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July 28, 2015 at 10:43 AM
To successfully prepare our prospects and clients for the future, we must have a working knowledge of the economic challenges they will face. But in our increasingly complex world, the economic information we receive can be manipulated by politics or financial conflicts of interest. We must find information that we can trust. That information must be easy to understand and easy for our clients to access.
One tool I have recommended is the debt clock, which has helped me to inspire many prospects and clients to take action. I want to highlight it again in this column because some changes have been made to the site recently that have increased its value to me.
The debt clock provides very valuable (and free) information in one easy-to-use location.
An important benefit of the debt clock is its ability to show current values and compare them to values up to the year 2019. The clock also provides various ways to compare those predictions. It uses the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, the House Committee on the Budget and the debt clock’s own numbers.
I use the debt clock to verify information for my clients and to develop great questions. Let’s review several examples of how to effectively use the debt clock.
According to the debt clock, federal tax revenues are currently $3.1 trillion. They will rise to between $3.8 and $4.1 trillion in just four years. That is a 30 percent increase. Ask your clients, “Who will they get that money from? People that don’t have any money or people who are already paying taxes?”
One particularly compelling part of the debt clock is the last column. It pegs the annual deficit not at $500 billion (as we’re commonly told) but rather $5 trillion-plus, the latter figure based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The clock also shows that the current Social Security liability is $14 trillion; and that our current Medicare liability is almost $28 trillion.
