“Who Stole My Pension”, by Robert Kiyosaki and Edward Siedle, is a dire look into the death of defined benefit pension plans. Defined benefit pension plans were very popular in the industrial age. The basic idea is that you would work for 2-30 years for a company or government entity. You would be paying into your retirement (usually 7-10%) while you work. Then you would receive a paycheck and medical benefits from retirement until your death. The defined pension plan would basically invest your money into a fund that used to be safely allocated into bonds and low volatility stocks. However, as people lived longer and medical costs sky-rocketed, the pensioners have increasingly started to invest in riskier, shadier products from Wall Street. Not only are the products risker but they are also more costly, in the form of higher fees. Wall Street recruits unsuspecting pension board members into this dangerous world. The losses from these investments are mounting and pensions are being shut down left and right. This leaves the retirees in very bad shape financially and physiologically. The military is one of the last bastions of the defined benefit pension plans. And even we are moving slowly to a defined contribution plan (401k). I have served in the Marine Corps for 22 years and I look forward to my pension. However, after reading 6-7 Robert Kiyosaki and Kim Kiyosaki books, I plan on my pension being less than 25% of my lifestyle. In fact, I plan to be able to invest my entire pension into other investment vehicles that I can leave to my children, such as gold, silver, and land. For my 5 takeaways, I will layout 5 things we can do to prevent ourselves (military-included) from being wiped-out by the pension time bomb.
1) Understand that your defined benefit or defined contribution pension plan is not enough. This also includes Roth IRAs, Social Security, etc. These are good products that help you generate a little income. However, these products are very risky. We are investing in these products from the outside. They can be changed without our knowledge. So while it is okay to have these products play a little part in our lives, we need to become financially literate and learn how to invest from the inside.
2) Learn about real estate. Real Estate is one of the few investment platforms where you can generate an infinite return. This means that you can have $0 of your money invested, however, you are earning a return on someone’s money. In order to master the art of real estate investing, you need to learn about OPM (other people’s money), debt, leverage, and taxes.
3) Learn about business. Business is another investment platform that can generate infinite returns. If you can write a book purely from your internal knowledge of a subject, you have now created an asset from thin air. This asset can produce income from royalties and sales. This is how the rich become and stay rich. The rich do not work for money.
4) Create intellectual property. These are items and ideas that you create and license to others for a profit. Most of us have ideas that can be million-dollar earners, however, if we do not study business, then we cannot take advantage of these ideas.
5) Invest in land, gold, silver, and earth (oil and trees, etc.). The final hat trick is to invest in what God created. Paper assets may or may not hold any value soon. Money is created and is now based on debt and not the gold standard. Once you have achieved material wealth, the next step is to achieve “Earth Wealth”. These commodities will be here forever and are in limited supply. Having gold and silver are important when our currency is debased at such a high rate.
As you can see from the above information, in order to truly prepare for the future, we need to be educated. We need to read and learn from experts. Then we need to “do”. We have to go forth into the world and create business and intellectual property. Once we have created material wealth, we need to create earth wealth. This true wealth will stand the test of time for generations to come. “Who Stole My Pension” is for anyone who wants to learn the truth behind our financial system and do something about it. Highly recommended.
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Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. I am an Amazon Affiliate. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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