John Wasik, Contributor, 2/03/2014 @ 2:01PM

Save early and often.

Don’t let Wall Street talk you out of this. This deceptively simple strategy works consistently. There’s a lot of solid math behind it, but you only need to know the results: You can save a lot of money over time.

Even with modest assumptions and savings rates, the miracle of compound interest works for everyone.

Let’s say you can only invest $100 a month. Over 40 years at 7-percent annual rate of return, those savings compound to $253,557 over 40 years; $515,365 over 50 years, according to calculations by T. Rowe Price, the mutual fund company.

By Roger Runningen Feb 2, 2014 9:00 PM PT

President Barack Obama said neither he nor members of his administration anticipated the magnitude of the flaws that hobbled the startup of the federal website for people to choose health-care plans under his new law.

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the degree of problems that you had on healthcare.gov,” Obama said in an interview with Fox News yesterday. Now, “it’s working the way it’s supposed to.”

Politico: Pre-Super Bowl, Obama Sparks With Bill O’Reilly,Feb 02, 2014

Politico: Pre-Super Bowl, Obama Sparks With Bill O’Reilly
President Barack Obama faced questions Sunday on Obamacare, Benghazi and the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups during a pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and dismissed much of the criticism of him as ginned up by the cable news channel. … Asked if the “biggest mistake” of his presidency was his claim that Americans who liked their health insurance plans would be able to keep that coverage, Obama nudged his interviewer. “Oh, Bill, you’ve got a long list of problems of my presidency,” he said (Epstein, 2/2).

CBSNews: Obama Defends Decisions On Sebelius, Benghazi, IRS In Fox Interview
Asked why he did not fire Sebelius for the botched roll out of HealthCare.gov, Mr. Obama said, “We hold everybody up and down the line accountable but when we’re midstream, Bill, we want to make sure that our main focus is how do we make this thing work so people are able to sign up.” He said his “main priority” on the health care law is improving the website so people can sign up for health insurance. As for when he knew that the site would be unable to handle traffic when it was launched, the president said “we all anticipated that there would be some glitches,” but that, “I don’t think I anticipated or anybody anticipated the degree of the problems with the website” (Kaplan, 2/2).

Caitlin MacNeal – February 2, 2014, 5:29 PM EST

President Obama on Sunday talked about the problems with the health care law’s rollout during an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly before the Superbowl.

When asked if telling Americans that they could keep their current health plans was the biggest mistake he has made, Obama addressed his apology for the remark.

“This is one I regret and I’ve said I regretted,” Obama said.

The President also acknowledged the law’s rough start.

Robert Powell’s Retirement Portfolio, Feb. 1, 2014, 6:01 a.m. EST

The 1099 and W-2 statements are starting to arrive in your mailbox. And that can mean only one thing. It’s time to file your 2013 taxes. It’s also time to start thinking about your 2014 taxes.

To help ease the pain, we asked experts what you should consider as you start to empty out your shoebox or enter numbers into spreadsheets. Here’s what they had to say.

Earned income before full retirement age

According to Mark Luscombe, a principal analyst with CCH Tax & Accounting North America, there’s no difference, from a tax perspective, whether the Social Security payments are received before the full retirement

By Sandy Fitzgerald, Saturday, 01 Feb 2014 01:59 PM

President Barack Obama was confronted with questions about Obamacare Friday during a Google Plus “Hangout Road Trip” that allowed Americans to ask him questions directly.

The event had been touted as a way to voice concerns to the president, but many people logged on to ask him difficult questions and to complain about many of the less-popular features of his signature healthcare reform, reports The Washington Times.

“I cannot keep my plan, which I like,” Kentuckian Rebecca Stewart told Obama. “I’ve spent weeks, with days on the phone, getting confidently delivered wrong answers, conflicting information, and it’s becoming quite obvious to me that a lot of agencies, almost everyone I’ve talked to, is having a lot of trouble figuring out the new rules.”

Scott Gottlieb, Contributor, Pharma & Healthcare, 1/31/2014 @ 1:36PM

A lot of attention is being focused on the reinsurance mechanisms built into Obamacare (the so-called “three ‘Rs’). These policy tools are designed to offset the losses that insurers may take on the Obamacare plans. In part, these potential losses stem from the fact that an older and less healthy pool of people are enrolling for the coverage than was originally estimated by insurers, and the feds. The losses are also a result of deliberate policy decisions that prevented the health plans from being priced to meet their true costs.

Published January 31, 2014, watchdog.org

A California senator is seeking to audit the state’s ObamaCare exchange after a Watchdog.org story revealed that $1.37 million was spent on a campaign featuring an eight-hour web stream starring a gyrating Richard Simmons.

The Jan. 16 event — now immortalized on YouTube — showed celebrity fitness trainer Simmons writhing on the ground to an MC’s chant of “Get Covered, hashtag, uh-huh,” a reference to Covered California, the state exchange. At one point, he snuggles up to a contortionist following a dance-off.

Sarah Hurtubise, 1:22 AM, 01/31/2014

They’ve passed the health care bill, but even the uninsured don’t like what’s in it.

Kaiser Family Foundation’s monthly tracking poll found that the uninsured population’s has an unfavorable view of the health care law by a margin of two to one — a huge spike in the negative response after Obamacare’s launch.

Forty-seven percent of uninsured respondents see Obamacare unfavorably, up from 43 percent in pre-launch in December. While 36 percent of uninsured respondents saw the law positively in December, that’s dropped to 24 percent in January.

By Russ Britt, January 31, 2014, 1:51 PM

A sizable chunk of America’s work force — up to 50 million people — may find themselves being shifted to private health exchanges over the next few years as companies start to see how much they can save by making the move.

That’s the view of Michael Gregory, portfolio manager at Highland Capital Management’s Long/Short Healthcare Fund, who sees “LinkedIn-type growth” for the exchanges, where companies such as Walgreen Co. WAG, IBM Corp. IBM and Time-Warner Inc. TWX are sending employees and/or retirees to find insurance.