Suze’s Blog & News

If you have a child or grandchild who is going to get paid for work this summer, I want you to consider a way to gift them a valuable retirement stake.

If you have unpaid credit card balances, your situation could soon progress from very expensive to ridiculously expensive. The majority of credit cards charge interest rates that move up and down based on the level of benchmark indexes, and those benchmarks tend to move in lockstep with what happens to the Federal Funds rate controlled by the Federal Reserve. When the Fed raises its interest rate that means that credit card interest rates are headed higher. And in December the Fed raised its interest rate for the first time since 2006.

I am concerned that many of you are banking on a retirement strategy that may not work out. According to a national survey, more than four in 10 Americans say they plan to keep working past the age of 65.

I am betting plenty of you have noticed the steep rise in prescription drug costs. According to the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, drug prices jumped more than 11% in 2014 and are estimated to have risen another 9.6% last year. And there’s no relief in sight. The expectation is that prices will rise about 4% in 2016. All of that is during a stretch when annual inflation has averaged less than 2%.

Nobody likes to see the value of their investment accounts fall, but whether it’s a correction (a drop of at least 10% but less than 20%) or a full-on bear market (a decline of 20% or more) the reality is that markets go through rough periods. Always have, and always will.