Lady: Nervous?Striker: Yes.Lady: First time?Striker: No, I’ve been nervous lots of times. (Hard to believe that Airplane! is pushing thirty years old. Man sakes alive.) Anyway, The Simple Dollar gave an unusual response to a reader who was concerned about having too much weight in stocks in her portfolio: My philosophy is that the instant … Read more
Today was another lousy day for the Dow stocks (except for Johnson and Johnson (JNJ), the only winner). In one article there was an interesting comment: “Yes, the market would probably move dramatically higher if they made a cut,” said Linda Duessel, market strategist at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. “But I think it’s more prudent … Read more
Trent of The Simple Dollar wrote this article that appeared on MoneyCentral: Retire at 40: Here’s how Trent answers a reader’s question regarding how long it would take to retire at current income levels if he saved 20% of his income. He used the following assumptions: Put 20% of each paycheck into an S&P 500 … Read more
JLP’s post on the Rules of 72, 114, and 144 got my math juices flowing. Where does the Rule of 72 come from? If you’re not into math, no biggie, but you might experience a little boredom. 😉 Say I have starting principal Ps with periodic interest rate r (expressed as a decimal). I let … Read more
I was IMing with a fellow blogger last night and he was asking me for hot mutual fund picks. (Obviously he was very delusional, since he was asking ME!) He was looking for a good $1,000 investment through traditional channels, like the stock market and the bond market. After suggesting what I thought, I asked … Read more
A couple of thought-provoking posts on inheritances at Yet Another Blog About Money and Crazy Money. YAB About Money has thought about the inheritance he might receive, but says that its presence does not affect other financial plans. Crazy Money, on the other hand, doesn’t think about the inheritance at all and prefers not to … Read more
The dynamics of the collector’s market for the new Presidential $1 coins are fascinating to me. The initial release of the $1 coins has an initial frenzy that dies down to a more orderly numismatic market for unopened rolls, high-grade specimens, and error coins. The standard errors in previous coins, like off-center striking, double-die errors, … Read more
No, I haven’t started a hot-tip newsletter. I’ll give you the whole secret right now. You probably already own this investment vehicle. Maybe a bunch of them. Maybe a whole jar-full of them. Lincoln pennies. You might have heard about this essay from Francois Velde, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago: What’s … Read more