Category: Financial Planning
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What you should know about limited partnership investments
list of cautionary considerations about limited partnership investments
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Are you a financial revolutionist?
A revolutionist is someone who wants to change the world — not just sitting around talking about it, but actually doing something to bring about change. If that describes your approach to personal financial management, then I’d love to have a conversation about what you are doing now and what else can be done to improve…
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Begin financial planning for health care changes now
We expect major changes ahead to U.S. health care policy under the current federal leadership. We don’t know specifically what these changes will be and when the changes will come. Yet for those with chronic medical conditions, it makes sense to begin financial and legal preparations for the change now. One key aspect of the change…
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Estimating the cost of COBRA coverage
Yesterday I took a telephone call from a woman who planned to leave her job soon to start a business. She needs to estimate the cost of COBRA health coverage to compare to her other options. This is a simple but important step in planning to launch a business. We presume that most people know…
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Prepare now for market correction and recession
There are growing indications that the investment markets and the overall economy have reached short-term highs and that we might soon headed into a period of market correction and possibly even recession. I am not interested in or attempting to ‘time the market’ not do I pretend to have any ability to make such a forecast.…
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$100,000,000,000,000 (Wealth Inequity in America)
One hundred trillion dollars. That’s the total net worth of all Americans in 2017*. It’s a staggering number. For practical discussion purposes, we might say that figure is the net worth of rich Americans. The top 160,000 households (one tenth of one percent) control a quarter of this wealth. About half of all this U.S. wealth…
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Our plans to widen the US wealth gap
The United States is an amazingly rich nation. Our net worth of about one hundred trillion dollars works out to about $300,000 for every person across the country. Of course we know that wealth is not distributed evenly like this. Most of that wealth is held by a few people. Half of our nation’s wealth is controlled…
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Vanguard makes investment decisions easy
I used to make a living as a Registered Investment Adviser and worked with Vanguard Group and other investment management firms. Now I provide generic standardized advice on investments when appropriate in the course of other accounting and financial planning services. My work now does not require a separate government registration as an investment adviser. Why…
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Add impact to ‘Not My President’s Day’
Resolve today to take a strong personal stance to avoid paying federal income taxes. Just make sure to do it safely and legally! On this historic “Not My President’s Day” I am reminded that civil protest has its limitations. Don’t get me wrong; I strongly support and encourage civil protest. Consider the old folk song “Charlie…
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My 2017-2018 economic and political forecast
“It’s still the economy, stupid” My fundamental forecasting premise is that the current federal administration’s fate and effectiveness in this divided country ultimately lies in the direction of the economy. Given the basic current macroeconomic factors: high stock market low interest rates high level of entitlements, and the low level of unemployment, I conclude that current…