Enough Bull E-Book

David Trahair

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 300

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Stop risking everything to make your investment advisor rich The stock market crash of 2008 proved one thing: traditional retirement planning advice simply doesn't work. The risks are too enormous. Trusting the stock market is like gambling with your family's future. But how do you plan for retirement without risking everything? Enough Bull shows you how, with an easy-to-understand, simple-to-apply strategy for a better retirement. Enough Bull overturns the conventional wisdom about retirement planning, and offers the simple secrets to securing a comfortable retirement. In an accessible and straightforward style, this practical guide explains how it's possible to save for retirement starting later in life, retire comfortably on less money, and incur less risk. Updated to apply to both the U.S. and Canada, this new second edition offers a message of hope for average, cash-strapped baby boomers by detailing a step-by-step plan for avoiding all the traps, doing the exact opposite of what the major financial institutions recommend, and still coming out further ahead. * Invest only in safe investments that will never decline * Get out of the stock market and mutual funds forever * Why waiting to save for retirement may beat starting early * Elect to receive the CPP pension at exactly the right age * Avoid the common scams that lead to financial disaster More than ever before, retirees are frightened and stressed out about finances. There never seems to be enough to pay current bills, let alone save thousands in RRSPs and 401Ks, yet the large financial institutions bombard us with fearful messages of destitution unless we maximize our contributions. The truth is this makes them rich, and you poor. Cut through the noise, stop taking the bait, and discover how you can have a comfortable future without sacrificing the present. Enough Bull provides the plan, you just need to act.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Fall of 2008

Angry yet?

Why I Wrote this Book

Your Retirement Journey

Down the River

Uh-Oh, it’s the Niagara River

Retirement Journey: Plan B

Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know

Part One: The Antidote - A Six Point Plan for Financial Freedom

1. Avoid Personal Financial Disasters

2. You Don’t Need the Stock Market or Mutual Funds

3. Buy a Home and Pay Off the Mortgage

4. Reducing Expenses doesn’t have to be Painful

5. Forget RRSPs Until Your Debt is Paid Off (the Opportunity Zone)

6. Ask Yourself if You Really Need an Investment Advisor

Chapter 1: Avoid Personal Financial Disasters

The Ponzi Scheme

Bernie Madoff

Our Very Own Canadian Fraud

Extraordinary Popular Delusions

Other Potential Disasters

How to Prevent Personal Financial Disasters

Conclusion

Chapter 2: You Don’t Need the Stock Market or Mutual Funds

The Worldwide Economic Meltdown

The United States

The Recovery

What Caused the Meltdown

The Vicious Spiral

Who Wants to be Rich?

Why You Don’t Need Stocks

Why You Don’t Need Mutual Funds - Risk

Those Darn Mutual Fund Fees!

We Won’t Get Fooled Again

Chapter 3: Buy a Home and Pay off the Mortgage

Can I Afford a House?

Just How Much House Can You Afford?

Your Credit Report

Your Home as an Investment

Conclusion

Chapter 4: Reducing Expenses Doesn’t Have to Be Painful

Reducing the Interest You Pay

Debt and the Economy

Reducing Taxes

Pension Income Splitting

Self-Employment – King of the Income Splitters

Conclusion

Chapter 5: Forget RRSPs Until Your Debt is Paid Off (The Opportunity Zone)

Pretend the Stock Market Does Not Exist

The RRSP Fallacy

Compound This

The Tax Turbo-Charged RRSP

A Word about Your RRSP Limit

Do You Trust the Stock Market?

Conclusion

Chapter 6: You May Not Need an Investment Advisor

My Story

What to Look for in an Investment Advisor

For Those Who Have a Lousy Advisor

No Advisor is Better than a Bad One

Henry’s Story

Conclusion

Part Two: The Details

Chapter 7: The Canada Pension Plan

What is the Canada Pension Plan?

How they Calculate CPP premiums

How they Calculate the CPP Pension

How the CPP adjusts for Inflation: The YMPE

CPP Pension

The New CPP Rules

Drop-out Provision

How to Apply for your CPP Pension

My Service Canada Account

How to Register for My Service Canada Account

How to Calculate your CPP Retirement Pension

Money Saving Tip – CPP Pension Sharing

CPP Pension Sharing Example

When Should I Elect to Receive CPP?

Warnings

Conclusion

Chapter 8: The Money Maximizer

Why Work Against the Taxman?

The Value of Time

The Time Value of Money

The Money Maximizer Spreadsheet

Meet Pat and Jane

Pat and Jane: The Assumptions

Pat and Jane: The Results

Pat and Jane Try Income Splitting

Putting the RRSP “Start Late” Theory to the Test

Pat’s Turbo-Charged RRSP

Conclusion

Chapter 9: Retiring Without the Stock Market

The Devastating Effect of the Crash

Are You Going to Throw Good Money after Bad?

You Can Still Retire Well

Other Ideas

Conclusion

Chapter 10: You May Not Need an RRSP

A Common Misconception

Alternatives to RRSPs

Investing Outside Versus Inside an RRSP

Investing in Real Estate

Investing in Your Own Business

Invest in a Tax-Free Savings Account

The TFSA as an Income Splitter

Opportunity for Retirees

Does Anyone Have $5,500 Outside a Registered Account?

Why the TFSA is Better than an RRSP for Home Buyers

The RRSP Home Buyers’ Plan

Keeping Profits in a Corporation

Conclusion

Chapter 11: The Antidote Summary

1. Avoid Personal Financial Disasters

2. You Don’t Need the Stock Market or Mutual Funds

3. Buy a Home and Pay Off the Mortgage

4. Reducing Expenses doesn’t have to be Painful

5. Forget RRSPs Until Your Debt is Paid Off (the Opportunity Zone)

6. Ask Yourself if You Really Need an Investment Advisor

Index

End User License Agreement

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Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part one: The Antidote - A Six Point Plan For Financial Freedom

Begin Reading

List of Illustrations

Figure 2.1

Figure 2.2

Figure 3.1

Figure 5.1

Figure 8.1

Figure 8.2

Figure 8.3

List of Tables

Table 2.1

Table 2.2

Table 2.3

Table 2.4

Table 2.5

Table 2.6

Table 3.1

Table 4.1

Table 4.2

Table 4.3

Table 4.4

Table 5.1

Table 5.2

Table 5.3

Table 5.4

Table 6.1

Table 7.1

Table 8.1

Table 8.2

Table 8.3

Table 8.4

Table 8.5

Table 8.6

Table 8.7

Table 10.1

Table 10.2

ENUGH BULL

How to Retire Well Without the Stock Market, Mutual Funds, or Even an Investment Advisor

Second Edition

David Trahair

Cover Design: Wiley

Copyright © 2015 by David Trahair. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN 9781118994177 (Hardcover)

ISBN 9781118994191 (ePDF)

ISBN 9781118994184 (ePub)

About the Author

DAVID TRAHAIR, CPA, CA, is a speaker, national bestselling author and financial columnist for CPA Magazine. His other books include Smoke and Mirrors: Financial Myths That Will Ruin Your Retirement Dreams, Crushing Debt: Why Canadians Should Drop Everything and Pay Off Debt and Cash Cows, Pigs and Jackpots: The Simplest Personal Finance Strategy Ever. He is known for his ability to explain the often-confusing world of personal finance in plain English. Canadians appreciate his no-nonsense style and the fact that his views are totally independent because he does not sell any financial products. He currently operates his own financial consulting firm and gives seminars on his books to accountants in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to start off by thanking the two people that are responsible for the creation of this book. Those people are my literary agent, Hilary McMahon of Westwood Creative Artists, and Karen Milner of John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., my publisher. If not for Hilary’s belief in the idea and Karen’s enthusiasm for seeing it get into print, you wouldn’t be holding it right now.

I’d like to dedicate it to two other significant people in my life. First, to my mom, Florence Trahair, who passed away in 2008 at age eighty-two. She was always my biggest supporter. I felt her presence as I wrote this book. And second, to my father-in-law, Jack Baxter, who passed away in 2006 at age sixty-eight. Jack was one of my best buddies. He taught me how to enjoy life. I know he enjoyed each and every day of his.

And much thanks to Tula Batanchiev and Lia Ottaviano at Wiley for all the hard work in making this second edition a reality.

Introduction

Welcome to the second edition! A lot has happened since the first edition of this book came out in early 2009. As I read through the first edition to see what needed updated, it occurred to me that my opinions haven’t changed. I still stand by everything I said the first time – the stock market is no place to trust your hard-earned retirement savings in.

But some sections needed updated. For example the whole chapter on CPP is revised for the new rules that came into effect after edition one was published. And here’s a bonus: this edition now includes step-by-step instructions for you to compute exactly how much CPP pension you can expect.

Ok, let’s start at the beginning.

The period of time we lived through in 2008 and 2009 shifted the financial world on its axis. The old rules regarding personal finance are now history, as in obsolete.

This happened in the last quarter, the autumn of 2008. Let’s call it “The Fall of 2008.”

The Fall of 2008

During this period financial institutions that had existed for more than a century simply disappeared. World stock markets tanked. Entire investment portfolios were devastated. Retirement dreams wiped out.

What this series of events has done is show quite clearly the naked truth: traditional financial planning techniques don’t work. In fact, if we had done the opposite of what the “experts” have told us to do to get ahead financially, we would be far better off today. Here are some of the past theories and the new reality:

Trust the stock market to make us wealthy? Never again.

Pay our investment advisor a fee of over 2% a year to try to beat the market? I don’t think so.

Risk our home trying to “make our mortgage tax deductible” by investing in mutual funds? Please, give me a break.

Maximize our RRSP contributions religiously each and every year…and also save 10% of our income above that. You must be kidding, right?

Borrow to invest – “leverage” our way to riches? Forget it. Many have tried; you can now find most of them in the poorhouse.

Skip a cup of coffee to get rich automatically? Yeah, right.

I am not opposed to capitalism. We need efficient stock markets so that entrepreneurial people can grow businesses that flourish – businesses that create great products, deliver excellent services, hire good people, make profits and pay taxes.

The problem is that, obviously, markets have not been regulated satisfactorily. Businesses, especially financial ones in the United States, have been allowed to run rampant in the quest for riches. Thousands of intelligent, well-educated people making six-figure salaries and multi-million dollar bonuses spent years creating complex financial products that were sold to unsuspecting members of the public.

Ever heard of collateralized debt obligations? Mortgage-backed securities? Non-bank asset-backed commercial paper? What about income trusts? Or even mutual funds?

These complex instruments made many people rich. The people that invented them. The people that re-packaged them. And the people that sold them.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people that bought into them got screwed. There’s the homeowner with no job and no money who was convinced to take out a mortgage on his home and ended up losing it. There’s the government, and the taxpayers, forced to shell out billions of dollars to buy into financial houses-of-cards just to keep them afloat. And of course, there’s anyone who holds investments in these worthless companies.

Angry yet?

I am, and that’s why I wrote this book. To give you hope. To show you that there is a way to get ahead financially. And you don’t have to be a genius or trust a financial expert to get you there.

I am going to show you how you can do it with a guarantee that in the future your investments will never decline. I can say that because we won’t be using the stock market. We won’t even be using mutual funds. It is so easy to follow you won’t even need to think about it for more than a few hours a year. It is so simple that once implemented you may not even need an investment advisor.

It’s the plan laid out in this book that you can read in less than one day. After you read it you’ll be able to explain it fully in five minutes.

Why I Wrote this Book

I wrote it because I have received a lot of emails like this:

Good morning, David. I have just finished reading your book Smoke and Mirrors: Financial Myths That Will Ruin Your Retirement Dreams and I couldn’t agree with you more. I am, however, concerned about my daughter and son-in-law who have this mantra that everything goes into the RRSP. I need to educate them and your line of thinking is what I need to approach them with.

While my children are quite well off, I am scraping by – having lost most of my portfolio in the recent stock market crash while my husband was going through a major cancer operation and my portfolio was not on my mind and, sad to say, nor on my broker’s mind. The good thing is hubby survived, but our belts are very tight as a result of looking the other way for even a few days.

Joanne

This email arrived in January of 2005. The stock market crash she was talking about was the crash of March of 2000. In 2008 I started to hear more such stories.

Your Retirement Journey

But does the whole idea of financial planning need to be so complex? If you listen to all the experts, you’ll often end up confused. You may be thinking:

My investment advisor is telling me I have to invest more but my existing savings have just gotten whacked in the market and I still haven’t even recovered the losses – isn’t this advice like throwing good money after bad?

Getting my finances in order is going to be painful. Forget it. I want to live now!

This is all so depressing. I never seem to be making much progress.

All the standard retirement advice says that I’m on the wrong track. Jeepers, my unused RRSP room is huge!

Personal finances are very complex; I can never get a good handle on what is going on with my money even after talking to my broker.

I may never be able to afford to retire!

You know what? It doesn’t have to be confusing or complicated. It never used to be – mutual funds only became popular at the end of the twentieth century, RRSPs were only introduced in 1957 and capital gains tax didn’t even exist before 1972. The truth is that the whole subject of personal finance has been made complicated because it makes money for the people that run the financial system. It is designed to be complex so that these financial types can continue to earn six-figure salaries – off the hard-earned savings of the little guy and gal.

Let’s make an analogy shall we? They want us to believe that the typical journey to retirement is like a trip down a river. A river is the best way to get there – walking is too slow. It’s a complicated journey, so you’ll obviously need a guide, right?

Down the River

We arrive at our advisor’s headquarters to learn about the trip we are about to take.

“Welcome friends, you’ve come to the right place! We have been in business for more than twenty years and we know rivers like the back of our hands. Trust us – we’ll get you to your destination safely.”

The advisor goes on to describe the trip.

“Rivers are different and you never really know what to expect. We have accompanied our clients on thousands of river trips. We know what to expect! We can guide you through rough waters. Don’t worry – let our experience be your guide!”

“Now step into the next office, where we’ll teach you all about what you’re likely to see and experience during the journey.”

So you step through the door where you are asked to sign the “Know Your Client” form. This form is necessary for the advisor. It proves you OK’d some level of risk taking. If you read the fine print, you’ll see that the onus is on you to protect yourself.

Now, in this case, the advisor doesn’t know which river you’re going to be travelling down. If he has had little experience, he may have only travelled down easy flowing rivers with nice scenery.

The more experienced advisors know that most trips are never soothing for long. They know the trip may be anything but.

If they were forced into full disclosure, they’d have to warn you of the truth:

Most retirement journeys using the stock market are like a journey down the river – the Niagara River!

Uh-Oh, it’s the Niagara River

Here’s what you should know before you begin the journey. According to Niagara Parks, an agency of the Government of Ontario, the Niagara River is 58 kilometres long, beginning in Lake Erie and ending in Lake Ontario. The elevation between the lakes is about 99 Metres (326 feet). About half of that elevation change occurs at one spot – Niagara Falls.

At Grand Island, the river divides into the west channel, known as the Canadian or Chippawa Channel, and the east channel, known as the American or Tonawanda Channel.

The Canadian Horseshoe Falls drops an average of 57 metres (188 feet) while the American Falls ranges from 21 to 34 metres (70 to 110 feet). That measurement is taken from the top of the falls to the top of the rock pile at the base, called the Talus Slope. The height of the American Falls from the top of the falls to the river below the rocks is the same as the Canadian Horseshoe Falls.

Sections of the river move quite slowly, but the speed of the water in the rapids just above the falls reaches 40 kilometres per hour (25 miles per hour). Speeds of over 100 kilometres per hour (60 miles per hour) have been recorded at the falls themselves. At the Whirlpool Rapids below the falls, water travels at about 50 kilometres per hour (30 miles per hour).

The great volume of water going over the falls is forced into a narrow gorge called the Great Gorge, where the Whirlpool Rapids are formed. The water surface here drops 15 metres (50 feet) and the water speeds reach 9 metres per second (30 feet per second). The whirlpool is a basin formed where the river takes a sharp right turn. The actual whirlpool is created by the “reversal phenomenon.” Here, the water travels over the rapids and enters the pool, then travels counterclockwise past the natural outlet. When the exiting water tries to cut across itself to reach the outlet, pressure builds up and forces the water under the incoming stream. The swirling waters create a vortex or whirlpool.

Beyond the whirlpool is another set of rapids that drops approximately 12 metres (40 feet).

“Are you ready?” your advisor then asks. “Let’s jump into the boat then, shall we?”

Assume your journey to retirement is the 58-kilometre stretch from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario along the Niagara River. It would be an exciting trip, wouldn’t it? Some parts would be calm and slow, others bumpy and very fast. There would be smooth sections and jaw-dropping plunges. There would be parts where you’d feel like you were going nowhere – spinning in circles. There’d possibly even be some rocky sections. Doesn’t that sound like the typical trip to retirement using the stock market?

Retirement Journey: Plan B

But is a trip down Niagara the only way to get to Lake Ontario? In personal finance terms, is trusting the stock market to carry our retirement nest egg to our destination the best way to go?

I don’t think so. Personally I’d rather avoid the jaw-dropping plunges. Decisions like whether to go over the Canadian Falls, or the smaller American Falls with the rock slope at the bottom, are decisions I don’t care to make!

I also don’t like the idea of spinning around a whirlpool at 50 kilometers an hour hoping I don’t drown. And I’d prefer a smooth ride to one that might throw me out of the boat.

Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know

Well, here’s what they don’t want you to know: you don’t need to use the Niagara River. You don’t need the stock market or mutual funds. You don’t need to risk your financial life going over spectacular plunges or stagnating for endless periods of time going around in circles hoping you won’t go under in the process.

You can take the guaranteed route – the safe road – and this book will show you how.

Part ne

The Antidote - A Six Point Plan for Financial Freedom

The Antidote is a simple plan. It’ll only take you a few minutes to read the six-point synopsis below.

But here is the best thing about it: You don’t need to follow it in order. You don’t even need to religiously follow each one of the six points. The fact of the matter is that if you stick to just one of the points, you’ll probably make a significant improvement in your personal finances.

Follow it all and you can rest easy knowing that your retirement nest egg will never decline, even if your bank goes out of business.

Here it is.

1. Avoid Personal Financial Disasters

Never touch anything that cannot be simply explained to you in plain English.

Don’t invest in anything that is not guaranteed by the government.

Never borrow to invest.

Avoid complicated investment schemes. If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

2. You Don’t Need the Stock Market or Mutual Funds

The truth is that you don’t need to risk your hard-earned money in the stock market and you don’t need mutual funds.

You can use 100% government-guaranteed investment certificates to achieve your goals without the risk of losing your shirt.

If you want to take a chance, buy a lottery ticket.

3. Buy a Home and Pay Off the Mortgage

Decide if you can afford a house and, if you can, buy one.

Do the calculation of how many years it will take to pay off the mortgage and do it before you retire.

Never risk your home for any kind of investment idea, no matter what.

4. Reducing Expenses doesn’t have to be Painful

Focus on two of your biggest expenses – income taxes and interest on your debt.

Pay to have your family’s personal income tax returns prepared by a qualified expert.

Pay extra to have that expert analyze your family situation to minimize your tax bill by income splitting, etc.

Find out what your credit rating is and improve it.

Get at least three quotes on any debt that you get into.

5. Forget RRSPs Until Your Debt is Paid Off (the Opportunity Zone)

Do not even think about saving for retirement until you have paid off student loans and bought a home.

Pay off the mortgage before investing another dime in an RRSP.

Never borrow to invest in an RRSP.

6. Ask Yourself if You Really Need an Investment Advisor

If you’ve got a bad one, find a good one.

If you can’t find a good one, simplify your finances so you don’t need one at all.

Chapter 1Avoid Personal Financial Disasters

In the mid-eighties I took one of those personality tests that determine what type of person you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are and what type of career you’d be suited for. The results were not too surprising: I was basically a pretty normal person, pretty good at math, probably never going to be a great artist or preacher.

But then, at the end of the session, the person giving me the results told me something that has turned out to be one of the most important pieces of information that I have ever received in my life. It was this:

Dave, you can’t tell when people are lying to you.

What? You mean I can’t tell by looking directly into someone’s eyes and monitoring their body language whether they are telling me the truth? Exactly.

And you know what? Neither can you.

Think about it. Ever watched a great actor in a movie? There are great actors all around us each and every day. The problem is that some of them want to rip us off.

I was fortunate enough to learn this lesson in my twenties and it has stood me in good stead when it comes to investing, as well as life in general. I don’t assume everyone I meet is lying to me. For example, I have known my buddy Stu for over thirty years and I know I can trust him because he has never once lied to me.

On the other hand, I initially do not trust people I meet for the first time, even if they have been referred by a friend or client.

Unfortunately, many people did not take the personality test in their twenties that I did. They learned the hard way that many people can’t be trusted. One of the early examples when it comes to investing rip-offs was that of Charles Ponzi.

The Ponzi Scheme

This scheme is often at the root of many investment scams today.

Charles Ponzi (pronounced “pon-zee”) was born in Italy in 1882 as Carlo Ponzi. He grew up there and emigrated to the U.S. in 1903 at the age of twenty-one.

His first stop? Canada. He went to Montreal, where he was convicted of forgery in 1908 and sentenced to three years in prison. After his early release for good behaviour he was soon arrested on immigration charges for trying to assist five other people get into the U.S. illegally. He was jailed again in 1910.

After his release, he spent time in several cities and held various jobs, including dishwasher, waiter and office clerk. He eventually settled down in Boston in 1917, where he worked in clerical office jobs.

On December 26, 1919, Ponzi established a company called the Securities Exchange Company. He had hit upon an idea to make himself rich. It had to do with postal international reply coupons (IRCs). These are coupons that can be exchanged for one or more postage stamps for the minimum postage for an airmail letter to be returned to any other country that is a member of the Universal Postal Union. The purpose of an IRC is to send someone a letter in another country with sufficient postage for them to send a reply. For letters in the same country you can simply use a self-addressed stamped envelope, but for mailings to other countries, using an IRC does away with the need to use foreign postage or currency.

Ponzi claimed that he could make money by taking advantage of different postal and exchange rates in different countries. For example, he claimed he could send $1 to Italy and with the IRC he could buy $3.30 worth of stamps in Boston. He promised a 50% return in 90 days. In the beginning he actually did pay that rate of return – often in only forty-five days.

To many people, it sounded like a good idea. The money started to flow in.

Within a few months people began lining up at his company’s door. Thousands of people invested their hard-earned savings. At its peak the company was bringing in more than $1 million a week, and that was in the early 1920s.

The problem was that he never really bought the IRCs or even attempted to make any money for the investors. He simply paid the return out of the money that other investors had put in, and he just spent the rest.

It was so devastating that even the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) devotes a page to it on its website.

Here’s what it says:

Ponzi schemes are a type of illegal pyramid scheme named for Charles Ponzi, who duped thousands of New England residents into investing in a postage stamp speculation scheme back in the 1920s. Ponzi thought he could take advantage of differences between U.S. and foreign currencies used to buy and sell international mail coupons. Ponzi told investors that he could provide a 40% return in just 90 days compared with 5% for bank savings accounts. Ponzi was deluged with funds from investors, taking in $1 million during one three-hour period – and this was 1921! Though a few early investors were paid off to make the scheme look legitimate, an investigation found that Ponzi had only purchased about $30 worth of the international mail coupons.

Decades later, the Ponzi scheme continues to work on the “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul” principle, as money from new investors is used to pay off earlier investors until the whole scheme collapses.

(U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, “ponzi” schemes. http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm.)

How could people fall for a scheme that promised such huge returns in so little time? Well, they did, and they continue to do so.

If you look up Charles Ponzi in Wikipedia, under “Similar Schemes” you’ll see a new name: Bernard Madoff – Bernie to his friends.

Bernie Madoff

Bernard L. Madoff was arrested on December 11, 2008 by U.S. Federal authorities in New York City on charges that he perpetuated a massive securities fraud on the investors in his investment hedge fund. Estimates of the losses ranged up to US$65 billion. We now know that this was the total inflated market value of the investors’ money. According to recent federal filings Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the firm Madoff started in 1960, actually held $17 billion in over two dozen funds.

A New York Times article dated December 11, 20081 quotes an associate director of enforcement for the U.S. SEC as calling it “a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions.”

The funds had been widely marketed to wealthy investors, hedge funds and other large institutional investors for decades. In fact there were approximately 77 “feeder funds” all over the world bringing in money that was forwarded to Madoff. Madoff’s funds were popular because they promised high returns with low fees.

It seems that part of the reason that this scheme lasted so long was that the returns promised and reported seem to be high but not outrageously so. For example, one of Madoff’s funds, the Fairfield Sentry Limited Fund, reported assets of US$7.3 billion in October 2008 and claimed to have paid more than 11% interest each year during its fifteen-year track record, according to the Times article.

I guess Bernie learned his lessons from Charles Ponzi well.

How did he do this? How did he convince dozens of sophisticated investors and financial institutions to trust him with their funds?

Well, one of the reasons is that he appeared to be a nice guy, with little or no ego. He used to tell interviewers that he got his initial earnings to start his firm in 1960 by working as a lifeguard at city beaches and installing underground sprinkler systems.

In fact, I just watched a thirty-four-minute video of Madoff that was posted on YouTube, entitled “Bernie Madoff on the modern stock market.” It was a roundtable discussion on October 20, 2007, shortly after the subprime mortgage crises started in the U.S. with stock markets riding high. One of his employees, a computer programming expert, sits beside him throughout.