BUILDING A FINANCIAL SAFETY NET

With our younger clients, it is still a lesson some have not learned

Many of the people I work with solicit my help to assist them in a plan to pay for their kids’ college. Many of those people tell me that it “snuck up on us.”

Friends, please let us all realize that some things cannot be planned for, but most can be prepared for. 

Many financial advisors including myself are great advocates of a so-called emergency fund. I call it a GTH fund. GTH can be either Good To Have or Go To Hell. 

Good To Have can be money set aside for an opportunity or an emergency. The Go To Hell part happens when everything goes wrong at once and you are living in financial hell.

When I was much younger my GTH opportunity fund enabled me to participate in a hot IPO (initial public offering) and more than double my money. Another time it allowed me to buy a building lot way below market value. It has also helped me pay for everything from dental bills to home repairs without the worry of where the money would come from or tapping my credit card. Before I learned this lesson it hurt me more than once.
 

What I am saying here is that an emergency fund, a GTH fund, is the first step in building what I call a Financial Safety Net.

A carefully crafted and well constructed Financial Safety Net will keep you from falling down and from being subjugated to the whims of luck, nature or a fickle economy.

You can be on a real roll and things can be clicking then all of a sudden numerous unforeseen stuff happens. The GTH fund helps you deal with this without interrupting your forward momentum. I would say that a GTH fund is essential before you actually pursue wealth building.

Wealth building will be thrown backwards when things go bad if
you don’t have a GTH fund.

In addition to a GTH fund a well-crafted Financial Safety Net needs to have the right kinds of insurance and the right coverages. We have a separate post on essential insurance so I won’t be laboring that now. I will say that well thought out plans for how you insure your car, your house, your income and your future can make a lot of difference in your overall wealth accumulation.

I would also argue that locking in your housing cost through homeownership is the only Insurance you can have against run away housing inflation.

We have  recently experienced rapidly rising interest rates combined with escalating housing costs making homes unaffordable for many people and reducing the size and desirability of homes for others.

Home ownership is the best defense against inflation and is the best option for all but a few Americans. If you have a job that transfers you frequently without reimbursement or you prefer a nomadic lifestyle you may be the exception to the rule that you must own a home to lock in housing costs.

Statistically homeowners have 17 times more wealth than nonowners.

So this well-crafted GTH fund starts with a minimum of $1,000 cash on hand in your house and accessible cash of at least three months worth of living expenses. Exactly how much you should have in your account depends on your own attitudes, beliefs and the predictability of your income.

Once you have these three building blocks, (GTH Fund, Adequate Insurance, and Home Ownership) in place, wealth accumulation will be easy because you are not likely to be going backwards at any time.

One of the best strategies I know is to use the same money for two or more tasks at the same time. It is what the most affluent Americans do. I know of two ways middle and upper-middle income Americans can give their money two jobs at once and reduce the time to start wealth building.

Since this GTH fund is so important and strategies to give your money two jobs can help so much, I urge you to contact us and get on our calendar for a FREE Half Hour Discovery Call to see if we can help you in this important process.