Why I’m Grateful to Richard Cayne – Part 1 of 3

I’m writing this with some trepidation but feel strongly that it must be said. My concern results from what I have witnessed these past three years as the Internet has been bombarded with lies, misinformation and accusations about the man I am writing about. If I were more courageous, I’d not hide behind anonymity and freely communicate my identity. But, I have seen what the criminals who stole our money are willing to do, so I will not reveal my identity – for now.

My wife and I live in Japan and are active investors. We aren’t rich, I’d say we are “comfortable” having invested carefully and methodically since I retired 11 years ago with a solid though not enormous pension.

We met Richard Cayne, in 2006 and were impressed by his attention to detail and conservative, yet forward-thinking advice about investing and planning for the future. At our first meeting with him, he answered our questions, and really listened to us. He didn’t try to sell us on any particular investment and was more interested in completely understanding our particular needs and goals than he was getting our business.

It was over three months before after we first met him that we actually began making investments with his advice. Everything we invested in through Richard Cayne at Meyer Asset Management has given us a solid return on our investment. Most are giving us above-average returns and we are very pleased.

Richard Cayne part 2

Inflation: The Silent Savings Killer

While topics like offshore investments and the real estate market are fun to discuss and exciting to everyone with a little money that they hope to grow, there is one aspect of investing that most people prefer not to discuss or even think about. It’s inflation. Inflation is scary because, no matter how smart, lucky or intelligent your investments are; inflation can eat up the wealth you have worked so hard to build and there is little you can do about it.

That’s what’s so scary about it.

What Richard Cayne of Meyer International says about inflation is this: “No matter how much money you have, you essentially have less money than you think you have. And the more you have, the more you stand to lose, so the more you’re stressed out by inflation.”

“Look, if you only have a few dollars in your pocket and are worried about buying today’s bread and milk, maybe inflation doesn’t matter to you. It’s when you have a lot of money and inflation is constantly eating away at it that it gets scary,” he said.

 

“Safe is a Loss”

What Richard Cayne is insinuating with this anecdote about literal bread and figurative bread (bread has been, at times in English language history, a well-deserved slang name for money) is that, if you want to build or maintain your wealth, you can’t simply play it super-safe by keeping your money in a savings account.

Even if you rarely spend a dime, inflation eats away at your savings. You need to invest it.

“Learning more about inflation initiates change in people who think they are being conservative by keeping money ‘nice and safe’ in the bank. They start to realize that they can’t do just that. It’s not enough,” said Richard Cayne.

He gave this example:  “If you have $10 million and you put it into a savings account where you are earning .5 or 1 percent interest but there is 3 percent inflation, you are losing money every single day without spending a dime. At 1% interest rate next year the purchasing power of the original US$10M is US$9.8M and each year erodes from there”

Instead, he advises clients to make investments at whatever level of risk they feel comfortable.

 

Think Long-term, not Short-term

Investment might be scary to think about for some people that consider themselves “too conservative to gamble with money.” In these cases, Richard Cayne advises investments with the lowest level of risk possible and that the investors think long-term, not short-term, about their investments.

That might mean that, if it’s too stressful to look at the numbers in your accounts going up or down, you should have your advisor monitor them and just update you periodically.  It really doesn’t matter what day to day fluctuations exist but it does matter where the balance on your account is down the road when you need to use that money.

“Don’t look at short-term balances, look at long-term balances,” advises Richard Cayne, “Think about what the balances will be 10 or 20 years down the line, not next year.”

To learn more about investment at any risk level and measures used to stave off inflation’s effect on your wealth, Richard Cayne and Meyer International can be reached at (+66) 02 611 2561.