Welcome SMC members
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My TA is about to expire and I don’t plan to continue. Except for SMPI it doesn’t seem worth the money. The problem is that I have invested with SMPI and if I leave TA, will they refuse to keep me updated on my investment?
Thats about all they are worth. lol Simon should have awarded the members that contributed the most information. Brian is right that he is focusing on his high end clients. Now that Chile is running well he has kicked the small guy to the curb.
AC:
I’m up in the air about continuing Total Access. I don’t have a real criticism of any product, other than the Liberty Alert, which I think is weak (and I believe he may be changing anyway). The two Tims’ products (4th Pillar and PVI) are very interesting, but frankly, I rarely implement them. I’ve never pulled the trigger on a Private Investor offering either. The best thing I’ve gotten out of TA has been the meet up I went to, and the very interesting people I’ve met.
Well if your not pulling the trigger on any of the product, it sounds like your wasting a lot of money. Unless you have a lifetime membership. My one year ends in october, and im going back to basic. I think i got as much knowledge as I can from TA. Besides most of my information came from members in the forum. Now that Simon is rolling in money and traveling the world hes only focused on the “elite” members like TA.
Honestly Private Investor is a waste of money. There are other Private Investor groups out there doing deals with groups like Monese. The only advantage they had was the Bordeaux Cellar deal at 12% or whatever. I suggest looking around more.
The forum was one of the best value part of SMC. Now that community is fading.
Roger, I liked the forum, the contacts I made, and also some of the one-off deals/information provided. I met great people at the Cancun conference, and some more great people at the TA event in Medellin. I’ve yet to act on any of the investment advice.
There’s been some discussion about a mechanism with which I’m very familiar, which is captive insurance companies. The oversimplification of that subject has made me concerned about some of the other subjects about which I’m not as knowledgeable.
Hi Folks, Big V here. I think I missed the info on this new website, but FdA was kind enough to point me in the right direction.
I read the comments on Total Access here and found them informative. I always wondered when it was announced that this product was reopening for membership, was it because of people leaving because they didn’t find value or was it an attempt to bring in more revenue. Member comments here make total sense.
To make a long story short, I will soon begin to spend a lot of time looking for and at business and investment opportunities which to a large extent will be passive in nature. I will pass along what I learn about this area, whatever that might be. I am looking to find some things that while not totally hands off, will generate income without me being tied to a business 60 hours a week. I also realize there is no free lunch.
All the best to everyone in 2017!
I think your comments on the captive insurance companies pitch are spot on. Unless you were trying to set up some sort of bogus tax dodge, I don’t think one would find the advice given by SMC to be particularly useful. I am in the transportation business and looked into a captive a few years ago as a way not to write high six figure insurance payments every year. Basically, it was hard to do and for openers would require me to post $6 million or so in capital with the state insurance commission.
Big V, thanks for participating. I hope we can generate interest in this free forum and exchange ideas like you’re talking about. I think Simon’s moving a lot of the comment to TA. I’m not saying the information from Tim Price and Tim Staermose aren’t valuable, but I just don’t put it into effect. I subscribe to a crisis investing newsletter from Casey that is much easier to put into effect on a monthly basis.
As for the private investing things offered by Simon, this is not at all a criticism of them, but quite a few of them don’t allow direct investment, but instead Simon’s group sets up special purpose vehicles to then invest in the investments. I’m a bit of a control person, so already I’m taking a leap of faith if I’m going to invest in some company run by someone else in another country. Now I’m being asked to invest in a second layer of the unknown as well, and I just don’t care for that. Since I’ve not invested through either PVI, Tim Price or Tim Staermose, I’m not getting that much–except for the private meetups. And they’re great. THe speakers are pretty good, and the members are great. But it’s a shame we’re paying such a premium essentially to meet up with each other.
On the completely different topic of captive insurance, it’s like a lot of other things: if your company’s risks and numbers could justify it, and done with the right captive manager, it can be a very good and legitimate risk shifting mechanism that also carries with it tax benefits. Done with someone shady, it can be a red flag tax dodge.
Sovereign Man has made the decision to focus more efforts on its higher-end clientele. That is, focus on folks coming to the SMC events, and focus even more on the Total Access members
I think you are right. The missives have increasingly become less relevant to anyone who isn’t registered with the SEC and interested in pursuing his private investment projects. I let my Total Access membership lapse this year, it just wasn’t delivering the value for the dollar for my purposes as a result of the change in focus…it was just time to move on.
Enjoyed meeting you all in Cancun and hope to see you here.
I haven’t frequented this forum as frequently as I should.
ML
Thanks for your thoughts. I had a friend (whom I met in Cancun) whose renewal anniversary came up the same time as mine for Total Access, and we were going through a lot of those same back and forth questions. Ultimately, I decided if the price remained the same (it did) that I’d give it another go. The investments sounded pretty exciting when I entered, but less so when I started thinking more about them. I’d rather stick with something where I had more control, but wasn’t loaning money on bottles of wine….
9-12% pa on the wine lending deals actually sounded pretty good. Far better than other options out there. The minimums were brutal however.
Roger I don’t have a problem with the proposed return. I guess it’s a matter of perspective: it’s the collateral that concerns me. Granted, I seem to recall that the company tried to build in pretty high buffers to account for diminution of value (i.e. you couldn’t borrow 95% of the alleged value of your wine collection), but I’d still be concerned about liquidating the collateral to be able to receive your money back.
Interested in hearing from any current SMC members. Any different feelings on Total Access now that Tim Price has left?
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