Getting Ahead for the Little Guy
The free shampooing of our carpet just wasn’t worth it. Three hours of battling vacuum salespeople was worth the price and time of renting a rug doctor and doing it ourselves. You think we’d have learned our lesson after the “promotional” offer to put vinyl siding on our house. But no… we experienced a laps [...]
My first job was a part-time position at a toy store that paid me little more than minimum wage. Some weeks, I wondered if my schedule resulted in my gas bill taking out half my earnings (after taxes). But I worked hard, got to work with “grown ups,” meet people, get some experience in the [...]
The panic attack came last night.
“What the heck am I doing?” I thought to myself. “Am I crazy?”
I was driving back to my unstable-yet-demanding job, in a car that needs some maintenance which I am concerned about paying for because of said unstable job which has had half of the paychecks arrive late this summer [...]
I’m trying to get all this straight.
You have the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which basically states that the stock market more-or-less reacts instantly to any information affecting the price of any stock. Therefore, you can’t beat the market unless you have some kind of inside track. So any assumption you make about the future movement of [...]
I was terrified that my new house would bankrupt us.
Because of the tech-bubble recession the nation was just coming out of, I’d taken a job that paid a bit less than I was used to. And we were buying a much bigger, better house in a nicer neighborhood… which was going to cost us nearly [...]
I was given the instruction by the financial advisers (sales people) that were handling our new 401k plan at our little company. They explained how the market grew at an average rate just over 10%. So imagine – if you had twenty thousand dollars in an index fund, ten years ago, it should be [...]
Since becoming serious about investing, I’ve found myself engaging in some activities which might be construed as a sign of my impending mental collapse. Going through school, I never felt that math was my forte. But lately, I’m finding myself running calculations. In my head, and on my calculator. For AMUSEMENT. Calculating percentages. Rates of [...]
in Lu has a great post on Wise Bread about the all-too-common assumption that the rich are evil – greedy, self-centered, ruthless, aloof, exploitive, amoral, uncaring — you name the adjective.
Why Is “Rich” Often Equated With “Evil?”
Xin tackles this issue, with an added bonus. Originally from China, he throws in some cultural background and the [...]
“I’d like to invest, but I don’t know the first thing about investing.”
Yeah, that was my excuse, too. I put money into my 401k, IRA, and a non-retirement mutual fund so I felt like I was making progress. With two major downturns in the stock market over the last dozen or so years since I [...]