Author Archives: David John Marotta

Even if you don’t need coverage you can avoid future penalties for as little as $1.87 per month.

Don’t borrow or withdraw money from your IRA.

Prepaid programs are not safe. They just assume a different type of risk.

If you are one of the 92% with children under the age of 18 who haven’t started a 529 plan, we encourage you to meet with a fee-only financial advisor soon. You can never start too early, and it’s never too late to do something.

In the past three years Joshua’s account has grown a whopping 76.6% averaging 22.5% per year.

If you are not saving for college you are falling behind.

Education matters. He who doesn’t teach his son a trade teaches him to steal.

Probably the most important question you can ask of anyone offering you financial advice is, “Do you have a legal obligation to act in my best interests?”

There are many things riskier than volatility.

You can smooth your returns without any of hedge fund’s drawbacks.

Wanting to avoid regulations, Hedge funds appeal to investor’s snobbery to make it seem like a privilege.

You take all the risk, but the manager gets twenty percent of any winnings. This is not a good compensation scheme.

Hedge claims are equivalent to “All of the coins I want to tell you about came up heads.”

As Hedge funds grow in popularity, beware of following the lemmings.

Good portfolios have low expense ratios and minimal trading costs.

Currently, stockbrokers can offer the same services as Fee-Only financial planners without being accountable to the same fiduciary standards. This exemption to the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 has been called the “Merrill Lynch rule.”

We are gradually becoming our grandparents.

Marketing promises and good friends often cloud the facts.

Many people are afraid of having their retirement progress assessed.

Decreasing your standard of living is the quickest path toward retirement.

“You’re fired!” can be an opportunity to work for yourself. But the best two words you might hear are yourself saying, “I quit.” Working for yourself is risky and frightening, but the financial freedom and opportunities you gain are significant.

“April is the month,” one wit noted, “when the green returns to the lawn, the trees and the Internal Revenue Service.”

Two hours and twenty minutes of every eight hour day go to pay taxes. Three minutes go toward personal savings.

On your way to becoming a billionaire, the million markers become commonplace.

It is a tragic irony that the goals of collectivism are best achieved by respecting individual liberties.

The incentives that produce wealth also produce inequity. Valuing equality above all else destroys the real wealth they are trying to redistribute.

Overweighting investments with average higher return and lower risk is a win-win situation.

The wealth gap between blacks and whites widens each generation as a direct result of Social Security.

ETFs combine tax efficiency with low expenses.

There is an art to selecting the right investment vehicles for individual portfolios.

Keeping expenses low helps keep your return high.

A good investment advisor will tailor the investments to the specific characteristics of the investor’s situation.

If the S&P were a financial advisor it would say, “Let’s buy mostly large cap growth stocks in the industry that did well last year with a high price per earnings ratio.”

If Canada paid their fair share for pharmaceuticals prices would fall.

Only 34% of family businesses successfully pass to the second generation and only 13% make it to the third generation.

In the corporate world, mismanagement can only be covered up so long. In time, those responsible are held accountable. Companies fold. Executives are taken away in handcuffs. Only in the federal government can poorly manage bad ideas and still plead they are underfunded.

Encourage the rich to be rich or else suffer the consequences of striving toward making us all equally destitute.

Voting for government entitlement programs is like being generous with your neighbor’s credit card.

Let the free market work its magic. Markets are brilliant in their ability to determine the optimal value and use of limited resources.

If a Democrat proposed a flat tax, they would take away the Republican’s major platform and be easily elected.

We would be wiser and stronger to take the advice of Thomas Jefferson, the second Governor of Virginia who said, “A wise and frugal Government, shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

Many people wish to prevent the rich from earning more money, even if that results in smaller tax revenues and a less productive economy.

Diversify your business and your investments. That way fads and trends won’t determine your financial success.

Adapting and reacting to trends is important in investing and crucial in small business.

At least 40% of the federal gasoline taxes are wasted on non-highway items of dubious general welfare. And 2.86 cents of the revenue is used to subsidize mass transit unused by all but a few large cities.
As an additional inequity, Virginia is a donor state. That means that Virginia, like most southern states, sends the government more in gasoline taxes than it receives in federal pork. We don’t even get to waste our own money! Most of the pork is sent to the Northeast and to states with more influential senators.

If market forces drive up the price of gasoline, any efforts to reduce it aside from supply and demand punishes the exercise of economic freedom and personal responsibility. If you find the moral argument of freedom unconvincing, free markets can still win the pragmatic debate.

Don’t put off the things that truly matter to you until you have more time. You will never have any more time than what you are given each day.

Running a small business requires financial balance. Here are ten rules.

Many businesses can be started in your spare time, from your home. This allows you to test the waters and determine if the market can eventually support you on a full time basis.

All systems must have a regulator in order to dampen runaway reactions. Healthcare coverage is no exception.