If you were part of the inaugural Phoenician League Investment Summit last month, you might be feeling something that a lot of people feel after a big event… a head full of ideas, and no clear sense of what order to put them in.
Gold… Bitcoin… Infinite Banking… macro strategy… real estate… mortgage notes… music royalties… tax strategy… digital privacy & security – we threw a lot at you last month. And each one of those topics, on its own, can turn into a rabbit hole that eats six months of your life. I know that from first-hand experience.
We’re still playing catch-up from the summit – it took a ton of time to organize, coordinate the sessions, and put everything together. That was a new experience for me.
But I think we’re back in the swing of things now, and with the holidays and new year fast approaching, I’d like to take some time to walk through exactly how you can take the ideas presented at our summit last month and put them into action… one step at a time.
Today, let’s talk about the first step. And I promise, this is the step that so many people skip.
Before you make any financial decisions, you need to know exactly where you stand. You need to have a firm grasp of your entire financial picture.
Think about how most folks go about their “retirement planning”…
They have some cash in the bank where their paycheck is deposited every two weeks. They have a 401(k) with their current employer, and maybe an old one from the previous job that they haven’t done anything with yet. Maybe they have a standard brokerage account or a standard IRA also.
And other than potentially some equity in their home… that’s about it. Somewhere out there, Retirement Incorporated is smiling.
For that person, every financial decision is made in a vacuum.
Should they invest in that stock they heard about from their friend or in a newsletter? Should they look into Bitcoin or “crypto”? Should they buy the plot of land next to their home?
In that paradigm, each decision is made in isolation. And that’s exactly how the financial industry likes it – because they have stand-alone products to sell you.
At The Phoenician League, we reject that “piecemeal” approach to personal finance and investing. Because if you don’t have a firm grasp of your entire financial picture, how can you possibly make informed financial decisions?
The solution, of course, is to know where you stand… to know exactly where your money is and how much of it is there.
I know that sounds embarrassingly simple, but I also know from experience that most folks just aren’t diligent about tracking their finances. If they were, they would almost certainly identify areas in which they could improve.
For me, I think of my investments as a set of buckets.
I have some money in the cash warehouse bucket – which is constantly compounding at a modest rate. I make other investments out of this bucket, then I fill the bucket back up. Over and over again.
I also have money in my reserve assets bucket. That’s gold and Bitcoin. They are my savings vehicles, and I’m confident that they will protect me from inflation over time.
Then I have money in my equities bucket. It consists of a targeted stock portfolio comprised of capital-efficient companies aligned with specific macroeconomic themes.
Then there’s my bucket for cash-flowing assets. This is primarily investment real estate and mortgage notes – things that pay my passive income every month.
And I have a bucket for private investments and other alternative assets as well. That’s my smallest bucket.
Each bucket does a different job. Gold and Bitcoin hold purchasing power. Cash gives me liquidity and options. Stocks give me exposure to businesses and long-term trends. Cash-flowing assets pay me. Each one covers for the weakness of another.
Now, if you do it this way… guess what? You have true diversification.
CNBC tells us that diversification is about owning stocks in all kinds of different industries. But they are all in the same bucket. If that bucket gets knocked down, they all might spill out.
I don’t see how anyone could consider that being diversified. I’m a little biased, but I think our approach to asset allocation is vastly superior – both theoretically and practically… because I can tell you from my own experience and that of our longest-tenured Phoenician League members – this approach works.
So my challenge to you is this – if you aren’t already in full control of your financial situation, take the time to get up to speed on it.
An easy place to begin is to sit down and document exactly where all your money is currently parked. From there, document which buckets your money is sitting in… and calculate what percentage you have in each bucket.
You can do this on a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet. There’s probably fancy software somebody will sell you to do it too… but I don’t think that’s necessary.
If you take the time to do this, I suspect you’ll instantly have some thoughts about how you can improve your situation.
Do you have way too much money exposed to the stock market? Do you not have enough anchored in reserve assets that will protect you from the inflation that the President told us is coming?
If you aren’t in the habit of doing this already, this simple little exercise could be the most important thing for you to do right now… especially if your goal is to step your game up in 2027, as so many folks will set a New Year’s resolution to do.
So that’s my challenge to you today. In my next email, we’ll talk about order of operations and how to start filling in the gaps. More on that later this week…
– Joe Withrow
P.S. We have scheduled our final strategy session of 2026 for November 17 at 8:00 PM Eastern. By the way, I would like to abbreviate “Eastern”, but I never know if I should say EST or EDT or ET… because the practice of changing the time twice a year is almost as stupid as listening to Paul Krugman, who apparently is still alive and trying to be relevant.
That aside, we’re calling this one The Blueprint Strategy Session: Your First 90 Days, and my goal is to walk through a 90-day plan to start dialing in your asset allocation model, building up your buckets, and maybe even getting up to speed on how to create passive income also.
I’m thinking that this one will be a great follow-on to our summit sessions last month, because it’s going to take some of the key ideas and hammer them into a practical action plan with a specific order of operations.
So if you were thinking that the summit was a little overwhelming, or if you were wondering which investment areas to focus on first – this next strategy session is for you.
I think we’re going to keep this one in-house, so I don’t plan to build a registration page or anything. Please just save the date – November 17 at 8:00 PM Eastern – and I’ll send out the access link when we get a little closer.