Don't Quit Your Day Job: The Intersection of Personal Finance, Economics, and Politics.
The DQYDJ Weekender, 5/18/2013
Yesterday, Nate Silver posted an article as a ‘pre-buttal’ to the inevitable complaints of conservatives audited in the last few years (yes, many conservatives and liberals will be randomly chosen per year). Turns out, a number of prominent conservative donors – some prominent only because they appeared in Democratic campaign material (in one example, directly [...]
The Saturday Powerball Drawing: You Do Not Have a Positive Expected Value!
Ed: Whoops, forgot 5/5 with a missed Powerball in the subprizes. Shows what I know about how the Powerball works, eh? It’s still a bad idea. Numbers Revised! Hey everyone, it’s your favorite lottery killjoy PK! I’m here to debunk a silly theory we’ve seen floating around the internet – that goes like this… The [...]
Predicting S&P 500 Closing Prices – May, 2013
If you’ve been around a while… you know all about this series. Approximately one entry per month where we look at the way puts and calls are trading on the ETF SPY (a S&P 500 ETF), and use those to divine the future based on the disparity between those prices and where the stock is [...]
Why Everyone Should Care About the IRS Targeting Conservative Groups
“First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for me, [...]
We’re ALL Financial Professionals
Most personal finance sites (and DQYDJ is a personal finance site about 1/3 of the time!) have a disclaimer somewhere which states that we are not professionals when it comes to money and financial advisement. It’s true – I have no formal qualifications that suggest that I have any special power or insight when it [...]
The DQYDJ Weekender 5/11/2013
I don’t have a lawn right now – just a pile of leaves. One member of the family doesn’t mind at all… Links We Liked! Ironically, after engaging with our friends at Control your Cash and Hull Financial Planning about Timeshares (in the negative), we were followed on Twitter by a Timeshare company. Kids, just [...]
May 8, 2013: The Actual All-Time Closing High in the S&P 500
Today was the all time high closing price for the dividend reinvested, inflation adjusted S&P 500. I know that much of the financial world has been rambling about the continual new highs in the stock market. You haven’t been, though… you read my post earlier this year (or read my Tweet this morning) where I [...]
The Curse of Success(ful Investing)
“If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I’d be fully invested. Anyone who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I’ve ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was [...]
How Much Did You Save in 2012?
If there’s one thing to be said about Finance sites (especially the blogs), it’s that there is no shortage of voyeuristic information posted for the view of anyone who happens to wander by. Think about it – straight Personal Finance blogs sometimes detail every transaction the author makes, Investment sites demand disclosure about what stocks [...]
The DQYDJ Weekender 5/4/2013
Has someone else already said something like this quote? “I’ve got a sense of time, but I haven’t got much sense. Or much time.” I woke up with it in my head, haha. Feel free to use it, just send me some royalty checks! Links We Liked! First link? The first web page ever! Resurrected [...]
Why Don’t You Buy That Used?
Maybe it’s a psychological thing – but us Americans (I can’t speak for our Canadian friends, but I imagine they are similar) have a love/hate relationships with the things we buy. Specifically, we love new things and we hate used things – especially in certain categories. It’s not a universal attitude, but this being ostensibly a personal finance site, it’s an attitude we can try to examine.
But… why is that? It’s not like buying used is foreign to us. I’d guess that most of us have purchased used cars and/or used houses – but used consumer goods is an area where few tread.
Crude Oil Price Return Calculator – Brent and West Texas Intermediate
Below is a calculator which will return the difference in price of a barrel of crude oil between any arbitrary dates since 1987. This isn’t technically an investment return – it doesn’t factor in contango or backwardization, so investor returns could vary wildly compared to price returns. However, it is useful to view the price [...]
The DQYDJ Weekender, 4/27/2013
Summer so soon? Got to love the Bay Area. We’re working on building a guitar this weekend, haha. Moonlighting A reminder – if you want some coding help from your favorite writer on the site (me), send me an email if you want to discuss projects or rates. I’m aiming mainly at visualizations, data mining [...]
How Often Do You Check Your Automation?
I suppose I shouldn’t even have to write this article, but consider it a public service announcement – there is a downside to the automation of your accounts. Namely, you could miss a huge mistake… and not find it until it’s too late. That’s why I’m here today with a horror story! The Ultimate Reason [...]
Beating the System: When Math (Not Gambling) Pays Off
We’ve talked about the lottery and gambling a ton of times on Don’t Quit Your Day Job, but with a topic as wide and varied as games of chance you can’t be surprised that we keep coming back to it. Today’s entry? A story about something you’ve always wanted to do – beat the system. [...]
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