The Simple Secret to My Success in Life

From Daily Wealth

The Simple Secret to My Success in Life
By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
Wednesday, May 7, 2014

What's my secret?

Friends at home in Florida think that I have some sort of "Golden Touch."

They want to know my secret to repeatedly making great investment decisions.

Usually, I just shrug off their questions without much of an answer. "Just good luck," I'll say. Or something like that.

The thing is, I do have a "secret" that helps guide my investment choices. Even better, it is not hard to understand or to put into action. Today, I'll show you what I do... And I hope you will always remember it.

My friends at home have seen me succeed over and over again. Usually, it appeared from the outside that what I was doing was a bit crazy. I wasn't. I was simply following the secret...

For example:

•   My friends looked at me like I was crazy in the mid-2000s. Back then, they were all buying real estate. I was buying gold coins. As you can guess, my friends were clobbered in real estate, but I came out ahead.
 
•   My friends know that when the financial world looked like it was ending in 2008, I took out a home-equity loan to buy stocks. (That was the first and only time I've ever done that.) I doubled that money pretty quickly and used those profits to pay off that loan. I've been saying "buy stocks" ever since.
 
•   In recent years, I've been buying large properties in Florida for 80%-90% less than what they sold for at their peaks. It's already working out well... One of these properties – a few hundred acres – is currently listed for a price more than five times what I paid for it. (That price was suggested by the realtor, not by me.)

So what is my secret?

Read more from Daily Wealth >>

Life in Canada, Home of the World’s Most Affluent Middle Class

From The Upshot, NYTimes

Life in Canada, Home of the World’s Most Affluent Middle Class
APRIL 30, 2014

The Canadian middle class may now be the world’s richest, but it has its anxieties, too.

Members of the middle class in Canada worry about whether they can afford college for their children and whether their children will find jobs afterward. Housing costs are a major concern, as are everyday costs for transportation and mobile-phone plans. Middle-class Canadians worry about inequality.

Yet many also believe that they’re better off than their American counterparts.

We reported last week that median income in Canada appears to have surpassed median income in the United States, based on more than three decades of international income surveys analyzed by LIS, a research group, and by The Upshot. As recently as 2000, median income in the United States was significantly higher. The data also show that lower-income families in Canada and much of northern Europe now make more than their American counterparts.

To get a sense for how these trends are affecting Canadians, we set out to interview members of the middle class. Most, of course, have no firsthand way of comparing their experiences with American ones, and they were quick to acknowledge as much. Yet in a globalized world, people do know about more than just their own neighborhood.

And interviews suggest that many members of the Canadian middle class prefer the situation on their side of the border.

“When you have a family to raise and you are middle class, you are on a treadmill,” said Deborrah Mustachi, a 52-year-old educational assistant for the Catholic school board in Markham, a Toronto suburb. “It’s very difficult to save when you have to live for today.”

Yet, Ms. Mustachi added, “I think people in the U.S. seem to struggle more.”

Canadians have little doubt that they face less financial stress about medical costs than Americans. Many also credit their labor unions for the size of their paychecks; union membership rates are higher in Canada. Canadians also know that the American housing bubble and bust were more severe than their version.