My Comments: As a financial planner, I’ve described the three primary phases most of us travel through in life: childhood, adulthood, and retirement. As a child, we’re dependent on others to maintain our lives; as adults we’re dependent on our ability to fend for ourselves and typically work for money; in retirement we’re dependent largely …
Continue reading 4 Financial Life Stages and How to Plan for Them
My Comments: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of "189 countries working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world." They recognize that market crashes happen from time to time, and …
Continue reading Listen to the IMF’s new warning, economist says, and cut your exposure to US stocks
My Comments: For millions of us, Social Security has become a critical source of income if we expect to continue our current standard of living into the future. For those of you not yet claiming benefits, these four items are critical to your future retirement success. Christy Bieber \ Oct 7, 2018 Social Security benefits …
Continue reading 4 Signs You’re Thinking About Social Security Benefits the Wrong Way
My Comments: Apart from my concern that many of us will wake up one day soon and discover much of our money has disappeared, it is helpful to understand where all the gains have come from since the last significant crash in 2008. By Nicolas Rapp and Clifton Leaf September 25, 2018 Who's responsible for …
Continue reading This Data Visualization Shows What’s Really Responsible For Our Current Bull Market
My Comments: A dilemma for many people is they find the language used by those of us in the world of finance and economics very hard to understand. It goes in one ear and comes out the other. I’m about to launch an internet course that will help solve this problem. I call it Successful …
My Comments: By first choosing to opt out of participating in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and then inviting a trade war with China, the US has effectively ceded global economic supremacy to China. The expressed logic behind these moves was in the guise of ‘Make America Great Again”. Hah! In turn, China is attempting …
Continue reading We’re underestimating China’s economic power. Here’s why
My Comments: Health issues in retirement are a given for those of us not already passed. Whether they end up costing an arm and a leg depends to some extent on how prepared we are before they happen. Both my wife and I are covered by Medicare and each of us has a ‘medigap’ insurance …
Continue reading How to Prepare for Costs Medicare Won’t Cover
My Comments: Readers of my blog posts know at least two things: (1) I’ve been expecting a significant downturn for longer than I can remember and (2) I like Vanguard Funds. I have much of my money there, to some extent because of their insanely low fees compared with what I lived with for most …
Continue reading Ride Out The Next Market Storm With These Balanced Vanguard Funds
My Comments: Despite the appeal of retirement, no one is ready to admit that the transition from “working for money” to “money working for you” will be easy. The cost of health care as you get older has the potential to cause your retirement plans to come unglued. To keep that from happening, Medicare is …
Continue reading Here’s what you need to know about Medicare if you’re still working
My Comments: For most of my adult life, the major player among brokerage firms in the US was Merrill Lynch. Actually I remember it as Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Smith. Then the crash happened in the fall of 2008 and Bank of America acquired ML on 1/1/2009. The cynic in me said that BoA …
Continue reading The ‘Great Bull’ market is ‘dead,’ and here’s what’s next, Bank of America predicts
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