Post 1 - Introduction

Brick House Savings

Your Guide to: The $even $martWeatlh $aving $trategies
The Secrets of How You Can Have Secure and Predictable
Retirement Income You Can’t Outlive

Introduction

Did you enjoy your vacation this past summer? Here in American people typically take two to four weeks off work to relax. We all need a get-away from the challenges and rewards of our regular work. So how much time did you spend planning your vacation?

Back before the internet, we often delegated this planning to a travel agent. Here was someone who had lots of creative ideas and suggestions, colorful brochures and posters, and often discounts and group rates.

The weird thing is – we didn’t have to pay the agent anything! Strange hu? This wonderful and helpful advisor got paid by the company you chose to use. You know – the cruise ship, airline, hotel, or booking service that lumped all these individual travelers into small groups. We even got a great discount for following the travel agent’s advice. Cool!

Back before the 1974 ERISA laws were passed, private businesses had professional pension managers. Employees knew from day one what their defined benefit (read: monthly retirement check) would be. But then the federal government (in all its inimitable wisdom and magnanimity) passed The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA. This law set minimum standards for pension plans in private industry. Basically, it established the precedence for the 401 and IRA plans that we now have.

So instead of having a highly trained and qualified pension manager watching out for your best interests, you now had to go it alone. Good luck with that.

How many of us spent only a few minutes of lunch with our co-workers deciding what sub-accounts, investments, etc. we would use to give us the best growth over the next 40 years? Really?? So how has that worked for us? Not so good.

Instead of having a predictable future retirement pension income, we were now required to go it alone and do the best we could at amassing a big pile of money that would pay us some unknown interest rate which was supposed to take care of all our retirement needs. Right – not so much.

Here’s the BIG thing you need to realize. Instead of using defined benefit plans (many of which were) provided by AA and AAA rated, legal reserve life insurance companies, we were left to fend for ourselves with defined contribution plans. These so called “qualified” plans were the best thing that ever happened to… Wall Street. Oh, sorry, you thought I was going to say “employees.” Bummer. Nope. Once again, the hard working, individual investor was dumped on by the big boys in the pin stripped suits on Wall Street and in the corporate offices of the investment banking world.

Oops, am I making it too obvious that I don’t have much respect for our Government, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve Banking System? Politics as usual, crony capitalism, and the greed and corruption found in many of our financial institutions, has ruined many plans for a secure retirement.

But together, we can write a new chapter in our nation’s history. If We the People allow these failed policies to continue, we could eventually lose our country and its freedoms.