The Online Investing AI Blog

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Depending on which researchers you talk to, about half to two-thirds of all Americans aren’t saving enough for retirement.

There’s a variety of reasons for not saving for retirement. You might think you don’t have the spare money. You might think that saving money for retirement can be started “later.” Or, you’re one of those James-Dean-live-fast-die-young type of people who figure they won’t be around long enough to enjoy the delayed fruits of their labors.

Worse, some people might think they can rely on Social Ponzicurity to take care of them in their golden age.

The truth is, a lot of factors can affect your retirement. So, if you’ve calculated your retirement savings, or you’re going to–you might want to consider the following six factors that can influence your retirement:

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Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, US Economy compound interest, future, Money, retire, retirement, returns, savings, time

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The original idea for Online Investing AI is to help everyone retire exponentially earlier than current investment systems that are available. (See, I was nice and said “systems,” not schemes.)

Is that so wrong?

Actually, it might. Or, at the very least, that goal and our own conception of retirement may need refinement based on an article from the Amen Clinics.

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Accelerating Technology, Automated Trading, Business Strategy, Dreams Come True, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success, US Economy active, Amen Clinics, brain, economy, learning, retire, retirement

This post over at Yahoo Finance is pretty typical of articles that tell us how to save a little money. Personally, I don’t know how great these morsels of advice really are, but they sure are popular. The most famous tidbit is

Forgo that Starbucks latte and retire a millionaire in 50 years.

I haven’t met anyone who got rich by skipping Starbucks, but maybe I will in 50 years. So, here’s some ideas that can help us save big money.

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Money, Success Amazon, credit, debt, eBay, Money, retirement, saving, Starbucks, tv

Some people think that the economic turmoil is just beginning. Others think that the worst is behind us, the government stimulus worked, and we are on the way to recovery. No one can predict with certainty which way the economy goes, but we need to prepare ourselves to succeed financially, regardless of what happens.

How can we do that?

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Automated Trading, Investing, US Economy Automated Trading, Investing, loss, Money, profit, retirement, stocks, Success, traders

Automated Trading seems to be gaining popularity on a daily basis. One common question is,

Can Automated Trading be used to generate passive income?

The answer is a resounding yes. However, that does not mean that you can set it and forget it.

Many people meet with a financial advisor, buy some mutual funds, and then forget about their entire investment portfolio for months or years. This is not a good idea.

Millions of would-be retirees got an unpleasant surprise when they checked their retirement accounts three months ago. It’s true that the markets have come back quite a bit in the last few months, but it does not mean that an important lesson can be learned: we need to manage and keep track of our investments. They cannot be offloaded and forgotten about like housework.

I saw a news show that featured an middle aged woman crying because she had lost 50% of her life savings. She lamented, “I was afraid to check my statements so I didn’t open them. But then when I finally checked, they were down by half.”

This is not a good strategy for retirement. If we are going to be successful money managers and retire wealthy, we need to actively manage our finances, and our retirement accounts.

And Automated Trading systems require monitoring in the exact same way. It does not take a lot of time or effort. Just a few minutes per day is probably enough. The important part is to commit to managing our finances so that we can achieve the financial freedom that we have earned.

This is true of nearly all forms of passive income. Contrary to popular belief, most passive income is not 100% passive. It normally takes at least a few hours per month to manage most forms of passive income. This includes mutual and index funds, real estate and stocks. We need to monitor what is going on with our investment, and make sure that we are receiving the income that we are supposed to receive.

Automated Trading, Investing, Success Automated Trading, financial freedom, Investing, Money, passive income, real estate, retirement, stocks

If you ask people about improving their financial situation, they usually say something like,

I wish I had a little more money.

Have you ever heard anyone say this? They think their financial goal is “a little more money.” But this is not a goal at all. This is just an impotent wish.

Wishes and hopes and desires are faint yearnings that come and go like a breeze. We feel like we want something, and then we never seem to get it. Goals are made of very special and different stuff. Goals are something that we are certain about. Goals have a specific number that we attach to them. Goals create a concrete crystal clear vision inside our mind. When we have a goal defined with precision, we can think of specific steps that we will take to achieve it.

How does this apply to money?

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Investing, Money, Success goals, Investing, lawyers, mistakes, Money, retirement, wage slaves

Index funds have become more and more popular over the last 15 years. The internet has made people aware of the high costs of mutual funds, and they were looking for a better solution. It’s true that index funds are probably better than mutual funds. But do they have drawbacks as well?

One of the major challenges with index funds is that they (obviously) go down with the market. People understand this when they invest, but they don’t really get it until they see their retirement account drop by 50%. What no one tells them is that sooner or later their account will drop by a large amount. It’s difficult to prepare ourselves psychologically for something like this, when we have no experience in the past.

Automated Trading systems do not need to go up and down with the market. They can exit or short a stock or index at any time. So, while the market goes down an Automated Trading system can actually make money. In fact, since markets go down faster than they go up, Automated Trading systems can make more money faster when the market is going down.

One of the good things about index funds is that once you make an investment, you don’t need to spend a lot of time or effort managing it. Index funds are perhaps one the most “Set it and forget it!” investments available. Automated Trading is similar in that it does not take a lot of work to manage the account. But you do need to check it periodically (if not daily) to make sure it is working properly.

Index funds definitely have their advantages. And, so do Automated Trading systems. It will be interesting to see how the investment landscape changes over the next few years.

Automated Trading, Investing, Money Automated Trading, effort, index funds, Investing, Money, retirement, time

It looks like Bernie Madoff will spend the rest of his life in prison. That was after stealing $50 billion of investor’s money. Did you know that there is a Ponzi scheme that is 200 times bigger than Madoff’s? It’s called Social Security.

Social Security currently has liabililites of $10 trillion. Many people think that there is a certain amount of money set aside to pay back this massive debt. Guess what. There isn’t. The government already spent the money. Just like Bernie Madoff.

This point of this post is not to be critical of the government. America is the best country in the world, and has perhaps the best government system. But the day of reconing is soon upon us; the govenment has borrowed more money than it can pay back. And people counting on Social Security are likely to be left holding the (empty) bag.

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Internet, Investing, Money, US Economy bernie madoff, debt, deficit, government, ponzi scheme, retirement, secrets, social security

In the last week, the markets have rebounded in a big way. Just when everything was looking like it was going straight down, it started going up again! Confused? I sure am. But that’s the way of the market.

Even though everyone has a prediction, almost no one can accurately predict the future of the markets. And, what typically happens is, just when we get out, it starts going up again. Isn’t that strange! Coincidence? Absolutely not. This happens to most investors. And, this is precisely the reason that 90% of investors lose money.

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Investing, Money bear market, bull market, depression, Investing, markets, recession, retirement, stocks

There’s a factory near where I once lived that was built about 40 years ago and no one has ever retired from it.

Is it because the job is so great no one ever wants to quit? Hardly.

It’s because workers use their 401K plans exclusively to fund their retirement. Unfortunately, the money contributed to these plans must stay there until they reach 59.5 years old and the back-breaking work and ruthless company policies claim these workers long before they can use this money penalty-free.

They either die, or get fired before they reach retirement age.

Retirement accounts that allow you to compound money tax-free are designed to keep you in the work force until you’re too old to use the money. It’s actually a boon for organizations and corporations to maintain a hungry, available pool of labor. The system also benefits the financial industry, which can maintain trillion-dollar accounts (filled with your money) over long time periods.

If the government and your company really wanted you to retire, they would allow you to maintain any investment account tax-free. They could let you compound the money, increasing the balance exponentially, and then tax it when you withdraw it as income. If that was the case, more and more people would leave their jobs once their accounts were large enough to spin off an acceptable level of income.

And then what would your boss do?

This is not meant as advice to abandon your retirement plans. In fact, you should keep contributing and even maxing them out. You should never deny yourself free money, even when the terms are not exactly satisfactory.

But, if you want to retire early, you need to add tools that lie outside of the typical retirement plans. You need to create a trading or investment account that you control now and one that can produce consistent and exponentially-increasing returns. It may sound like an impossible order, but as technology becomes more advanced, investors and traders will have more opportunities to create just such an account.

This is the first post in a series about financial myths that make you poor. For more information, you might want to read the previous article in this series. It’s called Financial Myths That Make You Poor.

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Accelerating Technology, Automated Trading, Business Strategy, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI 401k, finance, finance myths, ira, Money, retirement, retirement accounts