President Barack Obama is about to unveil his budget proposal, and parts of his proposal have already made their way into the news. One of the aspects of his new budget is that he wants to prohibit anyone from saving more than $3,000,000 in an IRA. The White House issued a statement regarding this new proposal: Under current rules, some wealthy individuals are able to accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving. How dare anyone try to save more than a "reasonable" amount of money for retirement!? T

If you've been reading this blog for a while then you know I'm not a fan of the spending that going on in Washington D.C. right now. I'm also not a fan of the spending that is scheduled to happen over the next few years. The government not only plans to keep spending more, but we are going to add millions of baby boomers to the Social Security and Medicare dole and we don't have a plan for it. When an individual or a family gets in as much debt as our country they file for bankruptcy. However, our political leaders are acting like nothing is wrong and are ridiculing anyone who even sugge

If you have been watching the news then you know that the federal government is going to be required to cut $85 billion out of their budget unless congress passes a law to avoid or change it before March 1st. $85 billion is a heck of a lot of money. It's so big it's hard to understand what it really means. Here are a few comparisons that might make sense. With $85 billion the government could buy UPS, which currently has a market cap of about $78 billion. That's about the 70th largest company in the world. Wowzers. It's also enough to send every single household in America a check for

I recently took a loan from my 401k to buy my first house (which is closing next week and I'm super excited about) and one of the reasons I'm comfortable using 401k money now is because I have no idea what the government is going to do with retirement funds in the future. The other day I read an article suggesting that President Obama wants to nationalize all 401k, 401b, and IRA accounts, force people to invest in government bonds, and institute a 100% early withdrawal penalty and eliminate the option of taking a loan from your account. That would mean the government would take your reti

If you are an American then Tuesday, November 6th is a big day for you. In fact, it's a big day for all of us in this country. There is a presidential election and there is a lot at stake in this election cycle, and in most states you have four people to choose from. That's right, there are four people to choose from. You Have Many Presidential Candidates Did you know there is a candidate who believes that a college education is a RIGHT and that college should be free for anyone who wants to attend? That would be Green Party candidate Jill Stein (although I'm not sure where all this mo

A few weeks ago I got into a fiery exchange on twitter with my friend TeacHer about teacher pay. She thinks teachers should be paid more, while I think overall teacher pay should remain flat or even go down. You can read TeacHer's opinion at her website if you'd like. She's a teacher and I'm not, so it may seem that she's more qualified to speak to the topic. However, I'm an economics nerd and math/engineering major, so I'm going to approach this from a numbers perspective. When you have an emotionally hyper-charged topic such as this one very few people look at numbers, data, and facts

You may have heard about the presidential election coming up on November 6th, 2012. According to the news it's Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney. In reality, it's Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney vs. Gary Johnson vs. Jill Stein vs. a number of other candidates with access to less than 270 electoral votes (and thus, truly ineligible to win the presidency). Many people will tell you that a vote for a third party candidate is a "wasted" vote. Others (like my Republican aunt, for example) will say that a vote for Gary Johnson or anyone else not named Mitt Romney is actually a vote for Barack Obama.

This is a guest post from William Cowie. He's a new personal finance blogger AND he's helping out with the Plutus Awards ceremony this year. Enjoy his guest post!!! O crap! Not again! Didn't we just have one? If any of those thoughts went through your mind when you read the headline, you're in good company. But let's cut the hype and look at the facts. Here's a chart showing the U.S. economy (based on employment statistics) for the last 70 years or so. The dates in red show the bottom of ever recession we've had. Now look - how far apart are they? In our lifetime, 7-10 years. L

I hate Social Security. I hate that it takes 6.2% of every dollar I earn (temporarily 4.2%), and takes 6.2% of my income from my employer (who would probably be paying me that extra 6.2% if they weren't paying it to the government!). Imagine how much more I could save for my own retirement if I had a 12.4% raise. That's $3,720 for someone making $30k a year. That's $6,200 a year for someone making $50k a year. And finally, even though I hate any kind of tax or benefit that isn't flat, this on is especially insidious. Social Security is an incredibly racially and socio-economically reg

As you probably know by now I'm very worried about the growing American Government bubble and I believe that investing in dividend paying companies in countries with a trade surplus is the safest way to put money in the stock market. But the stock market isn't the only place to invest. If you want to ensure your money retains it value or grows, there are a few other investments mentioned in The Real Crash that should do the trick. Precious Metals The experts say that a good diversified portfolio includes 10% precious metals. I tend to agree, although I'm willing to go up to 20% of my ass