For years, Steve Juetten has watched people venture into the exciting and risky world of personal investment.
And despite his warnings, he sees people overthink, underprepare and lose large sums.
To help cauterize the bleeding, Juetten has authored “Ditch the Guesswork: Creating Reliable ROI for Time-Starved Investors.”
In the book, the 62-year-old Bellevue author and certified financial planner comes up with 52 of the biggest (and easiest to fix) mistakes most investors make when setting off to create a nest egg of their own.
“I actually sat down to write a blog post about the most common investment mistakes and I came up with 52 of them,” Juetten said. “I thought instead of writing 52 posts, I’d just write a book.”
The book is told in a narrative structure, with a financial advisor explaining to a couple investing for the first time why common myths about investments could see diminished returns or even a loss of money.
“Investing is simple, but it is not easy,” he said. “People tend to make it too complex. People also pay too much to invest. If you spend $100 on investing, that’s $100 that isn’t invested and isn’t making money for you.”
Juetten has owned his fee-only financial investment firm since 2002 and has called Bellevue home for 28 years. He said in that time, he’s noticed people guessing.
“Ditch the Guesswork” sought to address that very issue.
“There’s something in our nature that makes us look for the next Google, the next Apple,” he said. “People go between fear and greed when investing. Here’s something I know for sure. The future is unknowable.”
Juetten swears by asset class investing, a method of investing that focuses on a group of securities exhibiting similar characteristics that behave similarly.
“Asset class investing works for everybody,” he said. “From college clients to 95 years old. It’s the only approach we’ve ever used, and most people don’t know about it.”
Juetten said that most financial advisors are not fiduciaries, and thus do not have an obligation to act in the best interest of their clients. He claims that as a licensed fiduciary, he does whatever he can to help clients, even if he makes less money at the end of the day.
“There are five words to consider when investing,” he said. “Simple, efficient, effective, sustainable and flexible. You work with those things in mind, and investing isn’t as scary.”
With “Ditch the Guesswork” and the narrative story written for the average person, Juetten is hoping he’ll see less people make the same mistakes time and again.
“The people who have read the book have told me how accessible it is,” he said. “I’ve had remarkable praise so far, which is great, but I just want people to avoid those 52 mistakes.”
“Ditch the Guesswork” is available on Amazon, while the first two chapters are available free on Juetten’s website.
