Are You Ready For Your First Year Of Retirement?

Are You Ready For Your First Year Of Retirement?

These Are 5 Things You Might Not Expect — But Definitely Need To Prepare For

Amy Legate-Wolfe  Thu, May 4, 2023

You prepare for retirement your whole life — maybe as far back as your teenage years and that first check. You put cash aside. You invest. You live within your means and when the time comes, you downsize. So are you really, truly ready to retire?  That depends.

Even with decades of planning and saving, surprises are likely to come your way that first year of retirement. Before the unexpected hits, here are five strategies retirees, and those about to take the plunge, need to put in place.

The Adjustment Period

Even if you have a smart plan for retirement, there’s still an adjustment period where leaving the labor force means far less money coming in and more going out. And let’s face it, pre-retirement habits and assumptions can be difficult to change.

If money from government sources and investments represents the upside, then spending habits — with an emphasis on “habits” — are the other. And the two must exist in balance.

Look over your budget before retirement, not after. Where and what do you spend on? What’s your projected cash inflow? Which cuts make sense, especially if they don’t impact your quality of life?

Review everything from subscriptions you stopped using long ago to exorbitant rates for wireless and mobile phone usage. Such moves can bolster your savings cushion when you’re ready to move ahead.

Prioritize Your Expenses

Want to travel? It’s a delicious luxury but it’s incredibly expensive when you factor in food, lodging, flights and frequency of trips. Want to renovate your home or buy a seaside getaway? Interest rates on first and second mortgages these days are through the roof.

Want to stay healthy? Treadmills and gym memberships cost money — though certainly, prevention is a big bargain compared to a lengthy hospital stay.

Before you break open the coffers and live it up, get a sense of your “nice to haves” versus your “need to haves.” If visiting family you miss comes far ahead of a two-week trip to Paris as priorities go, allow your wallet to follow your heart.

Keep Adding To Your Savings

Once it’s time to retire, many folks throw the savings plan out the window of the cruise ship or dream home. That’s the wrong way to go. Saving not only offers a buffer but also a means to make even more aspirations possible.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/very-first-retirement-5-things-100000477.html

30 Money Moves That Could Set You Up for Life

30 Money Moves That Could Set You Up for Life

Gabrielle Olya   Thu, May 4, 2023

Make Your Savings Very Hard To Get At

One of the keys to growing your savings is to keep the money in an interest-bearing account and don't touch it. Open a separate savings account at a bank you don't typically use. An internet bank can be good for this purpose since you won't be able to walk into a branch and take out the money.

Don't link your debit card to your savings account. When you want to deposit money, you can use mobile upload if available, mail in a check or go to a branch if it's not an internet-only bank.

Use Your Credit Card

This may seem like odd advice. After all, credit card debt is the biggest threat to financial security, right? Well, it can be. But credit card debt is different from credit card use. If you use your credit card for regular purchases and pay the balance off at the end of the month, it can actually help you save more.

First, you'll need a credit card that pays you cash back. Then, you'll need to use your card for groceries, gas and even monthly utility bills. And then -- this is the most important step -- you need to pay off your entire credit card balance before the due date. This way, you'll get cash back for what you've spent, but you won't pay any interest on your purchases. Now, the next most important step is to put the money you earned through cash back into your savings account. Don't let it sit there just to add up or to use it for next month's balance. Put it into savings.

Take Advantage of Credit Card Rewards

Some credit cards offer travel rewards and other perks in addition to or in lieu of cash back. If you have a travel rewards card, make sure you cash in on the rewards the next time you plan a trip to save on out-of-pocket costs.

Diversify Your Savings

You don't have to put all your money in a savings account. Diversifying your savings strategy to include a mix of savings accounts, CDs and money market accounts can ensure that you are earning interest while still being able to access funds if and when you need to.

Invest In Real Estate

If you own your home, you're already a real estate investor. But there are many other ways to make money from real estate. You can buy, fix and sell properties as they do on different fixer-upper shows on television. You could buy a multifamily property and earn rental income. Or you could invest in a real estate investment trust, or REIT, which sells shares of a portfolio of properties like shopping malls, apartment buildings and other properties.

Look At Where You Live

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/30-money-moves-could-set-190007732.html

7 Things You Must Do To Create a Plan for Your Money

7 Things You Must Do To Create a Plan for Your Money

Brought To You By  JP Morgan Wealth Management

Do you need help with your finances but don’t know where to start? You could probably use a financial advisor, someone whose job is to help you draw up a financial plan and get you back on track.

A financial planner can assist with some or all of your money issues by helping you create a personalized plan for your situation. They can help you plan for retirement or college, offer guidance with saving or paying off debt, work with you to build an investment portfolio and more. You might choose a financial planner for a limited purpose or for expansive help with your complete financial life.

Financial advisors’ services usually come at a cost, but if you need the help, it will be more than worth it. Plus, there are ways to get started with a financial planner without paying for the service.

Enrolling in J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors comes with no advisory fee for the first six months. You simply set up a free financial planning session, and an advisor will guide you through building a personalized financial plan and opening an investment account.

Taking your finances, risk tolerance, and time horizon into account, an advisor will match you to an expert-built portfolio and provide ongoing advice. As your financial goals change over time, your advisors will continue to be on hand to adjust your strategy. Also, J.P. Morgan’s team of advisors act as fiduciaries, so you can be confident that any advisor you work with has your best interest at heart.

If you’re considering hiring a financial planner, you’ll probably want to know exactly how you two will create a financial plan together.

7 Steps of Financial Planning

Once you’ve picked a financial planner, there are a few financial planning steps you’ll go through with your planner. Each planner might have similar or different steps, or they might perform these tasks in a different order. But in any case, here is a basic summary of how a financial plan is created.

1. Getting To Know Your Financial Planner

Let’s imagine that Brittany is your financial planner. The first meeting with Brittany might be similar to a first date. You’ll want to know her philosophy, investment approach and what steps she’ll take to help you meet your financial goals.

In your initial meeting with Brittany, ask to review her investment policy statement. The investment policy statement maps out how she will handle your money, her strategy and her work approach to help you meet your financial goals. Make sure to take a look at a sample financial plan as well, if available.

2. Asking Questions

Once you’ve gotten to know your planner, you’re ready for the next step: asking questions. Don’t be afraid to do your due diligence and ask your financial planner questions. She is working for you — as well as with your money — so dive in with these types of questions:

Can you please describe your educational background, experience and licenses?

What are your fees, and how are you compensated?

Are you a fiduciary, and will you put my financial interests ahead of your own?

What services do you offer as a financial planner?

What type of investments do you recommend and why?

What type of communication can I expect from you?

After synthesizing the information from your first meeting with Brittany, it’s time to proceed with the next steps of financial planning.

https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/financial-planning/7-important-steps-financial-planning/?utm_term=incontent_link_7&utm_campaign=1224258&utm_source=yahoo.com&utm_content=9&utm_medium=rss

6 Financial Pros Share How They Would Invest $100,000

6 Financial Pros Share How They Would Invest $100,000

Jaime Catmull   Thu, May 4, 2023

What would you do if you got a financial windfall of $100,000? In the current economy, it’s tricky to figure out the best way to make the most out of a large sum of money, so I posed that question to six finance and investing professionals to find out what they would do in that situation.

Here’s what they said.

Wendy Liebowitz, CFP, Education Consultant at Fidelity Investments

There are four areas I consider when it comes to any investment strategy: debt, emergency account, protection and growth.

First, pay off any high interest-bearing debt, such as a credit card with a high interest rate. Second, save at least three to six months’ worth of essential expenses, and keep those savings in a checking, savings or money market account so you can access them easily should you ever need to.

Third, depending on your risk tolerance and time horizon, consider protecting your principal, or the amount you invest, through methods such as a fixed-rate investment, which tends to be less volatile.

If retired, you may also want to consider protecting the amount of income you’ll need in retirement through guaranteed sources of income, such as Social Security, pensions and/or income annuities.

Once these three areas are addressed, allocate the remainder of the $100,000 to growth in a well-diversified investment strategy of stocks, bonds and cash, which can be done through individual securities, mutual funds, ETFs or fee-based managed solutions, just to name a few options. Following these four steps should help you balance risk and reward and put you in a better place financially to achieve your long-term goals.

Amy Richardson, CFP, Director With Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium

When exploring ways to invest a financial windfall of this kind, the first step should be to zero in on your goals. If you’re investing for retirement, a good place to start could be maxing out your 401(k), IRA or other retirement savings vehicles. If you’re looking to invest for future education costs, you may consider opening a 529 college savings plan.

Lastly, if you have a wider range of financial goals in mind — anything from building wealth to maximizing savings to paying down debt — a brokerage account may be a good fit as it allows you to invest in a wide range of assets, from stocks and bonds to mutual funds, ETFs and more.

Which types of investments you choose will depend on your goals and how much time you have to reach them. If you have a longer time to invest and you’re looking to maximize the growth of your investment, you may want to invest more aggressively by holding more stocks.

More conservative investors typically put more of their portfolio into bonds. Whether you are a more conservative or more aggressive investor, it’s important not to put all of your eggs in one basket and instead focus on building a diversified portfolio. It’s also important to avoid trying to time the markets, which is nearly impossible. The most important thing is to maximize the time your money has in the market to grow.

Jilliene Helman, CEO of RealtyMogul

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/6-financial-pros-share-invest-130015593.html

The War On Cash Poses An Existential Threat To Our Financial Independence

The War On Cash Poses An Existential Threat To Our Financial Independence

Allister Heath Wed, May 3, 2023

Shops that refuse cash? Councils that require maddening parking apps? Tradesmen who demand bank transfers? I’m part of the problem, dear reader. The virtual penny finally dropped when I flew to the Middle East recently without first bothering to visit a bureau de change, or even to withdraw local currency from an ATM. Every shop, taxi and restaurant accepted contactless payments; there was no need to fumble through my wallet trying to decipher unfamiliar notes. My smartphone’s mobile payment service was sufficient, a physical credit card largely unnecessary.

Next time, I will also make sure to take foreign currency. The global war on cash made my life easier on this occasion, but far from paving the way towards the liberating, borderless techno-utopia portrayed by a naive, self-interested alliance of Silicon Valley and Wall Street types, it is fast turning into the stuff of nightmares.

A cashless society is discriminatory, facilitates crime and hands dangerous powers to busybody officials, technocrats and woke pseudo-capitalists. Rishi Sunak is cracking down on fraud, launching a new squad with 500 prosecutors, but this will achieve little unless the Government finally grasps the need to protect cash from extinction.

A cashless economy compels everyone to carry a smartphone all the time, and to have access to at least one payment card. It requires the use of multiple apps, and substantial levels of technological literacy. This discriminates against the elderly, and anybody who finds technology difficult. It is a disaster for those on the margins of society, without a bank account or who lack a good credit score.

Many older voters are incensed at the way their choices have been curtailed. The hit is often two-fold. Take the compulsory shift towards electric cars: it is controversial in and of itself, and of course charge points, unlike petrol stations, don’t accept cash.

One of the great selling points of the cashless world was that it would reduce robberies and cut tax evasion. It has achieved the latter, as evidenced by a surprisingly large rise in the tax to GDP ratio, but it has also triggered an epidemic of fraud, with one in 15 people victimised annually by scams such as phishing or dodgy emails.

Many of us now log into bank accounts by showing our faces, presenting our fingerprints or through voice recognition. But impersonation is getting easier: artificial intelligence (AI) can clone our appearance and produce deepfakes – videos that look and sound exactly like us – to fool automated, or even human, identification protocols. Digitisation can be greatly fragilising.

 Imagine the power of a hacker, turbocharged by AI, sponsored by a crime syndicate, a hostile state or terrorist organisation who was able to delete bank account records, rub out transactions or plant incriminating, fake records of payments? Our society is a mere step away from chaos.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/war-cash-poses-existential-threat-200000224.html   

Suze Orman Shares Advice for Paying Down Your Mortgage Faster

Suze Orman Shares Advice for Paying Down Your Mortgage Faster

Personal finance guru Suze Orman has a cornucopia of helpful advice. Among her tips, she suggests paying off your mortgage by the time you retire.  Whether you have a 15- or 30-year mortgage, here’s Orman’s advice for paying down your mortgage faster.

Why Should You Pay Off Your Mortgage as Quickly as Possible?

Putting extra money toward your mortgage might seem like a financial hardship. After all, your mortgage loan is set up to pay out within 15 or 30 years — all you have to do is make the required payments in full and on time. Plus, isn’t it better to invest or save any extra money you have in your budget?

In certain instances, Orman said, the answer is no. “Don’t you want to feel safe in these seriously uncertain times — uncertain times about inflation, uncertain times about what the markets are doing, uncertain times about everything?” Orman asked in her February 2022 podcast. “The best way you can put certainty in your life is to own your home outright by the time you retire.”

Orman said she doesn’t recommend this strategy if you’re 35 and know you’re going to move in three or four years.  But she does believe that if you are older and your goal is to gain financial security and safety, paying off your mortgage as quickly as possible is a wise idea.

“Paying more on your mortgage could help you earn equity faster, reduce the total interest you’ll pay over the life of the loan and, ultimately, allow you to repay your mortgage more quickly,” said Felton Ellington, community lending manager at Chase. “That’s because making payments directly to the principal reduces the total amount of interest paid because interest is calculated as a percentage of the principal. Typically, the lower the principal, the less interest owed.”

Orman’s Advice for Paying Down Your Mortgage Faster

Here’s what you need to do to make your mortgage payments history, according to Orman.

Consider the Loan’s Interest Rate

The lower your loan’s interest rate, the faster you can potentially pay it off. However, if you’re thinking about refinancing to get a lower rate, Orman said to proceed with caution.

“The big mistake is that after spending years paying down their existing 30-year mortgage, people then refinance into a new 30-year mortgage,” Orman once wrote on her blog. “This is so very wrong. … My rule of refinancing is that you are to never extend your total payback period past 30 years.” 

Orman explained that if you have a 30-year mortgage and you’ve already made payments for 14 years, you should make it a point to get a refinanced mortgage paid off in 16 years. Otherwise, if you refinance for another 30 years, you’ll end up paying for your mortgage with interest for 44 years in total.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.gobankingrates.com/loans/mortgage/suze-orman-shares-advice-for-paying-down-your-mortgage-faster/?utm_term=incontent_link_2&utm_campaign=1223806&utm_source=yahoo.com&utm_content=4&utm_medium=rss

How Financial Literacy Changes Once You’re Retired

How Financial Literacy Changes Once You’re Retired

Apr 28, 2023   By John Csiszar

Financial literacy covers a wide range of topics, from budgeting and saving to investing and planning for retirement. Once you retire, however, financial literacy broadens to include scenarios that may not have been as relevant during your working life. For example, income typically drops in retirement, while expenses may remain the same or even rise, depending on the type of lifestyle you lead and the condition of your general health.

Financial Literacy Month is a great time for both seniors and those about to retire to review their planning and make sure they’re prepared for the changes encountered in retirement. Here are seven topics that are important to understand if you want to avoid any financial landmines in retirement.

Social Security

From the time you start receiving your first paychecks, you’ve been paying into the Social Security system. But as you approach retirement, it’s time to start planning your Social Security withdrawal strategy instead. Before you hit retirement, it pays to maximize your income in any way possible, as your Social Security payout is based in large part on how much you earn during your working career.

You’ll also want to sit with a tax or financial advisor and determine whether you should initiate your payments early, at full retirement age or as late as age 70.

Medicare

Medicare is a health insurance program for seniors, but it’s a complicated system with various parts. To use it effectively, you’ll have to become literate on how it works. In a nutshell, Medicare consists of two original parts, A and B, which cover hospital and medical expenses, respectively. Part B requires a monthly premium. You can also add Part D if you require prescription drug coverage.

Medicare Advantage, also known as Medicare Part C, is an alternative to Original Medicare that is run by a private company. As the choices can get complicated, you’ll likely need to speak to an expert to get financially literate when it comes to Medicare. Note that neither Original Medicare nor Medicare Advantage are likely to cover care outside of the United States.

Required Minimum Distributions

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/planning/how-financial-literacy-changes-once-youre-retired/

6 Terrible Mistakes To Avoid When Paying Off Your Mortgage Faster

6 Terrible Mistakes To Avoid When Paying Off Your Mortgage Faster

John Csiszar  Tue, May 2, 2023

On the face of it, paying off your mortgage faster sounds like a great idea. You can shorten the time frame that you have to make payments and you’ll save potentially tens of thousands of dollars of interest along the way.

But there are both good ways and bad ways to pay off a mortgage early. If you don’t approach your mortgage prepayment in the right way, you could end up paying much more than you thought, and could potentially even leave yourself in a worse financial situation.

Here are the major missteps to avoid if you’re planning to pay off your mortgage faster.

Putting All of Your Money Into Your Mortgage

If you funnel all available cash into your mortgage, you could leave yourself on precarious financial ground. Imagine a scenario in which you drop every dollar you can into your mortgage, and then the unforeseen happens: You get into a car crash, you lose your job, you have a major home repair or you’re faced with any of countless other emergencies.

With no cash reserves, you’ll immediately fall into debt as you’re forced to borrow to make those payments. In a worst-case scenario, you might not be able to keep up on your ongoing mortgage payments and default, which could eventually lead to foreclosure.

If you’re planning on paying off your mortgage faster, be sure that you both have an emergency fund and that you aren’t siphoning off every last dollar of your monthly cash flow.

Failing To Apply Your Extra Payments to Principal

The best way to pay down a mortgage fast is to apply extra payments directly to your principal. This will immediately reduce the amount of interest you’re paying on your loan every month — albeit just slightly — and it will drag down your principal balance faster.

But if you don’t specify to your mortgage lender that your extra payments are for principal only, it may very well consider those payments to be additional regular payments — in other words, payments are a combination of principal and interest, rather than principal only. This will slow down the payoff of your mortgage.

Using Debt or Other Loans To Pay Off Your Mortgage

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/6-terrible-mistakes-avoid-paying-130038334.html

Controlling Your Attention: The Most Important Skill of the 21st Century and How to Do It

Controlling Your Attention: The Most Important Skill of the 21st Century and How to Do It

Written By Joshua Becker ·

“In this information-rich, time-poor society, attention has become our most important resource.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Bruce Lee is credited with once saying, “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”

I tend to think he is right and maybe now more than ever. Especially as our attention spans, all around the world, shrink.

In a world where distractions abound, both big and small, the greatest skill we can personally hone is the control of our attention. In fact, the ability to keep focus amid ever-increasing distractions may just be the greatest determining factor of success in the 21st Century.

Our attention is the driving force that shapes our lives. It is what creates wisdom from our past experiences and helps us make the most out of the skills we’ve developed, the education we’ve experienced, and the talents we’ve accumulated.

It is our attention that puts these assets to work, allowing us to make the most of our potential.

Only with focused attention do we make the most out of these strengths. Ultimately, it’s where we direct our attention that shapes the direction of our path and how effectively we reach our goals and what we accomplish with the one life that we have to live.

This is why controlling your attention is so important.

Here’s How to Do It:

1. Simplify Your Environment.

Simplicity is the stepping stone to clarity. A cluttered environment, whether physical or digital, results in a cluttered mind.

By minimizing the unnecessary, we remove visual noise and make room for focused attention.

This doesn’t just mean owning fewer possessions, but also decluttering our online spaces.

2. Practice Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the art of being fully present. It’s a skill that trains your brain to focus on the here and now, preventing it from being hijacked by past regrets or future anxieties.

Simple mindfulness exercises can be a great starting point. So can religious rituals like prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.becomingminimalist.com/controlling-attention/ 

What The Bankers Are Actually Worried About

What The Bankers Are Actually Worried About: Morning Brief

Rick Newman·Senior Columnist  Tue, May 2, 2023

Bankers rule at the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif.

So there’s tension in the air as this year’s confab of financiers and business leaders starts on the same day that First Republic Bank fails in a government-backed takeover by JPMorgan Chase.  Just a bit of unpleasant housekeeping, many of the attendees at this year’s conference say.

“No one likes to see a bank fail, but that said, it’s good to see the last remaining source of uncertainty resolved today,” Citibank CEO Jane Fraser told a packed ballroom during the conference’s kickoff session. “We should all feel pleased about that.”

Fraser said the US financial system is “very solid.”

First Republic’s demise follows the failure of two other banks, Silicon Valley and Signature, in March. Is a crisis spreading? Nope. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Group (Yahoo Finance’s parent company) said, “the three banks that have failed … totally predictable mark-to-market losses on treasuries, well known structure of the deposit base.” Well-run banks don’t have such problems, he insists.

So everything is fine? Sorry, no.

Americans don’t need to worry about a cascading series of bank failures, but the three failed banks are already setting off a series of repercussions likely to include a sharp cutback in lending that that will slow growth, maybe to a halt.

“The implications are going to be pretty profound,” David Hunt, CEO of asset manager PGIM, said on the kickoff panel. “There’s going to be a real ratcheting up of regulation in the banking system. That will further hinder the supply of credit going into the economy. We are going to see a real slowing of aggregate demand.”

Behind the scenes, more money is flowing out of traditional banks and into other institutions that comprise the "shadow banking" system: private-equity firms, hedge funds, non-traditional lenders and so on. The big, well-known firms aren't showing unusual signs of stress.

But there's a lot of scuttlebutt about mid-market firms that could get squeezed by rising rates and falling asset values, just as those three regional banks did. Shadow banks are less regulated than banks that take customer deposits and offer FDIC insurance. So if there's some kind of crisis, the odds of a government bailout are low. Watch this space.

There’s always a political specter haunting the Milken attendees. This year it’s the debt-ceiling standoff between Republicans who want to slash spending in order to raise the federal borrowing limit, and Democrats who say raise the limit and talk about spending cuts separately.

“We don’t pick up the phone and tell the politicians what to do," Fraser said. "But we do lay out the consequences. This time feels different. It’s more worrying.”

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/what-the-bankers-are-actually-worried-about-morning-brief-120016591.html

They’re Taking A Wrecking Ball To The “American Reality”

They’re Taking A Wrecking Ball To The “American Reality”

May 1, 2023  By Simon Black Sovereign Man

Last September-- a bit more than seven months ago-- my father died. Technically he was my step-father, but he was every bit my dad, and I loved him. The loss was hard.  We didn’t do a memorial service right away, though. My mother understandably just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. So we waited… until last weekend, and held the memorial service at the George Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

It was a good thing my mother booked such a large venue; the memorial service was incredibly well attended, and nearly 500 people came to pay their respects.

https://cdn.sovereignman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IMG_6804-1152x1536.jpg

After the service was over, I wanted to get my mind off the day’s events, so some friends and I popped upstairs to check out the Bush presidential museum… which was currently presenting an exhibit aptly named “Freedom Matters”.

I couldn’t agree more.

Access to the museum, however, is tightly controlled. And you can only enter after going through an airport-style security checkpoint. You know the drill-- empty your pockets, take off your clothes, and submit to an angry authority who treats you like you’ve just been booked at the county jail.

My friend Jim was lucky enough to receive extra screening; after setting off the metal detector, he was pulled aside and assumed the “I surrender” pose while gruff security personnel waved a magnetic wand near his genitals.

Curiously the security wand kept going off, prompting the increasingly irate guard to demand “what is this? What’s in here?”

I couldn’t help myself and shouted, “It’s his dignity!” Apparently Jim forgot to remove it before going through security.

The irony seemed to be lost on the guards, whose brusque treatment of museum visitors was taking place directly in front of an exhibit literally called “Freedom Matters”.

At the front of the exhibit was a large banner-- I snapped a photo-- defining freedom, according to a former Soviet dissident:

“Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it’s a fear society.”

I thought about this quote for a few moments, glanced back at the security guards wanding another unlucky visitor, and quickly realized-- based on this definition-- that the US is quickly becoming a fear society.

You can no longer freely express views without fear of reprisal anymore-- especially if those views conflict with the radical woke left.

Personal opinions can easily be viewed as hate speech, misinformation, violence, etc. And we’ve all seen too many instances of people’s lives being ruined by cancel culture. But I’ll come back to this.

After wandering around the museum for a while and enjoying some jokes with my friends, I finally returned home to the AirBnb I’m renting with my family, very close to where I grew up in the Dallas area.

It’s the quintessential American suburb: clean, quiet, safe, and stable. The house where I’m staying is at the end of a picturesque tree-lined cul-de-sac, and on the other end of the street is a large park where small children were playing organized sports in the afternoon.

Parents chatted with each other on the playground while their kids bounced around the jungle gym. Retirees were out walking their dogs. Even the postman drove by and greeted some of the residents by name. Everyone was happy… and it was basically perfect.

This isn’t the famous ‘American Dream’. It’s not a dream. This is real life as it’s supposed to be… the pinnacle of civilization, the product of more than two centuries of hard work and responsibility. It is the American Reality.

That’s why it’s so frustrating to watch the people in charge dismantle it. Brick by brick, neighborhood by neighborhood, they’ve been chipping away at this vast, enviable middle class prosperity, ripping it away in front of our very eyes.

They’ve encouraged “mostly peaceful” violence and caused an alarming rise in crime as a result of their soft “criminal first” policies.

They’ve sent the cost of living to record highs, and yet have no understanding how their spending practices could have possibly contributed to inflation. They’ve expanded the national debt to a record high $31.5 trillion and plan to keep overspending tax revenue by trillions of dollars every year.

They’ve worked hard to re-engineer childhood education (and have succeeded in many school districts). Biology has been rewritten to conform to new woke ethics. Math is racist. And parents who complain about the decline in educational standards are threatened by the federal government.

The most comical part of this suffering is the abject political dysfunction that’s on display every single day of our lives.

Consider that, amid deadly and toxic train derailments, airplanes around the country that have been grounded, total chaos at the national seaports, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s priority right now is ensuring that Ford and General Motors use female crash test dummies.

It’s so ridiculous it almost sounds made up. And yet it’s completely true.

Or consider that the Treasury Department is now weeks away from defaulting on the national debt, once again, having reached its statutory debt limit. Congress is required to pass a law to raise the debt ceiling.

Yet the President of the United States refuses to negotiate a single penny in spending cuts in order to reach a compromise with the House of Representatives. Not a penny.

Simultaneously the guy was shown on video recently unable to remember how many grandchildren he has, or even the fact that he had recently returned from a trip to Ireland.

These examples of extreme incompetence never end. It’s so aggravating. Even terrifying.

That’s why I write so much about taking simple, sensible steps to reclaim control.

For example, if you think Pete Buttigieg is doing a great job as Transportation Secretary, then by all means, please continue to overpay your taxes and give him as much of your money as possible.

If, on the other hand, you recognize that he is demonstrably incompetent, completely unqualified to be Transportation Secretary, and was only given the position because he checks a diversity box (and agreed to endorse candidate Biden in 2020) then you might want to consider the multitude of completely legal ways to reduce your tax bill… and stop giving Pete so much money to waste.

It’s perfectly normal to feel angry or disgusted with America’s terrible leadership. But it’s a lot more effective to channel some of that energy into reducing their impact on your life.

There absolutely are ways to reduce your tax bill, to mitigate the effects of inflation, to still make phenomenal investments, to fund your retirement, and to ensure that you’re in a position of strength no matter how destructive they become.

There’s no downside in doing this. If this decline reverses and America starts to dig its way out of this hole, you won’t be worse off for putting yourself in a stronger position.

And that is actually still a possibility. This country has so much potential upside from its entrepreneurial brilliance, talented workforce, immense resource wealth, and more. That’s why it’s so bewildering to see how badly the people in charge are screwing it up.

At the moment, though, it’s difficult to see any real change on the horizon. As President Biden said in his re-election announcement, he wants to “finish the job”. By that I presume he means completely destroying the country.

This is nothing new; history is full of superpowers who eradicate themselves from within. They lay waste to the very ideals that made them strong and prosperous to begin with, they create divisions and disunity, and they subject themselves to horrendous, weak leadership.

But it’s one thing to understand the decline of empires and civilizations through the lens of history. It’s quite another to watch it happen from your living room window.

To your freedom,  Simon Black, Founder  Sovereign Man

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/theyre-taking-a-wrecking-ball-to-the-american-reality-147087/