Your Unbiased Advisor: Avoid SCAMS of brokers and advisors

How can you avoid SCAMS in financial services?

Wall Street is a ‘war’ zone! We must enter this war zone with the protection of knowledge. We could lose all our lifelong savings in one trade. Brokers and advisors have weapons that can 'kill' us financially. They are hidden behind lies, exaggerations, obfuscations and straight-out fraud like faking our signature. Half-truths and our assumptions and greed are also at play. These are our 'soft' underbelly targets. There are warning signs but most SCAM situations require us to be knowledgeable and to check every move. My first day as a manager at a security firm I was told: ‘brokers are [car] salesman.’ Our future life is at stake and yet we give strangers our money so easily.

Take Buffett’s advice: https://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Scams-Brokers-Advisors-Sender-ebook/dp/B07GZ1WSP1/

Trump’s new health care plans

Think about this: you are 44 years old and have a heart attack. You are in great shape—you finished the Ironman triathlon just five months before. Your hospital was out of network for your school district plan. The hospital charged $164,941 for your surgery and four days in the hospital. Aetna, which administers health benefits for the Austin School District, paid the hospital $55,840. Hospital sent you a 2^nd notice for $109,000. This is the way it used to be before ObamaCare and mandated ‘comprehensive care.’

In order to ‘Make America Great Again’ Trump and TX are sticking us with bankruptcy.

Buy catastrophic coverage: https://www.amazon.com/Health-Insurance-ONLY-right-policy/dp/1480125083

New ways the wealthy avoid taxes that we have to pay for them

The Trump tax breaks did not change a 1962 tax loophole from J F Kennedy. It allows the wealthy with money hidden overseas to declare and pay the corporate rate of 21% not 37%. The rich get richer. We have to pay for the courts, police, military, roads, airports, etc. the rich use but don’t pay for. We taxpayers help pay for their yachts and overseas vacation and rental properties. Imagine paying your tax at almost half the rate and then leaving it in a shelter with no income tax. You could live off the interest (no taxes) in one of your discounted villas and earn rental income while you were away. Trump’s mob favors Bank of Cyprus where the bank board is held by Wilbur Ross Commerce. Ross did not respond to Congress requests for info on money laundering via his Cyprus bank. However, Russians have used this facility with NO questions asked. The Panama Papers illustrate how hidden money gets laundered into mansions and property for sale. The IRS lets them earn some income overseas without being taxed too.

You can have a Trump tax shelter too: https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Tax-Shelter-Avoid-taxes/dp/1985448300

Does your vehicle hold value?

The brand receiving the most model-level awards is Lexus (five model-level awards), followed by Honda and Toyota with four model-level awards each. Chevy did NOT earn more awards than everyone else as they claim.

Lexus: Lexus IS; Lexus NX; Lexus LS; Lexus GS; and Lexus GX

Honda: Honda Civic; Honda Accord; Honda Odyssey; and Honda Fit

Toyota: Toyota Tundra; Toyota Tacoma; Toyota 4Runner; and Toyota Sienna

Porsche: Porsche Cayman; Porsche Boxster; and Porsche 911

Subaru: Subaru WRX and Subaru Crosstrek

Dodge: Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger

Check your ride by class and size. Flood-damaged cars ‘flood’ markets BEWARE.

Buy value in coverage too: https://www.amazon.com/Vehicle-Insurance-Beware-Double-Coverage/dp/1480027634

Is pet insurance right for you?

Pet insurance premiums rose 23% last year, and the number of insured pets rose about 16% to 1.83M last year, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing the North American Pet Health Insurance Association. Americans spent about $17B last year on veterinary care-- per pet that comes to $257 for routine care for dogs and $182 for cats. The largest providers of pet insurance are Nationwide, Trupanion, and Healthy Paws. Only about 1% of dogs and cats in the U.S. are insured, but insurers expect that number to grow. Most adults don’t even carry life insurance because other needs come first. Your need for pet coverage must be weighed against other expenses: basic emergency fund, family health insurance, transport, food, shelter, etc. Insurers see the fast growth of this cover and may spend more to induce us to buy pet insurance. Pets are important like our well-being.

https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Financial-Life-paycheck-paycheck/dp/1441499326

Did you get help paying for Trump’s tariff taxes?

Farms are not really struggling small businesses anymore. Farms are now corporations with over 2000 acres—70% of all our cropland. Super-aggie biz is socialism writ large. Trump has turned capitalism upside down. He gives $12 billion to corporations which are large enough to afford a slowdown. This Trump socialism is political juice to his followers who have fallen in love with Russia/Putin-style ‘democracy.’ You and I did not receive money to help pay for the price increases from tariffs. Farm corporations, known as ‘agribusiness,’ have been on a socialist track for a long time. Between subsidies and loans and insurance, agribiz has outgrown the need for subsidies set up when farmers had to struggle to live. Most Americans balk at giving hard-earned taxpayer dollars to people who make many times what most Americans do. By all means, let’s have a safety net. But, in years when farm firms make hundreds of thousands of dollars, I think they’re pretty safe already. Like coal, oil, gas, sugar, etc we pay everyone else except ourselves—even Congress people are double dipping. Trump gives tax cuts to wealthy.

Get your tax-relief: https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Socialism-for-Rich-little-people-pay-tax/dp/1535218584

CAUTION: Brokerage firms are reinstating commissions for IRAs

Firms like Merrill are charging commissions again for IRAs because Trump cancelled the Fiduciary Rule. This Obama regulation protected you from sellers making a fortune when you moved your IRA to their firm’s products—usually a variable annuity. Trump was told that the industry would be hurt if it could not continue to earn 6-10% on your IRA move. The wirehouse, which has about 17,400 financial advisers, is instituting the new protocol on Oct. 1, along with additional adviser oversight and new client disclosures. Merrill cited “client pressure and a new regulatory environment as the primary factors behind the change.” Merrill and others had required brokers to use an advisory account to comply with the Fiduciary Rule. Now you will be switched back to create commissions. They are using the misleading reason: “greater choice and flexibility.” Of course you have always had ‘choice.’ Handsome commissions are paid by insurers. They recoup them with multiple annuity fees you pay over the time you hold annuities.

Get the best without fees: https://www.amazon.com/Fiduciary-Rule-BEST-dont-lose-anymore/dp/1530980275

Are the top hospitals near you?

The current report on ‘best’ hospitals by USNews is out and mine are not on it. However, your doc may be good enough working out of your local facility for your needs. The report uses risk-adjusted survival and readmission rates, volume, patient experience, patient safety and quality of nursing, among other care-related indicators. My local hospital does not have high volume so it won’t score high ever. Tons of data are collected for this survey so for special conditions, it is useful. Whether your health insurance plan would ever pay for care at the ‘best’ facility is another matter. Some facilities have waiting lists for admission. Most of us have never lived with another country’s plan so we don’t know how good our health care is. If we compare our overall health to that of other industrial countries, it seems our general health care is determined by income not by this report. Access is the operative concern to the rankings by the World Health Org which show a different picture. Our ‘best’ is there for those who can afford it. 70% of us would like to try Medicare for all since we can’t afford the ‘best.’ It bankrupts us.

Buy catastrophic coverage until then: https://www.amazon.com/Health-Insurance-ONLY-right-policy/dp/1480125083

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Make

America

, “The Don”, Great Again

Two

Americas

: A Banana Republic? Do we really want an infant king? Daddy Putin!

Conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy to receive Emoluments from foreign states, false statements, subverting constitutional tax power, obstructing justice, failure to secure voting systems from attacks, and Foundation self-dealing.

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How Govt wastes our money: Congress spends $1.3 Trillion we don’t have!

Trump EPA throws out study linking pesticide to child health: Chem firms don’t like it.