Happy 4th of July fromCornerstone Wealth Partners on Vimeo.

A fun video of Reagan joking about the democrats. Funny. Timeless.

One of my favorite quotes adopted by former president Ronald Reagan is, “Trust but Verify”.

After Reagan used the phrase at the signing of the INF Treaty, his counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev responded: “You repeat that at every meeting,” to which Reagan answered “I like it.”

You and I need to “like it” too!  We need to repeat it at every meeting with our financial professionals.  Trust but verify!   We know we should, but why do so few people do it?

We all pay financial “experts” thousands in fees!   We really want to trust the professionals that we pay to invest our savings.  But we dread holding them accountable!  So we choose to continue to trust them even when our instincts are screaming to us that something is not adding up!  Most people think it is complicated and confrontational.  It is not!

You need to understand some basic truths (i.e Get out of debt, Free Markets work, etc).  Then establish some simple benchmarks for tracking success.  And then meet on occasion to compare your investment performance with the agreed upon benchmarks.

“Trust but Verify”  Let me know if I can help.

Steve

There are terrific deals on real estate these days! I get calls every week from clients that want to “get in on the action.” I own rental properties and my membership in the RPOA (Rental Property Owners Association) has been the best thing I did since buying my first rental property! I have learned as much from the RPOA as I have from my own mistakes ( that’s a lot of education). Check them out at www.RPOAonline.org!

Making money in Real Estate Investing is not easy! It’s similar to opening a small business! However, if you get into it with the right expectations and manage the risk appropriately, it can be very rewarding!

The RPOA is hosting a terrific conference downtown this weekend. You can check out the specifics here.

If you gave a farmer a choice to pay taxes on his seed or on his harvest, what would you recommend he do? No doubt, you would recommend that he pay taxes on the much smaller amount of seed and receive the entire harvest tax free! The option between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA are the same. A Roth IRA allows you to pay income taxes on the amount that you invest and allows the savings to grow tax free and it allows tax free withdrawals in retirement (age 59 ½)!

Dave Ramsey has called the Roth IRA the most tax friendly investment savings tool allowed by the IRS today! For 2010 only, you are allowed to convert traditional IRA savings to Roth IRA regardless of your income level! The 10% penalty would be waived. Taxes for the converted IRA savings can be paid 50% in the 2011 and 50% in the 2012 tax years.

Should you convert your savings? Contact your tax professional and discuss your options very soon. This opportunity will be over at the end of 2010. The individuals best suited for this opportunity will be those not needing to withdraw the money for at least 10yrs, will likely be in a higher tax bracket by the time they retire and have cash on hand to pay the income taxes for the conversion.

Call if you have questions. Time is running out.