What this Blog is about

The Pursuit of Financial Happiness(tm) is a weekly radio show about the accumulation towards retirement and  the distribution of retirement and how to make those more successful.  As the current financial crisis unfolded, the macroeconomic and economic news on the show which helps investors make decision became more important and took up more time, making it harder to cover investing and retirement planning issues.

Hopefully, this Blog will allow me to post information I did not get to during a show, provide some links to information, and to elaborate in more detail or make my point more clear.

The Blogs listed on the right are one's I have found interesting and/or informative; they are not a complete list of blogs I visit.  The links on the right are one's I believe anyone might find informative, but I am not listing all the sites I use.  With respect to finance, pensions, retirement, economics, investing, I use several academic sites available to me at MIT, Boston College, University of Michigan, and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania  among others which it would not be proper for me to provide links.

I try to keep politics out of my show and just discuss the issues.  Anyone who has listened to me knows how critical I can be of individual policy makers of both parties.  I believe we need a free discussion which is derived from a civil debate.  No issue is black and white, which is why my professional advice is always individualized to the client without bias or cookie cutter approaches.  I come from an academic background in which our texts were the original books and papers of the thinkers and discussion of ideas was a necessary critical analysis, give and take as no idea, however a revolutionary an advance at the time, has proven to be immutable or absolutely correct as knowledge grows.

At the same time, in the 18th Century, the pursuit of happiness was a philosophical concept which held that man had the inalienable right to provide food, clothing, and shelter for his family.  It has always been necessary for the individual to defend individual rights from the encroachment of any power which would seek to limit those rights.  There will always be those who consider themselves a special, elite class who know better than others or a privileged class who believe they have a greater purpose in a pursuing a greater self-serving Greed.  Over half of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are millionaires.  We live in an age in which 1% have more wealth than 95% of the people.  What makes you think you are in the other 4%?

We all need to stand up and discuss and debate issues, but there are those of both political spectrum's who either want to limit civil discussion or shout it down, who have opinions so firm they cannot listen, or are too afraid to listen, communicate, and learn from each other.  There can be no consensus of free people without a civil debate from which no one is excluded.  It is no longer fashionable, as it was in the 18th century when it was socially acceptable for anyone to get on the box in the public meeting places and speak or to freely debate ideas in coffee houses.

Investing and retirement shows no mercy for the undisciplined, uninformed, bigoted, or those too fearful to act.  It does require an even playing field on which all the players are governed by the same rules.

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