Perhaps the most important thing to know about finance is what are the unintended consequences of a proposed course of action. Unfortunately, these are very rarely discussed. What is discussed, rather, are over-simplified, numerical projections often with faulty inputs to boot. Then, armed with this false information, the consumer draws erroneous conclusions…often with devastating results. (Continued)
At the risk of being misconstrued, I will be short and to the point in this blog: There are no quick fixes to the problems plaguing our society, its government or our economic system. Just as the sky did not fall in the morning after we re-elected the one who is arguably the worst president (Continued)
Recently a client (and good friend) posed a question to me after hearing a sermon preached on the gospel story of the rich, young man, where Christ tells this man to “go, sell what you have and come follow me.” One of my friend’s questions was this: Am I not supposed to save, but (Continued)
In Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, he mentions 4 “human problems” that would cause the system to fail. Now the “system” was how to grow one’s wealth. So who would want that to fail? Of course the answer is no one, but oddly, many people do indeed fail to increase their savings via (Continued)
For this month’s blog, I am going to use an excerpt from the book, Money! Questions and Answers by Fr. Charles Coughlin circa 1935. Chapter VI of this book, Effects of a Dishonest Money System, offers 15 rather chilling prophecies when looked at with the benefit of 75+ years of hindsight. And while Fr. Coughlin (Continued)
What if you lived to ripe old age of 107? Would your retirement accounts hold up? Consider the interesting case of Leonard McCracken who has done just that. Retired for 41 years, he has managed to live on his personal savings, a lifetime annuity and social security. So what can we learn from Leonard? Well (Continued)
NOTE: This article was first published in January 2008. Are you a bull or a bear? Gosh, in today’s market I think most of us would prefer to be a mouse and hide in the back of the cupboard with our little piece of cheese! Frankly I hate the propaganda mill that is known as (Continued)
Recently in a piece written for Morningstar.com, Christine Benz had this to say about “When It Pays to Hire A Financial Professional”: Paying a financial planner an ongoing fee to handle every aspect of your financial plan can make sense if you’re extremely time-pressed or if your finances are particularly complicated. Ditto if you’re very (Continued)
Some years ago I read a pamphlet entitled The Pension Idea (Amazon says it is out of print, but you can find it by searching elsewhere) wherein the author pointed out the dubious origins, purposes and sustainability of pensions. I acknowledged the wisdom of his assessment, but didn’t think it had much practical applicability to (Continued)
I know this may sound strange coming from an investment professional, but I have come to HATE rate of return discussions. The way that most companies present investment “rate of return” to their prospective clients is generally so over-simplified and remote in time as to border on the ridiculous, if not in fact fraudulent. These (Continued)