Showing posts with label Banks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Banks. Show all posts

Thursday, September 12, 2013

More news from Life Insurance Awareness Month (LIAM)

 More neat Facts for  LIAM

Over 75,000,000 families in the US rely on Life insurance for family protection
Are you inside that Circle of Protection or outside? If not inside Why not???

US Life Insurance Companies pay out $1.5 Billion every day in benefits!!
That's a close  second to  Social Security which pays out $1.9 Billion per day.

At least with Life insurance we know there are the assets to back up the full value of their future obligations.
Life Insurers have to have  over $100 in assets for each $100 in obligations
The banks FDIC Reserve have less than $5-10 in reserves for every $100 in insured Deposits!
The Federal Government has well over $17 Trillion in Deficit to guarantee or let me say back  up their obligations.

In the past 13 years almost 500 banks have gone bankrupt in the USA
In that same time only a handful of Insurance companies have needed to be taken over.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

"The Rule of 100" and Preserving and Growing Your Assets

Some of you  know about "The Rule of 100" but everyone should know it and understand how it works. Simply put this rule help you determine a smart allocation  strategy that helps protect your assets from excessive market risk. Protection from market risk is critical  as we age in order to  preserve our assets  for the second stage of our lives.  The  first stage of Financial Life is Asset Growth and Accumulation . This is followed  by the Asset Distribution Stage or Retirement Stage of Financial  Life. As we get older and unfortunately we all do, we need to transition from maximizing accumulation to the preservation  and distribution of our assets. Different types of professional specialize in helping plan and implement these different strategies.  Some people even think of this  as a three stage process. They group them into, Accumulation, Transition and Distribution or Retirement.

 The Risk we can safely tolerate needs to  drop  if we hope to properly preserve our assets for the retirement years.  A five year recession is not an absolute disaster when we are 35 and  have 30 or more years to make up for the downturns that WILL Happen. Notice I  said WILL and not May happen. On average we have 2-3 bad years every decade. We have 3-5 average years and 2-3 really good years. This trend is clearly shown in economic theory and actual history going back 100 years.

Not considering this in your financial plan is one of the major reasons people run out of assets in retirement.  The second  major reason people run out of money is simply not saving enough in the  earning years.  The best solution is to  learn and  benefit from THE RULE OF 100. The  rule states that  you subtract your current age from 100 and the answer represents the maximum percentage of your assets that should  be exposed to  market risk. As an  example a 55 year old should have no more than 45% of their assets exposed to market  risk. Some people have less market risk tolerance  and should have less exposure. As we age the formula means that we need to  further adjust our risk % allocation over  time. Using SAFE Money strategies gives us the opportunity to include Safe Money Products and still have up side potential growth that can  beat inflation  and allow us to keep up with the rising  Consumer Price Index (CPI).  Unfortunately a Bank doesn't allow  one to keep up with the rate of inflation. It has been 20 years or more  since banks have paid a decent rate of return to their depositors.  This means that you  have less buying power at the end of December than  you  had on January 1st. There are other forms of Safe Money Assets that  can  protect and grow your assets and still produce a reasonable Rate of Return.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Positive Economic News For A Change

The Associated Press wrote a news article today titled "Leading Indicators Rise For First Time in 5 Months" Unfortunately this was September data not October data but it is still good news. Deliveries and orders rose by a very modest 0.3% but an increase is still an increase. This shows the economy is trying to grow!! Lets compare that to July with a 0.7 drop and August with a 0.9% drop. However we will still be down between 3-4% for the year.

AP out of DC also had some serious economic news and it wasn't as positive as that from the NY report. They found that only 15 % of those surveyed believe the economy is moving in the right direction compared to the 28% who felt that way just a month ago. With all the Economic turmoil less than 60% are happy with what is happening in their own lives. Everyone from all levels of society are concerned with the economic developments. 1/2 are concerned about their mortgage and credit cards, 1/3 are concerned about keeping their jobs and 70% are concerned about their investments falling and the impact on things like their retirement, medical bills and college costs.

In spite of all the bad news or maybe because of it you need to take positive steps to minimize the impact on you! Protect yourself from any further drops in value. No this does not mean putting everything under your mattress. You need to look at products that do the following things. Protect your principal at all costs, Get guaranteed growth from at least some of your assets currently its possible for a 40year old to get a minimum of 6-7.2% per year increase in Income Account Value, Maintain the upside potential of making more when the economy starts to recover, Make sure you have a chance of beating inflation with your assets so you don't loose buying power over the long term.

We can help you achieve all of these things in you financial arena! Does that sound interesting?
How can we Help you? Get in touch with us or send an email.

website www.columbusfinancialplanningpros.com
e-mail polarisfinancialservices@gmail.com

Monday, August 4, 2008

Loans Without Banks

There are several internet site that help structture small to medium sized loans with the use of a bank. The concept is called "Peer to Peer Lending" This can be used for family loans or other network members to loan you money. Its an interesting concept! Some people can not get a bank loan and sometimes the bank rates are just too high to be realistic. These Peer to Peer loans can have competitive rates for the borrowers and improve on the money earned by the lender on the loan. There are almost certainly some risks as well that need to be taken into account. I do not know anyone who has ever tried these programs. I do know of business funding that has been done by Angel Investors. From a business standpoint I do know businesses that have used this informal Angel network to get operating funding or cash to expand when banks will not write the loans. I even used one almost 10 years ago when we were working to acquire a business.
You can learn more about the program through any of these three websites.
US.ZOPA.COM
PROSPER.COM
VIRGINMONEYUS.COM

Our website is
www.columbusfinancialplanningpros.com