According to a Visa survey, children in the U.S. this year receive an average of $3.19 per tooth from the Tooth Fairy, a 24-cent drop from 2014. Younger children, who can expect to receive $10 less from their entire collection of baby teeth than children two years ago, will feel the burden. To help out the struggling Fairy, Visa released a mobile app that factors in gender, age home state, family size, marital status, income and education levels to show how much children at comparable homes receive. “No matter how much is left under the pillow,” said Nat Sillin, Visa’s director of global financial education, “a visit from the Tooth Fairy is an ideal opportunity to talk with children about the importance of saving and budgeting.”
Google Throws Estate Planners a Bone
Google recently made some much-needed updates to the options available to gain access to or protect the accounts of deceased users. The new page offers surviving family and estate administrators more leeway to present outside information about the deceased user, such as uploading death certificates, obituaries or testamentary letters, for Google to review in determining whether to allow the requested access. More importantly, Google has added the option for living users to determine what will happen to their account in the event of their death, bringing them more in line with the “legacy” options offered by social networks like Facebook. These are big steps forward from the fairly infamous stance the company took previously that put, perhaps, too much emphasis on the privacy of the user, much to the chagrin of surviving family members and estate planners.
Still More Bulls Than Bears?
Most advisors are still bullish on U.S. equities, according to a poll undertaken by Aberdeen of 120 attendees at the 2015 LPL Focus conference last month. About 59 percent of advisors surveyed didn’t buy that the U.S. is approaching a market correction, with nearly half of advisors saying the market will continue its run for at least another 3 years. This is compared to 41 percent who believe the market will reverse course in the near future. But for those who do see a correction looming, there’s no clear consensus on how to manage against a downturn. Just over a third reported allocating more toward international and emerging market stocks, while 27 percent said they’re moving more into fixed income and alternatives
