Monday, February 29, 2016

One of the wackiest ideas for soaring prescription costs I’ve ever heard

Taking out a mortgage to buy your next dose of meds? That’s what two professors offer as a solution to our country’s health care crisis.

I’m all for a market-based solution to soaring med costs. But this has to be one of the wackiest ideas I’ve ever heard.

The way I see it, Wall Street banks, like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, would bundle HCLs as they did with mortgages for sale to investors. Then when the loans blow up because a higher than expected number of patients die, aren’t cured, or can no longer make their payments, taxpayers would get stuck with the bill.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Congress passes permanent charitable giving incentives


Tax filing time is right around the corner. And Congress has passed the PATH Act making two laws that had expired on January 1, 2015, permanent thereby giving you greater incentives to donate to charities this year and beyond:

·       You are now allowed to donate real property for conservation purposes

·       If you are older than 70½, you many now make charitable donations from your IRA directly to a qualified charity, without being taxed on the distribution amount up to $100,000

Interested in more ideas to reduce your income and estate tax bills while helping your favorite charity? Then download a copy of
A Donor’s Guide to Planned Giving

Friday, February 12, 2016

Finally, an expansion on landlord rights!


As a landlord, there are three parts of this bill out of Wisconsin that I really like:

*Allow landlords to dispose of or sell property that trespassers leave behind

*Evict tenants who cause damage without repairing or paying for it 

*Prohibit municipalities from inspecting rental property unless someone files a complaint or the inspection is part of a broader program

Friday, February 5, 2016

Another reason NOT to accept cash from tenants


During your career as a landlord, you’ll likely have a few tenants who pay with cash. Although cash is nice, I prefer checks since that gives us both a record of payment.

But there’s another reason that I never gave much thought to … counterfeit bills.

Do you know how to easily spot one? Truth be known, I don’t. And neither did a landlord in Ohio who says she’s in a hard spot because her tenants paid in fake money.


For more ideas on buying and managing rental properties, pick up a copy of What You Must Know BEFORE Becoming a Greedy Landlord. It’s available in paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon. You can also order it from Barnes & Noble, Booklocker, iTunes, and kobo