Showing results by author "Dale C. Maley" in All Categories

American medical doctors face some unique financial planning challenges. They often have to incur student loans in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unlike regular college graduates who start working at age 22, they often can not start working until about age 30. Their relatively high income can also drive the need for huge retirement savings. Because of their high income, doctors are major targets for people selling bad investments. This short story explores these unique challenges. Read this short story if you are a medical doctor who wants to learn how to meet your long-term ...

Many Americans work hard and live below their means so they can grow their wealth through saving and investing. Unfortunately, the U.S. has 50% of the world's lawyers. Umbrella insurance is an easy way to protect your hard earned wealth from lawsuits. This short story explains umbrella insurance including how much umbrella insurance you should have.

Financial bubbles have been occurring for hundreds of years. Most of us have lived through the Tech Wreck of 2000 and the Sub-Prime Crash of 2008. This short story examines and identifies the common characteristics of financial bubbles. Reading this short story might help you identify the next time we find ourselves in a financial bubble.

In August of 1887, the TP&W railroad began advertising for a special passenger excursion train that would take Central Illinois citizens on a short vacation trip to Niagara Falls. On August 10, 1887, the train with its 625 total passengers began it trip east across Illinois.Just past midnight, the passenger train encountered a burned out wooden bridge just east of Chatsworth. The second locomotive and several wood passenger cars derailed killing approximately 85 passengers and injuring 372 more. It was one of the worst train wrecks of that era.In 1970, Helen Louise Plaster Stoutemyer ...

In the years immediately preceding 2008, the rage in financial planning was diversification. By not putting all your eggs into one basket, some asset classes would do poorly.......but other asset classes would do well. The theory was that investors should find asset classes which are not correlated to each other. The financial planning industry and Wall Street advocated investing in many asset classes including diversified U.S. stocks, diversified developed international stocks, emerging market stocks, commodities, timber, and bonds. Unfortunately, in the Crash of 2008, all asset classes ...

Illinois has a very interesting geological history. At one time, this area was covered by an ocean. Later it had lush tropical forests. Eventually the Ice Age glaciers leveled the ground to its current relatively flat topography. The Paleo-Indians are believed to have traveled from Asia to North America at the end of the last Ice Age about 14,000 years ago. These people gradually moved south until they occupied most of the United States. These early peoples adapted over time to the changing environment after the Ice Age. By the time the first white man explored Illinois, the Kickapoo ...

Many new investors are shocked to discover there are over 8,000 different mutual funds to choose from! How do you know which fund to pick? Once you pick a fund, how do you know how well it is performing? Do you have to spend a lot of time learning about investing? This book answers all of these questions and more. It shows how regular people can simplify their investment life and beat the pro's results. Jill is a new investor who knows she must start investing for her daughter's education and her retirement. Jill turns to her nephew, a Business Major, and to William the friendly Finance ...

Most retirement books assume you have time to save and accumulate money or you already have a significant net worth. Most of the 67 million Baby Boomers who are approaching retirement age have run out of time to save and accumulate more wealth. This short story explores the options available to people reaching retirement age who are broke. After reading this short story, you will be able to make your own well-informed decision on how to optimize your chances of being able to retire.

This short story explores the pros and cons of investing in variable annuities versus conventional mutual funds.

This short story explains the basic concepts of financial planning and provides a conceptual roadmap for planning your retirement. By using a conceptual roadmap approach, you can quickly grasp the general concepts of retirement planning in a very short amount of reading time.

This short story explores the pros and cons of utilizing immediate annuities for retirement income.

Fairbury is a small town located in Central Illinois. It is 100 miles south of Chicago and 60 miles east of Peoria. It was founded in 1857 when the railroad first crossed Central Illinois. In 1861, John Marsh, and son Henry Marsh, dug 180 feet down just west of Fairbury and found coal. Their discovery of coal in the Illinois prairie, prompted the discovery of more coal through-out Central Illinois. Fairbury quickly had three main operating coal mines. These mines created jobs that attracted miners all the way from Europe. The population of Fairbury exploded from 269 in 1860 to 2,324 in 1890...

Fairbury is a small town located in Central Illinois. It is 100 miles south of Chicago and 60 miles east of Peoria. It was founded in 1857 when the railroad first crossed Central Illinois. Fairbury was home to one of great horse importers of Illinois, John Virgin. He was named by the Governor of Illinois to be on the planning commission of the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. The Keeley Institute was founded in 1891 as an alcoholic treatment center in Dwight, Illinois, 30 miles north of Fairbury. Many Fairbury citizens worked at the Keeley institute during the years it was open from 1891 ...

Unfortunately, our U.S. educational system teaches Americans nothing about investing. Many people struggle for years to develop an optimum investment plan. This short story recounts the author's journey to a diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds. I hope the story of my journey to a diversified portfolio of low cost index funds will inspire other investors to further explore the advantages of index fund investing.

This short story explains the theory of behavioral finance and helps to explain how you can use these theories to help achieve your financial goals.

Bogleheads® are people who are very interested in investing. They meet and share their ideas about investing and personal finance on their online forum. Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, is one of their heroes. The typical Boglehead lives below their means so they can save and invest. They typically invest in low-cost Vanguard index funds in a well diversified portfolio. Over half of the Bogleheads are already millionaires. After reading this short story about the Bogleheads, you may decide to improve your own financial situation by joining their online forum.

In 1869, veteran surveyor Nelson Buck recruited five young Pontiac, Illinois, men between the ages of 16 and 20 to accompany him on a surveying expedition to southern Nebraska. When they reached Nebraska, he recruited about another six younger men to join the survey party. Nelson Buck expected the U.S. Army to issue his men guns, ammunition, and an armed escort. His requests were turned down, and he decided to start the survey anyway. Two days from the Army fort, the party ran into members of the Sioux tribe. Buck sent two of the Pontiac boys back to the fort to get help. When the Army ...

This short story explores how to find a good financial planner. After reading this short story, you will know how to find a good financial planner who meets your needs.

Although Wall Street tries to convince us that financial planning is too complicated for an ordinary Main Street citizen to understand, financial planning is not rocket science. This story provides a process map or flow chart for the entire financial planning process. Each process step in the flow chart then becomes a separate chapter. For each chapter, a list of the best books, best articles, and best short stories are given so you can explore each step in more detail. You can select the process steps that you are most interested in and then read the supporting books, articles, and short ...

Contributing the maximum amount to your 401K has become almost the “holy grail” of the financial services industry. I recently came across several studies which suggest that maxing out your 401K may not be the best strategy for everyone. One of these studies suggested that if you are in the lower income levels, you should not max out your 401K due to excessive taxes on Social Security income when you retire. Another article suggested that if you are within 10 years of years of retirement, you should also not max out your 401K. My goal is to further explore the issue of maxing out 401K ...