A common piece of advice I've heard is "Take risks while you're young." This is often applied to personal finance, in terms of trying to land a higher-paying job, starting a new business, or pursuing your passion. The thinking goes something like … [Read the rest]
Speaking of how to deal with bad 401(k) plans... Yale Professor Ian Ayres decided to write letters to thousands of 401(k) plan sponsors that have high costs and fees according to data from website Brightscope. I'm totally paraphrasing and adding … [Read the rest]
I've read a few books about dividend investing and remain interested in the idea, although I'm not confident enough (yet?) to allocate my portfolio that way. Portfolio manager and writer Mebane Faber has a short book called Shareholder Yield: A … [Read the rest]
Ever since we started cutting back our work hours in order to share childcare duties, Mrs. MMB and I have kept a closer eye on our monthly spending patterns. One of the headaches for budgeters is dealing with large lump-sum payments like those for … [Read the rest]
The other day while I was trying to help someone find a cheaper cell phone plan, I realized two things: There are way too many different options these days. Most are MVNOs that buy bulk minutes and data from the major providers, and many of … [Read the rest]
Along with other factors, new fee disclosure requirements for 401(k) plans have brought a lot of attention recently on "bad" 401(k) plans. These are plans with little or no employer match, higher-than-average fees, and/or limited investment … [Read the rest]
I'm roughly halfway through Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan. Although the book covers a variety of topics ranging from chemistry to religion to anthropology, the overarching theme is examining the practice of cooking … [Read the rest]
Apple is celebrating the 5th anniversary of Apple's App Store by making 5 top apps and 5 top games free for a limited time. Some other developers have also made their apps free as well. here is the official iTunes page, and below are some direct … [Read the rest]
Update - This promotion is now EXPIRED Capital One Consumer Bank has their annual Financial Independence Day promotion which boosts the usual bonus for their Consumer Bank Savings and 360 Checking accounts. (Artist formerly known as ING Direct.) … [Read the rest]
Here's the July 2013 update for my Beat the Market Experiment, a series of three portfolios started on November 1st, 2012: $10,000 Passive Benchmark Portfolio that would serve as both a performance benchmark and an real-world, low-cost portfolio … [Read the rest]
We've reach the midway point of 2013, and here are the returns of the major asset classes as benchmarked by passive mutual funds and ETFs. Return data was taken after market close at the end of June 2013. I'm still tweaking the format, in the … [Read the rest]
If you have a Citi credit card that earns ThankYou points, you can get a 1,000 free ThankYou points for linking your Citi card with Amazon.com for future redemptions. Simply log into your account at ThankYou.com and go to Overview > My Account > … [Read the rest]
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