To eliminate or reduce these transfers, you must first learn to recognize them and then understand how directly or indirectly they cost you money.  You may have to confront conventional financial wisdom.  Remember, the ones giving you these financial programs tend to profit from them.  Always ask, who would profit from these transfers?  Here is a list of the transfers of your wealth we will be discussing:

Taxes, Tax Refunds, Disability, Credit Cards, Life Insurance, Investments, Qualified Retirement Plans, Mortgages, Purchasing Cars.

These ten transfers can create financial losses for you.  You should study each one and determine how they will affect you.  On the surface, the transfers seem pretty basic.  It is not until you think a layer deeper that you find that these transfers may cause unintended consequences in the future.  The future demographics of the country will affect everyone’s financial future.
Taxes The Largest Transfer Of Your Wealth.

Are You Financing Your Future, Or The Government’s
    
A common definition of the word “tax” might be: “A contribution for the support of a government, required of persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that government.”  “A burdensome or excessive demand, a strain.”  The only power an elected official has is his ability to spend money, our money.  The one thing the government does well is collect taxes.  The problem is they spend more than they collect.  The government now spends a majority of its time trying to raise revenue through taxes in order to continue their increased spending.  Forty percent of your income now goes to some form of tax, which is more than the average family spends on food, clothing and housing.  According to a study conducted in 1996 by the Family Research Council, since 1948 for a family of four with an average income, Federal tax rates are up 1,250%.1  Over the past 10 years, state and local government taxes have increased 168% faster than national incomes.  Overall, we are now being taxed at a higher rate than when we threw tea into the harbor, with no end of increases in sight.  Now include the understanding of the demographics of our nation, and that light at the end of the tunnel is not a ray of sunshine, but a train coming our way and we’re on the tracks.
Next week, we will continue this discussion.

1Michael Hodges, Tax Report - A chapter of the Grandfather Economic Reports, April, 2002, at <http://mwhodges.home.att.net/tax.html>