Who's Profiting From Your 401(k)?

 

CNBC.com Article: Who's Profiting From Your 401(k)?

Why investors have suffered below-market returns even as mutual fund management company owners enjoyed market-beating results.

In this election year, there's a lot of talk about how the middle class has been decimated by our economic woes. In a sobering study titled "[T]he lost decade of the Middle Class", Pew Research Center defines this beleaguered group as those with household incomes between $39,000 and $118,000.

According to Pew, since 2000 the middle class "has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some – but by no means all – of its characteristic faith in the future."

Their median income has fallen from $72,956 to $69,487.

Full Story:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48827909

Learn more at www.donaldjlester.com

Article: How Much Will It Cost You If Bush Tax Cuts End? A Lot

CNBC.com Article: How Much Will It Cost You If Bush Tax Cuts End? A Lot

Americans would shell out as much as $5,700 more a year if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire at the end of 2012, according to a new analysis that highlights the perils and political consequences of the nation's fiscal cliff.

Full Story:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48674247

Learn more about this....www.donaldjlester.com

The Historical Shift in Social Security.

The Nest Egg is Boken as reported by Fox News.

New retirees receiving less in Social Security than they paid in, marking historic shift.

People retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers than they will receive in benefits after they retire. It's a historic shift that will only get worse for future retirees, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
Previous generations got a much better bargain, mainly because payroll taxes were very low when Social Security was enacted in the 1930s and remained so for decades.
"For the early generations, it was an incredibly good deal," said Andrew Biggs, a former deputy Social Security commissioner who is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "The government gave you free money and getting free money is popular."
If you retired in 1960, you could expect to get back seven times more in benefits than you paid in Social Security taxes, and more if you were a low-income worker, as long you made it to age 78 for men and 81 for women.
As recently as 1985, workers at every income level could retire and expect to get more in benefits than they paid in Social Security taxes, though they didn't do quite as well as their parents and grandparents.
Not anymore.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/07/new-retirees-receiving-less-in-social-security-than-paid-in-marking-historic/#ixzz22yWt5aKh

Say Yes to Marriage, But Never to Joint Checking

Simple asset protection strategy.



CNBC.com Article: Say Yes to Marriage, But Never to Joint Checking

Newlyweds can mutually protect their credit scores by keeping their finances unentangled.

Full Story:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48307272

Learn more about asset protection strategies by contacting Donald J. Lester at 719.330.2618

Crack Shacks, Mansions, and Household Wealth

Dave Gonigam – July 23, 2012

• Are Canadians richer than Americans. Well, yes… but for how long?
• Professor Niall Ferguson pinpoints “the biggest trend in economics, and perhaps geopolitics, in our lifetime”
• Byron King on the “white sands” that will speed up a critical step in the mining of metals by 99%
• A Chinese gold scam that could drive investors toward physical metal… an honest, if bizarre, silver offering from a scammy U.S. company… the most vitriolic letter ever addressed to The 5… and more!

Here’s a Monday milestone: Your typical Canadian is now richer than your average American. On paper, at least.
“Over the past five years,” reports the Toronto Globe and Mail, “net worth per Canadian household has exceeded net worth per American household (total combined value of liquid and real estate assets minus debt) for the first time.”
The paper cites figures from Environics Analytics that say the average household net worth in Canada was $363,202 in 2011. That compares with a U.S. figure of $319,970. The greenback and the loonie are more or less at parity these days, so the numbers aren’t skewed by currency fluctuations.
But wait, you ask… Isn’t Canada in the midst of a housing bubble? Wouldn’t that skew the numbers?
If you plug the word “Canada” and then “housing” into Google, the first auto-fill suggestion that comes up is “bubble.” Before “market.” Before “price.”
The question is of more than passing interest to this editor, en route to Vancouver for this week’s Agora Financial Investment Symposium.
Vancouver is truly a lovely place. It is also one of the world’s most-expensive housing markets. This year, it supplanted Sydney as No. 2 on a list assembled by an outfit called Demographia; Hong Kong is still tops.
Indeed, Vancouver is the inspiration for a website called “Crack Shack or Mansion?” — in which you look at pictures of various homes and guess whether they’re crack shacks or a $1 million-plus properties.




This one’s a mansion, listed for $1,180,000
“Canadians hold more than twice as much real estate as Americans and, once mortgages are factored in, have almost four times as much remaining equity in their real estate,” the Globe and Mail story goes on.
The part about their equity is good… as long as prices hold up. Right?
To be sure, Vancouver is an outlier when it comes to Canadian real estate. Still, the average home price in Canada last month was C$369,339, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.
In examining whether such a figure is sustainable, it’s worth asking how it compares with median household income — which in 2010 was C$69,860.
Ouch… The average house price is 5.2 times median household income — rather more than the 2 or 3 times the personal finance experts would tell you is prudent.
At the peak of the U.S. housing bubble in 2006, the average home price was $246,500. Meanwhile, median household income was $48,201. That works out to a multiple of… whaddya know, 5.1 times.
Hmmm….

Read More at Agora Financial: http://5minforecast.agorafinancial.com/crack-shacks-mansions-and-household-wealth/


Learn more how Donald Lester can help you with your retirement planning...Call him at 719.785.7170

Driving an old car? You're not alone.

From CNBC.com

Getty Images Mechanic Harrison Garcia works on a Ford Mustang at Brake and Wheel Service Center in San Francisco, California.

Feel like you're driving an old car? You're not alone. In fact, the average age of vehicles in the U.S. has hit a new all-time high. Experian Automotive says the average age of the 245 million vehicles registered in the U.S. in the first quarter of this year was 11 years.

That's an increase of just over 2 months compared the first quarter of last year.

What's behind the increase? Part of it is because the recession and sluggish recovery forced many people to put off buying or trading-in for a new or used car. Another factor is the fact cars and trucks are built to run longer. That quality improvement picked up momentum in the early '90s. Now, many of those cars and trucks are 13 to 22 years old, and yes there are millions of them still on the road.

In fact, Experian says more than 52 million cars and trucks in America are 16 years or older. (Related: What models will become collectibles?)

Ford Runs Strong

In its analysis of vehicle registrations, Experian found more Ford Motor [F 10.01 --- UNCH (0) ] models on the road than other model. That shouldn't come as a surprise since the Ford F-Series truck has been the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for 30 straight years. According to Experian Automotive, here the top 4 brands of vehicles in operation in the U.S.:

Ford: 17.2%
Chevrolet: 15.8%
Toyota: 10.4%
Honda: 7.3%

The four most popular models on the road in the U.S., according to Experian Automotive, are:

Ford F-150: 3.4%
Honda Accord: 2.6%
Toyota Camry: 2.6%
Chevy Silverado: 2.0%

One final note: For all the attention that's been given to hybrid and electric vehicles over the last decade, they are just 0.9 percent of the vehicles in operation in the U.S. That works out to a little over 2 million alternatively powered vehicles.

—By CNBC’s Phil LeBeau

USA! USA! USA!, Were Number 5?

"Free fallin, now I am, free fallin..."~ Tom Petty

Excerpt from AgoraFinancial.com

Even the power elite recognizes something is amiss. Each year, the World Economic Forum — the outfit that holds an annual shindig in Davos, Switzerland — issues an annual ranking of the world’s countries and how competitive they are.
The standards are cut and dried: Are property rights protected? Are officials easily bribed? Are the courts independent? Is organized crime a problem?
The United States ranked No. 1 as recently as 2008. By last year, it had slipped to No. 5. And the overall rankings don’t tell the whole story:

 

http://5minforecast.agorafinancial.com/something-rotten-in-the-state-of-america/