Media and fellow bloggers alike enjoy bemoaning the hazardous plague of inflation. I will show that not only is this argument not grounded in reality, but that it also ignores many ancillary benefits of an inflationary rate: spending encouragement, debtor relief and avoidance of a deflationary spiral.
Life insurance isn't really a topic we've touched too often here on Don't Quit Your Day Job, but since the majority of our readership has at least considered the various forms of life insurance on their quest for financial independence (or at least financial sanity?), let's dedicate some digital ink to the topic, shall we?
Remember this post we wrote as a reaction to a prompt on our (at the time) current spending and saving? We wanted to revisit the topic with the whole of year 2011 in the books - and some solid numbers.
On Personal Finance sites, we tend to get bogged down in the details of the drive for financial independence. We do the boring stuff most people don't bother doing - reading account agreements, pouring through investing prospect, and strategizing the best combination of credit cards needed to get the most cash back on certain purchases. Worthy undertakings all, yet sometimes we overcomplicate a simple matter - there is a very basic equation to success.
Last week, my colleague Cameron gave you this nice primer on the mortgage interest deduction and who it really benefits. Today, we're going to take this topic one step further (on the sell-side) and discuss government intervention in the mortgage market.
It has been mentioned here and elsewhere that the mortgage interest deduction in the tax code is a roundabout way of subsidizing banks. If interest rates are determined by supply and demand then the demand for interest rates is only dependent on what a taxpayer's "effective interest expense is". A new study suggests that most of the benefits fall into the hands of lenders.
As a genre of web sites, Personal Finance sites spend lots of time discussing and reviewing the best companies to enter into contracts with, and the best companies to do business with. There is also no shortage of reviews on companies which don't live up to those same standards. One thing we don't tend to touch? Companies which don't want to do business with us.
If there is anything in politics sillier than Congressional Job Approval polls, I've yet to find it - yet here I am writing about it. Ostensibly, these polls are set up to gauge the public's trust in Congress - to get an idea about the public mood regarding our elected leaders.
In reality, the entire setup of the poll is a sham. Here's the thing - unlike the President, the average voter cannot vote out the average Congressman (or woman). The truth is, Congress is set up in the way that it is strictly to avoid the public's mood from tearing the House and Senate apart.
One of the interesting things about writing on a Personal Finance site is that while you write for your readers and yourself, you are part of a broader community which informs your opinions and gives you reason to examine your own views on many topics. We at Don't Quit Your Day Job have now been around for (almost) three years, covered a large number of financial topics, introduced a number of personal financial strategies, and delved into too-great detail on subjects which had mildly interesting data.
We've got this running series on Don't Quit Your Day Job where we use the currently trading option prices (puts and calls) to divine where the market believes the S&P 500 is going over the next months. Normally, this is a problem we attack right after options expiration days (which happened to be on Friday), but as we had an issue with the script and prior commitments, you guys will have to accept our homework 2 days late.