Investment Club Investors:
Merck has offered to buy Schering Plough.
The offer was above Schering Plough's market price value, so, like we experienced when Inbev bought Anheuser Busch (which we previously owned) the shares of Schering Plough have surged quite a bit and will eventually be liquidated for a combination of cash and Merck shares.
We bought our first shares of Schering Plough six years ago--in January 2003. We then bought aggressively when the price dropped into the $14 range. A few years later, we sold half of our shares at the $23 range. Our average cost for the shares is $15.24. Currently, they are trading at $21.08. Including dividends, we have made roughly 51% on our Schering Plough shares, and a couple of things are evident to me:
I don't want any Merck shares at this time, and I think we could usefully put the Schering Plough proceeds to work more efficiently.
As such, I placed an order to sell our Schering Plough shares and buy 1000 more shares of General Electric.
All recent letters to investment club shareholders are on my blog:
http://buffettsbedandbreakfast.blogspot.com/
Andrew
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The TESOL Teacher's Nine Steps to Financial Freedom
This chapter is part of a book on professional wellness for teachers, soon to be published by Michigan State University Press.
How many times have you heard a colleague say, “I didn’t choose this profession to get rich”? It’s true that you weren’t exactly handed the keys to the Ivory Tower when you started to teach. But you can increase your odds of retiring in comfort if you acknowledge and utilize some important financial tenets.
TESOL teachers, worldwide, face different financial challenges. Some teachers are fortunate enough to work for establishments offering pensions—while others have to allocate their earnings to independently fund their own retirements.
Salaries range, as do the taxes TESOL teachers pay—especially when comparing teachers in one country versus another. Tax obligations can especially differ, country to country.
This chapter will focus on income allocation towards an end goal: retirement. And despite the American based focus, overseas teachers, we hope, will also find it useful.
Step #1 Always pay off Credit Card Debt
We all know how essential saving money for retirement is. But too many people invest or save money while still owing balances on credit cards. The average U.S. household strangles itself with $8000 in outstanding credit card debt (Larimore, Lindauer, Leboeuf 2007, p10). In this respect, being average is hazardous to your wealth. In short, if you owe money on a credit card that charges 18%, and you’re investing money that you expect to make 9% per year on, then you’re condemning yourself like Sisyphus—the character in Greek mythology who was forced to roll a boulder up a slope, only to have the Gods knock it down before he got to the top.
For TESOL teachers, paying off credit card balances in full at the end of each month offers a fabulous “return” on investment: better, in percentage terms, than what the stock market or the real estate market offers. Paying off an 18% interest bearing loan provides a tax free gain of 18%. Even if you could make exorbitant returns in the stock market, you’d be paying tax on those gains. So you might need to gain 25% on your money in the stock market to equate to the after tax gain that paying off an 18% interest bearing credit card balance would provide(Larimore, Lindauer, Leboeuf 2007, p10). Not even Warren Buffett, arguably the world’s greatest investor, has compounded money at 25% per year over his lifetime (Miles 2001, p52-53). So ensure that you pay off your credit card debts in full, before saving money towards your retirement.
Step #2 Establish a six month contingency fund
Teachers are generally experienced at establishing contingency funds. We don’t always receive paychecks throughout the entire year, so we have to put aside money for times (often during the summer months) when we’re living off our savings. And throughout our careers, we can be collared by bills when we least expect them: a new roof for the house, another car to replace the one that just died etc. What’s worse is that we can end up getting sick, laid off from work or need money to bail a son or daughter out of a tough financial jam.
TESOL teachers should establish a contingency fund with more than enough for their typical summer expenses. They should have enough money to cover at least six months worth of living expenses in a high interest savings account—one they can withdraw from whenever they want, without financial penalty (Larimore, Lindauer, Leboeuf 2007, p11).
Step #3 Pay Yourself First
Once you’re free of credit card debt, and you’ve established a strong contingency fund for emergencies, you should start investing at least 10% of your pre-tax income. Your employer might offer worthwhile savings plan assistance via a 401k or a 403b investment account. Such plans often allow employers to assist with retirement contributions, matching your contributions, in some cases.
If your employer doesn’t offer such a plan, there’s still the option (for stateside teachers only) to invest in an IRA investment plan, allowing you to compound your interest without paying taxes along the way (Malkiel 2003, p287). The earlier you begin to do this, the better.
And if you’re a self employed TESOL teacher, you might want to look into contributing to a Keogh plan which allows for tax deductable contributions (Malkiel 2003, p289). In some cases, you can even set up a Keogh plan if you moonlight as a tutorer.
For further reading on IRAs, Keogh plans and 401Ks, you can read Burton Malkiel’s, A Random Walk Down Wall Street or check out the following website: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/keoghplan.asp. Also consider finding a tax accountant who can patiently advise you on the different plans that may be available to you.
Step #4 Start investing as early as possible
Albert Einstein called compound interest the most powerful force on the planet. Here’s why.
If a 20 year old future TESOL teacher invested $100 a month into an investment account until the age of 65, they would have contributed a total of $54,000 over 45 years. And if they made 10% per year on that money, it would amount to $948,954.38 in an IRA investment account: nearly a million dollars accumulated by a teacher who invested the daily sum of $3.33 per day for 65 years. Even Einstein would have been impressed.
Compound InterestPresent ValueReturn Rate / CAGRAnnuityBond YieldMortgageRetirement
Compare this to a TESOL teacher who delays investing until they’re 40 years old. Assume that they allocate $700 a month for the next 25 years. At age 65, they will have invested $210,000 in the market.
Logic might suggest that the person starting later, but investing significantly more, would accumulate a larger account. But the early starter would end up with an advantage of more than $40,000 over the late starter. And they’d achieve their result by investing significantly less money.
Young TESOL professionals should understand that the earlier they start investing, the better: money compounds powerfully over time. You don’t need a massive salary to weave a large nest egg; you just need plenty of time and a committed, regular monthly investment plan. You can play with differing scenarios regarding alternative investment returns and their effects over time by logging on to the compounding financial calculator at http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm
Step #5—Invest in Low Cost Index funds whenever possible
Once a TESOL teacher is committed to investing their money for the future, they’re faced with the next inevitable question: Where do I put my money? If you asked the man commonly regarded as history’s greatest investor (Warren Buffett) he’d likely tell you to be wary of the financial service industry and invest in products called “Index Funds” (Lowe 2007 p151). A full 92% of American investors buy the index fund’s much more expensive cousin: the actively managed mutual fund (Davis 2008, p4). Selling actively managed mutual funds is more profitable for financial planners than selling index funds is. But index funds tend to perform better and trigger lower taxes than actively managed mutual funds. If you want to read an interesting online article about how the powers that be at Google wanted to ensure that their millionaire employees wouldn’t be taken advantage of by financial planners, check this out: (http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-get). And keep in mind that I am not suggesting that you “go it alone” with your financial planning. There are advisors who can help you to invest effectively, and I will outline how to find one, later in this chapter.
Fees and the Market
Stock market index funds are similar to actively managed stock market mutual funds. For example, Vanguard’s total U.S. stock market index holds thousands of stocks. And generally, nobody trades those stocks. An index is meant to hold a group of stocks, while an actively managed mutual fund is meant to trade a group of stocks. As such, there’s a cost difference that can’t often be overcome. The fees for, say, Vanguard’s total stock market fund is 800% lower than the fee for the average U.S mutual fund. It’s a financial albatross that’s tough to overcome with clever trading.
Over a 20 year period from 1978 to 1998, 85% of mutual funds failed to keep pace with the market index—mostly because of their high fee structure. And this 85% failure percentage is conservative because it doesn’t include the poorly performing funds that ceased operations or changed their names when they blended with other funds (Swenson 2008 p218). Nor does it include the added taxable liability that mutual funds expose their investors to, compared to index funds.
And the 85% of funds that did lose to the markets lost by 3.2% per year over a 20 year study (Arnott, Berkin and Ye, 2000 p85-86).
If you don’t think 3.2% per year is a large deficit, have a look at what it could do over 50 years:
$10,000 invested at 6.5% per year for 50 years = $233,066.79
$10,000 invested at 9.7% per year for 50 years = $1,024,074.08
The typical professional financial planner, however, (we’ll discuss the atypical planner later) will not invest your money in indexes because index funds don’t pay them as much as actively managed mutual funds. In fact, the largest provider of index funds, the non profit group called Vanguard, won’t pay advisors a penny. According to Vanguard’s Director of Institutional Sales: “When brokers realize that they won’t be compensated for putting our funds in a plan, they typically hang up on us.”(Swensen 2008 p280).
Now—and this is where Buffett’s argument builds momentum—many advisors who buy these inferior products (mutual funds) for their clients, end up charging them additional sales fees to get into these funds, additional redemption fees to get out, annual “advisor’s fees” amounting to as much as 2% per year—or all three. Again, I’m not suggesting a “Do it yourself” portfolio. Most, if not all of these excesses can be avoided by choosing the right advisor.
Academic studies all suggest that, after all fees and taxes (regular mutual funds cost more money in taxes when held outside of a tax deferred account) a portfolio of index funds is likely to leave a portfolio of actively managed funds in its dust. (Farrell 2004, p151-152).
Taking the Arnott study into consideration, before sales or advisor’s fees, you could end up with a 3.2% annual lag on the return of the market. It’s worth having a look at that difference again:
$10,000 invested at 6.5% per year for 50 years = $233,066.79
$10,000 invested at 9.7% per year for 50 years = $1,024,074.08
Add in an “advisor’s fee” amounting to a further 1% per year (which many financial planners charge) and the chasm widens:
$10,000 invested at 5.5% per year for 50 years = $145, 419.61
TESOL teachers might be left with a very important question now: “What if my financial advisor can find mutual funds that can beat the index funds over the long term?” First of all, even if they could, according to the 20 year Arnott study, the mutual funds that have beaten the market indexes only added a further winning margin of 1.3% per year (Arnott, Berkin and Ye, 2000 p85-86).
Secondly, nobody has proven, with consistency, that they can find index beating mutual funds. It’s easy to find those that have beaten the indexes in the past, but those performances don’t prove to be sustainable. When I personally attended Warren Buffett’s 2005 shareholder meeting in Omaha, he threw a gauntlet to the 24,000 attendees: “I’ll bet that nobody in this room can name ten mutual funds today that, as an aggregate, will beat the after tax performance of the S&P 500 index over the next ten years.” With some of the world’s smartest financial people in attendance, the crowd sat quietly—knowingly.
Professor Malkiel created the following scenario to prove the point. Imagine that it’s 1980. You have decided to prudently find out which the top performing mutual funds were from 1970 until 1979. And when you find what they are, you buy the best 20 performing funds. Unfortunately, in the decade that followed, you would have (as an average) underperformed—not only the U.S. index, but the average U.S. mutual fund as well.
The same rule applied when he assumed that you had bought the top 20 funds of the 1980s. In the decade that followed, they disappointed investors, falling short of the U.S. index. And the 1990s? It was no different. Those funds are disappointing in this decade, drastically falling behind the average mutual fund’s performance and proving to be disastrous when juxtaposed with the total U.S. stock market index (Malkiel 2003 p189).
How does this relate to you? What I want to illustrate is the fact that whether you choose your own mutual funds to invest in, or whether you ask an advisor to do it for you, you will very likely lag the results of market tracking index funds. And if you end up lagging the market by just a few percentage points per year, it can have devastating long term effects on a TESOL teacher’s retirement account.
And if a 3.2% difference sounds dramatic, David Swenson, the superb investor who heads Yale University’s endowment fund suggests that in a 15 year study, 96% of actively managed mutual funds fail to match the performance of the U.S. market index—by a whopping 4.8% per annum, after all taxes and expenses (Swensen 2008 p217).
There’s a fund rating agency called Morningstar that rates mutual fund performance based on past track records. Then they award them a series of stars—four or five star funds being the best. If you think you can avoid underperforming the market by doing your own research on top rated funds, you might want to think twice.
Burton Malkiel’s premise that it’s practically impossible to pick top performing mutual funds ahead of time holds true in Mark Hulbert’s study as well: “A mutual fund portfolio continuously adjusted to hold only Morningstar’s five star funds earned an annual return of just 6.9% between 1994 and 2004, nearly 40% below the 11.0% return on the total stock market index (Bogle 2007 p90).
And don’t forget that you can buy low cost, tax efficient index funds, while being advised by someone charging a fraction of what most other people pay for investment guidance. This strategy is endorsed by Warren Buffett himself when he says, “Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund that charges minimal fees (Cunningham 2001 p100). I’ll show you how to do that later in this chapter.
Academics have been shouting this message from the rooftops for years. And adding further insult to injury, more than half of American mutual funds are accompanied by further albatrosses, in the form of sales loads charging fees as high as 6% just to get into them. The chances are high that you actually own some of these yourself. And sometimes, mutual fund companies charge you fees to withdraw money from your funds. These extra costs don’t even go into the underperformance equations I previously cited.
TESOL teachers shouldn’t buy mutual funds that charge sales fees. If you pay a fee of 5.75% to get into a fund, then you have to make 6.1% the following year, just to break even. Dr. William Bernstein, who is regularly quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Money and Forbes puts it bluntly in his excellent book, The Four Pillars of Investing. Pertaining to sales loaded mutual funds, he goes on to ask, “Who buys this rubbish? Uninformed investors. Who sells it to them? Brokers, investment advisors, and insurance salesmen. Is it illegal? No. But it should be” (Bernstein 2002 p204). He’s particularly livid about it because the average “load fund” (which is what we call these funds) actually performs worse than the average “no load” mutual fund (Bernstein 2002 p204).
Many of the best financial minds in the country have caught on to the benefits of index funds over all other funds. And it’s evident when examining the biggest pension funds. According to Dick Davis, the Washington State pension fund has 100% of its stock market assets in indexes, the state of California has 86%, New York has 75% and Connecticut has 84% of its stock market money in indexes (Davis 2008 p4). And of the pension funds that aren’t in index funds, more than 90% of them are underperforming an indexed portfolio of stocks and bonds (Bernstein 2002 p86).
For further reading on the superiority of index funds over actively managed funds:
A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton G. Malkiel, 2003; The Bogleheads, by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer and Michael LeBoeuf 2007; The Four Pillars of Investing, by William Bernstein, 2003; The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing 2004, by Paul B Farrell; The Little Book of Common Sense Investing 2007, by John Bogle; and Unconventional Success, 2008 by David Swenson. For an online source, http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-get
Step #6 Find a financial advisor without a conflict of interest
Finding a financial planner can be one of the most important decisions you make. But too many people take it far too lightly.
Remember that there’s no reason to buy a “load fund” which charges a sales fee for an investment product. As quoted in the American Association of Individual Investors Guide to the Top Mutual Funds: “Funds with loads, on average, consistently under perform no-load funds when the load is taken into consideration” (Larimore, Lindauer, LeBoeuf 2007, p117). They don’t perform as well as “no load” funds, so advisors choosing them for you have conflicts of interest you need to be aware of (Gardner 1998, p80).
A portfolio of diversified indexes will almost certainly outperform a portfolio of actively managed mutual funds over time. If your advisor tries to talk you out of this reality, it’s time to find another advisor. Advisors get paid based on “trailer fees” for the products they sell. And index funds from companies like Vanguard don’t pay incentive fees to brokers or advisors.
Watch out, also, for advisors who charge high asset based advisor’s fees. If your account is valued at, say, $100,000, and your advisor charges 1.75% on assets, this means that they silently remove $1,750 from your account in that given year. They typically charge a percentage on assets each and every year, regardless of whether your account gained or lost money. You’ve seen how small percentage points can make a big overall difference in your account, over time. So don’t take the decision to use an advisor who charges a percentage of assets lightly.
There are certified advisors who charge one time fees to offer advice. If you’re comfortable with taking their advice and following through with making fund purchases (preferably index fund purchases) directly from the respective companies, you would likely find this to be the most economical solution. Many prudent people ensure that their advisors don’t sell financial products at all—distancing themselves from any conflicts of interest. As such, these advisors charging one time fees are those most likely to advise purchases of “no load” mutual funds and index funds. Unlike most financial planners, they aren’t entitled to receive sales fees or mutual fund trailer fees, so they’re more likely to act with your best interests in mind.
Finally, Vanguard, the non profit sellers of low cost index funds, employs salaried advisors you can hire on an annual basis to guide you. And if your account value exceeds $250,000, their advisory service is free.
David Swenson strongly recommends non-profit investment organizations like TIAA CREF and Vanguard. Using these companies and the advisors associated with them will also guarantee that you won’t be dealing with conflicts of interest (Swensen 2008 p345-347).
And if your money is with TIAA CREF, opt for their indexed products over their actively managed mutual funds whenever possible. Humorously, Douglas Dial, a portfolio manager with TIAA CREF says, “Indexing is a marvelous technique. I wasn’t a true believer. I was just an ignoramus. Now I am a convert. Indexing is an extraordinarily sophisticated thing to do” (Larimore, Lindauer, LeBoeuf 2007, p82). As a teacher, you may already have your money with TIAA CREF, which handles the investment accounts of many teachers and professors. If your money is with TIAA CREF, take solace in recognizing that its fees are exceptionally low. And keep in mind what Douglas Dial says, and ensure that your TIAA CREF portfolio is fully or predominantly in index funds.
Step #7 Think correctly about market fluctuations
If you’re a retired teacher, a rising market should make you happy. You’re likely withdrawing from your investment account, and a rising market assures that you won’t deplete your resources. But if you’re going to be teaching, and putting money into the markets for at least the next five years, you need to hope for lower market levels (Cunningham 2002 p71). Warren Buffett says that many investors don’t think correctly about market prices: “Only those who will be sellers of equities [stock market investments] in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise (Cunningham 2002 p71). Think of the stock market the same way you think about buying groceries. In a dozen years, you can be certain that you’ll pay more for your groceries. The same premise should hold true for the stock market as well.
So if your supermarket has a sale on non perishable groceries, don’t you want to load up on the discounted products? Of course you do. But, using the supermarket as an analogy for the stock market, too many people shun the supermarket when its products are on sale, and they rejoice when they can pay higher prices for their groceries.
The sooner you embrace the concept that cheaper prices are good for purchasers, the better. Most investors sabotage their investment results when they react to what the markets are doing.
For example, let’s assume that your neighbor (who’s a lawyer, not a teacher) bought a mutual fund called “ABC Fund”. He added money periodically to ABC Fund for 10 years. And let’s assume that this fund made 10% per year, as an average, over 10 years. You’d think that your neighbor would have annualized 10% on his money, right? But if he accurately represents the average person, he wouldn’t have made this return. His returns would have been nearly 3% below that 10% return, based on John Bogle’s 25 year study (Bogle 2007 p51).
I’ve already demonstrated how damaging a 3% lag can be over time. But why doesn’t this guy end up making 10% if his mutual fund (or index fund) made 10%?
In essence, when the markets are rising, the average person puts more money into their stock market funds. And when the markets are falling, they cease to buy, or reduce their purchases. This is the opposite of what investors need to do. The old maxim, “Buy low, sell high” is actually practiced in reverse by most people.
If you deposited equal amounts into your funds, religiously, each and every month, you’d surely generate returns that would equal the reported fund returns—as long as you weren’t paying sales fees. And if you’re disciplined enough to “be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy”, as Warren Buffett suggests, you can even outperform the funds that you’re investing in by buying more aggressively when the markets are getting hammered. To read more about Buffett’s philosophy online, you can check the following website http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/05/news/companies/buffet.pm.wrap/ or read Lawrence Cunningham’s The Essays of Warren Buffett.
Step #8 Allocate assets appropriately
The general rule of thumb suggests that your investments should comprise of stock and bond market money. A bond is a loan that you make to a corporation or a government and they pay you annual interest on that loan. Government loans are the safest. Bonds don’t fluctuate in value the way stocks do, and they’re a solid, more predictable component of a well diversified portfolio. If you prefer bank CDs to bonds, that’s fine. Just recognize that only $100,000 worth of a bank CD will be insured by the government. If you invest more than that in an individual CD, you could be taking on more risk.
As we get older, we want a higher level of predictability with our investments. Once you’re retired, you won’t want the value of your nest egg swinging wildly with 100% exposure to the stock markets. Professor Malkiel, of Princeton University, suggests that investors should have bond exposure that roughly equates to their age. For instance, a 30 year old would have 20-30% of her money in bonds, while a 60 year old would have 50-60% of her money in bonds (Malkiel 2003, p350-351). This is a generally accepted principle of responsible portfolio allocation—adding further stability as the person nears—or is in—retirement.
When we’re young, we can afford to take greater risks with our money, exposing more of it to the vicissitudes of the market, but when we’re older, we require more stability and predictability as we rely on withdrawing funds from our retirement portfolio.
Step #9 –Calculate how much you’ll need
Teachers, like other professionals, have different lifestyles and expenditures. What one teacher can happily live on, another might find oppressive. You need to write down what your annual expenses currently are, subtract any work related expenses or investment obligations and determine what you could live on (while maintaining your current standard of living) if you were to retire today.
The second step requires that you examine inflation. Over the past 100 years, inflation has averaged roughly 3% per year. If you hope to retire 10 years from now, you need to know how much money you’ll require, annually, 10 years in the future.
Assume that you can live on $30,000 per year right now, not including work related costs: professional clothing, transport, lunches out etc. For our first example, we’ll assume that you won’t qualify for social security or a pension, and that you’ll choose not to work part-time during your retirement.
If you want to retire 10 years from now, that $30,000 will need to be adjusted for inflation at 3% per year. Today, that $30,000 would have the buying power of $40,317, ten years from now, thanks to inflation. You can work out your inflation adjusted amount by using the compound interest calculator at http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm
As a retiree, it’s suggested that you not withdraw more than 4% of your overall portfolio each year (Bernstein 2002 p230). In this case, if you required income of $40,317, 10 years from now, you would require a portfolio of $1,007,925. Four percent of $1,007,925 is $40,317.
Considering that the markets have made roughly 10% per year since 1926, we may be able to expect something similar in the future. However, the markets may not perform as well as they have, historically, and considering that you should have a bond allocation which is equivalent to your age (bonds have lower long term returns than stocks) it might be prudent to expect a long term return of 8% on your money.
Play with the compounding interest calculator again, and you can see how much money you’ll need to invest to arrive at this hypothetical $1,007,925, ten years from now.
If this teacher had a portfolio of $425,000, ten years from their retirement date, and if they added $10,000 a year for ten years (at 8% per year) they’d have $1,073,998 upon their retirement.
Those might be daunting sums of money. But teachers receiving social security or a teacher’s pension will require a significantly smaller portfolio.
Even if this hypothetical teacher could expect just $15,000 a year from a pension or social security, they could achieve their future income goal (of $40,317 per year, ten years from now) with an investment portfolio of $632,925.
With assisted income of $25,000 a year (from either social security, a pension and/or a part-time job) a TESOL teacher could make up the difference with a portfolio of $382,925.
You can play with all of these variables at http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm. And for further reading on this topic, you can check out The Four Pillars of Investing 2002, by William Bernstein, chapter 12.
TESOL teachers may not be paid as highly as many other professionals. But if we follow the preceding nine steps to financial freedom, we increase our odds of enjoying a financially independent lifestyle during retirement.
Reference List
Bernstein, William (2003). The Four Pillars of Investing. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Bogle C. John (2007). The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Cunningham A., Lawrence (2002). The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Investors and Managers. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia).
Cunningham A., Lawrence (2001). How To Think Like Benjamin Graham and Invest Like Warren Buffett. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Companies.
Davis, Dick (2008). The Dick Davis Dividend. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Gardner, David and Tom (1998). You have more than you think. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Farrell, B. Paul (2004). The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing, New York, NY: Warner Books Inc.
Lowe, Janet (2007). Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World’s Greatest Investor. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Malkiel G. Burton (2003). A Random Walk Down Wall Street. New York, NY: Norton & Company Inc.
Miles, P Robert (2001) Warren Buffett’s 101 Reasons to Own The World’s Greatest Investment. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Larimore, Taylor, Lindauer, Mel, LeBoeuf, Michael (2007). The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Swensen, F. David (2005). Unconventional Success—A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Inc.
How many times have you heard a colleague say, “I didn’t choose this profession to get rich”? It’s true that you weren’t exactly handed the keys to the Ivory Tower when you started to teach. But you can increase your odds of retiring in comfort if you acknowledge and utilize some important financial tenets.
TESOL teachers, worldwide, face different financial challenges. Some teachers are fortunate enough to work for establishments offering pensions—while others have to allocate their earnings to independently fund their own retirements.
Salaries range, as do the taxes TESOL teachers pay—especially when comparing teachers in one country versus another. Tax obligations can especially differ, country to country.
This chapter will focus on income allocation towards an end goal: retirement. And despite the American based focus, overseas teachers, we hope, will also find it useful.
Step #1 Always pay off Credit Card Debt
We all know how essential saving money for retirement is. But too many people invest or save money while still owing balances on credit cards. The average U.S. household strangles itself with $8000 in outstanding credit card debt (Larimore, Lindauer, Leboeuf 2007, p10). In this respect, being average is hazardous to your wealth. In short, if you owe money on a credit card that charges 18%, and you’re investing money that you expect to make 9% per year on, then you’re condemning yourself like Sisyphus—the character in Greek mythology who was forced to roll a boulder up a slope, only to have the Gods knock it down before he got to the top.
For TESOL teachers, paying off credit card balances in full at the end of each month offers a fabulous “return” on investment: better, in percentage terms, than what the stock market or the real estate market offers. Paying off an 18% interest bearing loan provides a tax free gain of 18%. Even if you could make exorbitant returns in the stock market, you’d be paying tax on those gains. So you might need to gain 25% on your money in the stock market to equate to the after tax gain that paying off an 18% interest bearing credit card balance would provide(Larimore, Lindauer, Leboeuf 2007, p10). Not even Warren Buffett, arguably the world’s greatest investor, has compounded money at 25% per year over his lifetime (Miles 2001, p52-53). So ensure that you pay off your credit card debts in full, before saving money towards your retirement.
Step #2 Establish a six month contingency fund
Teachers are generally experienced at establishing contingency funds. We don’t always receive paychecks throughout the entire year, so we have to put aside money for times (often during the summer months) when we’re living off our savings. And throughout our careers, we can be collared by bills when we least expect them: a new roof for the house, another car to replace the one that just died etc. What’s worse is that we can end up getting sick, laid off from work or need money to bail a son or daughter out of a tough financial jam.
TESOL teachers should establish a contingency fund with more than enough for their typical summer expenses. They should have enough money to cover at least six months worth of living expenses in a high interest savings account—one they can withdraw from whenever they want, without financial penalty (Larimore, Lindauer, Leboeuf 2007, p11).
Step #3 Pay Yourself First
Once you’re free of credit card debt, and you’ve established a strong contingency fund for emergencies, you should start investing at least 10% of your pre-tax income. Your employer might offer worthwhile savings plan assistance via a 401k or a 403b investment account. Such plans often allow employers to assist with retirement contributions, matching your contributions, in some cases.
If your employer doesn’t offer such a plan, there’s still the option (for stateside teachers only) to invest in an IRA investment plan, allowing you to compound your interest without paying taxes along the way (Malkiel 2003, p287). The earlier you begin to do this, the better.
And if you’re a self employed TESOL teacher, you might want to look into contributing to a Keogh plan which allows for tax deductable contributions (Malkiel 2003, p289). In some cases, you can even set up a Keogh plan if you moonlight as a tutorer.
For further reading on IRAs, Keogh plans and 401Ks, you can read Burton Malkiel’s, A Random Walk Down Wall Street or check out the following website: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/keoghplan.asp. Also consider finding a tax accountant who can patiently advise you on the different plans that may be available to you.
Step #4 Start investing as early as possible
Albert Einstein called compound interest the most powerful force on the planet. Here’s why.
If a 20 year old future TESOL teacher invested $100 a month into an investment account until the age of 65, they would have contributed a total of $54,000 over 45 years. And if they made 10% per year on that money, it would amount to $948,954.38 in an IRA investment account: nearly a million dollars accumulated by a teacher who invested the daily sum of $3.33 per day for 65 years. Even Einstein would have been impressed.
Compound InterestPresent ValueReturn Rate / CAGRAnnuityBond YieldMortgageRetirement
Compare this to a TESOL teacher who delays investing until they’re 40 years old. Assume that they allocate $700 a month for the next 25 years. At age 65, they will have invested $210,000 in the market.
Logic might suggest that the person starting later, but investing significantly more, would accumulate a larger account. But the early starter would end up with an advantage of more than $40,000 over the late starter. And they’d achieve their result by investing significantly less money.
Young TESOL professionals should understand that the earlier they start investing, the better: money compounds powerfully over time. You don’t need a massive salary to weave a large nest egg; you just need plenty of time and a committed, regular monthly investment plan. You can play with differing scenarios regarding alternative investment returns and their effects over time by logging on to the compounding financial calculator at http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm
Step #5—Invest in Low Cost Index funds whenever possible
Once a TESOL teacher is committed to investing their money for the future, they’re faced with the next inevitable question: Where do I put my money? If you asked the man commonly regarded as history’s greatest investor (Warren Buffett) he’d likely tell you to be wary of the financial service industry and invest in products called “Index Funds” (Lowe 2007 p151). A full 92% of American investors buy the index fund’s much more expensive cousin: the actively managed mutual fund (Davis 2008, p4). Selling actively managed mutual funds is more profitable for financial planners than selling index funds is. But index funds tend to perform better and trigger lower taxes than actively managed mutual funds. If you want to read an interesting online article about how the powers that be at Google wanted to ensure that their millionaire employees wouldn’t be taken advantage of by financial planners, check this out: (http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-get). And keep in mind that I am not suggesting that you “go it alone” with your financial planning. There are advisors who can help you to invest effectively, and I will outline how to find one, later in this chapter.
Fees and the Market
Stock market index funds are similar to actively managed stock market mutual funds. For example, Vanguard’s total U.S. stock market index holds thousands of stocks. And generally, nobody trades those stocks. An index is meant to hold a group of stocks, while an actively managed mutual fund is meant to trade a group of stocks. As such, there’s a cost difference that can’t often be overcome. The fees for, say, Vanguard’s total stock market fund is 800% lower than the fee for the average U.S mutual fund. It’s a financial albatross that’s tough to overcome with clever trading.
Over a 20 year period from 1978 to 1998, 85% of mutual funds failed to keep pace with the market index—mostly because of their high fee structure. And this 85% failure percentage is conservative because it doesn’t include the poorly performing funds that ceased operations or changed their names when they blended with other funds (Swenson 2008 p218). Nor does it include the added taxable liability that mutual funds expose their investors to, compared to index funds.
And the 85% of funds that did lose to the markets lost by 3.2% per year over a 20 year study (Arnott, Berkin and Ye, 2000 p85-86).
If you don’t think 3.2% per year is a large deficit, have a look at what it could do over 50 years:
$10,000 invested at 6.5% per year for 50 years = $233,066.79
$10,000 invested at 9.7% per year for 50 years = $1,024,074.08
The typical professional financial planner, however, (we’ll discuss the atypical planner later) will not invest your money in indexes because index funds don’t pay them as much as actively managed mutual funds. In fact, the largest provider of index funds, the non profit group called Vanguard, won’t pay advisors a penny. According to Vanguard’s Director of Institutional Sales: “When brokers realize that they won’t be compensated for putting our funds in a plan, they typically hang up on us.”(Swensen 2008 p280).
Now—and this is where Buffett’s argument builds momentum—many advisors who buy these inferior products (mutual funds) for their clients, end up charging them additional sales fees to get into these funds, additional redemption fees to get out, annual “advisor’s fees” amounting to as much as 2% per year—or all three. Again, I’m not suggesting a “Do it yourself” portfolio. Most, if not all of these excesses can be avoided by choosing the right advisor.
Academic studies all suggest that, after all fees and taxes (regular mutual funds cost more money in taxes when held outside of a tax deferred account) a portfolio of index funds is likely to leave a portfolio of actively managed funds in its dust. (Farrell 2004, p151-152).
Taking the Arnott study into consideration, before sales or advisor’s fees, you could end up with a 3.2% annual lag on the return of the market. It’s worth having a look at that difference again:
$10,000 invested at 6.5% per year for 50 years = $233,066.79
$10,000 invested at 9.7% per year for 50 years = $1,024,074.08
Add in an “advisor’s fee” amounting to a further 1% per year (which many financial planners charge) and the chasm widens:
$10,000 invested at 5.5% per year for 50 years = $145, 419.61
TESOL teachers might be left with a very important question now: “What if my financial advisor can find mutual funds that can beat the index funds over the long term?” First of all, even if they could, according to the 20 year Arnott study, the mutual funds that have beaten the market indexes only added a further winning margin of 1.3% per year (Arnott, Berkin and Ye, 2000 p85-86).
Secondly, nobody has proven, with consistency, that they can find index beating mutual funds. It’s easy to find those that have beaten the indexes in the past, but those performances don’t prove to be sustainable. When I personally attended Warren Buffett’s 2005 shareholder meeting in Omaha, he threw a gauntlet to the 24,000 attendees: “I’ll bet that nobody in this room can name ten mutual funds today that, as an aggregate, will beat the after tax performance of the S&P 500 index over the next ten years.” With some of the world’s smartest financial people in attendance, the crowd sat quietly—knowingly.
Professor Malkiel created the following scenario to prove the point. Imagine that it’s 1980. You have decided to prudently find out which the top performing mutual funds were from 1970 until 1979. And when you find what they are, you buy the best 20 performing funds. Unfortunately, in the decade that followed, you would have (as an average) underperformed—not only the U.S. index, but the average U.S. mutual fund as well.
The same rule applied when he assumed that you had bought the top 20 funds of the 1980s. In the decade that followed, they disappointed investors, falling short of the U.S. index. And the 1990s? It was no different. Those funds are disappointing in this decade, drastically falling behind the average mutual fund’s performance and proving to be disastrous when juxtaposed with the total U.S. stock market index (Malkiel 2003 p189).
How does this relate to you? What I want to illustrate is the fact that whether you choose your own mutual funds to invest in, or whether you ask an advisor to do it for you, you will very likely lag the results of market tracking index funds. And if you end up lagging the market by just a few percentage points per year, it can have devastating long term effects on a TESOL teacher’s retirement account.
And if a 3.2% difference sounds dramatic, David Swenson, the superb investor who heads Yale University’s endowment fund suggests that in a 15 year study, 96% of actively managed mutual funds fail to match the performance of the U.S. market index—by a whopping 4.8% per annum, after all taxes and expenses (Swensen 2008 p217).
There’s a fund rating agency called Morningstar that rates mutual fund performance based on past track records. Then they award them a series of stars—four or five star funds being the best. If you think you can avoid underperforming the market by doing your own research on top rated funds, you might want to think twice.
Burton Malkiel’s premise that it’s practically impossible to pick top performing mutual funds ahead of time holds true in Mark Hulbert’s study as well: “A mutual fund portfolio continuously adjusted to hold only Morningstar’s five star funds earned an annual return of just 6.9% between 1994 and 2004, nearly 40% below the 11.0% return on the total stock market index (Bogle 2007 p90).
And don’t forget that you can buy low cost, tax efficient index funds, while being advised by someone charging a fraction of what most other people pay for investment guidance. This strategy is endorsed by Warren Buffett himself when he says, “Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund that charges minimal fees (Cunningham 2001 p100). I’ll show you how to do that later in this chapter.
Academics have been shouting this message from the rooftops for years. And adding further insult to injury, more than half of American mutual funds are accompanied by further albatrosses, in the form of sales loads charging fees as high as 6% just to get into them. The chances are high that you actually own some of these yourself. And sometimes, mutual fund companies charge you fees to withdraw money from your funds. These extra costs don’t even go into the underperformance equations I previously cited.
TESOL teachers shouldn’t buy mutual funds that charge sales fees. If you pay a fee of 5.75% to get into a fund, then you have to make 6.1% the following year, just to break even. Dr. William Bernstein, who is regularly quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Money and Forbes puts it bluntly in his excellent book, The Four Pillars of Investing. Pertaining to sales loaded mutual funds, he goes on to ask, “Who buys this rubbish? Uninformed investors. Who sells it to them? Brokers, investment advisors, and insurance salesmen. Is it illegal? No. But it should be” (Bernstein 2002 p204). He’s particularly livid about it because the average “load fund” (which is what we call these funds) actually performs worse than the average “no load” mutual fund (Bernstein 2002 p204).
Many of the best financial minds in the country have caught on to the benefits of index funds over all other funds. And it’s evident when examining the biggest pension funds. According to Dick Davis, the Washington State pension fund has 100% of its stock market assets in indexes, the state of California has 86%, New York has 75% and Connecticut has 84% of its stock market money in indexes (Davis 2008 p4). And of the pension funds that aren’t in index funds, more than 90% of them are underperforming an indexed portfolio of stocks and bonds (Bernstein 2002 p86).
For further reading on the superiority of index funds over actively managed funds:
A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton G. Malkiel, 2003; The Bogleheads, by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer and Michael LeBoeuf 2007; The Four Pillars of Investing, by William Bernstein, 2003; The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing 2004, by Paul B Farrell; The Little Book of Common Sense Investing 2007, by John Bogle; and Unconventional Success, 2008 by David Swenson. For an online source, http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-get
Step #6 Find a financial advisor without a conflict of interest
Finding a financial planner can be one of the most important decisions you make. But too many people take it far too lightly.
Remember that there’s no reason to buy a “load fund” which charges a sales fee for an investment product. As quoted in the American Association of Individual Investors Guide to the Top Mutual Funds: “Funds with loads, on average, consistently under perform no-load funds when the load is taken into consideration” (Larimore, Lindauer, LeBoeuf 2007, p117). They don’t perform as well as “no load” funds, so advisors choosing them for you have conflicts of interest you need to be aware of (Gardner 1998, p80).
A portfolio of diversified indexes will almost certainly outperform a portfolio of actively managed mutual funds over time. If your advisor tries to talk you out of this reality, it’s time to find another advisor. Advisors get paid based on “trailer fees” for the products they sell. And index funds from companies like Vanguard don’t pay incentive fees to brokers or advisors.
Watch out, also, for advisors who charge high asset based advisor’s fees. If your account is valued at, say, $100,000, and your advisor charges 1.75% on assets, this means that they silently remove $1,750 from your account in that given year. They typically charge a percentage on assets each and every year, regardless of whether your account gained or lost money. You’ve seen how small percentage points can make a big overall difference in your account, over time. So don’t take the decision to use an advisor who charges a percentage of assets lightly.
There are certified advisors who charge one time fees to offer advice. If you’re comfortable with taking their advice and following through with making fund purchases (preferably index fund purchases) directly from the respective companies, you would likely find this to be the most economical solution. Many prudent people ensure that their advisors don’t sell financial products at all—distancing themselves from any conflicts of interest. As such, these advisors charging one time fees are those most likely to advise purchases of “no load” mutual funds and index funds. Unlike most financial planners, they aren’t entitled to receive sales fees or mutual fund trailer fees, so they’re more likely to act with your best interests in mind.
Finally, Vanguard, the non profit sellers of low cost index funds, employs salaried advisors you can hire on an annual basis to guide you. And if your account value exceeds $250,000, their advisory service is free.
David Swenson strongly recommends non-profit investment organizations like TIAA CREF and Vanguard. Using these companies and the advisors associated with them will also guarantee that you won’t be dealing with conflicts of interest (Swensen 2008 p345-347).
And if your money is with TIAA CREF, opt for their indexed products over their actively managed mutual funds whenever possible. Humorously, Douglas Dial, a portfolio manager with TIAA CREF says, “Indexing is a marvelous technique. I wasn’t a true believer. I was just an ignoramus. Now I am a convert. Indexing is an extraordinarily sophisticated thing to do” (Larimore, Lindauer, LeBoeuf 2007, p82). As a teacher, you may already have your money with TIAA CREF, which handles the investment accounts of many teachers and professors. If your money is with TIAA CREF, take solace in recognizing that its fees are exceptionally low. And keep in mind what Douglas Dial says, and ensure that your TIAA CREF portfolio is fully or predominantly in index funds.
Step #7 Think correctly about market fluctuations
If you’re a retired teacher, a rising market should make you happy. You’re likely withdrawing from your investment account, and a rising market assures that you won’t deplete your resources. But if you’re going to be teaching, and putting money into the markets for at least the next five years, you need to hope for lower market levels (Cunningham 2002 p71). Warren Buffett says that many investors don’t think correctly about market prices: “Only those who will be sellers of equities [stock market investments] in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise (Cunningham 2002 p71). Think of the stock market the same way you think about buying groceries. In a dozen years, you can be certain that you’ll pay more for your groceries. The same premise should hold true for the stock market as well.
So if your supermarket has a sale on non perishable groceries, don’t you want to load up on the discounted products? Of course you do. But, using the supermarket as an analogy for the stock market, too many people shun the supermarket when its products are on sale, and they rejoice when they can pay higher prices for their groceries.
The sooner you embrace the concept that cheaper prices are good for purchasers, the better. Most investors sabotage their investment results when they react to what the markets are doing.
For example, let’s assume that your neighbor (who’s a lawyer, not a teacher) bought a mutual fund called “ABC Fund”. He added money periodically to ABC Fund for 10 years. And let’s assume that this fund made 10% per year, as an average, over 10 years. You’d think that your neighbor would have annualized 10% on his money, right? But if he accurately represents the average person, he wouldn’t have made this return. His returns would have been nearly 3% below that 10% return, based on John Bogle’s 25 year study (Bogle 2007 p51).
I’ve already demonstrated how damaging a 3% lag can be over time. But why doesn’t this guy end up making 10% if his mutual fund (or index fund) made 10%?
In essence, when the markets are rising, the average person puts more money into their stock market funds. And when the markets are falling, they cease to buy, or reduce their purchases. This is the opposite of what investors need to do. The old maxim, “Buy low, sell high” is actually practiced in reverse by most people.
If you deposited equal amounts into your funds, religiously, each and every month, you’d surely generate returns that would equal the reported fund returns—as long as you weren’t paying sales fees. And if you’re disciplined enough to “be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy”, as Warren Buffett suggests, you can even outperform the funds that you’re investing in by buying more aggressively when the markets are getting hammered. To read more about Buffett’s philosophy online, you can check the following website http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/05/news/companies/buffet.pm.wrap/ or read Lawrence Cunningham’s The Essays of Warren Buffett.
Step #8 Allocate assets appropriately
The general rule of thumb suggests that your investments should comprise of stock and bond market money. A bond is a loan that you make to a corporation or a government and they pay you annual interest on that loan. Government loans are the safest. Bonds don’t fluctuate in value the way stocks do, and they’re a solid, more predictable component of a well diversified portfolio. If you prefer bank CDs to bonds, that’s fine. Just recognize that only $100,000 worth of a bank CD will be insured by the government. If you invest more than that in an individual CD, you could be taking on more risk.
As we get older, we want a higher level of predictability with our investments. Once you’re retired, you won’t want the value of your nest egg swinging wildly with 100% exposure to the stock markets. Professor Malkiel, of Princeton University, suggests that investors should have bond exposure that roughly equates to their age. For instance, a 30 year old would have 20-30% of her money in bonds, while a 60 year old would have 50-60% of her money in bonds (Malkiel 2003, p350-351). This is a generally accepted principle of responsible portfolio allocation—adding further stability as the person nears—or is in—retirement.
When we’re young, we can afford to take greater risks with our money, exposing more of it to the vicissitudes of the market, but when we’re older, we require more stability and predictability as we rely on withdrawing funds from our retirement portfolio.
Step #9 –Calculate how much you’ll need
Teachers, like other professionals, have different lifestyles and expenditures. What one teacher can happily live on, another might find oppressive. You need to write down what your annual expenses currently are, subtract any work related expenses or investment obligations and determine what you could live on (while maintaining your current standard of living) if you were to retire today.
The second step requires that you examine inflation. Over the past 100 years, inflation has averaged roughly 3% per year. If you hope to retire 10 years from now, you need to know how much money you’ll require, annually, 10 years in the future.
Assume that you can live on $30,000 per year right now, not including work related costs: professional clothing, transport, lunches out etc. For our first example, we’ll assume that you won’t qualify for social security or a pension, and that you’ll choose not to work part-time during your retirement.
If you want to retire 10 years from now, that $30,000 will need to be adjusted for inflation at 3% per year. Today, that $30,000 would have the buying power of $40,317, ten years from now, thanks to inflation. You can work out your inflation adjusted amount by using the compound interest calculator at http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm
As a retiree, it’s suggested that you not withdraw more than 4% of your overall portfolio each year (Bernstein 2002 p230). In this case, if you required income of $40,317, 10 years from now, you would require a portfolio of $1,007,925. Four percent of $1,007,925 is $40,317.
Considering that the markets have made roughly 10% per year since 1926, we may be able to expect something similar in the future. However, the markets may not perform as well as they have, historically, and considering that you should have a bond allocation which is equivalent to your age (bonds have lower long term returns than stocks) it might be prudent to expect a long term return of 8% on your money.
Play with the compounding interest calculator again, and you can see how much money you’ll need to invest to arrive at this hypothetical $1,007,925, ten years from now.
If this teacher had a portfolio of $425,000, ten years from their retirement date, and if they added $10,000 a year for ten years (at 8% per year) they’d have $1,073,998 upon their retirement.
Those might be daunting sums of money. But teachers receiving social security or a teacher’s pension will require a significantly smaller portfolio.
Even if this hypothetical teacher could expect just $15,000 a year from a pension or social security, they could achieve their future income goal (of $40,317 per year, ten years from now) with an investment portfolio of $632,925.
With assisted income of $25,000 a year (from either social security, a pension and/or a part-time job) a TESOL teacher could make up the difference with a portfolio of $382,925.
You can play with all of these variables at http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm. And for further reading on this topic, you can check out The Four Pillars of Investing 2002, by William Bernstein, chapter 12.
TESOL teachers may not be paid as highly as many other professionals. But if we follow the preceding nine steps to financial freedom, we increase our odds of enjoying a financially independent lifestyle during retirement.
Reference List
Bernstein, William (2003). The Four Pillars of Investing. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Bogle C. John (2007). The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Cunningham A., Lawrence (2002). The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Investors and Managers. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia).
Cunningham A., Lawrence (2001). How To Think Like Benjamin Graham and Invest Like Warren Buffett. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Companies.
Davis, Dick (2008). The Dick Davis Dividend. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Gardner, David and Tom (1998). You have more than you think. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Farrell, B. Paul (2004). The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing, New York, NY: Warner Books Inc.
Lowe, Janet (2007). Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World’s Greatest Investor. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Malkiel G. Burton (2003). A Random Walk Down Wall Street. New York, NY: Norton & Company Inc.
Miles, P Robert (2001) Warren Buffett’s 101 Reasons to Own The World’s Greatest Investment. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Larimore, Taylor, Lindauer, Mel, LeBoeuf, Michael (2007). The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Swensen, F. David (2005). Unconventional Success—A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Inc.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Sound Stock Buying Principles
In the late 1990s, when the stock market was on a tear, everybody and his lapdog seemed to be interested in stocks. But the timing was disastrous. A full decade later, stocks are currently lower than they were during those “can’t miss” water cooler conversations.
In the late 1950s, when the stock market was on a tear, everybody and his pet rock seemed to be interested in stocks. But the timing was disastrous. The market made no appreciable gains for a 17 year period thereafter.
In the early 2000s, all the rage was on housing. So many people became intrigued by the Robert Kyosaki (there’s always a famous cheerleader) answer to real estate investing. Sadly, buying into the real estate frenzy proved to be the wrong thing to do. House prices have plummeted, and many investors are left with mortgages larger than the value of their houses.
In the early 1980s, things were similar. “Get into a house while you still can” was the motto. Of course, in regions deemed most popular (Alberta, Canada comes to mind) the timing couldn’t have been worse. A house selling in Banff, Alberta in 1982 ( a real hot spot at the time) hadn't increased with inflation during the 20 years that followed.
The 1920s was another “Can’t miss” investment era—for stocks this time. Prices exceeded silly levels and the results were famously disastrous in 1929/1930, when the markets dropped 90%.
Oil in 1973? A can’t miss? Oil prices were on a tear, and the investment world wanted to capitalize on that. Since then, oil prices have fluctuated wildly, but overall, the price of oil hasn’t exceeded the level of inflation since 1973.
Gold? The current hot one? Read your history. The price of an ounce of gold in 1801 has barely kept pace with inflation after more than 200 years. As a long term investment, it rivals the mattress and has proven to be a far tougher money maker than stocks and real estate ever have been. With gold... buy at your own risk. It's trendy right now, and isn't a long term appreciator. Double trouble.
Following the trend of the day generally leads to disaster for most investors. But we’re wired to follow the herd—even if it means that we’re headed towards mediocrity...or a cliff.
A look at the opposite direction of the herd tells us much more. What if you had invested equal monthly sums into the stock market from 1928 until 1938? Those were mostly depression years. The wise council wouldn’t have advocated it, and 1929/1930 would have killed your portfolio, short term. But if you kept buying you would have made a small fortune during that 10 year period--and an even bigger fortune in the many years that followed, if you held on to those shares bought at wonderfully cheap prices.
How about the market crash of 1973/74, the worst crash since 1929? Same thing. Investors ran away from it all—but those who didn’t, and embraced the cheaper prices, made a fortune.
How about 2003? The markets went into a dive when President Bush announced war with Iraq. If you had invested then, with reinvested dividends, you’d be ahead of the game today, even with the market crash of 2008/2009.
I haven’t hand picked a few scenarios that fit my thesis here. This is it. Buy when things are ugly, and 200 years of history has indicated that you’ll be handsomely rewarded. Buy when things (like the economy and the stock market direction) are positive, and you’ll experience average returns, at best. Buy when things are drunkenly euphoric, and you'll likely get slaughtered. There are no long term exceptions...period.
Why we’re wired to sabotage ourselves is beyond me, and always will be. During every euphoric market (whether real estate, commodity related, or stock related) the contemporary generation chimed, “this time it’s different, prices will keep rising” During every severe market decline, they also chimed, “this time it’s different, prices will keep falling”. History never repeats itself exactly, but Mark Twain was right. It rhymes.
Other truisms include the one about “buying at the bottom”. You can’t buy at the bottom, because you’ll never know where the bottom is, and nor will anyone else. Loads of erudite predictors will make their “picks” and one of them will get lucky and thereafter famous, thanks to his/her luck and consequential self promotion, but holding off from buying when stocks are being given away is a fool’s errand. Stocks can recover very quickly, and if you're waiting for better prices, you'll probably be left on the sidelines. If it's worth what it's selling for, buy it. And if it gets cheaper, keep buying. The U.S. and International stock markets are worth what they're selling for.
There have only been a few easier times to buy stocks than now. And what excites me is that many of my friends and colleagues understand this. This is for you guys.
But, while buying stocks for the long term investor is currently like shooting fish in barrels, I thought I'd write up a few quest-helping caveats. There are plenty of ways to make money in the stock market, of course, but like anything, it’s an “odds game”. And if you stack the odds in your direction, you’ll likely do very well. Here are a few general “odds” and rules to invest by, ensuring more of a stacked deck in your favour:
1. Of course, never buy anything popular. History says the odds are against you.
2. Avoid new technology: wind power, solar power, recycled water businesses, technology businesses. Historical odds are against you. There are easier ways to make money.
3. Buy businesses with plenty of “customers”. It’s like real estate. Real estate moguls find it a lot easier to buy apartment buildings than single family homes because apartments provide multiple sources of revenue. Houses provide one, and investing in real estate through single family homes is a heck of a lot tougher. Same goes for stocks. Buying companies like Colgate (loads of customers) over Boeing (a few customers) is a much safer way to make money over time, because if one source of revenue dries up (one guy stops buying toothpaste) there will be plenty of others to keep up the revenue flow.
4. Buy businesses you can understand. If you can’t explain how the business makes money (to a five year old) then you shouldn’t own that business.
5. Don’t “trade”. Studies all show that (on average) those who trade more frequently don’t perform as well as people who “buy and hold”. This rule applies to mutual fund owners, index fund owners, stock investors, and even mutual fund managers.
6. Buy businesses that can increase the prices of the products they sell. This puts a strike on technology companies (computers and cell phones get cheaper every year) and a check in favour for companies like Harley Davidson, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nike and Genuine Parts (which sell products that cost more over time)
7. Buy a business that any idiot can run, because one day an idiot will run it. Buffett said it first.
8. Don’t watch investment related television like CNBC, and don’t get investment advice from magazines or websites (including famous groups like the Motley Fool). Call this an opinion, if you like, but studies support how disastrous it can be. I listed these in order of danger. Listening to CNBC is one of the worst things an investor can do. And I know, firsthand, that you can't sell magazines by telling everyone to buy index funds.
9. Buy companies with low debt levels. With an average of the last three year's worth of net income, can they pay off their long term debt in less than a year? This rules out most businesses but it’s a sign of financial strength if a company can do this. For example, if a business made $4 million one year, then $5 million the next and then $6 million the following year, it's average 3 yer net income would be $5 million.
Then look at the debt level. If long term debt is $5 million or less, this is OK. The safest bet of all is buying a business with no debt. You'll find plenty if you look.
10. Buy businesses with CEOs who don’t pay themselves extravagantly. If you don’t know how the CEO’s pay compares with CEOs of other (relatively equal) businesses, you shouldn’t own the company’s stock.
11. Think of yourself as a business owner. The CEO is your employee, not your guide. Never listen to him or her for guidance. They tend to want to keep their jobs, so they're the biggest company cheerleader.
12. Buy businesses with high returns on total capital. If you don’t know what this means, find out.
13. Buy businesses with consistent net income increases and consistent increases in earnings per share (over many years). You won’t find increases every year, but look for rising three year averages.
14. Buy businesses that only buy back their own shares when the price of their stock is cheap. Don’t buy businesses that buy back shares at silly prices.
If there was a 15th rule, it would deal with price. Don't blindly buy a great company without ensuring that you're getting a great deal.
For now, the 15th rule can almost be ignored. Stocks are cheap. Enjoyably cheap.
In the late 1950s, when the stock market was on a tear, everybody and his pet rock seemed to be interested in stocks. But the timing was disastrous. The market made no appreciable gains for a 17 year period thereafter.
In the early 2000s, all the rage was on housing. So many people became intrigued by the Robert Kyosaki (there’s always a famous cheerleader) answer to real estate investing. Sadly, buying into the real estate frenzy proved to be the wrong thing to do. House prices have plummeted, and many investors are left with mortgages larger than the value of their houses.
In the early 1980s, things were similar. “Get into a house while you still can” was the motto. Of course, in regions deemed most popular (Alberta, Canada comes to mind) the timing couldn’t have been worse. A house selling in Banff, Alberta in 1982 ( a real hot spot at the time) hadn't increased with inflation during the 20 years that followed.
The 1920s was another “Can’t miss” investment era—for stocks this time. Prices exceeded silly levels and the results were famously disastrous in 1929/1930, when the markets dropped 90%.
Oil in 1973? A can’t miss? Oil prices were on a tear, and the investment world wanted to capitalize on that. Since then, oil prices have fluctuated wildly, but overall, the price of oil hasn’t exceeded the level of inflation since 1973.
Gold? The current hot one? Read your history. The price of an ounce of gold in 1801 has barely kept pace with inflation after more than 200 years. As a long term investment, it rivals the mattress and has proven to be a far tougher money maker than stocks and real estate ever have been. With gold... buy at your own risk. It's trendy right now, and isn't a long term appreciator. Double trouble.
Following the trend of the day generally leads to disaster for most investors. But we’re wired to follow the herd—even if it means that we’re headed towards mediocrity...or a cliff.
A look at the opposite direction of the herd tells us much more. What if you had invested equal monthly sums into the stock market from 1928 until 1938? Those were mostly depression years. The wise council wouldn’t have advocated it, and 1929/1930 would have killed your portfolio, short term. But if you kept buying you would have made a small fortune during that 10 year period--and an even bigger fortune in the many years that followed, if you held on to those shares bought at wonderfully cheap prices.
How about the market crash of 1973/74, the worst crash since 1929? Same thing. Investors ran away from it all—but those who didn’t, and embraced the cheaper prices, made a fortune.
How about 2003? The markets went into a dive when President Bush announced war with Iraq. If you had invested then, with reinvested dividends, you’d be ahead of the game today, even with the market crash of 2008/2009.
I haven’t hand picked a few scenarios that fit my thesis here. This is it. Buy when things are ugly, and 200 years of history has indicated that you’ll be handsomely rewarded. Buy when things (like the economy and the stock market direction) are positive, and you’ll experience average returns, at best. Buy when things are drunkenly euphoric, and you'll likely get slaughtered. There are no long term exceptions...period.
Why we’re wired to sabotage ourselves is beyond me, and always will be. During every euphoric market (whether real estate, commodity related, or stock related) the contemporary generation chimed, “this time it’s different, prices will keep rising” During every severe market decline, they also chimed, “this time it’s different, prices will keep falling”. History never repeats itself exactly, but Mark Twain was right. It rhymes.
Other truisms include the one about “buying at the bottom”. You can’t buy at the bottom, because you’ll never know where the bottom is, and nor will anyone else. Loads of erudite predictors will make their “picks” and one of them will get lucky and thereafter famous, thanks to his/her luck and consequential self promotion, but holding off from buying when stocks are being given away is a fool’s errand. Stocks can recover very quickly, and if you're waiting for better prices, you'll probably be left on the sidelines. If it's worth what it's selling for, buy it. And if it gets cheaper, keep buying. The U.S. and International stock markets are worth what they're selling for.
There have only been a few easier times to buy stocks than now. And what excites me is that many of my friends and colleagues understand this. This is for you guys.
But, while buying stocks for the long term investor is currently like shooting fish in barrels, I thought I'd write up a few quest-helping caveats. There are plenty of ways to make money in the stock market, of course, but like anything, it’s an “odds game”. And if you stack the odds in your direction, you’ll likely do very well. Here are a few general “odds” and rules to invest by, ensuring more of a stacked deck in your favour:
1. Of course, never buy anything popular. History says the odds are against you.
2. Avoid new technology: wind power, solar power, recycled water businesses, technology businesses. Historical odds are against you. There are easier ways to make money.
3. Buy businesses with plenty of “customers”. It’s like real estate. Real estate moguls find it a lot easier to buy apartment buildings than single family homes because apartments provide multiple sources of revenue. Houses provide one, and investing in real estate through single family homes is a heck of a lot tougher. Same goes for stocks. Buying companies like Colgate (loads of customers) over Boeing (a few customers) is a much safer way to make money over time, because if one source of revenue dries up (one guy stops buying toothpaste) there will be plenty of others to keep up the revenue flow.
4. Buy businesses you can understand. If you can’t explain how the business makes money (to a five year old) then you shouldn’t own that business.
5. Don’t “trade”. Studies all show that (on average) those who trade more frequently don’t perform as well as people who “buy and hold”. This rule applies to mutual fund owners, index fund owners, stock investors, and even mutual fund managers.
6. Buy businesses that can increase the prices of the products they sell. This puts a strike on technology companies (computers and cell phones get cheaper every year) and a check in favour for companies like Harley Davidson, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nike and Genuine Parts (which sell products that cost more over time)
7. Buy a business that any idiot can run, because one day an idiot will run it. Buffett said it first.
8. Don’t watch investment related television like CNBC, and don’t get investment advice from magazines or websites (including famous groups like the Motley Fool). Call this an opinion, if you like, but studies support how disastrous it can be. I listed these in order of danger. Listening to CNBC is one of the worst things an investor can do. And I know, firsthand, that you can't sell magazines by telling everyone to buy index funds.
9. Buy companies with low debt levels. With an average of the last three year's worth of net income, can they pay off their long term debt in less than a year? This rules out most businesses but it’s a sign of financial strength if a company can do this. For example, if a business made $4 million one year, then $5 million the next and then $6 million the following year, it's average 3 yer net income would be $5 million.
Then look at the debt level. If long term debt is $5 million or less, this is OK. The safest bet of all is buying a business with no debt. You'll find plenty if you look.
10. Buy businesses with CEOs who don’t pay themselves extravagantly. If you don’t know how the CEO’s pay compares with CEOs of other (relatively equal) businesses, you shouldn’t own the company’s stock.
11. Think of yourself as a business owner. The CEO is your employee, not your guide. Never listen to him or her for guidance. They tend to want to keep their jobs, so they're the biggest company cheerleader.
12. Buy businesses with high returns on total capital. If you don’t know what this means, find out.
13. Buy businesses with consistent net income increases and consistent increases in earnings per share (over many years). You won’t find increases every year, but look for rising three year averages.
14. Buy businesses that only buy back their own shares when the price of their stock is cheap. Don’t buy businesses that buy back shares at silly prices.
If there was a 15th rule, it would deal with price. Don't blindly buy a great company without ensuring that you're getting a great deal.
For now, the 15th rule can almost be ignored. Stocks are cheap. Enjoyably cheap.
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