Friday’s edition of Wealth Matters in the New York Times told us about the children of rich people. Turns out that if you are rich enough, instead of just relying on your spouse, you can hire somebody to tell you what a lousy parent you are.
One of the several intriguing things about Wealth Matters is that the author apparently doesn’t know any rich people, or at least none that will allow him 
to quote them. Instead, the columns seem to be written based on talking to people who talk to rich people. Or so they claim.
Sources for this week’s installment include a partner at a consultancy called Relative Solutions which "works with family businesses" and a partner at "BBR Partners, an adviser to ultra-high-net-worth clients." I suppose that both are keen to be quoted because they hope potential clients will read the column. I’m not sure that’s a sound business strategy.
What these advisors to the rich reveal is that if you’ve got so much money that your kids will never need to work for a living, it is hard to get them to work for a living. Good to know.
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The week before last The New York Times carried a piece on when a person should start collecting Social Security. You kids who read blogs probably didn’t even know there was a choice about when to start getting those checks or that it significantly affects how much you get.
Basically, the longer you wait, the higher the monthly payment. According to the Social Security Administration’s example (quoted in the article without attribution) a person whose "full retirement age" is 66, and would get $1000 a month starting then, could instead have $750 starting at age 62 or $1320 at age 70.
This dilemma, less now or more later, is faced by all those who would receive Social Security payments, which is to say just about all Americans. (We assume.) And yet it does not get that much attention. Why? Because it’s complicated. There are a lot of moving parts, including some counter-intuitive rules and strategies involving spousal benefits.
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How screwed up are things in Mortgage Land just now? In a Florida dispute over a house in foreclosure, Wells Fargo is suing itself. Apparently, the bank holds both the first and second mortgages. Acting as the first mortgage holder, it is suing all the other lien holders, itself included. They’ve hired two 
different law firms and Wells Fargo (defendant) is disputing the claims of Wells Fargo (plaintiff). What’s really screwed up is that everybody involved seems to think that this is normal.
Nationwide, the tidal wave of foreclosures continues. We’re on pace to clock 3.5 million of them by the end of the year. That sounds pretty bad. But wait, I hear you saying, didn’t the government start a program a few months ago to fix this?
Well, yes it did, sorta. In March the Obama Administration made a big splash with the Home Affordable Modification program. As I wrote at the time, it was greeted with rather a lot of feigned enthusiasm. Under the surface there was much concern that it wouldn’t work, and more than a few doubts about whether or not it was a good idea in principle.
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In his Wall Street Journal column from Saturday, Jason Zweig asks Does Stock-Market Data Really Go Back 200 Years? My head immediately fills with responses.
Of course not.
Why would you think it did?
Who could possibly care?
The title of the column isn’t a trick or a pun. It is really a serious examination of the quality of the stock market data prior to 1845. That was a period when the the “stock” in New York Stock Exchange mostly meant what we today call Treasury bonds. Corporations were rare, each was specifically chartered by a state legislature, and they were widely considered to be a sinister product of financial engineering gone amuck.
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I’ve been hoping for a Brett Arends column I could say something nice about, and last week I got my wish in the form of Baby Boomers to Kids: Kiss Your Inheritance Goodbye. The theme of the article, or the first few paragraphs 
anyway, is the trend of dropping a nice inheritance for the kiddies from the retirement plan in reaction to the market swoon.
I myself am just a bit too young to be a Baby Boomer and my parents just a little too old, so I am merely an outside observer on this one. But I have to ask those kids of Boomers out there: you were expecting to inherit something? From the Me Generation? Really?
A few paragraphs into Arends’ column he abruptly starts talking about annuities. This may seem like a non sequitur, but it follows nicely from the idea that retirees may be jettisoning the legacy for the children from their planning.
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to quote them. Instead, the columns seem to be written based on talking to people who talk to rich people. Or so they claim.
Media | Frank Curmudgeon | 
July 27, 2009 12:30 pm | 
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