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Yes, the cost of health insurance continues to rise every year, currently rising at twice the rate of inflation. Even with fiscally responsible health providers, costs have not been contained. Any major health crisis is costly; the state of the health arts employs technology and medicines that are expensive to build and produce. The cost of research has to be covered, and the dividends investors earn for taking risks on pharmaceutical products in development must be paid. It’s thanks to them and the researchers that many life threatening diseases have met their match. While we can expect these costs to continue, the hope is that all diseases humans encounter may be defeated. We do not necessarily have to accept continually rising costs, reflected in health insurance costs and the taxes we pay each year. The Health Reform Law of 2010 that was passed on March 23rd is designed to diminish rising costs.

One of the major factors that raise our health insurance costs is that many citizens, especially the poor, are uninsured. Without insurance, they are not able to get medical treatment at the early stages of their ailment. By the time they do see a doctor, it’s at the emergency ward where the cost is highest. Unable to turn these people away, either because of medical ethics or state and federal laws, these hospitals will treat the patient and turn to either the state or federal government for compensation, or increase the charges for people who are able to afford health insurance costs.

It is for this reason that the recent Health Reform Law has, as its centerpiece, universal health care coverage for all U.S. citizens. By helping the poor cover health insurance costs, it will be virtually impossible for a poor person to abstain from getting health insurance from whatever insurer they choose. The law will now subsidize the poor, covering the insurance costs they are unable to cover on their own. 24 million of our nation’s poor will be subsidized, with the $350 billion the law allocates to this effort.

Although the law will also prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and will curtail lifetime caps, thus requiring insurance companies to pay for more than they previously did, the increase in policy holders, including those 24 million people backed by the $350 billion allocation, should offset these new expenses. If the poor are now able to seek treatment earlier, emergency room costs will go down, saving even more money. Theoretically, the savings will reduce health insurance costs across the board.

This Health Reform law also stimulates the health insurance industry and may bring down health insurance costs for everyone. An increase in demand and an adequate supply of insurers means insurers will be competing with each other to provide the most robust product at the lowest price. With an increase in competition, more insurers will become transparent. Their administrative costs will decrease as they rid themselves of wasteful policies and procedures in order to price their products competitively.

Other projects are also being explored to reduce the cost of health insurance, and this law should be considered just the first step. What is certain in the debate is that whatever efforts succeed, medical costs will continue to rise. The goal, then, is not to curtail the rise, but to diminish it and keep it under control. The benefit to the consumer is that they will be able to get health insurance and be able to afford it, even if it means being subsidized by the government. Health insurance costs may continue to rise at a slower rate, but the overall health of America should reach an all time high. A healthier America is the true promise of the law, and who wouldn’t welcome that?

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We won’t even address the presidential elections George W. Bush won. (Aberrations belong in Ripley’s). Suffice it to say that those elections were a green flag to the political class to think creatively when it comes to getting their candidate elected – never mind the theory of universal democratic elections, where all the citizens are expected to vote. Sure, there are always mistakes in any human endeavor, but we’re not talking about mistakes here; we’re talking about outright, intentional attacks on the democratic process with its cornerstone, the democratic election, that legitimizes any government in power. ‘Government by consent of the people’, the phrase goes. Recent elections world-wide are mockeries of this noble ideal, and poses an unimaginable threat to all the world.

Take this June’s elections in Arkansas. Oh, yes, they held one alright. All 6 million of that state were invited to participate in the elections of their representatives of this 10,000 square miles of a U.S. state. Arkansas has 500 cities and towns. The land of Arkansas is diversified, ranging from forest to farmlands, to the hills and mountains in the north. Always a patriotic state, the home of presidents, Arkansas boasts of thousands of young men who have died on the battlefields, so that the people of Arkansas might rule themselves, but, on the night Arkansas opened the polling stations, no one seemed to remember them. It seems some Washington operatives appeared just in time to force the closing of all but four ballot stations. For most Arkansasians, voting that day meant driving for hours to get to a ballot box. The definition of “the peopleâ€? was amended to mean people with cars. Frankly, no one should care what the excuses are. The boys of Arkansas gave no excuses when their state and country called them to fight and die on the battlefields for democracy’s sake, for the sake of a fair election that they and their progeny could enjoy as the guarantee of liberty for the people of Arkansas.

The perversion of the election is tantamount to treason, a betrayal that sickens every veteran that made the sacrifice of home and family for the American way of life. It is the harbinger of the fall of the United States, that once ideal democracy that gave hope to all the nations of the world. We should not forget that as recently as the last century, our fathers and grandfathers offered their lives that we might be free. It is our responsibility to pass on to our children the democratic election in pristine form.

What will it take for Americans to be outraged by such practices as we have seen in the Arkansas ‘democratic’ election? Must we wait until our elections fall to the level of the election we saw in Afghanistan? That election has been condemned as a fraud by key U.N. officials who monitored it. Karzai, then – and still – president, gave all the appearances of a democratic leader. He appointed an election commission that reported to him alone, that made decisions that promoted him alone. Karzai used a reverse strategy of the Washington group that got Arkansas to close down all but four voting stations: Karzai’s lackeys opened up 25 percent of the polls in Taliban territory, knowing they would not be used, but used they were, to stuff the ballot boxes with Karzai votes. When 1.5 million votes, a third of all votes, were questioned, all of them Karzai votes, the U.N. creatively determined that Afghanistan law did not permit the tossing out of fraudulent votes. This was fortunate for Karzai. If these votes had been tossed out in this so-called democratic election, Karzai would have had to go through another election. The U.S. wanted Karzai to win, and apparently the U.N. held the same sentiment. Thanks to those fraudulent votes, Karzai is the “dulyâ€? elected president of Afghanistan today.

The democratic election is new to Afghanistan. What is Arkansas’ excuse? American citizens, don’t let this happen here…again?

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Don’t expect to see a sudden drop in health insurance prices as a result of the enactment of the Health Reform Law of 2010. Our best hope at this time is that health insurance prices will start to stabilize. Although the 2,400 page law specifies a number of changes to health insurance policies and practices, the law is by no means a ‘finished’ product. At best, it’s a broad guideline that opens a multiple lane highway leading to a health industry available to all citizens. Along the way, opportunities for experimentation will present themselves, including efforts to reduce costs, streamline administration, while increasing quality of health care. Still, efficient and effective procedures and processes have yet to be devised. Amendments are certain to be proposed. The law is recognized by economists and health care scientists as a first step, the beginning of what will be a somewhat long journey to universal, affordable health coverage for all Americans.

What’s affordable health coverage? Affordable is a relative term. The rich can afford what the poor cannot. A poor family may be able to afford a used, stark naked Yugo, while a rich family can certainly afford the same automobile, but they can also afford a Mercedes, which the poor family cannot. Health care plans come in the same sorts of varieties as automobiles. Some offer basic medical and prescription benefits, (the Yugo of health care), while others are complete in coverage, providing maximum coverage, from chiropractic treatment to catastrophic illness coverage, replete with coverage for organ transplants, unlimited lifetime coverage with no cap, and VIP hospital rooms. Our personal family budget and the income we may reasonably expect to earn, thus becomes what is affordable for us. If you’ve got the money or expect to earn it, you can afford it.

The problem then is to buy an affordable health coverage plan that fulfills both our basic and specialized medical needs. The various insurance plans are ‘packages’, consisting of covered services. In choosing the package, naturally, you want it to consist of every possible service coverage – there’s no telling what the future might bring – but, each component raises your total cost. Getting every possible service naturally raises the price. The problem for you is to put together a package that will cover all the essentials and any special needs your health condition may require. Insurers put together packages for you to choose from. Look at several of them; remember, they are not all the same.

When you’re young, a basic affordable health coverage plan will do, but as you age, more services will be required. As you get older, your income should increase, such that, what was not affordable when you were young, is affordable when you’re older. Sit down with your chosen provider’s agent and plan for the extensions you can expect to need as you age. The new law prohibits discrimination against the sick. A pre-existing condition no longer precludes you from getting the insurance you need to cover the treatment for a condition your policy did not cover. Waiting until a condition arises is not smart, however, because you can expect to pay higher rates Speak with your doctor about what he or she anticipates for your health, given your family history. Your doctor may be your best adviser.

Let us hope for and work towards bringing down the cost of medical insurance, but until then, if ever that day comes, your best bet is to get an affordable health coverage package that will cover conditions you can expect at each stage of your life. One delightful benefit of the new law is the promise of the nation to subsidize the poor who cannot afford insurance. Up to this point, people have been going bankrupt in their efforts to pay off medical bills their insurance didn’t cover. If you are making less than $88,000 a year, the government will subsidize your health care. You no longer need to become destitute to stay healthy – and alive. In this sense, affordable health coverage is available to everyone now.

Keep abreast of the ongoing changes to the law. Be involved. The law is a broad road towards universal health care coverage for everyone, but the vehicles to carry us to that goal are being built as we proceed. Perhaps, in time, the ‘Mercedes’ of health care packages will finally become affordable health coverage for everyone.

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There are some things in life you simply cannot avoid. One of these is health coverage. It does not matter if you are married, single, or have a large family, you need a health insurance coverage plan for a number of reasons. First and foremost, you never know when something might go down, and you need to be rushed to the hospital. Maybe you break your wrist or get into a fender bender and have to get an MRI done. Regardless of what the issue is, there comes a time when health coverage is imperative. And just imagine if you were facing a serious medical condition. At this point you would be seriously dependent upon a stellar health care plan. It can keep you from going bankrupt.

For single men and women, there are affordable individual health insurance coverage plans. Any time you deal with health coverage, you can expect to get a better deal based on two factors. One is your age, and two is your current health. Therefore if you are 25 and very healthy, you can get an affordable individual health insurance policy without much effort. The key is to take care of your health as best you can, and acquire a good coverage plan at a young age if possible. This way if you break your nose, need to visit a dermatologist, or have to go on for a minor operation, your health insurance will cover you; at least to some degree. It is worth the monthly payment.

A few websites that will help you find out more about affordable individual health insurance coverage are goldenrule.com, aetna.com, affordable-health-insurance.org, and ehealthinsurance.com. Be sure to take a closer look at these helpful websites in order to learn more about current health insurance coverage plans. Even if you are not searching for an affordable individual health insurance policy, it is wise to review these helpful sites. You can additionally learn more about family insurance coverage, policies for married couples, and low-priced insurance plans for individuals with pre-existing health problems. The key is doing your research beforehand.

On the flip side, it makes no sense to avoid decent and affordable individual health insurance plans. If you are aware how life works, then you already know that you will need health coverage when you do not have it. This is pretty much how it always works. Therefore it is prudent to look into a variety of affordable health insurance policies, and make a decision about which one is right for you. This way you will at least be prepared if something does happen. As for parents of children, it is basically imperative to acquire a good health insurance plan to be on the safe side.

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The first effort to avoid paying taxes occurred soon after the Revolutionary War in the United States. It took George Washington and a contingent of the United States Army to quell the tax revolt. These forefathers of the tax avoiders had actually believed the revolution was about over-taxation by their English King and that George and the forefathers of a taxing government were betraying the cause that led to U.S. independence. Just as they did then, today’s tax avoidance advocates agree with former first lady, Nancy Reagan: “Just say no!â€? And, just as George Washington responded with a heavy hand – no one was actually killed and not a single shot was fired – today’s government is ready to take you tax rebels down. Of course, they have to catch you first, and that’s the point in the program the Feds have enhanced, bounty hunting for tax evaders – no degree required.

Tax avoidance snitching is built on the old communist method of discovering non-conformists and party dissidents. The Kamer Rouge used it well. Hundreds of children gave up their mothers and fathers for the glory alone. If you turn in anyone you know is evading taxes, the Feds will pay you a nice percentage of what the offender owes. That’s right, mom, dad, your trusting employer, priest or pastor, your husband or wife, even your children, it doesn’t matter, the IRS doesn’t discriminate. They’ll express their gratitude with a nice fat check. With dollars, that is, not a bag of silver coins. It’s not a betrayal of trust, they’ll tell you. It’s patriotism.

The IRS has been paying this kind of bounty for years, so the paying isn’t new. For the first half of this decade, 428 ‘patriots’ were paid $12 million dollars (that’s $28K each on average), a pretty good take for a few hours of snooping, your report, and a trip to the bank. That $12 million was for $168 million the IRS recouped. Still, most Americans valued their jobs and families more than one year of low income earning. So the U.S. Congress thought, increase the bounty and you’re sure to get more players. You’ve got to make it worth their while. That’s why, in 2006, Congress ordered the IRS to increase the bounty from 7 percent to 15 percent. If the IRS collected more than $2 million from tax avoidance reports, the payouts work out to about 30 percent, amounting to about $600 thousand in total. You could retire off of that! If you’re young, with smart investing, you could get yourself an island in Dubai ($30 million, probably less, what with the cash shortage around the world).

Gone are the days when the unscrupulous rich parent who practiced tax avoidance could easily cut the prodigal son or daughter out of the will. Gone, too are the days when, for a key to the executive’s bathroom and an all-expenses-paid trip to Aruba, a junior accountant remained on the tax evading corporation’s good old boys list. In 2008, the IRS received 1,246 tax avoidance tips; in 2009, these leads tallied to 1,600. Congress sure is smart.

There is one caveat: the IRS is slow to pay. So slow, that, they’ve haven’t paid anyone under the new program yet. It seems we need a new program from Congress, a bounty payment avoidance informants program. Of course, the taxpayer will have to pay for that too. We’ve paid for bridges to nowhere, for hundred dollar hammers and toilet seats, and billions of dollars in cash give-aways to unknown persons in Iraq. It’s our patriotic duty to pay taxes. Tax avoidance is a crime. Don’t think they won’t catch you. They’ve got eyes all around. Care to join? Me, I mind my own business!

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Everyone knows someone who is like this – a certain kind of overcautious person who’ll leave nothing to chance; you’ll see in their closets or in garages or in perhaps paid storage, bags of neatly-organized files with old telephone bills from 30 years ago, tax records, umpteen receipts, every notice or office memo they got, every receipt for groceries they bought, bank statements and, of course, guarantee cards for 30 year old VCRs. Is there a reason why they do this? When any family member confronts them about why on earth anyone would need to do this, they usually have a cautionary tale about what happened to a friend once who got audited, and didn’t have the receipts she needed to back her story up. At a time when we entirely live our lives on computers, is there a point to saving receipts and paper records anymore?

Maintaining a little proof that you actually paid for the things you purchased and that you never failed to pay your taxes actually makes a certain amount of sense. There is no legal limit to when an audit can take place. Three years from now, when you think that your taxes are all paid for and nothing’s been contested, the IRS can pull your records and haul you in to ask for receipts. If the IRS figures that you made a major mistake in your IRS tax filing – that you understated your income by 25% for instance – they can ask you to produce records from six years ago. There is just no limit to the amount of joy that the IRS can bring into your life. So the rule of junk collection should be that you keep all your receipts and check stubs for at least seven years, and keep records of your tax returns for ever. Those would be your 1099 forms, your W-2 forms, and your year-end bank statements.

If you have brokerage statements, you probably need to keep your entire cache of records of what you spent on your investments, and what you received from them. Basically, any kind of investment that brings you a profit or loss that you would need to show on your IRS tax filing in any year, you need to save records of. However there are ways in which you can go too far with the record-keeping, unless you run your own business, and you need to claim your cell phone bills and your gas bills as business expense deductions. Business owners will need to keep their monthly bank statements and credit card statements to be able to prove how much they earn, should the IRS not be happy with what they claim in their IRS tax filing.

What do you do with documents to do with your loans and your insurance? This might have nothing to do with an IRS tax filing, but it will be good practice to hang onto them until you’ve completely paid your loans off. Who knows when they’ll claim that you never paid the installments? Brokerage firm statements and bank statements are easily available on the Internet for free forever. Do you still need to hang onto them? Well, the IRS needs to see paper records. So it looks like the filing cabinet still sticks around.

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More and more over the years, working people in this country have found that the laws have been actively shifting responsibility for American workers’retirement survival away from the companies that employ them, onto the workers themselves. Apparently, the fact of the change hasn’t really sunk in yet, because there are far too many people who are still providing inadequately for a retirement income, come the day they need to step out of the workforce. It’s as if they still think that they have a comfortable pension to look forward to. My father, in the middle of the cratering of the stock market two years ago, was just 60, and freshly retired. He had no pension, and his Social Security benefits were still years away. He had nothing to go on but his savings. He wanted to exercise the option of cashing out his stocks, but he was worried about how he would then have nothing to turn to if he lived to be 90.

When all these newly-retired people all around who had just been set free of a life of hard work watched their entire life’s work disappear as the stock market went up in smoke, the general advice they got back then, what my father got too, was to withdraw less each month to preserve their capital, and then to go work at Wal-Mart. Now my father did not want to do that; and his reasons were novel. He felt that he would only need to see his investments differently in his mind. He visualized having two sets of investments – one was cash and bonds that could see him through the first half of his retired life; the other part was the stocks he held that had taken a beating in the recession. He thought he would leave his stock funds untouched, and believe that they would bounce back one day so that they could fund the latter part of his retirement.

Believe it or not, this plan that my father has picked for himself is exactly the thing that experts recommend these days; in fact, it’s been bandied about for about two decades now. As long as you had a stock market that’s treating you well in retirement, the 4% rule, the undisputed benchmark in retirement planning, applied. The rule says that as long as things are going well, you’re supposed to invest your retirement nest egg about 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds. You can start out withdrawing 4% a year, and go up on a sliding scale from there to keep up with inflation. They said that you had a 90% chance of staying solvent up until your last day this way. The rule however, does not really hold together in severely difficult times such as these.

The main spanner in the works in finding a way to fund retirement income is inflation. If it weren’t for it, you would just need to invest in bonds to be set for life. But with inflation, you need to invest in something that will grow your fund because even with very low inflation, in 20 years, your dollar will buy you just half of what it does now. A great way to guarantee a decent retirement income would be to divide into five-year periods the time you have after your retirement, and adopt a different strategy for each five-year period. In the first phase, as soon as you retire in a time like this when interest you get approaches zero, you put your money in an immediate payout annuity for a five-year period. Once this is done with, you’ll need to find a deferred annuity or a bond ladder to generate your retirement income. The idea is that each phase of your retirement asks for a slightly more risky investment strategy to make up for your falling capital, and for rising inflation.

Of course there are some who say that this kind of measured response will do nothing through a difficult financial period such as this. They say, invest in mutual funds as aggressively as you can, because trusting in the markets is your best chance.

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So, you have just paid your taxes. Having bitten the bullet, though, you still don’t feel inclined to describe your contribution to the national effort in particularly generous or charitable terms. You would never guess it but you have a corner of sympathy with the economists and the government accountants of the country. They point to the tax laws of the country that often reward people with tax breaks for no reason, and make that up by taxing you, the taxpayer, a lot more than they would otherwise have to.

Let’s say that 30 years ago, you saw a bunch of computer makers with a dozen different computer designs, the Atari, the Commodore, the Apple, and you bet that that last one would probably make it big. You bought in on the ground floor, and today you find that your shares have appreciated ten times. If you sell them today, you’ll make a killing, and so will the IRS, because you’ll pay capital gains taxes. But let’s say that you don’t sell them today and you leave it to your heirs. Whoever inherits your Apple investment is going to cash in for free; financial advisors even recommend that if you’re pushing it a bit, that you don’t sell anything now and just write it off on your will. This really makes no sense if you think about it; a person who is 90 today and wishes to sell his stock portfolio will be hit by the tax laws as far as possible. If he had not sold anything, and he died the following day, his grandson who inherits it could sell it the very same day and he would not pay a dime in taxes. Over the next five years, the government will lose in a third of a trillion to this tax exemption.

It’s about the same way with the energy policy in the country. The government always has various incentives and high taxes to try to encourage or discourage one or the other kind of energy consumption behavior; people get so mixed up over these pretty soon, they give up on trying to understand anything, and do what they would have anyway. Or like some unscrupulous manufacturers, they try to game the system. Five years ago, President Bush signed in a new energy policy that really went for ethanol; and the tax laws were amended to hand out lots of credits and tax breaks to any farmer or manufacturer who helped with the ethanol effort. Ethanol has been a nonstarter, though; it’s been using up so much corn that food prices have shot up, and the production of ethanol uses up so much gas and puts out so much pollution, that it hasn’t been worth it. And still, tax laws have handed manufacturers of ethanol about $12 billion of tax credits in the past four years alone.

You’ve been hearing about those Cadillac health plans for a while and the whole lead-up to the new health care plan, haven’t you? Consider one of the best perks you get at working a regular job – health insurance. Employer-provided health insurance, though, is tax exempted. In the beginning, that tax exemption didn’t really cost the government much, as healthcare was cheap. Healthcare now, though, is rising in cost in such a fearsome way that in about 100 years, it will be using up almost all our national income. Granting a tax exemption on this costs the government $1 trillion right now every five years. So what do employers do, but keep wages frozen, and choose to compensate workers with very pricey health insurance plans. If they compensated workers with regular salary increases, they would pay payroll taxes on them. And part-time workers who don’t have insurance anyway, just suffer in both ways – no salary increases, no free insurance either, and the need to pay a tax when they go out and buy their own personal health insurance.

When employers are so willing to buy the pricey health insurance schemes, insurance companies have no incentive to lower their prices either. There are a bunch of tax laws that work like this – punishing the poor and rewarding the rich. For instance, the mortgage interest deduction plan will give you a better break if you have a really large house. Sometimes the tax laws get so complicated, even the drafters of those laws get mixed up like this.

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We are friends with this young family that lives close by; they have three little daughters, all under 8, and it’s a family that anyone would want to model theirs on. To me, the most remarkable thing about them is not just that they are perfect; it is how they are perfect right down to their sense of financial responsibility. Their daughters are young and they don’t need to start worrying yet about being ready with a fat endowment when they decide to get married or anything; but the time that they will need to pick a college is maybe only 10 years away, and it’s already making them nervous. For about 6 years now, they have been socking away $500 a month in 529 plans for college (it’s been built up to $30,000 already). They had the foresight to look up college costs perhaps three weeks after their first daughter was born, and they right away got around to it without putting it off.

There is no other savings channel that could possibly give them all that 529 plans do. They lock in their college costs at today’s prices, their money grows – and everything is tax free. They won’t be able to cover all the costs of their kids’ education by the time they grow up; but they have the right idea, and they’re doing the best they can. 529 plans certainly seem to attract a great deal of fierce loyalty from families with young children. According to the Financial Research Corporation of Boston, 529 savings plans are going to attract about $250 billion of investments by next year. And that is up from practically nothing just 10 years ago.

Here’s a quick rundown of what makes a 529 plan what it is. To begin with the curious name, as you would expect it, comes from the section of the tax code that sanctions the plan. These plans come in two flavors: college savings plans and prepaid tuition plans. Depending on the state, you’ll get an option in one or the other, and sometimes you’ll get both. Prepaid tuition plans are the ones that will allow you to lock in your college costs at today’s prices. For instance, if you live in Florida and have a child who will need to be in college in five years, the belief is that a four year degree at a University of Florida college will cost about $48,000 then. With your prepaid 529 plans now though, you could freeze it at today’s prices, which would be $35,740.

If you go with state-sponsored prepaid 529 plans, they ask that you sign up right away to one of several major established state institutions. If you pick an independent 529 plan, you get your pick of several smaller independent colleges. Prepaid plans can be somewhat bothersome. Most states don’t offer them, and when they do, they require that you be a citizen of that state to be eligible to apply. And they can be expensive too – not entirely suitable for people who want to save slowly, or just a part of what is needed. The most popular 529 option lies in the savings plans. These let you begin to save for admission to colleges in every state of the country today. And they are pretty easy to set up too. The great thing about these plans is, that it’s completely up to you when you make your deposits and how you choose to see your money invested.

If you worry that sort of thing, with a 529, your child gets no say over how to spend the proceed when it finally comes due. When they have no legal funds to their name, they become eligible for financial aid. And also, in some cases, the fact that the child has no right over how the money is spent keeps me safe from careless choices (say, spending the money on a week at the Bahamas). 529 plans can be real winners in other ways too. Over the years, you can make deposits that amount to as much as a quarter million dollars; in states like Colorado, the state will contribute up to $500 each month to your account, and you get all kinds of tax breaks as well.

Of course 529 plans can be a bit of a pain for the number of choices they give you with all kinds of features (like how they will invest your money). And if you happen to use the money to not pay for college costs, there’ll be a penalty. The way they invest your money can often become an area of serious disagreement. For instance two years ago when the markets plunged, ahead of the recession, some 529 plans tried to follow their normal plan oblivious of the economic environment. For accounts that were nearing maturity, they tried as usual to shift investments from low-risk mutual funds to more conservative investments (like income securities). In doing this, they went and sold their mutual funds on the market when it was very low. Everyone tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen. They sold at the bottom of the market.

529 plans, like anything else you trust others with, depend on how bureaucratic their administrators can be. Even if you’re completely enthusiastic about investing in your child’s future in this way, you need to be aware that if you are hoping for Hope and Lifetime Learning tax credits, paying your child’s entire college education bills with a 529 bounty can disqualify you. Well, nothing is without the downside.

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I am always amazed at the popularity of Oprah Winfrey and how many loyal viewers her show seems to receive. She is routinely among the wealthiest Americans and her show seems like it has been on forever, which I think begs the question – what is it about Operah Winfrey that appeals to so many different people?

I have a friend who watches the Oprah Winfrey Show every single weekday. If she knows that she is going to be out at the time the show comes on, she will make sure that she tapes it so that she can watch it later. I asked her one time what it was about Operah Winfrey that she liked so much and she said that her show was just so interesting.

She could not elaborate on why she liked the talk show’s host so much, but said that she always enjoyed watching her shows and learned a lot as well. She said the topics varied, but a lot of them were very informative in terms of health issues and crime trends. She said that Oprah also had the most interesting guests on her show.

I have watched a few Operah Winfrey episodes and thought that they were interesting, but not to such a degree that I would rather watch her show than any other talk show on television. I started to think that it had to be something to do with Operah Winfrey herself, so I started to investigate.

Oprah Winfrey grew up extremely poor and had a difficult childhood. She struggled to get an education and started out as a TV journalist. She eventually got her own talk show and really never looked back.

She is very involved in charities, has established schools in Africa, and has contributed to numerous causes. She also helped provide aid to people on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina hit and has donated generously to other programs as well.

Oprah Winfrey has also struggled with her weight, and that is something about which she is very open and honest, which I think a lot of people really appreciate. The fact that she can share her own problems and talk about them on live television is something that I think a lot of people admire.

When I look at it from an objective point of view, I think that what most people find appealing about Operah Winfrey is her integrity. I think that people respect who she is and what she made of herself, and it is really a prime example of the American dream.

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