Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing As much of the nation's focus is on the soon-to-be-passed Stimulus Bill, and the tragic Buffalo plane crash, there's other news that bears notice. This week, corporations have rushed to take advantage of the opportunity to raise capital, in order to pay down their spiraling debts. They've done so by creating a raft of new high yield, low-rated bonds.
Conversation Starters... You need to talk. You need to talk money. You know it. But what you don't know is how to bring it up! How can you get your partner to listen to you and open up in turn? Here are a few tips not only on how to get a conversation started, but to also keep it going!
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Obesity I also read yesterday that one in five Americans aged 18-34 is obese! Yes, I have noticed the spread widening on Americans as we sidle up to yet our next buffet or super-sized fast food meal. I personally was in the Las Vegas audience last week when Karl Rove could hardly contain his chortling as he belittled the obesity epidemic we have in America. His slick one-liners rolled easily off his tongue mocking the attention and funds that President Obama’s stimulus plan allots to addressing one of America’s costliest and most debilitating ills.
Alex Rodriguez’s admission to steroid use from 2001-2003 yesterday was the latest example of tarnish and cheating and lying. Young? Not too young to cash the big checks! Stupid, yes, I’ll readily agree. Greedy? Check. Selfish? Surely. A hero? Not. They say he’ll be treated better because he was honest and admitted steroid use. Yet there wasn’t much of an apology was there?
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing If Barack Obama can defy the terrific odds of being raised by his grandmother instead of a nuclear family, graduate Harvard magna cum laude, become a community organizer in Chicago in 1985, serve Illinois as their Jr. Senator from 1996-2004, win their US Senate seat from 2005-2008, and later outsmart, outrun, and outfundraise Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic nominee, and ultimately win the prize of the United States of America's first black President, then we women can surely push past our resistance to learning about our money. By comparison...well there really IS no comparison, period.
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing Bloomberg's morning's news reported that of 1,300 Wall Street executives canvassed about their 2008 bonuses, or lack thereon, 36 per cent said they were disappointed in the amounts--expected more. Stop already! While I certainly know on my pulses that I have worked harder this year than in any other, I am a fee-only Certified Financial Planner; i.e., my compensation is a direct percentage of my clients' quarter end balances, so my "bonus" is, that I make more money when my clients do; conversely take a compensation haircut when their portfolios drop, as it should be.
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Politics Well I won't totally unpack the entire speech here, since I've written an entire article about it. Yet I will say that I believe the reason that the media jumped on the bandwagon almost immediately attesting that it wasn't a Home Run speech was that it contained a lot of references to lowly slaves, especially at the beginning and first half, and yes, I'm suggesting that perhaps some latent racism had a hard time celebrating the truth about the horrors that America's slaves endured.
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Politics Last Monday I sought and secured an apt with an acupuncturist seeking relief from excruciating leg and back pain. I’ve had some pain these past months, but Sunday it flared up in a new way--uber pain--and I needed relief. The highly trained and expert acupuncturist explained to me that in a perfectly healthy body oxygen and blood flow freely through our veins and arteries to feed our organs and muscles. Yet when blockages occur in our arteries and veins, the potential for disease erupts, often followed by symptoms; i.e., pain. Well, yes, I was definitely in the pain category!
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing The fear of becoming a bag lady is just that; a fear of losing everything in a heartbeat. This abject fear has generally been conjured up in terms of a woman becoming widowed or suddenly divorced. So enter being “Madoffed” as a new cause of a bag lady fear.
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing Hey all you smart mutual fund investors, listen up! Check your accounts on line now, or call your broker or investment company,to see if your fund issued any capital gains this month. That's right, even though your fund's value probably took a nose dive, there very well may have been trading in that fund throughout the year that could have resulted in a capital gain. Mutual funds distribute the bulk of such gains during December to their shareholders, so you COULD owe income tax on capital gains even though your fund is sporting a big fat loss, or even a mild-paunchy loss...
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing What's all this clatter you ask? Well, let's say you have held your favorite (or even your not-so-favorite) stock, bond or mutual fund for a while and the value has dropped a lot. You've been licking your wounds, whining to yourself or anyone who would listen, but hanging on "till it recovers", right? Well that could take some time so here's an idea in the meantime. Sell that investment (or investments) in the next 2 calendar days. Buy a SIMILAR investment the minute your sale proceeds are available, since you don't want to be "out of the market" these days...a substantial recovery could happen in 8 hours!
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing I congratulate all who have not sold out of their stock mutual funds, realizing that monies invested in the stock markets are there for the medium-to-long term goods and services that we will buy as we age. Yet I want to invite those who may have sold out of their stock mutual funds or stocks to begin buying back into the markets, perhaps utilizing a strategy called Dollar Cost Averaging, which is fancy language for investing systematically into the market on different days thereby attaining different purchase prices whose average has historically been favorable to simply choosing one particular day in which to invest (or sell, for that matter).
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing I, for one, have NO interest in zero percent return on my money. Yet this weeks' traunch of 4-week US Treasury bills paying ZERO percent sold out! Yes, you read correctly; people stormed the Treasury to have the US Government hold their money, period, paying out zero (or less, read on) interest.
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing What the media is writing about why the stock market is opening and closing at whatever level is pure guesswork, at best. Have you noticed that often the same circumstance or instance is listed and/or credited for the market's upturn AND downturn? Let's get one thing straight. The stock market is fueled by a collection of buyers and sellers. When there are more buyers than sellers, the market goes up and vice-versa. When investors act on their fear by selling, the markets go down. When investors act on their hope by buying the market goes up.
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Charity The cornucopia of plenty was ever so conspicuous this year, compared to previous year's that I'd taken pretty much for granted, since I've visited the Eritrean refugee camps in Africa this July where food and education were both in very short supply. These kids are looking for both, yet their experience is that neither food nor education are readily forthcoming. While I donated and distributed thousands of dollars of medical supplies, it was in connecting eye-to-eye, and heart-to-heart with these kids, that I reveled, receiving their smiles of gratitude.
I have been traveling so unaware of any local flyers as to exactly what time the sales will begin the day after Thanksgiving, but I'm guessing it'll be midnight this year. I've always thought Black Friday sounded too racist, so I prefer to call it Friday Fire Sales instead. You see, in addition to the generally accepted meaning of fire sales, we've been burnt this year in the stock and bond markets such that retailers are going to HAVE to induce us with some pretty special savings. What will it take to rouse you out of a deep sleep,haul yourself into your car and for those of use living in cold weather states, possibly have to clean the frost or snow off that same car, and...
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing So with the stock markets and real estate valuations sliding I remember the giddiness of the 33.36 per cent returns of US Stocks in 1997, followed by 28.58 per cent in 1998 and 21.04 per cent in 1999 as well as the 26.37 per cent return of Real Estate investments in 2000, followed by 13.93 per cent in 2001, 3.82 per cent in 2002, 37.13 per cent in 2003, 31.58 per cent in 2004, 12.16 per cent in 2005 and finally 35.06 per cent in 2006. You don't see those numbers being touted these days do you? Yet we all experienced and benefited by them, didn't we?
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Science NASA launched spaceship Endeavour Friday night at 7:55pm EST and I was in Cape Canaveral, Florida to see it! It certainly did give me perspective looking out several thousand miles, seeing the ball of light called Endeavour slowly evaporate into outer space. We all bade the seven NASA astronauts "safe travels" and "come home safe"...those were the uniform wishes from all those gathered.
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Investing We already recognize that we won't work at a "job" for 40 years, receive a pension and a gold watch and live happily ever after, like some of our parents and grandparents. Yet what are we doing about it? We will have on average 7 careers during which we will be responsible for our own retirement savings. 401(k) plans are plans that were created to be portable, so they could move with us, from job to job, career to career. Yet, guess what? We do have to fund them!
Expert Author: Debra L. Morrison | Category: Motivation It's a great first day of the rest of our "less-divided", less alienated lives as Americans. Yes, I know we will always have our share of ideological differences, and all Black Americans don't think like all other Black Americans any more than Hillary supporters would be Palin supporters. Yet we have hurdled a limiting belief or at least set a new example that we can be governed by, and proud of a Commander in Chief who is other than a white male in these United States of America.
