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Financial Impact Factor Radio: On the Radio with Bob Harris

credit, Dave Kittredge, debt, homeownership, mortgages, Paul Petillo, personal finance, real estate, retirement No Responses »

Apr 102012

In the Austrian school of economics, which was founded in 1871 with the publication of Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics, the never before mention of self-interest was developed for the first time, upending the German school of economic thought. Menger, along with his cohorts William Stanley Jevons and Leon Walras, developed a marginalist revolution in economic analysis. In his book, Menger argued that economic analysis is universally applicable and that the appropriate unit of analysis is man and his choices. These choices, he wrote, are determined by individual subjective preferences and the margin on which decisions are made.

For many of us, the idea of economic competition takes place in markets when the meeting grounds of intending suppliers and buyers join together in a transaction. Typically, a few sellers compete to attract favorable offers from prospective buyers. Similarly, intending buyers compete to obtain good offers from suppliers. When a contract is concluded, the buyer and seller exchange property rights in a good, service, or asset. Everyone interacts voluntarily, motivated by self-interest.

Today on the show we are joined by Bob Harris, a man who has exploited the concept of competition with his previous project Lending Tree, where he made famous the tagline; “When banks compete, you win”. Now he has taken that thinking, that spirit of competition to a new, more micro level, suggesting that the competition between utilities for your business is something you should consider. As so WhiteFence.com was born.

Listen to Financial Impact Factor Radio with your hosts:
Paul Petillo of Target2025.com and BlueCollarDollar.com,
Dave Kittredge of FinancialFootprint.com and Neil Plein of InvestnRetire.com

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 04.06.12

401(k), annuities, Dave Kittredge, financial impact factor, insurance, Neil Plein, Paul Petillo, personal finance, risk No Responses »

Apr 062012

The other day I was invited by a friend of mine Gretchen Peterson, a rather talented artist and founder of Lemonwoodcourt.com to attend a meeting of the Toastmasters. For those of you who have never been to one of these gatherings, the group critiques the delivery of the spoken word in the hopes of helping its members overcome the daunting task of speaking in public. After a member gives a prepared speech on the subject of their choice, the group gives their members the opportunity to give an ad hoc speech on the topic of choice for that particular day. The topic for this meeting was dreaming. As I sat and listened to the fledgling toastmasters offer their take on what this was, I couldn’t help but think that dreaming is something more, something darker.

One woman suggested that she had dreamt about winning the lottery, one shared the dream of her daughter to become a ballerina, another suggested that simply determining whether one was awake or asleep added context to the dream. For some reason, perhaps due to my years of writing about the subject of money, I began to think that the thought that dreaming was just some sort of manifestation of what worried them. Is the dream of more money simply a concern about their job or making ends meet? Was dreaming about what your children might become a worry that that life might not turn out the way they had hoped or you had wished? Was trying to define waking and sleeping as two different events the worry that we might not be able to tell the difference?

We dream of retirement. Or do we worry about retirement? We dream of owning a home. Or is really the worry that we might not be able to afford one or keep the one we have? We dream about the future. Or do we worry about something we have only fleeting control of?

So today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio we confront those worries and talk about a product designed to help with those fears: the annuity.

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