Posts by First Pacific Financial
Your Smart Phone is Disrupting Your Long-Term Retirement Planning
It is somewhat ironic to follow up a post about the benefits of smart phones with a post about the harm your smart phone is causing you. Not in the medical sense, but the harm mobile devices are causing by distracting from long-term retirement planning. A recent survey by Northwestern Mutual reveals that 3 in…
Read MoreSocial Security Goes Mobile
Social Security Goes Mobile Smart phone and tablet users now have access to a revamped Social Security Administration website. They retooled their site to cater to the growing population of internet users using smart phones. According to their study, 6% of their visitors were viewing the Social Security site on a smart phone, and that…
Read MoreLower Deficits
America’s budget deficit is ballooning out of control, right? Analysts are discovering something surprising: the U.S. government budget deficit this year and next appears to be shrinking. Goldman Sachs has issued a report which lowered fiscal 2013’s estimated red ink from $900 billion to $775 billion, or about 4.8% of total U.S. economic output. How…
Read MoreFinancial Prediction Fallacies
One of the more interesting myths in the investment world is that large financial institutions, with their access to mountains of data poured over by teams of staff economists, can determine where the markets are going and profit accordingly. Gullible investors believe this even though, every year, we can go back to the confident predictions…
Read MoreBehavioral Finance – On Your Best Behavior
Behavioral finance has become a focus for many academics in recent years. In fact, numerous colleges and universities are offering coursework on the study of human behavior in relation to money. It has grown in popularity due to the increasing discrepancy between investment returns and investor returns. Countless studies have pointed to investors earning less…
Read MoreCongress Delivers Clarity on Taxes
As the end of the 2012 approached, Americans did not know what tax bracket they would fall in for 2013. Investors were also in the dark for the future of dividend and capital gains tax rates. These uncertainties led us to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing taxes in both November and December.
Read MoreUS Consumer Confidence Rises
As retailers gear up for the holiday shopping season, they are likely to see some happy shoppers. US consumer confidence has reached its highest level since September 2007. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan reading for the October sentiment index reached 83.1, up from a previous level of 78.3. This reading surpassed economist’s expectations by a…
Read MoreWhat is QE3 and Does it Matter to You or the Economy?
On September 13, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed would undertake a new program to stimulate the U.S. economy. The move was immediately dubbed “QE3” by pundits and columnists. But what is it and how is QE3 likely to affect you and the rest of us? “QE,” as you probably know, stands…
Read MoreBuying vs. Renting
For people of a certain age who remember taking out a home mortgage at 15% to 18%, the astonishingly low rates that banks are charging today are a little hard to believe. The chart below, taken from statistics collected by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation for 15-year and 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, tells the story:…
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