8 Financial Decisions You'll Never Regret

By Dan Rafter | Wise Bread | January 13, 2016

A new year is here. And even if you've already broken the resolutions you made at the end of the holiday season, it's never too late to make new ones, especially when it comes to your finances.

Here are eight financial decisions you can make now that you'll never regret. Make the moves on this list soon, and you'll dramatically increase your odds of a happy financial future.

1. Save More for Retirement

How much money will you need each year to enjoy a happy and healthy retirement? That depends on what you want to do after you leave the working world. You'll need more money if you plan to travel the world, and less if you envision days spent reading, binge-watching TV, and playing with your grandchildren.

A survey released last April by the Employee Benefits Research Institute suggests that more workers understand they'll need large amounts of money to enjoy their retirement years. The survey found that more than one in 10 workers think they'll need to save at least $1.5 million for their retirements. That's a lot of money. One way to reach such a lofty goal? Put away as much as you can each year now, even if your retirement days seem far away.

You'll never regret your decision to maximize your contributions to your 401(k) plan or your annual deposits to an IRA. Start boosting those savings today.

2. Building an Emergency Fund

What happens if your furnace conks out today? What if your car's transmission needs to be replaced? If you're like too many people, you'll put the cost of replacing these items on your credit card, building your debt.

The better option is to draw from an emergency fund of cash that you have already saved, usually in a savings account. Financial experts recommend that you build an emergency fund that can cover at least six months of your daily living expenses.

This might seem daunting. But if you deposit what you can each month — even if it is as small as $100 — that emergency fund will steadily grow.

3. Pay Off Your Credit Cards

Carrying a balance on your credit cards each month is a terrible financial decision. That's because cards come with such high interest rates — sometimes 18% or more. This makes your monthly debt grow by too much, even if you don't add any new purchases to your cards.

Don't just make the minimum monthly payment on your cards. If you do this, it will take far too long to pay off your credit card debt. Say you have a credit card with a balance of $5,000 and an interest rate of 18.9%. If your minimum monthly payment is 4% of your outstanding balance, it will take you more than 11 years to eliminate this debt, even if you don't make any new purchases with this card.

The better move is to always pay more than the monthly minimum. And don't buy items with your cards that you can't afford to pay off at the end of every month.

Why good jobs are too few, wages so poor

By Peter Morci | Sun Sentinel | January 5, 2016

Americans are justified to be angry about the economic recovery. As President Obama enters his final year, good-paying jobs remain scarce and family incomes are down about $1650 on his watch.

Since Ronald Reagan ran the country, the availability of attractive employment has been trending down and slowing economic growth is often blamed—during Obama’s recovery, GDP has advanced at a 2.2 percent annual pace, whereas the comparable figures for Reagan and Clinton were 4.6 and 3.7 percent.

But that puts the story backwards—the lack of workers adequately trained for a more technological demanding workplace is slowing growth, not the other way around.

Automation has been an enduring theme throughout American history. First, reapers and tractors consolidated farms and sent workers to factories. Then machines replaced workers in manufacturing, pushing them into more highly paid professions in medicine, education and technology but also less well paid occupations in restaurants, retailing and other services.

Until recently, computer-programmed machines could be taught strenuous and repetitive tasks like attaching a heavy, rigid fender onto an automobile. Going forward robots will increasingly replace people in activities requiring more-subtle manual dexterity—like making shirts and harvesting fruit—and those requiring more complex cognitive processes like masonry construction, driving limousines and building new robots that adapt to changing environmental conditions.

The drug store I visit in Washington no longer has cashiers—just a group of checkout machines and one clerk to assist technologically flummoxed patrons. Over the next two decades, robots will be capable of unloading pallets, stocking shelves, filling prescriptions, and generally running the store with minimal human intervention.

By 2030, it will become technologically possible to replace 90 percent of the jobs as we know them by smart machines. The real challenge will be training most Americans to engage in intellectually demanding and creative work, or the globalization of technology and competition will relegate most of us to very low paying work better left to androids.

US turns to UN to screen refugees from Central America

By Josh Lederman and Alicia A. Caldwell | Associated Press | January 13, 2016

The Obama administration is planning to expand a program to let would-be migrants from Central America apply for refugee status before they attempt to come to the U.S., Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday.

The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees will now conduct initial screenings to see whether migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala may qualify as refugees eligible to come to the United States legally.

"I am pleased to announce plans to expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and offer them a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous journey many are currently tempted to begin, making them easy prey for human smugglers who have no interest but their own profits," Kerry said in a speech at the National Defense University.

Later Wednesday President Barack Obama authorized the State Department to access up to $70 million from the U.S. Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund "for the purpose for meeting unexpected urgent refugee and migration needs related to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program."

In December 2014, the U.S. began offering refugee status to children in those countries who have parents already living legally in the United States. So far thousands of children have applied for the program but very few been approved to come to the U.S.

The latest effort is aimed at expanding that program by moving applicants, both families and single individuals, into safe zones to await processing.

Refugee processing for Central Americans was launched as part of a broader effort to curb the unprecedented surge of families and children traveling alone caught at the Mexican border in recent years.

31 Things to Know About Investing Your Money

By Andrew Lisa  |  GoBankingRates  |  June 8, 2015

Investing is easy. Just watch “The Wolf of Wall Street.” All you do is get some buddies together, pool your money, buy low, sell high and then find a place big enough for your private jet and sports cars.

Investing doesn’t work like that in real life — and you probably won’t get super-rich in a short time. 
But by learning the basics of how to invest your money through a long-term approach, you can safely and securely grow your money over time.

1. Do I need a lot to start investing?

It is natural to think that investing is for people with throwaway money, but over time, pennies turn into dollars. “Being a financial advisor for over 25 years, it amazes me how some people are able to accumulate so much money even if they don’t have huge incomes,” said Michael Argiro, founder of Connecticut-based 4T Financial. “It is a systematic approach, and over time, by investing small amounts on a regular basis, people are able to accumulate large nest eggs.”

Why you care: Start now with whatever you have. Time is a greater asset than money.

2. What about risk?

The first rule of investing is that the potential for gain comes with the potential for loss. The higher the potential payout, the bigger the risk of losing money. Conservative investments like bonds are far less dangerous than highly risky investments such as penny stocks, but they don’t have nearly the potential for a big windfall. There is no such thing as a safe bet.

Why you care: If someone pitches an investment as “guaranteed,” “risk-free” or “can’t lose,” walk away. All investments come with risk — without exception.

3. What’s the value in diversification?

The old adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” was never more true than it is for  investing. By spreading your money around different investments, you hedge your bets and protect yourself against a singular, catastrophic loss.

If you put all of your money in Acme Widgets, and Acme Widgets goes under, you go under with it. If Acme Widgets is just part of a larger blend of investments, you can absorb the loss and move on.

Why you care: It is important to create a portfolio with a wide variety of investments. Diversification is your greatest protection against risk.

Five results of higher interest rates

By Peter Morici | Providence Journal | December 16, 2015

The Federal Reserve will probably raise the federal funds rate at the conclusion of its two-day meeting today. Raising the banks’ overnight borrowing rate — held near zero since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008 — has the potential to push up the cost of mortgages, slow jobs creation and curb stock prices. But that does not always happen.

Here are five things to expect:

1. Mortgage rates will not rise much.

The effects of Fed's tightening depends greatly on whether a higher federal funds rate pushes up the 10-year Treasury rate, because rates on mortgages, corporate and municipal bonds generally follow that rate up and down.

When Ben Bernanke raised the federal funds rate in 2004-2006, those rates hardly budged, because the Chinese government was purchasing U.S. bonds at a maddening pace to keep the yuan cheap against the dollar.

Now, both the Chinese and European economies are deeply troubled and their monetary authorities are printing lots of money to push down borrowing costs. Private investors seeking safer and better returns will increase their purchases of U.S. securities limiting any increase in U.S. long rates.

2. Bank fees and car loans will get more expensive.

Tighter banking regulations designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis have pushed up banks’ costs for providing ordinary retail services. Higher short-term borrowing rates for banks will make things even tougher and banks will probably try to further boost fees on checking accounts and other services, and charge higher rates for short-term credit — credit cards, car loans and home improvements.

The good news is banks may start competing more for your money and pay higher rates on one-to-five-year CDs.

3. Jobs creation won’t be much affected.

The stronger dollar and lower oil prices are pinching corporate profits, and hiring has slowed this year to about 210,000 new jobs a month — less than the 260,000 monthly average in 2014.
Small businesses are a particularly important source of new jobs in an economic recovery, but even before the Fed pushes up bank borrowing costs, tighter federal regulations forced large banks to curtail lending to these. Somewhat higher short rates are not likely to have much additional impact on their access to credit.

Finding a job remains toughest for the long-term unemployed whose skills atrophied during the Great Recession and slow recovery, and for whom government benefits — expanded Medicaid and food stamps for healthy men — have often overwhelmed incentives to learn new skills.

On gun control, the president is just pretending

By Ed Rogers | The Washington Post Opinion  | January 5, 2016

I guess it’s ironic that President Obama, an affirmative gun-control advocate, has presided over the greatest expansion of gun sales in U.S. history. But the whole affair is somewhat robbed of its irony because it’s all so predictable. The president may as well have convened a meeting at the White House to ask his advisers what they could do to increase gun sales in the United States. I don’t see how this White House could have done anything else to more effectively create conditions where more people want to buy a gun.

The president makes no secret of his contempt for gun owners. Remember, as far back as 2008, he ridiculed the simpletons who “cling to guns or religion.” Well, after seven years of the Obama presidency, there are more frightened hands clinging to more guns than ever before. And rather than sincerely making an effort to work within Washington to make our streets safer, Obama prefers to issue meaningless executive orders on gun control — measures that would have done nothing to stop any of the several high-profile mass shootings that have taken place in recent years. Since the president knows his actions will increase gun sales, and he knows what he is calling for now would not have prevented the shootings he uses as props, what exactly is he hoping to accomplish? I think at this point, he doesn’t have much to do and is just pretending to be president.

It’s not just the contrived gun-control efforts that lead me to think Obama is mostly pretending. Let’s face it: As he enters his final year in office, he is a spent force, he is ineffective and unengaged in Washington and he is ignored — or worse, taunted — abroad. So what is he supposed to do with the limited time he has left in office? Well, the best ways to pretend to be president without actually doing anything are to issue executive orders and travel. Neither require dealing substantively with anyone who doesn’t work for you, and it’s almost guaranteed that everyone will be courteous and welcoming pretty much wherever the president travels, even though there is no expectation of a tangible result. Given the very real problems and threats that we face, an agenda of cosmetic executive orders and pointless travel may not be as extreme as fiddling while Rome burns, but it could easily be viewed that way.

While Obama decides where to travel and issues his meaningless executive orders from the Oval Office, the 2016 race to succeed the president is heating up, and the Republican candidates will make it their business to highlight the president’s every weakness, in hopes that they will be seen as a remedy. Similarly, the Democratic candidates will have to make it clear that they were against all the bad decisions the Obama administration made, and they will promise that they will do things differently. In politics, bad gets worse, and we don’t know what peril a disengaged president will bring. The president has gone into retirement mode too early. He needs to do more than just pretend.

Ed Rogers is a contributor to the PostPartisan blog, a political consultant and a veteran of the White House and several national campaigns. He is the chairman of the lobbying and communications firm BGR Group, which he founded with former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour in 1991.

These Are the Top 10 Risks to the World in 2016

By Ian Bremmer | Time | January 4, 2016

From a weakened trans-Atlantic alliance to an increasingly fractious Middle East
At the beginning of each year Eurasia Group, the political risk consultancy I founded and oversee, publishes a list of the top 10 political risk stories for the 12 months ahead. These are the risks and trends we believe are most likely to move markets in 2016. We’ve opened the year with a serious spat between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and a horrible day for markets in China. But our #1 risk centers on erosion of the partnership that has provided a lot of global stability over many years.

1.The Hollow Alliance
The trans-Atlantic partnership has been the world’s most important alliance for nearly seventy years, but it’s now weaker and less relevant than at any point in decades. The U.S. no longer plays a decisive role in addressing any of Europe’s top priorities. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and the conflict in Syria will expose U.S.-European divisions. As U.S. and European paths diverge, there will be no one to play international fireman—and conflicts particularly in the Middle East will be left to rage.

2. Closed Europe
In 2016, divisions in Europe will reach a critical point as a core conflict emerges between Open Europe and Closed Europe—and a combination of inequality, refugees, terrorism, and grassroots political pressures pose an unprecedented challenge to the principles on which the European Union was founded. Europe’s open borders will face particular pressure. The risk of Britain’s exit from the E.U. is underestimated. Europe’s economics will hold together in 2016, but its broader meaning and its social fabric will not.

3. The China Footprint
Never has a country at China’s modest level of economic and political development produced such a powerful global footprint. China is the only country of scale today with a global economic strategy. The recognition in 2016 that China is both the most important and most uncertain driver of a series of global outcomes will increasingly unnerve other international players who aren’t ready for it, don’t understand or agree with Chinese priorities, and won’t know how to respond to it.

4. ISIS and “Friends”
The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria is the world’s most powerful terrorist organization, having attracted followers and imitators from Nigeria to the Philippines. But the international response to its rise is inadequate, misdirected, and at cross purposes. For 2016, this problem will prove unfixable, and ISIS and other terrorist organizations friendly to its aims will take advantage of that. The most vulnerable states will remain those with explicit reasons for ISIS to target them (France, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States), and those with the largest numbers of unintegrated Sunni Muslims (Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and across Europe).

Feds can't say whereabouts of those whose visas were revoked over terror threat

By FoxNews.com | December 18, 2015

The Obama administration cannot be sure of the whereabouts of thousands of foreigners in the U.S. who had their visas revoked over terror concerns and other reasons, a State Department official acknowledged Thursday.

The admission, made at a House oversight hearing examining immigrant vetting in the wake of major terror attacks, drew a sharp rebuke from the committee chairman.

“You don’t have a clue do you?” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Michele Thoren Bond, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

Bond initially said the U.S. has revoked more than 122,000 visas since 2001, including 9,500 because of the threat of terrorism.

But Chaffetz quickly pried at that stat, pressing the witness about the present location of those individuals.

"I don't know," she said.

The startling admission came as members of the committee pressed administration officials on what safeguards are in place to reduce the risk from would-be extremists.

At issue is how closely the U.S. government examines the background of people seeking entry to the country, including reviews of their social media postings.

ABC: US deliberately ignoring social-media posts in visa vetting

By Ed Morrissey  |  Hot Air  |  December 14, 2015

Want to guess why five government agencies missed Tashfeen Malik’s social-media postings that declared her intent to conduct violent jihad on behalf of radical Islam? It turns out that they didn’t miss it at all. The Department of Homeland Security has a deliberate policy of not checking social media when vetting visa applications, ABC News reported this morning.

Want to guess why that policy exists? Again, three guesses and the first two don’t count:

Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.
“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.
One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen’s account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants.

While ABC names Johnson as the man who perpetuated this policy, it didn’t start with him, and Malik came in before this decision. The policy in place at that time would have been set by Janet Napolitano, who should not escape scrutiny for this nonsensical approach to national security. This failure might come as a big surprise to Congress, members of which have already begun to ask to expand vetting to social media after the terror attack in San Bernardino:

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded Sunday that the U.S. immediately initiate a program that would check the social media sites of those admitted on visas.”
“Had they checked out Tashfeen Malik,” the senator said, “maybe those people in San Bernardino would be alive.”

Maybe so, but then DHS might have experienced “bad public relations.” When people say that political correctness kills, this is exactly the kind of consequence they mean.

The notion that this would be a civil-liberties issue is equally absurd. The Constitution does not cover visa applications from foreigners; there is no right to a visa. Furthermore, social media statements are public in nature, not private, so reading them and considering them in terms of security concerns for entry into the US has no civil-liberties involvement either. Public declarations of support for jihad should be not just acceptable criteria for vetting, it should be a no-brainer as an automatic denial of the visa application in an age of global Islamist terrorism.

This demonstrates a shocking lack of seriousness about the war on terror by the Obama administration, albeit part of an overall pattern. They are literally more concerned about public relations than security in the visa application process, according to ABC’s report. It comes as Barack Obama and the Democrats have attempted to change the subject to gun control in the wake of the San Bernardino attack, and to climate change when it comes to the spread of ISIS. This administration clearly has its own priorities, and getting serious about national security ranks lower than their need to engage in political correctness.

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