Another Deadly Virus Surfaces- Marburg Haemorrhagic Fever (MHF)

With West Africa, and indeed the rest of the world, still reeling from the deaths brought about by the Ebola virus, the recent death of a Ugandan hospital technician of another deadly viral disease, Marburg Haemorrhagic Fever (MHF), has brought fresh fears, Tribune Newspaper reports.
Uganda’s Ministry of Health disclosed that a total of 99 people who had been in contact with the victim had been moved to quarantine. These contacts are being monitored for signs and symptoms of the disease after tests confirmed that the 30-year-old man who worked as a radiographer in a Kampala hospital died of the disease. The man was said to have had a headache, abdominal pains, diarrhoea and vomited blood before he died.
Marburg virus was first identified in 1967, after simultaneous outbreaks in Marburg (from which the disease takes its name) and Frankfurt both in Germany, Belgrade, Serbia and Yugoslavia. It was later traced back to monkeys imported from Uganda for laboratory work. Since then, the virus has appeared sporadically, with just a dozen outbreaks on record. The most recent outbreak, also in Uganda, in 2012, killed four out of 15 patients, according to the United States of America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Culled from My celebrity and I

Apple Sapphire How A Company That's Worth $1.5 Billion On A Friday Could go bankrupt on Monday-Myles Udland

 
 wikimedia commons

GT Advanced Technologies, which makes sapphire glass components for smartphones, filed for bankruptcy on Monday. Sapphire glass is an ultra-strong material, which Apple uses on both the camera lens and fingerprint scanner on the new iPhone. However, Apple doesn't, contrary to some expectations, use the material for the iPhone's main display.
The move caught the market flat-footed, shares of the company were down 90% after the announcement.
The drop in shares of GT on Monday has taken the company's market cap from roughly $1.5 billion Friday to about $175 million. 
At least one analyst Business Insider heard from after the announcement sees one possible reason for the sudden change from GT Advanced: Apple pulled the plug.
Jeffrey Osborne, an analyst with Cowen & Co., wrote that Apple, which lent GT $578 million as part of a supply agreement last November, "had the ability to call the interest free loan back and it appears they have done that."
Last November, GT and Apple entered a multiyear sapphire materials agreement that would include GT manufacturing sapphire materials at an Apple facility in Arizona. That agreement said that GT would reimburse Apple over five years, starting in 2015.
In his note, Osborne wrote that the agreement with Apple, "was made in order to allow GT to purchase components for the manufacture of ASF systems at the Arizona facility leased from an Apple affiliate company."
"Repayment was initially scheduled to begin January 2015 and follow a five-year schedule," Osborne wrote. "In its repayment terms, it is most likely that a substantial amount of additional current portion of prepayment was triggered as a result of covenant terms held between GTAT and Apple in relation to operating and financial metrics that the company likely failed to meet."
Osborne also noted that GT's cash and equivalents fell to $85 million on Monday from $333 million back in June, and while Osborne hasn't yet been able to confirm this, it seems this drawdown most likely resulted from early repayment triggers in the Apple loan. 
Monday's news comes about a month after Apple announced its latest iPhone models, which some investors were betting would feature a full sapphire display. 
They didn't, and immediately following that announcement shares of GT Advanced sold off. And since that news, GT shares have fallen about 40%.
Here's the chart showing the last three months of trading in shares of GT.

Culled from Business Insider

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/gt-advanced-files-for-bankruptcy-oct-6-2014-10#ixzz3Fjk2fnUe

THE IMPACT OF QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE OVERALL MARKETING OF PFAS

As we celebrate customer service week, it is imperative to note that the customer is king and they are the overall essence of our existence in business.
 

Peter Drucker noted that “an organization has two functions, one is innovation and the other is marketing”. And whatever you are selling whether pensions, insurance, cars, hosing etc. you are selling peace of mind.

Marketing is very essential in any organization and may be regarded as the life wire of the organization, but more strategic to the concept of marketing is that of customer service. This is because customer service leads to repeat purchases, and according to Lebouef (1989:13) in his book “How to win a customer and keep him for life” he noted that “the most important job of any employee including sales people is to create and keep customers”

Many people including sales representatives and their managers believed that sales person’s primary job is to make sales and without doubt, “making sales is important but it creates short term dollar while creating and maintaining customers and offering customer satisfaction make long and medium term dollars”(op cited)

The issue of quality customer service prompted Napoleon Hills to embark on a study. Napoleon Hill devoted over twenty years of his life trying to study why so few men succeed and so many failed. He went on to say that he interviewed numerous great men from all walks of life such as Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Woodrow Wilson etc. He presented the essence of his findings in his classic bestselling “Think and Grow Rich” One of Hill’s best recommendation is to cultivate the idea and habit of rendering more and better service more than that for which you are paid, and before you realize it, the world is willingly paying you for more than you do”. Today we call that “building perceived value”, seventy years ago we called it the”Law of Increasing Returns” (op cited)

But a more interesting story was that of the life of vice president Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson was the only United States chief of staff who never went to school not even a primary school. He was a tailor by profession and was taught how to write and do arithmetic by his wife. He carved a niche for himself first as a tailor but the success of his tailoring profession was hinged upon an excellent use of customer relations with his politician customers who are in serious desire of his well tailored suits. The relationship between him and his clients became so cordial that they encouraged him to go into politics. They provided him with both moral and financial support. He became Mayor of Glennville, member of the Tennessee house of assembly and later United States house of Representative between 1843-1853, Governor of Tennessee from 1853 to 1857 and United States Senate (1857 -1862) and following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he served as president from 1865 to 1869.

I am not interested in telling history of vice president Andrew Johnson but I am fascinated to bring this story to highlight on the gains of an effective customer service. It was an exciting customer relationship between clients that shot this man to limelight, customer service is essential to business concern. And according Jeff Hitchman a former managing Director of Xerox Nigeria. “People are no longer selling but building and maintaining relationships”, when a relationship is built and maintained it is like a bond. I could still remember a relationship manger in one of the new generation banks who followed a managing director of a major electronics company in 2003 to the burial ceremony of his mother and stayed for almost 5 days with him in the village, though an extreme situation but it buttressed one thing, he has built a relationship with this man.

An excellent customer service will at the long run impact positively on sales and marketing department. As Pension Fund Administrators’ positioned itself for effective customer patronage in the possibility of National Pension Commission Lifting the window of transfer, customer relationship will be the determining factor in keeping these customers and one of the effective ways of maintaining relationships is in resolving customer complaints, and according to Housley (2005:45) in his book on Marketing, “resolving customer complaints build customer loyalty” He went on to say that “it is possible to turn customer complaints into assets.

Most of the complaints among the Pension Fund Administrators’ customers are Zero balance, double registration, partial funding, change of name especially among married women failure to generate pin at the appropriate time, wrong statements, no statements etc. And according to Lebouef (1987) “a typical dissatisfied customer will tell eight to ten people about the problem. One in five will tell twenty. It takes about twelve positive service incident to make up for one negative incident”.

As the pension fund administrators embark on this onerous task of satisfying the customer, they should always bear in mind that customers are unique and different, what is applied to customer A may not apply to customer B. 

Let us all remember to satisfy our customer as we celebrate customer service. Happy customer service week

Odunze Reginald C

Richard Branson to Young Entrepreneurs: 'Just Do It' - Oscar Raymundo

Richard Branson talks about starting an empire in his early 20's and learning to take calculated risks.

Through the decades, entrepreneur Richard Branson has not lost that certain wunderkind vibe about him and the way he runs his brand. This aura makes him especially inspiring to entrepreneurs who are looking to start young.
“Most young people with good ideas… will find that 99 percent of people will give them every reason why their idea’s been done before or why it’s not a good idea or why they’re going to fall flat on your face,” Branson recently told Inc.’s president and editor-in-chief Eric Schurenberg during an exclusive sit-down interview. “In the end, you have to say, ‘Screw it. Just do it.’”
At the age of 15, Branson dropped out of high school to start his first business, a magazine for young activists titled Student.
Four years later in 1970, Branson began selling records by mail. In 1971 he opened his first record store. In 1972 he opened a recording studio. In 1973 he started his own record label. The Virgin business empire had begun, and Branson had not yet turned 24.
Today, the Virgin Group is a well-regarded global conglomerate of about 350 companies, branching into the entertainment, travel and mobile industries.
Not all of Branson’s big ideas have been successful. Virgin Airlines and Virgin Mobile are now flagship brands for Branson but remember Virgin Cola? With big risks come big, public failures, Branson has a follow-up secret to success: determination even when failure seems inevitable.
“If you have enough determination. It’s more likely that you will succeed because of what you learned from the occasions when you didn’t succeed," Branson said. “The most important thing is to not be put off by failure.”

Source INC

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Retirement-planning tips for singles-Jane Hodges

You can’t cut your costs in half

Cindy Pestka at the century-old Craftsman bungalow she owns in Seattle, half of which she rents to tenants. (Eirik Johnson/The Wall Street Journal)

Preparing for retirement is hard enough when two people are in it together. When you are on your own, it can be even harder.

Many Americans will head into retirement solo for different reasons, of course, including the death of a spouse, divorce and changing lifestyles. In the 2013 U.S. Census, some 54% of women 65 or over were unmarried, and 27% of men.

That is a lot of people, and their situations vary widely. But something senior singles tend to have in common, financial advisers say, is that their retirement-planning needs can be very different from those of married peers—and that many of them are unprepared.

In fact, a study by Rand Corp. says that single people are at much greater risk of not saving enough for retirement than married couples. The study, by researchers Michael Hurd and Susann Rohwedder, found that 20% of married couples won’t save enough for retirement, but that some 35% of single men and 49% of single women will enter retirement financially unprepared.
The reasons run the gamut. For one, there are more forces nipping away at their income and investible resources. For the newly widowed or divorced, advisers say that housing costs may jump as a proportion of income and that some income streams may become less predictable. A single person’s cost of living isn’t, as some might think, 50% of a couple’s. It may be 60% to 80% of a couple’s—or even the same—unless the single person reduces housing expenses significantly, perhaps by downsizing or living with a roommate—something AARP research indicates 40% of adults will consider.
Fewer Tax Breaks
In addition, singles often miss out on tax breaks (filing jointly, for instance) that are available to married peers. As they look ahead, advisers say, singles may also perceive a greater need to pay for pricey long-term care insurance in the absence of a spouse-as-caretaker, which can come at the opportunity cost of investment.
Fear of outliving their retirement savings is a common denominator for single women, who tend to outlive single men. It’s a concern frequently heard by Colin Drake, a fee-only certified financial planner with Drake Wealth in San Francisco.
Standard financial-planning models suggest that retirees can typically withdraw 4% of their portfolios starting at 65, adjusting the withdrawal upward over time for inflation, and not outlive their means, Mr. Drake says. For single women in retirement, he says, it may make more sense to start with a lower withdrawal—maybe 3.5%.

Tax experts add that single adults often face steeper tax challenges than their married peers, especially as they near retirement age. Without child tax credits, a spouse exemption, and no one with whom to realize the benefits of filing jointly, singles can take a pretty big tax punch during peak earning years.

“To lessen the tax bite, I advise my single adult clients who own their own businesses or have side businesses and freelance income to set up a solo 401(k),” says Dean Ferraro, an enrolled agent with Authoritax, a Mission View, Calif., company that prepares tax returns and represents taxpayers in IRS audits. Mr. Ferraro notes that 2014 contribution limits to solo 401(k)s are $52,000, and $57,500 for those over age 50. The contributions consist of a salary deferral (a maximum of $17,500) and a profit-sharing distribution (until the $52,000 or $57,500 limit is reached).

Singles have to be smart about planning for withdrawals from their retirement accounts once they’ve stopped working, experts say. While withdrawals from traditional individual retirement accounts are taxed as ordinary income, withdrawals from Roth IRAs aren’t taxed. For this reason, it can be wise for a single person to move a portion of funds into Roth products before age 70½. Because traditional IRAs require that adults begin withdrawing a minimum distribution (based on a percentage of total assets) at age 70½, retirees with substantial assets in a traditional IRA may be surprised at the high tax brackets.

Glenda Moehlenpah, a certified financial planner for Financial Bridges in Poway, Calif., tells of a couple that had socked away $3 million and assumed the wife would outlive her older husband. But when the man’s wife died first, his mandatory minimum IRA distributions and Social Security payments totaled more than $200,000 annually—more than he needed to live on—and incurred a bigger tax bill than they would for a couple. If he had converted a portion of those assets to a Roth 401(k) before 70½, Ms. Moehlenpah says, he might have owed less in taxes. It’s worth discussing with a tax adviser the possible benefits of a rollover and what the tax impact would be.

Dan Sudit, a Seattle-based financial adviser and regional market manager at BMO Private Bank, describes a similar situation in which a client with about $3 million in assets made a $500,000 Roth conversion before turning 70. Doing so lowered his required minimum distribution from the $100,000-to-$120,000 range into the $80,000-to-$100,00 range, and lowered his tax burden substantially.

Everyone’s situation is different, of course. Cindy Pestka, a 54-year-old regulatory-affairs manager at a Seattle-area medical-device company, has been single all her life and has saved consistently in employer 401(k) plans. She rents out a portion of her century-old Craftsman home for additional income, and isn’t planning to rely heavily on Social Security, which she estimates will account for 30% or less of her retirement income.

But despite her efforts, a financial adviser recently told her she might need to work longer than she’d planned—maybe to 72, versus her late 60s—to sufficiently fund her retirement years. She is now considering whether portfolio moves or downsizing could shorten her working years.

“I was very surprised,” she says. “I’d like to retire while I still have energy to enjoy my life.”

More Surprises

For retirees who are recently divorced, planners say, there can be other surprises as well. Assets like alimony and life-insurance policies become less reliable sources of income. Alimony designed to cover a former spouse for life, for example, may dry up upon the death of the former spouse who was paying. In addition, the owners of life-insurance policies determine who the beneficiaries are; thus, singles who don’t become owners on a shared policy may find themselves without benefits if an ex changes the beneficiaries.

There can be overlooked benefits for divorcées, however. Many don’t realize they may be eligible to receive an ex-spouse’s Social Security benefits, for example, provided the marriage lasted a decade. The divorced spouse can do this even if the ex has remarried, and with no impact to the ex’s benefits.

Ms. Moehlenpah says such a strategy can provide bridge income that can help defer collection of Social Security benefits, and thus increase the benefits that one receives. Indeed, some people choose to delay collecting their benefits until age 70.

Source Wallstreetjournal

Cost of Living in the 7 Most Beautiful Cities in the World-Erika Rawes

Have you ever thought about moving to another country? By the age of 44, the average American has only moved around 3 times in his or her lifetime. When most people move, they stay close by and that’s why we often see people moving to a few different places within the same city.
According to the Census Bureau, about 36.5 million people — or about 12 percent of the population — moved in the year 2012. However, almost 65 percent of these movers stayed within the same small area — their home county. Even those who moved to a different zip code still stayed pretty close by. Of those who relocated to a different county, upwards of 40 percent of them stayed within 50 miles of their previous location.
There are a handful of people, however, who enjoy traveling, experiencing different places, and are willing (or should we say able) to up and move to a new city, no matter how far away it may be. Even if we are unable to actually move to a city on the other side of the world, thinking about the possibility can be an experience in itself.
Using publications by Fabulous Traveling and U City Guides, coupled with traveler reviews and a bit of personal experience, we ranked some of the most beautiful cities in the world. Then, we used cost of living data (all pricing data comes from Expatistan.com) to calculate how much of a salary someone would need to live in each of these cities. Which ones can you afford to live in?

Bas Czerwinski/AFP/Getty Images

7. Amsterdam

• Cost of a fast-food combo meal: $9
• Dinner for two at a neighborhood pub: $54
• Cost of a 2-liter of cola: $2.77
• A dozen eggs: $3.43
• Monthly rent for a furnished home in an upscale area: $2,453
• Utilities for 2 people in a small place: Around $210
• 1 liter (1/4 gallon) of gas: $2.34
• 40-inch flat screen TV: $682
• A new car (Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI or similar):  $37,950
• Two tickets to the movies: $28
• Estimated salary (household income) needed to live here comfortably: $70,000 to $100,000 per year 

Source: Thinkstock

6. Lisbon

• Cost of a fast-food combo meal: $7
• Dinner for two at a neighborhood pub: $40
• Cost of a 2-liter of cola: $2.22
• A dozen eggs: $2.73
• Monthly rent for a furnished home in an upscale area: $1,359
• Utilities for 2 people in a small place: Around $134
• 1 liter (1/4 gallon) of gas: $2.12
• 40-inch flat screen TV: $490
• A new car (Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI or similar):  $37,738
• Two tickets to the movies: $16
• Estimated salary (household income) needed to live here comfortably: $40,000 to $70,000 per year

Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images

5. Budapest 

• Cost of a fast-food combo meal: $5.90
• Dinner for two at a neighborhood pub: $27
• Cost of a 2-liter of cola: $1.75
• A dozen eggs: $2.13
• Monthly rent for a furnished home in an upscale area: $670
• Utilities for 2 people in a small place: Around $230
• 1 liter (1/4 gallon) of gas: $1.79
• 40-inch flat screen TV: $5.91
• A new car (Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI or similar):  $28,343
• Two tickets to the movies: $14
• Estimated salary (household income) needed to live here comfortably: $27,000 to $47,000

Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images

4. Rio De Janeiro

• Cost of a fast-food combo meal: $9
• Dinner for two at a neighborhood pub: $36
• Cost of a 2-liter of cola: $2.08
• A dozen eggs: $1.94
• Monthly rent for a furnished home in an upscale area: $2,413
• Utilities for 2 people in a small place: Around $151
• 1 liter (1/4 gallon) of gas: $1.34
• 40-inch flat screen TV: $811
• A new car (Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI or similar):  $23,611
• Two tickets to the movies: $19
• Estimated salary (household income) needed to live here comfortably: $65,000 to $95,000 per year

Source: Thinkstock

3. Paris

• Cost of a fast-food combo meal: $10
• Dinner for two at a neighborhood pub: $51
• Cost of a 2-liter of cola: $3.17
• A dozen eggs: $4.68
• Monthly rent for a furnished home in an upscale area: $3,617
• Utilities for 2 people in a small place: Around $167
• 1 liter (1/4 gallon) of gas: $2.08
• 40-inch flat screen TV: $594
• A new car (Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI or similar):  $32,398
• Two tickets to the movies: $26
• Estimated salary (household income) needed to live here comfortably: $80,000 to $150,000 per year

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

2. Prague

• Cost of a fast-food combo meal: $6
• Dinner for two at a neighborhood pub: $19
• Cost of a 2-liter of cola: $1.73
• A dozen eggs: $2.22
• Monthly rent for a furnished home in an upscale area: $1,020
• Utilities for 2 people in a small place: Around $179
• 1 liter (1/4 gallon) of gas: $1.75
• 40-inch flat screen TV: $590
• A new car (Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI or similar):  $22,189
• Two tickets to the movies: $15
• Estimated salary (household income) needed to live here comfortably: $40,000 to $60,000 per year

Marco Secchi/Getty Images

1. Venice

• Cost of a fast-food combo meal: $9
• Dinner for two at a neighborhood pub: $41
• Cost of a 2-liter of cola: $2.68
• A dozen eggs: $2.50 to $4.04
• Monthly rent for a furnished home in an upscale area: $1,670
• Utilities for 2 people in a small place: Around $358
• 1 liter (1/4 gallon) of gas: $2.34
• 40-inch flat screen TV: $749
• A new car (Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI or similar):  $28,729
• Two tickets to the movies: $22
• Estimated salary (household income) needed to live here comfortably: $50,000 to $75,000 per year

Culled from wallstreetcheatsheet

Is your retirement portfolio ready to do the 'twist'?-Christine Benz

Getty Images

The conventional rules of thumb on asset location--which assets to put in your taxable accounts and which to hold in tax-sheltered vehicles--are pretty straightforward and intuitive. Because bond income is taxed at your ordinary income tax rate, it's the most onerous from a tax standpoint. Thus, you'd generally want to park the bulk of your fixed-income assets in your tax-sheltered accounts because you won't owe taxes on those assets on a year-to-year basis. Meanwhile, equities, especially non-dividend-payers, tend to be more tax-efficient and so are, therefore, a good fit for taxable accounts.

But there's a problem, especially for those nearing or in retirement: The rules about sequencing in-retirement withdrawals--deciding which assets to draw from which account types and when to do it--are at odds with the standard asset-location rules. As I outlined in this article, retirees will generally want to start by liquidating those assets that are most costly from a tax standpoint on a year-to-year basis--starting with required minimum distributions, moving to taxable accounts, and then segueing to Traditional IRAs and 401(k)s. Roth assets, which have the longest-lasting tax-saving attributes and are also the most advantageous when left to heirs, should be tapped last.
That framework for sequencing withdrawals would call for keeping the most liquid assets--bonds and cash--in taxable accounts because they'll be among the first to be tapped in retirement, while holding long-term assets such as stocks in Traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and Roths.
By now, you may have spotted the problems. In essence, the optimal in-retirement asset-location framework is the exact opposite of the ideal asset-location framework for accumulators. The upshot? At some point, pre-retirees may need to "twist" their portfolios, relocating at least some bonds in their taxable accounts for liquidity purposes while moving equity assets to tax-sheltered wrappers. It's also worth noting that the optimal asset location for retirement withdrawals will tend to be less tax-efficient than is the case for accumulators, so tax-savvy retirees will need to keep an eye on limiting the tax collector's cut as they adjust their portfolios and manage them on an ongoing basis.
Needless to say, optimizing a portfolio for in-retirement distributions is complicated stuff, and it's also highly dependent on an individual's own circumstances, including the level of wealth, tax brackets (which may change from year to year), and the ratio of tax-sheltered to taxable assets. For this reason, many individuals might find that obtaining customized retirement-distribution guidance from a financial or tax advisor will be money well spent.
Although one article can't begin to do justice to this complex topic, here are some of the key steps to take as you determine whether--and how much--you may have to twist your portfolio in the years leading up to retirement as well as how to do it in the most tax-efficient manner possible.
1) Evaluate what changes are in order.
If you've been maintaining a conservative asset mix in your taxable portfolio all along, your portfolio isn't likely to need a major realignment as retirement approaches. Ditto, if the bulk of your portfolio is in tax-sheltered accounts and you expect to receive most of your retirement income from some combination of 401(k)/IRA distributions, a pension, and Social Security; in that case, your tax-sheltered portfolio can be well-balanced among asset classes.
But if your retirement portfolio includes both tax-sheltered and taxable assets and you've been following the conventional rules of thumb about asset allocation, adjusting which assets you hold in which accounts will be more important. This article walks through the steps to take when formulating your retirement distribution plan--how much you'll need and which assets to tap first. If you're using the bucket approach to staging your retirement portfolio, you can then back into appropriate asset allocations for your taxable and tax-sheltered assets based on when you'll tap each pool. Ideally, you'd map out where your in-retirement income is coming from on a year-by-year basis (or in five-year increments). That exercise, in turn, can help you see where you need to make changes to the asset allocations of your taxable and tax-sheltered portfolios: The shorter the time horizon, the more conservative the composition of that pool of money should be.
For example, a new retiree who expects to tap most of his taxable portfolio within the first 10 years of his retirement will need to shift at least some of that portfolio into cash and bonds; otherwise, his distributions are apt to be buffeted around by market winds. Don't forget to factor required minimum distributions into the analysis; once those kick in, you might be relying less on your taxable portfolio for income than you did earlier. Thus, you may need to make fewer asset-allocation adjustments than it might first appear.
2) Determine the tax implications of repositioning.
Even though the goal of these adjustments is to take maximum advantage of tax-sheltered accounts for as long as possible, the twist itself can cause tax complications if it involves selling assets from your taxable accounts.
Of course, there are no tax consequences to changing up your tax-sheltered portfolios to make them more equity heavy; the beauty of these accounts is that you can tweak them all day long without incurring any tax costs when selling appreciated assets. Thus, you can readily reduce your bond holdings while boosting your equity positions in those accounts. Repositioning your taxable accounts, meanwhile, can be more problematic from a tax standpoint, particularly because you might be reducing your percentage in stocks and stock funds, in which you could have embedded capital gains.
Start by determining your cost basis in the securities you'd like to lighten up on and comparing it to the current share price. If you have sizable capital gains built up in your holdings, you can reduce the tax hit in any one year by scaling back your taxable portfolio's equity stake over a period of years rather than doing so all in one go. After all, you won't likely be tapping your taxable portfolio all in one year, so you can afford to give it a more conservative cast during a period of time. Alternatively, you can be more tactical about reducing your equity weighting, selling appreciated securities in years when you have offsetting losses or are otherwise in a lower tax bracket, or when you need to rebalance.
3) Assess whether municipal bonds merit a greater role.
Because taxable assets are among the first in the queue when it comes to taking distributions, that means the taxable component of many retiree portfolios will likely include a larger share of bonds and cash than it did during the accumulation phase. To help reduce the drag of taxes on this portion of the portfolio, retirees and pre-retirees who have heretofore stayed away from municipal bonds might consider them; the tax-equivalent yield function of Morningstar's Bond Calculator can help gauge whether skirting federal--and in some cases, state--tax helps make up for the typically lower yields attached to munis. At the same time, it's a mistake to populate your taxable portfolio with muni bonds exclusively, as I argued in this article, because the asset class doesn't give you the same ability to diversify that you can obtain by holding both muni and taxable bonds.

4) Build in flexibility and balance.
Although the rules on sequencing withdrawals can help you figure out which assets to put where, it's a mistake to hold all of one asset class in any specific investment wrapper. That's because in any given year of your retirement, you'd want to reserve the right to be opportunistic about from where you draw the assets. For example, you might want to draw assets from your IRAs and 401(k)s in years when you expect to be in a lower tax bracket (and, therefore, the tax hit would be less), in which case you'd want to maintain at least some bonds there. And, as previously discussed, when you have to begin taking RMDs from IRA and 401(k) assets, you'll want to draw it from more liquid pools of capital; that's another reason to hold some bonds and cash in those accounts. By the same token, you might want to keep some stocks in your taxable account to take advantage of tax-loss harvesting opportunities.

Culled from the Morning star

3 Student Startups That Are Going the Distance

Image credit: Rai Poquiz, Wharton|SF

Anyone who has made it through college knows that ideas are cheap. Every conversation in the classroom, on the quad or at the coffee shop is littered with them--some great, most awful. On occasion, the spitballing even spawns a bit of short-lived business action (witness all the broken links on any Best College Startups internet list from the past few years). o Clearly, it's not just an awesome idea that makes a college startup great. It takes follow-through, patience and business smarts to transform a dorm-room musing into a viable business. Here are some college startups that made the leap from good idea to great company.

The perfect fix

In 2012, Spencer Quinn was a junior at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, working a summer job at a company that sold athletic tape, when he heard about a doctor who used medical casting tape to fix an all-terrain vehicle. It was an "aha" moment for Quinn, a biotech major.
Along with his cousins Reed and Chris Quinn and brother-in-law Derek Rowley, Quinn attempted to repair household items using casting tape. "I thought maybe this stuff could fix more than bones, so we started putting it on broken tools, leaky pipes and other stuff," he recalls. "It was not a good solution."

Repair man: Spencer Quinn of FiberFix.

Image credit: BYU Magazine

Those efforts didn't work, but the trio got to thinking about what elements would make a better repair tape. The product would have to go beyond duct tape to create a permanent bond, and it would need to be waterproof and able to withstand impact and heavy loads.
They worked with the BYU mechanical engineering lab to find a solution. Once they had a prototype, they took it to an adhesives manufacturer to work out the production process. The result was FiberFix, which, after being soaked in water and applied tightly, can permanently repair shovel handles, leaking pipes and just about any other broken object.
But creating FiberFix was just the first step. "I think so many products fail in the manufacturing and logistics stage," Quinn, now 25, explains. "You have to learn how to approach big retail buyers and know how to execute your product in such a way that you don't get chargebacks that kill the company. After that first sale, 99 percent of the work is still ahead of you."
The team worked trade shows, demonstrating their miracle product to hardware and construction experts, and entered their idea in competitions. They won events at BYU and placed second in the International Business Model Competition. But their biggest coup came in October 2013, when they were featured on TV's Shark Tank, where they convinced judge Lori Greiner to invest in their concept.
That led to multiple stints on QVC, where they sold 45,000 rolls of FiberFix in 10 minutes. The product is now carried at 10,000 retail locations, including Home Depot and Lowe's. More than 1.3 million rolls of FiberFix have been sold at $6 to $10 each.
Despite the success, Quinn and his business partners are dedicated to finishing their education, though on a more relaxed schedule.
"I was initially nervous that I wouldn't get enough support from my professors to do both things, but I haven't found a single one that wasn't excited about the opportunity and supported us," says Quinn, who hopes to expand the FiberFix product line over the next three to five years before selling the company. "BYU has lots of entrepreneurs and great talent. I think everyone here likes a good success story and wants to be a part of it in some way."

Let's go to the tape

Lindsay Stewart was a TV news producer in Los Angeles before enrolling at the Wharton School's San Francisco campus in 2012. The idea was to get a few letters behind her name to help make her way up the ladder on the management side of the media business.
In one of her classes, students were asked to pitch a business idea. For several years, Stewart had been thinking about the inefficient ways news outlets acquire video footage. Deadline-focused assignment editors are often forced to buy tape sight-unseen from third-party stringers; at times they even contact people through YouTube. News stations go to air with whatever images they can find, good or bad. On the flip side, Stewart knew great photographers and videographers who missed out on work because they had no way to communicate directly with editors. And the payment process was equally slow and messy.
When she proposed her idea of an online exchange where editors could view and purchase news footage, and photographers (and the public) could show their work and find assignments, her classmates were intrigued. But it wasn't until fellow student Brian McNeill filled her Dropbox with plans and calculations that she realized her concept, which she dubbed Stringr, could be a viable business.

Footage found: Stringr's Brian McNeill.

Image credit: Matter Ventures

"It was having someone throwing their weight behind my idea that was the genesis of Stringr," Stewart says. "You can go to the best business-school program, but it's not so much about the academics as it is who sits next to you. Classmates helped write the business plan and build the tech stack. They gave me all that human capital for free, and that's what helped us launch Stringr."
Through the rest of their time at Wharton, Stewart and McNeill, both of whom graduated in May, refined their concept. They're now based at the San Francisco media accelerator Matter, where they have five engineers on contract. Stringr, which launched a three-month pilot in the San Diego news market in August, plans to roll out to several more pilot cities before expanding to newsrooms around the country.
Unlike other college entrepreneurs, who often have nothing to lose, Stewart, 34, and McNeill, 37, are taking big mid-career gambles with their startup. "I think doing something like this is totally different than when you're younger," Stewart says. "There are more risks--I sold my house to do this; I'm not taking a salary. But my contacts are wider and deeper; I'm able to navigate and sell to bigger companies. I'm not a 19-year-old selling a pipe dream."
McNeill, who tried to start a tech company during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, agrees that things are different this time around. "Without a network or capital to get you down those first 50 yards, starting a business is extremely difficult," he says. "At the same time, the opportunity loss is high. I walked away from a partner-track job at Ernst & Young. But leaving that behind has given me more confidence in what we're doing."
The founders agree that their entrepreneurship classes helped them clarify their once-hazy expectations. "One of our professors ended our class by giving us the stats on our education and experience," Stewart says. "He said less than 1 percent of the population was as prepared as [we were] to start a business, and he ended by saying he hoped we would try. That was very inspiring. This is not just an idea for me. I feel passionate about it."

A global cure

For all the debate about healthcare in the U.S., it's easy to lose sight of the fundamental problems plaguing medical systems in other parts of the world. In developing countries, people often die from lack of basic medicines, blood or operable surgical equipment.
During one of her first classes at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, chemical engineering major Carolyn Yarina stumbled upon this reality. Assigned an open-ended engineering challenge, Yarina turned to a campus club that had recently surveyed rural health workers. One of the needs in Africa, the survey found, was a centrifuge that could run without electricity, allowing clinicians to diagnose and treat diseases in areas without power.
Yarina took on the challenge, and by the end of the semester she and a team of students created a human-powered centrifuge built from bicycle parts. It was a neat engineering feat, and Yarina didn't want the idea to die with the end of the class. So she created a student group called CentriCycle to continue work on the project. She also enrolled in entrepreneurship classes, including a practicum in social entrepreneurship, which convinced her to go to India for the first time.
"I learned a lot on that trip, which led to a lot of changes," she recalls. "I realized what they needed on the ground, and using a bicycle was not the best idea."

Lifeline: (from left) Katie Kirsch, Carolyn Yarina and Gillian Henker of Sisu Global Health.

Image credit: Zach Hurley

Returning to India over the next two summers, she refined her concept and developed contacts. After graduating in 2013, she worked on her centrifuge full time, eventually developing a portable machine dubbed (r)Evolve that can alternate between manual power and electricity. She also lined up engineering and manufacturing support in India.
But it dawned on Yarina that she needed to go further. "Once I created our student organization and started going to business classes, I had an epiphany," she says. "Open-source designs are not a viable option if you actually want to get your product out there. If it was just about creating a process to separate blood, we would have been done four years ago."
Early this year, she and CentriCycle member Katie Kirsch teamed up with another University of Michigan grad, Gillian Henker, who is developing Hemafuse, an auto-transfusion pump for blood. Together, they started Sisu Global Health, a socially conscious for-profit company, as a platform to deliver medical products designed specifically for the needs of developing countries. The centrifuge and auto-transfusion pump are their first two offerings.
"Eighty percent of medical products are designed for 10 percent of the world," Yarina explains. "Designing for that other 90 percent is what we want to do."
The 24-year-old says she never expected to be at the helm of a company, but she's glad her life has taken this turn. "During freshman orientation they took us on a tour of the Center for Entrepreneurship. I remember I couldn't wait to get out of there," she says. "I never thought I'd do anything with entrepreneurship. After learning how to turn this idea into something that could impact people's lives, I've realized entrepreneurship can be more about making an impact than making money."

Source The Entrepreneur