Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
When Going Gets Tough
Posted on: July 19, 2016
Recently, I had a Review and Discovery meeting with a physician in her late 50s. When I first saw her, she looked burnt out and stressed. Who can blame her? She has been dealt a very bad hand in life.
- One of her children suffers from down syndrome and requires lifelong care.
- Her husband, also a physician, passed away several years ago, leaving behind a financial mess
- The financial professionals who were supposed to help her, led her to make disastrous investments. She lost her house and had to declare personal bankruptcy.
- Her father recently passed away, also leaving behind a financial mess.
- Her mother is so dependent on her now that she cannot continue her medical practice.
She told me she almost wanted to pull her hair out when thinking about her responsibility to her patients, her children, her mother and yet she can’t even sort out her own personal finances.
I did not mince words in telling her how dire her financial situation is. When I told her how much she needs to retire, she almost fell off her chair.
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My Gratitude Trip to China
Posted on: April 29, 2016
- In: Life
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Recently, I took a one-week trip to China, primarily to thank my English teacher. Since late last year, it had dawned on me that I had been so busy chasing my own success that I had forgotten to properly thank those people who made my success possible in the first place. So my new year’s resolution was to identify those people who had the most positive impact on my life and go thank them personally.
Teacher Huang is one such person. He started the first ever English immersion program in China, and he poured his heart into teaching us English. Without him, I wouldn’t have the language skills to accomplish what I have now
He lives in Guangzhou, China though, which takes nearly 24 hours of travel to get there. No matter, I made up my mind to do that. I wrote him a thank you letter, carried it with me, and I read it out loud in front of him and his family. We both were choked up in tears. This is a picture of me with my English teacher.
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I learned that Teacher Huang has kept me in his memory for all these years. He filled me in with many details of my middle school years that I had forgotten.
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Seeing his white hair, I felt like I had been an ungrateful student who took 30 years to come thank my teacher. But seeing how happy he was, I also felt like I’d made amends. Read the rest of this entry »
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Recently, a doctor nearing retirement age approached me with the question of how to maximize his social security income. He is 62, and his wife is 4 years his junior. He made substantially more money than his wife, and as a result, his PIA is $2400, and his wife’s PIA is only $1000.
PIA, or primary insured amount, is the monthly amount a retiree would get if he or she retires at the normal retirement age, currently 66. For every year earlier (or later) that one retires, one would get 8% less (or more). The youngest one may retire is 62 and the oldest is 70.
I’ve found over the years that many people give very little thought to maximizing their social security income, and they jump at the first opportunity when they turn 62 to claim their benefits. But in so doing, they could be leaving nearly half a million dollars on the table. Read the rest of this entry »
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Life Lessons From Improv
Posted on: September 10, 2014
Some of you may have already known that my hobby is improv comedy. Here is what happens during a performance. I go on stage with my fellow actors, we ask for a suggestion from the audience, and then we create a comedy play from scratch using that suggestion.
It just so turns out that many lessons I learn in improv are totally applicable to real life. Since after all, life is a just a big improv show. Nobody wakes up with a script in hand for how to live the day.
So allow me to summarize the top three lessons I’ve learned.
- First things first; be a great listener.
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A few days ago, my wife came home telling me the story of a sweet old lady she had met at her army clinic.
She is a 75 year old lady from Thailand, married to an American veteran for 40 years. Her husband just passed away a few months ago at the age of 92.
She couldn’t stop telling my wife how much she missed her husband, that he had married her despite the fact that she was a divorced woman with kids and that she could barely speak English. She went on and on about how he had treated her like a queen, buying her all the pretty things women like and so on and so forth.
Now everytime she passes by her husband’s picture, she still cries; and yet the memory of her husband is all she’s got left, now that she has no income and the home she has lived in for 40 years is being foreclosed.
What happened?
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In the past year, my business has grown by 40.7% as measured by the AUM. This comes from three sources: new clients, existing clients adding assets and client asset growth. -
My newsletter “The Investment Scientist” is read by over 4,500 people, representing a growth of 41.5%. This portends well for future growth of the AUM.
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I am grateful for the people who support my business, especially Nicole my assistant, Vanessa my editor, John my programer and the Fidelity support team.
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I am grateful for this year’s Nobel Economics Prize winners, especially Eugene Fama, upon whose theory I’ve built the investment approach that has served me and my clients so very well.
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I have started the process of ghostwriting a book on Physician Wealth Management, as well as redoing my website with a sharpened marketing message around the science of investing.
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I have won three storytelling contests in DC and Philly, and have failed to win at least the same number of contests.
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I have performed standup comedy to standing ovations as well as stoic reactions in corporate, charity and political events.
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I have found a new challenge and passion in improv comedy. I am thankful to my teachers Shawn Westfall and Anna Marie Trester, and my many classmates.
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My parents and in-laws stay with my wife and I for extended periods of time, helping us to take care of the kids, allowing me time to indulge in my passions.
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My kids are growing up strong, healthy, smart and caring, thanks to their mom who is also my wife. I couldn’t be more proud of them.
What are you thankful for in 2013? Share it with us in the comment section.
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As far as investment philosophy is concerned, I am solidly in the camp of Nobel Prize winner Eugene Fama and Vanguard founder Jack Bogle. They both believe that the market is by and large efficient, and there is no point in picking stocks.
Most of my money is in broad-based passively managed asset class funds, but I do set aside 5% just to have some fun with and right now I only have three stocks in my fun account.
Safeway
I bought SWY last November after going to the Chicago Booth Entrepreneur Advisory Meeting. From the meeting, I learned that big retailers routinely write off their inventory at a huge loss. The reason being that they can not control demands as they have little information about the needs of the individual consumer, though they can usually make a rough guess on aggregate needs.
I noticed my wife had been shopping at Safeway more and more. After a little digging, I found out Safeway had set up a technology system to track each individual’s needs and price sensitivities. Then it can make targeted offers to shoppers like my wife that unfailingly brought her back over and over. I recalled my earlier meeting and realized they would save tons of money just from better inventory management.
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Life: Our Real Treasure
Posted on: October 7, 2013
- In: Life
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My wife came home very sad today.
A colleague of hers got a call from her son’s teacher. He had come up to her to complain about chest pain when he suddenly collapsed right there in front of her.
My wife’s colleague ran to the emergency room only to find that her son was already pronounced dead. Doctors there couldn’t figure out how this could have happened to a healthy ten year old.
The child’s mother had refused to give up and gave CPR to her lifeless son for an hour until his rib cage nearly cracked.
My wife and her colleague used to swap stories about their respective children regularly and this son was the one she talked about most often. Now he is gone.
I don’t know her, but my heart is overwhelmed by sadness and I am reminded yet again that money and material trappings mean nothing. Life alone is the real treasure.
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Overwhelmed by Tasks?
Posted on: October 1, 2013
If you are successful in your line of work, you are probably overwhelmed by tasks and find yourself wishing there were 25 hours in a day and 8 days in a week.
Well, that wish will not be granted, at least not by me. But there are ways to make those tasks less overwhelming. I call it ‘The Five Ds’: Delete, Do Now, Delay, Divide, Delegate. Let’s go through them one by one.
Delete
Tasks that add no value, just delete them. When I first started out in my career, I used to write a weekly investment column for a local Chinese newspaper. After a whole year of writing, I did not get a single decent client. That task has now been relegated to my delete bin.
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Many middle aged Americans are caught between a rock and a hard place financially. They are the so-called sandwich generation, having to take care of both kids and parents at the same time.
This has recently been a subject of discussion with clients of mine. They are a self made millionaire couple. their parents however, are relatively poor. They have enough to live on by themselves, but if they ever got sick, they would be financially dependent on their children for care.
To that end, my clients have set aside $1m just in case.
I suggested they fork over a few hundred a year to pay for their parents’ gym memberships. If their parents actually use the memberships, my clients may never need to spend the million.
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- In: Life | Wealth Management
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I visited Dr. Chu who is a family doctor with a solo practice. He told me EHR is killing him.
He is in his 60s, very comfortable with pen and paper, but now Medicare requires him to record all patients’ records electronically, or he will have to pay a stiff penalty.
So now, in addition to seeing patients for eight hours, he has to spend three hours inputting health records.
I sat down with him and we toyed around with a few potential solutions.
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Seven years ago when I started my advisory practice, I used to call myself ‘The Investment Scientist’ to differentiate from those run of the mill financial advisors.
My blog was called ‘The Investment Scientist’, and in marketing materials, I highlighted my academic training and scientific approaches toward investing.
Then, for whatever reason, I stopped doing that. Even the title of my blog has been changed to ‘The Investment Fiduciary.’ (The word ‘fiduciary’ signals my intention to put my clients’ interest first, but few understand its true meaning.)
Over the past year, I’ve rarely heard people call me an investment fiduciary, but sometimes would come across a long lost contact who’d say, “Aren’t you the Investment Scientist?”
There is a lesson here for me. Don’t use obscure words people don’t understand in marketing.
So why am I reverting back to ‘The Investment Scientist’ again?
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Last Monday I went to Philadelphia to visit a client. After the meeting, I thought I would give myself a break. I would go check out a storytelling contest organized by First Person Arts at the World Cafe.
When I got there, they asked me if I wanted to participate. Well, I did not have a story, but what the heck, I’d come this far already. I would make up one on the fly. It would be a thrill to take part in a contest totally unprepared.
I spent the next hour preparing a story, which is based on a real-life experience that I’ve kept a secret thus far.
I went on stage, and the crowd loved my story! There was laughter like every ten seconds. In the end, I won the contest hands down. Now, I am a top ten storyteller in Philadelphia! I will have to go back to contest for the title of “Best Storyteller in Philly.”
I was so thrilled by my win, the excitement didn’t even subside after a whole week. This was a seriously cheap thrill, since all in all I’d spent only $10.
Let me elaborate on exactly why I am so thrilled.
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1. “The gross revenues for the financial services industry in 2010 were $1.129 trillion. That year, total US financial assets stood at $50.38 trillion, meaning that the financial services industry as a whole is skimming 2.25% a year out of everyone’s wealth.” This is an excerpt from a post on Wealthcare Capital entitled “Investment Expenses – The Other Millionaire You Make.” How about I help you cut those expenses by half?
2. Shocking! Shocking! Your elected representatives want the financial industry to continue ripping you off!
3. Ike Devji wrote a piece “Investment Fraud Red Flag for Physicians.” It is packed full of useful tips. I have one thing to add though, never work with a broker, regardless how clean his or her broker check record. These people are not legally obliged to watch out for your best interest.
4. A very succinct piece in Physicians’ Monday Digest about How Rising Interest Rates Would Affect You.
5. Taxpayers beware, AccountingToday has a piece on tax deductions expiring in 2014.
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10. P2P Lending: A New Asset Class?
9. A Lesson From a Client: Celebrity Business Gone Bad
8. The High Cost of Fee-Based Financial Advisors
7. How Often Do Market Corrections Happen?
6. Captive Insurance: A Business Owner’s Heaven?
5. How I Helped a Client Save $100k in One Meeting
4. Variable Annuity Fees You Don’t Know You are Paying
2. Be Careful When Buying a Condo as a Rental Property
1. Profit from Harry Dent’s Prediction? Think Again
Also see Top Ten in July.
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What fills up your tank?
Posted on: February 28, 2013
How Can I Help?
“What makes you smile every day? What fills up your tank?”
These are questions a friend of mine asked me recently. For my wife, it is hosting dinner parties. She loves seeing people come together and enjoys conversations with friends. She does this almost every week now. It is also a great way for me to see her doing the thing she loves.
For me, it is learning improv and performing comedy on stage. English is not my first language, and I never thought I could do that. Now, I regularly go on stage to make people laugh.
The Investment Scientist 