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It’s open enrollment season, but if you are like most people, you will probably default to what you did last year. That’s a shame, because spending some time with your options can help you save money. Health Insurance: For the 151 million Americans, who participate in employer-sponsored health insurance plans, there is some good news: the pace of premium increases is slowing down.
Don’t Spend that $4K Tax Raise Just Yet…
The Senate’s passage (51-49) of the budget blueprint last week paves the way for Republicans plan to tinker with the tax code with just GOP votes, which means that tax negotiations have entered a new phase. Last week, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers argued thatPresident Trump's tax plan, which aims to reduce the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, would boost the average American family’s income by $4,000 under . Critics, including former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, questioned the $4K promise.
Lessons of the 1987 Stock Market Crash
Is Dow 23,000 a reason to celebrate or a warning signal of a stock market correction, or even worse, a crash? Perhaps it's a little bit of both. The International Monetary Fund recently upgraded its global growth projections, but also issued a caveat, noting that the economic bounce back was breeding “complacency,” that was “spawning financial excesses...While the waters seem calm, vulnerabilities are building under the surface [and] if left unattended, these could derail the global recovery.” Amazingly, these words could have been the exact same warning from ten or thirty years ago.
Do Investors Care about Anything?
An administration in a seemingly constant state of chaos, escalating threats with North Korea, uncertainty over Iran, the potential unwinding of NAFTA, the dismantling of key components of the Affordable Care Act…and stock markets continue to rise. The MSCI World Index of large and mid-cap stocks from 23 countries hit an all-time high on Friday, as stock indexes in the US, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany, the UK and New Zealand all reached multiyear or record highs last week.
Behavioral Economics or Why We’re Bad Investors
The 2017 Nobel economics prize has been awarded to Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago for research on behavioral economics, which shows how our emotions can impact economic decision-making, as well as our investment performance. Thaler’s body of work has built on that of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who forty years ago showed the ways in which the human mind systematically erred, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations.
September Jobs Report Needs an Asterisk
Hurricanes Irma and Harvey blew across the labor market, as employers shed 33,000 jobs in September. Yes, it was the first negative reading on payrolls in seven years, but until we have the subsequent few months’ reports, it’s hard to read too much into the results. (As a note, Puerto Rico is NOT included in the BLS report.) The Labor Department said that the storms likely contributed to “a sharp employment decline in food services and drinking places (-105K) and below-trend growth in some other industries.”
Republican Tax Plan: How Does it Affect ME?
Fun with FAFSA
Forget the goblins of Halloween or even the fact that many of the big stock market crashes occur during the month. Now there is yet another reason to dread the spooky month of October—it’s time to complete the dreaded the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA form. Of course I am only slightly exaggerating, but as of October 1, families will be able to start the process of applying for college funding for students attending school in academic year 2018-2019. FAFSA is the gateway document because it is used to determine how much students and their families will receive in terms of college grants, scholarships and loans.
Caregivers Need Care
Non-professional family caregivers shoulder a huge burden. According to research from the Transamerica Institute, many “are providing care at their own risk.” Across a diverse population, 55 percent of respondents “say that their own health is taking a back seat to the health of their care recipient,” while a whopping 69 percent gave “little or no consideration to their own financial situation when deciding to become a caregiver.” While the vast majority of caregivers (87 percent) are caring for a family member, the demographic breakdown of the group is changing: 53 percent are women and 47 percent are men, spread across a variety of age groups and income levels.
Republican Tax Plan: 12 Questions
Senate Republicans are expected to unveil their tax plan this week and while we don’t yet know the details, the rumors are that there will be $1.5 trillion in tax cuts over the 10-year budget window. Even days before the announcement, lawmakers are divided on some key issues. In a surprise move, Republicans are reportedly considering maintaining the top income tax bracket of 39.6 percent, which applies to ordinary income above $470K for married filing jointly (MFJ) and $418,400 for single filers. Earlier this month, the President said, “the rich will not be gaining at all with this plan…the wealthy will be pretty much where they are…If they have to go higher, they’ll go higher, frankly.”