Money Rules, Cool Trader, and Life Settlements

How we invest our money for our retirement has changed consistently over the past several decades.

What was once, “Go to college, get a job at a stable company, and work for that company for the next 35 years so the company can take care of you the rest of your life” has turned into a world of constant change in the workplace.

We can no longer count on our company to take care of us or even keep us employed.

The responsibility has now fallen on us as individuals to sort our way through the maze of investment opportunities that seem to be everywhere, and everyone has an opinion about where we should put our money. Over the course of this article, we’re going to discuss three things:

First are your money rules: Do you have rules around your money? What are they? How often do you evaluate them?

The second and third items will be about two “outside the box” investment options that the majority of the public do not even know exist.

Money rules are a systematic approach to determining your personal requirements for investing money. Here are 8 simple guidelines to use when creating your personal money rules.

1. What are your liquidity needs?

2. What are your current and future cash flow needs?

3. What asset classes are you interested to putting your money in (Real estate, businesses, stocks, etc.)?

4. What is the objective of your investment (Cash flow, appreciation)?

5. What level of participation are you interested in?

6. What is your level of risk approach?

7. What rate of return are you looking for?

8. What are you desired tax ramifications?

These questions should be able to get you to a place of establishing some rules that will work for you!

Now, with regards to alternative investment options, one of my absolutely favorite cash cows is Cool Trader Pro.

If you have not heard of Cool Trader Pro, let me introduce you to this unique company. After Ed Barsano, a former programmer for Microsoft retired in the late 1990’s with a bank account full of money, he handed it to a professional broker and set off for a great retirement in his late 30’s.

However, after losing 60 percent of his wealth when the tech bubble burst in the early 2000’s, he decided to make a tool that would allow the average investor to take control of their own investments. Thus, Cool Trader Pro was born.

The Cool Trader software is a high-frequency trader (just like the pros at Schwab use) that sits on your computer at home. This software will turn your computer on stock trade all day and turn your computer off. The awesome part about it is that it comes with built-in strategies that actually think– it’s true artificial intelligence. You need to know virtually nothing about computers or the stock market to take control of your investments. Awesome, right?

The second unique strategy I’d like to introduce you to is called Life Shares.

Any person who owns an insurance policy has the legal right to sell it. Many insurance companies will often offer to purchase your life insurance policy for a fixed cash amount, thereby avoiding having to pay the death benefit.

The Life Shares strategy buys policies at a rate higher than the insurance will pay you for it, then continues to make the payment until the death benefit is to be paid out. Due to the strict guidelines around which policies they will purchase, they can guarantee investors a 65 percent pay out. This may take several years to realize, but is just comforting to know that you have a guarantee on a return of that size.

Now, why are these money rules and alternative investment strategies so important to you?

Consider this: According to a report in Forbes magazine in 2013, the average 401K balance for 65-year-olds in America was $25,000. Another report by Time magazine calculated that for every $1,000 in monthly income you want over a 30-year retirement, you need at least $269,000 in the bank.

With savings accounts earning maybe one percent per year, and 70 percent of mutual funds reported losing money in recent years, and does anyone really trust real estate?

I sure don’t…

It may be time to seriously look at some alternative investment strategies. Just make sure that you have all your money rules in place before you do.