Imagine being a teacher who receives an email that appears to be from the school principal requesting the signature of a time-sensitive document. Acknowledging the urgency of the email, you immediately open the attachment and inadvertently download malicious software to your school computer. With one click you have initiated a chain of events that leads […]
It is 1982. The Home Shopping Club – later Home Shopping Network – pops up on cable TV across the U.S. A shudder runs down the spines of America’s retailers. It is 1995. Two new internet companies, Amazon and eBay, introduce e-commerce to a broad swath of consumers. This is bound to sink in-person sales. […]
Hard to believe, but it’s been almost 40 years since a major antitrust action succeeded in U.S. courts. American Telephone & Telegraph had been considered a “natural” monopoly. A straight line could be drawn from inventor Alexander Graham Bell’s American Bell Telephone Co. of the 1880s to the behemoth AT&T had become by the mid-20th […]
We’ve wanted to do this one for a long time – about a year. Where did that year go? What could possibly have been so important that talking about cool cars seemed like too idle a pursuit? It escapes us now. Anyway … It’s no exaggeration to describe America’s relationship with the automobile as a […]
Many of us are, as of this writing, furiously rushing to finish up our tax filings and swearing on all we hold sacred that next year we’re going to get an earlier start. If that describes you, then just dialing down your anxiety level would be reward enough. But if you start early enough – […]
You’ve heard it a thousand times: “Buy real estate. They’re not making it anymore.” And it is good advice even if it’s as hackneyed as that other line you’re likely to hear in the same exchange: “Location, location, location!” But what kind of real estate? The two broad classifications – commercial and residential – have […]
You’ve no doubt heard inspiring stories about people who ran huge companies and amassed great wealth during their working years but are remembered today for how much of it they gave away. From Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, it has been a common theme. Maybe you’re not in a position to have a concert hall […]
There’s a debate raging about the minimum wage. And, more often than not, it’s an internal debate people are having inside their own brains. On the one hemisphere, it’s a great idea. The minimum wage hasn’t been increased in a decade and, although inflation has been low, it’s not zero, and the prices of necessities, […]
The federal government spent $4.8 trillion in 2019. That’s $150,880 per second, but it gets worse. In the plague year of 2020, it spent $6.8 trillion, which comes to … oh, who cares? It’s a lot and it’s bound to be even higher this year, especially with at least another round or two of pandemic […]
It may be true that nothing is certain except death and taxes, but at least one of those predicaments can be mitigated. Proper tax planning may reduce investment taxes as much as 40%, a savings that could open the door to financial independence. Unfortunately, that crucial aspect of overall wealth management is often overlooked, especially […]