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Empire Avenue (Beta)

Holy Cow! another awesome new Beta project we have to share.

(This may be “Part One” and watch for a second installment about Empire Avenues due to the awesome compexity of their product.)

This is Social Media Monopoly meets WALL-STREET!

I have to admit, because of my profession, I am slightly biased about a site that blends a virtual and fictitious,

stock-trading system with a fast action social media site.

Instructions:

First you sign in and self-assign a “stock-like” symbol (and vanity URL) to your profile for social dollar trading tha called “EAVES”. The traded commodity is you, your profile, and all of the members based on influence and popularity. Your “IPO” is the standard $10 of “EAVES” to start and I am not certain how many shares are issued. Your dashboard tells you what percentage of your shares are outstanding and there is no lack of information of what transpires throughout the entire community.

Next the sites guides you in a very clear and simple step-by-step process shown on the right of your home-page at all times. There is even a video on how to use the site.

Without details, you earn cash to trade when you do various connection activities and raise your level of coolness and connect-ability. Then you buy other members’ profiles that are listed by symbol based on your perception of their influence. As transactions occur and you build your portfolio, prices fluctuate and your entire portfolio moves across the top of the site as your “Ticker-Tape” keeps your eyes on the real time movement of the value of all of your holdings.

There are social groups that are Geo-Segregated and quite a few Topically cataloged so you can venture out to find friendly potential buyers of…. YOU.

This site is for the more advanced social media user and may be frustrating for those looking for a more simple or less complicated time-waster.

Good

1. Vanity URL, which we always love. ex http://empireavenue.com/DAMON

2. FaceBook and Twitter integration and friend finders.

3. The most organized beginner’s check list and sequential profile building of any social media site we have navigated. All instructions are simple, in plain English, and available in a video format.

Bad

1. Navigation is complex and the features are not for the novice.

2. The interaction can suck you in and you would want to open this up at your desk, on a work day .

3. Some of the features are limited for newer users and users without a higher EAVES value.

4. If you are not thick skinned or your emotional maturity is limited, when someone sells you or your values decrease, you may need therapy or medication.

P.S. On a side note I am available for non-licensed therapy sessions for $65 an hour as needed.

BTW, my value is up almost 1.5% in my first day, look:

http://empireavenue.com/damon

Website Coming Soon.

Ed Slott’s Roth Conversion Marketing Craze, Flawed?

OP-ED

You cannot deny the Ed Slott Marketing Company as a force, I am just not sure you should hire a marketing company to manage or protect your assets.

This “must-convert” theory breaks all of the scientific or mathematical rules for making a “theory”. There are more than three UNPREDICTABLE suppositions that make the Ed Slott theory undeniably flawed, but three flaws are three too many when managing your money. Nonetheless, here are three.

1. Taxes are going up.

True, we can agree that short term taxes may very well be higher. The real truth is they are “30 year cyclical” and sooner or later the higher entitlement political bozos will be voted out and our taxes will cycle back down in better times. If you retire when taxes come back down, Ed Slott is wrong.

2. The use of “dead assets” to pay the taxes today on the conversion.

A better use of dead assets, other than giving them to the government, is to manage them out of “dead asset” status into a vibrant asset. In my opinion there is no such thing as dead asset.

3. Ignoring the rule of compounding interest over time.

If someone pays a 38% tax on an asset, it can be likened to losing that much in poor market performance. If $100,000 in investable assets is now $62,000 in one day you would want a new financial advisor. (Remember the client’s money is being used to pay taxes even if it is from their checking account and not in this particular asset.) Also, as we all know, it would take a 62% growth of that new Roth asset to be made whole again. The Traditional Tax Deferred advisor is now 62% (market performance) ahead of the Ed Slott “Preferred Advisors”. Give me that lead when managing assets and I am confident with a little compounding over time I could keep that lead. My clients’ taxes in retirement would have to be more than 62% on their RMD’s for Ed’s theory to win. I am not sure that would be likely.

I have been managing money since the early 90’s and even then we were told to manage money based on an inevitable tax increases in the future.

Since then taxes have actually gone down and I have never had a client jump into a higher tax bracket in their retirement years. For the Ed Slott die-hard believers, I sure hope they get a client whose taxable income and bracket are higher in retirement.

Tatyana Ladd-Thomas

Here are some great articles that you can read before paying for Ed Slott’s Programs or the worse, the TAXMAN!

“Even Ed Slott is wrong about Roth IRA Conversions”

“Roth IRA Conversions: Do They Make Sense?”

By Roccy DeFrancesco JD, President, The Wealth Preservation Institute

Independent Advisors work hard and there is no bad marketing solution to get them in front of potential clients. This post is not intended to offend any Ed Slott Advisors and should be read as an opinion and not as a judgement. Be careful of advisors that pay $5000 to be listed and brainwashed by a non-licensed expert like Ed Slott, Dave Ramsay, or Clark Howard. We like a lot of what they say, but would never take their advise over proper experts. We may ask them about their marketing expertise because they all make quite a bit of dough selling their books, tapes, CD’s, speaking engagements, and yes… endorsements.

Social URL

Showcase all your web profiles with a single URL.

There is a new, well-funded site that offers some social media, profile organization. This site is www.socialurl.com .

This site allows a registered user to create a vanity URL, that can be shared with other social media contacts. The profile that can be created has the ability to add endless numbers of social media profiles, websites, and blogs to a consolidated user profile.

The site’s home page is promoting their concept this way and we could not state it any better:

There are two housekeeping details that we have navigated for the new user.

1. Whatever you would like to be shown as the first profile/site on your profile, needs to be added last. The most recent addition always shows first. The user friendly system allows frequent and simple editing.

2. This is not a social connection site. You cannot see who members are following, only who follows them.

If you re looking to make connections there are currently no email trolling or user search mechanisms. Mike’s Ad Shop professionals actually prefer this. It is up to the user to share their dedicated URL and ask that folks follow them. Finding friends on this system, if they are not publicly sharing their “Social URL”, will take an actual phone call or real conversation. Bummer for passive-aggressives.

What is your Social URL? If you would like help with this system or branding your vanity URL properly…

call us at 404.585.TATY

New Margin Ad

This is the concept board for our new brand. Let us know what you think. We are also designing a new Wealth Management Website and we would like to hear from you. What would you like to see on your Wealth Management Firm's Web Site?

Direct Online access to your accounts?

Writable Account Forms Sections?

Interactive Request a Meeting or Phone Call Calendar?

Helpful Links to Affiliate Firms?

News and Trends?