Photo of house in Norway, 1977 by Bill Hunter.
The Curious Cat Investing and Economics Carnival has been published infrequently over the last few years. My plan is to start publishing it much more frequently starting now.
- Personal Finance Basics: Long Term Disability Insurance by John Hunter – “people are much less aware of the importance of long term disability insurance. The census bureau estimates that you have a 20% chance you will be disabled in your lifetime.”
- Fed’s Low Interest Rates Crack Retirees’ Nest Eggs by Mark Whitehouse – “A long spell of low interest rates has created a windfall worth billions to banks, mortgage borrowers and others it was designed to benefit. But for many people who were counting on their nest eggs, those same low rates can spell trouble.”
- How to profit from the coming Greek default by Matthew Lynn – “Sell the U.S. banks but buy the dollar. If everyone knows Greece will have to default, what’s keeping them from pulling the plug? That’s easy. The Germans and the French won’t want to ‘re-profile’ all that Greek debt until they know their banks have largely sold both the debt and the credit-default swaps associated with it to someone else.”
- Buy Cheap Bonds with Safe Spread by Bill Gross – “Investors shouldn’t give their money away, and at the moment, the duration component of a bond portfolio comes close to doing just that – not because a bear market is just around the corner come July 1, but because it doesn’t yield enough relative to inflation.”
- How to retire with no savings – “Once you hit age 50, your chances of being jobless start to rise rapidly. You don’t get to choose when you retire. The job market or your ailing body will decide for you. Most retired Americans are getting by on incomes that you’d probably consider appropriate for the Third World. And even if they wanted to work until they died, they can’t.”
- Words of wisdom from Warren Buffett’s legendary sidekick – “You have to be a lifelong learner to appreciate this stuff. We think of it as a moral duty. Increasing rationality and improving as much as you can no matter your age or experience is a moral duty. Too many people graduate from Wharton today and think they know how to do everything. It’s a considerable mistake.
You should review your credit reports annually (at least) to correct any errors. Also doing so can be a tool to help you spot identity theft.
The real free credit report site (for those in the USA), annualcreditreport.com, is provided by government regulation (so those that don’t believe in regulation would maybe rather use one of the sites advertising “free” credit reports). But I suggest using the government provided reports and I would suggest spreading the requests out during the year (you get 3 a year, 1 from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies).
The site also has a large frequently asked question section including:
How do I request a “fraud alert” be placed on my file?
You have the right to ask that nationwide consumer credit reporting companies place “fraud alerts” in your file to let potential creditors and others know that you may be a victim of identity theft. A fraud alert can make it more difficult for someone to get credit in your name because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you. It also may delay your ability to obtain credit. You may place a fraud alert in your file by calling just one of the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies. As soon as that agency processes your fraud alert, it will notify the other two, which then also must place fraud alerts in your file.
Where can I find out more about credit reports, my rights as a consumer, the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the FACT Act?
Please visit www.ftc.gov/credit
Related: Credit Card Tips – Personal Finance Basics: Avoid Debt – Save Some of Each Raise – Personal Finance Basics: Long Term Disability Insurance
I strongly support Elizabeth Warren and strongly support her for to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She would do a great deal to improve the economy of the USA. And she would do a great deal to improve the life of tens or hundreds of millions of people. We have allowed a few people to bribe our elected officials to distort markets to damage hundreds of millions and provide huge gains for a few. We need to support capitalism not crooked elites breaking capitalism to favor their allies at the expense of the economy and those who want to benefit from free markets. It is very difficult to impede the greed fueled distortions that politicians put in place to break free markets and provide huge benefits to those who pay them. Elizabeth Warren is one of the few that is knowledgeable and skillful enough to reduce the damage those people cause the economy and everyone else.
Why I Support Elizabeth Warren and the CFPB
Nobody is entirely innocent; money’s promise is for most of us a siren’s call. And, as a nation, we’ve willfully scanted education in civic and financial literacy in schools at all levels. So guilt is not worth focusing on. We need instead a future practice of clear rules and tough oversight. And we need to remind ourselves that Adam Smith’s concept of an invisible hand did not contemplate that hand’s picking the pockets of the people whose individual decisions and actions, if the market works perfectly, let supply match demand.
There are few political appointments I care much about. They normally are so co-opted even if they have good ideas they can’t get anything done. Don Berwick is a great person to have lead health care reform. The system is so messed up I am skeptical he can actually get much done, but I also strongly support him.
Elizabeth Warren is excellent and wise enough to actually accomplish things even with those who will attempt to thwart and improvements in the financial system that move forward capitalism at the expense of a few nobles that are protected by political allies. I have no doubt those in power will still thwart most efforts to stop politically sanctioned distortion of markets to enrich a few people that then pay a portion of their gains to the politicians that let them ruin free markets for their own huge personal gains.
Very few political appointees make much difference. If Elizabeth Warren gets this position she will have a good chance and making a huge difference o the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people and the economy overall. That is true even though she will have to continually fight those politicians seeking to protect the anti-competitive benefits they have lavished upon those that pay them to enact policies that benefit them at the expense of everyone else.
Related: If you Can’t Explain it, You Can’t Sell It – Middle Class Families from 1970-2005 (webcast of Elizabeth Warren) – What the Financial Sector Did to Us – Politicians Again Raising Taxes On Your Children
Most people know living without health insurance is very risky (and shouldn’t be done). But people are much less aware of the importance of long term disability insurance. The census bureau estimates that you have a 20% chance you will be disabled in your lifetime. A disability can decrease your earning power and also can increase your expenses (to cope with your disability). In my opinion your emergency fund is best used for short term disability insurance.
One of the most important things you can do is be sure you have disability coverage. In the USA about 50% of the jobs provide coverage. If your job does not you should get insurance yourself. Many companies may not pay for disability insurance but may allow you to pay for it (this often can be the best option as the company can gain a better price than individuals but you have to check out the details). Also social security includes some disability insurance coverage but it is very limited. Relying on social security alone is not wise. For one thing it does not protect you from being unable to do your current job but will only pay benefits if you are unfit to do any job.
There are numerous factors to consider for disability insurance. Normally a long term disability insurance policy will pay 50-60% of your salary (be sure to check and see, and check if there is any cap). The terms of the policy will also determine how long you will be paid, being paid until at least 65 is what I would suggest – but some only pay for a limited number of years.
Often policies will offer pro-rated benefits if you earning power is reduced by a disability but you are still able to earn something. So you may have a policy that pay 60% of your original salary but if you make 50% of your previous salary then the payout is reduce to say 20%. So if you originally made $80,000 and now, due to a disability (not just losing your job), you could no longer do your job but could do one that paid less – say $40,000. You would then get your new salary of $40,000 + $16,000 in disability payments or $56,000.
Another detail you should check is whether the payments you will receive are indexed to inflation. In addition, make sure the policy is guaranteed renewable. You also want to buy from a reputable insurance company (check AM Best, Moody’s, Weiss rating agencies). It doesn’t help to have a guaranteed renewable policy if the insurance company goes out of business.
Another thing to consider is buying additional disability coverage. For example, if your company provides a 60% coverage policy it is often possible to purchase addition coverage (to provide additional benefits of 10% or 20% or more of your current salary).
A rough guide is disability insurance will cost 1-2% of the income replaced. For example, a policy replacing $50,000 per year of annual salary would cost about $1,000 per year. Of course, the older or sicker you are the higher the cost. Premiums are based on risk factors, so if you have health risks that will cost more. And, as age is a significant disability factor, the older you are the higher the cost will be.
Remember if you have disability insurance through work, and lose you job you need to get your own disability insurance. This is yet another reason to have an adequate emergency fund.
Related: Personal Finance Basics: Long-term Care Insurance – Personal Finance Basics: Health Insurance – How to Protect Your Financial Health – Life Happens: disability insurance
Gold and Silver at up dramatically in the last year. Food prices are up dramatically.
The World Bank Development Prospects Group shows food price changes Q1 2010 to Q1 2011
| Increase | |
| Maize (corn) | 74% |
| Wheat | 69% |
| Soybeans | 36% |
| Beef | 36% |
| Rice | -2% |
If food is 10% of your expenses and food overall has inflation of 30% that only increases your expenses 3%. If food is 50% of your income and goes up 30% that increases your expenses 15%. In the USA people spend about 10% disposable income on food (much of that though is really processing the food not the raw material). Spending in Japan on food is 19%, France 16%, China 33% and India 46%. 50% if what most of the people in the world spend. Those people are poor and don’t have the resources to pay more. This is why food prices are so critical. Governments fall from such rises in basic food prices. Also remember even in a country like the USA, where the average is 10% nearly 30% of people spend over 20% of disposable income on food. There are large variances not only between countries but within countries.
What matter most is local food prices, but global food prices impact the prices in countries. Though many governments subsidize food prices – when food costs more than 30% of people’s income I think not doing so (when prices rise dramatically) would be crazy. When food costs 5% the government really doesn’t need to be involved.
Inflation is a serious threat to economies in the next few years. Food inflation for non-rich countries is a huge problem now.
Related: Food and Energy Costs July 2008 – Food Price Inflation is Quite High – You Can Help Reduce Extreme Poverty – Creating a World Without Poverty – Ethanol: Science Based Solution or Special Interest Welfare
Food Price Watch by the World Bank
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USA consumers pay huge fees on debit cards not found in most other rich countries. Other countries provide debit cards with much cheaper fees than USA banks mandate now given their anti-competitive oligopolistic pricing power. I haven’t seen anyone (that isn’t in the pay of banks) arguing for keeping excessive fees in place. But there are lots of people being paid by the banks (including most likely, “your” representative).
Banks want a favor — at your expense
David Frum, special assistant to President George Bush, is exactly right.
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[banks] are lobbying hard to repeal the cap on debit card fees in advance of the July date when Dodd-Frank goes into effect… Congress is not swayed by arguments. It is swayed by clout — and on this issue, it is the banks who have the clout.
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Based on that experiment, economist Robert Shapiro of Sonecon estimates that about 56% of the value of reduced swipe fees will reach the final consumer. That’s the basis for his calculation of savings of $230 per household. That’s also the basis for his further calculation that reduced swipe fees will translate into a one-time gain of 250,000 new jobs.
The new Republican House majority appropriately mistrusts government regulation. But if the financial crisis taught us anything, it should have taught that financial regulation is different from other forms of regulation. Invisible charges imposed by a financial cartel is not my idea of a free market.
The caps were part of the huge bailout taxpayers gave banks and were meant to be a partial watering down of a few of the smaller favors their bought and paid for politicians had given them over the years (as “punishment” for their misdeeds).
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Earning more is an important and simple idea that is ignored far to often. Simple, doesn’t mean, easy, just easy to understand. This is something people should definitely consider in their personal financial planning.
There is a important caveat to remember, people earning a lot of money often have large financial problems and go bankrupt. Earning more if you borrow more than you earn and rely on ever increasing earnings can make you even more venerable than those earning less. A significant factor is how likely you are to replace your current earning if you need to find a new job.
There is also another concern to watch for – don’t become a slave to your desire to earn more. The reason to earn more is to improve your life long situation. If you sacrifice what you enjoy too much it becomes a bad trade off. Short term sacrifices may well be wise. But many people find themselves in decades long sacrifices to try and get ahead. This isn’t a good plan.
Making money online can be enjoyable and rewarding. However, it isn’t easy. I am putting more effort into this area and will be doing a great deal more in the next year. We will see how successful I am.
Related: Earn more money. It matters more than everything else combined. – 10 Jobs That Provide a Great Return on Investment – Earn More Money to buy luxuries (don’t go into debt) – High Expectations
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This is another article supporting my belief that long term bonds are not investments I want to take on now. The risks of inflation and low yields seem like a very bad combination.
Buffett Says Avoid Long-Term Bonds Tied to Eroding Dollar, quoting Warren Buffett:
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“I would much rather own businesses,” he said. “It’s very easy to take away the value of fixed-dollar investments.”
By “take away” he mean the government can undertake policies to “inflate” their way out of a budget mess. By undertaking policies that create inflation (drastically increasing the money supply, borrowing huge amounts of money, running huge trade deficits…) the country can devalue the currency, the US dollar in this case, and thus reduce the effective cost of the payments they have to make on long term bonds (because they pay back the loans with devalued, inflated, dollars). I believe he is right and long term USD bonds are a very risky (inflation risk) investing option today. Of course I have felt the same way for the last 5 years. I own very little in the way of bonds – I do own a bit of TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities), in my 401(k) – but stopped allocating money to that class in the last year.
Related: Bill Gross Warns Bond Investors (March 2010) – Bond Yields Stay Very Low, Treasury Yields Drop Even More – Who Will Buy All the USA’s Debt?
The biggest investing failing is not saving any money – so failing to invest. But once people actually save the next biggest issue I see is people confusing the investment risk of one investment in isolation from the investment risk of that investment within their portfolio.
It is not less risky to have your entire retirement in treasury bills than to have a portfolio of stocks, bonds, international stocks, treasury bills, REITs… This is because their are not just risk of an investment declining in value. There are inflation risks, taxation risks… In addition, right now markets are extremely distorted due to the years of bailouts to large banks by the central banks (where they are artificially keeping short term rates extremely low passing benefits to investment bankers and penalizing individual investors in treasury bills and other short term debt instruments). There is also safety (for long term investments – 10, 20, 30… years) in achieving higher returns to gain additional assets – increased savings provide additional safety.
Yes, developing markets are volatile and will go up and down a lot. No, it is not risky to put 5% of your retirement account in such investments if you have 0% now. I think it is much riskier to not have any real developing market exposure (granted even just having an S&P 500 index fund you have some – because lots of those companies are going to make a great deal in developing markets over the next 20 years).
I believe treating very long term investments (20, 30, 40… years) as though the month to month or even year to year volatility were of much interest leads people to invest far too conservatively and exacerbates the problem of not saving enough.
Now as the investment horizon shrinks it is increasing import to look at moving some of the portfolio into assets that are very stable (treasury bills, bank savings account…). Having 5 years of spending in such assets makes great sense to me. And the whole portfolio should be shifted to have a higher emphasis on preservation of capital and income (I like dividends stocks that have historically increased dividends yearly and are likely to continue). And the same time, even when you are retired, if you saved properly, a big part of your portfolio should still include assets that will be volatile and have good prospects for long term appreciation.
Related: books on investing – Where to Invest for Yield Today – Lazy Portfolios Seven-year Winning Streak (2009) – Fed Continues Wall Street Welfare (2008), now bankers pay themselves huge bonuses because the Fed transferred investment returns to too-big-to-fail-banks from retirees, and others, investing in t-bills.
I have posted about the need to save money while you are working numerous times. Here is a good article looking at the large number of people that have failed to do so and are now retiring.
Retiring Boomers Find 401(k) Plans Fall Short
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Vanguard long advised people to put 9% to 12% of their salaries—including the employer contribution—in their 401(k) plans. The current median amount that people contribute is 9%, counting the employer contribution, Vanguard says.
Recently, Vanguard has begun urging people to contribute 12% to 15%, including the employer contribution, because of the stock market’s weak returns and uncertainty about the future of Social Security and Medicare.
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Experts estimate Social Security will provide as much as 40% of pre-retirement income, or $35,080 a year for that median family. That leaves $39,465 needed from other sources. Most 401(k) accounts don’t come close to making up that gap.
The median 401(k) plan held $149,400, including plans from previous jobs, according to the Center for Retirement Research. To figure the annual income from that, analysts typically look at what the family would get from a fixed annuity. That $149,400 would generate just $9,073 a year for a couple, according to New York Life Insurance Co., the leading provider of such annuities— less than one-quarter of the $39,465 needed.
Just 8% of households approaching retirement have the $636,673 or more in their 401(k)s that would be needed to generate $39,465 a year.
Knowing exactly what is needed for retirement is difficult. But knowing what is a responsible amount is not. It is certainly no less than 8%, and is likely the 12-15% figure Vanguard recommends. If you start at 10% from the time you join the full time workforce (in your 20′s) then you have some flexibility you can see how thing look when you are 30, maybe 12% is sensible, maybe 15%, maybe 10%. If you fail to save for a decade however, you are likely to need to be at 15%, or higher.
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