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Slick TV ads often make financial planning and wealth management sound simple, but it’s usually not. Managing wealth requires knowing a lot about highly technical topics, like taxes, government regulations, and finance as well as history, psychology and how to communicate with loved ones about sensitive issues. This article highlights some of the knowledge needed to manage wealth and why it’s often so daunting without the help of an independent personal financial advisor who is familiar with your situation.
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Understanding The Federal Reserve Mandate To End Inflation
The Federal Reserve System, the nation’s central bank, has a dual mandate to pursue maximum employment and maintain price stability. These two priorities are currently treated equally, but that was not always the case. In fact, the Fed’s bias toward maximizing employment was a critical driver of the stagflation that plagued the U.S. in the late 1960s and 1970s. Recognizing the need to balance price stability and maximum employment, in 1977, Congress revised the Federal Reserve Act.
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Fed Governor Kugler Details Inflation And Economic Outlook
The 12-month inflation rate, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, was 2.6% in December, down from its peak of 7.1% in June 2022, and the six-month rate for PCE inflation was even lower, at 2%, which is the target rate set by the Federal Reserve.
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Why Rates May Not Be Cut Until June
The cost of a loan to buy a home, car, college education, and achieve the American Dream is staying the same for now. As expected, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank did not lower loan rates following the Fed’s Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024, policy meeting.
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Practical Suggestions For Achieving Your 2024 Resolutions
New Year’s resolutions usually fail because they‘re often too hard to achieve. After six months, only 10% of people who make resolutions achieve them or remain committed to them, , according to a study by Dr. Mark Griffiths, a Chartered Psychologist and Distinguished Professor of Behavioral Addiction at the Nottingham Trent University. What can you do to make financial, medical, or other personal resolutions more likely to be achieved?
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A Sign Of Progress In Solving U.S. Economic Problems
The Federal Reserve appears to be pulling off a feat most experts did not believe it could: ending its aggressive inflation-fighting campaign of 11 interest rate hikes without tipping the U.S. economy into a recession.
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Fed Keeps Rates Unchanged; Expects Easing In 2024
To promote transparency and free markets, the Federal Reserve System began publishing the opinions of the 19 U.S. central bankers that decide interest rate policy.
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Have You Logged Into Your Social Security Account?
Have you logged in to your Social Security account? Creating an online account at SSA.gov is an important first step in understanding your retirement income situation. However, only about 60 million of the 160 million individuals in the U.S. labor force who have Social Security accounts have created a way to access the Social Security Administration’s website.
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The Great Fake Out Of 2023 Is Poised To Extend Into 2024
All year long, the economy and stock prices have fooled experts and consumers, outperforming expectations month after month.
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Test Your Financial Planning IQ
The five questions below are a challenge meant to allow you to assess your knowledge of investing, tax and financial planning. If you have been following our news stream, this quiz draws on familiar ground. The answers are below.
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Planning Briefs
Feeling Stressed About Money? You’re Not Alone
Published Wednesday, June 8, 2022 at: 7:55 AM EDT
If you’re feeling stressed about inflation, the War in Ukraine, Covid-19 subvariants, you’re not alone.
“Amid historic inflation spike and geopolitical strife, money and economic stress is mounting,” according to the latest results of a poll by the American Psychological Association (APA) and The Harris Poll. “These more recent findings were alarming,” according to APA. “Stress about money is the highest recorded since 2015.”
More adults rate inflation and issues related to the invasion of Ukraine as stressors than any other issue asked about since the Stress in AmericaTM survey began in 2007. Top sources of stress cited by those surveyed were rising gas, energy, grocery, and everyday expenses, followed by supply chain issues and global uncertainty.
Investing is an emotional experience as well as financial. Even if you objectively know you have more than enough money to last the rest of your life, times of high-anxiety can test your ability to tolerate risk and stick with your long term plan.
Even if you are not a good fit as a client, as a trusted source of financial, tax, and investment planning solutions, it would be a privilege to point you to a resource that might be able to help you, if you’re feeling stressed over the economy and your personal financial situation. We’re here to help.
The Federal Reserve raised lending rates by a half-point on May 4 and plans two more half-point rate hikes this summer, on June 15 and July 27 and may impose yet another half-point hike on September 21. The Fed’s power to change rates is a blunt instrument, a crude rudder on the world’s largest economic system. So, the Fed historically raises lending rates in quarter-point increments.
By stacking half-point hikes one after another, the Fed is hoping to convince consumers inflation will not become a long-term problem. But will the Fed raise rates too much and tip the economy into recession?
The latest data on the economy indicate that the Fed just might be able to engineer a soft landing in which it would hike lending rates just enough to slow economic growth but not so much that it causes the economy to shrink.
New-job formation in May was better than expected. Even after the Fed announced that it planned a series of half point hikes, business created more new jobs than predicted. The latest inflation data showed that inflation slowed for the first time in about 18 months.
Meanwhile, purchasing activity at large service sector companies declined in May. The service sector accounts for 89% of U.S. economic growth and it was boiling hot at the end of 2021 but has now declined to a level in line with its historic norm. The data give reason to believe that the Fed could indeed stamp out inflation without causing a recession, but it’s far from clear.
The pandemic has made America’s labor force smaller. People around retirement age – age 62 to 70 -- left the workforce during the pandemic, according to data from independent economist Fritz Meyer, and many are unlikely to return to work. Fewer workers puts pressure on wages and could result in a wage-price spiral in which inflation expectations lead to demand for higher wages, which drives up labor costs and prices.
With the series of rate hikes coming up, economic and stock market uncertainty and a long, hot summer are in the forecast. In this period of high anxiety
The stock market is not a fan of economic drama. As what may be a long, hot summer of 2022 got underway, the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index closed this Friday at 4,108.54.
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