It’s that time of year – time to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid used by more than 99% of public universities. Many parents take the “why bother” approach. “We have too much money. We’ll never get any aid.” The first thought is usually “why did I have kids” while the second, [...]
Friday was painful, huh? The past few years of steady, positive returns have lulled us to sleep. It’s jarring for the plane to experience turbulence. But did we crash and burn? The higher the market the more irrelevant ‘point movements’ become. The 1987 Black Monday pullback of ~500 points was a one-day decline of 22%. [...]
Ostensibly written to explain economic events this article is one of the best you’ll ever read. Understanding what we tell ourselves and why is the first step down a path of better life decisions.
This chart does a nice job showing the prior laws, the competing Senate/House proposals for change and how things were resolved during the reconciliation process to create the new laws to go into effect beginning in 2018. Missing from the chart is discussion of the changes to §529s. Previously distributions in order to qualify for [...]
Takeaways from the above: more than half of American households own no stock roughly 1/3 maintain indirect ownership and with the rise in passive strategies (i.e. indexing) have endowed giants like Vanguard with enormous voting power over corporations Now consider the following: 60% of American families combined own less than 2% of stock wealth [...]
It’s a poor joke but it seems appropriate given data released yesterday by the Hartford Funds. A decade after the deep financial crisis the majority of survey respondents said there was no impact upon their lives. Really? Wow! And yet... 42% of respondents reported that they avoid investing in financial markets 46% have altered their [...]
The Internal Revenue Service has announced the annual inflation adjustments for a number of tax-related provisions. Assuming no changes as a result of the ongoing tax reform debate these are the numbers and tables that will matter come Jan 1st. Individual income tax brackets will remain at 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33%, 35% and 39.6%. [...]
Recently announced changes by the Social Security Administration: WORKERS: If you have a job then you pay 6.2% of your earnings into the Social Security system. The maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax – the so-called “wage base” – will increase from $127,200 to $128,700. Of the estimated 175 million workers [...]
On the heels of when smart people do stupid things we provide an example of when smart people say smart things. Today it’s Dr. Mohamed El-Erian. Read his comments focusing on the importance of the big picture – of the road traveled instead of what’s at the end of it. The implications are huge. It isn’t [...]
In an interview with CNBC the Oracle of Omaha disclosed that his investment vehicle (Berkshire Hathaway) is delaying taking profits in anticipation of a tax cut. Right now we're sitting and watching because within three months, actually less than that, we'll know the answer on it . . . I would feel kind of silly [...]