In the summer of 2011 a rural Illinois man named Wayne Sabaj was in his backyard picking broccoli. As he bent down, something caught his eye. Half buried in the dirt, he found a sealed nylon bag. Inside was $150,000 in cash. For Sabaj, who was unemployed and had, in his words, “spent my last ten [...]
Careful
My friend Rostislav, who would know, tells me that in Russian there is no equivalent for the word “privacy.” That's because, in Russian culture, privacy, as we understand it, is a foreign concept. In schools, for example, children's grades are posted publicly, and it is not impolite to ask someone's [...]
Why you should care about the dullest headline of the week
This week the government issued its monthly inflation data report, and the headline could have put you to sleep: “Consumer Price Index Rises 0.2% in April.” It would have been easy to skip over this seemingly insignificant story for two reasons: First, the way the government reports inflation data, [...]
Four (questionable) rules of thumb
Recently I heard someone cite the old expression, “a penny saved is a penny earned.” It's hard to argue with the logic of this straightforward idea. But, as you think through more involved financial questions, I think you'll want to be careful with simple rules of thumb. Below I will address four [...]
A valuable second chance
Sometimes life hands us second chances. And sometimes the stock market too offers up a second chance. They don't come along as often as we'd like, but that is exactly what we've seen this year. After a quick and very steep drop-off starting in late-January, the U.S. stock market has recovered [...]
