Medicare. The name is as recognizable as Kleenex®, KFC®, and Coca Cola®. But if asked what Medicare is, most people can only tell you it’s government health insurance for older people. If you’re going to do serious retirement planning you need to know more than that. If you don’t, you could miss sign up deadlines and that will cost you. [...]
What happens when you die? Whether you believe in an eternal after-life, or that you come back as Aunt Polly’s cat, in the world of money you choose the answer. Depending on your choice, as an old Eagles tune says, it could be heaven or it could be hell for the people that matter to you. Planning, or lack of [...]
Buried in the dusty archives of the IRS code is a military secret. The benefit for some military families can be substantial – the ability to deposit up to $500,000 into a Roth IRA, all at one time. In 2008 the Federal Government passed the Heart Act (Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act). It allows surviving spouses of military [...]
To take, or not to take—that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler to wait until 70 for the outrageous fortune of a larger Social Security check, or suffer the slings and arrows of a reduced benefit at age 62. Social Security is an important part of retirement income for many Americans and deciding when to begin benefits is a key [...]
Are my social security benefits taxable? That’s a frequent question when doing retirement planning. The simple answer is it depends on your income. But it wasn’t always that way. For almost 50 years, no one was taxed on Social Security benefits. Then, during a study of Social Security, a Senate Finance Committee Report said, “…by taxing social security benefits and [...]
The economic surprises keep piling up on the negative side of the ledger as the Fed persists in tightening policy or at least pretending that they are. If a rate changes in the wilderness can the market hear it? Outside of the stock market one would be hard pressed to find evidence of the effectiveness of all the Fed's extraordinary [...]
The economic data releases since the last update were generally upbeat but markets are forward looking and the future apparently isn't to their liking. Of course, it is hard to tell sometimes whether bonds, the dollar and stocks are responding to the real economy or the one people hope Donald Trump can deliver when he isn't busy contradicting his communications [...]
The Fed did, as expected, hike rates at their last meeting. And interestingly, interest rates have done nothing but fall since that day. As I predicted in the last BWER, Greenspan's conundrum is making a comeback. The Fed can do whatever it wants with Fed funds - heck, barely anyone is using it anyway - but they can't control what [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates again at their meeting next week. They obviously view the recent cyclical upturn as being durable and the inflation data as pointing to the need for higher rates. Our market based indicators agree somewhat but nominal and real interest rates are still below their mid-December peaks so [...]
There hasn't been a lot of change in our indicators since the last update and therefore, despite my discomfort with the altitude of this stock market, there are no changes to the Global Asset Allocation this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between risk assets and bonds is unchanged at 50/50. Bond markets moved around some during the [...]
Stay In Touch