Rick Kahler's Financial Awakenings

Gary and Joanne Goodrich, of Lead, SD, are past masters at traveling on the cheap. They have found creative ways to visit a variety of exciting places on a limited budget. In our April 24 teleclass, they shared some of their ideas.

Among Joanne and Gary’s suggestions were:

Consider volunteer vacations (www.passportintime.com and www.volunteer.gov/gov)

Consider Elderhostels (www.elderhostel.org)

Consider home exchanges (www.intervacusa.com)

Shop for the best values in tour groups: (www.gct.com/gcc/general and www.oattravel.com/gcc/general) Continue Reading »

Money and finances touch everything in our lives, even March Madness. There is no other sporting event like the NCAA men’s final four basketball championship. “The Big Dance,” as it is known, is the place where March Madness comes to its frenzied end. My father and I got hooked when we attended our first final four in 1992. We’ve now made the trek to the Big Dance in 13 of the last 17 years.

A ticket to the final four is one of the hottest seats in all of sports. In days past, snagging a seat simply required a little luck or a lot of money. Now, it requires a lot of luck and a lot of money.

There are basically two types of seats at the basketball tournament: good seats (the “lowers,” those on the floor) and not-so-good seats (the “uppers,” those a step away from the stratosphere). The good seats are not made available to the general public. If you want one of these seats, be prepared to shell out $750 to $3,000 to a ticket broker. If you want a chance at getting an affordable not-so-good seat, you will have to enter NCAA’s annual lottery. Continue Reading »

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know these are not happy times for investors. A casual glance at the financial headlines would lead to the conclusion that the best place to put your money may be under your mattress—preferably in euros.

A recent front page story in The Wall Street Journal led with a story about a couple who planned to retire this year, but now can’t because of the failing economy. Instead of quitting their jobs and retiring to sunny Arizona, they will continue to work because they can’t sell their home and have suffered a 20% decline in the value of their retirement plan. The story went on to talk about how bad things are for investors.

Reporting like this really gets my goat. While I am sure the reporter’s facts are right, the story would lead casual readers to conclude that the average investor has lost 20% so far this year. What the reporter didn’t mention was that this particular couple must have taken a very concentrated position on a handful of stocks or a few specific sectors. Continue Reading »

Rick will be a featured guest at 4:00 p.m. MDT/6:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, May 14, on the “Money, Riches & Wealth” radio talk show. Hosted by Drew Tignanelli, CFP®, and Timothy Maurer, CFP®, the show features weekly guest speakers and discussion on various personal finance topics.

Drew and Tim are President and Director of Financial Planning, respectively, at The Financial Consulate, a financial advisory firm in the Baltimore area. They consider themselves financial advocates for their clients rather than simply financial advisors, with a goal of helping clients redefine true wealth as being more about relationships than money.

For those in the Baltimore area, “Money, Riches & Wealth” airs live at 6:00 EDT on WCBM Talk Radio, 680 AM. To listen via the Internet, go to www.wcbm.com.

Rapid City readers of my weekly column may notice that they can now find my ‘”hard copy” column in Monday’s Business section of the Rapid City Journal. I recently ended my two-year run in the Rapid City Weekly News and rejoined the Journal.

I wrote from the Journal from 1991 to 2002. Shortly afterward, the Watertown Public Opinion picked up my column, as did the Rapid City Weekly News when it began publication. I am delighted to be back at the Journal, and I am told local readers can expect to see my column on a consistant weekly basis.

Okay, this may not seem like the most scintillating news, but it’s exciting to us. After many years of researching, waiting, researching, and waiting some more, we decided to implement a new financial planning software program. Our goal is to provide our clients with accurate and comprehensive financial advice. The new software package will help us continue that goal. As you may guess, a conversion to such a new and comprehensive program is no small undertaking.

The program is called Money Guide Pro. We purchased the software two years ago, but didn’t begin using it because we were unhappy with some of the functionality. When Rick recently attended a half-day due diligence presentation on the software’s new generation, he was convinced that it was time to add MGP to our practice.

Our first step was to hire an independent contractor who spent the better part of two months loading, learning, and assisting Rick in completely disecting the program. Call him obsessive, but before Rick can feel confident in the output of any software package, he’s got to understand the program inside and out. It took the better part of a month before Rick was satisfied with the calculations. The next step was to personalize the investment portion of the software to the KFG philosophy and models, which was no small task.

Finally, after six weeks, we were ready to begin transferring KFG clients to the software. This process will continue for the balance of the year. KFG clients can expect to see new formats with some of their financial planning reports at their next reviews.

It’s looming. It’s coming closer and closer. We don’t have much time left. It will be here before we know it.

What is it? The year 2011.

For all I know, somewhere back in the murky prophecies of Nostradamus, there’s a warning about this dark year. Actually, you don’t have to go back quite that far. There was ample warning in our February 28 teleclass. Our guest, Paul Thorstenson of Ketel Thorstenson, LLP, had plenty to say about the dangers of 2011.

What’s so scary about the year 2011? Tax laws. True, tax law is a frightening topic in and of itself. But one of the topics Paul discussed was the fact that several significant changes in the current tax laws are set to take place in 2011. Continue Reading »

Travel!

That’s the response I get from 90% of my clients when I ask them what they want more of in their lives when they retire. Except, as “everyone knows,” travel is expensive. Well, it doesn’t have to be.

Our April teleclass will feature Joanne and Gary Goodrich, who are experts on how to travel far, often—and cheap. Join us at 4:00 p.m. MDT on Thursday, April 24, for Joanne and Gary’s tips on how you can afford to travel on almost any budget. Click here to register.

If you travel by plane, I recommend you incorporate this website into your travel planning: http://www.flightstats.com/.

Let me explain why. Each year, my wife and I take a “couple only” vacation. This year, we took advantage of a sale on NWA to Germany, snagging roundtrip tickets from Rapid City to Munich for $525. Of course, the downside of traveling to Europe right now is that everything costs double what it did eight years ago. Gas is $9 a gallon, a cheap hotel room is $200 a night, and the simplest meal of franks, kraut, and beer at a communal restaurant will set you back $20. Add soup, bread, and a slice of apple strudel and you’ll easily hit $35.

But I digress. Taking my own advice from previous columns on traveling, we scheduled our return on a Friday, which gave us the whole weekend to get back if we encountered any flight delays. While our outbound flights went off without a hitch, the same was not true of our return home. This is where FlightStats enters the picture. Continue Reading »