Ric Edelman Offers Advice On Managing Your Finances

Ric Edelman, Executive Chairman of Edelman Financial Services and author of "Rescue Your Money," shares his advice about managing your finances and the importance of saving for retirement early.

1/23/17 #2007

Excerpt:

"We're joined by Ric Edelman, who is executive chairman of Edelman Financial Services, bestselling author of Rescue Your Money. Good to see you. Great to be with you. By the way, I need to fully disclose that right before we got on the air, I was haranguing Ric about my own personal situation, asking for advice. A lot of people... how often? All the time. What do they say? "Help me?" [laughter] Yeah. People want to know. "Am I doing the right thing?" "What should I be doing?" "I got a guy, here's what he said." And you know, and I've been named by Barron's three times as the number one independent advisor in the nation. So people tend to come to me and say, you know, "What do you...?" "Ric, what should I do? And what do you think?" And so on. Happens all the time. What's that feel like? It's gratifying on one hand. I mean you don't ask advice of someone you don't have confidence in, so it's an honor and humbling. Though on the other hand... [laughter] I want to make sure people realize that I can't give them an answer in thirty seconds. As much as I want to, and they want me to. So, you know, it's sort of like accosting the doctor at a cocktail party, and saying, "Doc!" [laughter] I hear you. You know. So make an appointment with me, because my two hour answer is a lot better than my thirty second answer. And my three week answer is fabulous. I love it. That's smart. Good marketing. That's also true. Question. In this book, which I told you I found fascinating, this read. Rescue Your Money: How to Invest Your Money During These Tumultuous Times. Three of the most important lessons, cause I found about twenty in here, three of the most important lessons we need to know, Ric? Well, number one is to diversify. Don't mix, and this is important today, with the election environment, and the new President, and new administration, don't mix politics and money. Everybody's focusing on "What does Donald Trump mean, and the Republican Congress mean, for my portfolio?" If you're planning for retirement, it means absolutely nothing. Because by the time you reach retirement, we're gonna have another President. Maybe another two or three or four Presidents from now. So Presidents have remarkably little impact on long term effect of investment results. So diversifying, not with this President in mind, whether you like this President or not, don't invest with this President in mind. Invest with your goals in mind. That's number one. Diversify on a long term and global basis. Because we don't want to make big bets..."