It’s a tough sell to recommend a financial book as summer reading, but the following will not feel at all like homework. I have interviewed these authors on my podcast, “Better Off”, so feel free to listen for a preview. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Wall Street
Read MoreBy now you have seen the headlines, but to understand the full impact of the Senate Health Care bill (Better Care Reconciliation Act), here is a Q&A that dives into some of the numbers of the current version of the plan. What is Medicaid? Medicaid is the country’s largest government health care program, covering about 20 percent (74 million) of all Americans, including:
Read MoreAmerican consumers will soon have an easier time: they will shop at either Amazon or Wal-Mart. That’s overstating the situation, but after Amazon announced that it was buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion and Wal-Mart (which last year bought fledging Amazon competitor Jet.com for $3.3 billion), said it had purchased online men’s retailer Bonobos for $310 million, the retail landscape shifted once again. Both transactions signify that to succeed, companies will need robust digital as well as a brick and mortar beachheads. Whenever big deals are announced, it can make you feel like there are going to be three or four companies left in each sector. In the past, there have always been cycles of expansion and consolidation and just as big conglomerates were created, they could also be pared down.
Read MoreIt’s wedding season and as thousands of happy couples prepare to take vows, just a fraction will spend time contemplating the end of their relationships. Let’s face it: signing a pre-nuptial agreement (“prenup”) is the most unromantic engagement or wedding gift ever. A prenup is a contract that outlines how a couple would split their financial lives in the event that the relationship does not work out. While most of us may think of a pre-nup as something for the very rich, after hearing about disastrous divorces and the financial horror stories associated with them, it’s clear that many more couples might benefit from the process that forces them to outline what they bring into the marriage, how they might split up assets accumulated during the marriage (marital property), including a home, and how the couple intends to manage family gifts or an inheritance.
Read MoreLast week, House lawmakers passed a bill that threw consumers under the bus. The Financial Choice Act would gut the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 by giving the president the power to fire the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at any time for any -- or no -- reason. It would also provide Congress with sweeping power over the CFPB's budget, which means that lawmakers could defund the agency entirely. That’s a shame, because in the six years since the CFPB was established, it has provided nearly $12 billion in relief for more than 29 million consumers. The CFPB was created out of Dodd Frank in order to create a single point of accountability for enforcing federal consumer financial laws and protecting consumers in the financial marketplace. The agency’s main goals are to:
Read MoreWhile most Americans were glued to former FBI Director James Comey’s testimonybefore Congress last week, two financial regulatory measures dropped below the radar. House lawmakers passed a bill that would gut the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010. If passed under its current form, the Financial Choice Act would give the president the power to fire the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at any time for any -- or no -- reason. It would also give Congress power over the CFPB's budget, which means that lawmakers could defund the agency entirely. That’s a shame, because in the near six years since the CFPB was established, it has provided over $12 billion in relief for millions of consumers.
Read MoreWith the labor market slowing down, will the Federal Reserve raise interest rates at its next policy meeting in two weeks? That was the big question after the Labor Department reported that the economy added a disappointing 138,000 jobs in May, worse than the 185,000 analysts had expected. Additionally, the previous two months were revised lower by 66,000, putting the three month average at just 121,000. In the first five months of 2017, the economy has seen average monthly job creation of 162,000, down from 189,000 in 2016, and 226,000 in 2015.
Read MoreBidding wars, no contingencies and frustrated buyers...the housing market is heating up! Existing home sales have jumped to their highest level since early 2007 and new home sale activity has been equally as brisk. Additionally, nearly a decade after the housing market peaked, foreclosure filings, which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, dropped to the lowest level since November 2005, according to ATTOM Data Solutions.
Read MoreMillennials are not as financially screwed as previously thought. The youngest among them are receiving the best graduation gift ever: a good paying job. That's welcome relief to those who comprise the generation that is defined as being born between 1980 and 2000, who have long complained that their incomes were depressed and they were so burdened by student loan debt, that they were forced to live with their parents and would never be able to fund retirement, let alone buy a home. The tide appears to be turning: the average base pay for college grads is up 3 percent this year to $49,785, according to executive-search firm Korn/Ferry International.
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