TOP 1%, Keep Making More Money

The gulf between the richest 1% of the USA and the rest of the country got to its widest level in history last year. The top 1% of earners in the U.S. pulled in 19.3% of total household income in 2012, which is their biggest slice of total income in more than 100 years, according to a an analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics at Oxford University. The richest Americans haven't claimed this large of a slice of total wealth since 1927, when the group claimed 18.7%. The analysis is based on data from Internal Revenue Service data. One of the economists behind the research, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, is a top researcher in the topic of wealth and income inequality. He won the John Bates Clark medal last year. The Clark medal is awarded to the most promising economists under the age of 40. Past winners have includes Paul Krugman of Princeton University, Lawrence Summers and Steve Levitt, co-author of "Freakonomics." In a separate analysis, Saez found the top 1% of earnings posted 86% real income growth between 1993 and 2000. Meanwhile, the real income growth of the bottom 99% of earnings rose 6.6%.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/10/pay-gap-richest-poorest/2793343/

How is your Generation Doing?

Fidelity recently released a study looking at Americans in this demographic breakdown: Generation Y: born from 1981 to 1988 Generation X: born from 1965 to 1980 Baby boomers: born from 1946 to 1964 “Matures:” born from 1909 to 1945 Here is the Executive Summary from the research: Fidelity® Five Years Later Research Executive Summary Here is an infographic for Gen Y. Here is the press release.

Houston this Market has a Problem

From Mark Halbert at Marketwatch:

Based on trailing 12-month earnings, the S&P 500’s SPX current P/E ratio is 18.8. Even if we assume that all 500 companies in the index will report earnings over the next few weeks that match analyst estimates, the S&P’s P/E drops only modestly, to 17.9. Even that lower level is higher than 77% of comparable readings over the last 140 years, according to data compiled by Yale University finance professor Robert Shiller. The average P/E for the S&P 500 since 1871 is 15.5 and the median P/E is 14.5.

Read the whole article.

How to Live in Silicon Valley - Financially

Wealthfront has a great blog post talking about the financial realities facing people that attempt to raise a family, send kids to college, own a home, and retire in Silicon Valley.

4 Ways Gyms Try to Take Your Money

This is a fantastic article discussing the problems we encounter with gym memberships.

Frontline Retirement Gamble

Draw your own conclusions. Here is the Frontline piece.

Female Breadwinners Becoming Normal in America

Thanks to Wendy Wang, Kim Parker and Paul Taylor at the Pew Research Center for giving us this report. Here is an excerpt: A record 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The share was just 11% in 1960. These “breadwinner moms” are made up of two very different groups: 5.1 million (37%) are married mothers who have a higher income than their husbands, and 8.6 million (63%) are single mothers. Here is a Marketwatch article about it.