ComingCrisis.com

In a article in the Toronto Star this week they stated that

Retirement is getting more expensive and perilous in the wake of America’s mortgage and financial crisis. The fear of a recession has increased the risk you will have less income in retirement, or have to work longer.

The worst part is it’s starting to get really bad, depending where you live you can feel it more than others.

How bad is it? Worse than after the tech-stock bubble. Worse than after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. Worse than the start of the Iraq war.

Also another worrying fact is that more and more pensions are starting to publicly admit that they are not properly funded.

Mercer Human Resource Consulting says its pension-health index fell to 77, down from 82 in December, 90 last summer and 120 in late 2000.

The pain of that decline will be felt beyond company or government-sponsored pension plans like the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which last week announced its sponsors must come up with a plan by Sept. 30 to deal with a solvency deficit of $12.7 billion, or 11 per cent.

When it comes to individual investors the article also stated

Hamilton said individuals will find the same thing if they take the time to prepare a financial plan using realistic assumptions.

“They will know the part about the assets not having done great (if they have invested in more than Canadian stocks),” he said.

The model portfolio tracked by Mercer includes 42.5 per cent in different types of bonds, 25 per cent in Canadian stocks, 15 per cent U.S. stocks, 15 per cent international stocks and 2.5 per cent in treasury bills.

This plan would have lost only 1 per cent of its value in the first quarter. But a selection of Canadian bonds rose in value by 3 per cent, driving down the interest rate that could be counted on in future. Losses on foreign equities were smaller than they would have been if other currencies had not risen relative to the Canadian dollar, at 5.2 per cent for an index of international stocks and 5.9 per cent for U.S. stocks.

What retirement savers may not realize, said Hamilton, is that interest rates tend to stay low for a long time once they have fallen, and the small difference between those rates and the annual inflation of consumer prices is “a very bad thing” in retirement.

“You don’t have any easy, safe way to get decent returns. That means you need more money to provide the same income than you used to. The fact that you are living longer (than you might have expected earlier) means you need more again.

“So, bottom line, it’s an expensive time to retire.”

So right now is not a good time to retire but some people have no choice so what is a person to do?

What would you do/are doing if you have to retire now?

Charlie Sheen in Wallstreet said “Life comes down to a few moments, and this is one of them” today the Dow did something funny, it dropped 200 points, and the only thing i can think is buy!

Very rarely do we get opportunities like this, now is the time to buy, before Dow 15,000.

Our calls in the past have been right on the mark, so take this advice and now is the time to buy.

The advantage of investing in the US for anyone outside is that the US dollar has been falling to all other currencies so right now it’s cheap to buy in the US, also with the current administration and the leaning toward a democratic leader in the next election, these are signs that the US dollar will be increasing over the next 4-6years which will magnify returns.

Where do you think the market is going? Leave a comment

Feel like going on a roller coaster?

Well i know money can sometimes get tight, especially when buying that 2nd or 3rd home for well “investing” reasons. I came across this great video on the net and i thought i would share it.

If you’re unfamiliar with the game roller coaster tycoon by Atari, it allows you to make custom tracks. You can do this in very different ways, but one way you can do it is by graphing out your points.

This smart fellow decided to take the real estate prices from 1890 till the present and graph it out using roller coaster tycoon, the best part is he’s going to take you along for the ride!

Enjoy!

To learn more please visit www.speculativebubble.com

I read an interesting article by Robert Kiyosaki, If you do know who Robert is he is the super star author that others want to be like, it’s been on the New York times best seller list for over 5 years, selling millions and millions of copies.

When Robert speaks people listen, that’s why i found this article interesting. Robert is prediciting that the market is slowly crashing.

On Feb. 27 of this year, a 9 percent market sell-off in China sent ripples of fear through stocks markets across the world. In the United States, the Dow’s one-day plunge of 416 points was the steepest decline since the market opened after Sept. 11, 2001.

So the question is: Should stock investors be worried? As you might expect, some say yes and some say no.

Robert thinks this is a sign of things to come, while i don’t disagree i don’t necessarily see this as the final end all and be all. The market has had a big run up from late 2006 to early 2007 and there was a lot of money made, thus equaling smart investors were profit taking, and even smarter ones were shorting the market.

Robert also says

To get a truer picture of comparative values, compare the Dow to the price of gold. When the purchasing power of gold is compared to the purchasing power of the Dow, the Dow appears to be crashing.

That means the average investor will need at least a 15 percent annual return on their stocks or mutual funds just to stay ahead of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power erosion — that is, just to break even.

In my earlier Yahoo! Finance columns, I used history to forecast the future by comparing the dollar to gold and oil over a 10-year period. Here’s the data:

1996

2006

Percent Increase

Table updated 3/21/07.

Table updated 3/21/07.

It is important to note that Robert does have significant positions in both Oil and Gold, but he has disclosed this in previous articles as well.

Overall this article raises a lot of issues, and investors should be concerned for the long term, but for the next 1-3 years the market is still heading up.

Enjoy the ride.

This is in follow up to the last post i wrote about the US falling apart financially, check it out here

There is a good article i saw over at CTV on a way to ease the strain on health care systems around the world, and thus potentially avoiding a huge problem.

The report goes into why we need to work together in teams to diagnose and manage diseases.

The report titled, “Why Health Care Renewal Matters: Lessons from Diabetes,” used type 2 diabetes as a case study to look at whether the country’s health system is effectively helping Canadians manage chronic conditions.

It suggests that what is needed is a shift from a focus on finding disease and fixing it, to preventing chronic conditions, then ensuring that those diagnosed with the diseases know how to manage them.

The report says such a shift in focus would have a “profound, positive impact on the lives of Canadians,” while also helping ensure the sustainability of our health care.

While i feel this report is a good first step, there is a long way to go for where we need to end up. Eventually i think all governments will realize that it is cheaper to prevent diseases like diabetes and heart disease by using preventive measures i.e. offering incentives like paying for gym memberships or subsidizing them to a certain point, and maybe a similar program for vitamins and sports or naturopaths.

Something like this is needed, but it has to be done by a major G8 nation to show that it works, but like many things in life as with this one as well, it’s going to take a leap of faith. Even if the government took a step like this tomorrow there wouldn’t be any conclusive results for years if not decades, what politician is going to run on that ticket?

The hope is though with a nation facing a massive slow down due to a crippled health care system i think the government will start having to look into alternatives.

So i was watching 60 minutes this evening and one of the stories caught my eye, it is what we have been preaching for a year now and the reason this blog was started. Read (What Were All About Post)

David Walker is the US Comptroller General and he is doing an Al Gore across America. This may have been the best report i have seen on this subject. It is an essential video to watch.

The one thing that was not addressed in the video was that the US is not the only one facing this issue, other countries facing this issue is the UK,Germany, Australia, France and the one with the biggest exposure is Canada. With 85% of exports going to the States and it’s own Canadian Pension Plan Underfunding as well as a medical plan that is underfunded, Canada faces the biggest risk out of all industrialized nations.

Last Time i checked these were the G8 nations.

United States

Japan

Germany

United Kingdom

France

Italy

Canada

Russia

Out of these countries at least 5 of them are exposed to the baby boomer crisis, and the underfunding of medical and social programs. Last time i checked when the top 5 countries in the world start going into an economic decline i think they call that a depression.

Everything is not doom and gloom though, look out for our up coming posts on how to benefits from a depression and strategies to make money when the economy collapses.

Watch the Video Here

Today Estonia made history becoming the first country in the world to implement e-voting in a parliamentary election. this is history because even the most technologically advanced nations in the world haven’t accomplished this.(P.S. if you’re thinking the US is the most advanced think again, see “The information age is about to explode post”

Anyways back to Estonia if you’re not familiar with the country they are located in eastern Europe former USSR, right beside Latvia and Russia and right across the Baltic sea from Finland. They have come along way in the last decade and half since the Berlin wall came crashing down. This is what Wikipedia had to say about Estonia

“Human settlement in Estonia became possible 11,000–13,000 years ago, when the ice from the last glacial era melted away. The oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was located on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in southern Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating, it was settled around 11,000 years ago, at the beginning of the 9th millennium BC.”

Amazing 11,000 years ago, well what makes this so unique is that even older people who are not seen as technologically advanced are voting as well.

The system uses a card reader to validate the person voting, this is major progress, the reason why it hasn’t occurred in the west yet in my opinion is because people are so worried about people “hacking” these kind of technologies and somehow managing to “fix” the results.

The real issue is though not people messing with results but with people not wanting to make progress, that is the major issue that needs to be addressed in the coming decades in the west, and this is a topic i will be addressing more in upcoming posts.

Today we celebrate Estonia’s progress and wish them the best of luck in the future.

So today is Wednesday and i’m bored, after the day the markets had yesterday all you can do is sit back and have a laugh, so i was introduced to a new service called today by a friend of mine Alisa called My Heritage, it’s a very cool service which allows you to map out your family tree amongst other things.

While doing some research on this company i found out that it was founded by Gilad Japhet who use to manage BRM Technologies’ anti-virus research unit until it was acquired by Symantec. My Heritage is actually based out of Israel and has a single goal of which is “Our vision has been to make it easier for people around the world to use the power of the Internet to discover their heritage and strengthen their bonds with family and friends”. A very noble goal to say the least.

The best part about My Heritage is the integration into other sites, i.e facebook, myspace, friendster and many more, the easier they make this the more viral there product will be, and let me tell you i can guarantee this is going to be a very viral product.

This is the viral part, the have one section on the sight called Face Recognition - Celebrity Matches, which basically takes a picture that you upload and then it looks in their database of celebrities and tries to find the best matches, while no means is this system 100% accurate it is pretty fun and this is the component that will make this site viral, think of all the myspace monkeys and facebook junkies telling there friends how the internet thinks they look like J-Lo or David Beckham or even god forbid Britney Spears.

Well i had to give this a little test so i figured who could i use that people would know so we could all judge the results? Then it hit me…… John Chow people all over the net recognize him and then we could all judge the results to see the accuracy.

So i uploaded this photo of John Chow

And now the magic happens, this is where My Heritage really shines, it goes and looks and looks to see who this guy looks like.

Well to my surprise it turns out John Chow is actually quite unique but dont fret ladies and gents, it did manage to find some results.

Drum roll please…………………………….

Now let’s go over the results, with the highest percentage and in first place we have

1. At a 68% match we have Gao Xingjian, if your asking who the hell is that? well go look him up in Wikipedia he is actually a Chinese Novelist who in 2000 won a pulitzer prize.

2. At a 64% match we have Tsui Hark he is the equivalent of Steven Speilberg in Hong Kong, at this point i seem to like the results, then something strange occurs

3. Also at 64% we have Song Hye-Kyo, she is a Korean model and actress, now no offence to John but this girl is cute and well i think there seems to be some error in the program, until i got the 4th result then i knew this was to good to be true, it was all the proof i needed.

4. At 58% and all the proof i need the man himself Kim Jong IL, at this point i realized that this software was not only accurate but also 100% correct, the man who throws stones at panda’s and other unspeakable acts is related to Kim Jong (or as i call him Kim John IL) IL himself.

5. If Kim Jong IL wasn’t bad enough apparently My Heritage thinks John Chow looks like Roberto Benigni the famous Italian director who gave that infamous oscar speech.

So all in all i would have to say that My Heritage is going to a great upcoming site and it will be all over the net in a few short months.

And the final conclusion is that John Chow has a 58% chance of being related to Kim Jong IL

After yesterday’s sell off the markets are starting to bounce back, the Dow is up 90+ point the NASDAQ is up 18+ point and the S&P is up 12+ points.

China is also up today in international markets, but you have to remember there is most likely going to be another couple of days of selling, the market doesn’t so quickly forget about a sell-off like it had on Tuesday.

So either tomorrow or the next week or two look for another significant move down, as the market corrects itself. This is going to be a good opportunity to buy for the long term as well. After the correction here comes Dow 15,000 Woo Hoo!

Well it looks like John Chow over at John Chow Dot Com is having a contest, the basic gist of it is that you have to guess how much income he is going to make this month from his blog.

Last month he managed to make $3,440.66, now the question is did he beat it?

I think he did, so i’m going to have to guess that he came in at a new record of $4142.07.

In a few days we will find out if i’m right.

You maybe asking well why do you want to guess this anyways?

Well because there is a prize, yes a prize a beautiful brand new watch. Not any old watch either its a brand new custom branded wristwatch from Abit Computer. This custom-made watch, with a face done in the Abit corporate color is given only to deserving Abit employees and visiting international media. It was presented to John on his last trip to Abit’s world headquarters in Taipei.

Now that’s a prize, if you want to win ladies and gents you must enter and for that, you must go to the website.

-Best of luck!