You’ve seen the mutual fund ads offering big returns to beat the competitors, the category average or the market as a whole.
There’s a lot of puffery in the investing industry, often supported by cherry-picked data for a period when a fund did especially well — but is not necessarily representative of the long term.
More important, though, is the message that you should swing for the fences to get the biggest return possible. That can lead an investor to take on too much risk. It can produce lots of disappointment when results fall short down the road.
What’s the alternative? How about investing for enough return instead of the most.
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“Investors can’t control the returns they receive or what the market provides,” says advisor Ben Birken of Woodward Financial Advisors in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “But they can control how much they save and how much they spend. Rather than relying on the market to hopefully deliver something, investors would be better off focusing on the things they can control.”
The idea of aiming for just enough is the theme of the book “Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life” by John C. Bogle, legendary founder of the Vanguard Group, the mutual fund giant. But it’s a core philosophy shared by many financial advisors.
Key benefits are setting financial goals with a realistic chance of being attained. Investing for enough means aiming for a smaller nest egg, a more reasonable rate of return and a lifestyle before and in retirement that is focused on things that really matter like family and friends, rather than big spending.
“Studies on happiness show that humans quickly adapt to their environment and you are better off spending money on experience than things,” says Damon Gonzalez, a planner with Domestique Capital in Plano, Texas.
In fact, planning carefully sometimes produces prospects of a better retirement than the client had thought possible, says Paul A. Ruedi, CEO Ruedi Wealth Management in Champaign, Illinois.
“More often than not, I find that most people walking through my doors can achieve a much better retirement lifestyle than they ever thought possible,” he says. “But then again, they were all frugal, budgeted and saved and invested.”
He adds that, “The only folks that end up with a decent or great return are the ones that had some form of budget, which leads to the savings fuel for investing,”
The cornerstone to the enough-not-most strategy is the fact that a nest egg can be built with a bigger savings rate instead of a world-beating investment return. A 30 year-old, for example, could accumulate $1 million by investing $158.13 per month for 40 years at a 10 percent average annual return, which is very hard to achieve. Or she could do it with $381 a month at a more realistic 7 percent.
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More important, if she aimed for $750,000 instead of $1 million, she could get there with $286 a month at 7 percent.
Though $1 million would be better than $750,000, the smaller target and bigger savings rate would probably produce fewer sleepless nights along the way. Granted, it would take some belt-tightening to save more each month, but many financial advisors find that clients can trim fat without much suffering.
“The rate of return is only one variable in a plan, and oftentimes it’s the variable that individuals have the least control over,” says financial planner Derek Tharp of Conscious Capital, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Focusing on saving and spending rates often has a far greater impact on the success of a plan.”
Planning to live on less takes a clear vision of what matters, he says. “I like to ask people if they have thought about what they are retiring to rather than just what they are retiring from. Life satisfaction in retirement is often driven more by having a continued sense of purpose in life rather than going on a spending spree.”
Since raising the savings rate requires spending cuts, experts suggest combing through all expenses. Tools like Mint.com and Quicken software can categorize every expenditure and analyze patterns, but it can be just as effective to record everything for a month with a pad and pencil.
That includes small expenses like lunches out at work, fancy morning coffees and pay-per-view movies, plus ongoing costs that should be reviewed every year, like insurance plans and cell phone contracts. There could be hundreds of dollars of savings a month from trimming spending that doesn’t produce much lasting value.
Then there are big-ticket items like your home and cars. Tharp says, “Most people could live in a smaller house or drive a less fancy car with almost no impact on their life satisfaction,” he says. “In fact, rejecting materialistic goals and the desire to keep up with the Joneses can often enhance life satisfaction on it’s own, with the added benefits of also increasing current saving and decreasing future expenses.”
“It’s really not wise to buy a house in a neighborhood where everyone else makes a lot more money than you,” adds financial planner Lauren Zangardi Haynes, with Evolution Advisers in Midlothian, Virginia. “It may sound cynical, but you will feel richer if you live in a neighborhood where people earn about the same amount as you or even slightly less.”
Not only will a more modest home require less down and a smaller monthly payment, but property taxes, insurance costs and maintenance are likely to be cheaper as well. There will be more money to set aside during the saving and investing years, and lower living expenses in retirement — a financial double whammy.
Many experts say there’s a sweet spot in car ownership, too. A vehicle that is four or five years old may sell for half it’s original price but have two-thirds to four-fifths of its life ahead of it. Buying used means the original owner, not you, takes the big hit from depreciation. And keeping a car for 10 years or more, instead of turning one in every three or four, can produce even more savings, even though you might spend a bit more on maintenance and savings.
“Americans’ obsession with cars is destroying their ability to retire earlier,” Gonzalez says. “The median income is about $54,000 and it amazes me how many $40,000 to $50,000 SUVs I see on the freeway. Many of these drivers have very little margin in their budget after they make their $700 car payment.”
[See: 10 Out-of-the-Box Ways to Save Money.]
As important as budgeting is to investment results, many people find it very difficult to create a plan and stick to it. As a result, their savings come from whatever is left at the end of the month — nothing, much of the time. Tharp says it’s better for the budgeting-averse to save at the start of the month, thus limiting spending to whatever is left.
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Why Investors Shouldn’t Be Greedy originally appeared on usnews.com
