I was not going to tackle the issue of the new tax law changes at this time. However, Ben A. wrote an excellent response to my “Henry” blog last week. Ben pointed out accurately that the top 10% of the income earners in the United States pays over 70% of the tax on personal income. After reading …
New Tax Law Targets America’s Most Productive Workers Read More »
An excellent article in The Wall Street Journal by Alex P. Kellogg, “BMW Touts ‘Joy,’ Value in New Ads,” Saturday/Sunday, February 13-14, 2010, highlights the changes in the advertising themes of several prestige manufacturers of automobiles. It seems that status is out and satisfaction, value and physical properties are being emphasized. Acura is now touting …
You are contemplating pursuing a graduate degree. Several weeks after you take the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), your scores arrive in the mail. How do you rank? You discover that your verbal aptitude score is in the third quarter, or below average range. Naturally you are disappointed. If this was your score, would you still …
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal mentioned that a conference of academic economists was taking place in Atlanta. The theme of the article centered around the frugal nature of academic economists. “Some economists may be cheap, . . . . because of their training or a fascination with money and choices that drives …
One of the most pleasant benefits from writing books is hearing personally from my readers. I would like to share a letter that I recently received which is ideally suited for Veterans Day reflection. “Dear Dr. Stanley,I recently…began to read The Millionaire Mind…. I try to read a little each night. It was about 11:00 …
My friends in the trust and estate business refer to it as OPM, that is, Other People’s Money. How well do people spend other people’s money? The pat answer is “not as well as if they earned it themselves.” Thus, many of my friends believe that it is not a good idea for wealthy parents to …
During these uncertain times, it pays to be vigilant in recognizing economic opportunities. Over the years, more than a few millionaires have told me that during one’s lifetime, major economic opportunities will confront most of us. Unfortunately, the majority of people don’t capitalize upon them. Some just don’t recognize “gold” when they stumble across it; others …
As long as we are headed towards a controlled economy, I would like to add my two cents worth and perhaps a bit of comic relief. We can encourage people to become more fiscally responsible! I suggest that we begin by altering the spending habits of the hyperconsuming/income statement affluent (IA) population. I mentioned on Twitter that …
If you recall from an earlier blog, Part 1: The Millionaire Next Door: Swiss? Cheese only, I hypothesized that most people who are guilty of tax evasion are hyper consumers. But not all of these tax cheats use offshore accounts. In fact, I am of the opinion that there is a much greater number of …
Compare the “rich” people (especially the Forbes 400 crowd I profiled in my previous blog) with the typical Joe and Nancy American household. The typical household in the United States generates a median income of just over $50,000 per year. As explained in an earlier blog, Average Rich? Median Poor?, its net worth is just …
Part 3 of 3: The Millionaire Next Door . . . Swiss? Cheese only. Read More »