Yes, I'm afraid to spend money, esp. the portion of cash flow I allocate to reinvesting to build cash flow for next year, and the next, and the next. Looks like this portion will need to be increased now, for next year already.
Obamacare sticker shock arrives
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-06/obamacare-sticker-shock-arrives-insurance-premiums-soar-20-40
"The rate requests are the first to reflect a full year of experience with the new insurance exchanges and federal standards that require insurers to accept all applicants, without charging higher prices because of a person’s illness or disability."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/us/health-insurance-companies-seek-big-rate-increases-for-2016.html?_r=2
“No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up”
--------Lily Tomlin

http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2013/09/05/are-you-afraid-to-spend-money
Junkster and I have been posting similar threads - money and retirement.
I'm wondering how many people here, in retirement, under-spend out of fear or some other issue - must see net worth grow, net worth must grow for ego issues?????????
I grew up poor but I always enjoyed life. I have a strange issue, I don' t like to spend money on thing that take up space. I don't care about cars, as long as they work. But, I'm OK with spending money on things like travel and food.
To be truthful, I have a spreadsheet projecting out my net worth out to 100 and even when adjusting for inflation I a great final net worth - something many would envy. That is with conservative spending and growth.
We all may remember people who lived through the Great Depression. In later years they might have a great deal of money but, they could not spend it. They were OK with giving it to other but they just could not spend it on themselves.
I'm in great health and plan to spend more. BUT, IT IS STILL A PURPOSEFUL EFFORT, TO SPEND.
I try to remember, will I be on my death bed wishing I spent less??
So, what is your story on spending?

Thanks to OJ & davidmoran for their thoughtful and considerate thoughts.
I agree a lot has to do with comfort level (the sleep factor as OJ put it).
We deal with a fine local bank. If anything changed in that regard, we'd pay them off and get out fast. The two "re-fi"s in recent years went to pay for a couple additions on the house. So our equity rose along with the debt. Also, I refuse to go out farther than 15 years on a mortgage no matter how attractive the rate.
Actually, have recently considered paying off all of the mortgage - as it's getting harder and harder to earn 3% in the bond/equity markets without going out there quite a bit on the risk curve. Am only around break-even YTD.
So it goes.

One day inflation is going to kill all retirements. That said I see the problem two ways and I'm not sure I would call one of them about "financial literacy". Some other literacy maybe.
1) Some people just don't make enough to save. It is easy to preach saying you should at least save a little etc. However, it is not easy to make argument it is going to matter if its too little.
2) People need to figure out the difference between iWant and iNeed. In our iWaste my iMoney on iWatch culture, that's the biggest problem. It is all about iWant. That's not financial literacy. That is something else.
Finally let me add or economy seems to be running primarily on consumption. If people start saving and not consuming we will have other problems. This is an excellent example of an article that makes rounds once a quarter or so. I call such articles the "who killed Marilyn Monroe" variety. When you don't have anything to report this is always a stock article to pull out and pen. Like the 1% vs 99% article. We keep discussing it, but there is no real actionable result, ever.

I try to convey this fact to all that will listen. This is as much of a National crisis as Health care and yet resolving this will not buy votes for either of the primary Parties.
1) How do you fix a problem which requires a certain level of financial literacy?
2) How do you address an issue which is viewed differently based upon your own personal views (politics)?
3) In a so called free society, how do you impose a policy on all to protect all?

Microsoft is changing the name of their browser with Windows 10. It is the same Explorer, just refreshed and updated.
I prefer Safari and Chrome.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/retirement-account-balance-compares-peers-143234713.html
Is it any wonder so few are prepared for retirement?

My 120k debt is at ~3.6% fixed and I can do better than that not paying that amount off but investing it. If I could refi at 40y (age 68), I would do so. It all comes down to sleep-at-night factor, that's all, hardly worth discussing in other, absolute terms. Orman vs Edelman, etc.

I don't have a mortgage either and it is a nice feeling.
I'm thinking that at some point it may be advantageous to take out a mortgage. With low interest rates AND a fixed rate mortgage AND the offing (I'm guessing in 10 years) might look good.
Think back to the 1960s when people had low interest rates; then in the 70s interest rates rose.

FYI: Fallout from Greece’s “no” vote on whether to accept its creditors demands in exchange for bailout funds is garnering most of the attention from market watchers early Monday.
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.barrons.com/focusonfunds/2015/07/06/oil-prices-plummet-to-three-month-low/tab/print/

You cannot 'austere' (if that is what is meant) your way here to economic improvement or health.

You might enjoy this (if it links ok).
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.zeit.de/2015/26/thomas-piketty-schulden-griechenland&prev=search

Piketty: When I hear the Germans now say that they maintain a very moral dealing with debt and firmly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: That's a big joke! Germany is the country that has never paid his debts. It can be obtained in other countries no lessons.

Tend to agree with bee. Assuming that money is money, it would appear to be a question of whether you want that money invested in the equity of your home or in some other productive asset like mutual funds.
We've always had a mortgage or rent payment of some sort. Guess we've grown used to it. The current one at 3% has about 10 years to run. I'll rather miss it when it's paid off. Think of a fixed rate mortgage as an "anti-bond" - or a bet on higher interest rates. It can serve as an inflation hedge by stabilizing housing costs during periods of rising prices.
I'd argue that you have more control over the money if it's in a highly liquid asset like a fund than in home equity. But, will admit that the home is the "safer" of the two investments and apparently (to many) has a greater emotional value.

Tax deductions (itemized deductions) can and/or will be altered if one's mortgage interest deduction is large enough to "help" move one into the itemized deductions portion of a tax return. This deduction then allows one to gather all of the other smaller deductions to become a larger value which may be a large enough dollar value to be of benefit to reduce taxable income.
'Course, everyone's circumstance will vary with this.
Many years ago, with the elimination (payoff) of our mortgage; we no longer had enough other deductions to itemize them on the 1040. But, the mortgage interest was gone and all is well.

FYI: You know Hancock and Washington and Franklin and Jefferson. You might even know Greene and Knox, Henry and Hale.
But it is very unlikely that you know the name Haym Solomon
Regards,
Ted
http://thereformedbroker.com/2015/07/04/the-broker-who-saved-america-3/

Bee asked: "Couldn't you reinvest these dividends yourself rather than "they reinvesting dividends" for you?"
Yes, and a lot of folks prefer to do it this way but......
-Many like to take all their dividends/distributions in cash and then reinvest them in shares of whichever company they hold presents the most compelling value to them at that time. This strategy almost always entails a transaction/trading fee unless one gets free trades for some reason.
-Others (me) like the option whereby dividends are reinvested free of trading fees and, in the case of some companies, at a discount to market value. EPD is one holding of mine that reinvests at a 5% discount.
My dividends/distributions in my Roth IRA accounts are not taxable. Those in my regular brokerage account are. Those in my SEP IRA one day may be.
Scottrade will not reinvest your cash distributions in additional shares. You get cash only. Fidelity will let you choose whether to reinvest or not on a security by security basis.
One note on the Fidelity reinvestment process - your cash is NOT reinvested at the share price on the day the distributions are paid. Fidelity buys sufficient shares up to 14 days ahead of the distribution date and reinvests your distribution at the average price they paid for those shares. Sometimes you win a bit, sometimes you lose a bit.
Also of note, if you use M* to track your portfolio their portfolio tracker program reinvests your cash at the share price listed/posted on the dividend declaration date. This is rarely, if ever, the same as the share price on the day the dividend is actually paid and almost surely is not the reinvestment price Fidelity uses. I cannot speak for the reinvestment process at other brokerages.

Hi Guys,
Thank you Ted for the Link.
Well, neither Consuelo Mack nor David Winters disappointed in this interview. Both were consistent with expectations.
Mack questioned Winter’s recent sub-par performance and his funds high cost structure. Winters mixed defense and offense claiming high research costs and a deep value seeking investment policy that is now the exception among active fund managers.
Winters noted that his contrarian’s style is especially out of favor because institutional investors are overly infatuated and committed to Index products. He believes the roughly 30% commitment to Indexing is a bubble scenario that will burst.
Of course, the issue is when the bubble will burst. That is unknown and unknowable. Until that time, truly active fund managers who own a largely active share portfolio are likely to underperform by Winters’ measure.
The Winters’ world model is reminiscent and similar to what came to be known as the Keynes Beauty Contest (KBC) model. To refresh your memory, here is a brief summary of the KBC from an old NY Times article.
“John Maynard Keynes supplied the answer in 1936, in “The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money,” by comparing the stock market to a beauty contest. He described a newspaper contest in which 100 photographs of faces were displayed. Readers were asked to choose the six prettiest. The winner would be the reader whose list of six came closest to the most popular of the combined lists of all readers.”
“The best strategy, Keynes noted, isn’t to pick the faces that are your personal favorites. It is to select those that you think others will think prettiest. Better yet, he said, move to the “third degree” and pick the faces you think that others think that still others think are prettiest.”
Institutional advisors and investors are the cream of the crop. They are the smartest, the best informed, have the most research resources, and have the most impact on the marketplace than anyone else. On a daily basis, this cohort accounts for 70% of the market’s daily trades. It is foolish to fight their current practices.
Regardless of Winters’ best intentions and judgment, if these institutional investors continue to favor Index products, prices on these products will continue to dominate price movements. My market opinions will have zero impact on market pricing; theirs will be decisive. Until these dominant players emphasize low P/E stocks, Winters’ performance will suffer.
Surely a change will happen someday, but few among us know when that will happen. I’m not among those few prescient souls. I’ll go with the flow. Stay strong on this 4th of July.
Best Wishes.

One M* thread with respect to possible annoyances:
http://socialize.morningstar.com/NewSocialize/forums/p/347815/3634184.aspx#3634184
I have looked at it off and on for the past few years more for my grandchildren donations rather than my own account. It's actually simple and credible. If nothing else one can get a great number of potential ideas from looking at the portfolio's that the site and others have created.

Article by Craig L. Israelsen:
"So after six years of a surging bull market, I wanted to revisit that analysis to discover: Does value-oriented investing still win out? My goal was to find out whether the value premium has persisted among U.S. large-, mid- and small-cap equity indexes — and, if so, to quantify its impact."
and,
'These findings do not argue for eliminating growth-oriented assets from a portfolio. However, the analysis does suggest that a value “overweight” is justified in the long run — particularly among small-cap U.S. stock mutual funds."

Article:
can-value-investing-still-trump-growth?

FYI: As investors’ move in droves to passive, low cost index funds, one veteran money manager is sounding the alarm. Wintergreen Fund’s David Winters says index funds are a dangerous market mania, akin to other market bubbles.
Regards,
Ted
http://wealthtrack.com/recent-programs/premium-winters-2/
Web Extra: Active Opportunities: (Scroll & Click On Web Extra)
How hard has it been to be an active mutual fund manager, during a six year bull market, when you and most other active fund managers have underperformed passive index funds? That’s the question we put to Wintergreen Fund’s David Winters.
M* Snapshot WGRNX: http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/WGRNX/quote.html
Lipper Snapshot WGRNX: http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/wgrnx
WRGNX Is Ranked #140 In The (WS) Fund Category By U. S. New & World Report:
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/world-stock/wintergreen-fund/wgrnx