Hedge Funds: Actual Investor Returns Less Than Advertised

When a mutual fund or hedge fund lists their historical returns, the industry standard is to use time-weighted returns that assume you buy at the beginning of the time period and hold until the end. However, what often happens is that a fund will … [Read the rest]

More Ways To Increase Your Free Dropbox Storage

I love Dropbox. I like that it's a real folder on my computer that is also invisibly synchronized and backed up in the cloud. The best part is that usually I forget it's even there. Other online storage apps like Box.net or SkyDrive don't work … [Read the rest]

Correlation Between Age Demographics and Stock Market Prices?

While perusing this early retirement reading list for more books to read, I ran across an interesting fellow named Harry S. Dent, Jr. His primary theory is that age demographics are strongly correlated with the economy and thus stock market prices. … [Read the rest]

How To Retire Early and Live Well With Less Than A Million Dollars [Book Review]

I enjoy reading older books about early retirement; I seek to learn from their experiences, but I also look for ways in that their perspective is colored by their own time period. For instance, a book written in the 80s1 - an era of high inflation … [Read the rest]

The Overnight Rule For Managing Your Portfolio

Recently, I came across an investment tip called the Overnight Rule from Carl Richards via the NYT Bucks Blog: Imagine that all your investment holdings were sold overnight by accident. You can't undo the trades, and now all you have is … [Read the rest]

New Checking Account Promotions: Citibank, Chase, M&T Bank

Interest rates looks to remain tiny for a long time, so if you want to boost your interest earned while keeping your money safe in banks, taking advantage of sign-up bonuses is one way to do it. Earning 1% APY on $10,000 is just $100 a year, and it's … [Read the rest]

Savings Bonds vs. Bank Savings Accounts

(In this post, I'm not going to provide all the background information on savings bonds that I normally do. For that, please read the older posts in my Savings Bonds category.) When the Treasury announced the $10,000 purchase limit for 2012, a … [Read the rest]

Pay Your Kids To Fund Their Own Roth IRA?

You're probably aware of the wonders of the Roth IRA and how it allows your money to grow completely free from taxes, even upon withdrawal. An added wrinkle is the lack of age restriction, so that even kids with earned income (wages, salaries, … [Read the rest]

Clover Pay New User Bonus via Referral

Clover is a new person-to-person payment system for use between phone numbers. Simple fees (none for personal use), simple interface. If you sign-up via invite from a registered user, you'll get up to $10 off your first purchase. The referrer … [Read the rest]

LivingSocial: $20 at The Body Shop for $10

LivingSocial is offering $20 to spend at The Body Shop for $10. Valid in-store only. Valid toward sale and promotional items. Over 65,000 purchased already. Psst guys... Valentine's Day is less than 3 weeks away ;) p.s. Groupon has $6 movie … [Read the rest]

American Express New York City Promotion: $50 off $200

I'm a little late on this one, but check it out you live in the New York City metro area or will be there in February. American Express has another promotion where if you spend $200+ at 2 or more participating merchants on a registered AmEx from … [Read the rest]

Exploring the Connections Between Happiness, Stuff, and Money

The Daily Beast has an article Consumption Makes Us Sad? Science Says We Can Be Happy With Less by Barry Schwartz (author of The Paradox of Choice) that serves as a nice compilation of various psychological and behavioral economics findings about … [Read the rest]