New Strategy For College Aid Maximization

New Strategy For College Aid Maximization

The pandemic relief law that the federal government passed in December included some significant changes to the college financial aid application process. Here is a very brief summary of some of the key provisions together with some implications for families with children or grandchildren approaching college age. Most will go into effect on July 1,…
Read more

Whose Fault Is Inflation?

With mid-term elections just around the corner, the Washington blame game is heating up. Republicans are asserting that the upsurge in inflation we’ve been living with since the beginning of this year is all due to the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan that pumped billions of unnecessary dollars into the economy. Democrats counter that the inflation…
Read more

Evaluating Seniors For Decision Making Capability

Early in my financial planner career I worked for a firm with a 75-year old client who had become a recent widow. A phone scammer had gotten hold of her and was persuasive enough to convince her to send a hundred dollars in gift cards to an address in the Caribbean. That one indiscretion resulted…
Read more

How Bad Was The First Half Of 2022?

Pretty bad. I’m not referring to the war in Ukraine, or the surge in COVID infections, or supply chain disruptions, or the growing number of gun deaths in the U.S. I’m talking of course about the capital markets. The negative 21% performance of the S&P 500 during the six-month period ending on June 30th ranks…
Read more

Is A Recession Looming?

It must be really tough to be an economist right now. Ordinarily the data that feeds into their economic models is consistent enough to enable them to forecast economic downturns with better than 50% accuracy (although they almost never get the timing or the severity right). Today, though, it’s a different story. Economists are flatly…
Read more

Why Some People Make Bad Financial Decisions

When I was a teenager I was a fan of science fiction. I recall reading one story about an attempted takeover of the world by a bad guy using warrior robots. His nefarious plan was thwarted by the good guy who discovered a way to cause the robots to self-destruct. The solution involved feeding conflicting…
Read more