Investing

The first investment we made was a 4 bedroom ranch home with a basement on a 1 acre lot in St. Charles Mo. In 1966. We were 22 years old and had 1 daughter. This home was next door to my older brother and his wife and 4 children. He knew we were shopping for a house and told us that his next door neighbor was heading for foreclosure.  We bought the house. We paid his $750 back taxes and assumed his loan for $16.000. The house was a “fixer-upper”, so we fixed it up. We sold it for $36,000 in 1975.

My next investment was with TIAA.  I had been working at Washington University in St. Louis since 1971 and when I left in 1975, I kept my $5800 TIAA fixed income account. Fixed accounts are invested in mortgages, so this is a “debt instrument”. Inflation was high, averaging 7% in the 1960s and 1970s and fixed income accounts earned more than the stock market.  In the early 1980s, inflation was 13% and settled back to 10%.  By 2014, my TIAA account stood at $90,000.

My next investments were homes in Salina Kansas we bought for $55,000.  We sold it for $85,000 in 1983.  In 1983 we bought a home in Dunwoody Georgia for $133,000. It is now worth over $500,000 and was paid off in 2004. Over the years we upgraded this house and spend over $100,000 over time to do so.

My next investment was a 401k plan I started contributing to in 1986 when I joined Electromagnetic Sciences Inc.(EMS). I put it in fixed income, because it was earning 10%.

In 1993, I set up a Vanguard 500 stock account and transferred my 401k from EMS into this Self-Employed (SEP) plan. Stocks took off in the 1990s and I continued to make contributions to this SEP account. It reached $130,000 in 2007. In 2009, I started taking money out of the SEP account to reduce my exposure to Obama’s program to crash our economy.  I did keep this account and did benefit from the Trump stock market surge. I still have this account.

Over the years, we paid over $500,000 into the Social Security Ponzi scheme. We were high earners and our Social Security income averages about $50,000 a year. We own our home and our cars and we are able to pay our bills with our Social Security income. We also get $7300 a year from our TIAA plan.

Investing today still requires single family home ownership and stock plan ownership.  Interest rates continue to be low, so fixed rate investments are pointless.  Our advice is to “get a lot while you are young”. And make sure your lot has a house on it that will appreciate. We also recommend that you invest heavily in your matched 401k plans if you have them, if not, set up your own IRA. 

This is a case study that addresses investment principles that apply to prospering in the US economy. It is my actual “real world” experience. I had little time or interest in being a day trader. My career as a Personnel Director and Consultant and raising our 6 children left little time available for investments other than homes and viable retirement funds. We made common sense decisions. Our investment choices did reflect our belief that the family is the primary economic unit. I share confidential information in order to deliver a clear picture of our experience.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader