How will the election affect your financial plans?

Posted on November 9, 2016November 9, 2016 by Danielle

What now? It’s very early to make predictions but I have at least as good a chance as the pollsters, right? We really don’t know what this incoming president will do, since his policy statements have been so thin, simplistic, and utterly without actionable detail. Nevertheless, some things seem obvious, so here are my thoughts on possible steps.

Never has saving been so important

One thing that seems pretty clear is that support for the vulnerable, the disabled, the elderly, and the ill will be diminished or eliminated. Even under Republican presidents there was opposition to much of the social support network, but now that the mandate seems to be for the ultra-conservative right wing, social programs and benefits are likely to be drastically cut. Certainly we’ll be unlikely to see any new initiatives. This means:

You won’t see any assistance to make education more affordable. If you have school loans, you’re not going to get any breaks. If you have children, saving for college will be critical. Without savings, it’s very likely you won’t see your children in college.
The incoming president has absolutely no plan to remedy the problems in Social Security. I can say with near certainty that you won’t see any impetus to bring benefits up to an actually livable retirement income. Without your own savings, you’re going to have a bleak old age.
Health care costs will be on you. Since the incoming president is unlikely to favor cost containment, single payer options, or public provision of service, we may well see a free-for-all where service providers scramble to snare the people who can actually pay out of pocket. Same goes for colleges, now that I think about it.
Charities won’t pick up the slack. The national mood to support the vulnerable seems to have disappeared. One of the most shocking things I’ve learned as a financial planner is how few people give to charities at all, and how small some of our contributions are. Especially in an economic downturn, charitable donations will lessen. Most charities are not able to float extensive programs for continuing care on their own, and depend on public, government support which is unlikely to continue.

Money, as always, gives you flexibility and protects you even in severe economic downturns. If you have to pay, yourself, for all the services most Western democracies provide their citizens, you must have savings.

Try to arrange catastrophic protection on your own

There is unlikely to be any movement toward increasing protection of the elderly and disabled. Long-term care insurance appears to be a necessity for anyone but the super rich. There certainly won’t be any type of long-term care insurance provision at the government level, and most likely no regulation of the industry. Unless you want to face complete impoverishment in needy old age, you should consider the catastrophic protection long-term care insurance provides. Medicaid, for when you’re completely broke, is unlikely to receive enough funding to provide enough care for enough people.

Similarly, disability insurance becomes even more important. Getting Social Security disability, already extremely difficult, will certainly not become easier or more generous. Even those with some savings could easily be wiped out by a disability.

I can’t comment on health insurance, because all the alternatives look so bleak to me that I have no idea what may still be available in the next years. This is a significant drain on entrepreneurship and small businesses. One of the biggest blocks to people starting new ventures has always been the inability to secure individual health insurance. The insurance safety net now becomes more important while simultaneously becoming more damaged.

Review your employment situation

Even if laws protecting workers are still on the books, the federal agencies still have plenty of options on how to enforce them (or not). A professor of mine once said that the most important thing a president does is make the 250 or so critical appointments to agencies that actually run the government. I think it’s pretty safe to say that anti-discrimination provisions, OSHA protections, affirmative action efforts, and environmental protections will be dismantled as much as possible. If you get in an employment situation where legal protections might be important…well, I hope you have the savings and insurance to tide you over a long legal sojourn with a potentially poor outcome. Don’t forget, a president gets to appoint judges and prosecutors.

Do whatever you can to develop your technical skills. The only way to make yourself valuable in a recessionary economy is to acquire skills that are so in demand no one will care who you are: computer, health care, accounting, and engineering come to mind. These are skills that are valuable world wide.

If you’re in college or have children who are, it is with a heavy heart that I say it appears to be a poor idea to concentrate on the liberal arts. My own daughter majored in Anthropology, and my long-ago degree is in Sociology, and I have (all my life) rigorously defended the value of a liberal education. I still believe in it, because I don’t think education should be job-training; it should be developing the life of the mind. However, with the reality of the current developments, any student needs to think about how to add technical or in-demand skills to their education, at least as a minor or certificate program. This is the time to add pragmatic skills to education, because you can’t count on any help or justice except what you can muster on your own.

If you are part of any vulnerable group—women, minorities, immigrants, disabled, LGBTQ, to name a few—this advice goes double. As Cal Newport has said, be so good they can’t resist you. It didn’t work for Hillary Clinton, but I’m hoping your luck will be better.

Stay with diversified investments

I don’t know what the impact will be on markets as yet. I’m guessing socially responsible investments, green energy, and anything dependent on health care funding are going to take a hit, while military contractors will see windfalls. I doubt that defunct industries can be brought back. Will Europe become more attractive? Will the Fed have any tools left? As always, the only mitigation of catastrophe is to have eggs in many baskets.

It all depends on your personal situation, of course, but this may not be the time to pay off a house (locking up your cash). You may need it—it’s easier to lose a house than to go without critical health care. However, it may be the time to nail down a low-interest mortgage, because rates aren’t going any lower.

Take care of yourself

The future looks stressful beyond anything I have encountered in my lifetime, while the quality and availability of health care is almost certain to be drastically impacted. Try to improve what is in your control: lose weight, eat healthy (and don’t be a victim of the corporate manufactured pseudo food complex), try to get exercise. You’re going to need to try to stay as healthy as possible, as long as possible.

I hope it will be possible to compartmentalize some of this, to get relief by pursuing craft, authentic relationships, the pleasure of pets. I almost said the joys of nature, but the impact on our natural world and climate is likely to be catastrophic.

Think realistically about emigrating

For most of us, it’s not going to be easy or even possible. Without significant money to take with you, and skills so in-demand that you’d be embraced by any country in the world, you’re probably not going to be obtain residency, particularly if you need to work. And if you own a house, who do you think is going to buy it? Those immigrants that are being deported? It’s going to take a lot of planning and forethought to actually accomplish this.

Darn, tried to keep out that bitter tone. Did avoid naming He Who Must Not Be Named. I’ll do my best to help puzzle through how all this relates to your own personal financial picture. It’s never been a better time to shore up and plan for what is in your control, and take steps to protect yourself. Let’s work on this together.

Is the Mexican peso a bellweather for the US election?

Posted on October 13, 2016October 13, 2016 by Danielle

Mexican peso (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is just too good to miss–apparently, the more likely it appears that Hillary Clinton will win, the more positive effect on the Mexican peso, so analysts are considering the price of the peso as an indicator of possible election results. The markets hate uncertainty, and Clinton is by far the more known actor.

Warning: an annoying video starts up on this link, so have your finger ready to mute if you wish. Peso story here.

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I fixed Social Security—and you can, too!

Posted on October 12, 2016October 12, 2016 by Danielle

Embed from Getty Images

Most of us are pretty convinced we could do a better job than our politicians. Personally, after my social policy studies way back when at the University of Chicago, I became less certain that even the best intended people could fix all that much, but it hasn’t stopped me from pontificating. The Republican party is welcome to draft me as their presidential candidate. Although I’m a lifelong Democrat, I couldn’t be any worse or more out of synch than the current nominee. But let’s get back to a program that affects all of us—Social Security.

There are about a million scary articles on how Social Security will run out of money, and my younger clients nearly always have a fear that Social Security won’t be there for them. I’ve been hearing that same song since I, myself, was a graduate student and now that I’m closer to circling distance, it’s still there. In fact, in my lifetime government services to the elderly and disabled have vastly expanded and improved, and that’s a good thing. Sadly, Social Security was only designed to put a floor under old-age retirement (in an era when people still had private employer pensions) and it hasn’t kept up with the real need for a basic guarantee of a decent living standard for those dependent on it as principal or only source of income.

Now you can try your favorite policy solution by going to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School Social Security Policy Simulator. This has several slider buttons you can play with to see what change(s) might make the System solvent, or for how long you can keep it afloat. I chose increasing the payroll tax rate from 12.4% (current) to 14.4%, which I think is pretty minimal, and increasing the taxable maximum income to $400,000+ (in other words, just about everybody). If only they would listen to me, instead of running out of money in 2030, the current scenario, it wouldn’t run out of money until 2070.

I was dismayed that my favorite solution (increase the taxable maximum), didn’t solve things on its own. It just makes no sense to me, and never has, to let the highest earners off the hook as they earn more than $118,500. Those who least need the break get the most benefit. However, I hate the idea of any tax raise as much as any blue (oops, red) blooded American, so I was dismayed that to make it work, I had to give us a tiny tax uptick. For comparison, take a look at this tax summary of employer social security tax rates in other countries. Plenty of countries pay far more than we do, and many pay less.

It’s important to remember here that the US Social Security system was never set up to be a true annuity program. Roosevelt wanted to cover people immediately–low-earning people like my iron miner grandfather–who had never paid into the system but desperately needed old-age support. Often people (again, like my grandparents) would have been too proud to participate in the system if it had been “welfare” but by pitching it as an entitlement program in which everyone would participate, people bought in. But current contributors have always paid for those before them–so it’s not accurate to say, “I paid in and now I want it back” in the same way as an investment or annuity works.

Unfortunately, not all the options I would implement as dictator are available in the UPenn simulator. What about making Social Security benefit amounts a sliding scale based on income in retirement? (Is Donald Trump collecting Social Security?) What about funding it from general revenue? What about some way to assess the economic impact of better benefits instead of throwing people on the general public welfare system, and bankrupting them before getting them there? What about the impact of immigrants earning and contributing?

Curious what the candidates propose? Of course you can go to their websites for details. Hillary Clinton’s proposals are here and Donald Trump’s are here. That’s right, no link. He doesn’t have anything on his website addressing Social Security (not that I could find, at least).

I do invite you to try out your own solutions on the UPenn simulator. If nothing else, you’ll see that it’s not a quick and easy fix. And if you want to take a look at your own personal retirement situation, check in with me—I’m here to help.

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