My Comments: Did you know you can choose from any one of 96 months to start your Social Security benefits? If you live to normal life expectancy, your choice of month can mean as much as several extra $100k for you and your family. The message: don’t sign up without first exploring what is in …
Tag: Retirement planning
Health Care Spending to Increase Moderately
My Comments: There was little talk among the 17 candidates yesterday about trying once again to repeal Obamacare. Why is that? Once again, projected health care cost outcomes are moving in the right direction, downward. Yes, overall spending will increase, but by far less than happened before the PPACA. Just suppose, if over the past …
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How to Fix Our Interstates
My Comments: As a resident of Gainesville, Florida since 1959, I remember when I-75 appeared locally. Bud Johnson and I would explore the countryside on our bikes on weekends. Among my memories are a bridge under construction near Warren’s Cave and I-75 was simply a cleared trail through the woods. Another day we found ourselves …
Retirees Contending With Mortgage Debt
My Comments: Most of you know that my wife and I recently downsized (we now have 60% of what we used to have!) to a new house in a nearby neighborhood. I never knew how much stuff we had. Deciding what to keep and find room for is truly an ordeal. Financially, we accomplished this …
A Century of Defense Spending In The United States
My Comments: With deal with Iran now in play, the focus is increasingly on the choice between war and peace. We either come to terms with some kind of negotiated settlement, or we accept the idea of sending young men and women off to die once again. I read recently that of the 239 years …
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Gamma-ray Rain From 3C 279
My Thoughts: An example of our insignificance in the universe; here is a short (1.10 mins) video that portrays a shower of gamma rays from a galaxy far, far away. The video was posted on a web site I often visit sponsored by NASA. Every day there is new image or video that reflects something …
Polls Show Most Americans Favor Pathway To Citizenship
My Comments: I’ve mentioned before that as an immigrant myself, I have a strong interest in this issue. I find it distasteful that children brought here by their parents are forced to leave because their parents arrived here without proper papers. Mindful there is no best solution, I welcome a dialog and changes to the …
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Rates Must Rise To Avert The Next Crisis
My Comments: Interest rates are the price paid for using money owned by someone else. The rise and fall of that price, which we call interest, is a critical element when it comes to deciding how your money should be invested. For over 30 years they have been trending down and you will soon see …
Who Now Pays for Healthcare?
My Comments: A fundamental shift being triggered by the PPACA (Obamacare) is the level of income earned by medical specialists and medical generalists. In order to make it more attractive for a medical student to focus on primary care, the idea was to compensate specialists less and instead redirect those funds toward those focused on …
A Basic Social Security Quiz…
My Comments: Many are railing against capitalism these days and others against socialism. If you’re adamantly opposed to socialism, I trust you’ve refused to cash your social security checks. Yes, you paid into the system, but the bulk of the money you get comes not from what you put in, but from what our children …
Helping Define Your Financial Future 