“Our country suffers from a lack of education both in the classroom and at home, ” writes Michael Kay, a Certified Financial Planner, practitioner and a CPA, in an article for Psychology Today. 

Michael asks, “What did you learn in school about money and the stock market? Unless you were a finance major in college, your basic understanding is probably incomplete. As a nation, we should be teaching the basics of money to our children from childhood forward. But, if our schools are not teaching our children about money, that responsibility should fall to parents. The two things your parents don’t teach you is about sex and money.” Continue Reading »

The latest information on global capitalization finds that the US now accounts for just 35% of the world’s equity markets.  Just ten years ago it was 50%.  Asia also owns 35%, Europe has 25%, and Latin America 5%.

I spent a better part of Monday analyzing our portfolios to see if we should make any changes in our global allocation to equities.  I modeled various options, using different managers and allocations to various countries and regions. Continue Reading »

A brief AP story on an inside page of our local paper recently caught my eye. The headline was “Expiring tax cuts will hit all taxpayers.”

One of the topics in the news this year has been whether Congress will take action to continue the Bush tax cuts from 2001 or allow them to expire on schedule at the end of this year. These are commonly described as “the Bush tax cuts for the rich.” Continue Reading »

While most of the news coming out of Washington these days isn’t good for small business, there are a couple of bright spots in the new small business bill passed by Congress and heading to Obama’s desk for signature. One provision of the $30 billion dollar loan program bailout for businesses is some relief on the 35% built-in gains tax that hits S-corps who sell assets within 10 years of converting from a C-corp.  The bill will lower the period to 7 years, and in 2011 it goes to 5 years.  If you own a C-corp and struggle to keep your profits under $75,000 a year, regularly pay shareholder dividends, or pay high salaries to shareholders, you may want to consider switching to an S-corp.

Also, if your business has $50 million or less in assets, any future sales of stock held more than five years if issued from the time Obama signs the bill to January 1, 2011 will be tax-free.  Also, the excluded gain won’t count in the AMT calculation.  This could be an interesting incentive for business owners to accelerate the sales of stock they may be contemplating in the near future.  Continue Reading »

I returned home last night from the NAPFA Practice Management Convention in San Diego where I led a breakout session on Financial Therapy.  I also spoke on “The Killer App of Life Planning” where I explained my financial planning process.  This was the first time I had presented at a NAPFA conference.  I had a great time and I hope those who attended my sessions found them insightful.

Between the presentations I took in enough classes to put me over 80 hours of continuing education for the year.  The most interesting session dealt with the needless and costly plethora of regulations coming my way as a result of the mountains of legislation passed by Congress to further regulate the financial profession.  This won’t result in the public being any more protected from thieves than before, but it will mean that those of us who are honest, hard working advisers will have to charge more for our services to comply with the new regulations.  

I will be home for a whole 10 days before my next trip to Estes Park, CO, where I will attend the national Nazrudin Retreat, a think tank where the brightest minds in financial planning will be in attendance.

Bob Veres, Inside Information,  recently reported on an interesting trend: car clubs, where members pay an annual fee and then rent their cars, when they need them, by the hour on a pay-as-you-go basis.  The market leader, Zipcar in Cambridge, MA, has 400,000 members, mostly in America.  It is in the process of purchasing Streetcar, the market leader in London.

So-called “zipsters” book their car by phone or online, pick it up from a nearby parking bay and unlock it with their Zipcard.  When they finish, they leave the car in a neighborhood parking bay.   The consulting firm Frost & Sullivan calculates that car owners who drive 12,000 miles a year would save $1,834, on average, by shifting to a car-sharing service.  The article notes that these rental fleets have become reliable markets for electric vehicles, which could be good news for the auto industry looking to introduce more of these cars in the future. You can read more here.

Congratulations to Dr. Sonya Britt, K-State, and the Financial Therapy Association for convening an amazing conference.  While it was the first one of this newly formed organization, one would have never known that judging by the organization, professionalism, and content that the event offered.

Speakers for the event included Dr. John Grabel, Dr. James Gottfurcht,  Drs. Ted and Brad Klontz, Dr. David Lazenby, Dick Wagner, JD, CFP,  Cicily Maton, CFP, Saundra Davis, CFP,  Jodi Kaus, CFP, and Rick Kahler, MS, CFP.

If you have any interest in financial therapy, this is an organization you will want to consider joining. Check them out here.

Older people who lose their jobs take longer to find work. It’s starting to appear that for many, they may never find a job again.

A New York Times article today reports than in August, according to the Labor Department, the average time unemployed for those 55 and older was slightly more than 39 weeks, the longest of any age group. That is much worse than in August 1983, also after a deep recession, when someone unemployed in that age group spent an average of 27.5 weeks finding work.

At this year’s pace of an average of 82,000 new jobs a month, it will take at least eight more years to create the 8 million positions lost during the recession. And that does not even allow for population growth. That means the average 55 year old may be near 60 by the time they find a job.  Read more here.

If you want to make anyone in the KFG office shudder, just say the magic words “server crash.” We’re still recovering from our recent technology problems.

We had gone along just fine for several years, without worry, assuming each day that everything would be working. Until the day everything crashed.

We had a choice to make: go with the cheapest option that would get things back to where they were, pay just a little bit more to have our server at another location, or take the most expensive route of moving all our software to the Internet. The first choice would be the least disruptive to the firm’s operations as well as the cheapest. Eliminating the server would be the most painful in the short term because it would change all of our software and many of our operations. In the long term, however, it would increase our productivity and efficiency. We chose the middle option.

It turned out to be hugely expensive. Nothing worked quite right after the move, and we eventually had to buy a new server and go through the expense and pain of moving everything again. Continue Reading »

I’ve had a CD in my foyer for a number of months called, “Creating Wealth from the Inside Out.”  The CD was done by Kathleen Kingsbury, a wealth coach.

I’ve had a number of clients want to purchase the CD for friends and relatives.  Obviously, I only have one and it was a gift from Kathleen as I endorsed the CD for her.  However, if you will click here, you can go to Kathleen’s website and download the CD for $14.95 or purchase it for $29.95 (including shipping). Continue Reading »