Financial Impact Factor Radio

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 04.13.12

admin — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:46:48 +0000

Today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio we welcome Phil Davis of Phil’s Stock World to the show to explain what is essentially another language and something we have yet to discuss on the show: how to use options, puts and calls in our investment toolbox.

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: On the Radio with Bob Harris

admin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:58:15 +0000

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.

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 04.06.12

admin — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:17:37 +0000

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.

Listen to internet radio with Financial Impact Factor Radio on Blog Talk Radio

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 04.02.12

admin — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:22:45 +0000

This episode of Financial Impact Factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Neil Plein discusses the topic of TIPS and Series I Bonds with Professor Zvi Bodie as the portfolio option that makes the most sense for retirement investors – at least in his opinion. This conversation answers the question that is often not asked: does inflation matter?

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 03.26.12

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:15:00 +0000

How do we get beyond the concept of funding our losing positions and selling off our winning ones in an effort to adjust our portfolios? Today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Neil Plein we discuss the delicate magic of portfolio rebalancing.

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 03.22.12

admin — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:07:59 +0000

On today’s Financial Impact Factor Radio show we discuss retirement calculators. Are they worth the effort? Do they allow you to build a future portrait that isn’t realistic or even possible? Should you bother?

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 03.19.12

admin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:10:13 +0000

With the first weekend of March Madness completed, the annual rite of basketball has narrowed the field to sixteen teams. Now this is not a sports show so we won’t discuss the games past of future. It isn’t about bragging, even if I ended the four days of basketball sitting in the number two spot. It isn’t about whether this single elimination tournament is the best way to determine who is the best in the nation. But I couldn’t help but wonder how similar this whole event is to investing. While college basketball is still played on the court, it is managed from the sidelines. In truth, you might think it is the talent that gets wins but it is actually how that talent is directed. So is the fate of the college basketball team like that of the mutual fund, dependent on the skills of the manager and not the players they use to get the win?

Today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Neil Plein we discuss why we look to winners and often try to rethink our plans when we hear of how our cohorts may have done.

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 03.12.12

admin — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:12:48 +0000

While we have the free will to invest, the ability to chose how much and where to invest and yet if we break it down into two groups, there are those that do and those that don’t. The divide is almost evenly split. Is that because even with those freedoms, we feel trapped?

It has been said that human consciousness is our greatest evolutionary achievement, the ability to perform what would otherwise be complex behaviors without so much as thinking about them. These are our habits. This ability enables us to economize our activities, saving what would otherwise consume our brains with the mundane.

One of the problems we face is how to change bad habits once they are ingrained in our heads. More than biases, these habits are a result of the narrative we tell ourselves. The trouble is or should I say begins with what we should do with our investments. What mental arguments should we make to even attempt to invest? The narrative has to be something more than: “you should”.

Once we begin or decide that we should invest, another function of the brain kicks in: creativity. Many of us look to the genius of others to guide them because we feel as though creativity is a gift, not an acquired skill. Is this where we fail in our retirement plans? I mean, we know that some of us will do good, others not so good and we’ll view our success on that of others. How do we get investors to focus on their own narrative and not that of our peer group?

Today on the Financial Impact factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Neil Plein we discuss how to wrap our heads around our plans to retire, a need to invest and our tendency to listen to our bad habits first.

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 03.09.12

admin — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:15:21 +0000

Most of us remember only the first two rules of fight club: “The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.” Our guest on the Financial Impact Factor with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Neil Plein ignores those rules. I want to welcome Ron Delegge, the editor of ETFGuide.com, former investment advisor and author of “Gents with no Cents”.

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

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 03.05.12

admin — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:11:53 +0000

Last week I received a letter in the mail from the bank that holds my mortgage that would make most mortgage holders think twice. It was the offer of life insurance. My bank might think there are good reasons for offering this product that is different that many of the other types of insurance offered with these types of loans. For instance, PMI is private mortgage insurance the bank makes you buy if you are putting less than 20% down on a mortgage. The sole beneficiary in this instance is the lender, who knows that if you are going to default, this riskier loan covers their interest in the transaction. Known as PMI, its cost has begun to weigh on borrowers who find their loans underwater. Once you pass 78% mark because the value of your house compared to the amount of your initial downpayment, you can cancel the policy.

There is also mortgage insurance which for some borrowers seems like a good option as well. Essentially the lure of this product is to pay-off the mortgage in the event of your death. The insurer doesn’t pay you directly instead writing a check directly to the mortgage company or lender.

The letter I received offered a term policy that would last until I turned 80 years old, which is about 26 years from now. Like all insurance policies it plays on your fears and comes at a time when the typical term policy is about to expire if you bought insurance in your thirties, which is typically the time when most folks consider coverage. But it isn’t cheap. In fact, this sort of policy has a seven year flat rate, just a few medical questions without an exam and of course the tug-on-your-heart-strings assurance that your loved ones will be taken care of.

So today I thought we’d talk about late in life insurance coverage and whether we should consider it.

Listen to Financial Impact Factor Radio with your hosts:
Paul Petillo of Target2025.com/BlueCollarDollar.com and Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng of FinancialFootprint.com

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 03.02.12

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:50:00 +0000

Today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio we are joined by Darwin Abrahamson, CEO of Invest n Retire and Neil Plein VP of Marketing and Sales. Mr. Abrahamson has patented a technology that allows the use of exchange traded funds in your retirement plan to allow you to achieve a future you may not have known possible.

Listen to Financial Impact Factor Radio with your hosts:
Paul Petillo of Target2025.com/BlueCollarDollar.com and Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng of FinancialFootprint.com

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 02.27.12

admin — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:09:09 +0000

Perhaps one of the most difficult topics to write about is personal finance. It wasn’t always so. In fact, personal finance was the domain of the beginner, the entry level of money management. Now those naysayers are the very ones questioning what they didi, where they may have gone wrong and how to fix it while saving face.

Jonathan Stroud, British fantasy writer once asked: “Can you define “plan” as “a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance”? If so, it was a very good plan.” Of course he wasn’t referring to personal finance or investing. Yet he sure could have been. We can’t even agree on the best plan or even a good definition of it. Arthur Brisbane the Public Editor of the New York Times offered this observation in the Sunday OpEd, “What do you do when you are told you are wrong 14,000 times a year?” Of course he was referring to the fact-checking process and the continual heads-up offered by readers of what he calls the most scrutinized newspaper in the world. We are our own personal finance fact checkers.

Martin Luther King Jr. thought property had “no personal being”. Churchill believed that man will be what he must “in spite of personal consequences”. Confucious weighed in on how to unlock the door to personal excellence and Gandhi rebutted that “It can be done only by God’s grace”. Hemingway advised us to “Forget your personal tragedy” while Margaret Thatcher saw the ability to do what is right as the height of personal satisfaction. Marcus Aurelius perhaps summed up what is personal when he suggested that “The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.”

Today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng we are joined by Erin Arvedlund, personal finance columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her “Your Money” column debuted in 2011. And she comes with a great deal of street cred: financial journalist who has written for Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, Moscow Times, The New York Times, TheStreet.com and Portfolio.com. This interview hopes to give you some direction on where to begin, how to stay with your plan and with any luck plot a new and steadier course for yourself.

Listen to Financial Impact Factor Radio with your hosts:
Paul Petillo of Target2025.com/BlueCollarDollar.com and Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng of FinancialFootprint.com

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 02.24.12

admin — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:44:44 +0000

Today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng we discussed the implication of gas prices on your personal finances.

Listen to Financial Impact Factor Radio with your hosts:
Paul Petillo of Target2025.com/BlueCollarDollar.com and Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng of FinancialFootprint.com

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 02.20.12

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:17:21 +0000

Henry Miller once suggested: “It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.” Nothing quite exhibits that thinking better than the latest reports that money has been flowing back into equity mutual funds as the markets head towards their all-time highs, as if there were little to consider in the world.

So today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng we discuss why this is happening, if it is good or bad and whether you can do anything about where the herd wants to take the markets. So this led us to a discuss about mortgages, why we aren’t responding to all of the information surrounding the apparent affordability of homes as compared to incomes and if it is worth the effort. The banking industry wants a herd. But you are resisting and they can’t figure out why.

Listen to Financial Impact Factor Radio with your hosts:
Paul Petillo of Target2025.com/BlueCollarDollar.com and Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng of FinancialFootprint.com

Financial Impact Factor Radio: 02.14.12

admin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:42:07 +0000

When we look back on the science of the brain, we find a 400-year history of looking at this organ as a machine, each section performing a mental function based on a single location. Then we saw it as a computer, hard wired with critical functions and circuitry that could change only within a window of opportunity, a time when some neuroscientists believe the brain had its most pliable moment, a plasticity if you will. As we aged, these moments became less frequent as we believed we are who we are and changing the direction of where we are going was much more infrequent. If you have ever attempted to learn a new language for instance, or wanted to master a musical instrument later in life, you know what I’m speaking of. It seems harder or at least we tell ourselves that it is.

Today on the Financial Impact Factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng, we have a practicing psychologist who specializes in financial psychology and relationship issues, Dr. Maggie Baker. She has been in this field for 30 years and is the author of the insightful book, Crazy about Money.

Listen to Financial Impact Factor Radio with your hosts:
Paul Petillo of Target2025.com/BlueCollarDollar.com and Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng of FinancialFootprint.com