3: I used to have...

"...But Things May Change" sung Bob Dylan in one of his songs...

Ahh...bank and credit cards, what a nice thing, if a burglar waltz into your house he won`t find all your belongings and if they stole your wallet/card holder, you can still block the card with a phonecall.
But there are different breeds of burglars these days, they can access anything you have and they might be in your future while you are peacefully sitting there completely unaware...

But let's roll back for a second and let me tell you as story...
I was watching a TV program on Italy's RAI 3 channel years ago, they were showing an RVM shot in Milan, where a line of people was waiting to get a hot meal and a bag containing some food items (a pack of Spaghetti, a brick of milk etc.) I thought to myself "finally they are addressing the problem of homeless people" but there was a catch... Many people in line weren't homeless at all, and one that was, it was for a very particular reason...

Italy: people lining up outside a Caritas Facility

The first group while all ex company workers owning a small apartment in Milan's suburbs, made the mistake on counting on the famous 1+ million lire pension, little did they know that the Lira would turn into Euro and that with the Euro equivalent they could hardly make ends meet.

But the one that sparked my interest even more however was this guy the reporter interviewed, he told his story (with mosaic effect on his face and garbled voice to protect privacy) of when he spent glamorous days in the 80s doing "Aperitivo" dressed in the latest fashion,

From Navigli...to Back alley...

...when all of a sudden his wife divorced him, took the kids, took the house, obtained from the judge ailments for a quite unreasonable monthly sum, and his small business, slowly but surely went down the drain.

So let`s repeat a part of Robert Kiosaki adage here: ""It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, ".

You never know when a law suit may strike you, people nowadays sue for the smallest of reasons, it could be your ex wife, your neighbors, the person leaving below you, hit on the head by a vase or your loosely tighten satellite antenna (an ex employee, a woman you met at a club, the tax office, the list goes on and on, Ellen Pao might cost her company USD 160.000.000 just as an example).
They are gonna aim straight at your jugular and try to get ahold of as much as they can. If they win the law suit the Judge might seize your belongings and leave you with a portion that will be the smaller the larger the claim will be.

So, getting back to the analogy of the plastic bag containing water (where water=money or properties) wouldn't it be good every once in a while to put the water accumulated so far into an indestructible steel barrel?
As to say, "this is what I made up until now, I mark the spot and safe guard it so that at least this part will stay with me no matter what happens in the future".

Would you put all your cash in a wheeled shopping cart and go around town to the happiness of every robber around you? Of course you wouldn't.
Yet if a lawsuit strikes, all your belonging are probably sitting there in the open, ready to be claimed by any judge (to the happiness of ex-wives, neighbors and more).

What if I told you, you could actually obtain both tax deferring capabilities and bulletproofing of your belonging using the very same instrument?

I'll tell you all about it in the next post...