Don't Quit Your Day Job: The Intersection of Personal Finance, Economics, and Politics.
Editor: We’ve since put our S&P 500 trailing returns calculations into a tool you can use. Dave Ramsey is a controversial figure in the Finance realm, at least in blogs (and blog comments), discussion boards, and other mediums where personal financial mathematics are discussed. However, Ramsey’s controversy doesn’t generally come about from his investment advice [...]
Update: Preliminary March data added. Enjoy! The calculator below uses long run 10-year Treasury Data from Robert Shiller to compute Treasury returns, based on reinvesting the coupon payments. You can see the total returns for the 10 Year Treasury for any arbitrary period from 1871 until today. After the calculator you can find our methodology. [...]
As you know from reading this site, the Government is quite a force in the economy – namely, taking in an estimated $2,468,599,000,000 in revenue in 2012. On top of that, Uncle Sam spent an estimated $3,795,547,000,000! As you might expect, both sides of the ledger were imbalanced between states – some states pay more [...]
It may be hard to recall now, but in 2004 a President won his election while promising to reform Social Security to allow private accounts. George Bush ultimately failed at that goal, but with Social Security again in the limelight during the whole “Fiscal Cliff” overreaction, we wanted to toss some facts out there to [...]
“Cut rates and eliminate deductions”, as a bumper sticker (ahem, Twitter) length quote, started to reenter the public consciousness again during the recent Presidential election. The phrase came to be associated with Mitt Romney, although, to be fair, he was almost forced into a position on rates by refusing to detail his stance on taxes [...]
Both my co-writer Cameron and I have recently penned screeds on a worrisome trend we’ve seen in Personal Finance blogs – the hyperbolic obsession with “Debt Zero”. “Debt Zero” is, of course, the idea that above all else Debt Must Be Paid Down.
The first clue that something is wrong with that story is the inclusion of the word “must”. There are very few absolutes in life – the snarky amongst you will acknowledge death and taxes – and in this situation is no different. You see, it’s naive to assume that things come for free. Every single thing you do is a trade off.
I know you’re in a real estate mood now that the election is done with… so let’s talk about it more, if only tangentially. Hey DQYDJ readers, remember that whole real estate bubble popping thing which started a few years ago? Now, there is plenty of blame for that little incident to go around, but [...]
When you own a website, sometimes you need to type out an article and lay out your lamentations about the decline of something in your culture. Usually, this coincides with hitting a certain age and believing “that wasn’t the case when I was a kid”. I don’t have any excuse like that; my cynicism is a reaction to a perfect storm of articles in recent days which, far from moving the Overton Window, broke the window and ripped out all the framing. Heck, it probably knocked down the wall.
Today we’re going to delve into Income Equality, a topic which has been fresh in the American collective consciousness ever since the Great Recession ended. Gini Index If you click the above image, you’ll see a graph from the St. Louis Fed (Census Bureau Data) showing a measure known as the ‘Gini Index’ headed up [...]
Remember a few weeks back when we discussed stock market investing using the Kelly Criterion to determine asset allocations? Today we’re going to go in a different direction and use Kelly for what it was intended – betting!
The Kelly Criterion is a formula you can use to determine the proper size of a bet when there are known odds and a definite payout. With a little hand waving and some basic math (as I proved a few weeks back), you can also use it to help guide your investment decisions – namely when determining the size of a position you should take. Let’s hop into some calculators.
