What I Should Have Said
It all started innocently enough. On May 6, I went along with my son Andrew (SMI's esteemed webmaster) to visit with his friend Hugh Hewitt, who was in Louisville doing his talk show for the evening. Hugh usually broadcasts from Southern California, and has (according to Talkers magazine) an audience estimated to be about 1.75+ million listeners who tune in at some point during the average week.
It was really Andrew's deal, but at the last minute he invited me to tag along. The last thing I expected was to be on the air, speaking off the cuff, to a national audience. But that's what happened.
On something of an impulse, Hugh asked if I would be willing to do a segment and talk a little about SMI as well as the market's wild behavior (the temporary 1,000 drop in the Dow) that day. No prep time, but being the seasoned veteran I am, I foolishly agreed (audio here — I'm in the third segment).
It was fun, went by quickly, and it wasn't until later that I began thinking of how I might have expressed myself better. So I decided to give myself something of a "do-over" and write about it in this issue. Here are a few of Hugh's questions with better answers than I gave at the time.
Hugh: Austin, tell people what Sound Mind Investing is.
Me: SMI is America's best-selling financial newsletter written from a biblical perspective. Our mission statement is to help our readers "have more so they can give more." [Sadly, I missed a golden opportunity to let the Christians in Hugh's audience know that we are the premier newsletter of our kind, and can help them better understand and apply God's financial principles. Unspoken message: they really should check us out. I've always been poor at the whole self-promotion thing. Sigh.]
Hugh: What do you generally advise your readers about the state of the world's finances these days?
Me: It's not the world's finances that are the biggest threat to most peoples' financial security. Generally, it's their own decision-making process. The biggest mistake Christians make in their finances and investments is not basing their decisions on biblical principles.
We provide step-by-step instructions to help people get debt-free, save for college, invest for retirement, and everything in between. We help them create a personalized plan based on their present financial situation, age, and risk tolerance. We give them specific investing recommendations. And we do everything we can to encourage them to follow their plan and, for the most part, ignore the financial news.
It's a much less stressful approach than trying to understand the world economic scene and wondering how to respond to each new crisis. And it's worked really well over the two decades we've been publishing SMI.
Hugh: What do you tell them on a day like today when the market just goes crazy — they're not used to this sort of thing.
Me: Hopefully they took it in stride. We've explained to them that every decade has its share of crises. In the 1970s, we had an oil crisis and inflation that led to the first wage-and-price controls since World War II. In the 80s, we had interest and inflation rates in double digits, with predictions of a monetary collapse. The 90s started with Desert Storm and included a 1998 Russian bond default and chaos in world markets. And so on. Yet, we've survived it all.
Life is filled with uncertainties, but we can manage our financial affairs so that when the unexpected comes along, we can isolate the damage. The blueprint for doing this is given to us in Scripture, and it is incorporated into the strategies we teach at SMI: Know where you're going. Avoid debt. Spend less than you earn. Save for the future. Diversify your investments. Exercise self-control and stay with your plan.
Hugh: After all your years of experience, do you believe anyone has a crystal ball?
Me: No one does. No one really knows what's coming next. Unfortunately, too many folks are persuaded otherwise. If you're investing with a long-term time frame — looking five, 10, 15 years out — you don't need to fear the occasional crisis. It takes self-control and a mature outlook to hold steady during such times, and we do our best to develop those qualities in our readers. 
We've revised our New Reader Guide to provide a simpler, and hopefully more helpful, introduction to SMI. If you could use a little more help "getting started" applying SMI's strategies to your personal situation, download a copy from the Bonus Reports page. 
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Austin Pryor has three decades of experience advising investors, and is the founder of the Sound Mind Investing newsletter and website. Austin lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with Susie, his wife of 44 years. Two of his sons, Andrew and Matthew, work with him at Sound Mind Investing. A third son, Tre, is a Realtor® in the area. |
- Hugh Hewitt
- The Top Talk Radio Audiences (Updated 3/10) | Talkers Magazine
- Young Life UK/Ireland - Tom & Nine Hammon
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