You’ll often hear financial planners advising on how to “diversify your investment portfolio” to mitigate risks and build wealth through multiple avenues. There are many different ways to do this, but stocks and bonds are two common options. Stocks are defined as partial ownership or equity in a business or organization, while bonds are a …

Continue reading “Bonds vs. Stocks: What’s the Difference?”

10 years ago, Prescription for Wealth made its debut. This small book has stood the test of time, challenging the complex financial schemes of our day with simple truth. Later books, Winning Your Financial Game, Retirement Curveball and Building Sustainable Wealth expound on the principles explained, in a nutshell, in Prescription for Wealth. As simple …

Continue reading “Going back to the future”

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Jesus said it, and we believed it. Which means we really didn’t need the recent Rice University study done by economists John Diamond and George Zodrow. They proved the side effects of raising the marginal tax rate, increasing the capital gain tax rate, repealing the 20% pass-through deduction and dropping certain expensing provisions, including treating …

Continue reading ““The Poor You Will Always Have with You”…and What You Can Do About It”

The step-up in basis or stepped-up basis allows property and businesses to be passed to the next generation without a tax on the appreciation. Biden’s new tax plan depicts removing the step-up basis. Removal of the step-up basis will seriously jeopardize the financial legacy of many Americans.  Today on Wealth Talks, Tom and John discuss …

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Now that Biden is expected to roll back the gift allowance, the wealthy are even more gung-ho about owning participating whole life insurance (PWLI).  Here are just a few of the reasons why: Owning PWLI equalizes estate planning so that the estate assets can be evenly distributed to all the heirs without tax liability PWLI …

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Poverty has always existed and always will. Despite the “War on Poverty” (the most monetarily expensive war), poverty rates in America have been steadily on the rise. This should, perhaps, come as no surprise. Jesus Christ told us we would always have the poor among us, but that doesn’t mean we have to be one …

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As early a 460 B.C. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, condemned the use of opium except when it was useful as a medicine.  Over 100 years later Alexander the Great introduced opium to the people of Persia and India.  In the early 1500s the Portuguese initiated the concept of smoking opium and by the 1600s …

Continue reading “Drugs, Taxes and Your Personal Economy”

Recently we’ve had a few Indexed Universal Life policy contracts come across our desk for review. As part of our review process, we calculated the cost of insurance in these policies and compared it to the cost of insurance in a Whole Life product of our design. In today’s show, Tom and John look at …

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Indexed Universal Life (IUL) insurance is all the rave these days. The speculative component, though not guaranteed, is attractive to many consumers. While the commissions earned on these products are attractive to the agents. “They say” IUL is a better buy and Participating Whole Life Insurance (PWLI) costs too much. So, let’s look and see… …

Continue reading “The Cost of Life Insurance”