Khan Academy -- Financial Literacy Course

Capital One credit cards sent me a link to this. I checked out the chapter on Retirement Savings and found no mention of the role fees, commissions, trading costs and taxes have in frustrating one’s path to wealth. Has the Kahn Academy been co-opted by Private Equity? {{ LOL }}

https://www.khanacademy.org/college-careers-more/financial-literacy/xa6995ea67a8e9fdd:investments-retirement/xa6995ea67a8e9fdd:saving-and-investing/v/saving-and-investing

There was an article today in the WSJ on the changes coming to Medicare Advantage. There was about 100 comments to the article when I read it last night, almost all of them recounting the problems an elderly loved one had getting health care under Medicare Advantage once they became sick or complaining that the article wasn’t referencing the WSJ article of a few months ago on the $50 Billion worth of “upcoding fraud” by the Medicare Advantage insurers themselves.

When I looked at the article this afternoon, I noticed that the comments section had disappeared.

https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/medicare-plans-are-making-big-changes-for-2025-heres-how-to-navigate-them-5c81fd05?st=Bcz4K9&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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I’ll look up that course. My kids’ school uses Khan Academy for math. I’ve been relearning advanced algebra and geometry, staying one lesson ahead of them so I can help with homework. They think I remember everything from when I was in high school. Hah. Who remembers how to factor quadratic equations??? So far, pretty easy. Will be another discussion next year with trig, and the following with calculus. Not sure I can relearn those…

But they love the Khan Academy coursework. So perhaps I’ll steer them to going through the financial literacy course. All I really need to teach them is the power of compounding…

Tim

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The fees and commissions are compounding, too. {{ LOL }}

A 2% loss to annual fees and expenses over an investing lifetime cuts the value of your estate in half.

intercst

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We should team up and write to Khan Academy and test their responsiveness….

d fb

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I’m pretty sure the Khan Academy does what they want. They’re well funded.

{{ In 2010, Google donated $2 million for creating new courses and translating content into other languages, as part of their Project 10100 program.[15] In 2013, Carlos Slim from the Luis Alcazar Foundation in Mexico, made a donation for creating Spanish versions of videos.[16] In 2015, AT&T contributed $2.25 million to Khan Academy for mobile versions of the content accessible through apps.[17] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $1.5 million to Khan Academy.[18] On January 11, 2021, Elon Musk donated $5 million through his Musk foundation.[19] }}

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Yes, they do, but when I wrote then long ago on a detail in their teaching of multi-variate calculus they thanked me for my feedback and improved their poorly done graphic. I expected, based on their mission and past practice, that if we pointed out the boneheadedness of teaching long term personal investment without laying out the need and best tactics for “avoiding the skim” of the “investment industry” they would respond.

I doubt the “investment industry” is donating enough to them to buy protection. But we would see.

After all, this board, although battered by social media tech chasnges, has a long and credible history…. I think.

d fb

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And it’s even worse than this, because at the end, if you are taking a prudent 4% withdrawal rate, then FULLY HALF of your withdrawal is being paid in fees/expenses each year!

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I’m not sure about that math. If you have $100K with no fees then you withdraw $4K. If you have 2% fees, then you only have a $98K fund. A 4% withdrawal would then be $3.92K

3.92/4.0 = 0.98 or 2% less.

DB2

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I’m not sure about your math. The 2% in fees, from what I understand, is the annual cost to have that account with that account provider. That 2% could be an AUM fee, plus associated charges on whatever funds are used in the account. 2% of $100k is $2k. 4% withdraw on that $100k is $4k.
So $6k has been pulled from that account, $4k to the owner of the account, and $2k to the account provider. Seems like
the account owner is paying $6k to get $4k. To me, it looks like the account owner is only getting 67% of the annual amount withdrawn, so is paying 33% of what is withdrawn.

Also can state that since account owner is getting $4k, and account provider is getting $2k, the account owner is paying the account provider 50% relative to what he withdraws.

At least that is exactly how I would look at it if I was paying anybody to manage my money. I guess that’s why most all of the folks on this board are managing their own money,lol. Fun with numbers.

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Study from ‘Professor of Retirement Income’ Dr. Wade Pfau shows you can double your retirement income by dumping your financial advisor.

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But then you aren’t withdrawing 4%. Your portfolio is down 5.92%.