Best Money Manager: Secret to finding the top 1%…

References: Advice I got from a high finance millionaire who has done 52 multi-million dollar deals in his 65 year lifetime. And he’s scary smart. Affiliates: None

Finding the best money manager is easier than you think.

Carl – seriously not the best money manager

It’s just that no one in the industry will tell you how to find them because most money managers suck so they don’t want you to find the very few really good money managers. (Just think of the Schwab commercials.)

Quick story about what happened to my mom when she trusted a bank with her money:

My dad was what he liked to call a horse-trader. Meaning he bought and sold things to make money. His dad was what he liked to call a horse thief, an entirely different breed of cat, and he went to prison leaving his wife and seven sons to starve their way through the Great Depression.

So anyway, my dad’s favorite hobby was restoring old cars, i.e., Ford Model A’s; Model T’s, etc. (Stick with me here…I haven’t gone off the rails…yet.)

To get my mom to go along with this expensive hobby, dad had to make sure that when he finished restoring a car, the books were at least balanced.

So to finance his hobby, he started buying cars that he only needed a few parts from, then he would sell off the rest one piece at a time or as a package if the offer was right.

Dad got so good at it that he then ventured into real estate.

He bought two foreclosed houses, fixed them up, and rented them out. That was going so well that he wanted to go into real estate full-time. Mom said no. She suffered from the delusion that a paycheck = security. (She later confessed to me at dad’s funeral that she should have trusted him and let him go into real estate.)

I can’t even imagine how wealthy we would have been if mom had let dad stay in real estate.

Anyway, to pull the rug out from under this babbling ramble, dad took the money he’d made ‘horse-trading’ and started investing in various financial products.

By the time he died of a brain tumor in his mid-sixties, this scrappy po’ boy from Georgia had left my mom with a half-million dollars in his IRA.

And since my mom knew absolutely nothing about how dad made the money or what it was invested in, she entrusted the National Bank of Detroit with managing her retirement. Crap!

By the time she died in 2013, and what was left of dad’s IRA was split between me and my brother, I wound up with $35,000. And it sure as heck wasn’t spent by mom; having grown up a farmer’s daughter during the depression, mom was as frugal as Scrooge, she ate like a bird, her home was paid for, and dad left her with no debt.

So, what happened to the money?

I don’t want you to wind up in that same situation.

Here’s how to find the best money manager:

1) Look for a money manager with a ten-year history (at least).

2) Must have averaged a 15% minimum return on investment (after fees) over the past ten years.

3) Must have ‘skin in the game.’ In other words, investing their own money in the same portfolio they are managing.

4) Make sure the money manager is young enough to have at least another ten years in the game.

5) And if your particular money manager retires or moves to another firm, go through this process again.

All of this information is available on the Internet with a bit of searching.

Go forth and multiply (your money)!

PS There is one other very good option out there if you manage to put together a half-million dollars yourself but want someone to take over so you can hang out at the cabin or go fly fishin’ in Wyoming…

Fisher Investments money manager fiduciary statement.

Fisher Investments. I’ve been reading Ken Fisher’s books (I mention one of his books in another of my posts) and articles for more years than he or I are willing to share. Nevertheless, this guy is also scary smart and he deals honestly with people. What he says in his commercials is absolutely true.

They set things up so they don’t make money unless you make money. Jeez, if all money managers were that honest, the whole freakin’ country would be rich.

If you have the moola, contact Fisher Investments (this is not an affiliate link – I just think he’s a decent human being – I’ve read all his books and most of his articles – and, yes, he’s really freaking rich for a very good reason – he earned it).