Friday, June 29, 2012

INSURANCE IMPLICATIONS FROM THE APPROVAL OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

What happens in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision?

The mandate stands. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court has upheld the core of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The law’s most controversial provision will stand – the mandate requiring every American citizen to buy individual health insurance coverage.1

The court made a key distinction, interpreting that mandate not as a directive but as a tax. “The federal government does not have the power to order people to buy health insurance," Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. wrote in the majority opinion. "The federal government does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance."1

The ruling carries profound implications for individuals, businesses and households.

Every American has to have health insurance by 2014 or pay a tax. If you are already insured, this isn’t a dilemma – but if you are self-employed or work at a company with fewer than 50 employees that doesn’t provide health insurance coverage, securing health coverage will be your individual responsibility.2

If you fail to buy health insurance in 2014, you will pay a penalty - $95 or 1% of your income, whichever is higher. In 2015, the penalty rises to $325 or 2% of your income.2

Larger companies must comply or face fines. Any business with more than 50 full-time employees must provide health insurance coverage to its workforce in 2014. If a business fails to do this, it will be fined if just one of its employees buys insurance on a state exchange (see below) or goes to the federal government for a health care tax credit.2

The fines will start at $40,000 and jump $2,000 for each additional worker older than 50 – and if the plan doesn’t cover 60% or more of health care expenses and cost an employee no more than 9.5% of his or her family’s salary, the per-employee penalty rises to $3,000.2

Federal government statistics indicate that only about 200,000 of the nation’s 6 million small businesses will face this obligation. Health care rebates (from insurance companies that spent too much on administrative overhead) and health care tax credits (which averaged $2,700 per business in 2011) may help.2

Business owners who pay for employee health coverage could see a reduction in premiums – theoretically, at least.

A “Cadillac tax” is coming. In 2018, insurers of employer-sponsored plans (or firms that self-insure their own plans) are looking at an excise tax if plan costs exceed $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for family coverage. These limits are higher for plans covering employees in high-risk occupations and retirees. The idea is to encourage these businesses to select less expensive plans, with the byproduct possibly being higher taxable wages for workers (and added revenue for the federal government). Mercer polled businesses with more than 500 employees in 2011 and found that about 60% felt they would face this new tax.4

The Medicare surtax is on the horizon. In 2013, individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and married couples earning more than $250,000 a year are facing a new 3.8% surtax on at least a percentage of their capital gains and dividends as well as 0.9% more tax on their earned incomes above those dollar levels.4

The threshold for medical deductions is poised to rise. This year, you can deduct medical expenses when they surpass 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. In 2013, the threshold will be 10% - but this increase will be waived for Americans 65 and older during tax years 2013-2016.4

The new FSA and HSA rules stand. Next year, employees may contribute no more than $2,500 to a Flexible Spending Account. The 2011 provision levying a 20% penalty for the misuse of funds from a Heath Spending Account will remain in place.4

Insurance exchanges are set to appear in 2014. Individuals, solopreneurs and businesses can start shopping for cheaper coverage via their state’s exchanges. (A dozen states are already at work creating them.) Individuals can qualify for tax credits if their annual individual income ranges between 100%-400% of the poverty line (in 2012, the ceiling would be $44,680). Via these exchanges, families with annual household incomes up to nearly $90,000 will be able to buy insurance at prices subsidized according to income level. Firms with up to 100 workers may turn to Small Business Health Options Programs.2,3

Citations.

1 – www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-justice-roberts-leads-supreme-court-support-of-healthcare-law-20120628,0,3606595.story [6/28/12]
2 – money.cnn.com/2012/06/28/smallbusiness/supreme-court-health-reform/index.htm [6/28/12]
3 - www.cnbc.com/id/47996639 [6/28/12]
4 - money.cnn.com/2012/06/28/pf/taxes/health_reform_new_taxes/index.htm [6/28/12]

Sincerely,

William T. Morrissey and Tammy Prouty
Sound Financial Planning Inc.
wtmorrissey@soundfinancialplanning.net
Primary Office
425 Commercial Street, Suite 203
Mount Vernon, WA 98273
Phone: (360) 336-6527
Secondary Office
650 Mullis St., Suite 101
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
(360) 378-3022

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 PETER MONTOYA.

Monday, June 25, 2012

BOND ANOMALIES

Here's a trivia question to startle your friends with.  According to the International Monetary Fund statistics, what country has the highest government debt levels, compared with its economic output in the world?

You might be inclined to guess troubled or developing nations like the African nation of Eritrea (134% of its 2011 GDP), Lebanon (136%), or Jamaica (139%)--or, if you were aware that it existed, the sovereign nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis (153%), a former British colony is located in the beautiful Caribbean Leeward Islands north of Venezuela. 

After reading so many headlines, you might guess that Greece (161%) is in the deepest debt hole, or perhaps the United States (103%).

As it happens, none of these countries is even close to the runaway leader in government debt as a percentage of its economic output: Japan, which is paying interest on bonds whose face value equals more than 229% of Japan's GDP.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this bit of trivia is that bond traders don't seem to be worried about Japan's ability or willingness to pay back its creditors.  As you've probably seen from the headlines, when investors are worried about a country's soaring debt levels, they will often demand higher rates--so the rate that a country pays is a pretty good proxy for how concerned (or not) investors are about the country's solvency.  With that in mind, look at the little table below, which shows the debt to GDP levels of various countries next to their 10-year bond rates.  Think of it as a comparison between how much global bond investors SHOULD be alarmed vs. how alarmed they actually are.

Country     10-Yr Bond Rates    2011 Debt/GDP
Greece                28.66%                160.61
Pakistan              13.37%                  60.12
Brazil                  12.55%                  66.18
Portugal              11.36%                 106.79
India                     8.35%                   68.05
Hungary               8.28%                   80.45
Ireland                  8.21%                 104.95
South Africa         8.20%                   37.88
Colombia             7.60%                    34.67
Peru                      6.76%                   21.64
Indonesia              6.47%                   25.03
Spain                    6.09%                   68.47
Russia                  6.00%                     9.60
Mexico                 5.92%                   43.81
Italy                      5.70%                 120.11
Poland                  5.35%                   55.39
Israel                    4.41%                   74.34
South Korea         3.65%                   34.14
Thailand               3.64%                   41.69
Malaysia               3.51%                  52.56
China                    3.38%                  25.84
New Zealand        3.30%                  37.04
Czech Republic    3.25%                  41.46
Australia               3.09%                  22.86
Belgium                3.00%                  98.51
France                   2.57%                  86.26
Norway                 2.38%                  49.61
Austria                  2.24%                  72.20
Netherlands          1.84%                  66.23
Canada                 1.83%                  84.95
United Kingdom  1.72%                  82.50
Finland                 1.69%                  48.56
United States        1.65%               102.94
Sweden                 1.48%                 37.44
Singapore             1.44%                100.79
Germany              1.38%                  81.51
Hong Kong          0.96%                  33.86
Japan                    0.88%                229.77
Switzerland          0.65%                  48.65

Comparing the right-hand column with the one in the middle, you see some head-scratching anomalies.  Greece, which has the second-highest debt-to-GDP level in the world, pays by far the world's highest interest rates on its debt, which seems appropriate.  But Italy, which is not far behind on the debt list, is paying interest rates somewhere near the middle of the pack, and the U.S. and Singapore, which have significant debt levels compared with the rest of the world, are paying almost nothing for the privilege of borrowing from global investors.  Meanwhile, relatively thrifty countries like Colombia, Peru and Indonesia are paying much higher yields than debt-burdened Belgium, France and Singapore.

By far the biggest outlier on the table, however, is Japan, with debt-to-GDP levels more than twice as high as the U.S., paying rates lower than anybody on the table but Switzerland.  How can that be?  Because more than 90% (some estimates say more than 95%) of Japan's government bonds are owned by Japanese citizens, compared with an estimated 57% in Italy, and 54% in the U.S.  In other words, the global bond markets cannot demand higher interest rates on yen-denominated government bonds because they don't own Japanese debt; global investors are looking for more return on their money than Japan is currently offering.




Monday, June 18, 2012

IPO WINNERS AND LOSERS

The past year will be remembered for two remarkable social media initial public offerings: LinkedIn on May 19, 2011 and Facebook on May 19, 2012. Although the dates were the same, the two offerings went very differently. LinkedIn's share price roughly doubled immediately after the shares were purchased, from the $45 IPO price to $94.25 when the market closed that day. The offering was widely described in the papers as a great success.

Facebook's shares, meanwhile, were priced at $38 and finished that frenetic first trading day at roughly the IPO price--at $38.23. You've seen the headlines ad nauseum: news reports have declared it an epic failure.

So here's the question: which IPO was actually successful, and which was a failure?

The media has had no trouble answering that question. But if you look at the situation from the standpoint of the company bringing shares to the public (and what other standpoint really matters?) then you come to exactly the opposite conclusion. The LinkedIn IPO would have to be judged a spectacular failure, while Facebook's IPO represents a rare example of a success.

To see why, just look at the numbers. In all, LinkedIn raised $352.8 million on its 7.84 million shares. Based on what investors were willing to pay on that first day of trading, the company actually had the opportunity to sell those shares to willing buyers at closer to $95, and raised a total of $700 million. That extra $350 million could have been used to fuel its growth, develop new technologies, reach into new markets, purchase competing organizations or a million other uses.

Where did that extra $350 million go instead? To friends of IPO underwriters JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, who were given the sweet chance to buy at half what the market wanted to pay for the shares.

Meanwhile, Facebook, the company, got full price for the shares it sold to the public; that is, the IPO price turned out to be surprisingly close to what the market as a whole wanted to pay for shares of the social media company. In all, the company raised $16 billion to build or enhance its franchise and acquire competitors. The insiders who got favored access to the shares got virtually nothing when they tried to flip them on the open market.

These facts represent more than just a way to look really really smart the next time you talk with friends about the investment markets. There's a serious issue buried in these routine mispricings, and in the way the media has been trained to think about (and cover) initial public offerings.

The brokerage companies that underwrite IPOs are paid handsomely for selling a company's first publicly-traded shares to the investment world--roughly 7.5% of the money raised, or about $1.3 billion on these two IPO deals alone. The firm is supposed to be working purely for the benefit of the company whose shares it is selling, and the only goal that makes sense is to raise as much money as possible for that company so its executives can deploy the capital and grow its business and shareholder value.

But in fact, in the real world that we happen to live in, the brokerage underwriters have actually made a practice of deliberately undervaluing shares when they bring them to market. They then dole out the underpriced IPO shares to their best customers, who can flip them for an immediate profit. Some of those big customers are, themselves, the people who make decisions about which company will be given the lucrative contract to sell their own company's shares on the open market. If this looks to you like a way to bribe people to bring you business, then you are reading carefully and correctly.

The difference between the initial share price and the higher price you see in a lot of IPOs directly benefits the brokerage firm itself. These deliberate underpricings have become a clever, perfectly legal way for the brokerage firm to reward the very customers who pay (or will someday pay) these firms ginormous fees for their own IPO. In legal terms, this is a huge conflict of interest, and it is interesting that our media reports favorably, with breathtaking excitement, whenever these large institutions visibly take advantage of the firms they supposedly work for to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And the media gives us an endless stream of negative headlines in cases like Facebook where, apparently by accident, the brokerage underwriters do their job well.

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-linkedin-ipo-risks-idUSTRE74H0TL20110519

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-18/nine-things-you-should-know-about-facebooks-ipo

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/17/facebook-ipo-is-official-38-per-share-on-sale-nasdaq-fb/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404646,00.asp

Sincerely,
William T. Morrissey and Tammy Prouty
Sound Financial Planning Inc.
wtmorrissey@soundfinancialplanning.net
Primary Office
425 Commercial Street, Suite 203
Mount Vernon, WA 98273
Phone: (360) 336-6527
Secondary Office
650 Mullis St., Suite 101
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
(360) 378-3022

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.

Monday, June 11, 2012

SPAIN'S PAIN

Sometime this weekend, Spanish leaders will ask the European Union's central bank (ECB) for economic assistance, a few days after the Fitch Ratings service has dropped the debt rating on Spanish government bonds to BBB status. The bond markets have responded with some alarm, and next week we may see aftereffects in the U.S. stock market. But to put this downgrade into perspective, Fitch has also assigned a BBB rating to the latest bonds issued by the Time Warner company, which is not, last time anybody checked, facing impending bankruptcy. Fitch also assigns a BBB bond rating to the nations of Brazil, India and South Africa.

But that doesn't mean Spain is out of the woods from an economic perspective. The International Monetary Fund will issue a report on Monday saying that the Spanish banking system needs an infusion of between $50 billion and $112.5 billion (40-90 billion euros) to restore full solvency. Spain's unemployment rate is just over three times the U.S. rate--around 24.3% overall, 51.5% of people under age 25--and the country may already be experiencing a recession that is probably destined to last two years at least.

Most of us remember what happened in the U.S. during the Great Recession; the banking system locked up, shutting off corporate access to credit. The two charts below show that this may be at the root of Spain's problems right now. The red graph shows that bank lending to Spain's corporate sector has fluctuated between 0% and negative territory since late 2009. The yellow graph shows that lending to would-be home buyers has dried up completely. Not surprisingly, Spain's real estate prices have collapsed--housing prices have fallen roughly 25% since 2008. Even if a million young families wanted to scoop up some of the bargains, where would the find the financing?





Seen from this standpoint, the first order of business in Spain, just like the U.S. back in 2008, is to get the banking system back on its feet, credit flowing again, people buying houses and companies investing in the kind of growth that will make a dent in that frightening unemployment rate. As you read the dire headlines in the week ahead, and the need for the European Financial Stability Facility to lend up to 90 billion euros to Spain's lenders, notice somewhere toward the bottom of the story that the European Union has already set aside 440 billion euros in its bailout mechanism. The money is there, and the best news is that none of it is coming out of the pockets of U.S. taxpayers.

Sources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47734525/ns/business-world_business/#.T9IhwfEii8Y

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/08/eurozone-crisis-germany-suffers-imports

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18368024

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18338616

Sincerely,
William T. Morrissey and Tammy Prouty
Sound Financial Planning Inc.
wtmorrissey@soundfinancialplanning.net
Primary Office
425 Commercial Street, Suite 203
Mount Vernon, WA 98273
Phone: (360) 336-6527
Secondary Office
650 Mullis St., Suite 101
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
(360) 378-3022

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.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

THE GREAT MAY SWOON

By just about any measure, May was an awful month for investment performance, which is another way of saying that the past 31 days have made stock indices 5% to 10% more affordable than they were in April. However, after the dramatic (and largely unexpected) run-up through the first five months of the year, most of the major indices were still in positive territory after the decline. The Wilshire 5000 index, which is the broadest measure of all categories of U.S. stocks, lost 6.22% last month, but remains up 5.08% with 30 days to go before 2012's halfway mark. The comparable Russell 3000 index fell 6.18% in May, but is still in positive territory so far this year, up 5.20%.

The stock market is fundamentally a gauge of optimism or pessimism for investors. If we think the future is bright, as most shareholders apparently believed until the end of April, there is more demand for more shares and prices go up. So we have to ask: why did sentiment turn around so dramatically, and does the herd of investors know something important about the future?

The headlines have suggested two reasons for gloom. The first is jobs. The latest employment report from the Labor Department shows the first increase in U.S. unemployment in 11 months, as the jobless rate ticked up from 8.1% to 8.2%. In the simplest possible terms, these numbers are interpreted as meaning that companies aren't hiring new workers as quickly as new workers are coming on the market. However, buried in the Labor Department report is a statistic on "labor force participation" that shows that more than 600,000 people got off their couches rejoined the work force in May. Somebody, somewhere, is feeling more optimistic about the jobs picture.

The report also said that the overall economy had added just 69,000 new jobs. However, a survey from the payrolls processing company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) showed that the American private sector added 133,000 new jobs in May, meaning that much of the job loss was in government and public sector payrolls.

Is this true? If you look at the chart below, the trend is very different from what you are likely hearing in the news reports. The red line, which is trending depressingly downward after a brief stimulus-related spike in 2010, is federal government employment, which corresponds with the numbers on the right-hand side. As you can see, Washington's payroll is declining dramatically, as the country works to restore its fiscal balance. Since the beginning of 2009, over half a million government jobs have been slashed or eliminated altogether.

The blue line looks a bit more hopeful. That represents the total number of private sector jobs in the U.S., corresponding with the numbers on the right-hand side. The Great Recession caused a dramatic freefall in total private employment that bottomed out around January of 2010. Since then, you can see a steady (and largely unreported) improvement in the jobs picture exactly where we would want it: in the private sector, in the for-profit companies that most of us invest in.



The other reason why investors have become allergic to stocks, according to the press, is the continuing fiscal problems in Europe. Overall Eurozone unemployment has reached 11%, and economists believe that a recession has either begun or is imminent. There are worries that Spain and Ireland could fall into the same economic precipice as Greece. Spain's 10-year bonds are now trading at a 6.7% yield, their highest level since November.

You can see, in the map below, a kind of "cheat-sheet" on where the sovereign debt problems are most acute. Purple countries are not in danger, the orange countries are facing worrisome conditions, and the bonds issued by countries painted in red are basically downgraded to junk bond status.



The recent selloff suggests that many investors are expecting widespread defaults in Europe that will spread (the word "contagion is often used) to the U.S. banking system, and from there into the U.S. economy, not unlike the way the collapse of U.S. investment banks caused the Great Recession.

However, if you read the news reports closely, you see that the European governments have a solution at hand, which some are reluctant to put into place. The new French government has proposed that the European Central Bank be authorized to issue its own bonds. This would make Europe function more like the U.S. fiscal system, where the states (comparable to the individual European countries) issue bonds, and our government (comparable to the ECB) also has borrowing power to sell Treasuries. The money raised by those Eurobonds would be used to contain the crisis, and the interest rate to Eurobond investors would be dramatically lower than what the countries in orange and red are currently paying in the open markets.

Presto! The ECB would step in as their surrogate borrower, swap their high rates for its lower rates, and eliminate the threat of contagion. Of course, this would also expose the purple countries to the credit risks of the orange and red ones (this is why Germany is dragging its feet on the idea), but presumably any deal would come with guarantees about future fiscal discipline, and would remove the crushing borrowing costs from countries as they dig out of their debt. That, in turn, would allow these countries to begin re-growing their economies, which might reduce the size and extent of the expected Eurozone recession.

Armed with this information, pessimistic stock investors might want to take another look at their European fears, and ask themselves: will European leaders eventually accept this way out of the crisis? Or will they allow the economic crisis to spiral out of control?

Meanwhile, it might be helpful to ask: where, in all the world, do investors feel the safest? Recently, German government 2-year bonds were issued at auction, where investors were willing to accept a negative yield for the first time in the country's history. That means that investors, today, are willing to pay the German government for the privilege of lending to it. This follows a record-setting Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) auction issued by the U.S. government, which was also priced at a negative yield. These are unprecedented events, and suggest that you and I are fortunate to be living in a nation whose debt is regarded by investors as one of the safest havens in the history of finance.

Sources:

Wilshire index data: http://www.wilshire.com/Indexes/calculator/

Russell index data: http://www.russell.com/indexes/data/daily_total_returns_us.asp

Jobs data: http://bit.ly/M6caB9

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-06/02/c_131626282.htm

Government and private sector jobs:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/09/441327/public-sector-2011-gop-candidates/

Drop in oil prices: http://bloom.bg/NgnjhA

Spain's borrowing costs:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/30/investing/world-markets/index.htm

European debt ratings and the Eurobonds proposal:
http://bit.ly/JQlbey

Sincerely,
William T. Morrissey and Tammy Prouty
Sound Financial Planning Inc.
wtmorrissey@soundfinancialplanning.net
Primary Office
425 Commercial Street, Suite 203
Mount Vernon, WA 98273
Phone: (360) 336-6527
Secondary Office
650 Mullis St., Suite 101
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
(360) 378-3022

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.