Estate Planning re Money in Tax Deferred Accounts

If you are holding significant sums in tax-deferred accounts, and you are concerned about their tax treatment when inherited by your heirs, this Laura Saunders piece is an important read. The upshot is that tax planning for retirement accounts comes down to guesses. No wonder the last Tax Report hit a nerve with readers. It delved into the problems affluent savers face when their retirement dollars are concentrated in traditional IRA/401(k) accounts. Required withdrawals can shower these savers with unneeded income that raises tax rates, reduces tax breaks and triggers tax increases.

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Don't Get Sucked Into Leveraged ETFs

On their face, leveraged ETFs look like they can greatly enhance returns in your portfolio. As Jason Zweig explains, unless you have more money than you know what to do with, and don't mind losing most or all of it, stay away from them like the plague until Hell freezes with pigs flying over.

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Ubiquiti's UniFi Travel Router and a PS re Amazon

Our recent post on travel routers generated quite a bit of interest. Many inquiries asked if there were better looking, sleeker models than the one displayed on the post. The answer is yes. Although it's not available in black or any color more to our liking, the Ubiquiti UniFi is sleek, thin, and light. 

PS re Amazon: While available on Amazon for $129, this thing is available on the product's website linked above for $79. 280 capsules of Citracal is double the price at Amazon as it is delivered for free from Costco. The point being is to check prices elsewhere before buying from Amazon. 

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Update Chrome Now

If you haven't updated Chrome since Thursday, update it now. Google on Thursday released security updates to patch 12 vulnerabilities, including one that has come under active exploitation in the wild.

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The "Catch" That Didn't End the Game

With two out in the ninth inning, this "catch" would have ended the game. You've got to feel for this guy, but given the playoff wild-card picture in the National League, any loss by the Padres is a welcome sight for the Phillies.

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Trump's Arch and a PS

Excavation work on President Trump’s 250 foot-tall arch in Washington, is expected to start over the next two weeks. The arch would sit between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island. “This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Thursday on social media. If you don't want it to be built, worry not: The project, one of Trump’s many so-called beautification projects in the nation’s capital, is facing litigation. Opponents have argued Trump needs congressional approval to build it. The triumphal arch would block or disrupt the sightline of other monuments, critics have said. Oh yeah, that's what they said about the ballroom.

PS: The one gratification to look forward to is when Trump is gone, as is done in countries everywhere when a corrupt self-aggrandizing leader is out, is watching the horrendous monuments and all the other such stuff being torn down and all the gilded stuff being stripped away.

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Geopolitical Risk Canary in a Gold Mine?

I thought I was the only one, when it comes to protecting one's assets, has been worried about geopolitical risks. As it turns out, the Dutch central bank shifted the location of 78 metric tons of gold, valued a $11 billion at today’s prices, from vaults beneath the streets of Manhattan to London, saying it would improve the ability to trade the metal in a pinch. The high-security operation took several months to pull off. Some of the gold was sold in the U.S. and repurchased in the U.K. Other bars were flown to Europe, likely in the storage hold of planes. The result: Almost a third of the Dutch gold reserve is in London and a still chunky 19% in New York, flipping their earlier positions. “In view of increasing geo-political unrest, DNB is strengthening its crisis preparedness,” the central bank said in a statement referring to its Dutch acronym. 

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The Toasted Owl (Restaurants in Phoenx and Flagstaff)

Originally one restaurant in Flagstaff, The Toasted Owl now has two restaurants in Flagstaff and two in Phoenix, including one conveniently located at 300 West Camelback Road. It serves delicious breakfast food and lunch food. There's another lunch restaurant in Flagstaff but I can't remember it's name. It's got patio dining and is on a main road.

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Democracy on the Line: Nightmare Scenario

Trump has appealed his ability to stop mail-in ballot voting to the Supreme Court. For procedural reasons there is no way the Court should be hearing the appeal and for substantive reasons the appeal has no basis (indeed, it's frivolous). That said, if anyone believes there aren't 3 votes in the shadow docket in the bag for Trump, they have not been paying attention, and if anyone believes there easily could not be 2 more that would vote in favor of Trump, they have not been paying attention either. Should Trump's appeal prevail, it would shut-down mail-in voting, and that will effectively shut-down voting in a wide swath of states particularly in the West, Southwest, Upper Mid-West, and the Northeast. To stop the vote is to stop democracy. Full stop. The idea that democracy now rests in the hands of 6 Supreme Court justices is nothing short of terrifying.

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The AI Toothbrush: Not a Joke

[Prefatory Note: You might think you know how AI is going to change our lives. This post might lead to your thinking again about the profound changes coming that you did not imagine]

You know about Dyson's high-end, high-priced vacuums for cleaning floors. If you care about your teeth as much as your floors, then Dyson's AI Camerajet toothbrush (priced at about $500) is for you. It’s a camera viewing, gap finding, jet washing, liquid flossing, mouthwash dispensing, technique teaching, live streaming, plaque blasting, precision cleaning toothbrush. As such, it's the only toothbrush with a camera and a jet, to target the gaps and remove plaque between your teeth. I'm waiting for a mini-robot-toothbrush you just drop in your mouth and it zooms around in it like a Roomba zooms around your floors.

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