Terry LaxtonA Constructive Maverick We re all mad here. I m mad. You re mad. The Cat in Alice in Wonderland When I was a kid, my mother always told me to wear clean underwear because if I ever got in an accident, they would find out that my underpants were soile. I always wondered who they were, and never much liked them. As I grew older, there were always a lot of theys in my way, but I never much cared what they thought. At 21, when I was in my first job, as a schoolteacher, the they were my principal. When it became clear to me that he and the whole system were more interested in the bureaucracy than in the kids academic progress, I knew I was in the wrong profession. When I quit teaching, I became a self-employed home builder. That would free me, I thought, from the bureaucratic they. But eventually the bureaucrats got more and more intrusive. So, once again, they had found me. After I had been retired for a while, my wife said to me one day, You oughta get your butt out of the house once in a while. As a builder, I had been sitting across from bankers for years, and believed I could do as good a job as any of them, so I became a mortgage broker. Once again, I figured, I could free myself from the bureaucratic they. Mortgage brokers are about the only folks who get to see people s whole financial picture, which taught me that 95% of Americans reach retirement age with very little liquidity and almost no savings. I discovered, that resulted from the introduction of IRAs, 401 (k)s, 403 (b)s, etc. In effect, those retirement plans ask amateurs to be their own pension fund managers. But most folks know very little about money management, so when they plan for their retirement, they don t know how much to invest, how to minimize their risk, and how to maximize their rate of return. I concluded that if 95% of Americans were not getting security and peace of mind when they retired, I didn t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that there had to be a better way. What really shocked me was that it wasn t only Mr. and Mrs. America who didn t know how to manage money for the long term. The so-called professional experts didn t know any more than Mr. and Mrs. America. What if you could take the gambling out of investing? You already insure your car and your house. Why not your investments, too? My discoveries about how to do that are so amazing that people often think they are too good to be true. But the solutions, which I call the Better Money Method, are both true and straightforward. All you will need to do is have an open mind and use it. Terry Laxton Investment Advisor Representative Read More Read Less