Incredible story underway in Israel about what Vanguard’s head of Investment Counseling and Research group, John Ameriks, calls “Mattress Risk“.
Here’s the jaw-dropping story from CNN:
A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, gave her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise gift, throwing out the old tattered bed her mother had slept on for decades. The gesture ended up bankrupting Annat’s mother, who had stuffed her savings of nearly $1 million inside her old bed for decades, Annat told Israel Army Radio.
Ouch.
The more I think about it, the more it hurts.
Without assigning blame, Ameriks draws a lesson for investors from this incident:
The bottom line: There are always risks out there, and avoiding the risks of investing—or even avoiding doing business with others generally—doesn’t mean you’ve done away with risk.
