One important concept in personal finance is financial independence.  You are financially independent when you no longer need to work for a wage in order to support your standard of living.  Sound awesome? How do you get it? Well, you save enough money to create a portfolio of stocks and bonds which you can live off of instead of your wage.

One of my favorite economists has to be Robert Shiller.  This is a great talk he gave at the London School of Economics.  He's famous for writing Irrational Exuberance, a treatise on bubbles, in 2000, calling the top of the stock market bubble.  He updated it in 2007, also effectively calling the top of the housing market. I was particularly

What is the sunk cost fallacy? The idea that any money or time you already spent on a thing matters.  That money is gone.  That time is gone.  You shouldn't let the time or money you spent on a bad idea keep you from throwing a bad idea away.  Preferably far away. This comes up all the time.  People finish terrible

Credit cards are great.  I'm a huge fan.  More often than not they allow you to obtain basically 1% back on purchases, give or take. (That's those points people are always going on about). Unfortunately, these are only great if you NEVER PAY INTEREST.  In the case of credit cards, this is simple.  Pay your statement balance in full every month and

The current tax code is a mishmash of law and loophole that's been built up over many years.  In some cases, like the 401(k) the loophole was later championed by someone and made into real law.  If the 401(k) was kind of an accident, the IRA was pretty much on purpose.  We're going to discuss something quite similar for educational

  One of my favorite stories in tax law is how the 401(k) came to be.  I realize the bar here is pretty low.  I mean, what's your favorite tax law story? I'm a nerd. Well, the setting is the late 70's.  It's the middle of the Carter administration.  For years rich folk had been attempting to play