What to Do With A Leftover 529 Plan

What to Do With A Leftover 529 Plan

Despite the burgeoning cost of higher education these days, some parents might still end up with unspent money in a 529 plan after their child has graduated from college. As you may know, if you withdraw the money for purposes other than for your child’s education, you have to pay taxes plus an additional 10%…
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Does Yesterday’s Market Drop Portend a Recession?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) experienced another jarring 800-point drop yesterday, roughly a 3% loss. The media attributes it to (1) the inversion of the yield curve and (2) the 0.1% decline in Germany’s GDP. Talk of an impending recession has ramped up. Most likely the questions on investors’ minds are “Is a recession…
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How Long Will The Next Recession Last?

Frequent readers of this blog know that I do not believe anyone can predict the future. So it might come as a surprise that, based on the title of this post, I appear to be doing just that. Well, I’m not. I’m just sharing some historical data to put business cycles in perspective. We are…
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The Power of Hindsight

Do you wish you had invested in Cisco when it went public in 1990? Or Microsoft in 1986? What about Qualcomm, which is up almost 10,000% since its inception in 1991 (just a bit higher than the S&P 500’s paltry 600% equivalent gain). I can’t tell you how many times I hear that regretful refrain…
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Worried About Social Security Going Broke?

Concerns about Social Security (SS) running out of money pop up from time to time in the financial media. Beyond the headlines there are a number of misconceptions regarding what that really means. In this post I’ll explain what could happen and what the consequences might be. The situation is a lot less dire than…
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The Ugly Way To Become Rich

There is no shortage of promoters of wealth-building schemes. Many start by writing books extolling secrets that they learned along the way to their own alleged success. If their fame from their books grows they often develop seminars and training classes designed to provide more secrets, tools, and motivation to help you become rich like…
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