Wow. Where to begin with all this information?
If you’re a Baby-Boomer and you are starting to consider some retirement ideas, you may already be out of time without a solid backup plan. Although we have been telling our subscribers the same information you will be reading below for almost a decade now, not many others really realize how screwed they are in relation to ever being able to retire and what is coming down the pike that will be making things even worse for them. Contrary to the popular myth, Ignorance is NOT bliss.
This mess has been building for decades, but during the past three years alone, the reality of [Covid] along with a major financial market meltdown has accelerated a financial decline dramatically and smacked quite a few normally informed people right in the chops as if what was happening was some sort of “surprise”.
The exposure of these financial events come as no surprise to current Infinex University students, but so many others will look at each item as a one-off event, not realizing the bigger picture long at play by the financial elite which will, and already is, devastating the middle-class.
Look, we know that there are 1000’s of promises being made on the internet about “How To Get Rich Quick”, but none of them work… Do you wonder why? Because none of those strategies are based in reality.
So, what is this “reality” we speak of? Simple, unless you are doing exactly what the 1% are doing to make money, it won’t be accepted and eventually you will fail. The articles and links below are testimony that this is a proven fact.
Face it, fully half of all families in America earn less than $50,000 per year and according to the Social Security Administration, nearly 40% of ALL workers make less than $30,000 per year in Gross Income [before taxes]. How sad is that?
It’s easy to see why people are looking to make more money, but it should be just as easy to see why the average Joe six-pack might freak-out a little when people like us come along and tell them they have the potential to earn at least $200 an hour but quite possibly up to $2000 Per Hour, or almost a month’s wages [for them] in under an hour. It takes some time for them to process that reality and many will never grasp the concept.
Anyway, the reality is that if you can’t get up to speed and start earning at least $100,000 a year, you are going to struggle financially every-single-day and you will then eventually be “left for dead” when the next few waves of inflation start hitting the proverbial fan.
The fact is that the rich will continue to get richer while the poor will continue to get poorer. That’s just the way it is and the choice to pick sides is yours. So either accept the facts now and adjust your future to include success or wait, resist and complain until you are forced to accept your fate later.
Now, we could yap all day until we’re blue in the face about these realities, but we’ve decided to let a bunch of highly credible economists, analysts and other sources chime in and take this conversation to a much higher level, so back to business…
Rather than re-hash the obvious, we’re just going to try to arrange things in a semi-cohesive manner, then let you hear things directly from the horse’s mouth if you’re so inclined to dig that deep.
The takeaway from all of the “bad” news below is really good news for you because our entire 2000PerHour system is designed to transform this disaster into something that works for you and turns it into the Absolute Biggest Financial Opportunity of Your Lifetime. Of course, we don’t expect that you have put all the pieces of this giant puzzle together yet, but trust us, it’s all here and everywhere else around you [when you know what to look for].
So, without further ado, here are some great clips of the articles that we believe will become of extreme importance to you in the broad scope of all things related to your [soon to be successful] financial future. Links to the full stories for those wanting to know more are embedded into the titles of each article.
Yes, we know these are not “Good News” articles themselves, but you will eventually see how tough times become the perfect springboard to financial success for those who know the path. To a point, the worse things become for the majority, the better things can become for those whom have positioned themselves on the right side of the fence.
This is just the Tip of the Iceberg to Your Opportunity – Let’s get to it:
Almost half of Americans die nearly broke
Will you end up being one of them?
In a GoBankingRates study, 69% of adults admitted to having less than $1,000 in the bank, while 34% said they actually don’t have any savings at all. But apparently, this collective lack of savings doesn’t get all that much better with age. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found not so long ago that almost half of Americans die nearly broke. Of the general population, 46% of retirees die with savings of $15,000 or less. But that number climbs to 57% among retirees who are single.
Now when we take other assets, like homes, into account, the picture gets a bit less bleak. Still, 57% of single-adult households and 50% of widowed households had no housing equity to show for when they died.
The problem is that dying nearly broke isn’t just a matter of denying one’s beneficiaries an inheritance. Rather, it points to a frightening degree of financial vulnerability during retirement. If seniors are passing without much in the way of assets, it means that in the years leading up to their death, they’re ill equipped to handle a major unexpected expense, such as a significant medical bill. In fact, in that same GoBankingRates survey, only 37% of seniors 65 and older claimed to have $1,000 or more in the bank.
Angst In America – Disappearing Pensions
There was once a time when many American workers had a simple formula for retirement: You stayed with a large business for many years, possibly your whole career. Then at a predetermined age you gratefully accepted a gold watch and a monthly check for the rest of your life. Off you went into the sunset.
That happy outcome was probably never as available as we think. Maybe it was relatively common for the first few decades after World War II. Many of my Baby Boomer peers think a secure retirement should be normal because it’s what we saw in our formative years. In the early 1980s, about 60% of companies had defined-benefit plans. Today it’s about 4% (source: money.CNN). But today defined-benefit plans have ceased to be normal in the larger scheme of things. We witnessed an aberration, a historical anomaly that grew out of particularly favorable circumstances.
Circumstances change. Such pensions are all but gone from US private-sector employers. They’re still common in government, particularly state and local governments; and they are increasingly problematic. They are another source of angst for retirees, government workers who want to retire someday, and the taxpayers and bond investors who finance those pensions. Today, in what will be the first of at least two and possibly more letters focusing on pensions, we’ll begin to examine that angst in more detail. The mounting problems of US and European pension systems are massive on a scale that is nearly incomprehensible.
The Dismal Retirement Picture For America’s Older Generation
As we have pointed out many times in the past (most recently here), the jobs “recovery” has gone disproportionately to older workers at the expense of younger workers. In fact, as Bloomberg points out, the employment to population ratio for those 65 and over is at its highest level since the early 1960’s.
This creates a bottleneck for younger workers who are looking to move up from their current roles, and also those that are trying to gain entry level employment but can’t until the current occupiers of those seats can move up. The situation doesn’t appear to be on the verge of getting any better either, as 27% of Americans say they will “keep working as long as possible” according to a 2015 Federal Reserve study – and to make matters worse (for younger generations), 12% of Americans say they don’t plan to retire at all.
The primary reason for the older generations remaining in the workforce isn’t surprising: people simply don’t have the money to retire. Three in five retirees surveyed by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies said making money or earning benefits was at least one reason they had retired later than planned, and almost half said financial problems were the main reason for working past 65.
Phased Retirement: The Next Big Trend
For decades, the standard has been for retirees to say goodbye to their jobs and ride off into the sunset. However, some people today are taking a different route to retirement. Rather than clocking out one day and never going back, these seniors are instead phasing into their retirement by moving to a part-time schedule, becoming consultants or even starting small businesses.
“I see the beginning of a trend for people to work past the normal retirement age that is as much related to financial needs as to not feeling ready to fully retire,” says Rob Werner, president and CEO of Ardent Credit Union in Pennsylvania.
45% Of Americans Spend Up To Half Their Income Repaying Credit Card Debts
On several occasions we’ve pointed out that the baby boomer generation is, to put it mildly, ill-prepared for retirement. In fact, over 50% of baby boomers have basically no savings set aside for retirement at all. Now, a new survey from Northwestern Mutual helps to shed some light on why Americans are completely incapable of saving money.
First, roughly 50% of Americans have debt balances, excluding mortgages mind you, of over $25,000, with the average person owing over $37,000, versus a median personal income of just over $30,000.
Therefore, it’s not difficult to believe, as Northwestern Mutual points out, that 45% of Americans spend up to half of their monthly take home pay on debt service alone….which, again, excludes mortgage debt.
Nearly three quarters of Americans are struggling with debt and the burden is significant in terms of both size and duration, according to new findings from Northwestern Mutual’s 2017 Planning & Progress Study. Specifically:
Of those Americans with debt, 4 in 10 (45%) spend up to half of their monthly income on debt repayment. Nearly half of Americans (47%) are carrying at least $25,000 in debt, with average debt of $37,000 excluding mortgage payments. Notably, more than 1 in 10 say their debt exceeds a staggering $100,000. More than one third (36%) said they will be in debt between 6 and 20 years while 14% expect to be in debt for the rest of their lives
When looking at the sources of debt, similar to 2016, mortgages (29%), credit card bills (19%), and personal educational loans (7% gen pop and 23% for Millennials) topped the list.
Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year
Editors Note: This is a slightly older article, but the latest data from the SSA can be found HERE: 2016 data will be out in Oct 2017, but the downward trend is looking even worse when inflation is factored in!
We just got more evidence that the middle class in America is dying. According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year. Let that number sink in for a moment. You can’t support a middle class family in America today on just $2,500 a month – especially after taxes are taken out. And yet more than half of all workers in this country make less than that each month. In order to have a thriving middle class, you have got to have an economy that produces lots of middle class jobs, and that simply is not happening in America today.
It’s Now Almost Impossible To Save For Retirement
My grandfather was something of a Renaissance Man.
He was a farmer, schoolteacher, fisherman, collector, real estate investor… and one of those guys who always seemed to know how to do everything. He could take apart an engine, build a house with his bare hands, tame wild horses, treat life-threatening wounds, play the guitar… and he was extremely well respected in his community.
Plus, like many from his generation who grew up during the Great Depression, he was also a prolific saver. Being highly mistrustful of banks, my grandparents dealt mostly in physical cash. They used to keep money in old coffee cans stuffed full of coins and bills.
Every now and again when the coffee cans became too numerous, they would buy government savings bonds. Of course, that was a different world. When my grandparents were saving, the government was actually solvent, and interest rates were ‘normal’. You could buy government bonds and expect a decent rate of return.
Plus the dollar was still linked to gold back then, so you could have a confident outlook on your currency. At the same time, Social Security was also in good shape; you didn’t have to worry whether it was still going to exist when it came time for you to retire.
Sadly, it’s no longer the same today. As we discussed on Friday, Social Security in the Land of the Free has a shortfall exceeding $40+ TRILLION according to its own annual report. Simply put, this means that Social Security woefully lacks the funding to meet its obligations, particularly those to America’s future retirees.
This isn’t a problem strictly with Social Security either; one of the major Medicare trust funds (Disability Insurance) is literally days away from going completely broke. And as the Financial Times reported recently, city and state pension funds across the United States have another multi-TRILLION dollar funding gap.
Nor is this problem distinctly American; the same conditions broadly exist across most of the developed world, especially in Europe.
So relying on just about any western government’s retirement program is an absolute sucker’s move.
The Baby Boom Tsunami That Is Set To Drown The Economy
In our most recent article Millennials: A Menacing Metamorphosis To The Status Quo breaks down an interview hosted by Gordon T. Long and Charles Hugh Smith. The interview discusses the massive generational shift occurring in the United States as the Millennial generation sets to stitch their beliefs and ideas in the American fabric. But there is an issue. The status quo i.e. the baby boomers are not ready to give up the reigns forcing a generational clash, and as described by Gordon T. Long and Charles Hugh Smith will continue for the next eight years. Such a clash will lead to economic and social consequences. In terms of crisis, Strauss–Howe generational theory provides an excellent blue print of this generational clash called the ‘Fourth Turning’, where the old older is dismantled giving way to the new order.
Half of American families are living paycheck to paycheck
More than seven years after the Great Recession officially ended, there is yet more depressing research that at least half of Americans are vulnerable to financial disaster.
Some 50% of people are woefully unprepared for a financial emergency, new research finds. Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) Americans have nothing set aside to cover an unexpected emergency, while nearly 1 in 3 (31%) Americans don’t have at least $500 set aside to cover an unexpected emergency expense, according to a survey released Tuesday by HomeServe USA, a home repair service. A separate survey released Monday by insurance company MetLife found that 49% of employees are “concerned, anxious or fearful about their current financial well-being.”
One explanation: Americans are crippled under the same amount of debt as they had during the recession. The New York Federal Reserve on Monday predicted that total household debt will reach its previous peak of $12.68 trillion in 2017. The last time it reached that level was in the third quarter of 2008, during the depths of the Great Recession. Indeed, it’s already close: Total household debt in the fourth quarter of 2016 was $12.58 trillion. Fewer borrowers have housing-related debt in 2017 and, instead, have taken on auto and student loans.
How The Coming Wave Of Job Automation Will Affect You
One of the more interesting mental exercises related to predicting the future involves trying to fathom the impact the rise of robots will have on humanity.
We can be quite sure that in the proverbial blink, robots will be doing all the war fighting. After that, what’s the point? But does that then lead to the sort of robotic apocalypse so well envisioned in Terminator?
It’s all but impossible to see through the fog to the answers.
We already have robo news reporters (you didn’t actually think humans write the crap passed off for news these days, did you?) Of course, as the news writing programs become more and more sophisticated, might the algorithms be tweaked to influence the masses to buy an advertiser’s product or, more onerously, to create a desired political outcome?
In terms of managing money, we already have robo traders and robo advisors. But what happens when these technologies become self-learning? Will the competing programs become so adept at exploiting kinks in the armor of Mr. Market that they will effectively nullify each other?
This Economy is Ruined for Many Americans
Here’s a mystery: Has this “wealth-effect” economy that the Fed so beautifully engineered since the Financial Crisis gotten a lot riskier, scarier, and uglier in some profound ways for lower-income Americans, those making $30,000 or less a year?
One of the questions that Gallup posed was this:
Next, I’m going to read a list of problems facing the country. For each one, please tell me if you personally worry about this problem a great deal, a fair amount, only a little, or not at all? First, how much do you personally worry about –
Then came 13 issues, including “hunger and homelessness.”
Turns out, among Americans making $30,000 or less a year, 67% worry “a great deal” about hunger and homelessness! Food and shelter, two of the most basic human needs. That’s the highest percentage ever in Gallup’s data series on this question going back to 2001.
It’s up from 52% in 2001/2004; up from 56% in 2007/2008; and up from 51% in 2010/2011.
Median annual household income in February was $58,714, according to Sentier Research. On an inflation-adjusted basis, this was about flat with February 2016 and below February 2000. Median income means 50% make more and 50% make less. Other studies have shown that incomes have risen sharply at the upper end of the spectrum, but have fallen at the lower end, with the gap widening. Thus the median might have stagnated, but for many of those below the median, things haven’t turned out so well. And there are a lot of them!
The Reality Is, Half Of Americans Can’t Afford To Write A $500 Check
The CEO of Assurant appeared on Bloomberg TV to explain why demand for his services is likely to increase: the chief executive of the mobile phone insurer said he expects a surge in demand as carriers charge customers more to replace their devices. “If you think back five years ago, you as a consumer didn’t know how much that phone cost, you thought it was free or close to free,” Assurant’s Alan Colberg said Monday. “Now you’re paying $600, that’s a lot. So we’ve actually seen the attachment rate, or the number of people buying the product, going up a little bit in the last couple of years.”
He then proceeded to give Bloomberg his traditional sales pitch: Assurant is counting on growth at its business covering phones and appliances to help counter a decline in the segment that insures foreclosed homes for lenders. While improvement in the real estate market has limited the number of vacant homes, Colberg said there are still many cash-strapped consumers.
It is what he said next that caught our attention: “The reality is, half of Americans can’t afford to write a $500 check,” Colberg said. He spun that stunning statistic by saying that when US customers sign up for a cellular plan, they’re willing to buy protection in case “they lose that phone or something happens to it.”
In other words, there are millions of Americans who don’t have $500 in the bank but are willing to dish out more than that on a cell phone, and then are stupid enough to make monthly payments that ultimately end up being far higher than $500 to protect their purchase… which they clearly couldn’t afford in the first place.
The Real Reason The Rich Get Richer
Tempus fugit – every action humans undertake has to take time into account. In the economy, interest rates serve as the signal and regulator of the inter-temporal structure of capital. In an unhampered free market economy, they tell entrepreneurs how large the pool of available savings is, and whether consumers have become more or less future-oriented. The issuance of additional money from thin air can neither alter the size of the pool of real savings, nor can it alter actual consumer time preferences. But it can and does temporarily suppress interest rates and distort relative prices. This falsifies economic calculation and promotes the malinvestment of capital – which in turn sets the boom-bust cycle into motion.
It took us a moment to understand what Gilder meant. Then we realized he’s right. Time is the ultimate limitation… the ultimate truth… the ultimate fact.
You’ll recall. There are facts and there are myths. The facts are true no matter what you think. Everything else is opinion, conjecture, or claptrap.
Rigged System
The new money substitute, which we’ve lived with for 45 years, is a fraud. A dollar in 1971 is worth about 17 cents today. In other words, it has lost roughly 80% of its buying power. Had you been counting on it to preserve the value of your work from the previous decade, it robbed you of everything from 1960 to 1968.
The phony dollar has misled an entire generation into spending money it didn’t really have… doubling or tripling its debt-to-earnings ratio, and shifting more and more of its real wealth to the least productive people – the Parasitocracy.
Wells Fargo exec fired for NOT scamming customers
NEW BRUNSWICK — A Somerset County woman is suing Wells Fargo Bank alleging she was fired for refusing to participate in an alleged scheme similar to the bank’s widespread account scam that led to millions of dollars in federal fines.
Melinda Bini, a former assistant vice president and regional private banker at the Highland Park bank’s branch, says in a recent lawsuit that supervisors instructed her to manipulate accounts and sell banking products or investments that were not the customers’ best interest or without their knowledge.
The lawsuit, filed in Middlesex County Superior Court on April 5, names Wells Fargo and three local bank supervisors.
The Franklin Park woman accuses her former superiors in the suit of running or knowing about alleged banking and investment fraud scheme at the local branch.
The Fed Admits The Good Old Days Are Never Coming Back
The dots that the FOMC members contribute to the plot indicate their expectations for the federal funds rate.
Technically, it’s what they think rates should be, not a prediction of what rates will be on those dates. Is that a forecast? You can call it whatever you like. I think “forecast” is close enough.
But before we analyze the whatever-you-call-it, let’s look back at the not-so-distant past. A 5% risk-free return. Here’s a rate history of the last 16 years:
I’ve highlighted this fact before, but it’s worth mentioning again: In 2007, less than a decade ago, the fed funds rate was over 5%. So were the interest rates for Treasury bills, CDs, and money market funds.
People were making 5% on their money, risk-free. It seems like ancient history now, but that year marked the end of a halcyon era of ample rates that most of us lived through.
Why A Record Number Of College Grads Are Working Minimum Wage Jobs
Over the past year we have repeatedly demonstrated that the bulk of the job additions has been focused on the lowest-paying occupations. Now, according to a new study by Bank of America, we find that these lowest paying sector have also accounted for the bulk of wage growth in the past year.
As Bank of America’s Emanuella Enenajor notes, wage growth in low-pay sectors outpacing all others. “If you’ve tuned into CEO earnings calls recently, you’d know that a common theme is wage pressure, especially in low-pay sectors such as restaurants. CEOs cite the need to attract quality hires, a tightening labor market, and the push from higher minimum wages. Last year, companies like McDonald’s and Walmart announced higher wages, raising fears of a sudden pick-up in wage pressure, which we argued against in our piece “Fast food, fast wages?” The data confirm a trend of rising wage pressure in low-pay sectors with limited pressure elsewhere: the bottom 20% of industries, by pay, is seeing wages rise at a 3.4% year-on-year pace so far this year, but the remaining 80% of the market is only seeing wage growth of 2.4%.”
If You Think Your Job Is One That Cannot Be Automated, You’re In For A Rude Awakening
It is pretty accepted knowledge that a number of lower-skilled jobs will disappear in the coming 5-10 years, due to the human element being replaced by artificial intelligence and autonomous machines. One of the most at-risk professions right now is that of Truck Driver, which as 13D Research points out, is one of the #1 reasons you rarely (if ever) hear anyone in DC discuss automation in the workplace.
And while it may be further out on the timeline, if you think your job requires a higher, special element of skill and mental acuity that just cannot be automated, you are probably very mistaken. In fact, there are few (if any) jobs in which a machine would be inferior to a person. And this is not as far out in the future as you may think.
Just imagine, how Truck Drivers would have reacted if fifteen years ago, you told them that they would be at risk of being replaced by a machine? And this isn’t some far-off vision of the future… it is happening now.
Why The True Cost Of Living Is Much Higher Than We’re Told
Over the past decade, we’ve been told that inflation has been tame — actually below the target the Federal Reserve would like to see. But if that’s true, then why does the average household find it harder and harder to get by? It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out your dollar isn’t going nearly as far at the grocery store or gas station as it did just a short three years ago, does it?
The ugly reality is that the true annual cost of living is far outpacing the government’s reported inflation rate. By nearly 10x in many parts of the country.
This week, we welcome Ed Butowsky, developer of the Chapwood Index, to the program. His index is a ‘real world’ measure of how prices are increasing much faster than the wages of the 99% can afford.
Basically, over the last five years, the average increase for all 50 major cities is 10% vs the average CPI of 1.5%. So it’s easy to see that for people who are in the middle income, lower income or people who are living off of a pension that’s adjusted based on the CPI, they’ve lost 8.5% of their purchasing power if everything was adjusted to the CPI year over year. Do that over five years, over 10 years — now you know why there’s such a separation between wages and wealth.
Most Americans are one paycheck away from the street
Americans are starting with more job security, but most are still theoretically only one paycheck away from the street.
Approximately 63% of Americans have no emergency savings for things such as a $1,000 emergency room visit or a $500 car repair, according to a survey released Wednesday of 1,000 adults by personal finance website Bankrate, up slightly from 62% last year. Faced with an emergency, they say they would raise the money by reducing spending elsewhere (23%), borrowing from family and/or friends (15%) or using credit cards to bridge the gap (15%).
Rich People Are Living Longer And It’s Going To Cost Taxpayers ‘Bigly’
Social Security, like America’s trillions of dollars of underfunded public and private pensions, is nothing more than a ponzi scheme that will eventually fail. Any system that relies on capital draw-downs to fund benefit obligations while the number of beneficiaries continues to soar is, by definition, a rather obvious ponzi. That said, it’s always easier to ‘kick the can down the road’ and hope for the best than to preemptively address the real problems that face retirees…after all, old people love to vote and taking away their retirement money is not a good way to earn their support.
Ironically, it’s not just the lower tiers of the socio-economic spectrum that will bankrupt social security. As a new study entitled “How the Growing Gap in Life Expectancy May Affect Retirement Benefits and Reforms” points out, rich people are living a lot longer than they used to and it’s going to take a massive toll on government entitlement programs over the next couple of decades.
Conclusion:
- Now, after everything you’ve learned so far, you probably don’t need any more convincing that you should be reading our free publication Bank Secrets Unlocked.
- Perhaps the idea of getting to work and actually learning how to become worth $200 up to an amazing [but possible] $2,000 Per Hour is starting to look like a pretty good alternative compared to having to walk through life with empty pockets, especially after everything you’ve just read about that puts you on one side of the fence or the other…
- Remember where your opportunity comes from in all of this…. The worse it gets for the 99%, the better it becomes for the 1%. Since you can’t stop this global avalanche from running its’ course, what are you going to do with your financial future?
- The reality is that there are no longer very many middle [class] roads left for average Americans to take that won’t be devastated by inflation. Therefore, the only choices are either going to be paths to poverty or wealth, so what’s it going to be for you?
- When all is said and done, you have great potential but it is you who must choose a path to wealth or you automatically lose that opportunity by default. Like a majestic bird who suddenly quits flapping its’ wings in mid-flight, gravity is the hardest of all realities to overcome.
- No one wants to become a poverty statistic, but sadly that is the fate to come for most of the 99%. By absorbing this fact, you are one of the rare few who has a chance so don’t you think the least you could do is start reading our free publication Bank Secrets Unlocked today?