Town Hall Question and Answers

Ken: Excuse me! Daria: Yes? Ken: Member of the dolans.com family we love all of you. The presidential candidates are not the only ones who can have a town hall meeting. Daria: Well no, no but this was my idea. I said you know we need to get all of these questions that are coming in and answer them because they’re not getting the answers from other guy running for president. Ken: We hear you. Daria: So, the Dolans are here to do what these presidential candidates have so far fail to do which just answer your questions. Ken: And if I’m elected, did we ever thought of running for office? No kidding. Daria: Have you ever thought of becoming Joe, the plumber? Ken: Don’t get me started please. Anyway, we’ve got so many questions, we ask you for questions for our little town hall video. We got questions so we’ve got three or four then we’re going to answer quickly. Number one, is it safe to invest a stock— Daria: I’m actually. Ken: —to saying, “It’s okay we’re near at the bottom.” Daria: I just wanted to say and these are ones that were most frequently ask. Ken: Almost frequently. Daria: That’s why we’re addressing it—yeah sure it’s time wherein both went in there because if you had all of his billions, you could get in at anytime and sitting whether out whatever kind of crisis. This is volatile, this is not the time for—America and we’d putting their money in stock nor is it time for manpower to stay invested because the pros are wrecks. They don’t know what’s going on and anybody that looks you in the eye on the television and looks you into the camera and says, “This is it or now is the time or don’t stand in the course, don‘t do this, or at least buy and diversify.” Doesn’t know what they’re talking about either and diversification for the first time prove that it’s not the greatest idea either because everything went down. Ken: I want to say one thing before we go to question two. Daria, who is smart of them by the way was one of the few people in America that predicted this major problem that we’re having. And last October predicted trouble in the money market funds. I know you’re not going to tell anybody that but I’m telling you. Question number two, should you stop investing in 401ks? No, investing. I’m going to change that, contributed. Should you continue to contribute to your 401k? Absolutely! Maybe not on stocks and mutual funds. Daria: No. Ken: On the side. Daria: Look for the guarantee accounts. Ken: Guarantee. Daria: The money market accounts, anything that is not going to fluctuate and this fall little times because with the government getting involved it’s just exacerbates the problem. It’s going to drag it out further, it did it with the great depression, it’s the governance state out of the next, the free market would have taken care of business, they would have been littered bodies but you know what, the government got involved they were still littered bodies all over the place. Ken: Bottom line, continue to contribute. Yes, get your retirement money going guaranteed at the moment. Daria: All right. Ken: Will the bailout make it harder or easier to get along like a car loan or mortgage— Daria: Then the credit mess that the American public has gotten itself into and the mess of banks that were lending the people with full knowledge’s people weren’t going to be able to pay this money back, you can see your hall of shame video if you’d like to. Ken: Oh yeah— Daria: Are full of period on that one. Ken: You know we just did it. Daria: But it’s making it more costly for everybody. Good credit, bad credit, forget it, you’re not going to get a loan. People buying houses have 20% down, come in and talk providing you have a decent credit score but if you’re going that, we’re going to go back to the basics and that means you’re going to pay and it’s going to be more costly and a lot of them with extra costly mortgages is the direct result of the government getting involved because we saw it with college tuition. Ones they start to guarantee in federal student loans or the colleges said—by the door we’re going to charge whatever we can. Government in, loan money out higher and people with bad credit or no credit, you’re out a lot. Ken: Hold on! My credit is not good and credit is hard to get, let me pay off, let me pay off what I’ve got, start rebuilding my credit so when credits are little bit easier my credit rating will be good, so there is a good timing for that. Daria: Yes. Ken: All right. We did a whole video on our last work on this fourth question of so people emailed us for our town hall video which is that we’ll do this again. If you have other questions, be sure to continue that on your questions to us here at dolans.com. Is my annuity safe? We’ll take a minute to discuss it but there’s a whole video we just did annuities and we’ve written some stuff too. The answer is check with your state insurance department because the job of the state insurance commissioners is to make there’s enough reserves if they are licensed to sell on your state that there’s enough reserves to pay off any annuity claim is number one. Job number two for the insurance commissioner is to make sure that if a company goes on a business with your annuity that in fact that the commissioner will find another company that will take it over. If not, we’ve got guarantee funds. Daria: There are guarantee funds. Ken: Well, there have guarantee funds. Daria: Most states will guarantee a maximum of a $100,000.00 per policy. Ken: For annuity. Daria: Which means that you know, if you’ve got a cash value on a policy of $200,000.00 and something happens you know to an insurance and investment which was never what you should have been doing as an investment but you’re not going to be covered for all of that or in your states. Some states have higher limit. Ken: Some are higher. Daria: If your annuity is more than a $100,000.00 unless your state has a higher limit then you’re not going to be covered beyond that amount. So, you really need to know if you have any sort of insurance investment be it an annuity or a policy, a life insurance policy, check with your state insurance commissioner. Ken: Right, check with your state insurance commissioner to see how your variable which we don’t like, variable or fixed annuity is affected if there is trouble. Check with your state and also, check on dolans.com for t hat annuity video we just did. More time on all of the questions, we’ll do it again. Send in more questions. Daria: Thanks for sending them in.