We do however pay (soon rising to) 20% purchase tax on non essentials (VAT).  After about the first $10K of earnings, that's tax free, income tax will also take around a quarter of additional earnings, and that rises to 40% for earnings over around $70K. There's also the 6% of earnings national ins...

As a US investor, my preference for the stock portion of the PP is to keep it all in the US Total Stock Market (VTI).  I personally view foreign stocks, and especially emerging markets stocks, as significantly more risky than US stocks.  My primary goal is to minimize the total risk level for the PP...

Thanks for the replies.  It is very interesting that the consensus is that the PP does increase wealth at a rate faster than inflation.  I hope that this trend continues going forward (but I must say I am somewhat unsure with bond prices and gold near the top of their historical ranges). For me, rat...

Does the PP do more than just preserve purchasing power?  For instance, I graphed the Year-To-Date performances for VTI (stocks), TLT (bonds), Gold, and SHV (cash), and the Total PP (see graph below).  You can see that the Total PP has a return of 8.2% so far this year, if you had started the 2010 y...