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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
The Inspirational Story Of Hetty Green, The Warren Buffett Of The Early 1900s
Published Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at: 7:50 PM EST
In an era of financial titans like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett, it’s hard to imagine that, at the turn of the 19th century, one of America’s dominant investors was a woman. But it’s true.
Born in 1834, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Henrietta (Hetty) Green came from a wealthy family and read financial reports to her grandfather as a child. The knowledge stuck, and she reigned as the greatest value investor of her era and an influential figure in America for many decades.
Hetty Green was a key financier in rescuing the U.S. Treasury from a frightening panic. The Panic of 1907 was the last major financial crisis to occur without the support of a central banking system in the United States. If not for J. Pierpont Morgan’s effort to secure financial support from banks and trusts, along with a small group of individual investors, including Hetty Green, the entire U.S. financial system would have collapsed, and the nation would have descended into a Great Depression-level event. Historical accounts indicate the Panic of 1907 was so terrifying that it led to codification of the nation’s central banking system, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Less well-known, however, is the role played by Hetty Green. In an era in which women were forbidden from holding a position on a corporate board or even exercising the right to vote, Hetty Green was invited to the Morgan Library in midtown Manhattan to brainstorm solutions to the national financial emergency.
In contrast to J. P. Morgan, Hetty Green saw the crisis emerging in 1906 and prepared for it by raising a mountain of cash well in advance. This enabled her to assist, not only with her great financial mind, but also with her wallet. She lent generously at reasonable rates to steer the nation clear of a self-reinforcing deflationary vortex.
Hetty Green’s financial help during the Panic of 1907 was the most public accomplishment of her long career, but her achievements over the prior decades were no less impressive. Hetty Green remains one of America's all-time best investors.
For more on Hetty Green’s inspirational story, visit the Museum of American Finance online at www.moaf.org, and see the Fall cover story of Financial History magazine, which profiles Hetty Green.
Financial historian, Mark J. Higgins, contributed to this article. His full financial history of the U.S., The Enlightened Investor (Greenleaf Book Group), is expected in bookstores in Fall 2023.
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