If you check Facebook at all this week, you’ve noticed that your feed lit up like a Christmas tree over the latest battle in the culture wars. People are outraged that Starbucks would dare to remove all holiday symbology from their iconic Holiday cups. Instead, they’ve opted for the more spartan solid red Starbucks cups as seen above. However, I have a far more radical question to ask. Is Starbucks more important than Jesus? Because many Christian households’ budgets would make you think it is. Continue reading “Why You Should Be Mad About Those Red Starbucks Cups”
When political debates about income inequality happen in America, they almost always seem to center on CEOs. The pay gap between the company chief and the average worker has grown tremendously over the past several decades, but what if CEO pay is pedestrian compared to an occupation you’ve probably never heard of, that of the hedge fund manager. These men whose pay is 1000 times higher than many CEOS pay much lower taxes than mere millionaires. Here’s how they do it. Continue reading “Men Whose Pay is 1000 Times Higher and Whose Taxes Are 50% Lower Than Your Local Brain Surgeon”
I was waiting in Charlotte airport for my flight back to America early Thursday morning, and I overheard a really interesting conversation between a bunch of flight attendants sitting next to me. There is a “Workerbee” mentality in America that keeps the average family average in terms of their net worth and income. I’ve demonstrated before that anyone who starts investing in their 20s can retire a millionaire, and the chat I heard that day reminded me why more people don’t end up that way. The headlines in each section below are some of the things they said.Continue reading “These Flight Attendants Show Why Most People Are Poor”
What was left of my SUV after crashing into a tree on the interstate
One night in my sophomore year of college, I was coming home for Christmas break in bad weather. I hit a big puddle on the interstate and lost control of the vehicle. Once I was off the road it all happened so fast. I just went diagonally right into a big pine tree. I’m very grateful my friend and I both escaped the accident without serious injury or worse. Now that it’s been almost five years and I’m able to talk about it more openly, I was horribly taken advantage of by our nation’s healthcare system that night when the hospital charged me more than the price of new car. If I hadn’t had insurance, I would have been ruined financially. Let’s look at how this crash shows how broken our health care system is in America, even post Obamacare, and how we need a major societal change to bring down sky high costs. Continue reading “The Night A Hospital Charged Me and My Friend $60,000”
Everywhere you turn, state and local politicians are talking about pension reform. If they’re not talking about it, they are having to deal with the consequences of years and years of underfunded pensions. Whether proposed reforms include more employee contributions, a higher retirement age, benefit cuts, or elimination of cost of living adjustments, the story is the same: pensions aren’t as good for teachers as they used to be. Teachers, if you were born after 1985, reconsider relying on your pension as your primary source of retirement security, especially if you work in one of the states with a severely underfunded pension. In place of a pension, I am going to show you alternatives you can use to fill the gap on your own with workplace retirement plans like 403b’s and Roth IRAs. Continue reading “Why Teachers Under 30 Should Consider Opting Out of Their Pension Plan”
Continuing this week’s series focusing on teacher finances, I wanted to warn about how the pizza in the faculty lounge could be the most expensive one on Earth and why teachers are at great risk for buying it. To explain why this food is so dangerous for your financial health, I need to explain how people in the financial advice industry are paid and why teachers make great targets for folks not legally obligated to act in the best interest of their clients. Hold onto your rulers and apples because this could literally save you several years worth of salary.Continue reading “Teachers, Beware the $100,000 Pizza in the Faculty Lounge”
This week, I would like to focus on the finances of one of America’s most important occupations, teaching. There are millions of teachers in the US, so if you’re not one yourself you probably know someone who is. Most of what I’m going to write applies to anyone with a similar occupational profile, but I want to target it towards that group. In regards to the title, a lot of you are going to laugh at me right now for saying the teachers can become billionaires. Unfortunately though, most workers of a modest wage write off their ability to ever build meaningful wealth in this country. To illustrate how even underpaid professionals like teachers can become fabulously rich, I thought I would run a simulation to show that a couple of teachers can really become billionaires one day, even though there are some major caveats. For all you public servants out there, here’s a way to serve society and secure a spot on the Forbes list at the same time. Along the way, you’ll enjoy long summer vacations, smart coworkers, and the knowledge that you’re making a difference. Continue reading “How Teachers Can Become Billionaires, or At Least Multimillionaires”
I went to the People’s Museum of Manchester, England the other day and accidentally walked into a gold mine of financial comedy thanks to English kids. The Museum has a section dedicated to the history of finance. It talks about financial bubbles, crashes, how English and American banks financed the Industrial Revolution, and more. To make the exhibit more kid friendly, they had a bunch of children write what they would do “if they had all the money in the world.” After scribbling down their answers, they stuck them on the wall. As you might expect, asking a bunch of 7-12 year olds what they would do if they were fabulously wealthy didn’t disappoint. After studying the notes and pretending to be an expert on child financial psychology, I found the kids seemed to fall into eight groups. I think most of these categories coincidentally reflect what adults would say too, just in a less direct way. After all, out of the mouths of babes comes truth. Let’s see what the different groups of kids said they would do with money if they had all they could ever want. Continue reading “What English Kids Said They’d Do With All the Money in the World”
After a wonderful day roaming around Manchester, England, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, I open up my computer to a series of really bizarre emails. A stream of emails from Apple start appearing thanking me for my purchase. Since I’ve had nothing to do with Apple since selling my iPad before going on this trip, I know something is up. It looks like the kind of thing that you get when someone steals your identity. I check the contents of the email since it appears to be a legitimate message from Apple, and it gives me the details. I’ve apparently made 11 transactions in varying amounts for a combination of store credit and access to this strange Chinese app. As I’m the curious type, I copy paste the Mandarin characters into Google and translate the page. “Meet your people now in social media exchange. Chat your connections” it says. Under the description of the app are photos that show profiles of women that look a lot like what you would see on OkCupid or eHarmony. Imagine if you were in this situation. What would you do? Are you panicking? Is your credit going to be ruined for the rest of your life? Is someone going to do a freedom of information act on your name and think you were searching for some strange scandalous website? The good news is, this is not even close to a financial emergency. I’ve actually faced something like this before when I traveled in Mexico so I knew what to do. Just in case this ever happens to you, here’s how I handled it. Continue reading “What To Do When A Guy Steals Your Identity to Spend $500 on a Chinese Dating Website”
