Financial advisor offers tips
by David Grace, Reporter

   While sitting in traffic, people find themselves thinking about things other than the traffic on hand. Sometimes the thoughts are about food or things that should have been done earlier or even what is going on that night.
   John Loyd, however, thinks of something completely different: saving for the future.
   In The Not-So-Secret Recipe for Financial Success, Loyd, an investment representative for Edward Jones, compared investment to a traffic jam.
   When one lane of traffic starts to move while the one a driver is sitting in stands still, he looks for an opening in that lane.    Once the driver gets in the other lane, it usually stops, and the previous lane starts to move again. Loyd, in his speech on South Campus last week, called this diversification.
   “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket,” he said.
   Spreading money out in investments is a good idea, Loyd said.
   “You never know which lane is going to shoot forward,” he said.
   When investing for the future, Loyd said, it is always better to get started as early as possible.
   “Each day you waste is like a penalty,” he said.
   For instance, if someone started investing money at the age of 25, putting $2,000 in each year for 10 years, the money would compound to more than $500,000 by the time the person was 55. If the same person started at the age of 35 and put the same amount in each year until 55, he would have a little more than $250,000.
   “The sooner you get started, the better off you’ll be in the future,” he said.
   With the stock market fluctuating so much the past few years, people might be worried to put their money into it, Loyd said.    The market has always has its ups and down through its history, but has always gone up.
   One should envision the stock market as a person on an escalator with a yo-yo. As the yo-yo goes down, it is still going up in a sense.
   “The highs get higher, and the lows gets higher,” he said.
   With students, it is hard to find extra money to save. Therefore, Loyd suggests that for one week students should write down all of their expenses and try to see what they can cut back on.
   “Try not to spend money on the stuff that you don’t need, so you’ll have more money later on in life,” he said.