The Trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund recently released their report to Congress, and the picture isn't pretty. For the first time in 36 years, they will have to begin drawing down their reserves to pay all beneficiaries. Without significant changes, the funds will be exhausted by 2034. In this podcast Randy discusses the implications of these revelations, and outlines some actions you should be taking now if you are planning to retire within the next decade.

In December, 2017 the government passed a new tax bill that lowered the corporate tax rate. One of the big benefits of this reduction touted by the administration was the ability of US companies to plow the savings into increasd capital spending and wage increases for their employees. Fast forward to today, and there here has been an increase in capital equipment spending, but not nearly as much as expected. What has seen a sizable increase? Corporate stock buybacks. Share buybacks have averaged $4.8 billion per day. That's double the rate seen at this point in 2017, and expectations are companies will buy back $800 billion by year end - 50% more than last year and a new record. Does all this spending by companies to buy back their own stock benefit the individual shareholder? The answer is - it depends. In this episode we discuss this trend and point out the factors that make buybacks positive for investors.

These are the points of our core set of investing values. They’ve proven over the long term to be useful guidelines to increase the chance of achieving success for us, but they don’t have to match your set of beliefs. The key is to develop your own, and then stick to them. Having a set of guiding beliefs will help you avoid the risk of investing based upon emotion, which is rarely going to lead to success.