Bogue's Blog

For those who invest in municipal bonds, or for that matter are receiving a pension or expect to receive a pension from a municipality, you should pay attention what Warren Buffett has to say.

On Wednesday, Warren Buffett said at a hearing of the U.S Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in New York said that there will be a “terrible problem” for municipal bonds and said, “Then the question becomes will the federal government help.”

There is no question that local governments are under pressure as the financial crisis lowered revenues that they receive in the form of income, real estate and sales taxes. Further compounding matters, many pension plans are underfunded due to the market losses suffered a few years ago coupled with the rosy return projections and lower funding that came beforehand. Yes, from a prohibitive perspective this can create a vicious cycle and quickly become a contagion similar to the fall of 2008.

What should you do? Now for those who are currently receiving a pension, the odds are quite low that your benefits will be reduced. But I wouldn’t make the assumption that they are perfectly safe either. For the current worker that expects to receive a pension in the future, I wouldn’t hang your retirement hat solely on your pension. I believe the same would be said of people solely relying on Social Security.

For people who invest in municipal bonds, I’d be very careful. Regardless of the potential risk addressed above, I’m not a big believer in buying individual muni bonds as for most people the dollar amount needed to buy an individual bond makes it very hard to diversify the risk. Unless you directly buy from the issuer, brokers make an awful lot of money on the spreads as muni’s are very thinly traded, which eats away at your yield. This lack of liquidity also makes it more difficult to sell an individual muni at a favorable price. If you do purchase municipals, it is best advised to use mutual funds to accomplish this; in particular funds that only buy bonds with high credit ratings. If you must buy individual muni bonds, focus on the one’s that are backed by the taxing authority of the entity rather than revenue bonds, which repayment is backed on a specific project. Because of this project risk, these types of bonds are more likely to default than ones that have the ability to tax to pay back the debt. If you are at risk of paying the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), you want to stick to funds or bonds that generate little private activity interest as this is an exception item for the AMT.

Finally, there are some scenarios where you should never buy municipals. It’s simply a waste of time to buy municipals in an IRA as the tax benefits are lost. And you really don’t get much benefit if you are in a low tax bracket.

In the end, just keep in mind that the risk of municipal default is quite real. And I wouldn’t bet against what Warren Buffett has to say.

Love it or hate it, what our government calls healthcare reform is now law. These are the financial planning implications you should consider in light of the changes:

Higher taxes: If you are single and making over $200K or married and making over $250K, watch out. Starting in 2013 people with these income levels are going to see their Medicare payroll tax increase from 1.45% to 2.35%. In addition, any investment income such as interest, dividends, capital gains and rental income will be subject to a 3.8% Medicare Tax. This tax is egregious as if you fall just one dollar above the stated income limits, ALL of this unearned income is subject to this Medicare tax, not the dollar amount over the limit.

Also be aware, the tax environment was already scheduled to get worse before the healthcare reform legislation was enacted. Next year the current tax bills “sunset” where qualified dividends will be taxed as ordinary income (from its current 15%) and long term capital gain rates will go to 20% (from its current 15%). So it may not seem like the new Medicare taxes are that costly, but the combination of this and the expired tax breaks may become very costly to some people. Think about it, some people will pay a 43.4% tax for dividends where they are paying 15% now.

If you are on the fringe of these income levels, you better plan now. For example, if you have investment property that you are considering selling that has a large capital gain, you may want to accelerate the sale into this year or at least by 2012 rather than waiting. You may want to begin repositioning any taxable investment accounts into more tax efficient holdings such as index funds, municipal bond funds or save more towards tax efficient IRA’s or employer sponsored retirement plans. If your situation dictates, you may want to consider converting a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA if you have a taxable account that generates a lot of income now and is sufficient enough to cover the tax cost of the conversion. Not only could this lower the amount of unearned income that could be exposed to the new Medicare tax in the near term, converting it to a tax free Roth can reduce the chance you may be subject to the tax later in life. Finally, people who own C corps with high accumulated earnings may want to take a large dividend this year before the higher rates are imposed.

Now if you have a high deductible health insurance plan or are considering one, things will change here as well as the deductible will be limited to $2,000 for an individual and $4,000 per family. The lower deductible is most likely going to result in an increase in premiums. Current high deductible plans are grandfathered as long as they meet certain minimums so you may want to consider enrolling in a high deductible plan while you still can. It also would be advised to contribute as much as you can now to a health savings account.

Finally, if you decide not to carry health insurance, starting in 2016 you will pay a fine of $695 or 2.5% of income, whichever is greater. In 2018, if you pay premiums in excess of $8,500 for an individual and $23,000 for a family, then there is a 40% tax on the excess amounts.

The above just addresses planning aspects from an individual perspective. If you are a small business owner, there are a lot more planning implications that should be considered. But start planning now because all of the financial implications are right at our doorstep.

We live in a society where more is better. Bigger house, better house, nicer car, nice clothes, more stuff in general. This includes bigger portfolio values, higher returns or chasing yields. This mentality that has run amok the last thirty years has finally caught up with us. The global deleveraging is going to take a while to filter and we’ve gone through three bubbles in the last decade due to greed.

There’s nothing wrong about wanting more. Elements of this keep us motivated and allow us to strive to improve. If a person is doing all the right things financially and life puts them ahead of the game, they have options. Sure the person could expand on their goals and continue to work, take the same level of risk in their portfolio, expand on their planned expenditures and continue to save or save more.

But there’s a cost to all of this. You can continue to strive for more, but the risk can remain the same or increase because of it. Or you may be sacrificing your current lifestyle only to end up with more money than you will ever really need. Equal time should be given to just enough. If you are ahead of the game, there is also nothing wrong with retiring sooner, paring down debt, saving less, spending more or taking less risk in their investment strategy. Many of these choices lead to less material wealth, but a lot less risk is involved. Not having to worry or being able to sleep at night does have its virtues. If you can afford to make these choices, they should be considered.

This is where financial planning has its value. It can help draw the line between more and just enough and giving you the option to continue to have more or decide that you have enough. Unfortunately most people let their investments and underlying investment performance dictate their goals when in reality it should be the other way around. I suspect that many people were ahead of the game before the tech bubble burst or before the financial crisis of 2008 began, but they didn’t realize it. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I’m sure that if many people knew the level of risk they were talking in their lives, they would have done something about it.