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January 2013 Credit rating agencies (more formally known as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations or “NRSROs”) provide ratings which are used for a variety of [...]

November 2012 It is time to eliminate the Electoral College.  Voters prefer the popular vote, and the reason for adopting the Electoral College initially is [...]

November 2012 The so-called “fiscal cliff” dominates current American news.  Almost everyone agrees that the federal government deficit needs to be reduced, and the vast [...]

October 2012 Last week, the National Center for Policy Analysis issued a study that compared spending by Americans in the two decades before their classic [...]

October 2012 Current news reports and commentary provide daily insight into the challenges that will occur if Congress and the President are unable to reach [...]

October 2012 The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation founded in 1971 that is best known for its annual worldwide and regional meetings [...]

September 2012 Fidelity tried to help savers by offering a simple way of gauging whether they are on track to a secure retirement. The bottom [...]

August 2012 On August 2, the “Pathway to Job Creation through a Simpler, Fairer Tax Code Act of 2012” (H.R. 6169) passed the full House [...]

August 2012 Since the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on average increased the total number of medals awarded by [...]

August 2012 The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) proposed and the SEC approved FINRA Rule 2090 (Know Your Customer) and FINRA Rule 2111 (Suitability) as [...]

July 2012 It depends on how success is measured. If the total number of medals won is the metric used, the United States is the [...]

January 2012 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released a report entitled “United States Sustainability Report”.  The report is part of a series addressing certain [...]

May 2012 In 2003, in response to Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted Regulation G and Item 10(e) of Regulation S-K.  These regulations [...]

May 2012 CEO magazine released its eighth annual survey of the best and worst states in which to do business.  California managed to be rated [...]

May 2012 Young people are the casualties of Congress’s unwillingness to address Social Security. Assuming politicians can get agreement that something needs to done about [...]

April 2012 The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is paying much greater attention to economic cost-benefit analysis in its rule making activities.  Private concerns wishing to [...]

April 2012 With President Obama’s signature, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, also known as the JOBS Act, is now law.  The law raced through [...]

March 2012 In March 2012, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on TARP’s Capital Purchase Program (CPP).  The report described this Troubled Asset [...]

March 2012 One of the important financial questions facing retirees is whether they have sufficient retirement savings.  This is impacted by what one wants to [...]

February 2012 On the last day of January 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued its budget and spending projections for the federal government covering [...]

February 2012 The Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) has the statutory duty to conduct, supervise and coordinate audits and investigations [...]

January 2012 The expected significant change in the estate tax at the end of 2012 should cause most affluent persons to engage in estate planning.  [...]

November 2011 Accounting firm KPMG and the Financial Executives Institute sponsored a study of the complexity in U.S. financial reporting. Aptly entitled “Disclosure Overload and [...]

November 2011 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Section 1004 of the economic stimulus law) provides for a refundable tax credit known as [...]

September 2011   Undocumented workers in the United States received refundable tax credits totaling $4.2 billion in 2010, an amount which is dramatically higher than [...]

August 2011 The Federal Reserve made a rare promise to hold short-term interest rates near zero through at least the middle of 2013.  In so [...]

August 2010 Economists are known for their dry writing style. Consequently, International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports are difficult to read, and are largely ignored by [...]

July 2011 Behavioral economics and finance use social and emotional factors to understand the limits of rationality in making economic decisions.  A recent survey by [...]

July 2011 Serious disagreements exist as to how to “solve” the “debt crisis” prior to the August 2nd deadline. Actually, the debt is simply the [...]

May 2010 The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. The related Health Care [...]

401(k) Savings Calculator A 401(k) can be one of your best tools for creating a secure retirement. It provides you with two important advantages. First, [...]

Loan Amortization Enter your desired payment – and let us calculate your loan amount. Or, enter in the loan amount and we will calculate your [...]

This allocation calculator will take your age and risk tolerance and propose an asset allocation for retirement savings.      

Risk Tolerance Worksheet (Text for those without flash or javascript) This Risk Worksheet will ask a set of questions to give you a risk tolerance [...]

Is your brokerage or insurance company offering you a free or low cost 401(k) using using ‘Safe Harbor’ or SIMPLE provisions?  If so your ‘free’ [...]

April 2011 Last week, credit rating agency Standard & Poors changed its outlook on U.S. government debt to negative. The stock market had a bad [...]

March 2008 The U.S. federal government recently released “The Citizen’s Guide to the 2007 Financial Report of the United States Government”. This is the first [...]

March 2011 The Government Accountability Office (GAO) again reported that it “cannot render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, [...]

September 2010 There are plenty of ways to be thrifty. We do not mean to minimize Benjamin Franklin’s advice that “a penny saved is a [...]

March 2010 In the beginning of February, Moody’s Investors Service warned that the triple-A sovereign credit rating of the United States would come under pressure [...]

January 2011 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has long sought to impose rules requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to continue to offer equal treatment to [...]

December 2010 As with most things in life, a few mistakes can dominate the final results achieved. Here are the most expensive common retirement financial [...]

November 2010 In August 2010, we summarized an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that concluded the U.S. is broke. Last week the Government Accountability Office [...]

November 2010 The best-performing investment type varies from year to year, and is not easily predicted. For this reason, financial advisors uniformly suggest diversifying (or [...]

October 2010 On October 7, 2010, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) announced it will start to refuse registration for auditors based in jurisdictions [...]

October 2010 A little-known provision within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 contains a provision that could dramatically impact how [...]

October 2010 This summer, a pair of university professors released a study regarding the size of state government pension obligations, and possible solutions to the [...]

August 2008 In late July, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued proposed regulations that require plan fiduciaries to disclose plan- and investment-related information for [...]

August 2010 Issuers conducting private offerings of securities often rely on Regulation D as the exemption from the registration requirements of the federal Securities Act [...]

August 2011 A surprising call for additional government regulation occurs in a report entitled “The Unfinished Agenda”.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce states that Congress [...]

July 2010 The Department of Labor (DOL) issued “interim final” fee disclosure regulations that apply to ERISA pension plans, including most notably 401(k) plans. The [...]

July 2010 12b-1 fees compensate mutual funds for marketing and selling costs. These fees are primarily a means of paying brokers for selling “no-load” funds [...]

June 2007 Short selling is the practice of borrowing stock (usually from a broker-dealer or institutional investor), then selling it in anticipation that the stock [...]

June 2010 The “flash crash” on May 6, 2010 is the biggest one-day intraday decline in Dow Jones Industrial Average history. The “flash crash” saw [...]

June 2010 Ratings of debt instruments are an integral part of U.S. financial markets. Reliance on these ratings is increasing, but their reliability is pathetic. [...]

March 2010 Last week, the Department of Labor (DOL) proposed requiring 401(k) plan and IRA investment advisers to (i) disclose their fees and (ii) show [...]

January 2007 The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed new rules designed to limit investors who could participate in hedge funds and other [...]

October 2009 Starting in 2010, taxpayers at any income level can convert regular IRAs to Roth accounts. Roth accounts have easy-to-understand advantages and disadvantages. Roth [...]

June 2009   The economy is not likely to have as robust a recovery as economists’ current consensus view. This means that repair of personal [...]

May 2006 This month, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) changes to its Code of Arbitration [...]

March 2009 Last week, the American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL) and The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University [...]

September 2008  One of the differences between the presidential candidates is their tax policies. Current tax rates arise from two pieces of legislation supported by [...]

August 2010 A report issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided its assessment of the U.S. monetary crisis and related recession. This was the [...]

June 2011   Two different reports by reputable consulting firms each conclude that more than half of employers will eliminate or change their existing health [...]

July 2011 With unemployment rates stubbornly over 9%, U.S. employment is topmost on practically everyone’s mind.  Generally, the American economy is barely adding more jobs [...]

July 2009 Policies to address the U.S. use and supply of oil are among one of the most important economic and political issues of the [...]

June 2009 The value of residential real estate held by households totaled $22.5 trillion in 2007. By comparison, the market capitalization of domestic equities was [...]

June 2010 In its sixth annual report, the May/June 2010 edition of CEO Magazine reported the results of its survey of over 650 chief executive [...]

June 2010 Nevada is running another series of advertisements which attempt to woo California’s businesses to their state. Advertisements released this last week mock California [...]

May 2011 Chief Executive Magazine released its seventh annual survey of CEOs regarding the best and worst states in which to do business. For the [...]

May 2011 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke held the first-ever news conference by a Federal Reserve Chairman. The move was an obvious effort to calm [...]

April 2008 If regulators are able reach a “mutual recognition” agreement, it would mark a radical shift in how international markets are overseen. The Securities [...]

April 2011 Recently, governors in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida made headlines by rejecting plans to build high speed rail lines within their states. High speed [...]

March 2011 Listening to certain political commentaries, one is led to believe that the “rich” are getting richer, while the “poor” are getting poorer. These [...]

August 2007   The early Christian church identified seven sins as the root of evil. The sins were used as a teaching tool regarding recurring [...]

February 2011   On January 26, 2011, the FCC designated nine companies to act as database administrators for licensing television white space. The FCC noted [...]

January 2011 The federal deficit’s unsustainable levels have received significant media attention. Less attention has been paid to similar large problems the states face. However, [...]

March 2006   Effective January 1, 2006, a Roth 401(k) option is available.  This Roth 401(k) option does not have the income limitations that have [...]

June 2005   This is one of the most common retirement questions we get.  The answer is largely dependant on how much of your pre-retirement [...]