Author Archives: David John Marotta

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.

Spending less money isn’t an end it itself. Directing your spending to what you truly value is what is important.

Keeping control of your finances means that you can have more fun with your money.

“Do I really want to spend my money in this way?”

Baring a real people’s revolution, it will take until 2050 for China to complete their slow march to free markets.

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.

NAPFA members give away a great deal of valuable advice.

ETFs combine tax efficiency with low expenses.

The value of any asset category does not go in one direction forever. The housing prices boom shows signs of weakness, and that they may correct or at least under perform for the next few years.

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.

The truly rich person is anyone whose income is greater than his or her expenses and whose expenses are sufficient to their desires.

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.

We guarantee you will agree it makes sense to entrust leadership to this last nominee.

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

Many financial products are sold through greed or fear, but estate planning isn’t one of them. Having an estate plan and a living trust is an import part of wealth management.

The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away. This is true even when running a federal deficit.

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.

Lottery tickets are also a good deal, if you win – otherwise it is just a tax on people who can’t do math.

Because you can’t change your mind, and you can’t spend your money ahead of time, the best use of an immediate fixed annuity is to protect you from yourself. Call me wild and crazy, but this is not the risk I am worried about.

The returns offered by immediate fixed annuities aren’t as good as they sound. The slight of hand in this case is the immediate loss of 100% of your principal. They are “fixed” for you to lose and the insurance company to win.

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.

We act as if being a business owner is trivial enough to burden them with the responsibility of funding, implementing, and enforcing whatever social programs are in vogue. Then we exempt ourselves from taking the risk.

We find the Heritage study useful, both to refute other presidential candidate’s claims that governmental coercion will make us richer economically, and also to help us find those countries where investment actually would make us richer.

Each year since 1994 the Heritage Foundation has used a systematic, empirical measurement of economic freedom in countries throughout the world.

The amount of money involved in foreign aid is often large enough to politicize the economic life of a small country and lead to massive graft, corruption, and waste.

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

Here is a rule for building stable economic systems: Who pays for a service and who is empowered to decide if a service should be given and who actually benefits from the service should all be the same person.

When you make a frivolous purchase, tell your spouse that you made it. If you can’t tell your spouse about the purchase, it isn’t worth the trouble. Above all, learn to work together in marriage. Being wealthy requires a husband and wife to both be frugal.