8 Daily Habits to Consider

These minor changes in your daily routine will make a major difference in your life and career. Happiness is the only true measure of personal success. Making other people happy is the highest expression of success, but it’s almost impossible to make others happy if you’re not happy yourself. With that in mind, here are …

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Lockheed Martin Scores Desalination Breakthrough?

My Thoughts on This: You’ve heard me talk about the future where my children are at an age where I am now. Roughly 2040. Seems like a long way away, but its really not. Today, I happen to have on a shirt that honors the Gators 1996 National Champtionship; that was 17 years ago, for …

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Americans Take Payroll-Tax Increase in Stride to Keep Spending

My Comments: There is a lot of evidence and sentiment that 2013 will be a solid year. Housing starts are strong and will continue to be at least until interest rates start to climb. The jobs report continues to be positive with roughly 200K new jobs every month for the past four months. GDP growth …

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For Tax Identity Thieves and Phishers, Business Is Booming

My Thoughts on This: One of the consequences of the deal entered into by Congress that will result in across the board budget cuts will be a greater inability on the part of the IRS to detect fraud and catch the bad guys when it comes to taxes. Many of us have little love lost …

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The U.S. Tax System: How Did We Get Here? Pt. 1, the Early Years

My Thoughts on This: I was taught long ago that no one has a responsibility to pay more in taxes than is required. It’s up to you and I to figure out what is required. So we push the envelope and either through good fortune or because we really know what we are doing, we …

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J.P. Morgan Weekly Market Recap – March 11, 2011

The original plan was to post these every week. Some of you like to time the market and this report from J.P.Morgan is perhaps the best summary to help your decision making:

THE ONLY SAFE WITHDRAWAL RATE

My Comments: For many years than I am aware of, there have been “experts” who have expressed their opinion about the optimum rate to withdraw money from accumulated retirement funds. The reason for this is to offset a fear by many of running out of money at some point before you die. Typically, that’s not …

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Investable Assets to Hit $80T by 2017

My Comments: When I saw this number, I had to reach far into my psyche to actually figure out how many dollars we’re talking about. And I’m someone who follows astronomy blog sites from time to time and am used to thinking in terms of billions of light years. It takes some time to get …

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Mixed Signals Give Gold Investors Whiplash

Goldman Sachs declares an end to 12-year run-up of gold, just before Bernanke reaffirms monetary easing My Comments: Gold, in its many forms, from actual coins, to shares of gold mining companies across the globe, has been a strong investment for many people over these past few years. We can argue that it reached bubble …

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Top 4 Commission-Free ETF Platforms

My Comments: I typically start a conversation with someone about investments by suggesting there are two types of investors: Those that want to do it themselves and those who decide they need some help. If they say they prefer to do it themselves, then my comment is usually to the effect that I'll help point …

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