Watching a hot air balloon fill and take off is a breath-taking experience. It’s not until you’re up close, that you realize just how big those things really are.
Before liftoff, you’ll notice sandbags hanging from the sides. Those keep the balloon grounded – and unless they’re cut loose – the balloon will not ascend.
I think of investing like a hot air balloon. The balloon is the strategies we use to grow our money. The hot air that fills them is the advice we get from mainstream financial advisors.
The balloon gets all the attention – we hardly notice the sandbags. But the sandbags in investing are those things that drag our account down. They’re the reason the darned balloon has to be so big in the first place.
In investing, the sandbags have names:
Taxes
Market Risk
Fees and Commissions
These sandbags have devastating effects, which is why mainstream advisors want our attention focused on the balloon and not the sandbags.
Fees and commissions are charged even if we never get off the ground. And if we happen to grow our money, the tax man will take some for sure – and the market will likely bite us in the rear at some point, too.
Without the sandbags the balloon wouldn’t need to be so spectacularly large. And without the investing sandbags, even moderate growth that was never interrupted by a market-imposed “setback” could get us to the financial heights we all dream of.
Is that possible? Absolutely. Leave me some feedback and I’ll tell you how.
