About Ant Investors

Welcome to antinvestors, a safe place for smaller investors to save their investments and live off of profits. 

Why do I call it antinvestors?  I was fascinated to read that there are only two animals known to farm.  One, obviously, is humans.  The second is leafcutter ants.  Apparently, leafcutter ants will gather and cut up leaves and take them back to their colony.  There, they don’t eat the leaves.  Instead, they eat the fungus that grows on the leaves.  To me, the analogy to living off of the interest that grows from your investments was obvious.

Now please don’t write me and tell me “well, actually, the spider monkey does this or the giraffe does that”, or even “the leafcutter ant really doesn’t do what you say”.  To me, the story of how the leafcutter ant lives off of the interest from his savings was too good to pass up.

Here at antinvestors.com, we are always on the lookout for predators.  And for those of us trying to save and invest enough for a comfortable retirement, there are a lot of predators lurking out there.

First, there are the anteaters, which can ravage entire investment colonies of ants like us.  Anteaters do not have our interest in mind at all.  They will offer “special” investment packages “only to special clients”.  Special suckers, that is.  This is because what they are really doing is unloading bad investments on you.  Anteaters are convinced that small investors are “dumb money” that should be eaten for lunch.  You are only a snack to him.  Anteaters stay at the top of the Fortune 500 lists by having lots of snacks, er, I mean investors, as clients.

Next are the Wasps.  A wasp will come in, sting you and fly away.  He is the one with the special “once in a lifetime” opportunity to make 10% (or 15% or 20% or 25%) back on your money, all “guaranteed”.  He just needs a large advance payment and then the money will start rolling in.  Bernie Madoff was one of the world’s best wasps, but there are plenty of others out there.  Consider the salesman whose investments require a 10% purchase charge. 

Next are the parasites.  Parasites don’t really want to kill you, they just want to “take their fair share” of whatever you earn.  Parasites may tell you “2% is not very much for helping you manage your money”.  But when interest rates are 2% or lower, it can be a lot.  As the parasites just keep getting fatter and fatter, and you wonder why you aren’t getting fatter too.  It’s because your “excess” is being skimmed off by the parasite.

Anteaters, wasps and parasites are absolutely not welcome at this blog.

This blog is for all of us ants.  And it’s not just for the big, rich ants.  It’s for all of us ants, big and small.  For example, we will discuss how to get free income taxes prepared and free medicare advice for those in need.  We will also discuss the benefits of low income earners filing taxes versus choosing to skip them.

What kind of help do we want to offer here at antinvestors.com?  We want to help everyone, paraphrasing Mr. Spock, “live long and prosper”. 

This includes not only investment advice, but advice on all kinds of insurance, including life insurance, long term care insurance, and health insurance.  Insurance is usually a poor investment, but that does not mean you should not buy it.  Don’t almost all of us have car insurance, for example?  In this blog, we want to discuss under what conditions one should buy insurance, and how much to buy.  And no, I do not work for an insurance agency (I’m one of the ants, remember?) so don’t try to buy insurance from me.

It also includes getting through the ins and outs of Medicare.  Initial Medicare enrollment is unreasonable complicated, and if you discover too late that you did not enroll correctly, you could be stuck with inadequate coverage or extra premiums for a year, or even your whole life!

Social security is another topic we will cover here.  In this blog we will explore some well known, and less-well known, ways to get the most out of Social Security.  And cover what you should do before, when (and if) the program runs out of money.

We want to help people minimize their income taxes, not just for the current tax year, but over their lifetime.  Part of this includes a discussion of Roth IRA conversions.  It also includes some common tax breaks that are not often taken.  We also discuss how some of us can get their taxes done for free.

And much, much more.  We want to help put together financial plans and invest for the future. Lack of planning is probably the primary root cause of most people’s financial difficulties. 

We want to help people find the right mix for their investments so that they do not run out of money if the (economic) weather turns bad suddenly.  We will also address different asset classes, such as precious metals, bitcoins, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, electronically traded funds (ETFs), private equity, housing and collectibles.  We will also discuss less common asset classes as well, such as puts and calls, leveraged investments and preferred stocks.  Many people have insufficiently diversified portfolios.  This places your investment stockpile at risk, and one unexpected downturn could wipe you out.

We will even include advice on nutrition and health.  After all, what good is having enough money if you do not live long enough to use it?  Also, understanding how long you may live can have an important effect on your decisions today.

That’s a very big pile of leaves.  Is it too much?  I don’t think so.  How can we get through them all?  Just like the leafcutter, one leaf at a time.