25: Paul Merriman: 12 Investment Decisions Guaranteed to Change Your Financial Future

Paul Merriman is an internationally recognized authority on mutual funds, index investing, asset allocation modelling and buy-and-hold strategies. He has over 50 years of investing and advising experience and we are stoked to be able to tap into his wealth of knowledge. Although Paul is “retired” he is as busy as ever, educating people of all ages on how to take investment decisions into their own hands. On this killer episode, we discuss one of his books “101 Investment Decisions Guaranteed to Change Your Financial Future” and break it down into the 12 top points. On each point, Paul explains the decision in detail and gives us advice on how to apply this practically to our own portfolios. This is a great episode for all levels of investing experience.   Relevant links: Pauls website - http://paulmerriman.com/   Recommended Books: Paul Merriman - 101 Investment Decisions Tony Robbins - Money Master of the Game   Discussed:  Five Steps to More Money, Less Risk and More Peace of Mind - https://youtu.be/P552ZhCxnrE   Time Stamp - Topic: 02:30 - Retirement home in Mexico 09:00 - How Paul started with finance 13:25 - Choosing to save vs. spend 20:26 - Making 16% interest on a CD 23:40 - Long term investing with stocks over bonds 29:40 - One stock vs. many stocks   33:20 - Stockbroker story selling 34:38 - Investing like a multi-millionaire 37:00 - Thoughts on Tony Robbins Money Master of the Game 40:15 - Personal picks or hire an expert 42:27 - Load funds vs. no-load funds   48:40 - Operating mutual funds with high expenses vs. low expenses   54:20 - High taxes, low taxes and no taxes with a Roth IRA / 401k 57:40 - Managing active and passive index funds 59:57 - Total market fund vs. Total market + value and small cap 1:02:30 - Using you select funds or target date funds 1:04:20 - 100% Target date funds vs. target date and adding small cap value 1:08:00 - Do you trust Wall Street, Main Street or University Street academics? 1:13:22 - Are international stocks necessary? 1:15:55 - Financial advisory hiring strategy 1:18:20 - Paul’s future asset allocation model