5 THINGS INVESTORS SHOULDN'T DO NOW

We thought you would appreciate the article in the link below by Jason Zweig from the Wall Street Journal. He has very good advice for everyone regarding investor behavior.

http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2015/08/21/5-things-investors-shouldnt-do-now/

Jason Zweig writes The Intelligent Investor every Saturday for The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Your Money and Your Brain, on the neuroscience of investing, and the editor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor, the classic text that Warren Buffett has described as "by far the best book about investing ever written." Before joining the Journal, Jason was a senior writer for Money magazine and a guest columnist for Time magazine and CNN.com, and he also spent a year studying Middle Eastern history and culture at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Sources: LINK:  http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2015/08/21/5-things-investors-shouldnt-do-now/

Sincerely, Bill Morrissey, CFP® and Tammy Prouty, CFP® Sound Financial Planning, Inc.

Primary Office 425 Commercial St., Ste 203 Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Phone: (360) 336-6527 info@soundfinancialplanning.net Secondary Office 650 Mullis St., Ste 101 Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (360) 378-3022 www.soundfinancialplanning.net

PLEASE READ THIS WARNING: All e-mail sent to or from this address will be received or otherwise recorded by the Sound Financial Planning, Inc. corporate e-mail system and is subject to archival, monitoring and/or review, by and/or disclosure to, someone other than the recipient. This message is intended only for the use of the person(s) ("intended recipient") to whom it is addressed. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender as soon as possible and delete the message without reading it or making a copy. Any dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this message or any of its content by any person other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. has taken precautions to screen this message for viruses, but we cannot guarantee that it is virus free nor are we responsible for any damage that may be caused by this message. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or notice filed, or excluded or exempted from registration requirements. Follow-up and individualized responses that involve either the effecting or attempting to effect transactions in securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation, as the case may be, will not be made absent compliance with state investment adviser and investment adviser representative registration requirements, or an applicable exemption or exclusion. This information should not be construed as investment advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. WE WOULD LIKE TO CREDIT THIS ARTICLE'S CONTENT TO JASON ZWEIG.

HOW TO READ THE PANICKY MARKET

Some of the most entertaining times to be a long-term investor are those periods when short-term investors are looking over their shoulders for an excuse to sell.  They're convinced that the market is going to go down before they can get out, and so they jump on any bad news that comes across their Bloomberg screen.   And, of course, Friday was a marvelous time to see this in action.  With all the economic drama playing out in the world, there were plenty of opportunities to panic.  The Greek Prime Minister has resigned!  Sell!  China devalued its currency a few days ago by 2%!  Head for the hills!  Chinese stocks are tanking yet again!  Get out of American stocks while you can!  The Fed might raise short-term interest rates from zero to very nearly zero!  It's the end of the world!   Of course, a sober analyst might wonder whether a change in governance in a country whose GDP is a little less than half the market capitalization of Apple Computer Corp. is really going to move the needle on the value of U.S. stocks-especially now that Greece seems to have gotten the bailout it needs to stay in the Eurozone.  Chinese speculators are surely feeling pain as the Shanghai Composite Index goes into free-fall, but most U.S. investors are prohibited from investing in this tanking market.  If the market value of PetroChina, China Petroleum & Chemical and China Merchants Bank are less valuable today than they were a week or a month ago, does that mean that one should abandon U.S. stocks?  Does it mean that American blue chips are somehow less valuable?   What makes this dynamic entertaining-and sometimes scary-is the enhanced volatility around very little actual movement.  You see the market jump higher and faster, lower and faster, but generally returning to the starting point as people realize a day or two later that the panic was an overreaction, and so was the false exuberance of realizing that the world isn't going to come to an end just because we're paying less at the gas pump than we were last year.  Despite all the jitters investors have experienced over the past nine months, despite the drop on Friday, the S&P 500 is only down about 4% for the year, and was in positive territory as recently as August 19.   If you want a broader, more rational picture of our current economic situation, read this analysis by a long-term trader who now refers to himself as a"reformed broker"in Fortune magazine: http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/american-economy-worries/ [click on link below in "Sources"] He talks about the "terrible news"that it hasn't been this cheap to fill your gas tank in over a decade, and businesses that rely on energy to manufacture their goods are now forced to figure out what to do with the excess capital they're not spending on fuel.   Oh, but it gets worse.  American corporations are struggling under the burden of enormous piles of cash they don't have a use for.  They may have no choice but to return some of that money back to shareholders in the form of record dividends.  Of course, you read about the risk to corporate profit margins.  It seems that unemployment is so low that wages for American workers are going up, and that could raise consumption and demand for products and services.   Meanwhile, contributions to 401(k) and other retirement plans are up dramatically, housing starts and the construction sector are booming, America's biggest global economic competitor (China) is reeling, and the Federal Reserve might decide that it no longer has to keep short-term interest rates low because the emergency is over and the economy has recovered.  The author apologizes (tongue in cheek) for bringing us all this terrible news, but hey, we can always sell our stocks and get out until conditions improve.   Right?   Nobody would be surprised if the U.S. stock market suffered a 10%, 20%, or greater short-term decline, this year, or perhaps next year.  But what can you do with that information?  Nobody would have been surprised if this had happened at any point in the long bull market that doubled your stock investments.  Nobody can predict whether Friday was a signal that the market will take a pause or continue to decline, or if the market will bring us another wave of short-term euphoria measured mostly in sighs of relief.  And if you don't know when to sell in this jittery market, how will you know when to buy back?    These short-term swings provide entertainment, but very little useful information for a mature investor.  If you aren't entertained by watching people sell in a panic and then panic-buy their way back in when they realize things aren't as dire as the headlines made them out to be, then you should probably watch a movie instead.   Sources: http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/american-economy-worries/

Sincerely, Bill Morrissey, CFP® and Tammy Prouty, CFP® Sound Financial Planning, Inc. Primary Office 425 Commercial St., Ste 203 Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Phone: (360) 336-6527 info@soundfinancialplanning.net Secondary Office 650 Mullis St., Ste 101 Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (360) 378-3022 www.soundfinancialplanning.net PLEASE READ THIS WARNING: All e-mail sent to or from this address will be received or otherwise recorded by the Sound Financial Planning, Inc. corporate e-mail system and is subject to archival, monitoring and/or review, by and/or disclosure to, someone other than the recipient. This message is intended only for the use of the person(s) ("intended recipient") to whom it is addressed. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender as soon as possible and delete the message without reading it or making a copy. Any dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this message or any of its content by any person other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. has taken precautions to screen this message for viruses, but we cannot guarantee that it is virus free nor are we responsible for any damage that may be caused by this message. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or notice filed, or excluded or exempted from registration requirements. Follow-up and individualized responses that involve either the effecting or attempting to effect transactions in securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation, as the case may be, will not be made absent compliance with state investment adviser and investment adviser representative registration requirements, or an applicable exemption or exclusion. This information should not be construed as investment advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. WE WOULD LIKE TO CREDIT THIS ARTICLE'S CONTENT TO BOB VERES.

DEVALUATION PANIC

Investors across the globe were sent into a panic recently when the Chinese Central Bank devaluated the nation's currency, the yuan. The U.S. market lost more than 1% of its total value, oil prices fell and global shares plummeted on news that China decided to make its currency two percent cheaper than it was before.   You actually read that right. Headlines raised the prospect of a global currency war, and there were hints in the press that nations might resort to trade barriers, which would slow down global trade in all directions. If you're following the story, you probably didn't read that the Chinese yuan, even after the devaluation, was actually more valuable against global currencies than it was a year ago in trade-weighted terms. Nor that China actually intervened in the global markets to make sure the devaluation didn't go any further in open market trading.   The background for the devaluation is China's slowing economic growth and its recent stock market volatility. The country is on track for a 7% growth rate this year-three times the U.S. rate, but sluggish by recent Chinese standards, and quite possibly unacceptable to the country's leaders. You probably already know that the Chinese stock market climbed to impossibly high levels earlier this year and then fell just as far in a matter of weeks. The Chinese government marched into the chaos with a heavy hand, outlawing short sales, banishing hedge funds to the sidelines, suspending margin calls and even buying stocks directly in an effort to put a floor on prices. The theory was that the devaluation was part of this intervention, since it would make exports cheaper and boost sales, raising profit margins of those companies whose stocks were recently free-falling.   A more nuanced view of the situation is that the recent depreciation is a small step to keep the yuan's value in line with those of its peers, not a dramatic shift in exchange-rate policy or a part of the Great Shanghai Market Panic. China's percentage of world exports has been steadily growing for this entire century, without any need to add the stimulus of a weaker currency.   A scarier scenario, which nobody seems to be talking about, is that China's endgame goal is to make the yuan the reserve currency for global trade-replacing the U.S. dollar. China is already lobbying to join the list of reserve currencies recognized by the International Monetary Fund. The new exchange rate is more in line with basic economic fundamentals, strengthening the argument that the yuan is not under the total control of an interventionist central government. But so long as China imposes strict limits on the amount of its currency that can flow into and out of the country, and attempting to manipulate its own stock market, this will be a difficult argument to make. Sources: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21661018-cheaper-yuan-and-americas-looming-rate-rise-rattle-world-economy-yuan-thing?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/yuanthingafteranother   http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/chinas-managed-markets   http://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-markets-china-devaluation-hits-165238168.html   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-13/china-citigroup-agree-there-s-no-need-for-big-yuan-devaluation

Sincerely, Bill Morrissey, CFP® and Tammy Prouty, CFP® Sound Financial Planning, Inc. Primary Office 425 Commercial St., Ste 203 Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Phone: (360) 336-6527 info@soundfinancialplanning.net Secondary Office 650 Mullis St., Ste 101 Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (360) 378-3022 www.soundfinancialplanning.net PLEASE READ THIS WARNING: All e-mail sent to or from this address will be received or otherwise recorded by the Sound Financial Planning, Inc. corporate e-mail system and is subject to archival, monitoring and/or review, by and/or disclosure to, someone other than the recipient. This message is intended only for the use of the person(s) ("intended recipient") to whom it is addressed. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender as soon as possible and delete the message without reading it or making a copy. Any dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this message or any of its content by any person other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. has taken precautions to screen this message for viruses, but we cannot guarantee that it is virus free nor are we responsible for any damage that may be caused by this message. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or notice filed, or excluded or exempted from registration requirements. Follow-up and individualized responses that involve either the effecting or attempting to effect transactions in securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation, as the case may be, will not be made absent compliance with state investment adviser and investment adviser representative registration requirements, or an applicable exemption or exclusion. This information should not be construed as investment advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. WE WOULD LIKE TO CREDIT THIS ARTICLE'S CONTENT TO BOB VERES.

TEACHING YOUR HEIRS TO VALUE YOUR WEALTH

Some millionaires are reluctant to talk to their kids about family wealth.Perhaps they are afraid what their heirs may do with it.   In a 2015 CNBC Millionaire Survey, 44% of families having at least $1 million in investable assets said that they had not yet told their children about their future inheritance. Another 27% said they had refrained from mentioning it until their children were 30 or older.1     It can be awkward to talk about such matters, but these parents likely postponed discussing this topic for another reason: they wanted their kids to grow up with a strong work ethic instead of a "wealth ethic."      If a child comes from money and grows up knowing he or she can expect a sizable inheritance, that child may look at family wealth like water from a free-flowing spigot with no drought in sight. It may be relied upon if nothing works out; it may be tapped to further whims born of boredom. The perception that family wealth is a fallback rather than a responsibility can contribute to the erosion of family assets. Factor in a parental reluctance to say "no" often enough, throw in an addiction or a penchant for racking up debt, and the stage is set for wealth to dissipate.   How might a family plan to prevent this? It starts with values. From those values, goals, and purpose may be defined.   Create a family mission statement. To truly share in the commitment to sustaining family wealth, you and your heirs can create a family mission statement, preferably with the input or guidance of a financial services professional or estate planning attorney. Introducing the idea of a mission statement to the next generation may seem pretentious, but it is actually a good way to encourage heirs to think about the value of the wealth their family has amassed, and their role in its destiny.    This mission statement can be as brief or as extensive as you wish. It should articulate certain shared viewpoints. What values matter most to your family? What is the purpose of your family's wealth? How do you and your heirs envision the next decade or the next generation of the family business? What would you and your heirs like to accomplish, either together or individually? How do you want to be remembered? These questions (and others) may seem philosophical rather than financial, but they can actually drive the decisions made to sustain and enhance family wealth.   Feel no shame in exerting some control. A significant percentage of families seek to define a purpose for transferred wealth. In CNBC's survey, 32% of parents aged 55 or younger said they were going to specify what their heirs could use their inheritances for, and that was also true for 15% of parents aged 55-69 and 9% of parents aged 70 or older.1   You may want to distribute inherited wealth in phases. A trust provides a great mechanism to do so; a certain percentage of trust principal can be conveyed at age X and then the rest of it Y years later, as carefully stated in the trust language.   This is a way to avoid a classic mistake: giving your heirs too much money at once. In fact, a 2015 Merrill Lynch Private Banking & Investment Group report notes that 46% of high net worth parents share that very concern.2     Just how much is too much? Answers vary per family, of course. In the aforementioned Merrill Lynch survey, 46% of families said that they wanted to avoid handing down the kind of money that would dissuade their heirs from realizing their full potential in their lives and careers.2   By involving your kids in the discussion of where the family wealth will go when you are gone, you encourage their intellectual and emotional investment in its future. Pair values, defined goals, and clear purpose with financial literacy and input from a financial or legal professional, and you will take a confident step toward making family wealth last longer.  Sources:   1 - cnbc.com/2015/07/22/wealthy-parents-fret-over-inheritance-talk-with-kids.html [7/22/15] 2 - bankrate.com/finance/estate-planning/critical-questions-before-leaving-an-inheritance-1.aspx [8/6/15]

Sincerely, Bill Morrissey, CFP® and Tammy Prouty, CFP® Sound Financial Planning, Inc. Primary Office 425 Commercial St., Ste 203 Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Phone: (360) 336-6527 info@soundfinancialplanning.net Secondary Office 650 Mullis St., Ste 101 Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (360) 378-3022 www.soundfinancialplanning.net PLEASE READ THIS WARNING: All e-mail sent to or from this address will be received or otherwise recorded by the Sound Financial Planning, Inc. corporate e-mail system and is subject to archival, monitoring and/or review, by and/or disclosure to, someone other than the recipient. This message is intended only for the use of the person(s) ("intended recipient") to whom it is addressed. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender as soon as possible and delete the message without reading it or making a copy. Any dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this message or any of its content by any person other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. has taken precautions to screen this message for viruses, but we cannot guarantee that it is virus free nor are we responsible for any damage that may be caused by this message. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or notice filed, or excluded or exempted from registration requirements. Follow-up and individualized responses that involve either the effecting or attempting to effect transactions in securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation, as the case may be, will not be made absent compliance with state investment adviser and investment adviser representative registration requirements, or an applicable exemption or exclusion. This information should not be construed as investment advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. WE WOULD LIKE TO CREDIT THIS ARTICLE'S CONTENT TO MARKETING PRO INC

WHY DOES THE WAGE GAP BETWEEN MEN & WOMEN PERSIST?

Last year, the median weekly earnings for an American woman came to $719.Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that the median weekly earnings for an American man were $152 higher, or 21.1% more.1 Calculated over the course of 52 weeks, that means the median yearly pay for a man in America was $45,292 in 2014. Median yearly pay for a woman: $37,388.1 The good news, relatively speaking: in the past 35 years, this gap has narrowed. In 1980, women working full-time earned only about 65% of the wages of their male counterparts.2 After all these years, why is there still such wage inequality? Two quick explanations are often put forth. One, there is still appreciable wage discrimination against women in the workforce, with mothers being perhaps most affected. Two, some women accept lower-paying jobs or leave work altogether while staying at home with their kids or taking care of ailing relatives. These factors are certainly present in wage inequality, yet so are others that get less media notice. More women work for low pay than men. Citing BLS data, the National Women's Law Center notes that more than two-thirds of minimum-wage jobs in this country are held by women. In fact, the NWLC found in 2014 that women made up 76% of employees in the ten most common occupations with hourly wages of $10.10 or lower. Even in these low-salaried jobs, full-time working women still made an average of 10% less than their male co-workers.3,4 As the Great Recession ebbed, these entry-level jobs were an immediate source of work for many women: 35% of the net employment gain for women from 2009-13 occurred in these fields, compared to 18% of the net employment gain for men. As the number of women in these low-wage occupations markedly exceeds the number of men, this is one of the underpublicized reasons for the continuing wage gap by gender.4   Careers in which women predominate pay less than careers in which men predominate. As an example, more than 75% of classroom teachers in America are women (and the median pay for classroom teachers, adjusted for inflation, is essentially where it was in 1970). Only recently have initiatives emerged to encourage women to enter "STEM" career fields (careers rooted in science, technology, math and engineering), which are male-dominated and comparatively high-salaried.5 It may be argued that a teacher contributes much more to society than a software engineer, but that argument is not bolstered by the pay gap between those careers. Looking at Payscale.com, the average salary for an elementary school teacher is $40,311 while the average software engineer earns $63,080.6     Women do a lot of unpaid work. A mother earns no salary for raising children; a wife earns no salary for taking care of a disabled or seriously ill spouse or partner. Historically, women have left the office to perform this work to greater degree than men have. This tendency also contributes to the wage gap, as the woman involved may end up choosing lower-paying work or not work at all.   Wage discrimination still exists, and is partly accountable for the differential in median wages between the sexes. There is more to the story, however; the career and life choices women are encouraged or impelled to make also influence the numbers.  Sources: 1 - bls.gov/cps/cpsaat37.htm [2/12/15] 2 - sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/may/09/fair-pay/ [5/9/15] 3 - nwlc.org/resource/fair-pay-women-requires-fair-minimum-wage [5/13/15] 4 - nwlc.org/resource/women-are-76-percent-workers-10-largest-low-wage-jobs-and-suffer-10-percent-wage-gap [4/2/14] 5 - nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-more-men-go-into-teaching.html [9/7/14] 6 - payscale.com/salaries-by-occupation [7/30/15]

Sincerely, Bill Morrissey, CFP® and Tammy Prouty, CFP® Sound Financial Planning, Inc. Primary Office 425 Commercial St., Ste 203 Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Phone: (360) 336-6527 info@soundfinancialplanning.net Secondary Office 650 Mullis St., Ste 101 Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (360) 378-3022 www.soundfinancialplanning.net PLEASE READ THIS WARNING: All e-mail sent to or from this address will be received or otherwise recorded by the Sound Financial Planning, Inc. corporate e-mail system and is subject to archival, monitoring and/or review, by and/or disclosure to, someone other than the recipient. This message is intended only for the use of the person(s) ("intended recipient") to whom it is addressed. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender as soon as possible and delete the message without reading it or making a copy. Any dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this message or any of its content by any person other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. has taken precautions to screen this message for viruses, but we cannot guarantee that it is virus free nor are we responsible for any damage that may be caused by this message. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or notice filed, or excluded or exempted from registration requirements. Follow-up and individualized responses that involve either the effecting or attempting to effect transactions in securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation, as the case may be, will not be made absent compliance with state investment adviser and investment adviser representative registration requirements, or an applicable exemption or exclusion. This information should not be construed as investment advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. WE WOULD LIKE TO CREDIT THIS ARTICLE'S CONTENT TO MARKETING PRO INC.

THE DOCTOR ON YOUR WRIST

Chances are you think that medical costs are going to bankrupt America, and if we assume that Medicare and Medicaid costs will rise as they have for the past 20 years (despite the brief interlude these last three years), then there is reason for alarm. But ask yourself: how much of those costs are related to expensive diagnostic tests? How much are related to fixing major health problems after the fact, when they could have been prevented if we had only known where to look at what lifestyle changes to make? What the bean counters are missing when they simply project ever-larger expenditures based on past experience is the enormous impact that wearable diagnostics are going to have on healthcare in general. You already know about Fitbit, which helps you get in shape by tracking the number of steps you take each day and week, and now also tracks heart rate, calories burned and stairs climbed. More recent innovations are the Sensoria smart sock, which diagnoses your running stride and can reliably identify a runner's rookie mistake of heel striking. If you've gone to a hospital to evaluate your endurance, well, you could have used the PerformTech heart-rate monitor, which calculates your endurance simply from five minutes on a stair-stepper. Not getting enough sleep? Or the right kind of sleep? The Withing's Aura bed pad will diagnose the quality of your REM cycle. An app by Sleeprate will tell you when you have restless cycles. And if you're one of those people who has trouble getting into meditation, you might try the Muse headband, which contains an EEG device that measures brainwaves, and helps coach you into a state of meditative peace. It also tracks your meditative progress over time. Wouldn't it be nice if all of these devices were included in the same device? As you read this, ten different companies from around the world are competing for an X Prize that will be given to the first "tricorder," the device from Star Trek that was used to diagnose the damage to crew members after a rough battle with the Klingons. The winner of the Tricorder X Prize will be able to monitor your body temperature, oxygen levels and heart rate, tell if you're anemic, check your blood pressure and perform a constant EEG. It will diagnose common maladies like stroke and less common ones, like tuberculosis. Meanwhile, if you saw the episodes of Jeopardy where a computer named Watson cleaned up the board, well, you saw the next major diagnostic engine. At this moment, Watson is busy absorbing all the medical literature, and is helping real doctors make proper diagnoses and offer remedies. IBM, the maker of Watson, expects to put the program in the Cloud, where it will be accessible to, among other things, mobile devices. The combination of the next generation of wearable diagnostics uploading data to Watson for instant analysis will allow all of us to have our health monitored constantly in real time-by affordable devices that are as sensitive as the expensive hospital equipment that currently hits the global healthcare budget so hard. When you begin to have a problem, the wearable device will schedule a medical exam. If you start to experience the early stages of a heart attack or stroke, the ambulance will arrive at your door-before you realize you have a problem. The treatments will be much less expensive, because the problems will be caught in the very early stages. How many billions of dollars will this save? The bean counters who draw the alarming graphs haven't even started to realize that they're living in the middle of a health care revolution. But now you do. Sources: http://readwrite.com/2013/08/29/readwritebody-scanadu-scout-tricorder http://readwrite.com/2015/03/19/tricorder-x-prize-home-diagnostics http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/11/ive-seen-the-future-of-health-tech-and-its-going-to-improve-your-life-in-2014/

Sincerely, Bill Morrissey, CFP® and Tammy Prouty, CFP® Sound Financial Planning, Inc. Primary Office 425 Commercial St., Ste 203 Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Phone: (360) 336-6527 info@soundfinancialplanning.net Secondary Office 650 Mullis St., Ste 101 Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (360) 378-3022 www.soundfinancialplanning.net PLEASE READ THIS WARNING: All e-mail sent to or from this address will be received or otherwise recorded by the Sound Financial Planning, Inc. corporate e-mail system and is subject to archival, monitoring and/or review, by and/or disclosure to, someone other than the recipient. This message is intended only for the use of the person(s) ("intended recipient") to whom it is addressed. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender as soon as possible and delete the message without reading it or making a copy. Any dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this message or any of its content by any person other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. has taken precautions to screen this message for viruses, but we cannot guarantee that it is virus free nor are we responsible for any damage that may be caused by this message. Sound Financial Planning, Inc. only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or notice filed, or excluded or exempted from registration requirements. Follow-up and individualized responses that involve either the effecting or attempting to effect transactions in securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation, as the case may be, will not be made absent compliance with state investment adviser and investment adviser representative registration requirements, or an applicable exemption or exclusion. This information should not be construed as investment advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. WE WOULD LIKE TO CREDIT THIS ARTICLE'S CONTENT TO BOB VERES.

PEACE IN OUR TIME

What was the most peaceful era of human history? The 200-year-long Pax Romana in the Roman Empire? The peaceful period in Asia following the Mongol conquests? The Ming dynasty in China? You probably haven't considered our present times, since we're constantly reading about the spread of ISIS, incursions by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and what appears to be an escalating conquest of Ukraine by neighboring Russia. Every day you read about the threat of terrorist attacks. But evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, author of "The Better Angels of Our Nature," has compiled statistics which make a compelling case that fewer people are dying as a result of violence in today's world than at any time in history. The wars we hear about are relatively contained-when you add up the populations of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and eastern Ukraine (and not every citizen in those nations is directly impacted by war), it comes to just 1.37% of the world population. And the peaceful zones in between are much greater in this century now that we've given up the habit of waging world wars. Pinker offers some interesting perspectives; for instance, deaths in warfare among certain aboriginal tribes in New Guinea and Fiji were higher than in Germany throughout two world wars. But his definition of peace is broader than simply fewer armed conflicts; he also takes into account murder rates and civilian violence in countries around the world. The murder rate during the gold rush in California was among the highest in recorded history; today, California is hardly a bastion of violence. In Europe, torture and public executions were common, and it was not uncommon to see severed heads resting on spikes as you entered a city. Today this kind of thing is rare globally and virtually nonexistent in the Western states. Slavery has been abolished, and the laws have had a significant dampening effect on the once-common instances of rape, infanticide, lynch mobs and cruelty to animals. The conclusion of the book is that not only are we living in the most peaceful time in world history, but that this may be the least-appreciated development in the history of our species. Which countries are the most and least peaceful? For that information, you turn to the Global Peace Index, which was created by the Economist magazine from data compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The methodology is detailed; each country is ranked based on its relations with neighboring countries (being at war earns a low score; the U.S./Canadian border earns the highest); level of internal conflict (countries embroiled in civil wars receive low scores); political instability; terrorist activity; number of homicides per 100,000 people; level of violent crime; number of jailed persons per 100,000 citizens; military expenditure as a percentage of GDP; and citizen access to small arms and light weapons. In general, the Institute found that peace tends to be found in countries with higher income, schooling, high levels of government transparency and low corruptions. You also find greater measures of peace in stable countries that are part of regional blocks (think: Eurozone). The most recent ranking, completed in 2014, lists Iceland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Finland, Austria, Norway, Belgium, Japan, Canada and Denmark as the top ten most peaceful countries, and their overall rankings are pretty similar. To find the United States, you have to go all the way down to number 101, where the high homicide rate, highest per-capita number of people in jails, huge military expenditures and high number of external conflicts that the military is engaged in all pull the ranking down. Not surprisingly, the bottom of the scale includes Iraq, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Sudan and Somalia-the most well-publicized war zones.

Sources: http://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/most-peaceful-time-in-history3.htm http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/nov/19/better-angels-nature-steven-pinker-review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index

Sincerely, Bill Morrissey, CFP® and Tammy Prouty, CFP® Sound Financial Planning, Inc.

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