Pop Economics — Page 6

The best tools to fight inflation

August 5, 2010

Not that any of them are all that great. The hot air balloon above is inflating. Get it? Get it?! Sorry. I’m tired. There are only so many ways our government can eliminate the deficit and eventually pay off its gigantic debt. The least painful—and the one federal officials were desperately hoping for when they [...]

Read the full article →

Keeping up with the Joneses impacts your giving, health, and happiness

July 30, 2010

That is, if the Joneses haven’t already been foreclosed upon. The Joneses are those folks with the nice house, big cars, kids in private schools, and other detritus of suburban bling that are, in fact, financed and not true indicators of wealth. “Keeping up” with them would no doubt put you in debt, as was [...]

Read the full article →

Should you care if your bank is unstable?

July 27, 2010

Jimmy Stewart is dead. There’s a great scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when the bank of the protagonist, Jimmy Stewart, suffers a bank run. Fearing that Stewart’s bank might be going under, many of its customers come running, asking to withdraw all their savings, lest they be the ones left holding the bag when [...]

Read the full article →

“New Normal” math: How your investing plans must change

July 23, 2010

So, when can we start calling it the “old normal”? Stocks have gone nowhere in ten years. Not even dividends have made it better. Sure, you might have had a bit of a gain if you stuck your money in emerging markets at the right time or gold or any of the other asset classes [...]

Read the full article →

How to prepare for a double-dip recession

July 20, 2010

Or what’s going to feel like a double-dip anyway. Don’t read too much into that. I’m not making a prediction. But there are plenty of people who are. Nouriel Roubini, that guy who just happened to predict the first financial collapse, says it’s likely we’ll have a double dip, in which GDP drops again after [...]

Read the full article →

Earn more money. It matters more than everything else combined.

July 16, 2010

Little tweaks vs. titanic decisions I enjoy personal finance blogs a lot. Admittedly, some of the time, what they cover can get a bit redundant. A lot redundant. Mind-numbingly redundant. But hey, the best personal finance advice is timeless. It’s the clever repackaging that makes or breaks someone new who steps into the field. But [...]

Read the full article →

Does being smart make you better with money?

July 13, 2010

Oscar Wilde died broke, why not you? Ok, bad example. Wilde was an extremely gifted poet and playwright, but he had a lot of personal problems confounding him before his death. This post is about a question that’s a little more clear cut than that: Does being smart make you better with money? Yeah, it’s [...]

Read the full article →

Foreign bonds: Do you need them?

July 10, 2010

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. A decade ago, there were few options for investing in foreign bonds that didn’t cost a bundle. Even today, you’re going to have a lot of trouble investing in foreign bonds directly. But the options for investing through mutual funds and ETFs, either with active or passive [...]

Read the full article →

When will you die?

July 5, 2010

More important: How long can you afford to live? Imagine living to the age of 122. That’s the oldest recorded age of a human, achieved by frenchwoman Jeanne Calment. Calment died in 1997. Just last week, scientists claimed to have discovered genetic markers that can predict, with 77% accuracy, who’s destined for extremely long life. [...]

Read the full article →

Where did your time go? Here’s an actual breakdown.

June 24, 2010

You probably watched T.V. A lot of T.V. Sometimes I’m not totally sure why the government tracks all the things it tracks. Private universities get funding to study all sorts of strange issues, but it’s really the Labor Department that has incredible repositories of data, some of which never even get seen unless an economist [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →