Part 2 I recently moved from the Dallas area to the Bay Area. The first thing I miss is the cost of living. The second thing I miss is the food. Dallas Fort-Worth has Mexican, cajun and good barbecue. But, thankfully, the summers here are much more bearable. It's been 61 and sunny all day everyday […]
As I've mentioned before, I once moved from Texas to California. With this move came a significant increase in both salary... and cost of living. It led to my savings rate decreasing but my overall dollar savings level staying relatively the same. Today let's explore the pros and cons of working in a high vs. […]
With my colleague PK writing about his 2014 savings rate, I thought that I would chime in as well. Using a loose definition of savings, where principal pay down of debt is included in the numerator, I have an after-tax savings rate of 53.42%. Without including principal paydown of debt, my strict savings rate would […]
Prize Linked Savings (you may also see them called 'Save to Win' games) are an interesting take on savings accounts, where every deposit is 'kept' unlike in normal lotteries, but some proportion of interest is assigned to a lucky winner through a lottery. In that way, prize linked savings games hit our psychological love of […]
A common financial topic begging for answers is whether to pay down debt or invest. Over much of the internet, it is encouraged to pay down your high interest debt before investing in a Roth IRA or putting money into a 401(k) above the employer match. The difficulty has always been in defining what, exactly, […]
Recently, I moved to San Francisco and as part of the move I decided to sell my vehicle and live car-less. I felt (and feel) that I could get most of my transportation around the city done with bicycle or public transportation. So long as I can get to/from work and to/from a grocery store, […]
Today, let's talk a bit about the economics of payday lending. We're going to cover, at a macro level: Where they make their money How they structure their terms Their strategy to deal with regulation How did payday lenders originally avoid regulation? Traditionally, the payday lending industry (estimated ~$50 BB+ size when we went to […]
Early last year, I prepared goals for 2014. In September, in a shift of plans I decided to abandon my goal of paying off all my consumer debt and instead focused exclusively on maxing out my 401k. To review my goals for 2014: Pay off consumer debt of $35,741.09 I was able to pay this […]
I haven’t yet decided if I should wear flowers in my hair. Over the past three and a half year, I have lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. I have mixed feelings about leaving and mixed feelings about the area in general and am excited to see what a new area has to offer. […]
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I decided to play around with Morning Star's X-Ray tool. The tool takes your entire portfolio and analyzes the asset allocation by geography, by risk level, by asset class as well as by type (growth vs. value, etc.). Here is what my current asset allocation across my portfolio is (asset type): […]