I’ve told this story to several people and the response was the same: "You need to put that on your blog!"  So, here goes.

Gaining weight on a cruise is as ubiquitous as breathing, or so I thought.  Indeed, on my first cruise I gained three or four pounds, and I’ve done the same on every cruise until my last two.  I haven’t gained a pound on either of them, and my secret isn’t that they were only two day cruises!  One was six days and the last one was 12.

No, the secret isn’t that I didn’t eat! I figure I ate about twice what I normally eat.  In addition to my morning bowl of gourmet oatmeal (chock full of nuts, berries, and dried fruit), I had a croissant or two, sometimes a grilled kipper, and yogurt.  For lunch I had a personal size pizza on most days.  And for dinner, I certainly ate more courses than normal, which included foie gras every other night, and a daily dessert (which I never eat at home).  I also did a few high teas and consumed more coffee and chocolate than I usually have in a year.

So, here are my secrets of not gaining weight. 

First, this isn’t your mother’s house.  You don’t need to eat everything on your plate.  If you are full, you can push the plate away without guilt.  If not eating everything on your plate when you go to a restaurant causes you financial pain, the good news is that your cruise cost won’t go down or up because of the amount of food you eat or don’t eat. 

At one meal, I happily watched Davin eat the blueberries off of 8 tarts, pushing the crust and filling aside and going on to the next tart.  There is no way that would have happened if I had directly been paying $2.50 for each tart!  However, in this case, not only was he choosing to eat healthily, I had already paid for the tarts, whether he ate one or 20. Also, if ever you don’t like what was brought to you, the waiter will gladly take it away and bring you something else. 

Second, I do high intensity yoga three to six times a week.  On my cruise, I got in just two really good yoga sessions, which should have been a good reason to gain weight, since I was working out less.  What I did do, however, was walk 30 minutes a day on a treadmill at the fastest pace I could maintain.  For me, that was about a 13-minute mile.

That was it:  sample everything, don’t clean your plate, and exercise vigorously every day for 30 minutes.

I hope this can work for you.  Happy cruising!

We kicked off the arrival of my new book, The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge," with an open house Thursday evening, December 8.  Indeed, and as I suspected, the old boy himself made an appearance (played by Phil Bangs).  While he managed to offend about everyone who attended, by the end of the evening Scrooge was even beginning to mellow and sporting a wisp of a smile.  Come Christmas Day, he will be having a lot to smile about!

We had just over 100 guests, and we handed out or sold over 50 books to clients and friends.  Since over 50% of our clients live out of state, most of them were unable to attend, but their copies of Scrooge are in the mail!

I look forward to people reading the book. My work of integrating financial planning with financial counseling has produced some wonderful, life-changing results for clients, and it’s exciting to have a chance to share those stories.

One of the more common questions asked of me was, "How did you find the time to co-author two books in one year?"  Well, I really had no intention of writing two books in a year, but one reason I could is because of my co-authors.  However, I have no plans to do this again anytime soon.  Right now, I will be focusing my attention on expanding my financial planning practice in Rapid City and taking an occasional speaking engagement . 

Obviously, you know that my weekly column appears here, on my weblog.  I publish it every Friday. There are also two other places you can catch my weekly column in hard copy. The Watertown Public Opinion publishes it on the Monday after it comes out on the weblog, and the Rapid City Weekly publishes it on the following Thursday. 

If you know of a newspaper that would like to add the column, please have them contact me. 

You will notice a new page on our website that is called "KFG Client Chatter." You will remember we featured a client in each edition of our old quarterly newsletter (which we no longer print in hard copy since we have gone to this interactive format). 

I intend to continue that tradition, posting a new article on one of our KFG clients in this space once every two months or so.  You will be able to see these articles by clicking on "KFG Client Chatter" at the left, or by going to the website and clicking on the button by the same name.

In addition to the bi-monthly client features, we will also feature pictures of clients’ recent happenings on the website.  For example, those pictures of new babies or grandbabies will be found here.  We also want to feature pictures of remodeled kitchens, recent trips, new houses, or any other trappings of what is happening in your life as a client.  So, send us those pictures!  And if you don’t have digital photos, don’t worry, we can convert any photo and get it on the site. 

And remember, the photos will only be seen on the website at "KFG Client Chatter," while the client stories will be found both here and on the website.

Coming Soon – Recent bi-monthly "Featured" Kahler Clients will be posted here! And more in-depth client photos and histories will be available under "Kahler Client Chatter" (http://www.kahlerfinancial.com/Chatter.htm) our exciting new section on the website that showcases the clients themselves!

Here is a great gift idea for any special people who could use some improvement in their relationship with money.  It will also forever change the way they view Dickens’ A Christmas Carol! The book is The Financial Wisdom Of Ebenezer Scrooge – 5 Principles to Transform Your Relationship with Money, with a foreword by Naomi Judd.

Ebenezer Scrooge would seem like an unlikely source from which to glean financial wisdom.  However, Dickens’ classic tale of how Scrooge left behind his miserly ways and transformed into a joyful, compassionate and generous man is a powerful model we all can benefit from today.

Unlike other financial books that focus narrowly on the "dollar and cents" of money, this book is an easy read.  Written for the layperson, it provides advice that is simple, transformational and timeless.  Wynonna Judd refers to her experience in working with Ted Klontz and me as the "breakthrough methods that changed her relationship with money."

Through these methods we’ve used successfully with Wynonna and many others, we show you the following:

• how to recognize ways that unconscious Money Scripts may keep you trapped
• how to deal with the relationship between your net worth and your self worth
• how to discover your authentic goals and values
• how to permanently change self-destructive money behaviors
• how to leave a family legacy of financial wellness.

Another great gift idea is Conscious Finance – Uncover Your Hidden Money Beliefs and Transform The Role of  Money In Your Life. This book takes off where Scrooge ends, and shows you in fine detail how to apply the principles in Scrooge.  It also has the additional component of addressing the "dollar and cents" issues of money in an understandable way.  Conscious Finance makes a a great companion gift to The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge.

You can order both books at Amazon.com, and if you order them together, the shipping is free.  Or, if you would like me to personally autograph the books, they are available at my office in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Here are the links to the Amazon.com site where you can buy the books.  Also, if you have read either book and would be so kind as to leave a good comment on Amazon.com, we would really appreciate it!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0757303544/qid=1134326509/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-0540022-9884028?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0966554310/qid=1134326408/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0540022-9884028?n=507846&s=books&v=glance

What is the greatest value that financial planners provide for their clients? There are many answers to this question, depending on the needs of the client and the style of the planner. One of my favorite answers, though, is that I can keep clients from making “The Big Mistake.”

Is it possible for someone untrained in financial management to be a successful investor? Of course. Doing so requires the patience to think long-term. It requires the willingness to go for the boring rather than the spectacular by buying mutual funds rather than individual stocks. It requires learning the fundamental principles of investing—diversification and asset allocation.

Someone who is unable or unwilling to follow that approach is extremely vulnerable to making “The Big Mistake.” One of the most common mistakes for untrained investors is buying individual stocks. Another is concentrating your investments in one asset class, such as stocks. Both these approaches can cost you dearly if that company suffers losses or that sector of the market declines.

What happens all too often is that one “Big Mistake” leads to another. I’ve seen investors who had huge losses as a result of not being diversified. They promptly turned around and put everything they had left into a different asset class in an attempt to recoup the loss. This is just taking all one’s eggs out of a failed basket (such as stocks) and putting them into a different one (such as bonds). It’s only a matter of time until the market changes, and the result will be another loss.

If your portfolio has suffered a loss because of a lack of diversification, don’t compound your problems by jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It is important that you accept the fact that what is lost is lost and that you don’t make things worse by continuing to act irrationally.

There is actually a grieving process that a person needs to go through with any loss, even a financial one. You need to go ahead and be angry, sad, scared, and feel whatever emotions this loss creates. However, that is not the state in which you should make new financial decisions. Once you’ve gone through the grieving process, you can begin to separate the feelings about the loss from the rational actions you need to take to protect and build your investments. This separation will help keep you from repeating past mistakes.

There are two reasons why using the services of a financial planner can keep you from making those “Big Mistakes” in the first place. The planner’s training and financial expertise, of course, is the first reason. (This, of course, is assuming the planner is competent and understands asset class diversification. At its simplest, this means building portfolios that include a minimum of four asset classes.)

A second aspect of the value you receive from a financial planner is the professional detachment a planner brings to managing your portfolio. The planner can make decisions in cold blood, looking at such factors as whether a mutual fund manager’s performance is declining or a particular asset class is thriving. He or she isn’t hampered by emotional factors such as guilt over selling the stocks your late husband bought or your Aunt Eloise recommended. Quite simply, it’s often easier to invest wisely with someone else’s money.

Can you learn to manage your own investments? Yes, if you choose to. Should you? Not necessarily. You can invest the time and energy to educate yourself thoroughly, or you can invest in a professional advisor. You’ll need to do one or the other if you want to avoid “The Big Mistake.”

Read Rick’s weekly column in the Rapid City Weekly News.

Download the_big_mistake_pod_cast.mp3

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO RICK’S WEEKLY COLUMN: Download the_big_mistake_pod_cast.mp3

While on Celebrity’s Millennium, I came as close as I will probably ever get to an outrageously expensive bottle of wine, a 1949 bottle of Petrus. Had you, or your parents, bought a magnum (equivalent of two regular bottles of wine) or two of this wine in 1949 and stuck it away in a cool, dark place for 56 years, you would be a very happy wine investor today. Each bottle would be worth a cool $12,000!

For that $12,000, charged to my shipboard account, the bottle could have been mine. The fact that my new American Express Blue card only has a $1,000 limit was only one reason why buying the Petrus wasn’t an option.

My tour of the ship’s wine cellar was graciously given to me by the cellar master, who also pulled out a 1907 bottle of Champagne which was the same make and vintage of that served aboard the Titanic. The particular bottle he showed me spent several decades on the bottom of the Baltic Sea as a result of a cargo ship that sank. For $7,000, that Champagne could have graced my dinner table that night.

The wine cellar was as extravagant as the bottles of wine that it held. The paneling came from the original MS Olympic, as did the light fixture and the gold-plated sink. In the middle of the cellar was a table, where just three weeks prior to my visit, a patron had consumed a $5,600 bottle of Chateau Cheval Blanc.

While I easily resisted the urge to spend $19,000 on the wine for my evening meal, I enjoyed my visit to the wine cellar. It was well worth the price of admission, which was free.

There was a time I rarely, if ever, purchased travel insurance.  Recently, however, I’ve been buying it more often.  I especially find travel insurance more of a necessity when traveling outside of the US.  My biggest concerns are coverage for medical services, trip delays, and in the event I am taking a cruise, reimbursement if a covered event causes me to cancel my trip.

When it comes to medical coverage, I am also finding it is not just the life-threatening events that would cancel your vacation for which you may wish you had coverage.  For example, on my family’s latest cruise, our daughter, London, came down with a UTI.  Certainly not a life-threatening event, it still needed attention.  A quick check with the ship’s infirmary found the cost of diagnosis and antibiotics in the ship’s infirmary was $200, plus an additional $50 for an appointment during the middle of the afternoon when the infirmary was closed.  I also was certain that Dakota Care would not cover this expense.

The solution?  Quick consumption of copious amounts of cranberry juice relived her symptoms long enough for us to go ashore at the next port of call in Spain and purchase the needed antibiotics.  My wife had spent a reasonable amount of time in Europe and knew that antibiotics were available at pharmacies without a prescription. With a minimal amount of pantomime, pointing, and poor Spanish, we were able to secure the needed antibiotics for $3.  We also made a quick visit to an Internet cafe where I Googled the medication to be sure we received the right drug and correctly understood the dosage.  That research proved that everything was fine.  London recovered completely and quickly.

A fellow passenger didn’t fare as inexpensively.  She got food poisoning on the ship and spent a day in the infirmary.  The cost was $800.  She was annoyed that the medical treatment wasn’t complimentary, since it was the ship’s food that caused the need for medical attention in the first place.  The only reason she wasn’t completely out of sorts about the charges is that she always purchases travel insurance and knew she had coverage.

These experiences have given me a reason to find out more about what my medical insurance does and doesn’t cover when traveling, especially on a ship, since I cruise a fair amount.  I’ll be checking into and reporting on that at a later date. 

Another coverage that travel insurance affords is for expenses for delayed baggage.  We lost our baggage for three days on our departure flight and for one day on our return flight.  We had $400 of delayed baggage coverage and used every bit of it and more buying basic clothing items in Spain.  I’ll let you know how that claim settles, too, and I’ll have further recommendations on coverage and companions to use in a future article.