A Great Online Retirement Calculator

Barry Ritholtz post a link to this article which had a link to the Ballpark Estimate Calculator which is the best online retirement calculator I've ever seen.

The market's continued lift hasn't seemed to improve the extent to which many American are still way behind where they need to be to retire when they want to with the lifestyle they want.
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Another Marc Faber Quote

Classic;

People with assets are all doomed, because prices are grossly inflated globally for stocks, bonds, and collectibles.

Read the interview. I would tell you that no matter is going on in the world (QE, ZIRP, anything else) it is never a good idea to abandon your own investment discipline or a properly diversified portfolio.

And one last picture from Green Gate Fire of one of our crew doing mop up with a pretty decent view.

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Sunday Morning Coffee

In between a lot of fire department business and a cornucopia of sports I found this from Dylan Grice;

Investment strategist Dylan Grice found last year that a "low beta" stock portfolio rose nearly sevenfold from the end of 1987 through 2011, while the "high beta" equivalent trailed notably, with much steeper declines. The drops show you that even in the short run, the "risky" stuff is, well, risky. 

People who can only focus on the shorter term miss this benefit. People need to have enough money when they need it, they do not need some specific result in the 3rd quarter of some random year from their investment lifetime.
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Green Gate Fire

The following was sent out to the Walker community about our most recent incident;

Shortly after midnight on May 22 Walker Fire was dispatched to a wildfire subsequently named the Green Gate Fire. It was located just off of Big Bug Mesa Rd a little ways past Amulet Mine Rd.
The fire was approximately five acres over extremely steep terrain that was heavily forested and had a lot of dead and down inside the fireline.
We received help from several Prescott National Forest hot shot crews and Central Yavapai lent us a water tender.
We had 14 Walker firefighters on scene who engaged in tasks ranging from line construction, pumping water up to the head of the fire, shuttling water tenders and mopping up. Included in the 14 were four firefighters who drove up from Phoenix in the middle of the night to help. For several of our crew this was a 12-16 hour day of fighting fire.
We were also involved with more mop up work on Thursday. 

Hopefully the one picture looking up at the truck creates some understanding how how steep this was. The fire was almost five acres but the elevation gain was close to 200 feet (6774 feet up to 6990 feet). 

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Marc Faber Quote

Faber:

In the 40 years I've been working as an economist and investor, I have never seen such a disconnect between the asset market and the economic reality ... Asset markets are in the sky and the economy of the ordinary people is in the dumps, where their real incomes adjusted for inflation are going down and asset markets are going up.

This is not my attempt to predict any sort of event or time table for an event but I do believe in awareness of the current environment and I think this quote articulates it well.
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Alan Abelson

Alan Abelson has died. He was 87 years old. He started writing his column for Barron's in 1966 and kept writing up until a couple of months ago when he went on leave. I have nothing profound here other than to note that like many, I've been reading him for my entire professional career which goes back to the late 1980's.

If ever a person was a Wall Street institution it was him. When speculation that something was wrong with his health first popped up in the comments of columns where Randy Forsyth was filling in for him, one reader noted that he was born in 1925. I'd figured he was in his 70s but obviously not.

He made a great contribution to many people.
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Hoot Owl Fire

On Sunday May 5th, Walker Fire was dispatched to a wildfire on Hoot
Owl Rd which could be described as being between Potato Patch and
Mountain Pine Acres. The fire was only about 1/2 an acre but was made
complex by the steepness of the terrain, the extent to which there was
a combination of dead and down and stacked wood piles inside the fire
line, the close proximity of a house, the even closer proximity of an
out-building of sorts, the incredibly thick over-grown forest, the
inability for every vehicle to get to the scene (road condition,
steepness and narrowness) and that the road was very narrow and
appeared to dead end.

Walker Engine 86 was first on scene and assumed command of the
incident. Other Walker vehicles participating were Patrol 85, Patrol
80. Patrol 84, Tender 81 and Rescue 81 (in case someone got hurt). In
all there were 13 firefighters from Walker. Additionally we had
outside help from a Forest Service engine, a Forest Service command
vehicle, a Type 6 engine from Groom Greek, a Water Tender from Groom
Creek and a command vehicle from AZ State Forestry Division.

Tactically, Engine 86 and the Forest Service engine were positioned
for the most direct attack. The water tenders could not get to the
scene because of the road so Patrol 85 shuttled water from the water
tenders staging area up to the incident to refill the engines. The
crews from Patrols 84 and 80 constructed the fire line along with
Forest Service and Groom Creek personnel.
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