Tag: financial services industrial complex

Life Insurance and the Elderly: Leveraged, Already-Bought Assets that Should Not be Wasted

I just caught the tail end of a Dave Ramsey segment (he of AM radio financial advice call-in show) during which Dave, hater of all things debt, recommended that a son tell his 80-something year old parents to surrender a life insurance policy that had a death benefit of $150k […]

Financial Advice for Normal Folks

Everyone should have access to financial advice, right? I think we can all agree on that — or at least we can agree that it would be a good thing if we all had some way to obtain financial advice. But the world in which we live does not offer […]

Friedman’s Law of the First Thing, as Applied to Investing: Market Caps

Investing, I’ve been known to say, is not, for most people, the key to financial health — probably not even in the Top 5 determinants of financial health (briefly: Numero Uno is savings rate, Numero Dos is making-a-living happiness, Numero Tres is having a feeling of currently being in control, Numero Cuatro is […]

Painting Yourself into a Corner, as Applied to Retirement Planning

One of the funnest, most difficult parts of my work is coming up with language to help clients understand concepts that tend towards the not-so-easily-understood side of things. Because, even though I often rail against the financial services industrial complex (the FSIC) for the jargon it uses, and for its […]