Personal Finance

The Noise We Don’t Ignore

The Noise We Don’t Ignore

Inflation is destroying wealth and making food so expensive. The Fed keeps raising interest rates — how can the housing market survive it? The 16th largest U.S. bank failed a few months back. Then the 14th largest bank failed! The COVID-19 pandemic happened. That sucked. Now there’s a stupid war in Eastern Europe.  The stock…

NewRetirement Review: The Complete DIY Retirement Calculator

NewRetirement Review: The Complete DIY Retirement Calculator

NewRetirement is an online retirement calculator and planning tool. It’s the most comprehensive financial tool I’ve ever used — miles better than any elaborate spreadsheet.  I’ve been tinkering with NewRetirement since 2017, when I met the Founder, Stephen Chen, and explored the tool for some articles I was writing at the time.  I used the…

3 High-Yield Alternatives to Savings Accounts

3 High-Yield Alternatives to Savings Accounts

Inflation is eating away at our wealth quarter-by-quarter. It appears to have peaked in May 2022, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate increases. But the chart below shows how the products we consume have recently become more expensive. Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi The Federal Reserve is mandated to target 2% annual inflation as measured by the…

It’s Not About Retirement Anymore

It’s Not About Retirement Anymore

Traditional retirement is a suboptimal goal. Building a career you genuinely do not want to retire from is better. Writing those words here or in a 240-character tweet takes little effort. But it’s an enormously complex concept for most middle-aged workers. To say: Hey, all you people aged 30-55, with kids, a mortgage, not-enough retirement…

Personal Basic Income: How to Create a Perpetual Paycheck

Personal Basic Income: How to Create a Perpetual Paycheck

Maybe you’ve heard of universal basic income (UBI).  UBI is a type of social program administered by governments to provide basic income for citizens — ideally, enough money to cover basic expenses or meet poverty level income.  Universal basic income became a popular topic in the political discussion during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, promoted…

Cream and Sugar First

Cream and Sugar First

A former colleague once told me that if I ever started drinking coffee, I’d never stop. Frida drank ten cups a day. She was an administrative assistant in the media department at my university.  I worked in the darkroom developing film and printing black and white photographs for various campus publications.  The coffee maker was…