The world has plenty of food, for now, but the reason that is has much to do with high yields on farmland acreage doused with fertilizers. Without modern farming techniques and the inputs that supply them, food will become more difficult to produce, and perhaps scarce. News 10 reports on Michigan farmers' trouble with fertilizer shortages, writing: A fertilizer shortage is putting the food supply at risk. Fertilizer prices have tripled from where they were in 2021 and it’s forcing Mid-Michigan farmers to change how they grow their crops. “You’re cutting off one hand to save the other,” … [Read more...]

How’s everyone feeling about this market? Well, if you’ve been following my dividend-centric, individual bond ladder approach, it hasn’t been all that bad. In fact, it’s been good to finally see markets get down to reality. You can’t have tech valuations based on thin air multiples forever. Or can you? We’ll see. But this isn’t a forecasting piece. The weather is what it is. I like dealing within areas I can control. My favorite being how much I save and how much I work. Isn’t that the key to everyone’s success? There was a time when America was an idea that championed the self-reliant—the … [Read more...]

You know from here, here, and here that saving for retirement is easier said than done. When should you secure your finances and move to a more defensive stance? When do you meet with a planner and talk about income needs? Are you on the right path right now in the middle of the chaos? What happens when Nasdaq craters by 20% in the first four months of the year? This is all real-life stuff. We’re all living it in real-time. When it comes to a return on your savings, I want you to be laser-focused on the return of your savings. Too many investors talk about buying low and selling high … [Read more...]

You've heard from Your Survival Guy that you need to save til it hurts, and that if you love what you do at work you should keep doing it. I'm not saying those things for no reason. Retirement is getting harder by the day as inflation drives up the cost of living. Americans on fixed incomes are having a hard time keeping up. Rodney Mock and Larry Gorman, two professors from Orfalea College of Business at Cal Poly, explain the predicament many seniors find themselves in today with inflation surging. They write in The Hill: If one does not account adequately for inflation, visions of retirement … [Read more...]

At the Cato Institute, Norbert Michel explains how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are about control. He writes about the dangers of such a creation: As a starting point, I want to distinguish between a wholesale CBDC and retail CBDC. With a wholesale CBDC, banks can electronically transact with each other using a liability of the central bank. Because that is essentially what banks do now, transact and settle (electronically) using reserve accounts held at the Fed, there aren’t very many new and interesting wholesale CBDC policy issues. (Basically, the Fed has had a wholesale CBDC … [Read more...]

Did you sell those old baseball cards on eBay? How about those crochet designs you've sold on Etsy? What about those cheesecakes you've been selling to your neighbors on Venmo? If you made more than $600, they'll be sending your name to the IRS. Laura Saunders reports at The Wall Street Journal: Now that your 2021 taxes are done—or at least under way—it’s time to focus on a key tax change for 2022 affecting millions of Americans making money through platforms like eBay, Etsy, Airbnb, Venmo and Uber. This change, which is beginning to ripple through e-commerce, tightens the tax reporting on … [Read more...]

You have undoubtedly seen the glossy product brochures for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) funds. They promise strong performance and the chance to impact the world for the better. But it turns out, that neither of those promises is being kept. Sanjai Bhagat reports in the Harvard Business Review: As of December 2021, assets under management at global exchange-traded “sustainable” funds that publicy set environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment objectives amounted to more than $2.7 trillion; 81% were in European based funds, and 13% in U.S. based funds. In the fourth … [Read more...]