The Embarrassing Thing We Did With Our Money

Andy Snyder|April 5, 2023

We did something embarrassing recently. It involved our money… and it was something a fella like us shouldn’t be doing.

But we’re proud of it.

Given the circumstances, we’d do it again. You should do it too.

In fact… there’s still time.

As all good stories do, ours starts with a confession.

It was a hot room. The light was bright, and it was shining in our face. The interviewer asked a question that so many folks want to ask us.

“What are you doing with your own money right now?” she inquired.

The room fell silent.

We had been hauled onstage in front of hundreds of folks to join a panel of experts talking about ways to invest outside the stock market.

We thought about taking a left onto Easy Street. We could have talked about our biggest purchases in recent years… real estate. But we’ve talked about that subject enough. And besides, buying real estate is like choosing a spouse.

What works for us… probably won’t work for you.

We wouldn’t recommend anyone else marry Mrs. Manward, just as we wouldn’t tell anybody else to buy the land we just bought.

But there is something that works for the masses. It’s something we just put more money into than we ever have in the past.

Again, it’s embarrassing… especially for a fella in our line of work.

But good advice is good advice. We shouldn’t be sheepish. So we took a nervous breath, picked a person in the sprawling audience to focus on… and made our confession.

“I just bought a CD,” we said.

Oof.

We ducked for cover, expecting tomatoes, shoes and maybe even a few sets of keys to be tossed our way.

But nothing came… just a light murmur and a lot of heads nodding in agreement. Even the fellow traders and investors on the stage nodded along.

“A guaranteed 5% investment right now,” one chipped in, “is a no-brainer.”

And that was coming from an analyst who makes his nut trading tiny tech stocks.

Look, we haven’t seen interest rates like these in decades. With the Fed telling us to buckle up and fasten our seat trays in preparation for landing… we likely won’t see them for much longer.

And once they’re gone, we’ll likely never see them again.

As we’ve said for so long now, the next leg downward is likely to take us to the lowest levels yet. And that, for the folks not doing the math, means negative rates are likely.

We didn’t lock in a long-term rate. They’re still lousy. Our CD is for just 18 months, but it guarantees we’ll walk away with an extra $7,000 in our pocket late next year.

For decades, this sort of opportunity wasn’t available. The chance to create a foundation of wealth that actually pays us to own it used to be the kind of stuff we could only read about in textbooks.

It shouldn’t make up the bulk of our portfolio – 10% or less. There are plenty of other things to put our money into.

But our fellow panelist had it right.

It’s a no-brainer.

That said… it’s still embarrassing.

But that’s never stopped us (or Mrs. Manward) before.

Note: If you’re looking for more smart ways to earn income in this market, check out my good friend Marc Lichtenfeld’s just-released book. It’s an absolute must-read for anybody looking to get paid to invest. Get a copy here.