Revising and Updating my 2013 Late Bloomer Millionaires book.
Hi Readers,
I will be publishing Introduction to the 2nd Edison of my first book, Late Bloomer Millionaires, published nine years ago. I am requesting you to read this short introduction and provide some feedback. I am doing this because the Introduction to any book is super important. I want to convey to readers that the contents of this book will help them achieve financial literacy.
Recall my co-author and husband of 40 years, Dan Robertson, who died suddenly six years ago. We were working on the 2nd edition before he died because my life was turned upside down. The new book is still a work in progress, and I hope to get it published by the end of 2023.
Thank you in advance for your time,
Steve
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Introduction
Late Bloomer Millionaire
A Financial Love Story
By
Stephen Schullo
This book is a genuinely American story about a timid country boy growing up on an isolated farm and my 74-year journey from the barnyard and the woods to writing this book. Along the way, I experienced personal losses, disappointments, and huge financial mistakes. Despite this, I became financially independent and retired early because of achievements attained later, much later, in life. I never forgot both negative and positive childhood values and the wisdom gained to achieve a contented life and personal wealth. I am grateful for two happy marriages, graduate degrees, excellent health, common sense, and a teaching profession. But it wasn’t always like this. It took a lifetime of ups and downs to discover the investing process, and for that, I have no regrets.
This book is different from the sophisticated and complicated investing books written by excellent and respected authors for three reasons:
First, this book is for newbie investors. I know you probably read this before in other books but ended up not explaining the basics. It’s a one-person and focused story about how I discovered investing from a nonprofessional consumer’s point of view. I was angry upon discovering that Wall Street, its cultural minions, and most financial professionals are no friends to investors. They can’t be, due to 20th-century systemic financial incentives. Even the ethical and competent financial advisers charge more than what they’re worth. It’s nothing personal against advisers. It’s that the stock market returns barely cover investment expenses, taxes, commissions, and the impact of inflation in addition to their 1-2% Assets Under Management fee (AUM). Yet, I have discovered how to make this unequal and unfair industry work for me without advisers. Self-managing your hard-earned money is the primary purpose of this book—it makes a huge difference!
Second, personal finance is more about soft skills than hard skills. Soft skills are non-measurable but acquired and universal, such as empathy, ethics, fear, anger, hurt/pain and stories. In contrast, hard skills are measurable and presented for a specific task: budgeting, stock market forecasting, scientific analysis, and statistics. Hard skill stories aren’t universal nor interesting, but soft skills stories are everywhere. Storytelling is rich and profound to the human experience. We discover, thrive, learn, and change for the better through stories.
Third, much of Wall Street’s history, the financial media, and ego-obsessive investors dismissed soft skills as less prestigious and unscientific. Traditionally, people did not talk openly about money. But thank goodness, in the last decade, investors and the financial landscape have evolved. A somewhat bitter thanks to the 2008 financial meltdown and the reaction from Financial Independence and Financial Independence Retire Early (F.I. or F.I.R.E.) movements, people said enough is enough and rejected Wall Street as more nonprofessional finance people wrote their stories. Financial nonprofessional gurus are located at every internet “street corner.” After I published the first edition of this book in 2013, thousands of blogs, websites, paperbacks, articles, Reddit investment forums, YouTube videos, and podcasts flooded the blogosphere advocating soft skills. While the vast majority are nonprofessional authors sharing their investing experience has increased, not many, if any, are seniors, newbies and late bloomers.
But first, here are three examples of the ethical and celebrated professionals reminding investors the importance of soft skills:
- Ben Graham, the mentor to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, wrote decades ago that “temperament” and “investors’ attitude” were more important than the complex skill of analyzing investments: “Little will be said here about the technique of analyzing securities; attention will be paid chiefly to investment principles and investors’ attitudes” (Quoted in The Intelligent Investor, The Revised Edition, 1973). Sticking with your plan for a lifetime requires a mindful attitude.
- Mr. Buffett is famous for his folksy and straightforward means of investing and that intelligent “attitude,” which has made him the most legendary and successful investor today. He oozes soft skill character of never listening to Wall Street noise, buying when others are selling, being transparent and exceptionally patient, and sticking with his investments for 80 years! The perfect example of a soft skill is giving the hard skill of compounding interest time to grow. It is all in his emotional head to stay put.
- Morgan Housel, author of the exceedingly popular The Psychology of Money, argues that soft skills, i.e., what goes on in your head, are more challenging than the hard skills of constructing and managing an investment portfolio. Soft skills come with life experiences with the understanding that there are good times and bad times with markets are just another part of daily living. If you can master daily living with wisdom and common sense, mastering the stock market, investing, and achieving financial independence would be a synch,
My reasoning may sound irrational but hear me out. Experiencing financial losses during stock market crashes, bear markets, or incompetent financial advisors are adversities that we wished did not happen. But so are deaths of loved ones, educational/career/marriage disappointments, or health/accident emergencies. My life story illustrates how I discovered a straightforward way of combining both hard and soft skills for my investing success. If you ever wondered, “How can I get temperamental about investing?” then this book is for you.
I believe most people would agree negative experiences bring new opportunities by forcing change and adaptation. They cause us to embark on a new path we would have not taken otherwise. With new challenges, our character develops and master new skills, especially those soft skills. Buddhism teaches us that difficult people and unfortunate events can lead us to be kinder and compassionate. All the world’s spiritual leaders preach that it’s not what happens to us; it is how we respond to challenges that make an enormous difference. Eventually, we evolve into kinder and wiser human beings.
One additional fact that makes this book different from the personal finance library and memoirs. Over-the-top adventures and misfortunes by famous people fill the bookshelves with their autobiographies. Instead, I am an ordinary American. My story contains a personal finance theme. Both my life misfortunes and mistakes are those many readers might experience. But you can learn from my late bloomer experience to avoid costly financial mistakes and paying exorbitant adviser’s fees.
I maximized personal misfortune, such as flunking the second grade and my father’s death when I was 13. My dysfunctional family of origin with my belligerent, abusive and emotionally disturbed older brother and my own mistakes correlates with constructing and self-managing my investment portfolio. Both the negative and positive experiences ultimately led to a life with meaning and fulfillment. Through it all, I eventually achieved educational, physical, and emotional health and investing successes. Yes, surprisingly, the connection of these personal misfortunes with the management of my portfolio exists.
My positive childhood also helped me to be a successful investor too. Despite my family’s serious problems, I tightly held on to the commonsense values from my Italian immigrant parents: frugal living and saving. I was lucky that frugality came naturally. I never let go to become that flagrant spender of my boomer generation. The hard skills of intellectual gravitas or an MBA are not needed to live on less and save. I also learned early on that it was very cool to save enough money through frugality, and make it work for me, so I wouldn’t have to work for it. Most importantly, I have more opportunities to be a better person and give back so the world with wisdom and wealth than without either.
I wrote this book because of my love for the American spirit. Only in America can a hard worker achieve an exceptional education and reasonable wealth. Furthermore, I am grateful that I have something to say that reflects the new thinking about investing. Thomas Jefferson wrote one of my favorite quotes: “all men are created equal.” I value this fundamental principle by practicing kindness, curiosity, and listening. My story’s primary purpose is to equalize the playing field between investors and the Wall Street machine via soft skill strategies. Hard skills are not the future—soft skills rule!