Fill your brain with some goodness and read some of these recommended articles on debt, investing, health, time management, and other interesting tidbits to give you a leg up in life.
Simplify your life. Find your truth. Work towards your goals.
Financial Planning
- It’s easy to look around at neighbors, family and friends and be envious because so many people are appearing to “be living the fat life.” But most people never really get to see what is going on behind the front door of American households. Very few people openly discuss their struggles or negative cash flow on social media. The debt piles up. Earnings fall short. Savings are always postponed until some point in the future which amazingly never arrives. But time keeps on ticking and eventually people come up on retirement age. What isn’t being discussed openly is how bad retirement is for many of the elderly who are constantly struggling to meet basic needs like food, utilities, housing and certainly healthcare. Here’s a glimpse as to what is really happening with many of our seniors who did not plan adequately. Could this be you in a decade or two? – https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/the-new-reality-of-old-age-in-america/2017/09/29/c4a422ce-94be-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html?utm_term=.be37f6077d78
Debt
- Let the bitching and fighting begin. Trump officially states the obvious, “Puerto Rico can’t ever pay back it’s debts. The debt will need to be wiped out.” News flash, the country is dirt poor with a large percentage of the population living at poverty levels. They owed over $70 billion in debt. Their economy is not doing well. But what happens when you have central bankers around the world manipulating interest rates down to zero? You “encourage” investors (and by that I mean pure speculators and gamblers) to go searching for yield. So when Puerto Rico’s bonds were yielding 8%, they seemed like a dream investment. Who needs to do any research or analysis anyway, just buy the bonds and collect the cash flow right? Puerto Rico was too broke to pay the debt BEFORE the hurricane wiped out the island. They were already structuring bankruptcy resolutions. So when bond investors won’t be paid, whose fault is it really? Is it Puerto Rico’s for borrowing the money or ignorant/dumb-dumb lenders (i.e. bondholders that chased yield) when the math said you weren’t going to ever be paid back? So now everybody can start bitching, arguing, and suing one another. How do you like bond investing now? – Puerto Rico bonds plunge to just 36 cents on the dollar after Trump pledge to wipe out debt – https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/04/puerto-rico-bonds-plunge-to-34-cents-on-dollar-after-trump-pledge-to-wipe-out-debt.html
Investments/Valuations
- This pretty much sums up the mindset of the majority of investors right now. Markets are going up, which means they assume tomorrow they will go up. Interest rates are so low that it’s better to be in stocks (especially since everybody knows stocks only go up and it’s easy money). But this is exactly how bubbles emerge and eventually resolve themselves (painfully). – http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc170925.htm
Macro
- If everything is so great about the economy, why are central bankers still doing stimulus and expanding balance sheets on net. Further, if everything is so super-duper, why are so many Americans so crunched financially and feeling the constant stress of financial anxiety that continues to grow year over year? – http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/markets/why-millions-of-americans-feel-left-behind-by-the-economic-recovery/ar-AAszNrm