About ‘The Elephant in the Room has a Paycheck’

In May 2012 my wife switched jobs, giv­ing her an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rollover her 401K. Like many, she was (and remains) intim­i­dat­ed by invest­ing. Together, we set­up a small port­fo­lio with her rollover that fol­lowed some invest­ing prin­ci­ples I’d been using since 1980.

Unlike my own port­fo­lio, which has had many deposits & with­drawals, my wife’s was sim­pler. One deposit, zero with­drawals. Any addi­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions to her retire­ment would be made else­where to cap­ture the match­ing ben­e­fit pro­vid­ed by her new employ­er.

Over time I’d track her port­fo­lio and give her updates when good things hap­pened (when she got a raise each month, some months two rais­es). These sum­maries got her inter­est­ed (for the first time) in her progress.

Our dis­cus­sions helped me real­ize that I had a knack for explain­ing this stuff in an engag­ing and mean­ing­ful way. At the same time, the sim­plic­i­ty of her port­fo­lio clar­i­fied a lot of the ben­e­fits of my invest­ing prin­ci­ples, in a way I had­n’t real­ized man­ag­ing my own accounts (which have grown in com­plex­i­ty over time).

In July 2012, I start­ed writ­ing (I’d be at ‘Wichcraft at 7:00AM and write until I had to start work­ing). Not only was I hav­ing fun, it crys­tal­ized my own per­son­al core com­pe­ten­cy. Explaining the com­plex, sim­ply and mean­ing­ful­ly. That last bit, ‘mean­ing­ful­ly’ is impor­tant. So often smart peo­ple explain things so well, the audi­ence is left with a big “why should I care?”.

Over time, I devel­oped a bit of a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that led me to ini­tial­ly focus on 401K rollovers. The Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint applies equal­ly well to non-retire­ment accounts, it’s just hard­er to explain sim­ply. Two exam­ples of the com­plex­i­ty elim­i­nat­ed by focus­ing on retire­ment accounts are tak­ing a long term view and the impact of tax­es. An IRA account is by def­i­n­i­tion long term invest­ing because of the penal­ties involved with ear­ly with­drawals. Also, IRA’s are tax deferred so there are no tax cal­cu­la­tions to con­sid­er. The tax cal­cu­la­tions only make the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion more com­pli­cat­ed and I real­ly want­ed to sim­pli­fy as much as pos­si­ble. Of course, peo­ple rolling over their 401K’s are a seg­ment that is easy to iden­ti­fy. Since I could iden­ti­fy them, I could com­mu­ni­cate to them more clear­ly than I could to a broad­er audi­ence.

Not only am I hav­ing fun writ­ing, I’m hav­ing fun cre­at­ing some­thing that peo­ple can use to invest well. I believe that wealth requires invest­ing, but that there’s so much fear and con­fu­sion around the top­ic of mon­ey, most peo­ple can’t get start­ed. It bugs the heck out of me that peo­ple are too afraid to open their state­ments at the end of the month! As a young teenag­er, I remem­ber anx­ious­ly wait­ing for my quar­ter­ly state­ments in the mail show­ing me how much my invest­ment (and invest­ment income) had grown. It was only pen­nies, but clear­ly there was some­thing that res­onat­ed with me if I’m sit­ting here 30+ years lat­er writ­ing about it.

With the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint, you can get start­ed with as lit­tle as $5 (none of which comes to me). And, I’ve been coach­ing a few close friends as I write to devel­op my ideas in a way that can be com­mu­ni­cat­ed clear­ly. Actors, free­lancers, young pro­fes­sion­als… they’re not rolling over their 401K’s, but they’re using the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint to get their start at build­ing wealth. In fact, just this morn­ing, some­one emailed me:

I like that I have more of a “per­son­al” rela­tion­ship to the com­pa­nies in which I am invest­ing with the ele­phan­t’s pay­check plan.

It’s the craft of cre­at­ing that’s teach­ing me a lot, and the real rea­son (for now) that I’m doing this. I like the ter­mi­nol­o­gy Guy Kawasaki uses in his book ‘APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur — How to Publish a Book’. He uses the phrase “arti­sanal pub­lish­ing”. It’s about the craft. The craft of writ­ing. The craft of get­ting this web­site done. The craft of mar­ket­ing my ideas in a way that builds val­ue & com­mu­ni­ty. These are crafts impor­tant to my day job (as a soft­ware mar­ket­ing per­son), and using them dif­fer­ent­ly than nor­mal is help­ing me under­stand them much bet­ter.

Since the blue­print focus­es on income invest­ing, I came up with the idea to use a metaphor of The Elephant in the Room (per­son­al invest­ing, a top­ic peo­ple hard­ly talk about hon­est­ly) as the sub­ject of the blue­print. We put the Elephant in the Room to work, and he comes home with a pay­check. In fact, he gets bet­ter rais­es than most of us, at least as far as the pay­roll sta­tis­tics seem to indi­cate.

That brings us to the present. This site will help me build an audi­ence and devel­op my ideas so that I can pub­lish the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint. However, it’s not just about me. I’ve cre­at­ed a free 10-part email course for you that explains the whole thing — the the­o­ry, how to get start­ed, and how to main­tain your port­fo­lio over time. The course includes an invest­ment selec­tion work­sheet and a track­ing spread­sheet so you can mon­i­tor your results over time. No pri­or invest­ing expe­ri­ence required.

You should join over 1,200 smart investors today, and sign up: