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As an investor, you have probably heard that real estate investments could offer diversification benefits due to the fact that they are less correlated with the general stock market. In addition, investments in real estate could potentially deliver stable income and appropriate returns. Since the passage of the JOBS Act in 2012, we have seen a proliferation of real estate crowdfunding platforms. These platforms allow investors to invest as little as $1,000 in commercial real estate deals that we...

David Barral, CPA, is a tax and accounting manager in New York City, and an adjunct professor at Wagner College in Staten Island. In the September issue of Journal of Accountancy, he offers a number of recommendations on how tax professionals can offer effective tax planning to millennials. Here are some of his top recommendations, recast as advice for the millennials themselves. (1) Finance a first-time home purchase. Do not draw upon retirement funds, such as 401k plan accounts or IRAs,...

Jason Zweig wrote this piece for the Wall Street Journal.   Based on his questions and model answers, North Capital earns a solid A. The burden of finding an adviser who will act in your best interest is on you. Getting all stockbrokers, financial planners and insurance agents to act in the best interests of their clients is a struggle that financial firms and their regulators still haven’t resolved. That should be their job — but for now, it’s yours.  Read More.......

20% of U.S. students do not meet baseline levels for financial literacy proficiency, according to the PISA 2015 Financial Literacy assessment. Only 10% are considered "top performers" capable of analyzing complex financial products and problems.  Teens who had a bank account scored better, on average, than those who did not, and if they had  a savings account the result was better still.  "The beauty of starting with a savings account is, it's teaching them to make deposits and watch that...

Joshua Rauh pens an essay which updates previous research by the Hoover institution at Stanford University on the public pension crisis facing state and local governments.  As demographics and investment fundamentals in our country have shifted, the level of unfunded liabilities of our state and local governments has risen to untenable levels.  In some states (see below) the stated liabilities are less than half of the true liability, as calculated by Rauh using a net present valu...

90% of the companies now developing blockchain technology—a new type of record-keeping software—will tumble into the "chasm of death" and vanish before the technology goes mainstream, according to Arvind Krishna, director of research at IBM.   Krishna says the survivors will be the companies that create software that makes it easy for businesses and consumers to capitalize on the benefits of blockchain.   Read the full piece at Fortune.com....