By Peter Macfarlane, Offshore Banking Expert for The Q Wealth Report. Part of the mini series on Secrets of Offshore Banking and Asset Protection.

Clients often ask me “what is the best offshore bank?” However, there is no correct answer to that. The best answer I can give is to respond to the question with a question. Best offshore bank for what? For privacy? For wealth management advice? For corporate accounts? For e-commerce? All these require different types of banks and services, which is why there is no single “best offshore bank.”

Below are just a few factors you should consider when looking for the best offshore bank for you. Let’s talk first about privacy or bank secrecy, because that’s what is on most people’s minds at the moment.

Your Country of Citizenship and Residence as beneficial owner of the account is a major factor, even if technically you are opening an account for a corporation or foundation from the other side of the world. In order to enhance your banking privacy, you should be looking to bank in a jurisdiction where you home country does not have undue influence. Europeans, for example, should look to other continents, to countries that are not covered by the European Union Savings Tax Directive. That means avoid all European countries, including Switzerland, Liechtenstein etc. Avoid also territories of European countries – like the Cayman Islands, which are British, or Curacao which is Dutch. Panama might be a good option, or Uruguay, or a wilder card country.

For Americans, however, Panama is to be avoided. Even the best offshore banks in Panama cannot be regarded as private for Americans, because of the US influence in Panama going back nearly a century. Switzerland no longer offers good banking privacy to Americans – since long before the current UBS fiasco. The Caribbean is also too much within the US sphere of influence. Americans looking for the best offshore bank for privacy should look to some lower-profile European countries, or maybe to the Middle East or Africa.

Another important factor to consider is what do you want out of your bank? For some people, the best offshore bank may be one where you have a great relationship with a private banker who knows you, advises and supports you, and takes you to lunch in a nice restaurant when you visit. Others couldn’t care less about that, but prefer great technology – online access to markets 24/7, without the hassle of trying to get hold of a private banker by telephone to execute buy or sell instructions.

Some people know exactly what they want – while others don’t have a clue and therefore need good, impartial wealth management advice.

Also important – how strong is the bank? Very important these days as most offshore centres do not have deposit protection or guarantee programs like the FDIC. That said, reputable offshore jurisdictions really don’t need such programs. The banks being bailed out are in the USA and Western Europe. Small, private offshore banks generally have a much more conservative profile and are not exposed to so much risk. We haven’t heard of any tax haven banks going under during the crisis, have we?

Next question o your mind – does Peter have specific recommendations for banks? The answer is yes I do. I deal with a number of the best offshore banks, right from small ones through to the biggest, physically located in many different jurisdictions around the world. I can put you in contact with them so you can open your account directly, with no need to deal through intermediaries. This information, however, is reserved for paying subscribers of The Q Wealth Report. Specifically, you will find my recommendations for the best offshore banks in the Practical Offshore Banking Guide 2009 that you can download right now in the Members’ Area, as soon as you have signed up. If, after reading this guide, you need more help making a decision, members are welcome to contact me for a personal one-on-one consultation. If you are considering membership of The Q Wealth Report, then the Practical Offshore Banking Guide 2009 is just one excellent reason why you should sign up now!

Coming Next: Wealth Management Advice – Whom Can You Trust?

by Peter Macfarlane, Offshore Banking Expert at The Q Wealth Report

I’m writing today with a pint of Guinness in front of me from a pub in County Cork, Ireland, where I have just arrived to prepare for the Q Wealth event with Richard Cawte and Thomas Bolther this weekend. Over the next few days here on the Q Wealth blog I’ll be giving you very brief sneak insider preview of something I’ll be talking about this Saturday to a select group of readers who have chosen to join us here in Ireland.

In essence, I’ll be talking about the changes being brought about in offshore banking by the UBS case, and the pressure from the USA, France, Germany and elsewhere by means of the forthcoming G20 summit in London. Is it hot air and hype? Or will the offshore banking business as we know it be irreperably damaged? Which are the best private banks for wealth management long term? Are Swis banks still good? These are just a few of the questions I plan to answer.

I’ll also be talking about the strengths, weaknesses and contingency plans of the various private banks and offshore brokerages featured in our 2009 Practical Offshore Banking Guide, and of course I’ll be talking about my new Gold Report – both of which are available right now for download in the Members’ Section here on site.

Check back here over the next three or four days for this series of mini-postings that I’m going to call “The Truth About Offshore Banking and Asset Protection.” This information is absolutely free, as is our Secrets of the Super Rich email course. If you haven’t signed up for the free course yet, please do go ahead and do so! For further information you might enjoy learning about our opinions on the best offshore banks.

by Peter Macfarlane, Offshore and Non-Resident Banking Expert for Q Wealth Report

At last we are seeing some sense in the anti-tax-haven rhetoric being rehashed by the mainstream press. An interesting article by Richard W. Rahn in the Wall Street Journal sets out to defend tax havens and the useful role they play in the global economy:

If the government suddenly said you would incur more onerous and expensive tax regulations and reporting requirements if you moved your business to a low-tax state such as Texas or Florida from a high-tax state such as New York or California, you would be justifiably outraged. Now substitute Switzerland and Bermuda for Texas and Florida, and France and Germany for New York and California, and you’ll understand a new form of “tax protectionism” that is infecting Washington.

Tax evasion is illegal…  surely there can’t be many people left in this day and age who would seriously believe that they could just open an offshore bank account in their own personal name, not declare it, and thereby evade tax. As you can see from reading publications like my Practical Offshore Banking Guide 2009, it is just a tad more complicated than that. And the vast majority of people I know who are offshore do so perfectly legally and in full compliance with the laws of their country of residence.

Of course, the best way to go offshore is to move yourself. That rather takes the wind out of the sails of fuzzy thinking leftists who try to argue that if you are living in a country you should pay for government services there (quite apart from the fact of whether you actually use those government services).

Moving offshore yourself is very practical these days for many entrepreneurs and business people, or even many retired professionals. They can do a little consulting or investing on the markets over the internet from a home office, fly back home once in a while to take care of those little bits of business that still require personal physical presence… and they can quite legally live tax free and stress free in a tropical paradise (or maybe a clean air mountain paradise like Andorra if that is more their thing.) That’s what we have been preaching for years here at The Q Wealth Report.

The current warpath being beaten by Senator Levin and his crew is flawed, as the WSJ piece points out, because tax evasion is already illegal. “It is a fool’s errand to pass ever more laws against things that are already illegal…” says Rahn. More tellingly, he presents evidence to back up his claim:

The chief tax writer in Congress, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle apparently did not report all of their foreign-source income. Their actions tell us that either the tax law is too complex, or they thought the tax burden was excessive. Would their behavior and that of millions of others improve by making the tax law more complex and punitive?

Finally, Rahn leaves us with what is perhaps a chilling thought for the future of a collapsing US economy, or perhaps just an accurate vision of the future:

The proposals by Messrs. Dorgan, Levin, Baucus and the Treasury will almost certainly have the unintended consequences of driving more U.S. businesses elsewhere, discouraging foreign investment in the U.S., and actually encouraging more U.S. investors to move their funds (either legally or illegally) not only out of the country, but to places in Asia or the Mideast that tend to be less cooperative with U.S. tax authorities than are the European and British low-tax jurisdictions.

Well done to Mr Rahn and the WSJ for sticking up for beleagured tax havens. Here at The Q Wealth Report we will continue to inform and entertain our readers with practical information on how to move yourself and your money offshore, how to create a new stream of wealth with your new offshore business, and how to do everything within the law. Of course, our best practical “how-to” information is reserved for pid-up subscribers to The Q Wealth Report. Besides instant access to our downloadable reports on offshore banking and gold bullion investments, and the archive of previous editions of The Q Wealth Report, an individual consultation with Peter Macfarlane is included in the benefits of signing up. What are you waiting for? Join Q Wealth today!

No, it’s NOT the beginning of the end for tax havens, but they will be slightly different… by Shannon Roxborough for The Q Wealth Report

Mistakenly viewed primarily as playgrounds of the ultra-rich, vehicles for tax evasion and shelters of the proceeds of criminal activity, the 40 some territories around the globe that are considered tax havens have been receiving some unwelcome attention lately.

It has, in fact, been a rough past year or so for the world’s low-tax and offshore centers. They are finding themselves increasingly in the crosshairs of the cash-strapped G-20 and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based bureaucracy run by high-tax nations such as the United States, UK, Germany and France.

Desperate to prop up their ailing economies, these countries are aggressively seeking to replace some of the trillions in taxpayer money that been used for stimulus packages and handed over to corporate interests in the form of bailouts.

In the latest escalation of the war on fiscal shelters, in their zeal to track down wealthy tax evaders, industrialized nations are intent on shredding privacy laws the world over. Half a dozen countries from Switzerland to Hong Kong have already caved to international pressure and threats of sanctions, agreeing to lift the veils of secrecy that have shrouded them for decades, and in some cases, centuries.

The momentum against tax havens started picking up speed last year thanks to U.S. Senator Carl Levin, a long-time foe of offshore tax havens, who insists they deprive government coffers of $100 billion in annual revenues and says “Tax havens are engaged in economic warfare against the United States and honest, hard-working Americans”—some argue that high total U.S. tax burden, which wipes out about half of most Americans’ incomes, is economic warfare.

The U.S. Congress last March began zeroing in on Swiss bank secrecy after UBS admitted helping American clients conceal assets from the government. The OECD recently blacklisted Switzerland and a number of other countries and jurisdictions because they “do not furnish banking information to tax authorities of other countries within the framework of income tax evasion.”

The truth is this political effort is not so much about snaring tax cheats as it is about the bigger picture: the long-term goal of destroying tax havens. Why? The answer is simple: tax-happy nations fear fiscal havens because they promote tax competition, financial privacy and fiscal sovereignty, all of which limit the ability of governments to act as monopolies.

Even with the stepped up efforts of their opponents, all is not lost. The growing coalition of world leaders may be softening some tax havens’ traditional codes of silence, causing the pillars of secrecy surrounding financial transactions to crumble, but most who use these sanctuaries to privately safeguard their assets, run their businesses and protect themselves and future generations have little to worry about (unless they happen to be on one of the clients lists that are being handed over to authorities).

Tax havens will continue to play a critical role in global finance for the foreseeable future. Besides, for those with real concerns about the security of their assets and holdings, there are many other privacy-conscious and tax-friendly places that manage to fly under the radar of financial watchdogs, providing the perks of tax havens without the scrutiny.

In the coming issue the Q Wealth Report, I’ll provide insights into one such place—a little-known lifestyle haven that doubles as an unlikely tax refuge.

Shannon Roxborough, editor and publisher of the global lifestyle magazine Borderless Living, is former correspondent with Money magazine. A widely-published writer and international consultant, he in an expert on living and retiring abroad and offshore planning. Visit www.BorderlessLiving.com.

A guest post by the Editors of BIG GOLD for The Q Wealth Report

(NB: we understand that many of our readers are not US persons and so this article may not be directly relevant to them, but there are other similar options for Individual Savings and Retirement Type accounts in other countries, so maybe this could apply to you too. If you are American – this is for you. If you’re already offshore, you don’t need this…)

In a recent article Gold in IRAs – a Safe Haven Nest Egg for Americans? at petermacfarlane.net we considered the pros and cons of putting gold bullion into a self-directed IRA and detailed how to do it. But the arrangements we covered were entirely domestic.

What about having your IRA hold gold offshore? It can be done, but before you go to the trouble, ask why. Your IRA would still be subject to U.S. law, and your IRA custodian would still be in the U.S., regardless of where the assets are.

One possible reason is protection from future creditors, especially of the lawsuit variety. If your IRA exceeds a million dollars, or if you live in the wrong state, or if you inherited the IRA, it may be available to anyone who successfully sues you. There are some rather complex arrangements that can move IRA assets (gold or anything else) offshore and make them far more difficult for a creditor to reach. But if that’s your motive, we’d think twice about the loss of control that such programs involve.

An entirely different reason would be to sidestep some future legal interference with gold ownership – if, for example, you think President Obama may become FDR Redux and embrace draconian measures, such as prohibition of ownership, penalty taxes, confiscation, or forced sale at an official price, as in 1933. No preparation for these possibilities can be completely reassuring, since we can’t anticipate exactly what the new rules might be. But something as simple as wrapping the gold in an IRA and storing the metal in a different jurisdiction could allow you to be one of the few remaining Americans who lawfully owns gold.

One easy way to go about this is for your IRA to hold the metal in the form of a Perth Mint certificate. Not all IRA custodians will do this, but some will.

The more sophisticated approach is to use an offshore limited liability company (LLC). Your IRA would own all of the LLC, while you would be the company’s manager and have direct control over its affairs. The LLC, having but one owner, would be eligible for establishment as a “disregarded entity,” so that its assets are treated, for income tax purposes only, as being owned by the IRA. As manager of the LLC, you would file such an election with the IRS, then open an account for the LLC with a suitable foreign institution, and use the account to buy gold.

Is that worth doing? If you want to have gold in an IRA, perhaps because your IRA dominates your financial picture, or if you’re worried about the possibility of gold confiscation, it may be. The costs are the homework you’ll need to do, and annual expenses of $2,000 or so, depending on how good you are at shopping.

To start, you’ll need an IRA custodian (which will be a U.S. institution — it’s your company that’s offshore, not the custodianship), one that specializes in such arrangements. We’ve identified some possibilities, and while we don’t know any of them well enough to give our wholehearted endorsement, you can begin by looking into Sovereign International Pension Services in Palm Harbor, Florida (www.sovereignpensionservices.com) or the Entrust Group in Paoli, Pennsylvania (www.theentrustgroup.com).

The custodian will get the offshore LLC formed for your IRA. Then you can convert all or a portion of your IRA assets to cash and transfer the money to the new custodian, who will invest it as a capital contribution to the LLC. From there on, you, as manager of the LLC, will run the show. You can buy Perth Mint certificates for the LLC or you can have the company purchase bullion from Kitco, Asset Strategies, GoldMoney, or any other seller of your choice. They will then help arrange storage with a vaulting company such as Via Mat International in Zurich, one of the oldest and most reputable.

Probably not many investors will want to go this route. But if you’re one of the few for whom it makes sense, these are the steps to follow.

***

In light of the demise of fiat currencies and the general stock market, more and more investors are flocking to gold as a safe-haven investment. And no one knows more about the hows, wheres, and whys of buying and owning physical gold than the editors of BIG GOLD, Casey Research’s monthly newsletter for the prudent investor.

One caveat: gold is certainly a safe haven and much preferable to some of the unstable investments around, but the fact is, it’s a non-interest-bearing investment. But there’s a strategy that smart investors – like Steven Lehman, the Federated Investors fund manager who beat 99% of his peers last year – are following now… and you can too. If you want to know how to squeeze up to four times more gains out of gold, click here to learn more.

With all the fuss going on about Swiss banking right now, many people might have overlooked the fact that you can simply move to Switzerland and live virtually tax-free, legally, and without being subject to notoriously strict Swiss immigration controls. How? Through the Italian tax haven enclave of Campione d’Italia – a little part of Italy, with some very special personal tax concessions, that functions like a part of Swiss territory.

“The first pure haven I remember reading about was Campione D’Italia, a village sized city on the shores of Lake Lugano in Switzerland and the first person I ever heard write or talk about Campione was Harry Schultz, publisher of the Harry Schultz International Newsletter” writes  Roger Gallo of Escape Artist. “Harry Schultz was the only one around at that time who was using the then uncommon word, ‘international’ when he spoke, and he was also the only one who was writing for an American audience who seemed to know all of the offshore secrets, and he knew scores of them.  He was years ahead of almost everyone else in writing about asset protection and he was the first to write about offshore investing. Harry has been publishing his newsletter for 41 years and it still very much garners the respect of most of the current lineup of hotshot investment gurus.”

Campione d’Italia is a small Italian commune of 1.7 square kilometres located entirely within Switzerland, on the eastern shore of Lake Lugano at the foot of a beautiful mountain. There are approximately 3,000 inhabitants, about 1,000 of them foreigners. The official currency is the Swiss Franc, but the Euro is accepted as well. All banking is done through Swiss banks. A famous Casino generates substantial revenue, which is one of the reasons why the residents of Campione enjoy some very special tax concessions.

Campione’s tax advantages only apply to private persons resident in Campione, and not to companies domiciled or managed from there (except that there is no VAT in Campione, which I suppose is a big advantage for companies)

How can you obtain a residence permit in Campione? You must normally buy an apartment or a house – simply because there is very rarely the opportunity to rent. Currently, however, I know of an opportunity to obtain a residence permit by renting. A client of mine is privately renting one of the nicest fully furnished, ultra modern duplex apartments in Campione Switzerland for EUR 2900 per month. It is located on the only sand beach with palm trees that we know of, in Ticino (what my client calls the “Banana Belt of Switzerland”). The deal is you pay one year in advance and that includes the right to Swiss & EU residency. He’s also prepared to sell at EUR 365,000. For more information contact me via info@petermacfarlane.net and I’ll put you in touch.

To sum up some of the many advantages of being resident in Campione d’Italia:

* Political, social and economic stability
* First-class Swiss infrastructure
* Swiss Franc is the official currency
* Banking through Swiss banks with Swiss banking secrecy
* Attractive lifestyle in a quiet, clean environment
* Efficient and reliable public services
* Swiss postal services, telephone numbers and car registration plates
* Effectively resident in Switzerland – with E.U. residence permit
* No value added tax (VAT)
* Special income tax concessions, no inheritance or gift tax

Interested in reading more like this? Every quarter, The Q Wealth Report covers material related to living the good life in tax havens around the world, protecting your assets in first class private banks. Right now, our focus is on How to Buy and Hide Gold Offshore. We are also publishers of the Practical Offshore Banking Guide 2009. Learn more at The Q Wealth Report homepage, or sign up today for our free 5-day e-mail course: The Secrets of the Super Rich

by Peter Macfarlane, Offshore Banking Expert at The Q Wealth Report

Do you know how anyone, regardless of credit history, can borrow money offshore at only 1% interest (or even less) with no scheduled repayment date, then simultaneously reinvest it for a much higher return elsewhere?

Of course not – because the rock-solid European banks routinely making such loans are not allowed to advertise these deals in your country. Your government calls this “investor protection.” Here at The Q Wealth Report, we call it “protecting the cosy domestic banking cartel.”

Foreign currency aribitrage is one of the areas where you can make money even in a falling market. Currencies will always go up and down, and there will always be big differentials in interest rates. Trading “pips” in the forex market, where you can make or break your account in a matter of minutes, is not every investor’s idea of fun. Slower moving and less risky (though of course not risk free), the types of foreign currency arbitrage programs we are writing about here offer an attractive alternative for more conservative investors.

The arbitrage or investment loan is a fairly standard wealth creation offering from European private banks, albeit little known. The gearing of the initial deposit, together with the currency arbitrage, makes it possible to invest a larger amount in a currency with high interest rates, thereby increasing the prospects of high returns.

Typically you will have to invest about USD/EUR 250,000 in a private offshore bank to get that facility. This can then be leveraged from one to five times, depending on the risk level of the currency you are buying into. If the initial deposit is USD 250,000, a loan of up to USD 1,000,000 can be contracted and then a proportion of that can be invested in a high income Bank CD in a currency paying a much higher interest rate.

The loan will typically be taken in a low interest currency s0 at the moment, USD, EUR and GBP would be perfect… although traditionally most loans have been taken in Swiss Francs or Japanese Yen. To spread risk, you can also choose to take the loan in a combination of two or more currencies. Then, you take the loan proceeds to buy another currency, paying a higher yield in CDs – typically in a multi-currency account at the same bank.

A variation on the same theme, of course, would be investing in gold. You can certainly borrow money against CDs or electronic gold to invest in other products offered by your private bank. Whether they would allow you to borrow against physical gold? I doubt it, unfortunately. In this case you might just be better off buying Perth Mint Certificates and asking your friendly offshore banker for a loan secured by that. Alternatively, hedge your investments by borrowing against US dollar investments, in US dollars, but using the loan proceeds to buy gold. That way you get the best of both worlds.

(Note – I normally recommend only physical gold – see my article How to Buy and Hide Gold Bullion Offshore. But, if someone is lending me money at 1% interest in fiat currency, and I can buy gold with it, I might not be so fussy…)

The profit factors, to summarize, are as follows:

• Exchange rate factor: Raising a loan in one currency and investing in another can lead to exchange rate gains as wells as losses.
• Interest rate factor: Where investments are made in bank CDs, the interest rate level of the currency of CDs can affect the return on the investment.
• Gearing factor: The return on investments is improved by the gearing of the initial deposit. The gearing factor plays an important role again if there is a loss. (You lose more!)

Of course, like any investment, you should do your due diligence very carefully. The good thing is that this, when done correctly (read those last three words again!) this makes a standard, conservative bank deposit that much more exciting. In these times of low interest rates on major currencies, we could certainly all use a little more excitement like that, couldn’t we?

How do you go about getting an Invest-Loan? Not, as you’ve probably guessed, from your local high street bank. If your existing banker won’t lend you money for things like this, it’s time to think about moving your investments to a different bank. A good place to start with the Practical Offshore Banking Guide 2009, available free for download to our members. I’m happy to make personal referrals to private banks who will carry out Invest-Loan transactions, at no extra charge to all Q Wealth members as part of the free consultation that members are entitled to. Just contact me via the Q Wealth London offices. If you’re not yet a member, you can join now to gain immediate access to these privileges.

Our apologies if you have tried to place an order or use our contact form. We currently have a technical problem with the SSL encryption certificate due to a recent change of hosting company. We are working to fix this problem and expect to have it resolved very soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and our apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Update: The issue has now been fixed.

Some investors are so worried about the prospect of economic collapse that they are buying gold and having it delivered to them, rather than holding the precious metal in the form of futures contracts or other securities. That’s the conclusion of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps more interesting, however, was the informed discussion that followed on the WSJ’s site, in the “Comments” section.

“Why place your trust in paper that is printed by the government?” asks reader Linda Hawkins. “Gold has been serving as money much longer than governments have been printing fiat currency. The risk is that the government may print so much of it, that we end up like Germany in the 1930s, or Zimbabwe right now.”

Gold, as commenter Avery Goodman went on to explain, “is not bought for “end of the world” planning. It is bought for preserving wealth when the financial system is working incorrectly … People are buying gold to have a thing of value that has no counter-parties, and, in that manner, protect themselves from a collapsing financial system, and a probable depression and/or hyperinflation.”

I particularly liked that point about gold having no counter-parties. That is, of course, assuming we are talking about real physical gold bullion, not about paper or virtual gold like ETFs. I have blogged over on my personal site before about the dangers of investing in GLD ETF, and – for that matter – other commodity ETFs. Journal reader Alex Vasilyevich points out: “I personally believe that the gold short trades on COMEX are not backed by any physical delivery capability. If there is a sudden spike in the deliveries demanded by buyers, the game will be exposed, just like what happened with Madoff and Stanford.”

Of course, regular Q Wealth readers will see nothing new in this discussion, but sometimes it is reassuring to know that even the mainstream financial press reports and respects our views, and that onshore Gold dealers in places like London and New York City are doing a roaring trade. It follows on from the article in January in London’s Daily Telegraph about Why the Rich are Running to Gold Bullion.

We do take matters one step further, however, by suggesting international diversification for your gold bullion holdings. Why? For example, there have been many rumors that the US might once again prohibit private ownership of gold, and confiscate – or, purchase at an artificial exchange rate – existing gold bullion held by individuals onshore. The same applies to many European governments, some of which only legalized private gold ownership in the last decade or two.

There’s also the important matter of how to buy gold bullion. Most gold sales go through a cartel of international bankers and precious metal traders. It is however, possible to go direct to the source and buy pure gold direct from the producers.

All these aspects of buying gold offshore and more are covered – together with step-by-step practical instructions and contact details – in the new Gold Report – otherwise known as How to Buy and Hide Gold Bullion Offshore. Of course we must stress what we are suggesting is a perfectly legal form of offshore asset protection. Unlike bank accounts, or ETFs held through brokerage accounts, real gold bullion is not subject to reporting requirements. If you want to keep it secret you can – legally. That personal and financial privacy aspect is just one more reason why we are so bullish on gold bullion right now. It is a secure, private store of wealth management with a view not just to asset protection but to really creating wealth in a secure, offshore environment. And that is what The Q Wealth Report is all about.

Would you like to obtain your copy of The Gold Report while the unique information in it is fresh and bang up to date? Well the good news is – it’s FREE. It’s available for download right now in our Members’ Area. The bad news, of course, is that you have to be a member to access it. But a membership still costs just $87 per year and brings numerous other benefits. What are you waiting for? Join Q Wealth today!