kate mats

So recently I have been doing a lot of research on how to develop some sources of passive income. I used to think real estate was a good way of doing that (via home appreciation and rent), but there are so many stories of failure and I am beginning to doubt my ability to [...]

Most of us have 401ks, but a lot of people don’t really know what the best way to allocate your money. Most 401k programs require you to invest in set of pre specified mutual funds. Often times one or more of these funds will be invested in growth or value stocks (and a [...]

I was chatting with some of my colleagues about why I am so intrigued by finance and why I would want to spend all my free time devouring everything I can find on economics and finance–well part of it is that I am inherently greedy and materialistic (Madonna’s Material Girl was my theme song when [...]

Looking into my crystal ball (since I am currently trying out making some extra money as a fortune teller) I predict that housing prices are going to keep going down. How did I come to this conclusion? Let me lay out my thoughts:

Housing prices are down. There is a great diagram showing [...]

You should make your money work for you.  Part of this is to make sure you have a credit card, you pay the balance every month, and that your credit card gives you some sort of perk (this is what I refer to as responsible credit card use–living within your means).  Of course if you [...]

An old coworker of mine and I once argued about 401ks.  He said “Why would I put my money in that account when I can make more investing it on my own and don’t have to wait until I am 65 to leverage it?”  Fair enough, I argued about the 3% employer match we had [...]

Home ownership and real estate can be a lot of work for the home owner. I love old houses, but as with any home things go wrong and you have to make repairs. I have made a lot of mistakes in dealing with contractors and here are some tips and tricks I have [...]

One of my investment friend recommended this site to me and I must say it is very cool! Foliofn
is a company that essentially allows you to create your own mutual fund. You can buy partial stocks–so if you wanted to owe a share of Google, but not lay out the hundreds of [...]

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with my good friend who recently who joined a startup research team developing software that hedge funds then use to create models. Since most of the people I interact with on a regular basis don’t find talking economics to be riveting conversation, I have asked my friend [...]

It sounds simple right? Spend less money then you can save more, but for most of us spending less is really difficult. It is a lot like dieting–we all want to lose weight, and we know eating less makes us thinner–but in practice it is very hard. As you can tell from [...]