The website DirectInvesting.com has an interesting gift suggestion for the newborn. The site uses this example: buy one share of a stock at $54.05 (I know – an odd figure). Invest $25 per month for 64 years ($19,554.05). Total value at retirement, assuming a modest 10 percent average return rate, easily attainable (less than historical numbers), including dividends reinvested, you would have close to $2 million, possibly more. It comes out to $1,974,393.97. Not bad at all, and it can be done through systematic small (remember, only $25 per month) payments. This can give you around $2 million or more at retirement. Double it to $50 per month and you could have $4 million or more at age 65. Less than $1 per day can get you $2 million at retirement. Less than $1.70 per day should give you $4 million or more when you retire.
Compare this to the return from Social Security or cash value life insurance. Always remember these two words: opportunity cost. The investment account belongs completely to you and your heirs. Social Security disappears when you do.
In 2010, U.S. foreign aid payments were, as usual, wasteful and counterproductive, worse today. We gave China $27.2 million, India $126.6 million, Brazil $25 million and Russia $71.5 million, says the London Daily Mail (DailyMail.co.uk). Mexico received $316.7 million and Egypt $255.7 million. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is there any provision for foreign aid.
The Top 10 countries receiving the most aid from the USA (source:DailyMail.co.uk): #1 Colombia $461.2 million, Mexico $316.7 m, Egypt $255.7 m, Phillipines $128.2 m, India $126.6 m, Russia $71.5 m, China $27.2 m, Brazil $25 m, Thailand $16.75 m, Turkey $8.2 m.
The problem is worse today and it continues to grow. You’d think the new breed of Republican insurgents would fight this craziness but Senator Marco Rubio of Florida , elected in 2010, is a big believer in foreign aid. He said foreign aid was “cost effective.” He offers no proof of its effectiveness, of course. It’s costly and ineffective. Marco has turned out to be a big disappointment to many of us who believed him when he ran six years ago. Congressmen Ron Paul and Larry McDonald, both medical doctors, always voted no on all foreign aid. Ron Paul retired in 2012 and Larry McDonald was murdered by the Soviet Union in 1983. Remember?