Now that the economy is on fire, all Americans should be rejoicing in their wealth, right? Wrong! Only 52% of Americans own any stocks according to a recent Gallup poll and only about 63% of Americans own real estate according to the Census Bureau, down from a high of about 69% in 2004. Given these figures, the bull market has left a lot of people behind.

According to the Federal Reserve, of the 10 percent of families with the highest income, 92 percent owned stocks as of 2013 (latest year for their study), the same level of ownership back in 2007. But ownership slipped for people in the bottom half of the income distribution.

The top 10 percent of Americans owned an average of $969,000 in stocks. The next 40 percent owned $132,000 on average. For the bottom half of families, it was just under $54,000. With over a 200% rise in the S&P 500 since 2009, the wealth gap has clearly widened.

The chart below shows stock ownership dropping from around 65.5% in 2007 down to 52% today, despite the massive rebound in the S&P 500. The main reason for the decline? Fear and distrust. Once burned, twice shy.

A number of people have asked me to share some different investment strategies for different life stages. What I’ll do is highlight the various investment strategies I think make sense for most people, discuss a couple more alternative investment strategies, and round up what strategy I think is most appropriate by life stage.

We all know that step one to building financial wealth starts with saving. What really widens the wealth gap over the years is HOW one invests. Before investing in anything, I encourage everyone to tell themselves five things out loud.

1) I will lose money.

2) I will feel like a complete idiot when I lose money.

3) Nothing goes up forever.

4) There are plenty of exogenous variables outside of my control.

5) No risk, no reward.

Now that you’re mentally set to invest your hard-earned savings in the stock market where one change in government law, a corrupt CEO, a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or a declaration of war could instantly wipe out half your gains, let’s begin!

To eliminate financial distortion, make sure I’m within my risk tolerance band, and push myself to continuously reinvest cash flow in order to survive permanent unemployment, every quarter I’ll be reviewing my investments. I’ve found that after even just a couple months, if I don’t write things down, I simply cannot remember how much and what I invested in.

For the past five years, my goal has been to earn a conservative 4% – 6% yearly return on my overall net worth given I reached my target number. It felt so amazing to escape the rat race in 2012, I was comfortable with what I had. Now, however, thanks to hedonic adaption, I’ve become used to the freedom and have turned greedier with my desired returns.

Today I’m shooting for a 10% yearly return based on my following new money investment allocation for 1H2017: 57.4% Real Estate Crowdfunding (10% target return), 11.27% Bonds (4% target return), 9.41% Stocks (10% target return), Venture Debt 3.3% (12% target return), 8.27% Mortgage (4.25% return), and Home Improvement 10% (20% return).

Let’s dig deeper into the numbers!

Besides the fact that there’s a massive generational wealth transfer underway, another reason why I’m not too worried about the financial future of our kids is because they are much more financially savvy than we once were.

Thanks to the internet, there is an endless amount of free information to consume. The information uptake compared to when I was a kid in the 1980s (pre-internet) must be 1,000X greater. Further, the ability to invest smaller sums of money is much easier and access to once unaccessible deals is much more available.

It used to cost $200 to trade a stock. Now you can build a 30 position portfolio for only $7.95 through Motif Investing. You used to have to spend $500 to buy Microsoft Excel software to help track your finances. Holy crap! Now you can just sign up for Personal Capital and manage your net worth and analyze your investments for free. Those who’ve taken advantage of such democratization have tremendously outperformed those who couldn’t be bothered.

Given the stock market is at an all-time high, here’s an interesting question I received from a 13 year old cryptocurrency trader who wants to know what financial mistakes to avoid. Perhaps you can give this middle schooler some advice after I’m done as well.