Your Wealth Reserve: How quickly can your account rebound from this correction?

How quickly can your account rebound from this correction?

Depending on how much of your portfolio (401k, 403b, brokerage, IRA, Roth IRA, etc) is in stock assets, you could be down 7% or more. A 500 Index fund is still up 8% over a full year while the Vanguard Wellesley Income fund (60% bonds) is up over 9% over 1 year. Your broad diversified asset account may take less than 6 months to get back on track. This is exactly why you invest in different types of assets. You don’t suffer big losses or big gains from any one shock. Over time, stocks produce better returns than bonds or cash or gold or e-bits. If you consider stock investing as gambling, you may have to wait a long time to hit another jackpot. If you consider stocks the safest investment you can make over time, you won’t have to do a thing. If you played your last chip in February, you must now double your bet to get back even. If your stock fund represents your ownership of many businesses, most will keep working through any panic. Buffett: I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

https://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffetts-Investment-Strategy-Set-Forget/dp/1484822900

How can you determine how much your advisor gets paid?

Since there is no industry standard or database for commissions, fees, retainers, kickbacks or other forms of payment, you will never know exactly what your salesperson actually earns. They could create a loss in your account and still charge you $3,000 a year. Recently, one of the sources of information was partially closed. The CFP Board told financial planners that the compensation information was “not very specific or helpful to consumers” and that the best way for consumers to select an advisor is “to have a conversation with their prospective advisor.” But we can’t interview 10 prospects without knowing something about how they charge. “We’re trying for more transparency as an industry, and this is less transparent.” The CFP Board’s consumer website, LetsMakeAPlan.org, is part of a public awareness campaign. Some advisors think the group may have caved in to the whims of the brokerage industry, many of whose advisors also carry a CFP designation. The Board was criticized for not properly disclosing things like customer complaints and criminal or regulatory problems for thousands of CFP designation holders on its consumer website. It took me a long time to find an advisor that charged only a fee for a financial plan/advice for a client. Most charge 1-2% annually of your balances plus fees for packaged products like annuities. It’s your money.

Buy unbiased advice: https://www.amazon.com/Fiduciary-Rule-BEST-dont-anymore/dp/1530980275

How much government do we want?

Elections are about choices: what to do with our tax money? If you believe social benefit programs are needed to help people you vote Dems in. If you believe corporate and wealth benefit programs are needed to help business and the asset class you vote GOP. Socialism: Trump is now helping some businesses and not others. Welfare for the rich or welfare for the poor, both have succeeded in driving up our public debt and the size of government. Subsidies to the elites and to the needy have never been contracted only expanded. Why are we still providing oil, coal and gas subsidies to profitable companies? Trump pays oil/gas companies when the oil/gas market price falls. We don’t get a bailout for our fuel oil/gas bills. Why have we allowed corporations to pay such low wages (same as 1973) that full time employees must beg for food stamps to survive? Why doesn’t government protect us from unwanted robo calls, opioid drugs and nicotine e-cigarettes? We allow the wealthy to avoid taxation through expensive tricks we can’t afford. When will everyone pay their fair share for their subsidies? Only now is Washington State repealing Boeing’s subsidies. Why is a ‘capitalist’ system paying profitable companies socialist subsidies? Give bailout to taxpayers!

Pay your fair share: https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Tax-Shelter-Avoid-taxes/dp/1985448300

SEC lawyers create more obscure annuity ‘disclosure’ form

The new “reader friendly” variable annuities summary prospectus and rules were supposed to improve investors’ understanding of the complex contracts but actually prove the need for real-ife testing. This charade “illustrates why we shouldn’t leave the job of developing disclosures to securities attorneys. The model they developed based on the proposal is 16 pages of small type and legalese,” CFA Director Roper said. “Had they bothered to test it, I am confident that they would have learned that much work was needed to make these documents both more readable and more visually appealing. But they weren’t willing to do that, perhaps because they didn’t want to hear what investor testing would have told them about the need to go back to the drawing board." Insurers were thrilled with the way SEC lawyers can obscure the tricks insurers use to make sure an ordinary person could never understand how their annuities work.

Insurers can never lose money: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Buy-That-Annuity-Guaranteed/dp/1466494573

File your taxes for free

TurboTax and other for-profit tax prep firms are due to raise prices soon. If you have your documents, use your favorite software now and pay your tax due on April 15. The payment, if any, can be in April; the filing should not. The federal and state can cost you nothing at https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/. Another site has no cost or restrictions: https://www.creditkarma.com/tax. And remember you can usually reduce income and thus tax by making a deductible contribution to your IRA.

Filed already: refund status: https://sa.www4.irs.gov/irfof/lang/en/irfofgetstatus.jsp

Save for a long life: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Plan-Live-Age-100/dp/1548180793

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Like 1776, this period is a test of democracy—do we really want ‘low-IQ’ Mobster?

Mob Boss: 'Oh, we'll be cutting' [SS & Medicare] entitlements

Mob Boss: my employees see “I have natural ability” in medical expertise.

Mob Boss using Supremes to overturn centuries-old law

Mob Boss lowers his taxes by paying bribes

How Govt wastes our money: Congress spends another 1.7 Trillion we don’t have!

This is how the GOP plans to stay in power? Is 6 hour wait enough to forsake democracy

Supremes under thumb of Mobster eliminate Congress power to govern

Mobster distracts us with promise (bribe) of tax cut to ease panic Pence assurances fail.