Welcome to David Teitelbaum's Money Balance

 David Teitelbaum
  About David
  Financial Planning
  Products & Services
  Newsletter
  Consultation
  In the News
  Happenings
  Contact
  Home
   
 
Search newsletters
Show all

 

Keys to Financial Success Include:

  • BALANCE your short-term wants against your long term goals
  • BALANCE the money you spend with the money you save and invest
  • BALANCE your investing greed and your investing fears by moderating your expectations
  • BALANCE your portfolio risk by diversifying among your stocks and bonds

Consider the following facts:

  • A recent study has shown that the average baby boomer's net worth at less than $50,000, which includes the value of their home.1
  • In a typical year, about two-thirds of U.S. households do not save money.2
  • Most people underperform the market; from 1984 to 1998, the average stock mutual fund averaged an annual return of 10.7 percent, while the average investor only averaged a 7.3 percent annual return.3 Because of this difference, the average investor's increase was only about 63 percent of the average mutual fund's rise of 459 percent.
  • Americans are addicted to credit card use:
    • About 60 percent of credit-card users carry a balance. In 2000, the average family with at least one credit card had $8,123 in credit-card debt. Ten years earlier, it was $2,985.4
    • · A 1998 study showed that the average undergraduate student has an outstanding balance of $1,843; 14 percent had a balance of over $3,000.5

The fundamentals of money management, which includes budgeting, savings, and investments, are not taught in the educational system, nor are they taught once a person graduates college and enters society. Learning to curb impulse spending, to invest, to formulate a financial plan, and to stick to that plan are needed get your finances in order and work towards a comfortable retirement.

However, most people grow up without having learned this knowledge, and develop, instead, poor or non-existent money management skills and habits. As long as people think about consumption and not saving, about credit cards and not investing, about today and not tomorrow, few will have their financial house in order.

In order to get your financial life in order, you need to learn financial and investing fundamentals and concepts; like other disciplines, investing and related financial matters have their own rhythm and their own vocabulary.

The goal of this webpage is to help people learn these financial and investment fundamentals and concepts and to help people balance the money they spend with the money they need to save and invest as well as balance all of their investments in order to become more intelligent investors.

At the appropriate places in this website, I've set up links to websites that either I've found useful or that I've had interviews with. I also want to list the following helpful websites:

1: In 1994, the typical boomer's net worth was a little more than $40,000. Without counting home equity, this net worth was less than $20,000. Source: John R. Gist, Ke Bin Wu, and Charles Ford, "Do Baby Boomers Save and, If So, What For? -- Executive Summary," June 1999, www.aarp.org.

2: Paul A. Merriman, "17 Steps To Improve Your 401(k) Returns," 1999, www.fundadvice.com.

3: Charles W. Kadlec, "Strategy Beats Tactics," Mutual Funds Magazine, May 2000, pg. 116.

4 Source: www.cardweb.com, as reported in Now What: The Cards are Stacked Against You, by Stephanie AuWerter, October 22, 2001, www.smartmoney.com.

5 Source: Smart Money, "The Semester of Living Dangerously," May 2000, pg. 148.

back to top

  
 


Site designed by Site designed by HyperCalm