Analysis Topic: Personal Finance
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, March 06, 2014
Maximizing Your Retirement Planning IRA / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Don_Miller
As working folks get closer to hanging up their spurs, it is easy to become overwhelmed. When should you take Social Security? What type of insurance do you need? Should you buy an annuity? Do you need nursing home insurance? Should you roll over your 401(k) into an IRA? The list goes on and on.
Retirement planning requires many irreversible decisions. We each need to get it right; however, what is right for us is not always right for someone else. And, in addition to basic number-crunching, we each make assumptions about life and politics—sometimes without even realizing it.
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Thursday, February 27, 2014
The Ty Cobb Approach to Retirement Investing / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Don_Miller
When baseball fans talk about players from the early 1900s, Babe Ruth is normally the first person mentioned. He was a great home-run hitter with 714 career home runs, a record that stood for almost 40 years. Only two men have surpassed it. Ruth struck out 1,330 times—a record that also stood for several decades.
Most people think of Ty Cobb as a gritty player who held the career stolen-base record for many years. But let’s look a bit deeper. Ty Cobb broke into major-league baseball in 1905 at the age of 19 and hit .240 his first season. For the next 23 seasons, he hit over .300.
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Thursday, February 13, 2014
Are Your Bank Savings Safe From Bail-Ins? / Personal_Finance / Credit Crisis 2014
By: Raul_I_Meijer
I know you thought you’d seen some crazy stuff, but it’s going to get better, promise!
On the one hand you have Greek politicians claiming their economy is doing so well, they’ll present the troika with a big feel good surprise. On the other, Greek unemployment reached a new high at 28%, with youth unemployment now at 61.4%. That’s almost 2/3 of young people. What is to become of them?
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Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Retirement Investing, Why 65 Is Not a Magic Number / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Don_Miller
Is retirement really all it's cracked up to be? The answer depends on where you find yourself financially, emotionally, and health-wise come age 65 or so.
When we're young, we trade time for money and hope to stash away enough of it to later reverse the process and trade money for time. Ideally, we'd each have a few decades of independence before the grim reaper—or assisted living facility—comes knocking.
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Monday, February 10, 2014
Prepare for When the New MyRA Becomes "TheirRA" / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Money_Morning
Peter Krauth writes: In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama unveiled something new: a retirement savings account to "help" Americans build a nest egg, coining it the "MyRA."
Something immediately felt wrong about the proposal... but I couldn't put my finger on it.
So I researched the new MyRA and found details to help you understand just how it works.
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Thursday, February 06, 2014
Debt the Last Social Taboo? / Personal_Finance / Debt & Loans
By: Don_Miller
Social taboos have dropped left and right since I was a young man raising a family, but one is unlikely to disappear any time soon: holding too much personal debt. But debt need not be a personal tragedy nor a badge of shame. For some, it is simply a practical problem with practical solutions. For others, however, it isn't even the real problem.
In the last few year I've watched two friends handle debt quite differently, and those differences illustrate the real taboo about debt that we seem to ignore. I've changed names and tweaked a few details to keep peace in the world, but what follows are essentially two true stories: those of Joe Able and Tom Baker.
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Friday, January 31, 2014
Who Most Benefits From MyRAs: Savers Or The US Treasury? / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Dan_Amerman
By executive order of the President of the United States, as announced in the State of the Union address, there is now a new type of tax-advantaged retirement account.
These are the MyRAs, the user-friendly "my retirement accounts" for small investors, that are presented as being one part of the campaign to help close the income and wealth disparity gap in the US. And one of the issues that is identified as being part of that gap is that the poor and middle class have relatively little money in retirement accounts when compared to the wealthy and the upper middle class.
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Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Insuring Yourself Against a Bankrupt Government / Personal_Finance / Credit Crisis 2014
By: Casey_Research
Spreading your political risk beyond one jurisdiction is the single most important financial step you can take today.
Having all your eggs in one basket only makes it easier for someone to grab them all. Internationalizing your assets makes it much harder for any particular government to control you or your money.
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Friday, January 24, 2014
Americans Can Still Benefit from Tax Havens / Personal_Finance / Taxes
By: Casey_Research
By Nick Giambruno, Senior Editor, International Man
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”–Benjamin Franklin
You are technically a slave when 100% of the fruits of your labor is taxed or otherwise confiscated by force. So, at what percentage are you not a slave?
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Thursday, January 23, 2014
Laddering Adds Another Layer of Financial Protection for Retirement / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Don_Miller
Laddering reminds most people of a strategy often used when owning multiple CDs. Back when interest rates made them worthwhile, if you were trying to arrange cash flow, you could stagger the maturity dates of your CDs so you always had one maturing in the near term. Longer-term CDs had better rates, but they tied up your money; laddering mitigated that problem.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Ten Pillars of Financial Independence / Personal_Finance / Debt & Loans
By: Don_Miller
Young folks can usually digest a difficult message more easily when it comes from someone who is not: (a) their parent; (b) their teacher; nor (c) anyone else whose lectures they are sick of hearing. In that spirit, we're starting out 2014 with 10 ways people of any age can safeguard their financial independence. Please feel free to pass it along to anyone in your life who could use a nudge in the right direction from someone other than Mom and Dad.
Wealth is not gauged by how much money you make, but rather how much you keep. Accumulating wealth, regardless of your age, gives you options and independence. It's sad when people toil in jobs they hate because they need the money. Anyone in that position finds their employer controls their time and, sad to say, much of their happiness (or lack thereof).
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Thursday, January 02, 2014
Retirement Reboot - The Ultimate Layer of Financial Protection / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Don_Miller
From international real estate to international government regulation to international business, Nick Giambruno, the senior editor of International Man is the go-to guy. While my passport is good for another eight years, I’m sure he has to replace his annually. Nick has recently been traveling with legendary investor, Doug Casey, and I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about this trip as well as tips for folks looking to protect themselves and their wealth by diversifying internationally. So, without further ado…
Friday, December 27, 2013
January Sales 2014 - Post Christmas 2013 High Street Sales List - Discount Voucher Codes? / Personal_Finance / Shopping
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Shop-till-you-drop looks set to continue all the way into January which was once upon a time the true start date for the holiday sales season that over the decades has meandered its way towards the end of November. Though of course most of these early sales are bogus, for these 50% off sales amount to nothing more than the original prices as the real sales only began online Christmas Eve and in store on Boxing day. Even then consumers need to be on their guard because it was very difficult if not impossible to capitalise on most of the discounts promoted, for instance many of the goods that you may have been interested in at for say 60% off have mysteriously become out of stock!
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Boxing Day Sales 2013 List, But Are the Sales of 2013 Real? / Personal_Finance / Shopping
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Praise the lord for without Jesus there would be no 75% discounts! Britain's cathedrals of consumerism look set to be full to bursting point on Boxing day as bargain hunters resume celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ after a day of partial rest (online shopping) by maxing out their credit cards on asian sweat shops produced goods. Unlike the 50% sales in the lead up to Christmas Eve, these should represent the REAL SALES that for many stores started online late Christmas eve, as Christmas day shopping seamlessly continues into the shopping malls early Thursday morning and thus not even a storm damaged and disrupted transport network will be able to stop Britain's shopping zealots from securing their piece of the consumer sales relics of 2013.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Five Personal Finance Moves to Make Before 2014 / Personal_Finance / Taxes
By: Don_Miller
While it's tempting to slip into an eggnog stupor from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day, there are five items we should all check off our to-do lists before the ball drops on 2014.
Review your loss carryforward numbers. If you have any capital loss carryforward from previous years, now is a good time to take some profits. You can take your gains and offset them against your carryforward, plus $3,000. Who knows when our desperate government will still demand its share of our gains via taxes but leave us alone to cover our losses? Offset those carryforward losses and take some profits where it makes sense to do so.
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Monday, December 23, 2013
Christmas Eve Online Sales 2013 - Next, John Lewis, Curry's, Debenhams, Argos... / Personal_Finance / Shopping
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Christmas storms may have brought Britain's transport system to a halt but without much effect on the shopping frenzy underway which today saw the mainstream broadcast news channels busy reporting from Britain's packed shopping malls as an estimated £3 billion will be spent just today, many shoppers were asked for their views on what they were looking for prompting many to comment that they were out and about and getting into the Christmas spirit as they search for sales bargains, as though this is what Christmas is all about i.e. a month long consumer shopping celebration to max out credit cards on. The actual story of Christmas has long since turned into just another series of special effects movies and not good ones at that as today we can see space stations in the sky with beds that can bring people back from deaths door Lazarus style (Elysium), against which the Jesus story just cannot compete.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Next, John Lewis Christmas Sales 2013 - All High Street Start Dates / Personal_Finance / Shopping
By: Nadeem_Walayat
It's Christmas! That means a month long media induced buying frenzy for the masses to engage in as sales fever pitch reaches its maximum intensity in the run up to Boxing Day. However, a word of caution as this is NOT 2008 when many retailers were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy that would claim many such as Woolworth's and Comet, and thus were panicked into real deep discounts to quickly offload stock to improve their cash-flows. Instead, now we have a strong UK economic recovery underway that is resulting in an highly engineered sales season which started off with over inflated prices calculated to generated discounts of as much as 75% so that items can still be sold for a hefty profit.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Setting Up Your Own Business - 10 Lessons for Aspiring Entrepreneurs / Personal_Finance / Business
By: Casey_Research
By Jeffrey Tucker
One of my favorite web spaces is meetinnovators.com. It interviews startup entrepreneurs, people who created something new and made it successful. Through casual conversation, it investigates their thinking, mode of working, trials and tribulations, breakthroughs, and visions of the future. Just hearing these people talk gives you a real lift.
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Friday, December 20, 2013
UK Christmas Sales 2013 Start Dates, Retailers Deep Discounts / Personal_Finance / Shopping
By: Nadeem_Walayat
A fast accelerating UK economy towards growth rates that academic economists cannot imagine today (well beyond 3% GDP) looks set to manifest itself during the holiday season as a debt fuelled spending binge as the cathedrals if modern Britain will be jam packed with shoppers afflicted with sales fever searching for bargains as Christmas has morphed into a month long relentless advertisement to spend, spend and then spend some more in January.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Turn off the Tube, Tune out the Media, and Drop out of December Madness / Personal_Finance / Financial Markets 2013
By: Don_Miller
Overconsumption of mass media during the month of December can cause emotional whiplash. Navigating images of smiling shoppers and candy-cane merriment while reading about a derailed train in the Bronx or Syrian refugees has left me pining for the days of yore—when Christmas was still vaguely related to a guy who wore sandals and annoyed his local government, and the only bad news you heard about was the drought or oxcart accident in your own village. Sure, folks still capitalized on religion and lots of bad stuff happened, but there was no 24-hour news/commercial cycle feeding us the play-by-play.
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