
Written by Craig Kirsner
When my dad was only 8 years old, his dad died unexpectedly leaving his family with only a small checking account and his family struggled for many years after that happened. So as a young man, my dad swore he would learn everything he could about finance, insurance, investments so his family wouldn’t have to suffer like he did. We’ve been helping families for almost 50 years which I describe in my latest book on amazon: Retire Strong.
We’ve seen this movie before — sky-high stock prices, sky-high real estate prices and the Fed raising interest rates. We also saw how those times ended in 2001 and 2008.
At this point, my clients are looking to preserve and protect their wealth, so here are my five golden rules of investing and two golden rules of advanced estate planning that I share with them, which I’ve learned over the past 25 years. I focus on working with retirees with over $1 million in net worth; however, these rules apply to everyone.
Five Golden Rules of Investing
Rule No. 1:
Diversification can be an important part of a retirement plan, and the central measure of diversification is to not have more than 5% of your portfolio in any one position.
This is crucial because you never know if one piece of bad news, or some new technology, could come along that could potentially disrupt one company’s performance and stock price. Last year, for example, famous financial giant Equifax had a data breach and its shares dropped 35% in just a few days.1
Rule No. 2:
There are 11 sectors in the S&P 500, so you should never have more than 20% of your portfolio in any one sector.
This was a big problem in the late ’90s, when tech stocks did amazing and if you hadn’t rediversified your portfolio before the tech bubble burst in the early 2000s, anyone with too much exposure to tech really took a beating.

We’re seeing that again now because the FAANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (Alphabet) — have been the best performing and most widely held stocks around. In total through July 2018, those six stocks plus Microsoft have made up 98% of S&P 500 returns and 105% of Nasdaq 100 returns.
The alarming part of this is that Amazon, Netflix and Microsoft together this year alone are responsible for 71% of S&P 500 returns and for 78% of Nasdaq 100 returns.2
If you own any highly valued stocks at this point and don’t want to have as much risk, remember to keep diversifying. Remember, never have more than 20% exposure to any one sector of the S&P 500.
The 11 sectors of the S&P 500 are:
• Energy
• Materials
• Industrials
• Consumer Discretionary
• Consumer Staples
• Health Care
• Financials
• Information Technology
• Communications
• Utilities
• Real Estate3
Rule No. 3:
Positions that pay a dividend are generally preferable to those that don’t. This means your money is working for you and paying you money along the way.
On the other hand, what’s important to a retiree is to make sure they’re not taking too much risk, and stocks add risk to your principal. For example, keep in mind that while AT&T pays a 7.3% non-guaranteed dividend currently, during the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis, AT&T lost 46% of its principal.4
That’s why I prefer using ETFs and Institutional Mutual Funds to help achieve greater diversification with low fees.
Rule No. 4:
Own at least 40% fixed income at all times, including real estate investments. Most retirees don’t want to have as much volatility in their retirement plan, and this helps them achieve that goal. Also keep in mind that we are nine years into this bull market in real estate, so be careful of the current risk present in the real estate market. While younger people should be fine investing in rental real estate or REITs, a retiree whose goal is to preserve and protect their wealth may prefer to take those high real estate prices into consideration and ramp back their position in that sector in favor of more bonds or preferred stocks instead. As you’re well aware, markets don’t go up forever.
Rule No. 5:
Keep 5% of your assets in cash, because challenges happen in life. Most of my clients always have $50,000 to $75,000 of cash in the bank. It makes sense to have at least six months of expenses in your savings account.
2 Golden Rules of Legacy Planning
In addition to wanting to help preserve and protect their wealth, my clients want to leave a legacy to their children and grandchildren after they’re gone. Here are two estate planning golden rules to create a legacy for your family.
Estate Planning Golden Rule No. 1:
Use a dynasty trust to help protect the assets you leave to your family. The estate planning attorneys we work with set up revocable living trusts with dynasty provisions. This means that after you and your spouse are gone, a bulletproof trust is set up for each of your children that’s designed to be 100% divorce protected, 100% creditor protected and 100% lawsuit protected. These trusts are intended to protect the assets you leave to your children.
What’s also crucial to my clients is that these trusts keep their assets in their family bloodline. After your child passes away, the funds in the trust don’t go to that child’s spouse, those trust assets only go down to your grandchildren in the same bulletproof trusts. This gives your grandchildren divorce, creditor and lawsuit protection as well. Also, it doesn’t give your grandchildren control of the money at their age 18 or 21 but waits until they are at least age 30, so they don’t make dumb mistakes early in life.
Estate Planning Golden Rule No. 2:
You must fund your dynasty revocable trust. After you set your trust up, you must fund it by either retitling your non-IRA assets into those trusts or changing the beneficiary of your assets so that your spouse is the primary beneficiary (if applicable) and then your trust is named as the contingent beneficiary.
If instead you make the mistake of naming your children contingent beneficiaries, your assets will not go into those protected trusts, they will go directly in your child’s name with no asset protection or bloodline protection.
What’s worse, let’s say you named your ex-wife as beneficiary and never changed that. When you die, she’ll receive those funds even if your trust dictates otherwise. Beneficiary designations overrule trust directions.
It’s imperative to find an attorney who specializes in advanced estate planning. They might be expensive, but as my dad always says, with an estate plan you can buy expensive and cry once or buy cheap and cry forever. Isn’t that often true with many things in life?
Sources:
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/business/equifax-breach-federal-investigation.html
2. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/amazon-netflix-and-microsoft-hold-most-of-the-markets-gain-in-2018.html
3. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sector-breakdown.asp
4. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/t
Craig Kirsner MBA, is President of Stuart Estate Planning Wealth Advisors in Coconut Creek, Florida and is a nationally-recognized Author, Speaker and Fiduciary Retirement Planner, whom you may have seen on Forbes, Kiplinger, Fidelity.com, AT&T, Reuters, Nasdaq.com, US News & World Report, Reader’s Digest, Wealth365, MSN Money, Fox Business, Bankrate.com, Yahoo Finance, Newsmax, and others.
Craig is the author of Retire With Confidence: Preserve and Protect Your Wealth And Leave A Legacy and the creator of the Preserve and Protect Retirement System. He has undergraduate degrees in finance and risk management from the University of Florida, as well as an MBA in finance from the Chapman School of Business at Florida International University. He has passed the Series 63 and 65 securities exams and has been a licensed life insurance agent for 27 years.
Find More From Craig Kirsner:
www.stuartplanning.com – this is where they would be able to find our contact information and get more information on us
https://www.facebook.com/StuartPlanning
https://www.linkedin.com/company/stuart-estate-planning
We strive to keep The Table Read free for both our readers and our contributors. If you have enjoyed our work, please consider donating to help keep The Table Read going!
8 comments
Comments are closed.

Howdy would you mind sharing which blog platform you’re
using? I’m looking to start my own blog soon but I’m having
a tough time selecting between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal.
The reason I ask is because your design seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something unique.
P.S My apologies for getting off-topic but I had to ask!
Hello!
thetablereadmagazine.co.uk, I appreciate the care you put into this space—it really shows. I’m a longtime educator and writer, and I care about adding value, not hype.
I recently published my ebooks and training video on https://www.hotelreceptionisttraining.com/
They feel like a hidden gem for anyone interested in hospitality management studies. These ebooks and videos have already been welcomed and found very useful by students in Russia, USA, France, UK, and Vietnam—helping learners and professionals strengthen their real hotel reception skills. I believe visitors and readers here might also find them practical and inspiring.
Why my ebooks and training video are special:
They uniquely combine academic pathways such as a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management or a advanced hotel management course with very practical guidance on the duties of a front desk agent, the hotel front desk receptionist job description, and detailed hotel front desk tasks.
They also explain the reservation systems in hotels, hotel check-in, check-out flow, guest service handling, and practical guest service recovery—covering nearly every situation that arises in the daily business of a front office operation.
Beyond theory, my ebooks and training video connect the academic side of a hotel management degree with the real-life practice of front office sales and marketing.
• For students and readers: they bridge classroom study with career preparation, showing how hotel and management course theory link directly to front desk skills.
• For professionals and visitors of this community: they support career growth through questions for receptionist and step-by-step questions to ask a receptionist in an interview, along with guidance on writing a strong receptionist description for resume.
As someone who has taught hospitality management programs for nearly 30 years, I rarely see materials that balance the academic foundation with the day-to-day hotel front desk job requirements so effectively.
This training not only teaches but also simulates real hotel reception challenges—making it as close to on-the-job learning as possible, while still providing structured guidance.
I hope you, thetablereadmagazine.co.uk, and the readers/visitors of thetablereadmagazine.co.uk will support my ebooks and training video so more people can access the information and gain the essential skills needed to become a professional hotel receptionist in any hotel or resort worldwide.
Wishing you continued success with your site—truly.
hgh kur kaufen
References:
anabolika und hgh kaufen
Whereas anabolic steroids have their place in the remedy of
certain medical situations, these medications are not protected for another use.
Any guarantees of higher athletic performance are
additionally not backed by scientific evidence.
The stimulative effects of trenbolone could also be attributed to declines in mental well being.
This typically translates to a short-term improve in dopamine and adrenaline ranges for
the first few weeks and then considerably much less dopamine from there onward.
Our sufferers sometimes report preliminary euphoria initially of
trenbolone cycles and then a crash towards the end.
Some AAS users might, due to this fact, resort to using hCG or human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG) to
maintain up testis volume quite than seeking to protect fertility per se.
Whether Or Not or not AAS are ultimately found to impair kidney perform, long-term use resulting in (untreated) hypertension is most
likely to inflict renal injury. Biochemically, this expresses itself in comparatively small elevations of blood aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase
(ALT), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT)
(99) values. Rarely, AAS-induced hepatotoxicity may present itself in jaundice and
pruritus (100, 101).
Understanding the unwanted side effects of steroids is crucial
for athletes and bodybuilders. Many are tempted by the promise of speedy
muscle development, however the long-term well being prices are significant.
It’s essential to weigh the short-term benefits towards the long-term
dangers. Steroids are sometimes utilized by bodybuilders and athletes to extend muscle mass and enhance performance.
However, steroids include many unwanted side effects that can have
an effect on each bodily and mental health. These anabolic steroids also
produce milder side effects compared to trenbolone, in our experience.
For more information on suitable anabolic steroids for women, read this text, which references related medical analysis and
offers dosing guidelines.
Women ought to be noticed for indicators of virilization (deepening
of the voice, hirsutism, acne, and clitoromegaly). To prevent
irreversible change, drug remedy must be discontinued, or the dosage
significantly decreased when delicate virilism is first
detected. Such virilization is common following androgenic anabolic steroid
use at high doses. Some virilizing adjustments in women are irreversible even after immediate discontinuance of remedy and aren’t prevented by concomitant
use of estrogens. Hair loss, whereas it could possibly additionally potentially have an effect on feminine customers,
is primarily a priority for males who use steroids.
These genetically predisposed to male pattern baldness can see
this creating prematurely due to elevated DHT. Whereas not a well being concern, hair loss may
be distressing for younger steroid users.
Anabolic steroids can be utilized as performance-enhancing medicine that enhance
muscle mass and decrease fat, as well as causing many undesirable results.
Some people take them regularly to enhance their bodily efficiency and construct
up their our bodies. Authorized dietary supplements
like creatine, whey protein, and beta‑alanine have proven advantages for muscle growth
and pose far fewer well being risks compared to anabolic steroids.
Individuals who use AASs have a better likelihood to be drug and alcohol abusers [4,33,57].
Long-term analysis is needed to clarify the mechanisms and the organic
and social processes involved in neuropsychiatric effects of
AAS abuse. Antagonistic effects are very common in steroid users, with some affecting over 10% of customers.
Examples in male customers embody zits, breast growth (gynaecomastia), and erectile
dysfunction.[1] Male users of steroids are additionally 2.four times more probably than non-users to be infertile.
These drugs might lower the damage that occurs to muscles throughout a tough workout.
Some people also might like how their muscle tissue look once they
take these medicine.
The body’s testosterone levels will rise when first taking Check Dianabol cost per unit, because
of it basically being exogenous testosterone. Nevertheless,
the physique will recognize that testosterone ranges are excessively excessive, and thus, in a bid to maintain homeostasis, it’ll shut down natural testosterone production via the testes (17, 18).
It does this by inhibiting the HPT (hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular)
axis. The liver is a resilient organ with sturdy self-healing properties (commonly regenerating itself post-cycle).
Nonetheless, anti-estrogens are typically thought-about a light treatment for gynecomastia.
According to 2018 statistics, the typical value of gynecomastia surgical
procedure is $3,824 (13). If bloating or water retention turns into extreme, customers should lower
the dose or discontinue use. Alternatively, trenbolone
is an alternative option for experienced users as it does not aromatize.
Due to Dianabol’s aromatization results and being extremely estrogenic, it’s a compound that causes important amounts of water
retention. This can go away customers wanting puffy, bloated, and smooth-looking; hence,
why it’s sometimes used in the low season.
Wonderful goods from you, man. I’ve understand your stuff previous to and you are just
too great. I really like what you’ve acquired
here, certainly like what you are saying and
the way in which you say it. You make it enjoyable and you still take care of
to keep it sensible. I cant wait to read much more from you.
This is actually a terrific web site.
Feel free to visit my website :: https://deborahhartung.com/
Have you ever considered about including a little bit more
than just your articles? I mean, what you say is important and everything.
But think of if you added some great pictures or
video clips to give your posts more, “pop”!
Your content is excellent but with pics and video clips,
this website could certainly be one of the greatest in its niche.
Excellent blog!
It’s going to be ending of mine day, however before finish I am reading this wonderful article to increase my knowledge.
Thank you a lot for sharing this with all of us you really know what you’re talking
about! Bookmarked. Kindly additionally discuss with
my site =). We will have a link alternate contract between us