a hackers guide to managing your money
The steps to starting a business are really straightforward. Starting a business is as simple as saying – “I’m a business.” Every citizen has a Social Security Number and can immediately start a sole proprietorship. It gives you the least amount of legal cover, since you are personally liable as a sole proprietor, but you […]
Have you ever heard the advice that the true path to wealth is through real estate? For many Americans, real estate makes up a huge percentage of their net worth. Buying a home is the American dream and monthly mortgage payments build equity. It’s still wealth building but as a byproduct of needing a place […]
I went to college for five years and graduated with a Bachelor’s, a Master’s degree, $35,000 in student loans but also a job. I had a Computer Science degree but timed my graduation with the dot com bubble bursting. Yay me. So I stayed an extra year, picked up an M.S., and managed to score […]
I grew up with a relatively privileged upbringing in the 1980s. We were what I still consider solidly middle class. My parents owned a single-family home in the suburbs on Long Island, my dad had a stable white collar job, my mom also worked part-time while we weren’t in school, we never worried about food […]
When my girlfriend (now lovely wife) and I first started dating, we’d go on various road trips together. I don’t think it was that long ago but this was before the days of having Waze or Google Maps on your phone. We’d print out Mapquest directions! I’d drive, she’d navigate, periodically changing the directions because […]
Did you hear about how Bank of America was going to start charging a monthly fee if an account didn’t have maintain a $1,500 minimum balance or have a monthly direct deposit of $250 or more? Personally, I don’t understand the moral outrage (actually I do, it’s to sell pageviews because it’s popular to slam […]
Every New Years, we rent a vacation house with friends from college. We get one of those big 12-bedroom vacation homes, fill it with food, games, adult beverages, kid beverages, and then we spend 3-4 days celebrating another year gone by. When we started, there were no kids. Now there are close to a dozen! […]
When I was a kid, I collected a lot of stuff. Baseball cards, comic cards, Magic the Gathering cards, aaaaand stickers. Stickers were fun but once you stuck them on something, well, they were done. So I kept them on their little slick pieces of paper. And so that’s how I had a sticker collection. […]
Many years ago, companies that promised free stock trades were living on borrowed time. High volume traders plus no commissions meant bankruptcy for the likes of Zecco (eventually acquired by TradeKing, which was itself acquired by Ally Bank). But Robinhood has shown us that a brokerage offering free trades can work. They’ve figured out you […]
A few years ago, one of my dad’s co-workers was complaining to him about a shady practice you’ll find with stores that sell big ticket items – TVs, engagement rings, furniture, home theater systems, etc. It’s called “0% deferred interest finance.” Deferred interest finance is when they give you 0% for a set promotional period […]