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The Lake Wobegon Effect
When asked to rate their driving skills, more than 75% of Americans believed they were in the top one third of the population. In international math competitions, American students routinely ranked themselves near the top…
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How To Make $100,000 In Retirement & Pay Zero Taxes
You retire at age 60 so you can now make penalty-free withdrawals from your retirement accounts. You file as married filing jointly and for the 2025 tax year, you are allowed to claim $31,500 as…
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Yield Is Not Return
Peer-to-peer lenders make lending to individuals and businesses easier without needing a bank in the middle. But banks play an important role in assessing credit risk so if banks don’t want to play this game,…
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Thinking About Yield
Yield is the money you make on your investments. Different investments have different names for yield. If you own a farm, the crops you harvest each year which you can then convert into cash is…
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Should You Rebalance Your Portfolio?
Doveryai, no proveryai is a Russian proverb whose English translation trust, but verify was made famous by President Ronald Reagan when negotiating nuclear disarmament with his Soviet counterparts. But using it in everyday life requires the right context…
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The Archimedes Lever Of Investing
Benjamin Graham lived a remarkably productive life. Besides being one of our nation’s Founding Fathers, he was a prolific author. He was also a scientist, an inventor, a printer, a postmaster, a humorist, a statesman…
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Free Lunches Seldom Exist
You are walking down a busy street with your finance professor and you notice a 100 dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. So like any normal person would do, you stoop down to pick it…
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Think Like A Seller
Say you’re looking at two investments, one pays 5% each year and the other pays 8%. What is wrong with taking the 8% one? That is what smart consumers do. And it seems like an…
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The Most Important Estate Planning Task…
The hardest part about estate planning is getting around to doing it. The second hardest part is deciding on an executor – a person you appoint to execute instructions as stipulated in your will. It is…
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The Post-Covid Times Were Wild
All investing is about cash flows, whether they be a dividend, rent or an interest payment. If there are no cash flows or never a prospect of cash flows, it is not an investment. It…