The Media: If It Bleeds It Leads

With spring finally here, I have a bit of a spring in my step. With a bit of a light-hearted, spring-time flair, I thought I'd share a clip from Alonzo Bodden. Alonzo has a comedy special airing on Showtime.

The clip below talks about the 'Fear of Disease.' In today's world, there's always a crisis going on somewhere--financial crises included. At the potential cost of our peace of mind, they are usually showing up in our newspapers, television news, and other media outlets. Remember to keep things in perspective and don't get too caught up in the crises du jour.

Think positively. Think Spring. Laugh a little.

To Your Prosperity,

Kevin Kroskey, CFP, MBA

Diversification: Disciplinarian of Disciplinarians

Disciplined diversification works when you do and even when you don't want it to. Diversification in effect forces you to sell the thing that has been doing so well in your portfolio and to buy the thing that hasn't. While this makes rational sense, it is emotionally difficult to execute. Think back to the tail end of 2008--were you selling bonds and cash to buy stocks? Most likely you weren't unless your advisor or some sort of automatic trigger did it for you. Carl Richards of www.behaviorgap.com provided a good reminder of how diversification works in a recent NY Times blog post. The diversification he discusses here is more so related to equity asset-class diversification but also touches on the three basic building blocks--equities, bonds, and cash. He doesn't discuss alternative asset classes -- an asset class that doesn't fit neatly into the three basic categories -- being used to further diversification, but that's a detailed topic for another day. ...

2013 Key Tax Proposals

On February 13, President Obama's Fiscal Year 2013 budget was released. Follow this link to get a full copy of the 2013 Budget . The Treasury's Green Book containing general explanations of the Administration's revenue proposals can be found here. Robert Keebler, a leading professional in the area of tax and estate planning, highlighted some of the key proposals potentially affecting taxpayers below: Extend Bush tax cuts for all but the top two brackets. The only change would be to have the 33% and 35% rates go back to their pre-2001 levels of 36% and 39.6%. Taxpayers in the top two marginal brackets would still benefit from reduced rates on the portion of their income taxed in the lower brackets. Raise the long-term capital gains rate to 20% for single taxpayers making more than $200,000 per year, $250,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly and $125,000 for married taxpayers filing separately. Tax rate on qualified dividends would revert to ordinary income t...

65-80 Year Olds … A New and Exciting Demography

Should today’s 70-year-old American be considered “old?” How do you define that term these days? Statistically, your average 70-year-old has just a 2% chance of dying within a year. The estimated upper limits of average life expectancy is now 97, and a rapidly growing number of 70-year-olds will live past age 100. Perhaps more importantly, today’s 70-year-olds are in much better shape than their grandparents were at the same age. In most developed countries, healthy life expectancy from age 50 is growing faster than life expectancy itself, suggesting that the period of diminished vigor and ill health towards the end of life is being compressed. A recent series of articles in the Economist magazine suggest that we need a new term for people age 65 to 80, who are generally healthy and hearty, capable of knowledge-based work on an equal footing with 25-year-olds, and who are increasingly being shunted out of the workforce as if they were invalids or, well, “old.” Indeed, the a...

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