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Blog

Musings on personal finance and more. Not written with AI since 2012.

Rain window

Here’s the risk tolerance we ought to be talking about

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I was a little hard on people who have a low investment risk tolerance. But that’s not because I’m a mean person. I have very good reasons. I get that the idea generally is that we want to protect against … Read More … Read More

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Scary hand

Why it doesn’t matter what your risk tolerance is

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When investing, whether for retirement or for any longer term goals, there is often a discussion of “risk tolerance”. Risk tolerance in this context means how much variability in the investment return process that an investor is willing to withstand. … Read More … Read More

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Drumsticks

Amazon Prime just raised its prices by 20%. What’s 20% of $0?

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The news was electric. Amazon, the great dark god of retail, was going to raise its prices on its popular Amazon Prime subscription service, from $99 a year to $119 a year. That wasn’t the electric part though. That was … Read More … Read More

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Carhenge

What would you do if your car died today?

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“Mobility is empowerment” is a phrase I’ve long internalized. That goes for the micro level (being able to get from place to place) and the macro level (being able to move to another place). And if you are far away … Read More … Read More

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Gas prices sign

Adventures in pointless frugality: Shopping for a gas station

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I’ve been fascinated in one way or another by gas prices ever since I worked at a gas station in college. At first it was just the geographic variation in prices, like how I could drive across the river from … Read More … Read More

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Why I want you to live paycheck to paycheck

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“I couldn’t make ends meet. I was living paycheck to paycheck.” “78 percent of U.S. workers live paycheck to paycheck.“ “Stop living paycheck to paycheck and sign up for our credit counseling service.“ The phrase “paycheck to paycheck” is a … Read More … Read More

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Product splash

Why frequent flyer miles but not grocery stores? A study in contrasting loyalty programs

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I’m a big fan of collecting frequent flyer miles and points. While the airlines and hotels have done their best to devalue the extreme opportunities that there once were, I believe that there still are some great deals to be … Read More … Read More

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Handholding

What to do when an emergency isn’t unexpected

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I’ve long said that you can gauge whether something is an emergency if the following three “U” words describe the situation: Unexpected Urgent Unavoidable I use this metric to be able to distinguish between actual emergencies and things that feel like … Read More … Read More

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Gift cards

How to offload (or combine) unused gift cards

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After the debacle of trying to use a prepaid card to anonymously purchase VPN service, only to find that I couldn’t use it for purchases outside of the U.S., I decided to just buy the VPN service outright. But I … Read More … Read More

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Cameras

Online trust, or How to figure out your biggest threats online

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Greetings from Seattle, Washington! Actually, hello from Charlotte, North Carolina! On second thought, salutations from somewhere in Azerbaijan! It’s fun to be anywhere at the click of a button. By this I mean, anywhere as far as my computer traffic … Read More … Read More

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