American Express Membership Rewards: Airline and Hotel Points Transfer Bonuses, Up to 40%

If you have collected a nice stash of Membership Rewards (MR) points from American Express, you may want to log into your account and check out the many new transfer bonuses available to their airline and hotel partners. Waiting for one of these … [Read the rest]

Albert Banking App Review: Smart Savings, No Fee $250 Cash Advances, $75 Referral Bonus

Albert is another new fintech "super app" that wants to combine your banking, budgeting, saving, and investing needs all in one place. On their paid "Genius" tier, Albert includes a team of humans that you can chat with and ask specific questions … [Read the rest]

Crazy Rich IRAs: From Peter Thiel to Ted Weschler

Propublica recently reported that venture captialist Peter Thiel has a $5 billion Roth IRA. Essentially, he bought some lottery tickets using his IRA wrapper, and they paid off. The controversial part is that these lottery tickets weren't … [Read the rest]

S&P 500 Returns by Components 1900-2020: Earnings Growth + Dividends + P/E Changes

In the previous post How Much of Historical Stock Returns Is Due To P/E Ratio Expansion?, we saw how the S&P 500 historical average total return could be broken down into separate components of earnings growth, dividends, P/E multiple changes, and … [Read the rest]

Weekend Listening: NPR Planet Money Summer School Investing Edition

In 2020, the NPR Planet Money podcast did a series called Summer School that focused on economics concepts. You can still listen to those, but the 2021 Summer School series is about investing. Hardcore personal finance geeks might come away … [Read the rest]

Myth: It Took 25 Years to Recover From 1929 Stock Market Crash

Sometimes, it pays to scratch a little beneath the surface. In 2012, well-known behavioral scientist Dan Ariely published a paper that found that when people signed an honesty declaration at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, they were … [Read the rest]

Chewy National Dog Day Sales: Spend $100, Get $30 Gift Card + 10% Off All Gift Cards

Online pet store Chewy.com is offering a variety of National Dog Day promotions: Spend $100, Get a $30 gift card on select Dog products. Decent selection of a variety of dog products. Look to see if your normal purchases are included. 10% off … [Read the rest]

Best Visual Explanation of the Convexity of Long-Term Bonds

Long-term US Treasury bonds are often considered a good asset class to own due to their historically low correlation with stocks. When stocks go down, long-term bonds tend to go up (and vice versa). While the 30-year is not specifically included … [Read the rest]

How Much of Historical Stock Returns Is Due To P/E Ratio Expansion?

According to Multpl.com, the P/E ratio of the S&P 500 is now 35, and the dividend yield is only 1.3%. The all-time low dividend yield was 1.11% back in August 2020. Even if you consider stock buybacks, the earnings yield is less than 3%! That … [Read the rest]

Free Grubhub+ Membership For Rest of 2021 (Targeted)

Grubhub is offering free Grubhub+ membership for the rest of 2021 (usually $9.99 a month) - and Seamless+ - for targeted customers, although many others will still get 30 days of free Grubhub+ membership. In addition, this offer does not require a … [Read the rest]

Real-World Smoothing Effects of Regular Investments (Dollar Cost Averaging)

Most people must rely on the power of smaller, regular investments from work income to build up their retirement nest egg. In the latest Sound Investing email, Paul Merriman shared a new Lifetime Investment Calculator that helps you see how these … [Read the rest]

Richer, Wiser, Happier: Notes From 40+ Super Investors NOT Named Warren Buffett

It was very telling that the first chapter of Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life by William Green was a profile of Mohnish Pabrai. In other words, not Warren Buffett! If you aren't a student of value … [Read the rest]