That's true even if you're out of work, flat broke, your credit cards are maxed out, your car's been repossessed and a sheriff's deputy has already served your eviction notice.

I'm about to explain why - and share the best three words of advice you'll ever get ...

According to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, Americans' views on the general state of the country have hit an all-time low, with 81% saying the nation is on the "wrong track" - the worst-ever number for this barometer.

Some will say this simply reflects The Great Recession and the inevitable pain and suffering it has wrought.

But that's not the whole story. Increasing numbers have been saying this - not just for years but for decades, with large majorities claiming that the country is going downhill, life is getting tougher, our children face a declining future and the world in general is going to hell in a hand basket.

Exactly why is pretty obvious ...

We face the twin specters of terrorism and nuclear proliferation. American troops are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. TV programming is trash. Taxes are high. The federal deficit is ballooning, home prices are falling, the currency is weak, food and fuel prices have jumped, credit is tight, and the stock market just experienced its worst year since 1931.

Of course, the national media delivers the world through a highly distorted lens. It does this to attract attention. It takes viewers to sell advertising.

And you don't draw a crowd talking about buildings that don't burn, planes that don't crash, or companies that are hiring instead of laying off.

Yet despite all the negative news, our general lot is getting better, not worse. As Greg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "Living standards are the highest they have ever been, including the living standards for the middle class and the poor. All forms of pollution other than greenhouse gases are in decline; cancer, heart disease and stroke incidence are declining; crime is in a long-term cycle of significant decline, education levels are at all-time highs."

Our ancestors just a few generations removed would marvel at life today. In the first half of the 20th century, for instance, most people earned a subsistence living through long hours of backbreaking work in forestry, mining, farms or factories.

Today we work roughly half as many hours, physical toil has ended for most wage earners, and we have more purchasing power with far more leisure.

In the first half of our nation's history, most Americans lived and died within a few miles of where they were born. Nothing - neither people nor news - traveled faster than a horse. And, as far as we knew, nothing ever would. Today we have instantaneous global communication, 24-hour broadband Internet access and same-day travel to distant cities.

Formal discrimination against women and minorities has ended. There is mass home ownership, with central heat and air-conditioning - and endless labor-saving devices: stoves, ovens, refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, cell phones and computers.

Medicine was almost non-existent 80 years ago. In 1927, for example, President Calvin Coolidge's sixteen-year old son Calvin Jr. developed a blister playing tennis without socks. It became infected. Five days later, he died. Before the advent of antibiotics, tragedies like this were routine.

Advances in drugs and technology have eliminated most of history's plagues. There has been a stunning reduction in infectious diseases.

We complain about the rising cost of health care. But that's only because we live long enough to need more of it. The average American lifespan has almost doubled over the past century.

We have low-cost access to information, art and literature. We have almost every imaginable political and economic freedom.

True, the federal government is a sprawling, metastasizing leviathan that needs to be beat back with a stick. But compare it to most governments in most countries down through the ages.

In short, we enjoy economic and political freedoms that millions throughout history have risked theirs lives for. We live a long time, in comfortable circumstances, and enjoy goods and services in almost limitless supply. By almost any measure, we are living better than 99% of the people who have come before us.

Yet Americans routinely tell pollsters that life is hard and things are getting worse. In short, we risk becoming the moping caricature that comedian Steve Martin creates when he grumbles, "the only joy I know is a dishwashing liquid."

Seldom do we take a moment to appreciate our incredible good fortune being alive.

As Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins writes:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here...

And none of us knows how long he's going to be here.

Take Eugene O'Kelly, former Chairman and CEO of accounting giant KPMG, for example.

Four years ago, he was diagnosed with inoperable, late-stage brain cancer. He was told he had three to six months to live. He was 53.

Suddenly, the life of this rich, powerful and privileged man, whose days were filled with executive meetings and business appointments, became something very different.

He was left with less than 100 days to live.

"No more living in the future," he wrote in his memoir. "(Or the past, for that matter - a problem for many people, although a lesser one for me.) I needed to stop living two months, a week, even a few hours ahead. Even a few minutes ahead. Sixty seconds from now is, in its way, as elusive as sixty years from now, and always will be. It is - was - exhausting to live in a world that never exists. Also kind of silly, since we happen to be blessed with such a fascinating one right here, right now. I felt that if I could learn to stay in the present moment, to be fully conscious of my surroundings, I would buy myself lots of time that had never been available to me, not in all the years I was healthy..."

With the clock counting down, O'Kelly made a list of his closest friends and colleagues and planned a final encounter with each one:

"I stopped at each name and made myself recall, in the closest detail possible, all the moments the two of us had enjoyed together. How we met. What made us become friends in the first place. The qualities in them I particularly appreciated. The lessons I learned by knowing them. The ways in which having met him or her had made me a better person."

His friends were touched - usually overwhelmed - to know how much they had meant to him. "Enjoy every sandwich," he writes.

Most of us promise ourselves that one day - not too long from now - we'll slow down. We'll spend more time with our family. Enjoy a lazy day out with friends. Or just take a walk alone in the woods or on the seashore. Some day...

If - like me - you're one of the millions who has often deluded himself this way, O'Kelly has three words of advice: "Move it up."

Eugene O'Kelly died on September 10th, 2005.

Alexander Green
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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The attendees come for a number of different reasons. Some want to gain some insights on interest rates, the dollar, or the stock market. Others are seeking a new investment strategy. Still others are looking for good investment ideas or, as one gentleman insisted, "just one great stock."

But before you can put your money to work effectively, you need something even more fundamental to your success: a philosophy of investing.

In her book Philosophy: Who Needs It, Ayn Rand argues that all of us have a philosophy of life, whether we know it or not. "Your only choice," she writes, "is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought...or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions..."

What's true of life is also true of investing.

Over the past two decades, I've dealt with thousands of individual investors, some highly astute, some rank novices. Many had only the foggiest notion of what they were trying to achieve - or how. In some ways this is understandable. World financial markets are complex and the investment process can be daunting.

Beginners often don't understand the fundamentals of saving and investing. And even more experienced investors are often stymied by the complexities and technical jargon surrounding the investment process. Many try (and inevitably fail) to outguess the markets - or simply wave the white flag and turn their portfolio over to "that nice young man down at Merrill Lynch."

Big mistake.

No one cares more about your money than you do. With a basic understanding of the investment process and a bit of discipline, you're perfectly capable of managing your own money, even your "serious money." Especially your serious money. By managing your own money, you'll be able to earn higher returns and save many thousands of dollars in investment costs over your lifetime.

The Gone Fishin' Portfolio rests on a powerful philosophy of investing. It's battle-tested. It's built on the most advanced - and realistic - theories of money management. And it works.

Moreover, The Gone Fishin' Portfolio does something that virtually no other investment guide does. I'm going to show you - very specifically - where you should put your money. And then I'm going to show you how to manage it year after year.

Once you've set up your portfolio, the whole process will take less than 20 minutes a year to implement. This may sound like an audacious claim. But, as you'll soon see, the strategy itself is steeped in humility.

It is based on the only realistic premise for an investment philosophy - that, to a great extent, the future is unknowable. So don't expect me to draw on my gift of prophecy and tell you what's going to happen to the economy, interest rates, the dollar, or world stock markets. (No one is more surprised than me how the market action unfolds each year.) Nor will we ignore uncertainty or pretend we have a system that has eliminated it. Instead, we're going to use uncertainty and make it our friend. In short, we're going to capitalize on it.

Investing is serious business. Getting it right is the difference between a retirement spent in comfort (or luxury) and spending your golden years counting nickels, worrying whether you'll have enough. The difference could hardly be starker.

Up until now, you may have been tempted to turn your investment portfolio over to someone else to manage. After all, your financial security is paramount. You may not think you can take the risk - or handle the responsibility - of running your money yourself. I fully intend to disabuse you of that notion. I also want to point out that there are serious risks to turning your money over to someone else. That person may manage it poorly. Or be terribly expensive. Or both.

If you're skeptical on this point, it may be that you've bought the story that Wall Street is selling: Investing is so complicated - or your personal circumstances so exceptional - that you should not be trusted to run your own money.

I'll concede that if you don't know what the heck you're doing, this is absolutely true. But one solution is learning what to do, rather than turning your financial welfare over to someone else.

When it comes to managing your money, there are plenty of potential pitfalls out there. However, those investors who wind up in retirement with less money than they need have generally fallen prey to one of four basic mistakes:

1. They were too conservative, so their portfolio didn't grow enough to begin generating the income required to meet their spending requirements.

2. They were too aggressive, so a significant percentage of their portfolio went up in flames along the way.

3. They tried - and failed - to time the market. Confident that they would be in for market rallies and out for market corrections, they ended up doing just the opposite much of the time.

4. They delegated unwisely. They turned their financial affairs over to a broker, insurance agent, or financial planner who - over time - converted a substantial amount of their assets into his assets. In addition, the advisor may have been too conservative, too aggressive, or tried and failed to time the market.

If your nest egg is lying in pieces late in life, you generally don't have the opportunity - or the time - to build another one. The consequences, both personal and financial, can be devastating.

Planning your financial future is a momentous responsibility. Although The Gone Fishin' Portfolio has a lighthearted name, it enables you to handle your serious money - the money you need to live on in retirement - in a serious way.

There are few guarantees in the world of investing. In fact, once you get beyond the risk-free world of Treasuries and certificates of deposit, there are virtually none. However, The Gone Fishin' Portfolio eliminates six major investment risks:

1. It keeps you from being so conservative that your long-term purchasing power fails to keep up with inflation.

2. It prevents you from handling your money recklessly.

3. It does not require you to own any individual stocks or bonds. So a single security - think Worldcom or Enron - cannot cause your portfolio to crater.

4. It does not require a broker, financial consultant, or anyone else to attach himself to your portfolio like a barnacle, siphoning off fees every year.

5. It doesn't require you - or any investment "expert" - to forecast the economy, predict the market, or analyze competing economic theories about the future.

6. Perhaps most importantly, it guarantees that your time will be your own. Rather than spending countless hours evaluating stocks, market trends, or fund managers, you'll spend your time as you please. While others struggle to manage their money effectively, you'll have "gone fishin'."

This last point means that instead of spending countless hours fretting over your investment portfolio, you'll be able to relax...play golf...travel the world...spend more time with your kids or grandkids...or just swing on a hammock in the shade with a glass of ice-cold lemonade. Because your investments will be on autopilot.

This is not just a strategy for today's markets, incidentally. The Gone Fishin' Portfolio is designed to prosper - and generate peace of mind - through all market environments.

And I invite you to be skeptical. In fact, let me begin by asking you a question:

If I could show you a way to manage your money yourself, using a strategy that is as powerful and effective as any used by the nation's top institutions, that will allow you to outperform the vast majority of investment professionals, pay nothing in sales charges, brokerage fees, or commissions, that will take less than 20 minutes a year to implement, and is based on an investment strategy so sophisticated it won the Nobel Prize in economics, would you be interested?

I hope so. That, in a nutshell, is The Gone Fishin' Portfolio. It's about handling the money you intend to retire on simply, effectively and cost-efficiently, with the absolute minimum of time and attention.

If you're like most people I know, you have better things to do than watch your stocks bounce up and down all day.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not averse to trading stocks, myself. (Long- term investing and short-term trading are not mutually exclusive.) But short-term trading strategies are beyond the scope of this book. Instead of focusing on trading or speculating, we're going to focus here on the money you intend to retire on - and perhaps ultimately leave to your kids, your grandkids, or your favorite charity. This is money that shouldn't be treated like chips in a poker game.

Reaching financial independence is a serious goal, one that should be pursued in a disciplined, rigorous way.

That's why I recommend that you make The Gone Fishin' Portfolio the core of your long-term investment program. The philosophy behind it is based on the best investment thinking available. It has been tested in various economic conditions. It increases your returns while reducing your risk. And it minimizes your investment costs and annual capital gains taxes.

Best of all, it works. Investors who have put their money to work this way have enjoyed years of market-beating returns while taking less risk than being fully invested in stocks.

Now it's your turn.

Regards,

Alexander Green
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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