Building real wealth. Not just living off your paycheck. Theres some people, call them the 1 , if you want, who can make enough from their ordinary daytoday income to become truly rich, but for the vast majority of americans, the paycheck its simply not enough to get you there. You need to augment it. If you keep watching, im going to tell you how to do just that for the rest of your life. Usually, i come out here and tell you whats happening in the market. There are a lot of other things you have to do if you want to pay off to mean something. Tonights the exception. You may not want to hear this, but its absolutely fruitless to think you can get rich in stocks if you havent laid down a foundation for building longterm wealth beforehand. You can make a fortune in the market, but if youre at best, youll stay afloat when if you planned things better, it might have let you become filthy rich. Three things you must take care of first. I dont usually address these subjects. Sometimes, i feel remiss that im not mentioning them more. We dont teach Financial Literacy in high school in this country and few colleges will teach you a thing about how to manage your finances, although you might learn a ton of stuff about English Literature or marxism. This is one of the reasons i wrote, so you can have a personal finance foundation you need to invest in the market. One of the three things you must do before you own a stock, first, this is going to sound boring and it just sucks the life out of everything, but you need to hear it. If you have to, youve got do pay off all of your Credit Card Debt. I like to be as entertaining as possible. I still see people who have it. Im not one of those zealots who say your credit cards should be cut up or that Credit Card Companies are evil. Like a lot of the companies that recommend but the facts are these. If you have Credit Card Debt, you are playing an extraordinarily high Interest Rate on that to the credit card company. Were talking rates that might make a loan shark flinch. Tony soprano would give you better terms. To be fair to the industry, theyre not going to break your kneecaps if you dont pay them back, however, it will finally kneecap you and suck you dry if you let them. It wont matter if youre burdened by Credit Card Debt. Youre not going to be able to generate returns that are consistently high enough to cancel out the damage that you do by keeping that balance on your credit card. If you have good credit, you can still be paying around 15 annual interest. If your credits not so hot, maybe 20, 30. If your stock portfolio, 20 , if youve got a big balance, then all of your gains will be sucked down the drain. So this is simply a sine qua non of investing. Youve got to invest. It just doesnt matter what you do. If you go in with Credit Card Debt stocks are just going to be a hobby for you and nothing more. I know i probably sound like your parents here, but your parents are right. There are three things you need to do. The second is health insurance. You do not invest a penny in the market before you have health insurance. You might think obama care will make this a nonissue. In 2014, youve got to have a choice. Either buy insurance or pay the penalty mandated by the Affordable Care act. Thats the gist of it. The penalty starts at 95, is a percentage of your annual income, whichever is larger. In 2015, the fee jumps to 325. 2 , whichever is bigger and in 2016, 695. 2. 5 of your income. Dont be a moron. Even if you object to the Affordable Care act politically, its idiotic to pay a fine to get nothing rather than pony up and get health insurance. Going to be all kinds of things to make the cost more bearable. Honestly, you shouldnt need legislation to make you get insurance. Medical emergencies are whats causing bankruptcies in this country. Ive been there, under interstate 5 and near santa monica in california, getting treatment from clinics when i moved up north on interstate before my parents bailed me out. Also my sister, thank you. All the capital, just wipe it out. Spent years building in this market. Sure, you can now get coverage if you have preexisting conditions, but its a lot cheaper to buy insurance before you get sick, and youll need it eventually. Before you start investing in stocks, i actually think you should have Disability Insurance. You racked up in the stock market. You have to pay off the Credit Card Debt. Get health and disability. You do have no excuse for not getting them if you cant afford to own stocks. Thesel are more than just items on a personal finance to do list. Theyre essential elements in your strategy for capital preservation. We like capital appreciation, buying stocks, preserving that wealth. All im saying there is i can help you buy the right stocks. But we must always acknowledge that capital preservation comes first. Because you need to protect your money in the present. Talk about moving into certain kinds of assets as a plan for preservation. Heres the bottom line. More important than all that stuff is paying off your Credit Card Debt, getting health and Disability Insurance. They are the three most important elements of capital preservation i know, and without them, investing all these great stocks, it just doesnt make sense. How about we go to morgan in california. Booyah. My question is about taxes. I have a regular brokerage account, but as we are approaching, will be approaching the end of the year for someone who is just going to be starting to think about tax preferred, what would be a good place to start . I got to tell you, i dont want you to be thinking about taxes. In fact, one of the worst decisions i made was dictated by my broker saying its time to switch out. Please, just think about investments from the point of view of whether or not theyre going to go up or not. We worry way too much about the tax man, and the one time i listened to my adviser, it was a huge mistake. I violated my own rules. Todd in new york. Hi, jim. I know you dont like writing covered calls, but riding in the money covered calls. Recently came to my attention that riding covered calls is the same thing as shorting a put. Could you please explain the difference . One has unlimited downside. One cuts off your upside. A lot of people sell calls. If you sell puts, you have unlimited downside in a big crash. Never cut off the ability to limit your downside. The whole industry disagrees with me. But i have been there in market crashes and seen what being short puts will do, and i have tried to hold hands with people who wanted to commit suicide because they sold calls in situations where there were takeovers. Lets go to jerry in texas. Hi, jim. I have a 403b thats employer matched. Im 69 years old. Ive had this for forty years. I have no plans on retiring within the next three to five years, but this plan only allows mutual funds, money funds and bond funds. I manage this and from all the funds available, i choose around ten and dont change them often. Right now, the distribution is about onehalf money market and the rest is spread across the 500 index. Technology, energy, chemical funds and bond funds. I think thats too much money market. I think youve got to maybe take it to 40 and go up 60 on the rest because of that one key point. Youre not anywhere near retiring. Youve still got a lot of years to make money. Do not cut off your upside in that fund. Talking about that later in the show. Markets up, markets down, but sometimes, you need to take a step back and look at the big picture. Preserve it. Pay off the credit cards, get some health insurance, Disability Insurance, some peace of mind. Otherwise, it doesnt matter what stocks we buy. Its the other thats going to wipe you out. Well be right back. Were talking about a subject we dont spend enough time on in the business media, which is longterm wealth building. Not tomorrow. If youre serious about getting rich and staying that way, then i recommend you absolutely must do two things. Go to amazon, buy the entire jim cramer catalog. Its right here. Ive gotten that crass, shameless piece of selfpromotion out of the way. The second thing is prepare for retirement. Even if youre in your early 20s. Notice i didnt say save for retirement. I said prepare. Just stuffing your money in the First National bank of seaweed an saving an ira or 401 k , as great as these tax deferred vehicles may be, they may not be enough. Young people, dont turn off the tv. Youve got to do this, too. If theres anyone who can make this process sound interesting, its going to be me, right . Wouldnt you rather learn from a crazy lunatic who throws chairs around, uses sound effects . Every time, when we get these ceos on, during the commercial, you know what they want to do . Im not kidding. I make you a promise. I promise to give you some useful advice you cant just find on the internet. I think its not worth calling the stuff advice anymore. Should you put money in an individual retirement account . Hmm, let me think. Yes, you should. Thats not a bold insight. Thats not advice. And people make careers out of saying your ira, tear up those credit cards. Credit cards. Epiphanies like pay your bills on time. All the advice america already knows and yet, people will condescendingly tell you just that and assume its enough to help you get ahead. Maybe they even charge for it. I say its not basic financial responsibility. Its just a jumping off point. Im the guy who tells you where to go from there because i didnt make a career out of giving people money advice. I used money to make more money. So how should you prepare for retirement . What useful advice can i give you, beyond just that you should have a 401 k and your ira, because you dont pay taxes on the money you contribute and the gains inside, allowing them for years after years of tax free computing. Compounding. In other words, all that stuff you know. Almost every person on the street knows that. How about some advice on what you should not do with your 401 k . The conventional wisdom says you should put money in it, but then it leaves you on your own in the complex and confusing, if not nightmarish process. What should you not do . Dont use your money to buy stock in the company you work for. Im far from the first person to say this, yet Company Stock is still the most popular 401 k investment out there. More people put their money into the stock of their employer. I cannot stress enough how misguided this is. I tell you if your portfolio is diversified and all five banks in separate baskets. As i tell you in the first gospel according to cramer, real money, is diversification is the only free lunch. Regular viewers know if you expose too much to the same sector, youre running an enormous risk. The tech collapse soured an entire generation, they havent come back. They have not come back. Or for many, that was a long time ago, so how about 2013, your entire portfolio was in high yielding dividend stocks. Buying yields were so low which meant investors had no choice but to buy stocks with big dividends. Then in the spring of 2013, Interest Rates began to rise. The return you could get from bonds increased dramatically, and all these high yielding stocks got crushed because they had real Interest Rate competition from the bond market. So if even onethird was made up in these high yielders, even though the first half of 2013 was fabulous for the market, thats a danger of not being diversified. Many were in bond funds and that was even worse. Now, apply that logic to your 401 k . Do you really want to invest into the same company paying your salary . What if you work for enron or Eastman Kodak for more recent unsavory example. You lose your time of savings. Wow, thats really bad. You probably feel like you understand the company you work for. I dont want excuses in youre investing in what you know. That excuse doesnt cut it. Diversification comes before Everything Else when youre investing. Never put retirement money in the company you work for. Stick with cramer if you want to know more about how to manage your money so you can build lasting wealth for you and your family, especially during retirement. Stay with cramer. Everybody wants to get rich quick, except perhaps some hippy types who doesnt believe in currency. Anyone who tells you hes got a way to make an obscene amounts of money is usually some kind of scam or something very illegal. A la mr. Whites meth operation in breaking bad. The most reliable way get rich is to do it slowly and carefully, which is why tonight, were talking about longterm wealth building. I told you about what you needed to do before owning stocks. Going through what not to do when investing for retirement. Now ive got some advice. Real advice. Not just bromides about your ira and 401 k, which is the first places you want to invest for retirement because of their tax deferred or as i like to say, tax blessed status. And because in case your 401 k , Many Employers will match a portion of your contributions, give you some free money. Heres a very important rule. Its especially critical when investing for retirement. It is possible to be too caution. Its possible to be too prudent. Theres a point where prudence becomes recklessness, it switches. This is something you particularly see with people who want to save for retirement, because theyre scared. I like to say you invest for retirement, dont save, you invest because saving makes it sound like you just have to sock some money away. Maybe a money market, a stable value fund. Something no one would invest in if they actually understood anything but the name. No, thats not how it works. And that is unfortunate because youve got to do some real unbrainwashing here. Most people when theyre putting money away feel like they shouldnt take on too much risk, right . Thats the music youre hearing, right . That the Retirement Savings are too important to jeopardize by investing them in stocks. If you believe theres less chance for downside, after inflation, thats pretty irresponsible. Okay . I call it recklessness masked as prudence. Investing in stocks is far more less going to jeopardize than investing any stocks would be. You need to generate enough money to support yourself for the rest of your life by the time you retire. If you are too risk averse, if you load up on bonds in your 20s, 30s and 40s, avoiding stocks because of the risk, you will never generate enough to retire comfortably. The money you have will be safe, but thats all it will be. With that low rate, you barely can outpace inflation. Capital preservation is not a financial suicide pact, please. Also factor the need for capital appreciation. By the way, lets not forget that bonds arent always the epitome of safety. There are moments when bond funds can be risky. The faster rates rise, the harder those bonds and those bond funds will fall. So keeping your money in bonds means you likely wont generate enough to retire when you want to, and there are times when bond prices have genuine downside risks. They wont go to zero or close, get your money back, they can drop and erase two or three years worth of coupon payments. We saw rates skyrocket in 2013 in the second quarter. What else falls under the category of recklessness as prudence . How about those popular investments out there, stable value fund. I know that name sounds very reassuring, but the truth is, this is just a type of fund that gives you a slightly better return than a money market fund, and worse than a high quality bond fund. The return is too meager. The definition of trying to be so prudent you become irresponsible. The goal of this show is to help you use your money to make more money. When you put money in things like stable value funds, youre taking that money off the table. This money, im not going to use it to generate more wealth. Either you cling to safety, and when its time to retire you dont have enough cash, you dont have any cash or you take some risks that will allow you to retire wealthier and happier. While money cant necessarily buy happiness, being broke is a pretty sure ticket to being miserable. Im not saying theres no place for bonds in retirement portfolio. There is. You should have some of your cash cordoned off in something in a risk free zone. 401 k s often have prelimited zones. Equities in an index fund. Kind of stocks that have been proven to be the best asset class in a 20year period. As you get older, you can and should should take some of that stock money off the table. You should do some schnitzeling and put it into high quality bond funds for safety, but only some money. Thats my ticket. You should keep 10 to 20 in your bonds when youre in your 30s. No reason to own bonds in your 30s. 40 and from age 60 until you retire, stick to 40 . That may sound extremely aggressive, but its the best way to retire the way you want to and still have some safety. And once you retire, you should still own stocks. I think they should be about a third of your portfolio at that point. This is very much countered to the conventional wisdom, but it was coined when people had much shorter life spans. Were living longer and if you want to provide for yourself, you need the extra upside from stocks, because eventually, that safe money in bonds will indeed run out. Do you really want to make that bet . Heres the bottom line. Now you have your First Principles of retirement investing. Stick with cramer, and ill give you some more tips to make more money. May i go to bart in North Carolina . Jim, i sold the income stocks in my retirement account when Interest Rates started to rise. I want to income, but not at the expense of losing principle and these have dropped after i sold them. When is it safe to buy them back in a rising Interest Rate environment . Weve got to go back to levels where i think that you can get a cushion, even if rates go to outsize places, and i think that for little growth stocks, thats going to be 5 to 5. 5 and not before that. Because youre going to be in a world where theres a lot of people that are going to be selling those until they get to 5. 5. Maybe even 6 for the lower quality ones. Lets go to wally in florida. Yes, professor cramer. Hi. I want to thank you for making me all this money so i can retire. Youre very kin