If you've been shopping at Amazon.com for many years like I have, a fun activity is to look at your order history which it appears they keep indefinitely. I have purchases dating as far back as 1999, with many questionable ones sold off long ago on … [Read the rest]
My Wisest, Most Frugal, Longest-Lasting Purchases From Amazon
Blog Flashback: 5 Years Ago, S&P 500 at 750
How time flies. Almost exactly 5 years ago on November 21st, 2008, I was sitting alone in yet another hotel on a business trip in a city that I can't even remember. CNN was on TV as I wrote the following in a blog post with the title S&P 500 at … [Read the rest]
True Cost of Holiday Shopping Calculator
Time for my annual Black Friday Buzzkill calculator! ;) Can you hear that sound? Sleigh bells a-jingling? Carol singers? No, it's credit cards a-swiping as part of what is now officially BUY BUY BUY season. Here's a mental trick that I use to … [Read the rest]
Unexpected and Wise Advice From Financial Advisor Ann Kaplan
I'd never heard of Circle Financial or Ann Kaplan before reading this Businessweek interview, but I found myself bookmarking it for later as she gives a lot of unexpected advice that you usually don't hear from a financial advisor. For example, … [Read the rest]
Barclaycard Travel Community: Share Stories for Bonus Miles
Barclaycard recently started a "Barclaycard Travel Community" at BarclayCardTravel.com. Although it's obviously another "social media" attempt to promote their new Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard (actually a pretty good travel card … [Read the rest]
Puerto Rico Exposure in Vanguard Tax-Exempt Municipal Bond Funds
Speaking of holding municipal bonds, I've been catching up on the troubles in Detroit and Puerto Rico. Last month, there was a flurry of articles warning about mutual funds with high exposure to Puerto Rico bonds, as they were yielding over 9% and … [Read the rest]
Free 39-Week Subscription to Wall Street Journal
Same offer, but link works again. Here’s a free 39-week subscription to the Wall Street Journal. New subscribers only. Not a trial, no credit card required. Just fill out the first page, hit "Click Here", and that's it. Use a spam e-mail if you … [Read the rest]
Reasons to Buy Actively-Managed Mutual Funds
I would characterize my personal portfolio as 85% passive, 15% active, and 100% low-cost. Why is part of my portfolio managed by people trying to generate "alpha"? Aren't I supposed to say that index funds are always better? Author and money … [Read the rest]
Charts: Credit Card Debt and Household Debt Trends
Here is an interesting Quartz article by Matt Phillips outlining "the most important change in the US economy since the Great Recession that nobody is talking about". I don't know about that, I've seen a lot of these charts before. But many include … [Read the rest]
Shoprunner Membership with American Express
Update: American Express is now offering Shoprunner if you enroll at ShopRunner.com/AmericanExpress and agree to keep your AmEx card as the default payment method for their Express Checkout feature. You can still choose to use another credit card for … [Read the rest]
$30,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Experiment – One Year Update, Prosper and LendingClub
After posting Part 1 yesterday, here is Part 2 of my Beat-The-Market experiment one-year update. In order to test out P2P lending, I started with $10,000 split evenly between Prosper Lending and Lending Club, and went to work lending other people … [Read the rest]
$30,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Experiment – One Year Update, Part 1
It's finally been a full year since starting 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, … [Read the rest]