What Others Say
The Social Function of Insurance
April 11, 2011 | Author jr
Web Site of Extreme Value…
I have frequently quoted or referred to Mises.org
The Ludwig von Mises Institute was founded in 1982 as the research and educational center of classical liberalism, libertarian political theory, and the Austrian School of economics
I am especially interested in the economics aspects of the institute. The following article by Robert P. Murphy is one of the clearest explanations of the insurance function that I have personally ever read…and I’ve read many.
The Social Function of Insurance
Legal requirements and prudence require most adults to carry various insurance policies. Although we may often take insurance for granted, it serves a valuable social function.
Read the article here…
The Social Function of Life and Disability Insurance Products
You and I daily face the risks of our own death and disability. That creates great risk for our families, our co-workers, our social, civic, and religious networks.
You and I are not indispensable, but we are contributors and we are often unaware of the significance of the contributions we make. Our families in particular rely on us in ways that death benefits or disability income checks can never replace.
Not owning adequate life and disability insurance ignores the reality that we support our families spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially. It also ignores the painful reality that our families would face in every aspect of their lives if we left them with inadequate financial support when we die or–perhaps worse–burdened them with care-giving responsibilities and not enough money to either give care to a disabled family member or take care of the basic needs of the household.
In addition, we often are completely unaware of the value we bring to our social, civic, and religious communities. Have you never found an unexpected vacuum created by the untimely death of one of your colleagues at work or a member of your social circle? Sometimes we don’t recognize contributions until they are no longer made.
Insurance provides us with a simple and inexpensive way to assure that the work we do every day can continue after our death or in the event of our disability. Businesses have realized this for over a century through the use of key person insurance policies that assure the business will continue to thrive if the contributions of its most important contributors is cut short.
I encourage you to make sure you provide the same assurance to your family and the communities that depend on you.
by Jeffrey Reeves MA, EUREKONOMIST™
Even The Fed Knows An Obama Economy Won’t Work
April 2, 2011 | Author jr
Fed Governor: Crisis Scared Winners, Too
- By ALLISON BELL
Read the entire article here…
Commentary…
As usual, the economist author of a study looked at the results derived from following conventional wisdom. What about those folks that relied on safe equity in their homes and whole life insurance policies, and their savings in local banks and credit unions. I assure you, those folks haven’t changed their practices and are not “scared.” They continue to apply the economic principles and follow the economic practices the Founders and Builders of America’s economy paid forward. Unfortunately, Washington and Wall Street have used Madison Avenue advertising and marketing schemes to convince Americans that creating equity in their homes and whole life insurance policies and saving money in their local banks and credit unions is a bad idea…better, the tell us, to give control of our money to some anonymous ‘money manager’ on Wall Street and subject our future income to the whims of the IRS.
There are links to more examples of just how bad the economy really is below. Just remember common sense: get out of debt, keep lots of ready cash, avoid the IRS–that means opt out of qualified retirement plans–and don’t forget to remember to pay something forward to those you care most about.
by Jeffrey Reeves
OTHER FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD COVERAGE FROM NATIONAL UNDERWRITER LIFE & HEALTH:
Posted in Money, What Others Say | 
Tags: bank, banker, banking, banks, debt, debt to others, financial, financial advice, financial planning, health insurance, investing, Retirement, saving | 
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EUREKONOMICS™ Insights – Money, Power, and Old Age
February 18, 2011 | Author jr
Economic Education
Economic education takes time and attention to common sense thinkers and writers. You often find these folks on the outs with conventional wisdom. You regularly find them on sites and forums like Mises.org Here is an example.
Money, Power, and Old Age
by Jan Iwanik on February 18, 2011
I suspect that funded retirement plans like American 401(k)s British private pensions, or Polish open pension plans (OFE) cannot survive in a centralized democracy. The only alternatives are unfunded schemes such as American social security, British state pensions, or the Polish Social Insurance Institution (ZUS). But such systems naturally lead to a conflict of interest between age groups, out of which the older generations emerge victorious. As a result, an internal gerontocracy is formed within the democratic system. This new and more oppressive system may prove to be more sustainable than the democracy itself.
Read the rest here - http://tinyurl.com/Mises-org-2-18-11
What an economist has to say about EUREKONOMICS™…
September 13, 2010 | Author Dr Agon Fly
“Money for Life…in good times and bad–the primer on EUREKONOMICS™–is a dangerous book – in a good way.
“On the surface, it appears to be a personal finance book, and in a sense it is. It addresses such issues as how you manage your money and what you use it for. The consequences of your answers to these questions reach into every aspect of your life. And, if you follow the tenets of Money for Life, you find the magic of compounding working for you to create life-long wealth that you can pass along to your children and grandchildren, and even more importantly, you find yourself in a position to pass wisdom along to them as well.
“So, in one sense, this is a very practical book, with tactics that help you to set achievable goals and measure your progress toward reaching them, not that much different in some ways than a thousand personal finance books that came before it and a thousand books yet to come.
“But Money for Life…in good times and bad is so much more than that, and therefore, so much more powerful than most of those other books. Money for Life demands that you look to the past in order to see a clear path into the future. It expects that you’ll remember that the Money Monsters and the Behemoths (you’ll find out what these whimsical terms mean as you read the book) work for you, and not the other way around. Most importantly, it challenges you to connect your decisions about your money to your philosophy of life. If you think deeply about the book as you work through the practical, tactical exercises, you’ll find yourself rethinking your relationship with money, and by extension, with the whole economy.
“Aristotle, in his work Nicomachean Ethics, probed the question of what the ultimate good is. He had this to say about wealth: “The money-maker’s life is in a way forced on him; and clearly wealth is not the good we are seeking, since it is useful, only for some other end.” For Aristotle, the other end is the “good life,” which includes security and independence, as well as civic virtue and public service.
“There is a modern strain of this kind of thought as well. It can be found in recent discussions of “positive psychology.” This is the term used by the American Psychological Association to describe the study of what makes people happy. A recent paper describes the progress that has been made in understanding “positive psychology”. The authors studied people who described themselves as happy, to find out if they had common characteristics. Using a combination of questionnaires, surveys, interviews and human subject reports, they find “…six overarching virtues that almost every culture across the world endorses: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.”
“The authors describe three robust, apparently universal empirical findings. For our purposes, the third finding is the most relevant. They write,
“[S]trengths “of the heart” – zest, gratitude, hope, and love – are more robustly associated with life satisfaction than are the more cerebral strengths such as curiosity and love of learning. We find this pattern among adults and among youths as well as longitudinal evidence that these “heart” strengths foreshadow subsequent life satisfaction.”
“This is quite a different view of people than that taught in economics! Economists start by assuming that rationality and self-interest are the best way of understanding why people make the decisions they make (as if people only made rational decisions!). Consumer choice theory assumes that people derive utility, (defined as well being, satisfaction, happiness, or whatever) only from consumer goods. Of course, most economists recognize that there are limits to this view, but nonetheless this is the view at the heart of most discussions of trade, and is not far below the surface in most other discussions. The economic point is that how you spend or manage your money can be thought of as an extension of your deepest self, your core values.
“And this realization lies at the core of the Money for Life philosophy. When the choices you make with your money are in alignment with your deepest values, your money and the decisions you make regarding it are more likely to make you happy. Your money, and the Economy is serving you and the ideals you hold dear, not vice versa.
“But Money for Life also serves as a financial self-defense manual. My daughter’s jujitsu instructor emphasizes the concept of situational awareness and the role it plays in preventing trouble. If you pay close attention to what is going on around you, you avoid problems. You can anticipate and prepare. The same can be said of your financial dealings. Prudent people can and do set aside money for contingencies. Money for Life helps you focus on what is going on around you, and plan for the best and the worst. Finally, Money for Life is a timely reminder that the personal and national economic gains that this pursuit engenders should be working for each of us in good times and bad and not the other way around. And that idea is what makes this book so dangerous – and so valuable.”
From the foreword to Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life–How to Thrive in Good Times and Bad
October 2007
Aristotle. Nicomachaen Ethics. Terence Irwin, Ed. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1985. p. 8.
Seligman, Martin E. P., Tracy A Steen, Nansook Park, and Christopher Peterson. “Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions.” American Psychologist. Vol. 60, No. 5, July-August 2005. p. 410-421 Most of what follows relies heavily on this article.
Posted in Legal, Ethical, Moral, Personal Financial Management, What Others Say | Tags: debt, debt to others, financial, financial advice, financial planning, insurance dividends, investing, life insurance, Money, money for life, money under management, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, passive income, saving, Taxes, term life insurance, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance | No Comments »
Question: Got Debt? Answer: Get EUREKONOMICS™
August 17, 2010 | Author Dr Agon Fly
America and the world have received a legacy of wisdom and wealth but have squandered it as pointed out in this post from HubPages.com…
Shakespeare, Franklin, and Stanley Johnson
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”, Act 1 scene 3 – Greatest English dramatist & poet (1564 – 1616)
“But, ah! think what you do when, I you run I in debt you give to another power over your Liberty.”
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanac, c. 1758
“…How do I do it? I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. I can barely pay the finance charges. Somebody help me.”
Stanly Johnson, Lending Tree commercial, c.2005
Amazing…
It seems Stanley Johnson–and the rest of America, including the Dolts in DC–paid little attention to the wisdom that Shakespeare and Franklin bequeathed to us centuries ago as a legacy.
Instead, Stanley was seduced by the Siren Song composed in the late 20th Century by the Wonks of Wall Street and the Wannabes in Washington. The lyrics go something like this:
Get stuff you don’t own.
Borrow to buy it.
That proves your true worth.
Debt’s a good diet.
“Invest” - do not save.
Give us all your money.
Become our good slave.
Your life will be sunny.
Having stuff you don’t own and “owning” investments you don’t control is a sure road to servitude, poverty, and the loss of liberty. It is devoid of common sense and lacks an economic foundation.
This is conventional wisdom and I call it The Debt Paradigm.
The problem here is that true intelligence–common sense–sees all sides in a debate. On the other hand, pseudo-smarts embrace a theory, elevate it on an ideological altar, and protect it by demonizing anyone that interjects a competing or alternate view.
History abounds with examples…
- The Romans of Caligula’s reign
- Crusaders that ravaged both the Jews of Europe and the Muslims of Arabia
- Nazi Germans
- Modern day Islamic fanatics that demonize Jews and Americans equally
- Crazed religious fanatics of Iran
- Corrupt unions like the SEIU
- Misguided ACORN workers
- The list could be endless and include every religion and government
There is only one way to deal with ideologies that demand absolute adherence–and the Debt Paradigm is such an ideology–and that is to get real , challenge the assumptions, prove the alternatives, wake up the ideologues to the untruths that are leading them where the LEADERS want them to go.
There are strategies that allow you to personally escape The Debt Paradigm and gain control of the money that flows through your life. One source of information about a unique approach to this dilemma of the 21st Century is found in the life-changing book Money for Life. I encourage you to read it.
National Health Care Fails! Again…
September 29, 2009 | Author Dr Agon Fly
If you were wondering about how the medical professionals feel about the insane national health care proposals in DC, read this article from the highly repected Investors Business Daily. It is submitted without comment because it speaks loudly for itself…
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199
Posted in What Others Say | Tags: health care proposals, medical professionals, national health care | 1 Comment »
EUREKONOMICS™ – Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life…
August 20, 2009 | Author dragonfly
( Page 2 of 2 )From Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, April 2009MYTH 6. Life insurance is not a good investment. This canard spread as 401(k)s and IRAs supplanted cash-value life insurance as Americans’ most popular ways to build savings while deferring taxes. True, the investment side of an insurance policy has higher built-in expenses than mutual funds do. But two factors point to a revival of insurance as an investment. One is guaranteed-interest credits on cash values, which means that if you pay the premiums, you cannot lose money unless the insurance company fails (see “Savings Guarantees You Can Trust,” on page 55). The other is the boom in life settlements. If you’re older than 65, you can often sell the insurance contract to a third party for several times its cash value — and pay taxes on the difference at low capital-gains rates.Truth: A good investment is one in which you put money away now and have more later. Checked your 401(k) lately?
by Jeffrey Reeves, youBEthebank.com, ltd.
Posted in Personal Financial Management, What Others Say, Whole Life Insurance | Tags: contracts, credit, financial, insurance, insurer, investing, investments, Life, Money, personal, policies, saving, savings, Taxes, undefined, wisdom | No Comments »
Warnings Across Centuries From Thomas Jefferson – Democrat…
June 24, 2009 | Author dragonfly
It has been said the greatest volume of sheer brainpower in one place occurred when Jefferson dined alone…
HOW DID JEFFERSON KNOW???
Especially read the last quote from 1802.
“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.”
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks (and the Federal Reserve IS a private bank) to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered..”
And, just for kicks, Mark Twain said this: ‘If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.’
Posted in Legal, Ethical, Moral, What Others Say | Tags: bank, banking, banks, debt, democrat, inflation, liberties, saving, savings, Taxes, tyranny, undefined | 1 Comment »
Another Power Grab By The FED, SEC and the Dolts in DC
June 24, 2009 | Author dragonfly
“The National Association of Fixed Annuities, Milwaukee, has voiced that concern in a member alert…
“NAFA sees the proposal as “a clear attempt to take control – read collect fees – on all product recommendations,” including recommendations involving life insurance, long term care insurance, health insurance, property-casualty insurance, savings accounts and fixed annuities, NAFA officials say.”
http://www.lifeandhealthinsurancenews.com/News/2009/5/Pages/NAFA-Pans-FINRA-Draft.aspx
Maybe the answer is for independent insurance and financial advisors to relinquish S6, S7, etc. registrations and quit selling securities. Few Americans are truly qualified investors and most annuity buyers are not.
Whole life, health, and annuity products are usually more than adequate to secure the wealth of the typical American and her/his family and they grow and secure family wealth without risk and without worry.
Pretty soon we will allow the Feds take every authority away from us and our freedom will go with them. Life, health, and annuity agents should not be worried about fixing the system that’s gotten us into the mess we are in now; the same mess that allows the power-hungry in the FED and in DC to grab control. We should be looking for a “soulution” that lets the state insurance departments maintain authority and control.
Perhaps, therefore, the answer to the ongoing challenge of FINRA and the power-grabbers in DC is to withdraw from their area of control. The fewer professional insurance and financial advisors (yes, you can be a true financial advisor without any securities registrations) they control, the less power they wield.
Power Grab By The SEC, FINRA, & DC Jeopardizes Your Wealth
June 5, 2009 | Author Dr Agon Fly
“The National Association of Fixed Annuities, Milwaukee, has voiced that concern in a member alert.
“NAFA sees the proposal as “a clear attempt to take control – read collect fees – on all product recommendations,” including recommendations involving life insurance, long term care insurance, health insurance, property-casualty insurance, savings accounts and fixed annuities, NAFA officials say.”
http://www.lifeandhealthinsurancenews.com/News/2009/5/Pages/NAFA-Pans-FINRA-Draft.aspx
Few Americans are truly qualified investors and most annuity buyers are not. Whole life, health, and annuity products are usually more than adequate to secure the wealth of the typical American and her/his family and they do the job without risk and without worry.
American citizens and their life, health, and annuity agents should not be worried about fixing the system that’s gotten us into the mess we are in now; the same mess that allows the power-hungry in the SEC and in DC to grab control. We should instead be looking for a “soulution” that lets the state insurance departments maintain authority and allows individual Americans to maintain control of their saving and insurance programs.
If individual Americans don’t watch these regulators “like a hawk,” pretty soon we will allow the Feds take every authority away from individuals and the individual 50 states and our freedom will go with them.
Perhaps, therefore, the answer to the ongoing challenge of FINRA and the power-grabbers in DC is for every citizen to encourage their advisors to withdraw from the arena FINRA and the SEC control. The fewer professional insurance and financial advisors (yes, you can be a true financial advisor without any securities registrations) these power hungry bureaucracies control, the less power they wield.
Posted in Personal Financial Management, What Others Say | Tags: annuities, annuity, financial, finra, Health, insurer, Life, risk, saving, savings, undefined, wealth | 2 Comments »
Unconventional Wisdom About The Fed and The Future…
May 5, 2009 | Author dragonfly
This post is mainly a link to a powerful assessment of conventional wisdom about the future of the US and the world economy by Jim Welsh, an investment advisor/economist that has been right more often than wrong.
Jim Welsh of Welsh Money Management has been publishing his monthly investment letter, “The Financial Commentator”, since 1985. His analysis focuses on Federal Reserve monetary policy, and how policy affects the economy and the financial markets.
This newsletter is dense, loaded with statistical data, and won’t be an easy read for the casually interested. It is worth the time and energy you’ll need, however. There will be a follow-up to this post that will deal with the Ethics of Advising Investing to Middle America – or something like that.
By Jeffrey Reeves, MA, Master Money for Life Guide, youBEthebank.com, ltd.
Posted in Legal, Ethical, Moral, What Others Say | Tags: economy, energy, financial, investing, investments, Life, Money, policies, undefined, wisdom | No Comments »
“If only,” “Someday Isle,” & “A Round Tuit”…Three Stooges
May 3, 2009 | Author dragonfly
The two most frequently asked questions posed to Money for Life Guides are:
“Why haven’t I heard of the EUREKONOMICS™ Model for Creating and Managing My Personal Economy before now?”
and…
“Why isn’t everyone using the EUREKONOMICS™ Model?”
However, one group of people (those who learned about this model years ago but whose thinking was trapped in the failed Debt Paradigm) are hanging out with the Three Stooges.
If Only…
On the one hand, they are wondering, “How much better our lives would be if only we had adopted the EUREKONOMICS™ Model ten years ago when we first learned about it.”
Truth be told.., if they had dedicated $10,000.00 a year to creating and managing their personal economy starting in November, 1998…
- had they chosen to invest that money in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds they would have had about $92,500.00 dollars in their accounts at the end of 2008 based on the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
- on the other hand, had they chosen to deposit that money into a Money for Life Account with guaranteed growth, they would have had almost $130,000.00 net of taxes, fees, and commissions.
Someday I’ll Get Around To It…
These folks may still be living on Someday Isle where the currency is A Round Tuit. They may still believe the failed advice to “be patient,” “hold on,” “wait for the rebound,” and, most damaging of all, “think long-term,” strategies designed to keep your money in a Behemoth’s account.
They believe that the recession will be over soon; that the economy of America and the world can be propped up with more government, more government spending, more government borrowing. They are convinced by the Dummies on Dull Street (formerly Wall Street) and the Dolts in DC (all of them) that giving control of their money to some Behemoth corporation, union, or government agency is somehow better than keeping it in accounts they control.
The time to change is NOW. Hear to what John Mauldin, a brilliant economic thinker, wrote in his weekly newsletter on May 1, 2009…
Next year, we will be entering what will certainly be the most dangerous era in my lifetime for the US economy. It is not clear what will happen. There are a lot of paths that can be taken…While I think the most likely outcome is a long Muddle Through recovery, the likelihood of a lost decade of deflation a la Japan is a very real potential outcome. And the possibility of stagflation and a seriously impaired dollar is also quite real…Investors, businessmen, and entrepreneurs need to be as nimble as possiblle. A free market will figure out what paths to take, and I am still optimistic about the long term. But we have some very dangerous times in front of us, and we need to be realistic.
What if…
It’s time to get off Someday Isle and learn how to grow rich without risk and secure wealth without worry. If you had left the island in 1998 you would obviously be better off today based on the example above. HowevEr, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
The money you held in your EUREKONOMICS™ Accounts would not have been idle. In addition to the growth referenced above, your money would also have been doing double duty…
- You could have borrowed from your account to buy a car and repaid yourself instead of the bank. That alone would have saved you thousands of dollars that you could have used to create a second Money for Life Account.
- You could have borrowed again to go on a grand second honeymoon, repaid that too, and saved the thousands of dollars – that would otherwise have been paid in credit card interest – in EUREKONOMICS™ Accounts.
The possibiities are endless.
by jeffrey Reeves MA, youBEtheBank.com
Posted in Money, Personal Financial Management, What Others Say | Tags: bonds, credit, debt, economics, economy, investing, investments, Money, risk, saving, savings, stocks, Taxes | No Comments »
Shenandoah Life Dragged Into Receivership By Freddie And Fannie…
April 27, 2009 | Author Dr Agon Fly
The MoneyforLife Blog will keep you posted on the progress of the almost century old Shenandoah Life Insurance Company as it emerges from receivership. What’s important to note is that this relatively small mutual insurer seems to have invested prudently and responsibly based on the support the US Congress gave to publicly held Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Shenandoah Life has limited resources and cannot invest in large scale projects the way the Behemoths do. It must invest its capital based on generally available information from what it – and most others – would consider reliable sources. In this case the US Congress and the finance committees of the two houses were “sleeping with the enemy.” They were receiving significant campaign contributions from Freddie and Fannie and, at the same time, were aware of the great risks associated with the lending practices and portfolios of these two Behemoths of the mortgage industry. The committee power brokers intentionally withheld that information from the public – and Shenandoah Life and its policyholders are part of the public.
While dozens of financial institutions - mainly banks – are failing due to the irresponsible behavior of the entire industry and the failure of the Congress to exercise adequate oversight (not control), Shenandoah Life is the first casualty among life insurance companies. (No, AIG is not a life insurance company. It is a conglomerate Behemoth that owns life companies. Those life companies are doing OK.)
The cautionary tale here is that the 31 State Guarantee Associations will protected and preserved the personal wealth of Shenandoah Life policyholders. The federal folks, who contributed so significantly to this unfortunate failure will beat their chests, complain about executive compensation and divert attention away from their past and ongoing failures.
Stay tuned.
Here’s the Notice of Receivership…
“On February 12, 2009, pursuant to Title 38.2, Chapters 10 and 15 of the Virginia Code, the Circuit Court for the City of Richmond issued an Order that appointed the State Corporation Commission of the Commonwealth of Virginia as Receiver of Shenandoah Life.
Receivership is a protective measure established under Virginia law to protect policyholders in the event an insurer experiences financial difficulty. The Circuit Court for the City of Richmond found Shenandoah Life in a condition where any further transaction of business would be hazardous to the policyholders, creditors, members, and the public. Both Shenandoah Life and the State Corporation Commission determined that the receivership was necessary to protect the interests of policyholders and creditors.
For additional information regarding the receivership, please visit our web site www.shenlife.com, or you may contact Shenandoah Life at 1-800-848-5433.”
by Jeffrey Reeves – youBEthebank.com
Posted in Legal, Ethical, Moral, What Others Say | Tags: aig, bank, behemoth, Congress, financial, insurer, investing, mortgage, mortgages | 4 Comments »
529 Plans Guarantee Nothing And May Deliver The Same…
April 21, 2009 | Author dragonfly
An article, Turmoil Spooks 529 Holders, published in the National Underwriter on 4/20/2009 By TREVOR THOMAS indicated a flight to safety by some parents and grandparents that were putting money aside in 529 Plans for the college educations of their children and grandchildren.
This is one more indicator that America is waking up to the reality that Wall Street and the Dolts in DC have been telling us to “save” but that what they are really telling us is to gamble. Investing is clearly very risky. Investing that is disguised as saving is clearly a con of the lowest character. Putting your children’s or your grandchildren’s future at risk based on a con game that you or they cannot win is foolish.
Of course, the con-artists don’t tell you that. They project 8% gains year upon year and proclaim it the truth. They ignore actual investor performance history and substitute generic stock market statistics that support their sales proposal. (Sales proposals are OK when they are sales proposals. They are a con when they are packaged as sage personal finance advice.)
A truly sage advior told me today during an interview that he makes sure his college funding proposals incorporate cash value life insurance, which is not counted when seeking financial aid, and rely on gurantees that are –>
-
truth based
-
objective
-
verifiable
That kind of advice might just lead to reliable wealth creation and wealth preservation, intelligent legacy planning, and the perfect investment.
You might want to evaluate529 Plans that way, too.
by Jeffrey Reeves – youBEthebank.com
Posted in Legal, Ethical, Moral, Money, What Others Say | Tags: 529 plans, college educations, financial, financial advice, investing, investments, Money, risk, saving, savings | No Comments »
Why Choose American Insurance Companies…
April 10, 2009 | Author dragonfly
ING To Review “Strategic Options” For U.S. Ops; May Shift Annuity Book
By ALLISON BELL
Published 4/9/2009, National Underwriter“ING Groep N.V. wants to reduce the scope of its U.S. operations ‘over time and as market conditions permit’…”
Buy And Hold? A Sure Loser For Amateur Investors…Like Us.
March 25, 2009 | Author dragonfly
Gary D. Halbert’s Forecasts & Trends…
Ideas are strengthened when they are endorsed by informed experts. Gary Halbert has been proving for a very long time that the buy and hold strategy is flawed. Below is an excerpt from another of his brilliant articles on this topic.
Unspoken by Mr. Halbert but obvious from the article is the corollary that most Americans should not be investing in the first place.
Recognize that investing for the long term is an oxymoron. If you had used the buy and hold strategy starting in 1998 and planned to rely on your investments for income in 2009, you would have less money today than you invested over the past ten years. You would have lost money. Your $200,000.00 investment could be worth less than $90,000.00.
On the flip side, if you had prudently placed you money in a quality whole life insurance policy you could have almost $250,000.00 in cash values growing tax free and readily accessible for income, opportunities, emegencies, or a legacy for those you care most about.
America has been bamboozled by the shennanigans of the chalatans and scallyways of Wall Street for too long. It’s time to return to America’s fundamental financial model – save, build equity in your home, finance only when it’s absolutley essential, invest only form assets and never from earnings or ready reserves.
More Buy-And-Hold Myths Debunked
March 24, 2009
“…Unfortunately, this has not slowed the flood of misinformation being distributed by the usual suspects in an effort to support buy-and-hold investment strategies. It seems that the more I write about skewed articles, studies, etc., the more examples I see of them being generated by Wall Street and the brokerage community to sway unsuspecting investors. [emphasis added]
I recently received an e-mail from a major mutual fund family promoting the buy-and-hold concept. While I am not at all surprised that a mutual fund company would be trying to keep investors in their funds, I was disappointed to see that the argument used was a very old, and thoroughly discredited line of reasoning known as “don’t miss the best days in the market.”
I’m not going to disclose the company that published the e-mail I received, but it really doesn’t matter. You can look in the archives of virtually any major brokerage firm or mutual fund family and likely see similar titles. As I pointed out in the March 3 E-letter, it’s in their best interests for you to stay invested, even though doing so may not be in your best interest. Thus, you need to look out for your own best interest when you deal with them.”
Buy and Hold? Long term? Whom do you want to make wealthy?
I encourage you to follow this link to the full article.
Jeffrey Reeves
Posted in Personal Financial Management, What Others Say, Whole Life Insurance | Tags: financial, halbert, insurer, interest, investing, investments, legacy, Life, Money, saving, savings, Taxes, undefined | No Comments »
The 21st Century Way to Wealth…Take Care
September 21, 2008 | Author dragonfly
The Wisdom of the Founders
By Benjamin Franklin, Commentary by Jeffrey Reeves
A large percentage of Americans during the colonial period were self employed farmers, merchants, craftsmen, tradesman, shopkeepers, and so on. Employees were less common than partners and permanent employees even rarer. Because of that, the following admonitions of Father Abraham address the working class who were also responsible for their own success and livelihood.
Today, the self reliance and independent spirit of those early Americans lives on in the tens of thousands of small businesses that create 90% of America’s jobs and in the drive and commitment of American workers employed by our larger corporations.
The commentary shows that Father Abraham’s words are just as meaningful today as they were then.
Father Abraham speaks:
And again, Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee;
Each of us has a “shop” to keep. Your shop may be an actual shop or it may be a cubicle, or it could be the corner office. It may be the janitor’s closet or the cab of a truck. It may be as the center on a football team or as the fifth grade teacher at St. Cecelia’s Elementary school. Whatever your sphere of influence and responsibility, that’s your “shop.” As long as you take care of your shop you can reliably expect to be able to take care of yourself.
There are, of course, external influences that can wreck your ‘shop’ regardless of how careful you are. That’s always been the case and always will be. When it happens to an American, however, we just find another shop.
And again, if you would have your business done, go; if not, send.
And again, he that by the plough would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive.
And again, the eye of a master will do more work than both his hands.
Self reliance is a hallmark of Americans. Father Abraham recognized this and cautioned his audience that you can’t delegate your personal success. Individual success relies on individual effort; you are the master and your attention is essential to your success. Your mastery may be at the plow or as the head of the team. Success will elude you, however, if you delegate what only you can do; the business will not get done and the field will not get plowed.
And again, want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge.
There are three types of knowledge you must access when it comes to your work and your personal economy: knowing about something that could be done, knowing how to do what could be done, and knowing whether or not to take action. A ‘want of care’ means you didn’t evaluate the ‘whether-or-not’ aspect of knowing.
There’s also a second way to look at this axiom from Father Abraham. We’ve all met people with great intelligence who have achieved only moderate success because they relied on knowhow alone, and other more average folks who met with great success by working diligently. This proves the axiom. Lacking knowledge – not knowhow – is not as much an impediment as is lacking careful attention to both the initial decision and the ensuing action.
Father Abraham is quickly becoming my hero.
Jeffrey Reeves
Posted in What Others Say | Tags: benjamin franklin, economy, father abraham, independent spirit, self reliance, thrive | No Comments »
The Demise Of The Investment Myth…
September 20, 2008 | Author jr
Predictable Financial Failures
Pundits and politicians are bemoaning the entirely predictable failure of America’s financial triplets’ [the banking, insurance and investment Behemoths] irresponsible financial behavior over the past two decades: Bear Stearns, Indymac, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie and Freddie, WAMU, Morgan Stanley, other lesser-knowns and others yet to come.
The pundits want to explain the situation by pointing at everything from executive compensation to over-regulation. The Dem’s want to blame it on Bush and the Republicans want to trace it back to Clinton. You won’t find an answer that makes sense listening to any of those folks and their agenda driven drivel.
Here’s the straight skinny.
During the Clinton years, which coincided with [but did not create] a long and strong bull market, the line between and among banks, broker-dealers, investment advisories and insurance companies got blurred and in some cases erased. This blurring continued into the 21st century and the Bush years.
But, the Bull Market Didn’t.
During the bull market the financial services industry came to the realization that the more money they could extract from Americans like you and me, the more money they could make for themselves. Moreover, they found that ‘invested’ dollars were more profitable for them than any others. This led The Behemoths to create the myth that every American should be investing.
The Investment Myth
This myth was easy to perpetuate because of the bull market’s seemingly relentless growth. When the bull market ended, however, the myth was in jeopardy. Americans were running out of money and were less inclined to ‘invest’ and that meant the financial services folk might have to take a cut in pay.
The Easy Mortgage
The Behemoths needed a way to perpetuate the myth. Enter the easy mortgage, the HELOC, the concept of ‘harvesting equity,’ the emphasis on massive and misguided 401(k) contributions [see final thoughts below] and a variety of other strategies to extract money from Americans.
The result for many Americans is that they have no money and the investments they bought with the money they borrowed from their home equity – or their credit cards – are worth less than they paid for them.
Now the Problem Arises.
- Americans have a ton of debt.
- They had been led to believe that using debt to buy ‘investments’ was a good idea.
- It wasn’t.
- Now, Americans can’t repay the debt they incurred to buy ‘investments.’
- Now the companies that convinced Americans to ‘invest,’ and also loaned them the money to do so, can’t collect because Americans have no money – they only have ‘investments’ that are worth less than the debt they incurred to buy them.
- Crash, boom, bang!
KAL’s cartoon
Sep 18th 2008
From The Economist print edition
One final thought. If you think your 401(k) [or any investment plan for that matter] is a good deal because you are putting a large amount of money into it, think again. If you put $10,000 in a 401(k) and incur the same amount of debt in the same year, you will likely pay more in debt service than you earn in your retirement savings account.
And another…Tax detectability is a monkey trap that many Americans fall into and never escape.
by Jeffrey Reeves MA, EUREKONOMIST
Posted in Debt, Personal Financial Management, Taxes, What Others Say | Tags: 401 k contributions, aig, bank, banking, banks, bear stearns, credit, debt, easy mortgage, executive compensation, financial, financial behavior, heloc, indymac, insurance companies, investing, investments, lehman brothers, Money, morgan stanley, mortgage, Retirement, saving, savings, Taxes, undefined, wamu | No Comments »
Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG And The Fed…
September 16, 2008 | Author dragonfly
Rather than boring you by recounting what is readily available in the rest of the media, I want to recommend a great book that sheds light on what our Founding Fathers believed and embedded in our banking system. I’ll let you decide if those principles and practices are still there.
The Financial Founding Fathers, The Men Who Made America Rich, Robert E. Wright and David J. Cohen, The University of Chicago Press, 2006
As will rogers said in 1928,
“Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.”
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Posted in Money, What Others Say | Tags: aig, bank, banking, banking system, banks, bear stearns, financial, founding fathers, lehman brothers, press, u s treasury, university of chicago, will rogers | No Comments »
The 21st Century Way to Wealth…Settle Down
September 16, 2008 | Author dragonfly
By Dr Benjamin Franklin and Dr Agon Fly
“II. But with our industry we must likewise be steady, settled, and careful, and oversee our own affairs with our own eye, and not too much to others;
WOW! I wonder what Benjamin Franklin would think of ‘modern’ investment vehicles such as mutual funds, ETF’s, hedge funds, and derivatives of all kinds? These instruments require that you not “…oversee [y]our own affairs…”
The companies and the people that sell these products would have you believe that they are “steady, settled and careful,” but those qualities are not intrinsic to their products or the hallmarks of the marketers. In fact, the less you know the easier it is for them. If you think that’s an exaggeration, try reading a prospectus. You’ll discover that you know less after reading than you did before, and the prospectus is supposed to be the fountain of truth about mutual funds and primary stock offerings.
The truth is that America has lost sight of the wisdom that makes it great. Unless Americans reject the conventional wisdom, which is no wisdom at all, and regain clarity about how to handle their own money, they will soon find themselves gaining wisdom and clarity from the bankruptcy judge.
Father Abraham continues his lecture about being “steady, settled, and careful:”
for, as Poor Richard says, I never saw an oft-removed tree, nor yet an oft-removed family,
that throve so well as those that settled be. And again, three removes are as bad as a fire;
Father Abraham uses the word “remove” the way we might use the word “move.” In the America of the 1750’s, the ability to settle down in one place permanently was not quite as easy as it is today. Families built their own homes, made their own furniture, collected dinnerware one item at a time, and so on. Moving frequently would make being “steady, settled, and careful” quite difficult for the family.
You might remember, also, that Benjamin Franklin started the first volunteer fire department in Philadelphia around this time because a fire meant the loss of all that a family owned. The insurance that we rely on today was non-existent.
Just as a transplanted tree finds it hard to thrive, so a frequently transplanted early American family would find it difficult to thrive. In America today we hardly think twice about moving across town or across country. Many families spend their future trying to create a better one. They move to a new house or a new job or a new school district or a new city hoping that the mere fact of moving would create a better future. Americans burn their connections to place and destroy a part of their families when they do.
Granted, a lot has changed in the last 250 years, but Father Abrahams premise is just as valid today as it was in 1758; the deeper the roots, the stronger the tree. The same thinking applies to how you deal with your money. Moving money around like play money on a Monopoly Board is just as damaging to your personal economy as moving your family around is to your personal relationships. Money needs a home; it needs to be “steady, settled, and careful” in its own way.
As always, Benjamin Franklin, through the character of Father Abraham, brings wisdom, which knows no century, to the 21st century. We stand in awe of it both because it is timeless and because it has been buried by the advertising and marketing of the Behemoths, who would like nothing more than that ‘we the people’ remain slaves to their shibboleths.
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Posted in Money, Personal Financial Management, What Others Say | Tags: Add new tag, bankruptcy judge, benjamin franklin, conventionalinvestment vehicles, derivatives, economy, father abraham, fountain of truth, hedge funds, investing, investments, Money, mutual funds, prospectus, stocks, thrive, undefined, wisdom | No Comments »
Why The SEC Really Wants To Regulate Indexed Annuities…
September 9, 2008 | Author dragonfly
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Wall Street, 1987
The SEC is a Behemoth that works for other Behemoths, in particular the major Wall Street firms and their minions. The SEC, along with its junior partner FINRA, wear the mantel of a Robin Hood while concurrently robbing everyone in the neighborhood by supporting the self serving aims of the Behemoths. Now they want to get control of another bag of money.
‘Sheryl Moore, chief executive of AnnuitySpecs.com, estimates there were $25.1 billion in indexed annuities sold in 2007, down about $2 billion from their peak in 2005. While sales decreased, last year total indexed annuity assets reached $123 billion according to the SEC.”
Furor builds on SEC indexed annuity oversight plan
By EILEEN AJ CONNELLY, Associated Press http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/08/ap5400800.html
The SEC claims that its aim is to protect consumers by further regulating an insurance product on the rather flimsy claim that Indexed Annuities are funded by investments.
DUH!
All insurance products are funded by investments. The simple fact is that the Wall Street wizards, who brought you the current credit and housing crises, now want to ‘fix’ the indexed annuity market.
BUNK!
The Wall Street Behemoths, who will be no more open and clear in their explanation of this product than current state regulations require, want to capture all that annuity money for themselves.
Consumers will actually lose since the Wall Street wonks will dishonestly demonstrate that these products don’t perform as well as the failed mutual fund industry, ETF’s and fee based advisors, thereby recovering the $123 billion that Wall Street’s Behemoths have been unable to get their greedy hands on.
American’s have been duped into believing that the SEC/FINRA are the watchdogs they were originally intended to be. They are not. They have morphed into watchdogs for the Wall Street Behemoths and their aim has become protecting the Behemoths from lawsuits by consumers as opposed to protecting consumers from the subterranean subterfuges of the Wall Street Behemoths.
Having said all that, it is clear also that the Indexed Annuity business is plagued with charlatans and snake oil sales reps that create a problem for the majority. The states have been too slow to effectively regulate these products and the people who sell them. The answer, however, is not to add a layer of bureaucracy that answers to the Behemoths.
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Posted in Legal, Ethical, Moral, Money, Movie Quotes, What Others Say | Tags: annuities, annuity, credit, investing, investments, Money | 4 Comments »
The 21st Century Way to Wealth…Relax!
August 31, 2008 | Author jr
The Economic Value of Time…
By Benjamin Franklin, Commentary by Jeffrey Reeves
Father Abraham’s recounting of the advice delivered by Poor Richard’s Almanac during its twenty five years of publication continues with some admonitions about chasing a life of leisure. These observations may be even more appropriate today than they were 250 years ago, when they were written.
“Methinks I hear some of you say, `Must a man afford himself no leisure?’ I will tell thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says, Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure; and, since thou art not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.”
Right off the bat Father Abraham chastises the questioners. Leisure is the result of work but not its aim. If you want to have leisure time, beware wasting time at work because the hour spent on the internet, or reading the paper, or discussing last night’s game will lengthen your day at work and reduce your time of true relaxation with family and friends.
Self employed folks recognize this relationship more readily perhaps than those employed by others. It’s easy to measure the value of time wasted when it translates directly into lost opportunity, lost sales or extended hours completing a critical project for a revenue producing client.
It’s easy to measure the lost leisure time when the ‘leisure’ time spent at work keeps you from a golf date with friends, your child’s sports event or musical recital; when the long awaited anniversary dinner has to be postponed at the last minute; when the weekend barbecue goes on without the host, who had to go into the office.
There’s more from Father Abraham…
“Leisure is time for doing something useful;
Now there’s a mind bender for the modern American. Who thinks of leisure being ‘useful?’
As a starting point, let’s define ‘work’. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it this way; ‘activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something.’ Hmmm. According to that definition, everything is work. Playing tennis, watching TV, reading, wrestling with the kids, laying in the hammock taking a nap all require you to ‘exert,’ to ‘do.’
Father Abraham got it right again. All of those activities are useful all by themselves and all of them are work. Their leisure value comes from your intention and attitude, not from the activity itself. Their ‘useful’ aspect derives from the benefit you derive from the activity – the work – and perhaps from the control you exercise over the choice of activity.
There’s more…
“this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man never; for A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things.
The option of having a choice about how to spend your time and energy results from being diligent. You’ve seen it a hundred times; the slacker remains a slacker all his or her life; the hard worker grows in stature at work and in the community. The slacker ends up with few choices and the diligent person with many.
Leisure is the reward of work and laziness is trying to gain the reward without doing the work, which – by way of observation – is just as much work as that done by the diligent person.
There’s more from Father Abraham on this topic…
“Many, without labor, would live by their wits only, but they break for want of stock; whereas industry gives comfort, and plenty, and respect.
Following Father Abraham’s thoughts from the last entry, it only makes sense that those who ‘live by their wits only’ and avoid labor eventually come to a bad end. Consider where the petty thieves, drug dealers, con artists, even organized crime bosses end up. ‘They break for want of stock.’ There’s nothing of value in their choices or their ‘work.’
Those who work diligently, on the other hand, and take control of their money, their time and their lives arrive at a different place.
Sometimes my workload writing, helping clients and mentoring other advisors is so heavy that I have to hire out some chores around the house. My favorite chore to hire out is mowing the lawn and trimming around the sidewalks, trees, planters and bushes.
The 72 year old man that does this work for me is a fine example of a person who has diligently made his way through life for the past four decades on his own terms. He is respected and admired by everyone who employs him, works only when he chooses based on his age and energy level, but lacks for neither money nor leisure.
Father Abraham makes one more point…
“Fly pleasures, and they will follow you. The diligent spinner has a large shift; and now I have a sheep and a cow, everybody bids me good morrow.”
I recently attended the 50th reunion of my high school graduating class. I was amazed and surprised that so many of my classmates remembered me for who and what I was 50 years ago. Some of those memories were accurate and others were not. The party girls from ’58 were still seen as party girls. The jocks were still the jocks. The elite still elite.
If you start out as a pleasure seeker you may never recover to be anything better in the eyes of the world. The ‘diligent spinner’ started, I’m thinking, with just one sheep. He worked hard, made wool enough to also buy a cow and now ‘everybody bids [him] good morrow.’
Here’s wishing you Health, Abundance, Love and Light as you work diligently toward fulfilling your mission in this life.
Jeffrey Reeves
Posted in What Others Say | Tags: Abundance, diligence, energy, Health, Life, Love, Money, stocks | 1 Comment »
The 21st Century Way to Wealth…”Do or do not…there is no try.” Yoda
August 30, 2008 | Author jr
The Way to Wealth…
By Benjamin Franklin, Commentary by Jeffrey Reeves
Having laid the groundwork for continuing his verbal treatise, Father Abraham translates the premises he’s postulated into a series of calls to action.
“Let us, then, up and be doing, and doing to the purpose;
These simplest of words carry profound meaning when it comes to you building your wealth. During the last thirty-five years Americans have lost track of the basic truth that working hard and following conventional wisdom – doing what everyone else does with their money just because that’s the way everyone else is doing – just isn’t enough. You need to invest your activity and decisions with meaning. You need to be ‘doing to the purpose.’
What purpose? Every successful personal economy has four essential goals: to be debt free, to develop an income stream that requires neither work nor active management, to have plenty of cash at hand when confronting life’s surprisingly unsurprising surprises, and, perhaps most importantly, to pay forward a legacy of both money and the secret wisdom about the way to wealth so future generations aren’t burdened with property they don’t own and investments they don’t control.
Father Abraham has other admonitions about how to travel the way to wealth.
“so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.
Diligence on the way to wealth means persevering with attention and care at building your personal economy. Diligence makes life simpler and less perplexing. That lets you get more done in less time and with less stress. Life is only a struggle for those who struggle with living.
Dr Benjamin Franklin’s Father Abraham has more insights…
“Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy;
Motivational speakers, authors and coaches get paid millions of dollars every year to tell you the simple compelling truths that Americans have embraced for over 250 years and that Dr Benjamin Franklin’s Father Abraham popularized in the final installment of Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1758.
It’s no surprise that Dr Benjamin Franklin has become such an iconic person in history and folklore. He practiced what Father Abraham preached. He worked diligently at a wide range of tasks and became one of the wisest, most accomplished and most beloved men in history because of it…and he made it look easy.
Let’s consider a few more of Father Abraham’s ideas.
“and He that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him. Drive thy business, let not that drive thee;
I know a man that claims to be a ‘night person.’ He stays up late, sleeps late, gets to the office late, then works late. His family suffers, his health suffers, his business suffers, he complains about being overwhelmed on a regular basis. This man reads motivational books, attends seminars, studies Dr Benjamin Franklin’s works, yet he refuses to consider the possibility that his sleeping and work habits have anything to do with his everyday challenges.
Is this laziness? I don’t judge it, but Father Abraham implies as much and predicts the natural consequence – poverty. In America we may measure such a man as a success. He has a nice home in a nice neighborhood, drives a nice car and so on.
The hidden reality, however, is that he could be a better parent, a better spouse, a better provider, and of greater service to his clients. His income, his charitable giving, his health, life and peace of mind could all improve if he would put his business in perspective and give up the failed idea that he is a ‘night person.’
Father Abraham ends this discussion of “Do or do not…there is no try” with perhaps the most commonly quoted aphorism from Poor Richard’s Almanac;
“and Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, as Poor Richard says.
Bill Newman was one of the founders of the human potential movement and one of my mentors. He taught me by example that this approach to time and life management worked well.
I had hired Bill to conduct his PACE seminar for a group of my employees. I invited him to stay with my family for the two nights he would be in town. When he retired the first evening it was quite early and I asked him when he’d like me to awaken him. He said he would awaken at 5:30 and I need not worry. He did. He did so without the aid of an alarm. Bill had become so accustomed to rising early that doing so was automatic for him. I’m betting the same was true for Dr Benjamin Franklin and for thousands of other successful people for centuries and millennia.
I’ve personally followed this advice and practice for decades. I know that my life, my perception of the world, my peace of mind, my relationships, and every aspect of my life has improved since I adopted this approach to managing my work and my sleep. I also believe that, had I known about and followed this practice earlier in life, I would have avoided many of the mistakes I’ve made before, the many I’ve made since, as well as some I’ve yet to make.
Jeffrey Reeves
Posted in Money, Movie Quotes, What Others Say | Tags: ben franklin, benjamin franklin, diligence, poor richards almanac, sleep habits, sloth | 2 Comments »
The 21st Century Way to Wealth…Time Management
August 29, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
Posted in What Others Say | Tags: benjamin franklin, Dr Agon Fly, father abraham, Life, Money, Retirement, time management, undefined, wisdom | No Comments »
The 21st Century Way to Wealth…Industriousness
August 16, 2008 | Author dragonfly
By Benjamin Franklin and Dr Agon Fly
I. Industriousness
It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service;
Benjamin Franklin and the other Founding Fathers didn’t have to deal with the IRS, state, county, township, city and district income taxes, taxes on gas, electricity, telephone service, internet access, cable and satellite service, water, sewer, gasoline, heating fuel, beer, wine, whiskey, tobacco, and sales tax on almost everything else thrown in just for good measure. Add to that the taxes on corporations, which are rolled into the price of their goods. Those taxes then get taxed again when you buy those goods.
Today’s governments in America take a lot more than ten percent of your time. They don’t require actual time. They take so much of the typical American’s work product – money for short – in the form of taxes that you really work for the government up to 50% of the time.
It can get even worse when you add in estate and inheritance taxes and probate fees and costs if you are financially successful and don’t have well informed and qualified advisors.
but idleness taxes many of us much more; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears; while the used key is always bright, as Poor Richard says.
One thing hasn’t changed. No matter how much of your money the government takes, you are still responsible for your health and your own financial success or failure. That means you have to rely on your own work to produce enough income to care for yourself and your family if you have one.
Benjamin Franklin obviously refers to manual labor when he talks about ‘sloth brining on disease’, rust consuming faster than wear and tear, and saying the ‘used key is always bright.’ Many Americans don’t do manual labor. Finding a way to keep your key always bright is intrinsically your job, too.
A corollary to what Father Abraham teaches is that relying on government for health care or financial support is not a good idea. The more a government gives you personally the more it can take away.
The Pickens Plan and The Money For Life Plan
August 7, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
The Money for Life Plan
America is addicted to investments they can’t control and debt they may never repay.
As you will see shortly, T. Boone Pickens has committed $58,000,000.00 to promote a plan to wean America from foreign oil in ten years.
The Money for Life Plan weans individual Americans from the Debt Paradigm almost immediately. [It's not as expensive.]
In both cases the process begins when a person – or in the case of the Pickens’ Plan – when a country changes its mind.
The Money for Life Plan lets YouBeTheBank and gain control of the money that flows through your life. It relies on the individual family re-thinking what works and what doesn’t regardless of the “conventional wisdom” that the Behemoths – large government, unions and business – want you to believe.
The Pickens Plan flies in the face of the “conventional wisdom” of Washington DC. The Pickens Plan aims to keep American money in America by converting electric power generation from natural gas to power generated by wind and solar, then converting petroleum driven vehicles to natural gas.
Both plans rely on the same principle.
The Pickens Plan believes that it’s essential for our nation to regain control of its energy and stop sending $700,000,000,000.00 of our wealth oversees every year.
The Money for Life Plan believes that it’s essential for individual American families to stop putting their money into investments they don’t control and debt they may never repay.
Below is a detailed description of the Pickens Plan. I encourage you to read it, recognize the wisdom it contains, and sign on to support it. It is worth your time and attention.
I also encourage you to visit www.YouBeTheBank.com and learn about The Money for Life Model. I don’t have $58,000,000.00 to promote this idea and the book that describes it Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life! How to thrive in good times and bad so I’m hoping you’ll discover some value there and tell a friend.
The Pickens Plan
America is addicted to foreign oil.
It’s an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people.
The addiction has worsened for decades and now it’s reached a point of crisis.
In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil.
Today it’s nearly 70% and growing.As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that’s four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.
Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion — it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.
America uses a lot of oil. Every day 85 million barrels of oil are produced around the world. And 21 million of those are used here in the United States.
That’s 25% of the world’s oil demand. Used by just 4% of the world’s population.
Can’t we just produce more oil?
World oil production peaked in 2005. Despite growing demand and an unprecedented increase in prices, oil production has fallen over the last three years. Oil is getting more expensive to produce, harder to find and there just isn’t enough of it to keep up with demand.
The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.
What’s the good news?
The United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.
Studies from around the world show that the Great Plains States are home to the greatest wind energy potential in the world — by far.
The Department of Energy reports that 20% of America’s electricity can come from wind. North Dakota alone has the potential to provide power for more than a quarter of the country.
Today’s wind turbines stand up to 410 feet tall, with blades that stretch 148 feet in length. The blades collect the wind’s kinetic energy. In one year, a 3-megawatt wind turbine produces as much energy as 12,000 barrels of imported oil.
Wind power currently accounts for 48 billion kWh of electricity a year in the United States — enough to serve more than 4.5 million households. That is still only about 1% of current demand, but the potential of wind is much greater.
A 2005 Stanford University study found that there is enough wind power worldwide to satisfy global demand 7 times over — even if only 20% of wind power could be captured.
Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.
That’s a lot of money, but it’s a one-time cost. And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it’s a bargain.
An economic revival for rural America.
Developing wind power is an investment in rural America.
To witness the economic promise of wind energy, look no further than Sweetwater, Texas.
Sweetwater was typical of many small towns in middle-America. With a shortage of good jobs, the youth of Sweetwater were leaving in search of greater opportunities. And the town’s population dropped from 12,000 to under 10,000.
When a large wind power facility was built outside of town, Sweetwater experienced a revival. New economic opportunity brought the town back to life and the population has grown back up to 12,000.
In the Texas panhandle, just north of Sweetwater, is the town of Pampa, where T. Boone Pickens’ Mesa Power is currently building the largest wind farm in the world.
In addition to creating new construction and maintenance jobs, thousands of Americans will be employed to manufacture the turbines and blades. These are high skill jobs that pay on a scale comparable to aerospace jobs.
Plus, wind turbines don’t interfere with farming and grazing, so they don’t threaten food production or existing local economies.
A cheap new replacement for foreign oil.
The Honda Civic GX Natural Gas Vehicle is the cleanest internal-combustion vehicle in the world according to the EPA.
Natural gas and bio-fuels are the only domestic energy sources used for transportation.
Cleaner
Natural gas is the cleanest transportation fuel available today.
According to the California Energy Commission, critical greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas are 23% lower than diesel and 30% lower than gasoline.
Natural gas vehicles (NGV) are already available and combine top performance with low emissions. The natural gas Honda Civic GX is rated as the cleanest production vehicle in the world.
According to NGVAmerica, there are more than 7 million NGVs in use worldwide, but only 150,000 of those are in the United States.
The EPA estimates that vehicles on the road account for 60% of carbon monoxide pollution and around one-third of hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions in the United States. As federal and state emissions laws become more stringent, many requirements will be unattainable with conventionally fueled vehicles.
Since natural gas is significantly cleaner than petroleum, NGVs are increasing in popularity. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach recently announced that 16,800 old diesel trucks will be replaced, and half of the new vehicles will run on alternatives such as natural gas.
Cheaper
Natural gas is significantly less expensive than gasoline or diesel. In places like Utah and Oklahoma, prices are less than $1 a gallon. To see fueling stations and costs in your area, check out cngprices.com.
Domestic
Natural gas is our country’s second largest energy resource and a vital component of our energy supply. 98% of the natural gas used in the United States is from North America. But 70% of our oil is purchased from foreign nations.
Natural gas is one of the cleanest, safest and most useful forms of energy — residentially, commercially and industrially. The natural gas industry has existed in the United States for over 100 years and continues to grow.
Domestic natural gas reserves are twice that of petroleum. And new discoveries of natural gas and ongoing development of renewable biogas are continually adding to existing reserves.
While it is a cheap, effective and versatile fuel, less than 1% of natural gas is currently used for transportation.
The Mechanics
We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity. Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel — reducing our dependence on foreign oil by more than one-third.
How do we get it done?
The Pickens Plan is a bridge to the future — a blueprint to reduce foreign oil dependence by harnessing domestic energy alternatives, and buy us time to develop even greater new technologies.
Building new wind generation facilities and better utilizing our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years. But it will take leadership.
On January 20th, 2009, a new President will take office.
We’re organizing behind the Pickens Plan now to ensure our voices will be heard by the next administration.
Together we can raise a call for change and set a new course for America’s energy future in the first hundred days of the new presidency — breaking the hammerlock of foreign oil and building a new domestic energy future for America with a focus on sustainability.
You can start changing America’s future today by supporting the Pickens Plan. Join now.
Posted in Legal, Ethical, Moral, Money, What Others Say | Tags: debt, economics, economy, energy, investing, investments, Life, Money, thrive, undefined | No Comments »
The 21st Century Way to Wealth – A Word To The Wise…
August 5, 2008 | Author dragonfly
By Ben Franklin and Dr Agon Fly
COURTEOUS Reader,
I have heard that nothing gives an author so great pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by others.
Dr Agon Fly agrees.
Judge, then, how much I must have been gratified by an incident I am going to relate to you. I stopped my horse lately, where a great number of people were collected at an auction of merchants’ goods.
Today we park our cars in multilevel parking facilities at multilevel malls where a great number of people are collected for “sales.”
The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times;
Just like last week, of month or year, times and topics remain consistent. Some see the world as full of shadows and others see it as full of light. Those who live on the dark side tend to engage in negative talk and behavior while those on the side of light focus on more positive thoughts and activities – as you will discover was the case in 1758 as it is today. Read on.
and one of the company called to a plain, clean old man, with white locks,
A picture of wisdom.
“Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them? What would you advise us to do?”
Today, as in 1758, people look to those with experience and the wisdom of years for advice and counsel. The difference between 1758 and 2008 is that current America has mistakenly clothed government – including its most incompetent branch; the Congress – corporations, unions and bureaucracies with the mantel of both knowledge and wisdom.
Father Abraham stood, up and replied, “If you would have my advice, I will give it you in short; for ‘A word to the wise is enough,’ as Poor Richard says…”
Ah! The first words of Poor Richard and how profound. There’s much more to come. Read on.
Posted in Money, Personal Financial Management, Taxes, What Others Say | Tags: bad times, good times, Money, Taxes, wisdom | No Comments »
The 21st Century Way to Wealth…
August 4, 2008 | Author dragonfly
By Dr Benjamin Franklin and Dr Agon Fly
In 1758 Benjamin Franklin published the final annual installment of Poor Richard’s Almanac. As a preface to this final edition he wrote The Way to Wealth and introduced Father Abraham as the main character in the tale.
Father Abraham embodied the financial wisdom that “Poor” Richard Saunders – Ben Franklin in disguise – incorporated in the 25 years during which the almanac was a staple on the bookshelves and kitchen tables of colonial America.
In 2008, on the sesquicentennial of that event, Dr Agon Fly is bringing this classic book about money back to life. The money wisdom that Dr. Benjamin Franklin captured in The Way to Wealth is timeless; however, the vernacular of 1758 sometimes obscures the meaning for today’s economy and for the personal economies of 21st Century Americans.
Dr Agon Fly offers clarification and corrects archaic words and spellings to help the reader move easily through the story and capture the essence of the messages about money, saving, investing, debt, taxes and a variety of other financial fundamentals.
In addition, Dr Agon Fly provides commentary on Father Abraham’s insights in 21st Century English and invested with the knowledge of financial products and services that were not available to Americans in 1758.
Dr Agon Fly’s comments are indented and italicized to set them apart from the main text.
Read on…
Introduction by Benjamin Franklin – Commentary by Dr Agon Fly
In 1732 I first published my Almanac under the name of Richard Saunders; it was continued by me about twenty-five years, and commonly called Poor Richard’s Almanac. I endeavored to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand, that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand.
Think about that! That’s about ½ of 1% of the total population as subscribers and about 2% of the total population based on family size. In today’s terms, that would be over 6 million subscribers. Any publisher or writer – even J. K. Rowling – would be pleased with that. Imagine the influence this simple publication had on the thinking and behavior of early America
And observing that it was generally read, (scarce any neighborhood in the province being without it,) I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books.
In today’s world of mass communication – TV, cell phones that are more powerful than the computers of just ten years ago, print on demand publishing and – more than anything else – the internet, is it any wonder that Americans are going in dozens of different financial directions.
I therefore filled all the little spaces, that occurred between the remarkable days in the Calendar, with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, as (to use here one of those proverbs) “It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.”
Ben Franklin wrote pithy sayings and motivated early Americans to work hard and save money so they could amass wealth and secure “virtue.” The amazing part of this is that it worked for the founding fathers and for many generations after them. It’s hard to be virtuous – have peace of mind and the freedom to serve our family, church, and country.
www.YouBeTheBank.com
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Financial News From The Week Of July 25th, 2008…
August 4, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
I pay close attention to the financial news. It’s part of my job to know what’s really going on in the general economy so I can properly train other advisors and guide my personal clients with integrity.
Below are six articles from financial news sources from last week I encourage you to skim the first five and read No. 6 carefully.
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Government debt nears record high The Bush administration announced its plans to borrow billions of dollars to deal with the skyrocketing budget deficits, placing the blame for the near record levels of debt on the dismal economy a… |
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President Bush signs housing rescue bill Despite previous threats to veto any proposed housing bill, President Bush today signed a controversial bill that aims to help the limping U.S. housing market as well as provide a financial boost m… |
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Home prices down 15.8% in one year Between May 2007 and May 2008, the cost of homes in the U.S. declined an unprecedented 15.8 percent, indicates the Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller Home Price Index of 20 cities. This figure… |
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Hedge funds to post worst month in five years Hedge funds may post their worst month in at least five years after bets on financial stocks and crude oil backfired. Wagers on a decline in financial stocks and homebuilders soured afte… |
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IMF: Housing recession, credit condition will worsen The International Monetary Fund (IMF) today said there is no visible end to the ongoing housing recession in the U.S., adding that tough credit conditions could contribute to an extended economic s… |
Don’t expect another bull market
Stock returns may never be the same – at least for this generation of investors.
(Fortune) — Although you won’t find it listed on your calendar, we’re approaching the anniversary of an epochal event. No, it has nothing to do with the NCAA basketball tournament. It’s a different kind of March Madness: The end of the bull market that lasted for a generation and changed the way that Americans think about stocks.
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Alarming Stats About Young People and Money…
July 28, 2008 | Author dragonfly
America’s young people are trapped in a dysfunctional paradigm that is robbing them of the oppotunity to succeed.
“The June 2008 Greenberg survey, entitled “Young People: Living on the Edge” illustrates the severe impact of the current economic crisis on 18 to 34 year olds…
“Of the young adult participants, 75 percent say they have gone deeper in debt over the past year. Nearly 19 percent of respondents report having their phone, cable or utilities cut off, and more than 15 percent have faced repossession or have had their credit card cancelled due to non-payment.
“Additionally, about 33 percent of those who owe money on a credit card owe more than $10,000 overall…” – [my emphasis]
If you have children, nieces and nephews, grandkids, or friends with kids, teach them about money and how to handle it. They won’t learn it in grade school, high school and especially not in college, where they learn instead that credit is easy to get and delivers immediate gratification through alcohol, drugs, and sex.
The GAO said recently that financial literacy among Americans is appallingly low. If it’s low in general, its at the bottom of the scale for our young people.
What else could we expect after almost 30 years of misinformation about saving, home equity, mortgages, investing and money in general; misinformation provided in commercials, sound bites, and one hour TV specials that claim to be informative but never scratch the suface of financial issues. Information from the Behemoths whose only goal is to move money from your pockets into their accounts.
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN. And, if you think you know what to teach them, look at your own financial situation. Debt up to your eyeballs? Don’t teach them that. Investments that are going nowhere? Don’t teach them that. Money in all the wrong places at al the wrong times? Don’t teach them that.
First, learn yourself. Discover what the Financial Founding Fathers knew but that the Behemoths and their minions have shrouded in confusion. Discover that saving comes first, home equity is very, very important to you and using it as an ATM machine is not in your best interest. Discover that whole life insurance is a great place to put your foundation money. Discover that every successful personal economy has exactly the same foundation – money that you control, with no strings attached – and the same framework too:
- freedom from debt
- secure income to last your lifetime
- ready cash to deal with life’s surprisingly unsurprising surprises
- a legacy of wisdom and wealth to pay forward to those you care about
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Advice About Saving From Benjamin Franklin…
July 27, 2008 | Author dragonfly
“Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.” Benjamin Franklin,
John Bigelow, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 1 of 12, pg 254
Ben Franklin penned these words about a topic other than money, but could just as well have been discussing saving.
Einstein referred to the magic of compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world.
Everything I’ve learned about money in the past 50 years supports the idea that slow and steady wins the day when it comes to money.
Modern financial thinking, however, denies the validity of this idea. It focuses on the mountain top and loses sight of the trail. Why are many American’s facing foreclosure? Is it because they lack the discipline or wisdom to manage their money effectively? Or, is it because they were led to believe in the “certainty” that the “market” will always pay off in the “long-term?” Why is America’s savings rate at or less than zero? Because they were told to focus on the top of the mountain and missed the crevasse at their feet.
Surprise! We don’t live in the “long-term”. Here’s a wisdom teaching that appears in every source of advice from the Ancient Bible, to the New Testament, to philosophers and teachers in every culture and every age - except perhaps the late 20th century: Save, secure your future needs, pay off your debt, invest only in that about which you are personally knowledgeable and only with money you can afford to lose.
Ben Franklin calls it ”human felicity.” We call it peace of mind. You cannot hold onto peace of mind if your mind is constantly focused on money issues in a negative way. You cannot enjoy the mountain trail if you are only looking at the pinnacle.
You need to know where you are going. You need to stop along the way and look forward and up to anticipate your next step and remind yourself of the goal. Life is lived in the present moment and money arrives and passes through your life today. If today is lost and today’s money is lost, tomorrow cannot be better and peace of mind cannot be achieved.
Here’s a simple “how to.”
Sally, a 22 year old female, graduates from college, takes a job earning $30,000.00 per year. Sally saves $5,000.00 a year in a cash value whole life insurance policy every year until her normal retirement age of 67. At that time Sally has over $1.2 million dollars cash including dividends. She can convert that saved money into an after tax income stream of more than $50,000.00 that will last her for the rest of her life.
One simple saving strategy yields “human felicity”. Imagine the results if Sally increases her contribution every year as her income rises! This one simple strategy would yield income multiples of two, three, or greater than the $1.2 million. In addition, the cash value could be accessed by loans prior to retirement to pay for vacations, cars and even houses.
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Money Is Important, But So Are Red Marbles…
July 20, 2008 | Author dragonfly
Generally this blog deals with issues relating to money, saving, investing and the general economy and how that relates to your personal economy. Today’s blog digresses a bit from the norm but not really too far. It recounts a story I’ve heard several times about how one man used some of the money in his personal economy with great results. It inspires me and perhaps it will inspire you too.
RED MARBLES
I was at the corner grocery store buying some early potatoes. I noticed a small boy, delicate of bone and feature, ragged but clean, hungrily apprizing a basket of freshly picked green peas. I paid for my potatoes, but was also drawn to the display of fresh green peas. I am a pushover for creamed peas and new potatoes. Pondering the peas, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between Mr. Miller (the store owner) and the ragged boy next to me.
‘Hello Barry, how are you today?’
‘H’lo, Mr. Miller. Fine, thank ya. Jus’ admirin’ them peas. They sure look good.’
‘They are good, Barry. How’s your Ma?’
‘Fine. Gittin’ stronger alla’ time.’
‘Good. Anything I can help you with?’
‘No, Sir. Jus’ admirin’ them peas.’
‘Would you like take some home?’ asked Mr. Miller.
‘No, Sir. Got nuthin’ to pay for ‘em with.’
‘Well, what have you to trade me for some of those peas?’
‘All I got’s my prize marble here.’
‘Is that right? Let me see it’ said Miller.
‘Here ’tis. She’s a dandy.’
‘I can see that. Hmmmmm, only thing is this one is blue and I sort of go for red. Do you have a red one like this at home?’ the store owner asked.
‘Not zackley but almost.’
‘Tell you what. Take this sack of peas home with you and next trip this way let me look at that red marble’, Mr. Miller told the boy.
‘Sure will. Thanks Mr. Miller.’
Mrs. Miller, who had been standing nearby, came over to help me. With a smile said, ‘There are two other boys like him in our community, all three are in very poor circumstances. Jim just loves to bargain with them for peas, apples, tomatoes, or whatever. When they come back with their red marbles, and they always do, he decides he doesn’t like red after all and he sends them home with a bag of produce for a green marble or an orange one, when they come on their next trip to the store.’
I left the store smiling to myself, impressed with this man. A short time later I moved to Colorado , but I never forgot the story of this man, the boys, and their bartering for marbles. Several years went by, each more rapid than the previous one.
Just recently I had occasion to visit some old friends in that Idaho community and while I was there learned that Mr. Miller had died. They were having his visitation that evening and knowing my friends wanted to go, I agreed to accompany them. Upon arrival at the Funeral Home we fell into line to meet the relatives of the deceased and to offer whatever words of comfort we could.
Ahead of us in line were three young men. One was in an army uniform and the other two wore nice haircuts, dark suits and white shirts…all very professional looking. They approached Mrs. Miller, standing composed and smiling by her husband’s casket. Each of the young men hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, spoke briefly with her and moved on to the casket. Her misty light blue eyes followed them as, one by one, each young man stopped briefly and placed his own warm hand over the cold pale hand in the casket. Each left the Funeral Home awkwardly, wiping his eyes.
Our turn came to meet Mrs. Miller. I told her who I was and reminded her of the story from those many years ago and what she had told me about her husband’s bartering for marbles.
With her eyes glistening, she took my hand and led me to the casket.
‘Those three young men who just left were the boys I told you about. They just told me how they appreciated the things Jim ‘traded’ them. Now, at last, when Jim could not change his mind about color or size….they came to pay their debt.’
‘We’ve never had a great deal of the wealth of this world,’ she confided, ‘but right now, Jim would consider himself the richest man in Idaho’.
With loving gentleness she lifted the lifeless fingers of her deceased husband. Resting underneath were three exquisitely shined red marbles.
The Moral : We will not be remembered by our words, but by our kind deeds.
Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
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Wishing you Health, Abundance, Love and Light…
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Posted in Legal, Ethical, Moral, Money, Personal Financial Management, What Others Say | Tags: Abundance, economics, economy, Health, investing, Life, Love, marbles, Money, saving | No Comments »
$1.6 Trillion in Losses and Counting…
July 13, 2008 | Author dragonfly
“There’s no crying in baseball!” Part II
If you are truly interested in your financial future – especially over the next year or two – you’ll read John Mauldin’s newsletter on a regular basis. Here’s an excerpt from and a link to his most recent. After a detailed discussion of the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae fiascos, John opines about the near term and long term prospects for the economy and investing…
Posted Jul 11 2008, 11:13 PM
by John Mauldin
“…I am a long-term (and even mid-term) optimist. We have to work through some serious problems, but we will. Valuations are going to be low once again, and it will be time to become bullish. And researching and writing my book on how the world will change in 20 years makes me very optimistic. No one in 20 years will think of today as the “good old days.” The changes that are in front of us will be amazing. So, simply take a deep breath, be conservative today, and get ready for a really wild and fun ride.” Emphasis added…
Being conservative has always been common sense but in 2008 and for the foreseeable future it’s essential. If the Dolts in DC would recognize that and quit spending our money like it’s their own, the People they are sworn to serve would not be facing personal recessions while the fat cats in Washington get fatter. OH well! Vote for the non-incumbant and pray for a better future.
The ‘soulution’ to most Americans’ problems is to get off the credit train and get back to the basics of conservative personal economics. The people have been bamboozled for decades by the now failing financial industry and the incompetents that legislate on its behalf instead of ours. It’s time to ignore their insanity and regain our own.
EARN, SAVE, SPEND ONLY WHAT YOU CAN REPAY TO YOURSELF, LEAVE A LEGACY OF BOTH WISDOM AND WEALTH…
It isn’t as hard as you might think. Americans who adopt the Money for Life Model find that their financial situation improves rapidly and without significant life style changes. It’s really nothing more than controlling the money that flows through your life.
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Oxymoron: Wall Street Wisdom About Your Money…
June 27, 2008 | Author dragonfly
Wisdom???
Forbes.com
Liz Moyer, 06.26.08, 3:00 PM ET
Wall Street’s Widening Credibility Gap
The carnage spread across the financial sector. Fortis was down 19%, Lehman down 6%, National City (nyse: NCC – news - people ) down 7%, MBIA (nyse: MBI – news - people ) down 11% and Washington Mutual (nyse: WM – news - people ) down 6%. The Keefe Bruyette & Woods (nyse: KBW – news - people ) index of bank stocks, the BKX, was off 3%. Financials dragged the S&P 500 17% below the record it set back in November. [Emphasis added]
The wizards of Wall Street can’t figure out how to take care of their own money much less yours. It’s time for every American to take back the control of their money, and there’s a simple, age old, tried, and tested formula you can apply that allows you to do that - http://themoneyforlifeblog.com/?page_id=69
The Debt Paradigm Isn’t Working…
I know this may seem blatently self serving and it is to an extent. On the other hand, the paradigm that controls America’s thinking about money management, saving and investing just isn’t working and needs to be changed. Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life…How to thrive in good times and bad offers a simple, sustainable, common sense set of strategies and practices that allow Americans to wrest control of their money from the Behemoths that demonstrate only greed and lusting for your money and neither wisdom nor compassion for you.
Peace of Mind Is the Payoff…
American’s who have read Money for Life, and who are applying the principles it teaches to their personal money management practice, are experiencing peace of mind about money that seemed out of their reach only a short time ago. You owe it to yourself to learn the Money for Life secrets that have been practiced since Biblical times and which were abandoned in the late 20th century.
Avisors with decades of experience who read Money for Life write comments like this:
“I Read your book it was great!! I am a financial advisor and have been doing a lot of research about banking concepts. I like the way you introduced the concepts and I am going to institute them into my practice. It is a shame the home office doesn’t teach these concepts to their agents. The more I read and test the more I like the concepts and the less I like what I’ve been taught by those that aren’t as wise. I would very much enjoy the opportunity to find out more about what else I could be doing for my clients. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.”
Thanks for your patience and understanding. America needs to know what’s in this book, not because I wrote it – I’m simply the voice of the many who preceded me – but because the ideas, principles, and practices it presents are essential to their success with money.
Jeffrey Reeves
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Mutual Fund Misrepresentation…
June 25, 2008 | Author dragonfly
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Gone With the Wind, 1939
It appears that the mutual fund industry is very much like the Congress. Proof again that Americans are being bamboozled by Behemoths whose only interest is in moving money from your pockets into their own accounts. This isn’t a personal opinion but the opinion of a mutual fund industry watchdog as Gary Halbert reports in his newsletter this week! Here are a few excerpts and a link to the full text.
A Shocking New Morningstar Study!
June 24, 2008
“…Morningstar released a study last week showing that many mutual fund managers have little or none of their own money in the very funds they manage …
“Yet the new Morningstar study shows that about half of the mutual fund managers they track have NONE of their own money in the funds they manage. ZERO.
“Morningstar found that 47% of US stock funds and 61% of foreign stock funds have no investment of the managers own money. Bond funds fare even worse with 66% of taxable bond funds, 71% of balanced funds and 80% of municipal bond funds having no manager investment…
Perhaps the most interesting part of the study was Morningstar’s analysis of its own Picks and Pans. This is a service provided by Morningstar where they select funds that may be good long-term investments (the Picks) as well as mutual funds to avoid (the Pans). When analyzing management investment in these two groups, Morningstar found that the Picks had a median manager investment of $430,000, whereas the median investment by the fund managers in the Pan category was $0…Get the message?”
Here’s the link to the whole article; http://investorsinsight.com/blogs/forecasts_trends/archive/2008/06/24/a-shocking-new-morningstar-study.aspx
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There are better ways to handle your money that the Behemoths won’t, don’t, or can’t talk about. www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
______________________________
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Fraudulent Financial Products And Advertising…
June 11, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
Honest Abe Would Be Appalled…
“You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
- Abraham Lincoln
President Lincoln didn’t live in the information, advertising and propaganda age we inhabit. Everything from politicians to religious beliefs, hamburgers to health care, infant products to investments are presented to the public every day in one form or another and all are distorted to support the presenters’ aims.
If Abraham Lincoln spoke his famous line today – especially if he worked in the financial markets – it might go like this:
“Advertising and propaganda can fool many of the people all of the time,
and all of the people most of the time,
but it still can’t fool all of the people all of the time;
but don’t worry about it, the fines will be much less than the profits.”
This is especially true of financial products. Americans are bombarded daily with information, advertising and propaganda about new financial products and services. The Behemoths and their minions cleverly disguise sales pitches as planning strategies. The financial press follows the lead of the Wall Street Wonks and supports every ENRON type shibboleth as if it came directly from the Lord.
A Case Study from 2007…
Here’s a case on point. Tom bought a hot new indexed universal life insurance contract. He was told that if he paid $20,000 a year into the contract for five years – $100,000 total – and then let the money grow for another five years he could expect to draw $18,000 per year from the policy for as long as he lived and the beneficiaries of his policy would still receive the full death benefit when he died.
When this product was presented to Tom by a well known insurance and financial “advisor,” Tom bought it on faith. There was also a printed illustration from the insurance company that made the numbers look legitimate. Two years and $40,000 later Tom realized that the “advisor” exaggerated the earnings and possible income and at the same time gave little attention to the probability that the actual results would most likely fall way short those exaggerated claims.
Caveat Emptor?
This is not a case of “caveat emptor.” Sophisticated information, advertising and propaganda presented by a “professional” is readily believable and not so readily debunked by an untrained buyer. Tom was hoodwinked by a dishonest and unethical sales rep who cares more about the sale than the client. (As a note, that salesman was recently indicted.)
“Trusted advisor” is a term that is claimed with about the same weight as “nice tie.” Americans need more than the claims of a well dressed salesman and a compliant illustration from a mutual fund or insurance company. If you want to dodge the “dodgers” then you need a way to measure and manage your money that lets YouBeTheBank and lets you control the money that flows through your life.
Here’s my first recommendation ever on this blog; find an INDEPENDENT advisor that is not bound to one of the Behemoths and who understands that keeping YOU in control of your money is the most important role of an advisor.
Jeffrey Reeves
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“Soulutions” To Financial Problems Or Difficulties…
June 1, 2008 | Author jr
The EUREKONOMICS™ “Soulution“…
The Oxford dictionary defines the word solution this way: “the act or a means of solving a problem or difficulty.”
The EUREKONOMICS™ Model for dealing with financial issues modifies both the spelling and the meaning of this word:“Soulutions” adds, ”with awareness of the personal aspects of both the problem or difficulty and the act or means employed in solving the problem or difficulty.”
The Operating Manual for EUREKONOMICS™…
Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life…How to thrive in good times and bad deals with practical, workable, easy to understand solutions to money and financial problems. In addition, one of the main goals of this blog and of the book Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life…How to thrive in good times and bad is to guide you to a greater awareness of the non-material and personal issues relating to money, finances and your personal economy. One of the soulutions that can make you more aware is reflected in this quote:
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” Joseph Campbell
Conventional wisdom – which is no wisdom at all – guides us on paths that are contrived by Behemoths – large corporations, unions and government. When you follow this path, you are heading toward a destination that makes Behemoths wealthy but weakens your personal economy; a path that makes bad decisions feel good.
It’s scary to follow a path other than the one that you, your peers, co-workers, family and friends recognize from TV, radio, print, employer sponsored programs and so on. It’s uncomfortable to embrace your fear of being different and following your own path. But, that is the cave you must enter because that is where you will discover your treasure.
Shams of Tabriz, mentor and companion of the Sufi mystic Rumi, expressed the same idea another way: “If you’re not building rooms where wisdom can be openly spoken, you’re building a prison.”
If you don’t allow yourself to explore alternatives to conventional wisdom you are simply creating your own financial prison and your architects are the Behemoths whose only goal is to transfer your money from your pockets into their accounts.
There is a better way.
You can cut a clearer path for your self than any Behemoth can contrive.
Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life…How to thrive in good times and bad does not define a path and ask you to follow.
Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life…How to thrive in good times and bad provides the insight, wisdom, tools, and guidance that lets you to create your own path; lets you control the money that flows through your life; lets YouBeTheBank.
The few dollars you spend to buy Money Now, Money Later, Money for Life…How to thrive in good times and bad is less than the cost of pizza and beer or a night at the movies. A night out at the pizza parlor or the multi-plex promises neither a solution nor a soulution to money problems or a malfunctioning personal economy.
This book promises both.
Jeffrey Reeves MA, EUREKONOMIST™
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Learn More, Own More, Owe Less…
May 19, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
“Carpe diem. Seize the day boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” Dead Poets Society, 1989
America! We have been bamboozled by BS from Behemoths (the name given to large corporations, unions and government.) As long as we adhere to their paradigm and wander like zombies through our financial lives, we are doomed to be, as Benjamin Franklin warned 200+ years ago, their servants.
Russ Wiles, a writer for the Arizona Republic, wrote this just a day or so ago:
May 18, 2008
Financial issues still baffling AmericansAre doctors and auto mechanics really easier to understand than financial professionals? One recent survey says so – the latest indication there’s a literacy gap out there when it comes to money issues.
Most Americans have a lot of financial burdens to carry, whether it’s simply paying the monthly bills or investing for retirement, drafting an estate plan or borrowing prudently. Yet many signs suggest millions of people aren’t up to the task.
The article goes on to discuss our lack of literacy, excess credit, failure to educate our youth and a variety of other observations. It’s time Americans take back their personal economies from the Behemoths and their minions. It’s time to “seize the day”; learn more about personal economies, own more of what we use every day instead of just using things that we finance; relying on debt for our well being instead of building wealth.
Carpe diem! –> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
(Read the entire article here http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080518/BIZ/805180347/1005)
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Risk Management Must Read…
April 29, 2008 | Author dragonfly
“Elementary, my dear Watson.” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1939
Nothing is more elementary than risk management when it comes to saving, investing and financial planning. If you, or your advisors, allow the focus to shift to the ever fickle “rate of return” you will soon find yourself out of money or in bankruptcy.
Gary Halbert is insightful. His perspective reflects the common sense that is often wanting in less mature pundits and advisors. I encourage you to read the excerpt from his recent newsletter. It is loaded with wisdom. Better still, take some time and link to the entire article and soak up some of the ideas and information that makes a successful saver and investor, and creates a successful personal economy.
The Stock Market’s Decade-Long Drought
by Gary D. Halbert
April 22, 2008
IN THIS ISSUE:
- The Stock Market’s “Lost Decade”
- The Importance Of Risk Management
- Lesser-Known Investment Risks
- How To Determine Your Own Risk Tolerance
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The Importance Of Risk Management
Stock market volatility during the recovery phase of a sideways market is often significant, and the last couple of years have been no exception. This volatility is like riding a roller coaster for many investors. New interim highs make them feel that a market rally has taken hold, only to then experience yet another downhill run. Some who can’t stand the fluctuations in value get out of the market and sit on the sidelines, often without any plan for how to get back into the market later on.
No matter what the cause, the market’s recent action underscores the inherent risk of investing in the stock market. It also shows the danger of the buy-and-hold strategy, especially one that recommends investing in unmanaged “index” mutual funds. Sure, the markets will likely rebound eventually, but that will be of little consolation to investors who need their money now for retirement, or who may have bailed out of the markets at or near the bottom.
In past E-Letters, I have illustrated the relationship between losses and the amount of return you have to earn just to get back to where you started. Whenever I reprint this “break-even” table, I receive quite a response from readers indicating how this information opened their eyes to the risks they were taking. Because evaluating risks and avoiding large losses is so important, I have reproduced that break-even table below:
Amount of Loss
IncurredReturn Required
To Break Even10%
11.1%
15%
17.7%
20%
25.0%
25%
33.3%
30%
42.9%
35%
53.9%
40%
66.7%
45%
81.8%
50%
100.0%
60%
150.0%
70%
233.3%
To demonstrate the point of this table, the S&P 500 Index plunged apprx. 45% from its high of 1527.46 during the bear market of 2000-2002. Buy-and-hold index fund investors who suffered that 45% decline had to earn a total cumulative return of over 81%, just to get back to where they were in March of 2000, and it took them over seven years to do so.
However, even though the S&P 500 Index hit a “new record” in May of 2007 (and eventually climbed as high as 1565.15 on October 9th), the subprime debacle and potential recession have taken buy-and-hold investors back under water again! The S&P 500 Index closed at 1390.33 last Friday, down 175 points from its 2007 record territory.
For Nasdaq investors, the situation is much worse. Those who rode the market all the way down, over 70%, will require a return of over 233% just to get back to even, and the Nasdaq Index is nowhere near that point now, some eight years later.
This further illustrates that it is critical to avoid incurring large losses in the first place. If you can keep losses to a minimum, then you spend less time having to make up for lost ground.
Read the entire article here –> http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/forecasts_trends/archive/2008/04/22/the-stock-market-s-decade-long-drought.aspx
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SPECIAL OFFER –> The paperback version of Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century will be released on May 1st, 2008. Everyone who buys the e-book version before May 1st will also recieve an autographed copy of the paperback when it is release. No special codes are needed. Thanks for making the purchase befor April 30th. Shipping and handling charges will still apply. –> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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Financial Plan – Or Not…
April 14, 2008 | Author dragonfly
Albert Einstein said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”
The 50 page leather bound financial plan that you receive from the well known company with the large advertising budget is at best a snapshot of a fantasy; it represents the “level of thinking” that has America in debt up to its eyeballs with a negative savings rate for the past three years. It is out of date when you receive it and out of touch with the reality of your life’s daily challenges.
The typical financial plan wants for wisdom.
Think about it. Do you rush to the bookshelf to pull out your neatly bound financial plan when your family faces a crisis and you need money?
Ask yourself how you’d feel if, instead of unfounded fantasies in a fancy leather binder…
-
You were free from debt-to-others; no mortgage, no car payments, no credit card bills or store charge card balances, no home improvement balances at the home improvement center…no debt of any kind
-
You had an income you didn’t have to work for, you couldn’t outlive, was protected from inflationary pressures, and wasn’t decimated by interest payments and taxes every month
-
You had ready money to take care of yourself and your family when some planned or unplanned life event required it – job loss, college for the kids, illness or disability, a long awaited second honeymoon, long term nursing home expense
-
You had a secure tax free legacy of your wisdom and your wealth that you could pay forward on your terms to those you care about.
These are the Four Pillars that are the framework of all stable financial structures because they rest on a foundation of money that you – and you alone – control.
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SPECIAL OFFER! –> The paperback version of Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century will be released on May 1st, 2008. Everyone who buys the e-book version before May 1st will also receive an autographed copy of the paperback when it is release. No special codes are needed. Don’t be an April fool; make the purchase before April 30th. Shipping and handling charges will still apply. –> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
Posted in Money, The Four Pillars, What Others Say | Tags: 401(k) plans, 801(k) plans, Add new tag, agon fly, annuities, annuity, bank, banker, banking, banks, be the bank, become your own bank, becoming your own banker, bonds, book on money, books on money, books on personal finance, circle of wealth, debt, debt elimination, debt management, debt reduction, debt to others, disability income insurance, Dr Agon Fly, Dr_Agon_Fly, financial, financial advice, financial advisor, financial planner, financial planning, health insurance, housing market, how to thrive, infinite banking, insurance dividends, investing, jeff reeves, jeffrey reeves, leap system, life insurance, long term care insurance, mass mutual, mass mutual insurance, massachusetts mutual life insurance, millionaire, Money, money book, money books, money for life, money under management, mortgage, mortgage management, mutual funds, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, nash, nelson nash, new york life, new york life insurance company, northwestern mutual life, passive income, personal financial books, pirates of manhattan, r nelson nash, Retirement, retirement income, retirement planning, saving, stock dividends, stock market, stocks, Taxes, term life insurance, The Four Pillars, the guardian life insurance company, thrive, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Who’s helping you, why buy whole life insurance, why whole life insurance | No Comments »
The Investments You Need…
April 10, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
“I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too.” The Wizard of Oz, 1939
A commercial that is currently running on TV explains how easy it is for you to move your money from wherever it is now into “the investments you need” and the coffers of the company running the ad. It’s their way of saying “I’ll get you my pretty…”
The problem with this ad and so many others like it is that most Americans don’t need investments. Most Americans NEED:
- ~ to get out of debt
- ~ to save money so they can turn it into income they don’t have to work for and that they can’t outlive
- ~ to insure that they can pay the bills when the unexpected happens – and it always does
- ~ to teach those they care about how to stay out of debt, how to avoid the BS of the Behemoths about “needing” investments, and how to be their own bankers
I once asked a group of small business owners what they would call a person who accomplished these four goals. I got several answers but the one that garnered the most attention – and laughs - was made by a woman that owned a drapery company: “I’d call that person” she said, “a figment of your imagination.”
She was and is wrong. Many Americans have discovered that being one’s own banker is a safe and sure way to achieve these goals – a way that is possible for everyone who chooses it. You can do this and Money for Life…in good times and bad gives you the road-map, the tools and the guidance to do it.
SPECIAL OFFER! –> The paperback version of Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century will be released on May 1st, 2008. Everyone who buys the e-book version before May 1st will also receive an autographed copy of the paperback when it is release. No special codes are needed. Don’t be an April fool; make the purchase before April 30th. Shipping and handling charges will still apply. –> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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Make Money On E-Bay – Or Not…
April 6, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
“The stuff that dreams are made of.” The Maltese Falcon, 1941
Jonathan and Stacey have an unconventional family. Stacey is a highly compensated executive and is rising rapidly in her profession. Jonathan is an innovative and creative artist. Jonathan stays at home with the couples two children, works on his art when he can and dabbles on eBay as a way of making a few extra dollars to feed his passion.
His eBay adventure didn’t start out as an avocation, however. Like many other easy money schemes such as multi-level-marketing programs, foriegn exchange trading, precious metals deals, or day trading on the stock exchanges, it began as a fantasy about a fortune. It wasn’t long, though, before Jonathan and Stacey both recognized that success was unlikely. When Stacey became pregnant with their second child – well, that sealed the deal on the role of eBay in their financial future.
Reality and common sense tell us that there is no such thing as “easy money.” There are ways of making money – like those mentioned above – that are particularly suited to certain individuals; that are fulfilling, fun and rewarding if you and that way of making money are compatible. If your personality, skills and psyche are not in synch with a particular profession or business opportunity, failure is assured.
You might make a lot of money, but it won’t be easy, you’ll not be happy, and eventually you’ll find a way out of that situation – drugs, infidelity, alcohol, eBay, fishing, golf or some other distraction. The same holds true for financial practices. We all have two professions; one is the career of our choosing; the second is being our own banker and managing the money that flows through our lives.
Many individuals and families ignore their second profession or see it as a nuisance. That’s because their personality, skills and psyche are out of synch with the way they deal with their money. Americans have been led to believe that their personal economies are best served by “plans” devised by Behemoths – large, publicly owned financial institutions. Those “plans” are the counterparts of the quick and easy money schemes.
It is no more valid to expect to succeed using the standardized robotic thinking that goes into such plans, than it would be to expect every American to succeed on eBay.
There is a better way for you to take control of the money that flows through your life, a much better way; one that is adaptable to every American and to every situation; one that is based on principles and practices that have been known to the money-wise for millennia and practiced by financially successful Americans from the days of the Founding Fathers until today.
You can learn about this amazingly simple and effective approach by following this blog for a year or two or you can spend $29.95 and buy a book that will tell you most of what you need to know to debunk the bull of the Behemoths and escape the Dungeon of Debt they have built for you.
The Book? Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century
SPECIAL OFFER! –> The paperback version of Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century will be released on May 1st, 2008. Everyone who buys the e-book version before May 1st will also receive an autographed copy of the paperback when it is release. No special codes are needed. Don’t be an April fool; make the purchase before April 30th. Shipping and handling charges will still apply. –> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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The Future of Money is the Past…
March 26, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
“Elementary, my dear Watson.” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1939
Peter Bernstein is one of the elder statesmen in the world of economic thought. At age 87, his expectations and thoughts about the future have been accurate for decades. It is rewarding to find someone of his stature and experience indirectly endorsing the strategies and practices that are presented in Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century. Here’s a brief excerpt form his recent letter to John Mauldin, another analytic economist that hits the nail on the head more often than not. I encourage you to read all of this letter and consider how you are going to manage your money in the future based on the thinking of these informed and insightful comments.
The Shape Of The Future
By Peter L. Bernstein
“The root of today’s problems in the financial markets and in the economy as a whole is the household sector. The point needs no elaboration, but its significance cannot be minimized. As we have argued on more than one occasion, the shrinkage in the personal savings rate is not the result of consumer profligacy, as other commentators persist in describing it. Rather, the savings rate has been suppressed by a slowdown in the growth of household incomes. The shortfall between income and outlay has been met by borrowing, and in particular by borrowing against the family real estate. Now the opportunity to borrow has shrunk dramatically, an outcome that will profoundly change the household’s spending power and spending patterns. But the impact is not just on the household. A slowdown in the growth of consumer spending has ominous implications for the entire global economy – and, along the way, the U. S. federal deficit, soon to be overburdened by spiraling benefit obligations. This predicament is not a short-run matter, unless home prices abruptly reverse themselves and head back into the stratosphere – which is hardly likely.”
Read – and re-read – the entire letter here –> http://www.investorsinsight.com/otb_va_print.aspx?EditionID=670
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www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com addresses this issue at its core. It shows you how to thrive while others just survive or worse, descend into the dungeon of debt that never releases its prisoners without first inflicting great pain and leaving deep scars.
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Another Financial Forecast for 2008 – and Beyond…
March 9, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
Would You Buy Stock In U.S.A., Inc.?
by Gary D. Halbert
March 4, 2008
Introduction Several years ago, I wrote an E-Letter that compared the United States to a giant corporation – USA, Inc. In that 2003 E-Letter, I predicted that USA, Inc.’s economy would surprise on the upside in the coming years, and it certainly did. I also recommended that investors move back to a fully invested position in stocks at that time, if they had not already done so.
When I wrote a second E-Letter on USA, Inc. in 2004, most in the media were pessimistic on the outlook for the economy. Unemployment was considered to be chronic, even though it was only slightly above 6%. Others moaned about the growing federal deficit, blaming both the Bush tax cuts and the ongoing war in Iraq. Yet, the US economy continued to grow robustly, and the stock markets set new high after new high.
With many economists expecting the current sub prime and housing woes to result in an economic recession, as well as a sure “CEO” change for USA, Inc. in November, I thought that it was high time that I revisit this topic for my E-Letter audience. We currently have the usual dichotomy of those who believe things will get better, those who think things will get worse, and of course, we can’t leave out the gloom-and-doom crowd for whom the sky is always falling. However, this time around, we seem to have more experts lining up on the negative side than on the positive, possibly including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the “CFO” of USA, Inc.
This week, I will attempt to give some perspective by analyzing the current situation as if the United States of America was a stock – USA, Inc. - and whether or not we would want to buy shares in it. Would we want it as a long-term holding in our investment portfolio or our retirement fund? Let’s play like stock analysts and take a closer look.
Read the entire article here —> http://www.investorsinsight.com/forecasts.aspx _________________________________________________
To insulate your personal economy from possible future financial failures in the general economy go here –> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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“The Secret” and “The Science of Getting Rich”…
March 8, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
In 1910 an amazing man named Wallace D. Wattles wrote an amazing little book – The Science of Getting Rich. The ideas in this brief tome have been resurrected and reinterpreted today in videos and books under the banner of The Secret.
The basic premise in both works is that there’s enough wealth in the world to allow everyone to fully participate, but most folks just don’t know how to go about it. Rereading the original text this morning it dawned on me that what we call The Debt Paradigm in Money for Life…in good times and bad is a 21st century perversion of Wattle’s and The Secret’s basic tenets.
The Debt Paradigm intones the mantra that you can have everything you need and anything you want as long as you have enough credit. This perversion substitutes “having” for “owning.” It traps you in a circular process of acquiring things that you do not own and paying someone else for the privilege of going broke. The Debt Paradigm denies the possibility that you can have what you need and want without credit. It denies you the possibility of getting rich.
Money for Life…in good times and bad is the antidote to this kind of non-productive and destructive thinking. You can have what you need and want and you can get rich. The Science of Getting Rich and The Secret describe the construct or the process that allows you to succeed financially. Money for Life…in good times and bad gives you practical, usable tools to help you realize those possibilities. Money for Life…in good times and bad isn’t a get rich quick scheme or a theoretical discussion of how to invest. Money for Life…in good times and bad guides your use of the money that flows through your life to make sure…
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~ You are free from debt and own what you own without credit strings attached
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~ You have income you don’t have to work for and you won’t outlive
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~ You have enough ready cash to deal with the ups and downs of life without having to pull out the credit card or dip into the retirement account or access the equity in your home
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~ You leave a legacy of your wisdom and wealth behind when you pass to the other side.
There is no other book exactly like it on any bookshelf in America today. You owe it to yourself to buy this book —> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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Money and the Media…
March 5, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
If you rely on the media for guidance about money and investing you will soon find yourself lost in a forest of financial misinformation. Both the financial media and the mass media develop their information from sources within the financial community – lobbyists for a specific point of view that serves the bottom line of Behemoths, not your best interests.
Even worse, the well known “advisors” who appear on television and the radio are performers and pundits, not trained financial guides. Their goal is to sell advertising to support their “show” and books and tapes and seminars and speaking engagements to sell their next book, tape, seminar and speaking engagement. I have no problem with that; it’s free enterprise and it makes us all stronger. I do it myself, but in addition, I put my 35+ years of experience helping individuals, families and businesses small and large with money issues into the equation.
That’s not the point of this post, however. Watching the news this morning to catch up on the primary results I realized that over 60% of the commercials on three different cable networks – CNN, FOX and MSN – were focused on negotiating tax relief with the IRS, negotiating debt reduction with credit card companies, acquiring new credit cards, borrowing to buy things and “interest free” purchases. Another 20% focused on capturing your money in 401(k) rollover accounts, planning for your “dreams” (interesting choice of words), on-line stock trading or other investment schemes, health insurance or mortgage rates. (I guess the politicians are wisely watching the commercials instead of the “shows.”)
The commercials do not address the same topics as the pundits and performers. They do address the issues my clients talk about every day, “How can I have the things I need and want without the risk of debt overtaking my personal economy?” or ”How do I run my business so the profits come to me and not the IRS?” or any of dozens of other questions about current concerns; paying for college, or health care, or retirement, or housing, or vacations, or cars, or…you get the picture.
My point is this: American’s are trapped in an outmoded pattern of thinking I call The Debt Paradigm, which recites its mantra non-stop: “You can have everything you need and anything you want as long as you have enough credit.” We are even using credit to pay for our retirement when we finance the things we need and want and, at the same time, put money aside in an IRA, a 401(k) or its equivalent instead of paying for what we buy with money from our own “bank”.
The Point! The media and the pundit performers always operate in their own best interest not yours. They continue to tell the story of The Debt Paradigm as if it were the gospel. Even when they decry debt, they still promote the corrolary to the main mantra, which is that investing is better than saving. They are wrong. Americans have lost thier way. The past offers wisdom and the 21st century offers powerful financial products that serve you and not the Behemoths.
You owe it to yourself, your family and your future to discover the secrets to Money for Life…in good times and bad. If you don’t want to spend the $29.95 to buy the book, at least get a head start on your future and get the FREE white paper Why Budgets Don’t Work at www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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Financial Satisfaction Survey Results posted on a separate page –>
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Buffett – On Banks Losing Money…
March 3, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
Forbes.com (Annual Letter To Shareholders – Buffett On Investing And The Markets – Forbes.com Staff 02.29.08, 9:00 PM ET) excerpted the following gem from Warren Buffet’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders – http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2007ltr.pdf:
“Some major financial institutions have, however, experienced staggering problems because they engaged in the “weakened lending practices” I described in last year’s letter. John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo aptly dissected the recent behavior of many lenders: ‘It is interesting that the industry has invented new ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine.’
“As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight…”
Ugly indeed! One more reminder that every business’s economy, just as every personal economy, is prone to failure when it engages in unnecessary risk. Multi billion dollar banks can – of course – withstand the failures inherent in risk more easily than you and I; they are leveraging our money as well as theirs. You, as an individual or family, however, rely entirely on your own money UNLESS you have discovered a method of managing the flow of money through your lives that lets YouBeTheBank. Then you can armor yourself against investment risk while your neighbor struggles to pay the credit card bill and mortgage and hopes his 401(k) doesn’t crash and burn.
Being successful with money is easy and a great deal of fun once you know how. The secret is that you can have results like Warren Buffett or you can follow the folly of the banks. The tides on its way out. Get your swim suit here www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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We’re Not As Rational About Money As We Think We Are…
February 29, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
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“The economic point is that how you spend or manage your money can be thought of as an extension of your deepest self, your core values. And this realization lies at the core of the Money for Life philosophy. When the choices you make with your money are in alignment with your deepest values, your money and the decisions you make regarding it are more likely to make you happy. Your money, and the Economy is serving you and the ideals you hold dear, not vice versa.”
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“Can thinking about an arbitrary number influence how much you’re willing to pay for a computer keyboard, a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates? Apparently so — and the degree of influence may shock you.
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“In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Laboratory and the Sloan School of Management, put the question to the test in an experiment involving a group of MBA students.
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“The experiment began with students being asked to write down the last two digits of their Social Security number. When the experiment ended, it revealed a pattern — that students with Social Security numbers ending in the highest-ending digits (80-99) were willing to pay more for items (the wine, the chocolates, etc.) than students with the lowest-ending Social Security numbers (01-20) were willing to pay.
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“Experiments such as this make up the foundation of Ariely’s book. Ariely argues that while economists continue to base theories on the idea that humans are rational — that we make optimal economic choices based the information we have — the notion is fundamentally flawed. Not only are we irrational, says Ariely, but when and in what form irrationality surfaces is predictable.
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“Economics can be a tough subject to tackle, but Predictably Irrational is surprisingly entertaining. While the book belongs in the same family as Freakonomics, don’t expect the same kind of theoretical hand-waving. Ariely is less interested in regression analysis and more interested in simple behavioral experiments such as trying to determine if the first person to order a beer at the table is happiest with his choice (yes).”
You can read the USA Today article here – http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Not+as+rational+as+we+think+we+are+-+USATODAY.com&expire=&urlID=26739216&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fmoney%2Fbooks%2Freviews%2F2008-02-24-predictable-irrational_N.htm&partnerID=1661
Everything we do is affected by our minds, our hearts our hormones and our bodies. The merchants of misinformation and their minions, the snake oil sales reps from Wall Street, want you to believe that they have found the sourcerer’s stone and that all you have to do to achieve wealth is follow their “system.”
BUNK!
Discover a better way that relies on awareness of who you are and how personal economies actually work instead of adherence to a rigidly drawn plan that serves the Behemoth that wrote it much better than it serves you –> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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Today is your last chance to take the Financial Satisfaction Survey - the link to this anonymous two minute survey is on the side bar —>
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Monty Python on Money…
February 26, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
This post is for your edification and entertainment but it conveys an important message too. I have found over the years that songs, especially songs from musicals, often present us with unintended truths. This one - I hope you have the QuickTime plug-in to play it and you don’t just get to read the words – supports the premise that it is money and not investment that is the measure of wealth for most people.
Oprah, Warren, Donald and friends are a special breed. No matter what the motivational speakers would have you believe, you cannot replicate their wealth, unless of course you are one of the exceptionally rare individuals who have a particular talent for attracting money - one in a billion, I’d guess. You are more likely to be one of us; an abused spouse or child trying to overcome trauma; a parent with a Down Syndrome child that requires constant care and ongoing expense; a widow or widower whose spouse had little or no life insurance; an average Joe with just a high school education who had to support himself at the age of 18 and has struggled just to keep food on the table; a family of four with no particular problem but a schedule so busy and a budget so tight that there’s barely enough time and money for essentials; and on and on and on…
You can, however, learn how to use the money that flows into and through your life to build a solid foundation and framework that allows you to live comfortably and without financial stress. Learn how to save, spend and invest in the 21st century at www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
Enjoy the Monty Python Money Song. (And, accept my apologies if some of the other songs on this site – hosted by “Norm” from the TV show Cheers – are not quite as inspiring – read “offensive”)
Posted in Money, The Four Pillars, What Others Say | Tags: 401(k) plans, 801(k) plans, agon fly, annuities, annuity, bank, banker, banking, banks, be the bank, become your own bank, becoming your own banker, bonds, book on money, books on money, books on personal finance, circle of wealth, debt, debt elimination, debt reduction, debt to others, disability income insurance, Dr Agon Fly, Dr_Agon_Fly, financial, financial advice, financial advisor, financial planner, financial planning, health insurance, housing market. stocks, how to thrive, infinite banking, insurance dividends, investing, jeff reeves, jeffrey reeves, leap system, life insurance, long term care insurance, mass mutual, mass mutual insurance, massachusetts mutual life insurance, Money, money book, money books, money for life, money under management, mutual funds, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, nash, nelson nash, new york life insurance company, new your life, northwestern mutual life, passive income, personal financial books, pirates of manhattan, r nelson nash, Retirement, retirement income, retirement planning, saving, stock dividends, stock market, Taxes, term life insurance, The Four Pillars, the guardian life insurance company, thrive, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Who’s helping you, why buy whole life insurance, why whole life insurance | 1 Comment »
The 800 Pound Retirement Risk Gorilla…
February 20, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
CNNMoney.com
Most Americans Unprepared for Retirement
Tuesday February 19, 3:37 am ET
By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
After the author of this article points out that most Americans will have to reduce their lifestyle in order to retire, he goes on to point out that, in addition to lower incomes,
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“…Many workers do not have a realistic estimate of how much they will need to spend on health care when they retire, according to a 2007 study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).
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The study shows that 84% of employees estimated they and their spouse will need to accumulate less than $250,000 for retiree health costs, 32% of whom thought they would need less than $100,000.
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But according to the EBRI, couples will need to save about $300,000 in retirement to cover health expenses, assuming they live to average life expectancy and Medicare benefits remain at current levels. For those who live to 95, that amount jumps to $550,000.”
Read the entire article http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/080219/021908_crr_healthcare.html?.v=1&printer=1
Add probable long term care expenses either at home or in a nursing home to those amounts and the typical couple could easily be looking at close to $1 million in post retirement health and care costs alone.
This is not a new problem. The fact is that the entire Debt Paradigm, with its emphasis on investing as opposed to saving, is putting the future of all Americans at risk for the benefit of the merchants of misinformation and the financial snake oil sales reps. You can escape the dungeon of the Debt Paradigm. A good place to start is with the FREE white paper Why Budgets Don’t Work. You can download it at www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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Help us discover how America feels about its financial situation –> Click here to take the survey…
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Wealth and Your Waistline…
February 19, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
The positive relationship between health and wealth is apparent. It’s difficult to acquire wealth when your health consumes your energy and your money.
The negative relationship between weight and health is equally apparent. Obesity creates unintended consequences that cost money…lots of money.
Now the health care industry is going to incorporate a mechanism in health insurance programs to track how health care providers deal with the obesity issue. (See the brief below.) The obvious reason is that obesity leads to heart problems, diabetes, cancer and many other life threatening medical conditions. Each of these conditions is expensive to treat and puts a financial strain on the system, on the patient and the patients financial resources. In addition, many of these conditions are cronic and require home care or nursing home care at $6,000 per month and higher. You don’t need a calculator to figure out that writing a check for an extra $6,000 on the first day of each month for several years will stress the resources even of those who see themselves as wealthy.
Many estates that are built over a lifetime of work and worry are consumed by medical expenses in the last few months or years of life. Obesity can be a significant contributor to this erosion of health and wealth. You owe it to yourself to put a proper plan in place to address the probability that your wealth will be at risk even if you are in great health. Money for Life…in good times and bad shows you how to deal with this issue and with the other financial issues that present themselves throughout your life. It provides clear and effective strategies for accumulating and growing your wealth. It shows you how The Four Pillars can help you measure and manage your progress. You owe it to yourself –> www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
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NCQA Adds Obesity Indicators to HEDIS
The National Committee for Quality Assurance is using its latest set of health plan quality indicators to encourage plans to pay more attention to weight.
The NCQA, Washington, says the 2009 edition of the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set, a tool for comparing the quality of many health maintenance organization plans and some preferred provider organization plans, will include a measure indicating how often doctors check the body mass index of adult plan members.
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The Economic Stimulus Package of 2008 Revisited…
February 18, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
It’s always nice to find support for an idea. Here’s a great article that elaborates with elegance and clarity on the lack of economic wisdom in the stimulus program that the DC insiders have foisted upon us and which we commented on a few days ago.
Ben Franklin said “If you do what you should not, you must hear what you would not.” I hope the folks in DC hear what Yaron Brook has to say…
Commentary
To Stimulate The Economy, Liberate It
02.14.08, 10:28 AM ET
While some in Washington are quibbling about the details of the economic stimulus package, nearly everyone agrees with its basic idea: that our ailing economy needs Uncle Sam to play doctor and hand out some $150 billion in consumer spending money. But this sort of government intervention is not the cure for our economic troubles. It is the cause.
To understand why, we must first recognize that the key economic activity that causes growth is not consumer spending but production.
Read the rest of this very insighful article here –> http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/14/yaron-economy-regulation-oped-cx_ybr_0214yaron_print.html
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If the Legislative and Executive branches of our government followed the wise counsel of our Founding Fathers they would not make many of the mistakes they do. Ben Franklin also said “The ancients tell us what is best; but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest.” If you would hear the wisdom of the Founders expressed in terms that fit the 21st Century go to www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com and get your copy of Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century. You’ll never regret knowing more or owning more.
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Benjamin Franklin on Money and Life…
February 16, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
I will attempt to lighten up these blog posts during the next few weeks with some of the wit and wisdom found in Poor Richard’s Almanac by Dr. Benjamin Franklin. These brief quotes and quips will be added at the end of each post and occasionally interspersed within the post when they relate directly to it.
Let me know if you find this helpful, a relief or an annoyance. Thanks…Dr Agon Fly
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“There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog and ready money.” Poor Richard’s Almanac
Posted in Money, What Others Say | Tags: 401(k) plans, 801(k) plans, agon fly, annuities, annuity, bank, banker, banking, banks, be the bank, become your own bank, becoming your own banker, bonds, book on money, books on money, books on personal finance, circle of wealth, debt, debt elimination, debt reduction, debt to others, disability income insurance, Dr Agon Fly, Dr_Agon_Fly, financial, financial advice, financial advisor, financial planner, financial planning, health insurance, housing market. stocks, how to thrive, infinite banking, insurance dividends, investing, jeff reeves, jeffrey reeves, leap system, life insurance, long term care insurance, mass mutual, mass mutual insurance, massachusetts mutual life insurance, Money, money book, money books, money for life, money under management, mutual funds, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, nash, nelson nash, new york life insurance company, new your life, northwestern mutual life, passive income, personal financial books, pirates of manhattan, r nelson nash, Retirement, retirement income, retirement planning, saving, stock dividends, stock market, Taxes, term life insurance, The Four Pillars, the guardian life insurance company, thrive, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Who’s helping you, why buy whole life insurance, why whole life insurance | No Comments »
Albert Einstein and Money…
February 5, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
“When the solution is simple, God is answering.” Albert Einstein
“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein is right up there with Aritotle, Michaelangelo, DaVinci and the other greatest minds in history. We often fail to recognize that he – as did all of the greatest thinkers – operated at a very basic level; he started with awareness and progressed through the information he developed to understanding and to wisdom. Wisdom is what makes him and the others special and awareness is the foundation of wisdom.
What does this have to do with money? The process is the same regardless of the pursuit – mathematics, science, history, your personal economy…it makes no difference…finding solutions starts with awareness. Awareness starts with emptying one’s mind of the shibboleths that scurry out of their crevasses whenever a discussion of money comes upon us, then observing the world around us, and restructuring our thinking according to reality instead of the manufactured reality of the financial tyrants that masquerade as servants and program us – and their sales minions who interface with us – to behave in their best interest; not ours. (Sorry for the long sentence – sometimes the words take over.)
Take a look at www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com and see if the FREE offer is something you might be interested in.
Please take a couple of minutes – really just two or three – to complete the Satisfaction Survey - Click here to take the survey…
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The Wall Street Journal: A quote from 1993
January 22, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
“History shows that once nominal growth slows in a heavily indebted economy, there can be no recovery until the excess debt is eliminated…Too many people have become complacent about deflation. But watch out. Debt has grown too large to be sustained out of cash flow. As soon as the balance sheet is depleted, a deeper crisis of asset liquidation will catch the world by surprise.”
Source: James Dale Davidson, The Wall Street Journal, 1993.
What’s true for the economy in general is also true for your personal economy. Once the credit card balances reach their limit, home equity is depleted, and the 401(k) is decimated you, and your entire economy, will be up for auction. If you are not yet on the brink, you can probably avoid this crisis by applying the practices of Money for Life…in good times and bad to your current personal economy.
“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” Albert Einstein
You cannot expect to apply the practices that are the stock in trade of conventional wisdom and escape the tsunami of financial failure that is about to engulf the world. The debt structure that lies below the surface of the ocean of money that covers the earth has collapsed and the tidal wave of financial failure is forming.
2008 is not going to be a great year for the world economy.
2008 can be great for your personal economy. It’s your choice.
Posted in Money, What Others Say | Tags: agon fly, annuities, annuity, bank, bank on yourself, banker, banking, banks, be the bank, become your own bank, becoming your own banker, circle of wealth, debt, debt to others, disability income insurance, Dr Agon Fly, Dr_Agon_Fly, financial, financial advice, financial planning, health insurance, how to thrive, infinite banking, insurance dividends, investing, jeff reeves, jeffrey reeves, leap system, life insurance, long term care insurance, Money, money for life, money under management, mutual funds, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, nash, nelson nash, pamela yellen, passive income, pirates of manhattan, r nelson nash, saving, stock dividends, Taxes, term life insurance, The Four Pillars, thrive, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Who’s helping you, yellen | 3 Comments »
BEWARE! IRS and 529 plan abuse…
January 22, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
Tax deductibility is a trap…all by itself. It rarely creates a real benefit and often creates real problems – even when you do it right. Your IRA deduction is probably costing you money without you knowing it, but at least it’s fully legitimate.
Relying on tax deductibility becomes even more dangerous when the advisor who proposes a tax deductible scheme is either ignorant or greedy (or both) and relies on “loopholes” to justify his or her sales ideas. The article below is just one more example of how foolish it is to rely on advice that is focused on tax deductibility when common sense (and often, common decency) is a much better guide.
Money for Life…in good times and bad is based on common sense practices that have been tested and proven for thousands of years. Paying attention to IRS rules and other tax laws is important. Making them the measure of your success is misguided.
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Posted in Taxes, What Others Say | Tags: agon fly, annuities, annuity, bank, bank on yourself, banker, banking, banks, be the bank, become your own bank, becoming your own banker, circle of wealth, debt, debt to others, disability income insurance, Dr Agon Fly, Dr_Agon_Fly, financial, financial advice, financial planning, health insurance, how to thrive, infinite banking, insurance dividends, investing, jeff reeves, jeffrey reeves, leap system, life insurance, long term care insurance, Money, money for life, money under management, mutual funds, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, nash, nelson nash, pamela yellen, passive income, pirates of manhattan, r nelson nash, saving, stock dividends, Taxes, term life insurance, The Four Pillars, thrive, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Who’s helping you, yellen | No Comments »
Financial Impact of Cancer at age 33…
January 9, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
I received a very painful thank you the other day. A 33 year old client thanked me for selling him more life insurance than he originally thought he needed. Why was he thankful? He had just undergone a seven hour surgery to try to remove cancer from his body. Now he’s facing chemotherapy and a long recuperative period. Then, if he’s blessed, he’ll receive a clean bill of health and will be able to continue his life – as a medical doctor.
The cash in this client’s policy will serve him well if recovery takes longer than expected. It will help offset the loss of income and perhaps pay for treatment that is not covered by his insurance. If things go well and he is back to work in a short period of time, his policy – his “bank” – will continue to grow every year, will never lose value and will provide a legacy for his heirs when he dies.
It’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the significant benefits that a cash value life insurance policy puts at the disposal of the policy owner. It takes the long view to see it until something happens. Then again, at a time like this, it’s easy to remember.
Permanent cash value life insurance is the most powerful financial tool available to individuals and families. It is the foundation of your financial life. If you do not have this foundation, your money structure is built on sand…it will not survive much less thrive.
Say a prayer for my client and friend.
Available soon…
Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century visit www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
©2008 Poor Richard Publishing Company
Posted in What Others Say | Tags: annuities, annuity, bank on yourself, be the bank, become your own bank, becoming your own banker, circle of wealth, debt, debt to others, disability income insurance, financial, financial advice, financial planning, health insurance, infinite banking, insurance dividends, investing, leap system, life insurance, long term care insurance, Money, money for life, money under management, mutual funds, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, nash, nelson nash, pamela yellen, passive income, pirates of manhattan, r nelson nash, saving, stock dividends, Taxes, term life insurance, The Four Pillars, thrive, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Who’s helping you, yellen | No Comments »
The Pirates of Manhattan; A Book About Money Mongers…
January 8, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
Here’s another informative look at the world of personal economics. The Pirates of Manhattan (http://www.thepiratesofmanhattan.com/) addresses the issue of how personal economies are being diminished to satisfy the goals of large financial corporations.
Here’s The Pirates of Manhattan web site promotion:
“Go behind the scenes of modern finance and discover the people and organizations that ultimately control your financial life. Learn why you should invest in yourself and your loved ones first, and why the stock market and mutual fund industry pose a danger to your financial well-being, yet remain extremely profitable for Wall Street and its sidekicks, the banks and mutual fund companies of America. Together they form the Pirates of Manhattan! In this new, thoroughly researched work, author Barry James Dyke brings transparency to the American economic system and outlines why permanent life insurance should be a centerpiece of most Americans’ financial plans instead of the stock market or mutual funds.
$ The September 11th World Trade Center Victim Compensation Fund and how it became the largest life insurance payment ever recorded.
$ The infatuation the nation’s banks and corporations have with life insurance, and why they purchase so much of it, they themselves could be considered life insurance companies.
$ The life insurance industry’s unmatched stability and safety—characteristics that America’s banks have been unable to mimic.
For the consumer, life insurance can become a rock solid chassis and ideal infrastructure for creating a personal finance company. Learn how:
$ To recapture and pocket all of the interest you pay to banks and other financial institutions;
$ Dividend paying permanent life insurance can become the ultimate hedge against inflation;
$ Walt Disney used life insurance to start his theme park empire, when everyone else turned him down. $ Permanent life insurance performs more jobs than any other economic instrument, and why it can empower and improve your financial life.”
It’s time. The voices that speak out about common sense personal economics, muted for too long by the canons of the “pirates”, are finally being heard – and you are fortunate to be listening.
The straight skinny: The Pirates of Manhattan explains why permanent life insurance is a better alternative for building your personal financial structure than those offered by Wall Street and the banking Behemoths.
Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century is the “how to”.
Place your advance order for Money for Life…in good times and bad at www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
For just $29.95 you’ll receive the e-book within a few days and, if you’re among the 1st 100 to order, you’ll receive a signed copy of the paperback when it is released – probably in February.
Posted in What Others Say | Tags: annuities, annuity, bank on yourself, be the bank, become your own bank, becoming your own banker, circle of wealth, debt, debt to others, financial, financial advice, financial planning, infinite banking, insurance dividends, investing, leap system, life insurance, Money, money for life, money under management, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, passive income, pirates of manhattan, saving, stock dividends, Taxes, term life insurance, The Four Pillars, thrive, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Who’s helping you | No Comments »
Money Wisdom in a Saturn Commercial…
January 6, 2008 | Author Dr Agon Fly
A recent commercial for Saturn automobiles suggests that what you spend your money on is not as important as where you save your money. It shows a variety of vignets that demean ostentatious consumption and promote the vitrue of frugality.
Imagine that; the Saturn automobile company has adopted the Money for Life…in good times and bad philosophy.
Pay attention to the commercials and advertisements you see and hear daily and you will discover that the ideas this blog presents are beginning to infiltrate the thinking of America. The age of consumption for the sake of consumption is over.
Hollywood and certian other shallow thinking communities will continue to value “having” more that owning; appearance over substance. Mainstream America is moving steadily toward the reality that money spent – whether on cars or houses, gold or diamonds, appliances or funrniture, stocks or mutual funds – is money that is given away without a promise of return. That works OK in good times. It doesn’t work at all in bad times.
When money flow is plentiful it seems that there is no end to the prosperity – the Roaring 20′s. When the money flow dries up it seems there is no end to scarcity – the Great Depression. Those who practice Money for Life…in good times and bad do not consume their money resoures in the fire of “having” during the good times nor are they cut down by the specter of scarcity in the bad.
Would you like to learn more?
Money for Life…in good times and bad – How to Thrive in the 21st Century can be purchased at www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com
Posted in Money, What Others Say | Tags: annuities, annuity, bank on yourself, be the bank, become your own bank, becoming your own banker, circle of wealth, debt, debt to others, financial, financial advice, financial planning, infinite banking, insurance dividends, investing, leap system, life insurance, Money, money for life, money under management, mutual insurance, mutual insurance company, passive income, saving, stock dividends, Taxes, term life insurance, The Four Pillars, thrive, universal life insurance, variable life insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Who’s helping you | No Comments »