Why Investors Prefer Real Estate to Stocks, Bond and Gold
Americans still feel skittish about the stock market. When it comes to long-term investments, real estate is still preferred over cash or the stock market, Bankrate.com reports in a new study. For long term investments over 10 years or more, 27 percent chose real estate, 23 percent preferred cash investments, and 17 percent opted for the stock market. Gold and precious metals came in fourth at 14 percent, and bonds debuted at 5 percent.
Related: Clinton’s Capital Gains Tax Plan Aims at Long-Term Investment
Although the S&P 500 has risen 27 percent over the past two years, Americans were only slightly more inclined to favor stocks in 2015 than they were in 2013.
The only exception to the brick and mortar policy? Households headed by college graduates were the most likely to prefer stocks. In the western U.S., real estate was preferred nearly two to one over any other investment choice.
The survey of 1,000 adults living in the continental U.S. yielded some surprises across gender, age, income, location, and political party. Men were more likely to favor real estate, while women were more likely to favor cash investments.
At 32 percent, the majority of millennials--those between 18 and 29 years old--favored cold, hard cash, while 32 percent of participants between the ages of 30 and 40 stuck with real estate.
Related: U.S. Real Estate ETF Rally Faces Test With Rate Rise
Lower-income workers with salaries of less than $50,000 felt “more secure” than their higher earning counterparts, who were making $50,000 to $74,900. And Republicans were three times more likely to say they felt “less secure” about their jobs as Democrats.
Bankrate’s Financial Security Index for July remained positive for the 14th consecutive month. However the July reading was the second lowest in 2015, due in part to a decline in job security with 22 percent feeling “more secure” about their jobs than 12 months ago and 14 percent feeling “less secure.” Sixty-two percent felt “about the same.”
Deficit Hits $738.6 Billion in First 8 Months of Fiscal Year
The U.S. budget deficit grew to $738.6 billion in the first eight months of the current fiscal year – an increase of $206 billion, or 38.8%, over the deficit recorded during the same period a year earlier. Bloomberg’s Sarah McGregor notes that the big increase occurred despite a jump in tariff revenues, which have nearly doubled to $44.9 billion so far this fiscal year. But that increase, which contributed to an overall increase in revenues of 2.3%, was not enough to make up for the reduced revenues from the Republican tax cuts and a 9.3% increase in government spending.
Tweet of the Day: Revenues or Spending?
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee and one of the authors of the 2017 Republican tax overhaul, told The Washington Post’s Heather Long Tuesday that the budget deficit is driven by excess spending, not a shortfall in revenues in the wake of the tax cuts. The Wall Street Journal’s Kate Davidson provided some inconvenient facts for Brady’s claim in a tweet, pointing out that government revenues as a share of GDP have fallen significantly since 2015, while spending has remained more or less constant.
Chart of the Day: The Decline in IRS Audits
Reviewing the recent annual report on tax statistics from the IRS, Robert Weinberger of the Tax Policy Center says it “tells a story of shrinking staff, fewer audits, and less customer service.” The agency had 22% fewer personnel in 2018 than it did in 2010, and its enforcement budget has fallen by nearly $1 billion, Weinberger writes. One obvious effect of the budget cuts has been a sharp reduction in the number of audits the agency has performed annually, which you can see in the chart below.
Number of the Day: $102 Million
President Trump’s golf playing has cost taxpayers $102 million in extra travel and security expenses, according to an analysis by the left-leaning HuffPost news site.
“The $102 million total to date spent on Trump’s presidential golfing represents 255 times the annual presidential salary he volunteered not to take. It is more than three times the cost of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that Trump continually complains about. It would fund for six years the Special Olympics program that Trump’s proposed budget had originally cut to save money,” HuffPost’s S.V. Date writes.
Date says the White House did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.
Americans See Tax-Paying as a Duty
The IRS may not be conducting audits like it used to, but according to the agency’s Data Book for 2018, most Americans still believe it’s not acceptable to cheat on your taxes. About 67% of respondents to an IRS opinion survey “completely agree” that it’s a civic duty to pay “a fair share of taxes,” and another 26% “mostly agree,” bringing the total in agreement to over 90%. Accounting Today says that attitude has been pretty consistent over the last decade.
