Hey friends,

Today a great success story to share from a long time reader and hopefully an inspiration to others that small, consistent actions can make great things happen.

“Since I started following your content, we’ve grown our investments from the low six figures to almost seven figures.”

Also amazing were the $2,688 in donations raised by my nephew Manuel on Canada Day for the Venezuela earthquake relief efforts (hosted by Casa Maria). Almost 7 years old, great job! Anyone wishing to support can can go here.

Eddie

Hey Eddie,

Hope all is well. Long-time reader, first-time emailer here.

I’ve never written a blog, newsletter, or anything people actually read, but I imagine it can feel like you’re sending an email blast into the abyss. You hit send, people either read it or they don’t, and unless someone replies, you have no idea whether it’s making an impact. That’s really the only reason I’m sending this.

I’ve been in corporate finance for about 15 years. I see wealthy people doing it right, and I see wealthy people doing it wrong. I’d like to think I know my way around personal finance, but investing and building wealth is a lifelong lesson.

One thing that resonated with me about your content is that you’re a local guy, roughly my age, with a similar mindset around family, kids, and building for the future. Most financially successful people I know are 20 years older or entrepreneurs who built and sold businesses. Your story felt much more relatable because you were building wealth in real time.

Reading your newsletters pushed me to work backwards. I figured out what my wife and I need to save today to put ourselves—and more importantly, our kids—in the best possible position down the road.

A lot of people in my field rely on a paid-off house and a defined benefit pension for retirement. Those are great assets, but I’ve always struggled with the fact that once my wife and I are gone, that pension is gone too. I wanted to build something that could outlive us and become part of our family’s legacy.

Since I started following your content, we’ve grown our investments from the low six figures to almost seven figures. I can’t give you all the credit, of course, but you definitely helped shift my mindset from simply having a good income to intentionally building long-term wealth.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you’re making a difference, even if it probably doesn’t always feel like it. At least in my case, your emails have had a real impact.

Thanks for putting them out there.

—You are welcome, thanks to you for sharing your inspiring success. If you feel appropriate, I’m curious if you could share some more specifics of the changes you made, so we can share more with the group.

Picking individual stocks is not for the faint of heart.

I’ve been in a couple 10x stock increases followed by round trips to 0.

I’m currently in a stock that went from $10 to $70 and is back to $29.

Bitcoin - although not a stock persay - too has venture capital type risk return characteristics.

It can go up 100% or 500% and can easily fall 75%.

Even for the blue chip stocks, bad things can happen and things go out of favour.

Nike is down 75%. Lululemon is down 75%. Space X opened at $150, went up 50% to $220, and fell 33% back to $150. (that’s how math works, a 50% increase only requires a 30% decline to go back to square one).

The average age of a company on the American stock market is 18 years.

Just because these are proven brands, doesn’t mean that they are good investments now that they are 75% cheaper. They are more likely falling knives than will ever get back to prior highs.

For all the Amazon’s that have fallen 90% on their way to 1,000x returns, there are 1,000 companies that simply died.

Time tells and it also costs if you overweight the wrong opportunity.

If you are going to try and pick individual stocks, be sure to size your investment so that if it goes belly up, you aren’t on the street.

For this reason, I keep my Bitcoin position at 20-25% of my networth. I’m comfortable with the vision and thesis, but I limit my greed by maintaing a close cap on the exposure.

For everything else, there’s low cost broad stock market ETFs that return an average of 10% if you invest for 20+ years.

10% may not sound like fun, but 10% can turn a simple amount into many, many millions over time.

We have identified a real estate investment opportunity in an asset class we have a lot of experience and success in. If anyone is interested to learn more, let me know directly.

This is suited to people who understand private real estate, have a long term mindset, and are comfortable with illiquidity over the 5 years we typically hold these projects.

Minimum participation would generally be $200,000.

“Nothing ventured nothing gained”

—anon

Has this newsletter impacted your investing/financial strategy?

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