Vacations are for People, NOT Your Retirement Plan

Do you remember how much value the stock market lost in the crashes of 2000 and 2007? I’m talking about what percent the market lost during each of those crashes.

If you’re not sure, take a guess before you read on.

The tech crash happened just 15 years ago. The S&P 500 lost 49% from March, 2000 to October, 2002. Many investors – myself included – had moved their money into NASDAQ tech stocks, which plunged 78% during that same 2-1/2-year period.

Then the S&P 500 peaked again in 2007 – just a few years later. By March of 2009, it had plunged 57%.

That makes two heart-stopping losses of more than 49% just in the last 15 years.

If you don’t remember just how deep those crashes were, you’re not alone. Most of the people I’ve surveyed think the losses were less.

We human beings have a remarkable ability to screen out painful memories, according to the behavioral finance experts.

But consider this: How would another drop of 49% or more in the market affect your current standard of living or your future security?

Is the volatility we’ve been experiencing the start of the next major crash?

I don’t know… and neither does anyone else.

But I do know that this volatility has shocked a lot of folks out of complacency.

Just two weeks ago, the Dow traveled nearly 5,000 points up and down in just one day!

There’s lots of uncertainty over China, Greece, and what the Federal Reserve is going to do next week and in the coming years.

One thing is for certain – we don’t have a free market any more. The market is engineered by central banks and governments around the world as a means to their ends, not yours. There is no historical precedent for the market manipulation that has gone on for the last ten years.

Which means we’re in uncharted territory, and all bets are off.

Doesn’t it make sense to hope for the best, but have a “Plan B”?

During the last market crash and the Great Recession, every financial “expert” was parroting the same mantra: “There’s no place to hide,” they moaned.

To prove what bull crap that was, I posted a copy of one of my Bank On Yourself plan annual statements on our website. It showed how this policy increased in value by $12,205 in 2008 – a year that was one of the worst in history for the stock and real estate markets.

That’s $7,230 more than the premium I paid into it that year.

All of the previous gains and all of the principal remained intact – just like they did in the other 19 plans my family owns.

I’ve investigated more than 450 different financial products and strategies over the last 25 years, and the one that stands head and shoulders above the rest is the super-charged dividend-paying whole life policies that I call Bank On Yourself.

Bank On Yourself plans have an unbeatable combination of advantages that include:

• Guaranteed, predictable growth that gets better every year you have it
• It’s never had a losing year in more than 160 years
• Enjoys a 5-layer safety net
• You can access your cash value when and how you want with no questions asked
• You can use the money in your plan and it can continue growing as though you never touched a dime of it (if your plan is from one of a handful of companies that offer this feature)
• You can access both your principal AND growth with no taxes due, under current tax law – you would have to get at least a 7% annual return in a tax-deferred account to equal the return of a Bank On Yourself plan
• Your plan NEVER goes backwards and NEVER takes a day off

Which brings us back to what I said at the top of this blog post…

Vacations are for people – NOT for your retirement plan

Can you imagine how it would feel to have a portion of your hard-earned dollars in a plan that has only one direction – UP (and up faster)?