Masonry Magazine June 1992 Page. 37
Prudent Investments A
Retirement Must
Having good retirement income is a function of getting good investment advice and structuring your investments to meet your retirement needs.
MOST MASON contractors aren't well prepared for retirement. They don't have retirement plans, and their personal assets aren't sufficient to maintain their standard of living. The only way for them to maintain their standard of living is to wisely invest the proceeds from the sale of their business. The first investment decision that usually needs to be made is whether to take back a loan from the purchaser of your business. The first question that has to be answered is "Does the sale fall through if you don't help finance the sale?" If you must be a "banker" during retirement, make sure there is ample reward for taking the "risk", a high rate of interest or an increase in the sale price.
Any financing arrangement should be reviewed by your attorney to make sure you have as much protection as possible. The last thing you want is to have your buyer default on the loan, forcing you to take over a business that someone else has been running. Once you have the cash, it needs to be invested. The first thought is to go to the "king" or "queen" of certificates of deposit and invest all the money in CDs. Initially, this is a good approach, if the interest is adequate to maintain your lifestyle. This approach works well if there is no inflation. Inflation erodes the buying power of your CD interest.
In order to protect your income against inflation, it is important to diversify your investments among a variety of income producing vehicles. Based on risk tolerance, we often use a mixture of certificates of deposit, municipal bonds (insured and uninsured), investment grade corporate bonds, U.S. government securities and blue chip stocks.
To reduce risk, we usually use mutual funds to increase diversification and stabilize income. The key to us-
ay To The Top
A Solid Work Platform
Non-Stop towers are built from heavy gauge tubular steel and trussed every 4-6" in height. This gives our 16" wide towers incredible strength and sway-resistance. Because of this advantage, you can safely land materials on the laborers' platform, exactly where other systems tell you to never land a load. In actual on-the-job tests of free-standing Non-Stop towers, landing a full cube of 12 blocks (2350 pounds) on the laborers platform at 20 feet high produced a hackward flex of less than one inch! This kind of strength and stability meam your men will feel safe and secure on a solid working platform. And, you can safely stock ahead to free your forklift for other duties.
X-Braces Stay In Place
The x-braces are always in place for maximum safety and stability. They simply pass through the work platform both going up and coming down. Non-Stop introduced this unique design to eliminate the dangerous, time-consuming chore of removing and replacing x-braces as the platform is raised. When the wall is topped out, Non-Stop can be lowered and ready to go to work again in one-third the time of scaffolding without this feature. This advantage reduces your laborers duties to only two feeding materia to the masons, and raising the scaffold as needed.
JAMES A. ANGELONE, JR. is a senior partner with Multivest Planning Corporation in Hartsdale, New York. A financial consultant for seventeen years, he has worked with a number of building and masonry contractors throughout the U.S. He specializes in retirement and estate planning for small to large size contractors. For information about his financial articles, you can contact Angelone at 800/933-4494, or write him at Multivest Planning, 280 North Central Avenue, Suite 202, Hartsdale, New York 10530.