Your Mexican Portfolio
By Hector Saenz de Viteri
September 5, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Why don’t we make saving a priority?

Even when we know that saving money is good for us, saving for tomorrow is still a largely ignored and unappreciated skill. Most of us will say, “I can’t save any money!”

It is true that saving today is harder than it used to be because income has held steady in recent years, especially for the middle class, and prices have continued to rise. Credit has become very accessible and spending money is easy—we choose to buy a car or a flat screen television instead of saving.

Probably the most important factor is that saving money is not fun. Gratification is delayed; you must choose between spending your money now or having a nice retirement 20–30 years from now, even if the reward in the future is greater.

A reward you get in the future is an abstraction. Let’s use retirement as an example. We may not be around 20–30 years from now, our goals might change or many things could happen. We have an automatic preference for immediate reward.

Even though all these factors could discourage us from saving, we have to be conscious that we must be responsible for funding ourselves. What’s more, our longer life spans require more money to suffice in retirement. We may have to make sacrifices in the short term, but we will feel so much better in the medium to long term.

Actinver-Lloyd is your best option for saving or investing your money, using investment strategies that have proven themselves over time. Now is a great time to invest your money; yields for many Actinver-Lloyd funds are between 6–8.25 percent versus 2 percent in the US. We have just opened a new branch at La Luciérnaga shopping mall, located between Liverpool and Office Depot.

Hector Saenz de Viteri is Actinver-Lloyd’s branch manager at La Luciérnaga,

hsaenz@actinver.com.mx.