2023 Stock Market Charts & Cycles, Hyperloop Scam, Best Pink Sand Beaches, Easy Hotel Elite Status

Another TBB post featuring the most eclectic links around the web such as 2023 stock market charts & cycles, the Hyperloop scam, the best pink sand beaches, how to get easy hotel elite status, we expose 403(b) plans, we go inside an online scam labor camp, someway somehow a client of JP Morgan turned a $50 Million portfolio to just $1.5 Million, an amazing story written by an abused child and how she recovered, fascinating stuff about the Kikkoman soy sauce bottles, always amazing photography, breath taking churches and of course the must read material in the quirky miles and points blogs blog space. Happy New Year and see you on Tuesday.

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Welcome to my quirky original authentic blog. It all started back in 2012 focusing on my crazy hobby addiction of frequent flyer miles, hotel and bank points. It has since evolved to a curated weekly post of the best web content I find along with my commentary. Here to Educate primarily, sometimes Entertain and if I get to Inspire you, well, that is a bonus.

This blog publishes on Fridays. This is a one man labor of love operation, enjoy it white it lasts. I may post on a Tuesday going forward whenever I get to it. Update: Come back for at least the next few Tuesdays when I will be posting a collection of 2023 Annual Best of lists, something I have been doing over the years around Christmas/New Year’s holidays.

 

PERSONAL FINANCE

Great charts! Put These Charts on Your Wall 2023 Edition.

If you have a 403(b) retirement plan at work, you are most likely getting screwed: Investing for retirement — Why you might want to reconsider that 403(b). It is a great shame that these plans are handled this way for so long. There is a website 403bWise that keeps track of the abuses in this space and tries to improve them.

Fiduciary rules typically don’t apply to public school 403(b) plans, Otter says. School districts may contract with dozens of companies to offer retirement investments while refusing to provide employees with any guidance or advice, he says. That’s when insurance companies peddling expensive investments, including variable annuities and high-cost mutual funds, step in. “Guess who is emailing teachers? Guess who is going to the school districts and offering free lunch? It’s the high-cost companies doing this,” Otter explains.

You will soon start reading many articles about how you can get 529 Plan college fund accounts and turn them into tax-free Roth IRA accounts for the kids. Don’t believe the hype. There are many restrictions to get this done and it is very limited. Strings Attached. If little Johnny does not go to college…you can always switch the beneficiary to another family member until little Johnny comes to his senses. Some of the obstacles are:

• There’s a lifetime limit of $35,000 per beneficiary that can be transferred from a 529 to a Roth.
• The amount that can be transferred each year is limited to the amount that could otherwise be contributed directly to an IRA. In 2024, that will be $7,000, meaning that it would take five years to move the entire $35,000.
• In years when funds are moved from a 529 to a Roth, those funds will count toward the beneficiary’s IRA contribution limit. Suppose that parents transfer $4,000 from a 529 account to their child’s Roth IRA. Since the child’s overall IRA contributions are capped at $7,000, he or she could only contribute an additional $3,000 directly to an IRA that year.
• The beneficiary would need to have earned income that’s at least equal to the 529-to-Roth transfer amount, just like the requirement for a regular IRA contribution. The child doesn’t have any earned income? No transfer is allowed.
• To be sure parents use the new provision in the way it was intended—that is, truly for surplus funds—there are two additional restrictions. First, the 529 account must be at least 15 years old. Second, any funds contributed to the 529 within the most recent five years aren’t eligible to be transferred. Neither of these restrictions is a permanent obstacle, but they can slow transfers.

This New York Times gets inside one of these online scam operations. And it is harrowing to learn what they are doing to people: 7 Months Inside an Online Scam Labor Camp. I read recently that there were some raids in these places and many were arrested, which is of course great and about time.

I always thought this was so stupid and here we go: The Hyperloop was always a scam. It’s time to be honest about Musk’s vacuum tube to nowhere.

After reading this article, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts. I guess this will take the legal route and we will have to wait to see the outcome. But it takes special “skills” to “grow” a portfolio from $50 Million down to $1.5 Million, wow! JP Morgan Is in a Fight Over Its Client’s Lost $50 Million Fortune. You take an extreme risk tolerant person, you add dementia and bankers who are not fiduciaries looking to maximize fees for the bank (and their bonuses) and you get a tragic situation like this. Clients like this are addicted to risk and they will never be satisfied if you try to slow them down. Meaning, I don’t care how much money any potential client has, they will not become my client if they don’t listen to sensible advice. And please avoid investing in Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs). And this smh:

In some years, they paid more than $400,000 in interest on the JPMorgan loans and at times more than $250,000 in advisory fees to the bank and Chickasaw.

 

GEOPOLITICS

Fareed Zakaria with an excellent essay: The Self-Doubting Superpower. America Shouldn’t Give Up on the World It Made.

 

ODDZ & ENDZ

This is one of those special stories from The New Yorker that just stays with you. Deals with personal trauma inflicted on children, in the name of science. You add Nazis, bullying, orphans and wild young parents and, all I can say, it just blew my mind. Not a happy read, you have been warned: Behind a Locked Door. As a girl in Austria, Evy Mages was confined to a mysterious institution in Innsbruck. Decades later, she learned why.

Interesting link: The Most Searched-For Word in Every Country.

• Gaslighting is the most searched definition in the U.S., and — at 130,000 U.S.-based searches per month — the most for any country in the world.
• Pegging is the most searched word definition in the UK (11,000/month). [Seriously?}
  
• Woke is the most searched definition in Canada (7,200/month).
• Bullying is the most searched definition in Australia (4,300/month).
• In Japan, メンヘラ(translating to Menhera, slang for somebody needing mental health care) is the most searched definition — and the most searched non-English language definition in the world (92,000/month).

We are all aware of the Kikkoman Soy Sauce. And we all most likely had no idea about its unique bottle. The Kikkoman Soy Sauce Bottle Is Priceless. Special releases of the iconic soy sauce bottle can fetch hundreds of dollars online, especially among Americans, who have formed a deep relationship with the Japanese brand. I had no idea all these bottles are manufactured in a factory in Walworth, Wisconcin since 1973!

Very cool photography: Photographer Mikko Lagerstedt Illuminates the Magical Solitude of the Nordic Winter