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Slick TV ads often make financial planning and wealth management sound simple, but it’s usually not. Managing wealth requires knowing a lot about highly technical topics, like taxes, government regulations, and finance as well as history, psychology and how to communicate with loved ones about sensitive issues. This article highlights some of the knowledge needed to manage wealth and why it’s often so daunting without the help of an independent personal financial advisor who is familiar with your situation.
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Understanding The Federal Reserve Mandate To End Inflation
The Federal Reserve System, the nation’s central bank, has a dual mandate to pursue maximum employment and maintain price stability. These two priorities are currently treated equally, but that was not always the case. In fact, the Fed’s bias toward maximizing employment was a critical driver of the stagflation that plagued the U.S. in the late 1960s and 1970s. Recognizing the need to balance price stability and maximum employment, in 1977, Congress revised the Federal Reserve Act.
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Fed Governor Kugler Details Inflation And Economic Outlook
The 12-month inflation rate, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, was 2.6% in December, down from its peak of 7.1% in June 2022, and the six-month rate for PCE inflation was even lower, at 2%, which is the target rate set by the Federal Reserve.
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Why Rates May Not Be Cut Until June
The cost of a loan to buy a home, car, college education, and achieve the American Dream is staying the same for now. As expected, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank did not lower loan rates following the Fed’s Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024, policy meeting.
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Practical Suggestions For Achieving Your 2024 Resolutions
New Year’s resolutions usually fail because they‘re often too hard to achieve. After six months, only 10% of people who make resolutions achieve them or remain committed to them, , according to a study by Dr. Mark Griffiths, a Chartered Psychologist and Distinguished Professor of Behavioral Addiction at the Nottingham Trent University. What can you do to make financial, medical, or other personal resolutions more likely to be achieved?
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A Sign Of Progress In Solving U.S. Economic Problems
The Federal Reserve appears to be pulling off a feat most experts did not believe it could: ending its aggressive inflation-fighting campaign of 11 interest rate hikes without tipping the U.S. economy into a recession.
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Fed Keeps Rates Unchanged; Expects Easing In 2024
To promote transparency and free markets, the Federal Reserve System began publishing the opinions of the 19 U.S. central bankers that decide interest rate policy.
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Have You Logged Into Your Social Security Account?
Have you logged in to your Social Security account? Creating an online account at SSA.gov is an important first step in understanding your retirement income situation. However, only about 60 million of the 160 million individuals in the U.S. labor force who have Social Security accounts have created a way to access the Social Security Administration’s website.
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The Great Fake Out Of 2023 Is Poised To Extend Into 2024
All year long, the economy and stock prices have fooled experts and consumers, outperforming expectations month after month.
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Test Your Financial Planning IQ
The five questions below are a challenge meant to allow you to assess your knowledge of investing, tax and financial planning. If you have been following our news stream, this quiz draws on familiar ground. The answers are below.
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Planning Briefs
Six Tips To Avoid Phishing Scams
Published Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at: 7:00 AM EST
"Fake news" has exacted a high cost to American culture and political discourse, but the internet fakery that costs you time and money is phishing, emails diabolically aimed to trick you into opening your personal data to crooks and miscreants.
Phishing is the practice of emailing people purporting to be a reputable company to fool people into revealing passwords, credit card numbers, contacts, emails, internet accounts, and your most personal digital data. It's rampant. Whether you're using a smartphone, tablet, or computer, here are some tips for protecting yourself:
Mistakes. Phishing emails often are generated by teens or crooks with weak skills in English punctuation, grammar, and spelling. The phishing email from Office uses an improper style in "24hrs" and the capitalization of the phrase, "Kindly Click here" should arouse suspicion. When you look at this email's bottom line, the copyright is "Office Outlook." The logo is off. The product name is Office 365 and there is no mention of Microsoft in the copyright notice. Does the sentence Terms of Use Privacy & Cookies Developers make sense? It's a hint that this is a fake.
Reply email address. In this phishing email, the reply address at the top left says "Microsoft support," but if you look closer, the reply email address is "support@simpur.net.bn" and that is not a Microsoft address. The "bn" suffix is the internet country code for Brunei, and that's another telltale sign of fraud. Clever phishing emails often fake reply addresses in other ways. The easiest way to verify a reply email address is to double click on it and look at its properties. If the email purports to be from Microsoft or Google, will hitting reply send an email to a Microsoft or Google email account? If not, it's fake.
Links. Don't click on links in a suspicious email without being deliberate. The link could be a malicious website. Right click on the link and check its properties and see if the link goes to the company.
Slow down. The grammar, misspelling, bad links, and other telltale signs are easily overlooked when you're in a rush, and that's perhaps the reason why people become ensnared by phishing emails.
Verify before you trust. Trust but verify works for some things but not with internet security. First verify and then you can trust.
Secure Software. Microsoft and Apple release updates to computer operating systems continually and those are essential to staying secure. Anti-virus and anti-malware programs are also essential and they need to be kept updated with the latest fixes.
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