Gotta admit I was surprised by Trump’s speech tonight.

For people currently here illegally, yes. His plan was deportation, then formal application for legal status, a process which most could never afford.

What he seemed to say tonight was that he favored a path for undocumented immigrants (without criminal records, of course) to gain citizenship. If I understood that correctly, then I applaud him for that change.

He said months ago that he wanted to make the process for legal immigration easier. I hope he’s serious. That’s how I feel too. I’m all for immigration if it can be controlled and we know who the hell is coming over here.

Did a little more digging this morning, and it looks like I did understand it correctly. From this article: Trump signals major shift on immigrants.

President Trump signaled a new openness on Tuesday to granting legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants who have not committed serious crimes.

The idea is a sharp break from the broad crackdown on immigrants in the country illegally that Mr. Trump ordered in his first weeks in office and the hard-line positions embraced by his core supporters that helped sweep him into the White House. The president hinted at the reversal just hours before he arrived on Capitol Hill to deliver his address to a joint session of Congress.

A move toward a comprehensive immigration overhaul would be a dramatic turnaround for the president, whose campaign rallies rang with shouts of “build the wall!” on the Mexican border and who signed an executive order in January directing the deportation of any unauthorized immigrants who have committed a crime — whether or not they have been charged or convicted — or falsified a document. The standard could apply to virtually any one of the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally.

Either way, expanded HSA’s are a very minor part of a solution, and not the end-all, be-all they keep touting. Doubly so for low income families. The ability to put money you don’t have into an HSA does exactly…nothing.

Someone (Takei, I think) made an interesting observation after the speech. If you listen carefully, they’ve been very deliberate about saying that their goal is for people to have “access to healthcare” and not that people will “have healthcare”. This gives them a convenient out for when someone is facing a $5,000/month “high risk” premium with coverage exclusions and a $1MM cap because they once had pneumonia for a week when they were three. “Hey, we told you that you have access to healthcare…and you do!”

On your second part, yes. Did you see Warren Buffet’s comments on that the other day? Put your money in low-load index funds. Managed funds under perform the market and have for a long time. Significant academic research consistently shows that “timing the market” is for losers. But it does enrich money managers.

Why Pay High Fees

None of them will do it, but I want money manager compensation to be directed tied to their performance. They cannot have a percent of my base, year after year. But I would give them a high percentage of the increase on any gain over the Dow or S&P 500 (with essentially no fees in index funds) and on any lower decline than the Dow or S&P 500 in bad periods.

Instead, the model is to secure clients with big assets, then to skim off of that year after year, with remarkably little to show for their net, compared to mine. I know I besmirch the industry, but I have learned the hard way, as have a lot of my friends, and my parents.

I had one guy about 10 years ago talk about how his firm does all this research and moves funds based on their smart view of the market. I asked specifically, “Then do you ‘time’ the market?” He said yes. So I asked him to show me someone’s portfolio improvement for the last ten years on their calls, compared to the Dow, removing names. No, he said. A few days later, after another lunch, he said, “Well are you going to move your portfolio over?” I said no. He asked why. I said, “You lost me when you said you timed the market. I know better. And then when you were not willing to show me how you have done with an actual portfolio, I thinking, I can’t trust you with all I have.” So why did you go to lunch with me, he asked. I said, because you asked.

Recent Forbes Article On Timing…

I invest with Vanguard, a variety of index funds in different sectors and broad market, small, mid- and large-cap, some foreign, some bonds.