We can think of inflation as being like a financial cancer – it’s slowly and relentlessly eats away at the value of our investments. Some investors would prefer to ignore inflation; it is after all inconvenient where investment planning is concerned. It can take pretty looking investment projections and make them look downright ordinary. The [...]

A relative of mine made me aware of this viral video going around on YouTube by the author “politizane”. As you can imagine, I have quite a few issues with this video. I’m not suggesting some of the information is incorrect, I just have an issue with the conclusions and some of its assessments.

One of the items that has been getting a lot of play since President Obama’s State of the Union Address has been minimum wage. In his address, the President suggested that the federal minimum wage be raised from $7.25 an hour to $9.00 an hour, indexed to inflation. (I’m old enough to remember being excited [...]

It might be one of the most controversial issues in energy, but it’s having a profound impact on American energy production. Hydraulic fracturing is a new technology that allows us to search for oil in places we’ve never looked before, and make use of natural gas and oil deposits that were never before economical.

One of the terms that tends to pop up more and more when people talk about money and economics is “behavioral finance.” Behavioral finances is a relatively new field of study. The idea is to look at the reasons that people make the money choices they do (those choices are often irrational). Behavioral finance applies [...]

Or your daddy for that matter! It’s time to man up! (Is the politically correct term “person up”??) It’s time to act like an adult and make sure you got a handle on your finances. Your mom and dad won’t be around forever, and relying on the government to be a surrogate parent is a [...]

The Federal Reserve just announced today that QE3 (also now known as ‘Unlimited QE’) has set sail. This was to be completely expected, and the markets today reacted somewhat higher. Since 1977, the FED now has the dual mandate of targeting inflation and unemployment. Federal Reserve can you please explain how printing and bond buying [...]

Believe it or not, I was somewhat nervous flying this past week. It didn’t help that I was flying close to the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. How many times have we’ve seen the awful snuff video of the planes crashing into the twin towers? And from multiple angles no less.

For those who couldn’t make it, here is my FINCON12 Ignite presentation. The presentation is much more about the psychology than mechanics. Enjoy.

Sure, the overall economy affects our daily lives to a certain extent. But, how concerned should we be about the economy, and what can we do about it anyway? Well, it doesn’t benefit most people to stay up at night, sweating the details of the next morning’s jobs report or how the yen will behave [...]