takes these concerns away.

It's for people with low risk tolerance who'd like a good retirement nest egg that doesn't depend on how other people's companies are doing (i.e., the stock market).

It's an approach that allows you to take money out and use it for emergencies or opportunities without any penalty.

And it comes with contractually guaranteed growth. It doesn't matter how well or how poorly the economy is doing or what gyrations the stock market is experiencing. You'll get the annual growth guaranteed in your contract. The companies that offer these policies have delivered on their promises and guarantees for 100 years or more.

I would never have known about this if I'd been an ordinary TV-watching American. The ways I've been able to build a comfortable life during challenging times would have remained a secret to me had I not been part of the Ron Paul world.

So I suggest you read more about it -- it's yet another way smart and enterprising people have figured out how to prosper through a world fraught with peril and bad ideas.

The details:

https://www.BankOnYourself.com/Tom