By Martin Siesta, CFP®

Advice that I have been giving clients has little to do with products. Here is an example of what we advised:

•    Money and credit will get scarce - get out of debt or reduce debt if you can
•    Reduce your expenses structurally - look at your cars - look at all the outgoings
•    There may be no real return on conventional investments and it will take years for the adjustment to work its way
•    Social security may not be a sure thing - think more about how you are going to spend your “Golden years”
•    Invest in sure things such as reducing your use of energy.  Remember,  investments in cutting your oil use give you a cash tax free return (more…)

By Martin Siesta, CFP®

In many of the communities that I am a member of(our profession, local communities, non profits, and yes, my family), there is this underlying, and sometimes fully present conflict and stress. There is judgment about who knows better and where the wisdom lies. But what I have noticed is that when we invite each other into conversation where we truly listen, something changes. Perception is altered. Recently I participated in an intergenerational learning journey that had about 30 participants across generations. I was surprised at my immediate judgment as I just saw someone enter the room. Labels and shadow galore! Yet over several days, each of us were jarred, inspired and moved to tears at both hope and understanding.

Every aging generation questions whether the generation coming of age has what it takes to learn into maturity as defined by the aging generation. Easy for each to think it knows better than the other. The fact is that they will always know more together than they could in isolation or competition. Hierarchy has the relevance of fossils. In an age of wisdom, life is a circle and we dare to be peers.

© 2008 Martin Siesta, CFP®.  Reprinted with permission.

By Martin Siesta, CFP®

Much of what I have been hearing and reading from planners is around questions like “What did I miss?” “What if this is different?” It is surrounded by fear and shame. Let’s step back.

I want to start off by saying, I believe that this crisis is “different” and it has been coming for a while. While the cost of the “bailout” has been in the headlines, it pales compared to the other debts that will come due all too soon:

• 12 trillion dollars to support the current and future beneficiaries of social security
• $140 trillion to fund Medicare as it is currently legislated
• $170 trillion to fund Medicaid (this is a difficult number to evaluate as it is a combination of Fed and State). (more…)

This prophecy was spoken by an unnamed Hopi Elder of Oraibi, Arizona. it speaks of this time of transition in our world and asks important questions. It speaks of the possibility of this being a good time. We can create that with an expanded perception in life and with deep and true questions about ourselves and the way we choose to live.

–Martin

The Hopi Elder Speaks

“You have been telling the people that this is the 11th hour.

Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

And there are things to be considered. . . . (more…)

As the Bush Administration asks for close to a trillion dollars to prevent a worldwide financial cataclysm, here are some numbers you might find interesting — courtesy of the ABC News Research Center and ABC News’ Barbara Paulson.
In 2007, Wall Street’s five biggest firms– Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley -   paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves.
That’s $10 billion more than the $29 billion loan taxpayers are making to J.P. Morgan to save Bear Stearns.
Those 2007 bonuses were paid even though the shareholders in those firms last year collectively lost about $74 billion in stock declines –their worst year since 2002.
This type of pay is corrosive and has many long term impacts on the world that extend beyond any moral judgment. First of all, like drug crime, it sucks the best kids away from all other ways of making a living. In the inner cities it is not the incompetent boys who get into the drug business, it is the kids with talent and drive. They mostly end up on the dark side. So, too, with investment banking where most of the most talented kids in business school aspire to join Goldman Sachs.
Because of this attraction of huge piles of money, this talent is not available for the other more important and productive parts of our society.
Secondly, investment banking no longer mainly works to ensure that the productive parts of our world are financed. Now it mainly plays with money. It was in 1984 that the power began to shift from the Investment bankers who financed projects to the trading rooms that dealt for their own book. Most of the action on Wall Street - where most of the serious money is made and hence where the attention is paid - is connected to trading for the house - either for a bank or for a hedge fund
So the huge paydays pull the best people away from the productive parts of the society and economy and into activities that are no better that drug dealing. But this giant casino is absolutely toxic as we are discovering.
It undermines the real world. It destroys the value of our lives. It too makes us all addicts of easy money. They are the crack dealers and we are the punters. They make the money and the public becomes helpless and impoverished.
For like drugs, easy play money feeds on itself. All the imagination and energy go into making the payday even bigger. All the imagination goes into new ideas of how to get us to do the wrong thing. So as we are finding out, the piper who pays for all of this is us. We pay in losing our homes and we pick up the bill for the dealers.
Any system of reform has to look into the “System”. At the heart of it is how people are paid. If we don’t change this - then nothing will have changed and we will end up in even worse trouble.

Martin Siesta

© 2008 Martin Siesta. Reprinted with permission.