Now that spring is here, the rain is finally starting to dry-up in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). For all the readers that don’t live in the area, we have a very bipolar weather pattern — 4 months of constant rain and clouds in the winter, and then 4 months of absolutely no rain in the summer.
It’s a weather pattern as regular as clockwork…
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Raising kids isn’t easy under the best of conditions. Most of the parents I know work a 50+ hour work week. To deal with after school care, they enroll their kids in after-school programs, at considerable cost to themselves. It’s a kind of “two steps forward and one step back” situation that makes raising kids and saving money difficult.
The average family I see, only gets to spend nights and weekends together…
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When you think about it, money is a pretty funny thing. For a couple thousand years humans used precious things to represent this idea of “money” — ivory, colorful shells, precious gems, livestock, silver, and most notably gold. This worked well for humanity for a very long time… as long as the values were small.
The general inconvenience of physically carrying a whole bunch of “precious stuff” eventually gave way to paper certificates…
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Wow, what a difference a month makes! This time last month, the Tako family was buried under a veritable mountain of snow. Now, one month later, spring has definitely sprung.
Temperatures are warmer, and there’s more natural light due to the annual daylight savings time shift. This has made a huge difference in how much daylight we have, and I find myself itching to get yard-work done and prep the bbq for grilling season…
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It’s been roughly 10 years since the last recession in the U.S. Historically, that’s a long time to go without a recession. Some people say its been too long.
On Friday, the US treasury yield curve inverted, which is considered a leading indicator of a recession. Could an economic slump be right around the corner?
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As a writer of a public blog about money and investing, I get plenty of feedback from the internet. Not all of it is positive. There are definitely trolls. Sometimes though, people ask really insightful questions that are worth sharing. Sometimes even the trolls ask really good questions.
Today’s post is about one such question. A reader recently wrote to me and asked…
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Greater risk means greater rewards. That’s the mantra we’ll taught about stock market investing. Take the risk of investing in the stock market and you could lose money… but you might also make considerably more than you would in a bank account, or money market fund.
“Without risk there is no reward.”
That’s the story we’re told as newbie investors anyway…
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Unique thinking has always been something of a rarity among the human race. Humans are social creatures that like to fit in. We love to talk, tell stories, share ideas, and even copy some of the best ideas. We also tend to follow the people we believe to be authorities.
This behavioral tendency leads to fads and faddish behavior. Take for example Tulip-mania…
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To understand how our February went down, you first have to understand that we were “snowed-in” for a significant portion of the month. The local news called it “Snowmageddon”, but my kids called it “fun”…
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