inflation
Popular posts in inflation
Posted 8 weeks 2 hours ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance
Every financial calculation that you make is influenced by your expectations for future inflation: how much to borrow, where to put your savings, and whether your last raise was a reason to celebrate or to start looking for a better job. Even small decisions, like whether to buy a couple extra cans of tomato paste, are affected. No dollar amount or interest rate is good or bad, except when compared to inflationary expectations.
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Posted 8 weeks 4 days ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance, General Tips
I eat lunch at a local fast-food place occasionally. My usual order runs to just over $4, so I was annoyed when I realized while walking over there yesterday that I'd forgotten to pick up a nickel or dime--I was going to end up with a pocketful of change. In fact, though, I needn't have given it a thought: My order cost $4.60.
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Posted 11 weeks 2 days ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance
Since 1998, the US Treasury has had a pretty good deal for small savers who were worried about inflation--the Series I Savings Bond. The interest it paid was based on inflation plus an additional return that was set by the Treasury and fixed for the life of the bond. On May 1st the Treasury announced the value of that fixed return for the next six months: Zero.
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Posted 12 weeks 4 days ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance, General Tips, Budgeting
My very first experience running a household was in 1980, just as the last big inflation was spiking up over 10%. My carefully constructed budget was completely destroyed by prices that were rising by 1% every month. Since then, I've given considerable thought to how to deal with just that situation. Since history seems dangerously close to repeating itself, it's a timely topic.
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Posted 12 weeks 4 days ago by Xin Lu
Personal Finance, General Tips, Taxes, Investment
After the recent interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve many of my bank and money market interest rates plummeted. Now the best yield I have is on my Series I Savings Bonds issued by the United States Treasury. These bonds are also known as I-Bonds and their yields fluctuate according to inflation. Currently, the yield is 4.28% and that beats all of my other cash investments. Here is some information on the interest rate on I-Bonds and the advantages of owning these bonds.
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Posted 26 weeks 7 hours ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance
With prices up, price statistics that look preposterous to anyone who shops, and the Fed trying to thread the needle of preventing a recession without letting inflation run out of control, I want to make sure everyone knows that we're seeing at least two other issues besides inflation.
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Posted 26 weeks 2 days ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance
Of the various ills the economy can face, inflation is simultaneously the worst for society as a whole, and yet the easiest for individuals to deal with successfully. The strategies for dealing with inflation are pretty straightforward.
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Posted 35 weeks 3 days ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance, Frugal Living
If you have a budget--more specifically, if you track your spending--you have the data you need to track changes in your own personal cost of living. That's a lot more useful than the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI (although people on Social Security, or with a lot of money invested in inflation-indexed treasury bonds, care about the CPI too). It's not so easy to turn your data into a number, though. In fact, you'll face a lot of the same problems the government does.
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Posted 39 weeks 4 days ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance
The Consumer Price Index was released today, showing prices were up 0.3% last month and up 2.8% from a year ago. The same report also includes the so-called core rate, which excludes food and energy. Since food (up 4.5% from a year ago) and energy (up 5.3% from a year ago) are the principle contributors to increases in the cost of living, the core rate was naturally lower--up 0.2% (2.1% from a year ago). Except for making things sound better than they are, what's the benefit in talking about the core rate?
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Posted 46 weeks 11 hours ago by Philip Brewer
Investment
There are risks in any investment. The market might go down--or the market might go up, but your investment might go down anyway. The company that issued your stock or bond might go bankrupt. Even cash has the (virtually certain) risk that it'll be worth a bit less next month due to inflation. There are a couple of investments that eliminate almost all these risks: TIPS and I-Bonds.
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Posted 46 weeks 3 days ago by Philip Brewer
Personal Finance
There are those who point to the 1980 peak gold price of $850/oz and observe that the price would have to go up to $2149/oz just to get back to that point. I say, take a second look at the data.
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The United States Postal Service announced that they may issue a "forever stamp" - that is, a stamp that you can buy now, at a given price, that will be good into eternity. Like all hedging, this sounded like a good idea at the time, but fortunately, there are people much smarter than me out there to crunch the numbers.
Continue reading "Does the Forever Stamp Make Cents?"
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