My Comments: Selling long-term care insurance has been a tough sell for me. It’s less appealing than life insurance and statistically, it’s less likely to happen than death. It’s an emotionally charged issue that’s hard to deal with rationally. The major player in the long-term care insurance policy world is Genworth Financial. They’re on the …
Tag: Retirement planning
Rate Hike Rally
My Comments: Interest rates and where they are going is a relatively hot topic. For those of you with savings accounts and Certificates of Deposit know, the returns you get are anemic at best. But if you need to borrow money for whatever reason, low interest rates are good. Since there is an expectation that …
Yellen’s problem with US felons
My Comments: We are a nation of approximately 316 million people, of which roughly 30% are “youth dependent” and 20% are “elderly dependent”. This leads me to assume that roughly half of us are capable of employment of some kind. The next assumption is that if the employable number of people is about 158 million, …
The Glass Ceiling on Rates
My Comments: I’ve recently shared this chart with you that shows the historical ups and downs on interest rates in this country going back 224 years. They have been trending down since 1981, a long time. Right now they are nearly zero. When this happened in the past, they began an upward climb until they …
When Patience Disappears
My Comments: We’ve talked extensively about the likelihood of a market correction, if not a crash, coming in the near future, maybe this year. What many have not talked about are the implications of a rise in interest rates. This is going to happen, given that they’ve been on a downward trend for twenty plus …
Medical Identity Theft Rising Fast
My Comments: If ever there was a 21st century crime, this is it. We’ve all read about what happened to Target Stores and others where customer information was stolen. What we don’t often think about in this context are our own medical records, scattered across the health care landscape which we inhabit. I’ve been aware …
QLACs Change the Game in Social Security Timing
My Comments: If you know about Social Security plannning, as I claim to do, the prevailing wisdom is to delay taking your benefits for as long as possible. The argument is that each year you wait, you increase the size of your payments by 8%, even before the expected annual increase due to inflation. What …
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When Underperforming the S&P 500 Is a Good Thing
My Comments: I’ve spent time recently with clients talking about our mutual frustration with the performance of their investment portfolios over the past 18 months. They want their accounts to grow aggressively and I want them to grow aggressively, if for no other reason than it makes me look smart. We can argue that the …
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Border Security Is Not An Immigration Cure-All
My Comments: Many of you know that I am a documented alien who in 1959 was granted US citizenship. Hopefully, this gives me some right to comment on the immigration issues facing us today. While I’m not an admirer of the Mexican political system, I do accept that if you achieve the status of President, …
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Put Your Retirement Plan on Steroids
My Comments: First, this assumes you have a retirement plan and that you have tried to answer the question “How Much Is Enough?”. Second, your answer to this question is still open to debate. And three, you actually have earned income that needs to be reported. In a perfect world, we would have a way …
Helping Define Your Financial Future 