Archives

Inflation in the US: What's the Market Telling Us?

One of the things we like to do here at Don't Quit Your Day Job is to reveal interesting things hiding in plain sight. One of those things: subtracting the Daily Treasury Real Yield rate from the Daily Treasury Yield rate gives you a good idea of the market's expectations of inflation. Even though media prognosticators won't agree on whether we're in for a deflationary era, hyperinflation, or a whole lot of nothing, you can get a reasonable prediction from market data. Our explanation is below, along with the limitations of this method.

Read More
The Roth IRA and Why (Most of) You Need One Yesterday

It's a topic we've covered here at DQYDJ before, and we'll definitely do it again in the future. Every once and a while everyone needs a reminder: if you qualify, open a Roth IRA. If you have one and you aren't funding it: do it. Here's a rehashing of why!

Read More
Rest In Peace Steve Jobs.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Read More
Refinance Your Mortgage and Pay the Same Amount? A Calculator to Determine if it's Worth It!

There is a mortgage strategy variously described in different corners of the internet where a mortgage is refinanced... and payments stay steady. For this strategy, a borrower is currently paying some monthly payment, and will continue to pay the exact same monthly payment after their mortgage is refinanced. The benefits are usually explained as an acceleration of mortgage payments and a "guaranteed investment return". You may find yourself in a situation where you are considering this form of accelerated mortgage payments. Is it worth it? Let's run the numbers and find out!

Read More
Carnivals and Links, Week of 10/3/2011

Another week, more featured articles and links.

We're on a roll recently, we cleaned up the front page of the site - let us know if you like the changes and our Twitter follower count is now up to six! (0 to 6 in a week is an infinite percentage increase.)

Read More
Is Frugality Overrated?

Writers on personal finance blogs and websites are, on the whole, a frugal bunch. The reasons we started our respective sites are varied - influence, to chronicle paying off our debts, the spread uncommon knowledge, altruism, or merely to build a stage to have our financial opinions heard. Our readers are a much more diverse bunch. While most all people have to deal with their own finances, our readers come to us with their finances in various stages of disarray. While us writers, as a whole, have our finances in order (or at least on the right track), some of our articles tend to preach to the converted. I feel there is an overabundance of frugality articles in our corner of the internet - so I ask, "Is Frugality Overrated?".

Read More
A Mortgage Refinance Calculator to Help You Decide if You Should Refi!

Conceptually, it's easy to grasp why and when you should refinance your mortgage. In practice, inertia is the main reason people hold back from refinancing. With that in mind, we present these mortgage calculator which will allow you to see how your current mortgage will compare with the mortgage you are considering. Perhaps if the math is enticing, you'll shop around? Enjoy!

We'd like to thank Hugh Chou for compiling the equations that we needed to create this calculator, and Ironman at Political Calculations for providing the calculator framework.

Read More
Carnivals and Links and Twitter, Week of 9/26/2011

Don't Quit Your Day Job... is now on Twitter, check us out by clicking this link or the slick icon in the subscribe section. Special thanks to Bret at Hope to Prosper for being our first follower! For the record, the first user DQYDJ followed is Nelson at Financial Uproar. Congratulations, or whatever superlative normally goes with Twitter accomplishments. To the rest of our readers, there is still time to grab one of the other milestone spots like 1,000th reader - or 10th...

Read More
Home Price Affordability vs. Mortgage Rates Grudgematch

Here at DQYDJ we've rambled on recently about the affordability of homes, and even tried to convince you that when mortgage interest rates are low it's not necessarily a good time to purchase a house. We've tried to make the point that affordability in Real Estate seems conditioned on affording payments instead of the actual purchase price of a home. That said, we left our readers hanging by not graphing that affordability with changing interest rates.

For a deeper background, please visit "Rooting for Price Increases and Low Interest Rates" for a description of the DQYDJ Median Home Affordability Index, and "Home Price Affordability Calculator" to play with the affordability numbers yourself.

Read More
Home Price Affordability Calculator

In our last article, we promised you a calculator so you can copy our methodology and calculate 'affordable' houses by determining what an acceptable monthly payment would be. In our current article, we deliver! Thanks to Ironman at Political Calculations for the calculator creation script, it was very useful once again!

Read More

Don't Quit Your Day Job...

DQYDJ may be compensated by our partners if you make purchases through links. See our disclosures page. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Sign Up For Emails
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram