My coworker Brian wouldn’t shut up about Circle stock back in June. He’d bought shares the day they went public and watched his investment quadruple in a few months. I asked him what is an IPO in the stock market is, and he looked at me like I’d just asked what the internet was. Turns […]
Jake phoned me six months after starting his roofing business. “This loan’s killing me, man.” “What’d you expect? You knew it was 6%.” “Yes, but it feels 10 times as expensive.” That’s the funny thing… Jake never even realized what that debt was costing him. He never did the math, he said; he simply glanced […]
Tuesday was absolute chaos. The Dow Jones closed up 203 points to hit 46,270, which sounds good until you see what happened with everything else. The S&P 500 ended down 0.2%. The Nasdaq got hammered even worse, dropping 0.8% as tech stocks took a proper beating. Why the mess? Trade tensions between America and China […]
So there I was, staring at a $47.82 check from some utility stock my father had talked me into. “Great dividend payer,” he said. “Cool,” I thought. But what does that even mean? I called him up. “Dad, I got forty-seven bucks. Is that good?” “Well, what’s their payout ratio?” “Their what now?” That conversation […]
Running a business means being on the road. Client meetings in Denver. Trade shows in Vegas. That conference in Austin, everyone’s talking about. Your travel spending adds up fast, and picking the right credit card can mean the difference between wasting money and actually getting something back. Here’s the straight talk on travel credit cards […]
My buddy Steve called me three weeks ago, all excited because his insurance guy showed him this fabulous “can’t lose” financial product. Market returns when things go up, zero losses when they crash, and tax-free money forever. I pressed him for what it was called. He said, “IUL something.” Did he even know how it […]
So last month I’m at the bank trying to get a loan for a car, and the loan officer said, “You look like you have good credit, but let me check your credit rating.” I’m like, “Wait, isn’t that the same thing?” The silence was brutal. She just looked at me for like three seconds. […]
Three years ago, I started my freelance consulting business in my basement. Super excited, making good money, like a real entrepreneur. And then April came and my accountant Lind,a hit me with a question that caused me to realize I had not an effing clue about what I was doing. “Are you using cash or […]
When my uncle got his first credit card in ‘89, he was over the moon. He thought he’d hit the jackpot, as he thought he had gotten free money to spend on freebies. Six months later, he’s underwater on debts, paying interest that seems to multiply like rabbits. It took him almost four years to […]
Look, we’re going to have to get one thing straight up front. IQ scores for dead presidents? They’re all guesses. No one sat Abraham Lincoln down with a Scantron and a number 2 pencil. Researchers examined their writings, the languages they knew and generally made educated guesses. So when you encounter lists of the 10 […]
