The Poor Transfer Wealth to The Rich Via Credit Cards
Reuters has a story about the poor getting bamboozled with yet another scam. No it’s not three card monte, or state run lotto tickets. It’s via credit cards, and the rich are getting well.. rich off of them. According to the Boston Federal Reserve report, with its pretzel logic, only poor people pay by cash, and the rich elite pay via credit cards. Who better to perform the study than the Federal Reserve. With their multi-generation devaluation of the dollar, the Federal Reserve is an expert about wealth transfer. The report though, is class warfare at it’s finest.
Obama Educates His Children About Finance
The AFP and ABC News have a puff piece about Obama eyes babysitting duties for daughters. Implying somehow Obama still lives a regular life now that he’s president. While I commend that he is trying to educate his children on how to manage money, I also find it ironic based upon his government spending policies. It’s kind of like asking a drunk about how to quit drinking. So I’m in full compliance with FinReg, I believe Obama’s monetary policy is Jimmy Carter part deux. So take my opinion as somewhat biased.
I too think it’s important to teach children about money, and not rely on our public education system for any insight. During the interview on how the financial reform law will help the general public, the topic wandered into the financial education of his children.
Read More »Payday Loans VS. Loan Sharks
The Huffington Post recently had an article about Payday lenders leaving Arizona. In their usual left leaning slant the article was cheering about these companies were leaving the state, and how awful they were preying on people to take out loans. Which got me thinking about what exactly is predatory lending anyway? Is the lender stalking you, forcing you to sign that loan for a paycheck you don’t have yet? Are they putting the proverbial gun to the borrower’s head making them take out the loan? Common sense says of course not. It should go without saying getting a payday loan is bad money advice! If I must resort to using payday loans to support my existing lifestyle, I need to cut back or make additional income. It’s not uncommon for a payday loan’s effective APY to be over 40%! Some people do use these loans because of emergency purposes, which in my opinion is fine, and was the original purpose of these loans. Is it the fault of the lender that the individual keeps coming back to use their service?
How Wealthy Are You?
Being wealthy can be defined in many ways. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines wealthy as:
1 : having wealth : very affluent
2 : characterized by abundance : ample
This definition of course is very vague. What exactly is “very affluent”? Being a numbers guy, I like specifics and like to measure things like wealth.
Read More »Added More Exxon Mobil (XOM) To My Portfolio
I’ve owned Exxon Mobil (XOM) for the past 7 years, and including dividends, I’ve had an annual return of slightly over 5% APY. While it’s not knocking it out of the park, it’s not bad for a Dow component, and especially not bad in this economic environment. Exxon, as with other oil companies have been beaten up in the past 2 years, especially in the past 3 months with the BP disaster in the Gulf. For the past three months, Exxon’s stock has declined over 16%, and I think it has been oversold. I’ve been looking for a place to put some new money, and have been looking at FDIC secured investments, but I am frustrated with their poor returns.
Economic Forecast for 2010 and 2011
I normally don’t make outright predictions on this blog, but Sam from Financial Samurai challenged me in his latest blog post. I’m always up for a challenge, so I’ll take a stab at it. Please come and revisit this blog post at the end of 2011. The purpose of the Investor Junkie blog has always been about making good investment decisions. The goal is to help you and I become better investors. Topics discussed in this blog I’ve thought should contain mostly timeless information, and apply regardless of market conditions. I recommend at least 80% of your equities portfolio should be low cost, tax efficient and indexed based investments. If you feel you can outperform the market, do so with no more than 20% of your assets. When the market zigs one way, you zag the other way. That way if you are wrong, you didn’t bet the farm. Adjustments in your asset allocation strategy also make sense when investing this way. This doesn’t mean 100 equities and 0% bond allocation. This means making adjustments within say your equities and increasing your exposure to emerging markets.
By making smaller calculated bets, that can be somewhat speculative, you might be able to come out ahead. A proper asset allocation in my opinion is the most important thing to ensure investment success. As I have mentioned in the past, any predictions about the future are like football color commentary. While the assessments might be correct, it’s sometimes easier to make predictions when you have no skin in the game.
Read More »I’ve Joined the Yakezie Challenge!
I finally joined the Yakezie Challenge! For those who regularly follow my blog you are probably wondering what too me so long? For those do don’t know much about it the purpose of the “The Yakezie” is it’s dedicated to promoting high quality personal finance content on the Internet.
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