Financial calamity for those left behind.....

.....is so unnecessary.

This won't appear in any headlines but it should. Many spouses are forced to face life ahead of them with a lot of financial fear because the other spouse failed to protect his (mostly his) family with life insurance. I just became aware of a situation where this has happened recently. Picture the wife having to move from her home because the husband apparently didn't get around to paying the premium to prevent the policy from lapsing. He felt great at the time ---but died from cancer in about a year.

My goal in my business is to not let that happen wherever possible -- especially with my family and friends and those who I come in contact with in my business.

Why is Health Care so hard to fix?

I really can't figure out why this is so hard to fix. You have health care providers on the one side (hospitals, doctors, drug companies) and those who need the aformentioned services and products on the other side. In the US, connecting the two has become an all-consuming component that has apparently created the (very expensive) mess we are in.

This may sound like I think the problem can be solved with one organization in the middle (government) to parcel everything out between the two. And it is tempting to think about how clean that may appear. But after attending a Medicare sales meeting today and knowing how complex the government makes things, I think we should run from a government driven solution. Come on private sector, get going to fix this problem before its too late!!

Fixed Income Annuities

This is the second consecutive post on the investment side but I need to get this off my chest.

One thing that this last major market dip has shown me is the wisdom of having fixed income as a part of your investment portfolio. A great way to do this is to have an annuity that pays a monthly income for life no matter what the market does. Depending on your needs, the income from the annuity should match your minimum income needs that will not require major withdrawals from your equity portfolio during a downturn in the market. So a fixed income annuity of 30% of your total portfolio may be a good target for the annuity.

Investing in Gold

This blog is not one devoted to personal investing but it's hard not to comment on all those ads trying to get people to invest in gold. Certainly any commodity will bring the promise of returns if held and then sold during the right market cycle.

I remember when gold was around $600 an ounce back in 1980. So now it is up again. Which means if you had invested in gold back then it would have provided a return of less than 2% per year. This means if you had put a $100 in gold back then, today it would be worth about $180. By contrast, the Dow was in the 1,000 range back then. Today it is around 9,500 even with last years major bust. So a $100 in the market then would now be worth $9,500. And that doesn't even account for the dividends. Need I say more?

My belief is that investing in gold is a bet against America and it's future. It's saying that the dollar will continue to lose strength against gold and other commodities. If you believe that America is a goner, then investing in gold may be a good idea.

Also, where do you put all that gold you buy? If it is in certificates, then how confident can you be that it is backed up with real gold? If you bought the real coins, then how secure is your vault at home? (get ready for the vault ads)