Mental health issues are a major concern for everyone.
Mental health issues are a major concern for everyone.
Further, mental illness is rarely experienced in isolation, with ripple effects on relationships, families, and communities.
While more widely accessible than ever, mental health services can be expensive, difficult to access during non-working hours, and insurance coverage often falls short. Adding on a new layer with the pandemic and response to Covid, it is an understandable challenging environment to seek help.
In our work, because our relationship with clients is more than about the data and outcome of financial planning scenarios, we talk about many issues. This has been our practice since the beginning and because I have an M.Ed. in counseling and experience as a therapist, psychology and mental health are always concerns of ours. We are financial planners with a strong interest in mental health and many of our conversations with clients and each other involve issues of mental health.
Add to our usual financial planning practice the mental health overlay of Covid and a pandemic and we feel it is important to provide our clients with resources addressing mental health issues that are beyond our expertise and are deserving of more focused attention. We are building a resource of links for visitors to our website that can better help directly address mental health concerns.
If you or your family are concerned about mental health and resources to aid us through the rough patches in life, please visit our mental health resources page: https://www.sasadvisors.com/mentalhealth
Inflation
This week we get more data on inflation. The latest jobs report was a big surprise when the term “eating crow” came up in the form of Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary who tweeted disparagingly before the data was released gloating about how bad the number would be. Contrary to his tweet, the job numbers exceeded expectations by a large number, the result being a surge in interest rates on that Friday.
There are always at least sides to any analysis and predictions by economists. On one side is the Phillips curve I have discussed before. This economic hypothesis says when unemployment numbers drop, wages and therefore inflation will increase. Over the last 12 years economists pointed to the failure of the Phillips curve to result in higher inflation as inflation remained below 2% with unemployment measures reaching new lows. Digging down into the data it appears that at the same time wages and prices are increasing, so is productivity.
Productivity in the 4th quarter increased almost as much as wages! The result is the increase in the “unit labor costs” rose just 3.1% vs. the headline number of 6.3%. Also the “Employment Cost Index” or ECI declined from the 3rd quarter to the 4th quarter, reflecting the same trend as productivity.
Fed chairman Powell said that the increase in the ECI in the 3rd quarter was an important part of his decision to be aggressive on monetary tightening. We could just be reflecting confirmation bias-the tendency to listen only to those who agree with you-so I am human as well. We are very aware that the economic and analyst consensus prediction that interest rates have to increase for the last 35 years has been consistently wrong. “They say” is often quoted to me and “they” are correct 50% of the time. One just doesn't know which 50% is correct.
Alternative Energy
Some good news about alternative energy production from CNN. Scientists and researchers have successfully set a new record for energy production from nuclear fusion, a non polluting, non-carbon generating and efficient system. The potential is enormous but we are years away from using it as a major power source. The most recent initiative is a cooperative research project funded by many countries. There is hope for cooperation: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/09/uk/nuclear-fusion-climate-energy-scn-intl/index.html
Social Security
Update on the status of social security is useful. Questions about Social Security viability? Read this link: https://www.cnbc.com/select/will-social-security-run-out-heres-what-you-need-to-know/
This website is informational only and does not constitute investment advice or a solicitation. Investments and investment strategies recommended in this blog may not be suitable for all investors. SAS Financial Advisors, LLC and its members may hold positions in the securities mentioned within this newsletter.
The SAS Newsletters are posted on the SAS Blog weekly: https://www.sasadvisors.com/blog
