Your Guide to Financial Clarity
David
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Posts by David
Equity Indexed Annuity Scam
16 years ago
in Insurance
First, to put it on the table, I have a strong bias against EIAs because I think there are more effective ways to achieve the same result. They often have many moving parts that can make them less valuable than they originally appear and which help hide the expenses built into the product – [...]
The Ultimate Safe Withdrawal Strategy
16 years ago
in Retirement
What if you have discovered that your risk tolerance is virtually non existant? Here is a strategy that reduces risks to their bare minimum. The next article will address those who are willing to take more risk.
Investment Choice
I am assuming that zero risk tolerance means only CD’s under FDIC [...]
Property Tax Deduction for non Itemizers
16 years ago
in Tax
Under the Housing Law signed on June 30th, if you decide not to itemize you can increase your standard deduction by the amount of real property tax you could have claimed if you did itemize, up to $500 ($1,000 on a joint return). This originally only applied to 2008 tax returns, but the Emergency [...]
Should You Rebalance?
16 years ago
in Investing
With the markets down significantly most people’s portfolios have drifted away from their target allocations. For those brave enough to look at their porfolios right now, a natural question is should I rebalance to bring my portfolio back to its target allocations. This is an attempt to help [...]
Municipal Bond Yield Spread at Record High
16 years ago
in Investing
10 yr AAA Municipal bonds are currently yielding around 4.95%. This is 32% HIGHER than the 10 yr Treasury note which is yielding 3.74%. Most of the time municipal bonds offer lower interest rates compared to Treasuries because of their tax favored status.
To see how unusual the current situation [...]
Who to Blame for the Credit Crisis
16 years ago
in Commentary
You can go bleary eyed reading and watching all the finger pointing going on as to who is to blame for the current credit crisis. The fact that we are in the final lap of a presidential race means that political pundits are trying to spin the culprit to their advantage. Why do we care about [...]
5.8% SS Cola Increase in 2009
16 years ago
The Social Security Administration announced today that Social Security payments will increase by 5.8% in 2009. In addition, the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax will increase to $106,800 in 2009 from $102,000 this year.
Mortgage Modifications are Harder than they Appear
16 years ago
in Commentary
From the Wall Street Journal we have the following grim statistics.
12 million homeowners currently have negative equity. Current projections have this growing to 20 million homeowners by the time we reach the housing bottom (from housing futures markets). This is out of 50 million homeowners who [...]
Crisis Due to Trust Destruction not Wealth Destruction
16 years ago
in Commentary
When the dot com bubble burst in 2000, technology companies proceeded to lose $5 trillion in capitalization. That is a huge loss, and it hurt. It destroyed a lot of companies and even damaged the portfolios of those who didn’t have a lot of technology exposure. It also plunged the US into a [...]
Beyond the Credit Crisis