By Megan McArdle; Bloomberg View ~ Jan 23, 2015

Earlier in the week, I discussed the Obama administration’s proposal to tax earnings on so-called 529 college savings plans, part of a package of tax hikes that will pay for new programs such as his proposal to make the first two years of community college free. This has been touted as a plan to hike taxes on the rich to help the middle class, but in fact it’s more of a plan to redistribute money from the upper middle class to the lower middle class.

By Jose Pagliery, CNN; Las Vegas Review-Journal ~ Jan 23, 2015

There’s a problem with the way AT&T sends out customer alerts via text message: They’re too easy to mimic.

With little effort, a scammer could send you alerts that look just like the real thing. Click on a link and the hacker will grab your login credentials — or fool you into giving up your credit card too.

It’s yet another phishing scheme. But instead of email, hackers can target you with texts.

The problem stems from AT&T not making its real alerts look legitimate enough, said Dani Grant, the computer programmer who noticed the flaw.

From Erik Carter; Forbes ~ Jan 23, 2015

You may have made a resolution to save more this year but how should you invest your savings for long term goals like retirement or education expenses? It’s one of the most common questions we get. Let’s start by looking at what NOT to do. Here are some of the most common investment mistakes I routinely see people making:

1) Being recklessly conservative

From The Associated Press; The New York Times ~ Jan 22, 2015

WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration says a budget increase this year will allow it to keep field offices open an extra hour on most weekdays, starting in March.

After years of cutbacks, the agency said Thursday it will restore service hours nationwide on March 16. A field office that is usually open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. will stay open until 4 p.m. on every weekday except Wednesday.

Field offices will continue to close at noon on Wednesdays.

By Rebecca Shabad; The Hill ~ Jan 21, 2015

Healthcare costs and a lack of money top the list of Americans’ financial problems, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

Fourteen percent of adults named healthcare costs and a similar percentage picked low wages as the worst financial problems they face. Healthcare costs returned to the top of the list for the first time since ObamaCare was signed into law in 2010, Gallup said. .

Nine percent of adults said too much debt or not having enough money to pay off their debts is their most important financial issue.

By Michael R. Strain ; The Washington Post ~ Jan 21, 2015

President Obama proposed a number of changes to the tax code in his State of the Union address. Some of them, if enacted, would represent improvements to the status quo. But taken as a whole the president’s tax proposal is quite bad. And it suggests that the president isn’t interested in compromise or working with Republicans in Congress on tax reform.

Let’s start with the good. The president wants to expand the earned income tax credit (EITC) for workers without children. The EITC is a federal earnings subsidy for low-income, working households. The logic is simple: If you work and don’t earn a lot of money, the government will write you a check to supplement your earnings. For example, in 2014, a married couple with two children that earned $20,000 would receive a $5,460 EITC subsidy.

From Maddy Dychtwald; The Wall Street Journal ~ Jan 21, 2015

MADDY DYCHTWALD: What is one element of growing older that has surprised me?

Control. You may think you don’t have much, but all of us have more control than we think in terms of our own aging process.

I always assumed I’d grow old like my parents. In fact, after my dad died at age 60 from cancer, both my brother and I worried that we, too, might face the same fate. The fact is that, somewhere in the back of our minds, many of us assume that our genetics are the primary predictor of how well or poorly we will age.

By David Rogers; Politico ~ Jan 20, 2015

Like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, House Republicans kick-started a bigger fire than many imagined with an opening day rules change that revived Social Security as a hot issue for this Congress — and the 2016 presidential elections.

The GOP’s immediate target is Social Security’s sprawling disability insurance program, which has grown at a pace far beyond its revenues and will exhaust its trust fund reserves by December 2016, threatening a 19 percent cut in benefits.

In the past, Congress has simply shifted revenues from Social Security’s larger retirement account to fill holes in the disability fund. But the new House rule throws up a roadblock by creating a point of order against any such bill that does not improve the “actuarial balance” of the combined funds.

By Scott Cooley; Rekenthaler Report ~ Jan 19, 2015

Americans are accustomed to hearing about the problems with their retirement system. Social Security faces a long-term deficit. Most private-sector workers lack access to a defined-benefit plan. Too few people save for retirement in defined-contribution plans, and those who do, frequently save too little.

There may be a book that challenges this conventional wisdom, but Falling Short: The Coming Retirement Crisis and What to Do About It is not it. Indeed, authors Alicia Munnell, Charles Ellis, and Andrew Eschtruth make a strong and familiar case that all the things we think are wrong with our retirement system truly are flaws. But they also provide a helpful how-to guide for investors to navigate the current, problematic retirement system, while they attempt to jump-start a conversation about how policymakers can fix it.