Lazy Man and Money

Gas Going to $5 in 2012? Here’s How to Fight Back.

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Last week, I noticed many media outlets predicting $5 gas in 2012. It seems to have started from this post from GasBuddy. The theory goes that we have some of the highest gas prices we’ve ever had, and during the summer months prices typically get higher. This GasBuddy chart has the nation’s average price at around $3.34 as of today. GasBuddy also says that prices typically peak at 93 cents from the start of the year. that would bring the average around the country to roughly $4.27, most likely in time for your Memorial Day vacation.

Where does the $5 come from? It seems that all the uneasiness and politics in the Middle East, particularly Iran, could lead to a slowed production of oil. That could raise prices. GasBuddy is even suggesting that oil prices could pass their high of $147 in 2008. While it seems that GasBuddy is the catalyst, CBS New York, CBS Baltimore, and ABC seem to be jumping on board with the possibility. Of course gas prices vary throughout the country, so if some places see $5 gas, others may avoid it.

So what can you about this? You can try to occupy your local gas station, but don’t expect that to get gas prices lowered.

I see two things that you can do. The first is to look into these tips on saving money on gas. That’s a no-brainer.

The second tactic is less obvious. If GasBuddy is right and the price of oil goes from around $100 today to the $150 record highs, you can make a lot of money by investing wisely. I have some money put aside in PowerShares DB Oil Fund (DBO). At that peak of oil price of $147 in July of 2008, the stock reached nearly $55 a share. It currently trades at around $30. If we see a similar trend, perhaps that stock jumps to between $50 and $60 a share. If so, you could nearly double your money.

As long as you invest enough, doubling your money would certainly ease the anxiety at the gas pump, right?

Who is up for a game of guess the peak gas price average (as reported by GasBuddy) this year? I’m going to go with $4.16. Leave your guess in the comments.

A Sucker Punch of Personal Finance to America

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In the last 24 hours I’ve had three experiences drastically change how I feel about personal finance in America – one of them major, one of them minor, and one… calling it a stretch would be generous.

Last night, my wife called me from her hotel in upstate NY. That’s a long ways from our San Francisco home. She said, “It’s worse that I thought here.”

Let me back up a bit. My wife has a white-collar job in the military. She asked to be deployed to help with victims of Hurricane Irene as that was a requested need. I was surprised to hear about a military deployment to Hurricane Irene months after the fact. I didn’t really take the need that seriously. It seemed that Vermont got all the news stories, not New York (though there’s not a large distance there). I had figured that by this time everyone had reached safety. This clearly wasn’t going to be like the deployment for Katrina that I’ve heard so many stories that I won’t repeat in this space.

What’s so bad in upstate, NY? It turns out it is a personal finance nightmare. There are people who don’t have houses because they were swept away by the river. Some of these people didn’t have flood insurance. (Dear FEMA, you require me to buy flood insurance when I already have it, and others don’t have to have it at all? Really?!?!) Many people lost their jobs because they were literally washed down the river as well. My wife explained that these people are in the worst kind of pickle – no home so they can’t get a job… no job, so they can’t get a home. I’ve never really thought of this predicament. Two thoughts immediately came to mind:

  • Where’s the emergency fund? It kills me that over and over again, people don’t seem to have an emergency fund set up. They don’t realize it until something that they can’t control and devistates them – like a hurricane or a flood.
  • What about and extended stay hotel on credit cards? I know it’s not a good situation, but getting income is key and if a place of residence is required, get an extended stay hotel and use that. You need to stay somewhere. In times like this, it’s probably worth even looking to cash out some those Roth IRA and 401k savings. The kind of thing is a financial set back, but you are able to live.

I’m waiting to hear more details about the pickle, because it seems solvable especially in extreme cases that effects the whole community. I’ll be waiting for a couple of weeks until my wife gets back. Then I’ll be able to ask her in more detail.

I do believe she is coming away with a new appreciation of sound personal finance. Though in some ways she may think my site is more of joke now, as I don’t cover these extreme situations – the ones where people need the most help. I honestly don’t have a lot of experience with such situations, so I don’t know if my advice would be helpful. I’m better off at handing the “problem” of having maxed out your 401k too early in the year (we should be so lucky).

There’s hope though. I think people are learning from these experiences. And I don’t think they are learning from just having it happen it to them, but the media is doing a decent job covering it. Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of people learning about how unemployment works from first-hand experience. I was there once and I didn’t want to go back. It directly lead to the creation of this website. This whole thought of hope came to me in the form of that second, minor experience that I mentioned above. I was watching an old episode of Clark Howard and he said the following in a clip on a radio show:

“I used to feel I had to convince people why they should be smart with their money. I don’t have to do that as much any more. The mood of the country has changed.”

When I first started writing about why MonaVie was a scam, a lot of distributors said, “Big deal, it’s only $125 a month. I know my finances and I can afford that.” I would love to be able to audit them and find out how many of them have a year of expenses in their emergency fund. I’d like to know how many have their retirement all squared away. The $125 per month, per person in a family of four turns out to be $5000 a year (there’s some bulk discounts). I think people are now starting to take stock of what that $5000 a year would mean to them. We are talking aftertax money too. That’s like giving yourself a $7500 at work. Who wouldn’t want that?

I’m cautiously optimistic that America seems to be getting it. Perhaps America is as smart as my dog after all.

This brings me to the third experience – the Sucker Punch. I was watching the movie last night (scantily clad women fighting with swords is the kind of thing you can get away with when your wife is 2500 miles away) and while the long middle part of the movie dragged from too many fight scenes, I thought the ending was fantastic, perhaps one of the best I’ve seen. I don’t think I’m giving anything away with this, but I’m going to leave you with the final sentence:

“You have all the weapons you need – now fight!”

Ask the Readers: Please Explain Occupy Wall Street to Me?

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Confession time… I don’t watch a lot of news. In fact, I probably wouldn’t watch the news at all, but it ranks high up there with my wife’s favorite “shows.” However, I did get myself out from under the rock to catch a bit about this “Occupy Wall Street” stuff. I would have likely written about it before, but I went to a conference to learn to be a better Personal Finance Blogger. As you might be able to tell, the first dose didn’t take.

So today I’d like trick readers into educating me allow you to take the stage and tell me what this is all about. It seems like it might have something to do with the bank failings in 2008, but I missed that as well since I was in Australia at the time. If it were about that, it seems to me like the protests are about 2 years and 11 months too late.

Don’t limit yourself to explaining Occupy Wall Street – tell me how you feel about it. I’m leaning towards agreeing with the movement. One thing giving me pause is that there are so many protests here in San Francisco and Berkeley that it is hard to take any of them seriously anymore.

Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? (Part 3: How to Fix Social Security)

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The following is a continuation of the Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? (Part 1) and Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? (Part 2: An Explanation of Social Security Works). Those articles explained the history of Charles Ponzi and the original Ponzi scheme and explained how Social Security works. In this article, we’ll cover how to fix Social Security

How to fix Social Security

As explained in part 2, the demands of the baby boomers are putting a strain on the system. The current system is not sustainable without some changes (unless the US adopts a Logan’s Run sort of policy, which seems somewhat unlikely).

There are two sides to the equation – the taxes being taken in and the benefits being paid out.

One way to help pay for benefits would be to raise the tax rate, which is currently 6.2% of wages $106,800. This is levied on both the employee and employer, resulting in the government collecting 12.4% of these wages. Ratcheting the rate up a point or two would put more money into the coffers – but would be very unpopular with the voters. In fact the employee share of OASDI (Social Security) was temporarily dropped to 4.2% for 2011 in an attempt to jump start the economy.

Alternately, the cap could be removed so that all earnings would be taxed. No longer would the contributions of Alex Rodriguez be capped at $6621.60 (with an identically capped contribution from the Yankees).

There are three ways to balance the equation from a benefits perspective.

The first, and least popular, is to simply reduce the benefits the program pays out. This is a hard sell to voters (and older voters are more likely to vote than younger ones) as well as powerful lobbying organizations such as AARP.

The second method is to reduce the duration of payments. The government has already begun doing this. People born in 1937 or earlier are eligible for full benefits at age 65, while those born in 1960 or later are not eligible for full benefits until age 67 (chart here). Will we see further tweaks in the future? Perhaps someday you’ll need to wait until age 70 (or later) to receive full benefits.

Benefit payments could also be reduced by instituting a means test. The intent of Social Security is to serve as a safety net, rather than a full-fledged pension. Billionaire Warren Buffet is entitled to Social Security payments – but does he need a financial safety net? Of course not. As the general populations begins to pay more attention to the funding of their retirement, it’s possible than many people in the current generation will not need the safety net of Social Security.

The downside to the means test is that it may discourage people from taking care of their finances. Why bother to invest for your retirement when those who don’t will get bailed out by Social Security? That’s a very penny-wise and pound-foolish sentiment, of course. The prudent investor may be able to afford a house on the beach and lobster for dinner, while the person who ignored their retirement with the plan to be bailed out by Social Security may end up renting a room in a rundown part of town and cooking dinner in a hot pot. Still, it’s the kind of thing that many Americans could consider.

My advice: invest with the assumption that you won’t receive any Social Security benefits. The odds of this are extremely unlikely to happen as unless it taken down completely people will still be paying into the system. I still plan for my retirement as if Social Security doesn’t exist – simply because a lot can happen in the 30 years before I get to take it. If I do end up receiving benefits, that’s just frosting on the retirement cake.

I was thinking of ending the discussion of Social Security and Ponzi Schemes there, but I could probably be persuaded to write a few words on what some famous other people have said about Social Security and Ponzi Schemes. I’m looking for feedback to tell me whether you like the discussion or if I’m beating a dead horse here. Thanks!

Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? (Part 2: An Explanation of Social Security Works)

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The following is a continuation of the Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? (Part 1). That article dealt with the history of Charles Ponzi and the original Ponzi scheme. In this article we’ll cover the Social Security system in general.

Social Security also works best as a pyramid

There is one common thread that connects Social Security to a Ponzi scheme. Both work best when the investor base resemble a pyramid – with a few investors at first, gradually growing with each successive group. When this happens there are few complaints, because everyone gets their money – or in some cases much more than they originally contributed.

During the early years of Social Security, a natural pyramid was formed, due to a relatively short average length of retirement (simply because people died sooner) and large families. Unfortunately for the Social Security program, the base of the pyramid began to shrink in post baby boomer generations. People started to have smaller families – the successive group got smaller. Worse yet, due to the wonders of modern medicine people started to live longer, which meant that they could collect benefits longer.

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system.

Naturally, the US government is not interested in creating a Ponzi schemes. Social Security’s intention was to be a pay-as-you-go system, where the benefits for current retirees are paid by current workers, who will themselves become beneficiaries in the future (with their benefits paid for by the next group of workers).

At a superficial level, this sounds a lot like a Ponzi scheme. However, there are some very importance differences.

The first difference is that you don’t have ownership of an “account” containing your investment and the accrued earnings. Those who invested with Ponzi and Madoff received financial statements showing their account balance and earnings. You won’t see this sort of statement from Social Security. While the Social Security Administration does provide statements to workers, these statements contain a projection of estimated payments – they do not contain an account balance. This is because you don’t have any ownership rights in the money you put into the Social Security system. What you have instead is the promise of payments that will be paid for by the generations of workers behind you.

Second, the goal of Social Security is transparent. You know that the money you pay in goes to pay the benefits of current retirees. This is no secret. If you aren’t aware of this, it’s because you weren’t paying attention in civics class. With a Ponzi scheme, you are deceived into believing that your money is being invested when in actuality it is being used to pay off earlier participants.

To clarify that above point, some of your money is being used to pay earlier investors. The operator of the scheme is also skimming some money off the top – outright theft. We all joke about congress raiding Social Security and leaving IOUs behind, but I doubt that many people truly believe that congress is going to gut the Social Security program and deposit the money into their Swiss bank accounts. There is no intention for the people who run Social Security to use the money to make themselves rich.

While the goal of a Ponzi scheme is to make the operator rich, the goal of Social Security is to ensure a safety net for all current and future generations.

The problems with a pay-as-you-go-system

Although most government-run pay-as-you-go programs have a noble goal, this does not mean they are perfect. The concept definitely has some flaws.

Ida May Fuller is the answer to a trivia question, and a pretty lucky lady. She was the first person to cash a social security check. Ida May had paid into the new system for three years. When she received her second check, she had received more in benefits than she had paid into the system. Ms. Fuller lived to be 100 years old, collecting nearly $23,000 in benefits. Not a bad deal, since she had paid in less than $25. (That’s not a typo. It’s not $2500 or even $250 – she paid in a Jackson and Lincoln).

Ida May wasn’t alone. The earliest recipients of the program earned substantially more in benefits than they paid into the system.

In the early stages of a pay-as-you-go system, the government is in a bit of a pickle. The government had to decide whether to pay the early recipients a fair benefit based on what the participants had paid in, or a reasonable benefit based on the intent of the program (to provide financial security in retirement). The U.S. government chose the second option. This meant that future generations would be subsidizing these early payments.

Why did the government choose to subsidize the early recipients? Probably to encourage support of the new system. Friends and relatives of Ida May and her contemporaries could hear for themselves how great the Social Security system was. The flip side would have been to pay the early recipients a couple of dimes every month – which wouldn’t have generated nearly as much buzz for the new system.

Pay-as-you-go systems are also at risk of changing demographics. There are two main risks of Social Security: that the number of people paying into the system will decline, and that the number of people receiving benefits will increase. The decline in family size in recent decades has lead to a decline in the number of people paying into the system – but so has the phenomenon of early retirement. Even worse, the early retirees are going to be toward the top end of wage earners – those paying the most into the system.

As the baby boomers receive benefits, it’s going to be the smaller generations of workers behind them paying the bill. To exacerbate the problem, advances in medicine coupled with people paying more attention to their health means that people are living longer than ever. Instead of receiving benefits for ten years, someone might receive benefits for thirty!

In the third installment of the series, we’ll look at what can be done to the Social Security system deal with the problems of a changing society.