Insights & Advice

Dalton — If Sen. Elizabeth Warren gets elected president, maybe you’ll get Social Security after all. First, a warning: Beware political ideology masquerading as economics I see it on both sides of the aisle with “think tanks” praising a policy that fits their political narrative by bastardizing the math. Full disclosure here: I’ve never voted for Sen. Warren and I doubt I ever will. As an Independent, I vote Democratic from time to time. I’m a huge fan of Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts. I did vote for McCain over Obama, but then personally spent six figures supporting Obama’s…

Does this sound familiar? Business is good, but it could be better. It’s not so much the economy or consumer demand that are holding you back. Your competition is eating your lunch and you need an advantage. Advantages can happen in technology use, marketing prowess, strategic planning, financial strength and product differentiation. These are all important, but the most untapped competitive advantage is organizational health, aka teamwork. Unlike good teamwork, all of the others are easy to access. You can hire a co-CEO to design strategic planning. The technologies of those disrupting your industry are mostly available to you. For…

Dalton — Last week I declared that “global manufacturing is already in a recession,” and that “even though the U.S. consumer is healthy and active, the trade war has brought U.S. manufacturing to the brink of recession.” I think we just passed the brink. According to the most recent reading of the Institute of Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index, manufacturing in the U.S. has dropped for two consecutive quarters, overtime hours have been falling, and the survey of industrial production fell from 51.2 in July to 49.1 in August (50 being the line between growth and contraction). Although being below 50 means…

Dalton — Do you have a mortgage? Did you refinance recently? If not, maybe you should. U.S. homeowners owe $9.4 trillion on their mortgages and an additional $4.6 trillion in non-mortgage debt, for a total of $14 trillion. The non-mortgage debt consists of, in descending order, student loans, auto loans, credit cards and home equity lines. That exceeds the roughly $13 trillion of outstanding debt in 2008, just as we were getting into the Great Recession. Readers know that I hold a rather cautious view on where the economy is heading, so you might suspect another doom-and-gloom story about the timing…

Jackson Hole, Wyo., the site of last week’s Federal Reserve Bank Economic Symposium. Powell delivers perfectly Dalton — People expect too much. Last week financial prognosticators focused on the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium (Friday, Aug. 23) and the headline speech delivered by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. They expected Powell to talk about where the Fed was going to go on interest rate policy. That, however, was not on the agenda. That’s not a figure of speech. I mean it literally was not on the agenda for this annual meeting. It never is. This annual meeting and subsequent speech have…

Dalton — Growing up in the Berkshires, I could tell if a certain generation lived in the area at a certain time period by the way they referred to General Electric as “The GE.” For more than 20 years, because of my profession, local folks have asked me where “the GE” is going — should they buy, sell or hold? For 20 years I’ve said to sell that garbage. Telling people that they made a mistake, especially when they felt so safe with their decision, wasn’t a good way to make friends. People didn’t really want my insight, they just wanted…

Dalton — My bride, Stacey, and I spent last week in Lake George, New York. It’s become an annual pilgrimage of ours, which came to be because my parents would bring the family there every summer since as far back as I can remember. We’ve been there enough times that the area is easy to navigate. But we’ve also been there enough so that we don’t feel as if we miss out on an adventure if we skip doing stuff we’ve done a dozen times before. We call it our “do nothing” vacation. We walk down to the lake and do…

Dalton — Did that title get you to click? If so, I’ll have to keep it in mind in case I want to someday up my clickbait game. But this, my friend, ain’t clickbait. This is your favorite uncle, Allen, helping you put cold, hard cash in your pocket. Who’s good to you? Over 140 million people, more than half of Americans, had their personal data compromised by the Equifax breach back in 2017. On July 22, Equifax agreed to settle state and federal investigations of the data breach by setting aside $700 million to pay for damages. I filed mine…

Dalton — Last Thursday, July 18, the yield curve (the spread between yields on 10-year and three-month U.S. Treasuries) turned un-inverted for the first time since May 23 and ended a 40-day streak at inverted levels. As a refresher, an inverted yield curve is an interest rate environment in which long-term debt has a lower yield than short-term debt instruments of the same quality.

Dalton — Your husband has a kept woman. And it’s you. Kept in the dark, that is. According to a UBS study, “women put financial security at risk by deferring long-term financial decisions to spouses.” Let’s face it: Most financial advisors are old white dudes (OWDs) like me, and old white dudes often don’t like to falter from traditional gender roles. OWDs are not comfortable with change, like involving the matriarch in the conversation. About half of financial advisors are over 50 years old, most are male, and nearly one-third of all financial advisors are projected to retire in the next 10…

Dalton — What’s your number? I know you’ve thought about it—the size of the investment portfolio you’ll need to feel comfortable retiring. According to a recent Charles Schwab survey of 1,000 401(k) plan participants nationwide, the number is $1.7 million.