Hi Neil, Re: Long Journey............
For me the main part of the journey was before finding Mr. Lichello's book. I started buying stocks after college with whatever money I had left from the meager salary I made on my first job. The market was so bad that in three years, I don't think I had a single stock that went "up" after my initial purchase!
Finally in the 4th year they started to rise a bit and I started feeling better about investing. Back then I was essentially "dollar cost averaging" even though it wasn't regular or constant in amount. It was, maybe, more like just averaging down. There wasn't any "Cash Reserve" as there wasn't any cash!!! So, when my poor stocks did get clobbered further, I couldn't really do anything except wait until I had some more spare cash.
Some time later I sold off maybe 20% of my position, paid the taxes and funded my own cash reserve. I'd use it to buy on market dips and recover it with small be reasonable profits. So, when I came across Mr. L's book in the mid '80s, it made a lot of sense to me. It was also much more regimented than what I did.
I tested AIM in real time for a full year before making a commitment to it. When I did change to AIM, it was 100%.
So many seminars turn out to be sales pitches rather than educational. I did listen to Mr. Lichello's "seminar" which was a late night "infomercial" for free on TV sometime in the '80s. It was not long after I'd read his book. Now, the real question is would I have spent $XXxx.xx on a seminar for Mr. Lichello's AIM model? I have to say, "Probably not" but that's my nature.
I think that AIM fits my nature and my lifestyle. To say that there's not other or better ways to make money is simply not true. There are lots of ways, but not many would have fit with my life very well. I've kidded with the group here about my favorite book in the past. Its title is, "The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail." It's the story of working smarter, not harder and is somewhat tongue in cheek.
So, it's my lifestyle and my nature that keep me using AIM. It works for me and helps me to be mostly successful in my investments. It seems that puts me ahead of many others. I'm sure there's a crowd ahead of me as well, but I'm running my own race.
Best regards, Tom