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No, I'm not talking about my 40th birthday from late October, but the Noosa Classic Gran Fondo (100 mile / 160km). Held on Sunday Oct 10th, the ride was a tour of the Sunshine Coast hinterland (much more than Noosa let me assure you). It took 6 months of training to be in shape for this ride and I almost didn't make it with severe cramps hitting me about 10km before the finish. I'm pleased to say my brother Tristan and I safely made it back.
For our 2021 year end client event, I invited Dr. Bob Waldinger to speak about the insights his team can offer on money and happiness from the longest running study on human well-being. Dr. Bob is the Founder and Executive Director of the Lifespan Research Foundation, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and the 4th generation Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. His TED talk, 'What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness' is one of the top 10 most watched TED talks of all time.
We’ve been seeing a lot of cartoons and jokes lately about how it has felt like Groundhog Day, with 2021 being basically a repeat of 2020. The reference, of course, is to the Covid pandemic, which raged through 2020 and then, when we all expected a return to normalcy, once again peaked (twice) during 2021 with the Delta and Omicron variants. But the Groundhog Day analogy could just as easily be applied to the investment markets.
The End of the Fed Buying Spree?
You might be reading about the internal debate at the Federal Reserve Board about when and how to ‘shrink its balance sheet,’ which will (articles tell us) have some mysteriously negative impact on the U.S. investment markets. But what are they actually talking about?
Food Inflation on the Uptick
If you haven’t been to a grocery store in the past year, you might not be aware that the cost of groceries has gone up an aggregate 5.4%, and the prices of staples like meat, dairy, eggs, sugar and coffee have surged even faster.
Are College Costs Moderating?
One of the biggest differences between attending college in the pre-1980s era and today is the enormous cost difference, to the point where virtually every college student has to take out student loans in order to matriculate.
SPAC Returns: Buyer Beware
You’ve probably heard of Special-Purchase Acquisition Companies—SPACs for short—which raise money in initial public offerings from investors without actually revealing how they plan to deploy it, and then trade on exchanges—often at high multiples—with nothing more to offer investors than cash in the bank and the promise to someday invest it wisely.
How to Avoid Being a Covered Expatriate (Or Minimize the US Exit Tax)
The US exit tax, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008 as part of the Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax (HEART) Act, is a burdensome financial obstacle to US citizens and long-term permanent residents who plan to expatriate from the US for federal tax purposes.
Please let me know if we might be of assistance.
Have a wonderful rest of your day,
Ashley Murphy, GFP (USA/AUS) CFP® AIF®
Areté Wealth Strategists, LLC.
Access our comprehensive, unbiased financial guides here.
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