Obviously, we’re not going to try to read King Solomon’s mind from the perspective of a few thousand years after he lived and died. The headline above shouldn’t be taken literally, but rather as a jumping off point from which to analyze the differences between Wall Street stock investing and the income property approach favored by Solomon Success founder, Jason Hartman. Before anything else, we need to talk about inflation.
Back in the days of King Solomon, before the widespread use of paper currency, inflation was an unknown entity. Gold, silver, or good, old-fashioned barter greased the way for commerce between individuals. Trade and investment was much simpler then. But then along came paper currency, which appeared for the first time in Europe and America sometime in the mid-17th century, and everything related to economics changed.
The problem with inflation is that, over time, it reduces the purchasing power of all paper-based assets, which, unfortunately, includes the stocks, bonds, and mutual funds sold by your friendly neighborhood broker. What this means in the greater scheme of things, and what we think King Solomon would have noticed, is that Wall Street investing is akin to NOT being a good steward of what God has given you. Investing in paper-based assets is the same as burning a certain portion of your portfolio each year or tossing it out the car window.
We think Solomon would have preferred land-based assets for the simple reason that, through a properly structured mortgage characterized by fixed-rate interest and a long-term maturity date, there’s no better way to make good use of God’s gifts. Income property investing takes advantage of what has historically proven to be the most conservative AND profitable strategy of all time. Paper money was not God’s invention and we’ve noticed the particular shortcomings of it for a while now, especially since the US left the gold standard back in the early 1970s. Ever since then inflation has spiraled out of control.
Real estate allows the conscientious Christian to take back some control by shifting his or her portfolio away from currency assets and into something that old King Solomon could certainly understand because he owned plenty of it himself – land (Top image: Flickr | Clearly Ambiguous).
The Solomon Success Team
