My Retirment Plan

Where am I putting my money? For my retirement I'm actually following the Good to Great Index or method. Good to great is a book by Jim Collins that talks about companies that are able to consistently perform and adjust to make the company Built to Last.

The Good to Great companies

• Abbot Laboratories (ABT)
• Circuit City (CC)
• Fannie Mae (FNM)
• Gillette (got bought out by Proctor I think)
• Kimberly-Clark (KMB)
• Kroger (KR)
• Nucor (NUE)
• Philip Morrs/Altria (PM/MO)
• Pitney Bowes (PBI)
• Walgreen (WAG)
• Wells Fargo (WFC)

The Built to Last companies:

• 3M (MMM)
• American Express (AXP)
• Boeing (BA)
• Citygroup (C)
• Disney (DIS)
• Ford (F)
• General Electric (GE)
• Hewlett Packard (HPQ)
• IBM (IBM)
• Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
• Marriott (MAR)
• Merck (MRK)
• Motorola (MOT)
• Nordstrom (JWN)
• Phillip Morris/Altria (PM/MO)
• Proctor & Gamble (PG)
• Sony (SNE)
• Wal*Mart (WMT)

See anything in common? You guessed it, my money is in Philip Morris. Yeah yeah yeah, I know they make cigarettes and that stuff supposedly can kill you, but it's a great company. Great dividends, actually does have an uptrend. You don't hear people talk about the shitty cars Ford makes that kill people as much. How about the number of people that get cut shaving in the morning using Gillette razors each more made by Proctor & Gamble, or the number of divorces each year deep rooted in the problematic movies Disney produces that instill an unrealistic view of love in young people as much. Alright, I'm going to switch off the sarcastic mode now.

There are some real crap on this list though... FNM is not worth crap now, MOT is crap, CC is double crap, F is crap to the 5th power. If you look at the chart for ALLLL the way back, and I mean back in like the 80's or even further, the ones that actually do have an uptrend I like are (wth the current dividend % following) : ABT (2.44%), KMB (3.54%), KR (1.30%), PM (4.40%), MO (6.37%), WFC (3.87%), MMM (3.05%), JNJ (2.71%), PG (2.24%).

Some of the companies I really like as well like BA and IBM and some technically do have an uptrend but I didn't include them b/c the slope of the trend is not as great or almost flat or there's a lot more volatility than I'd like. So seriously, if you are putting in money into your 401(k), IRA or whatever retirement/pension fund you have like SEP or VUL... just go w/ these companies. Personally I'm even more selective. I'm down to just PM, MO, WFC, JNJ, KMB, and PG. Six companies... well, it used to be 5 before the PM/MO spin off. I simply just buy these shares no matter what price they are and I reinvest the dividends. I don't care if they go up or down. Will this work? Let's see... I'm almost 25 now, I'll let you know in 40 years. So let's talk again in 2048.