Posted August 4, 2009 - 05:00 by Philip Brewer
I got a notice from one of my credit cards a bit ago, announcing that they were raising the interest rate. It's only of theoretical interest to me, of course--I use credit cards for transactions, not to borrow money--but looking at the rate they're charging reminded me that there are really three interest rates.
Posted July 12, 2009 - 04:00 by Philip Brewer
A few times I've written a post that I thought was good, but that seemed to vanish into the blogosphere without a trace. On my two-year anniversary of writing for Wise Bread, I'm going to link to five of them and suggest that you take a look at them. For a few long-time readers it may be a second look. (But, judging from the number of reads these got, not many.)
Posted June 12, 2009 - 00:39 by Philip Brewer
The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Arthur Laffer that shows a scary graph of the monetary base, which has surged enormously in the past year. He suggests that this is "potentially far more inflationary" than the monetary policies of the 1970s. I'm as worried about inflation as anybody, and agree that the Fed should already be taking steps to minimize it, but I think Laffer is off-base here.
Posted June 11, 2009 - 06:39 by Philip Brewer
When I went off to college in 1977, inflation was high and rising, but the maximum interest rate you could earn on a savings account was capped by the government at a fraction over 5%. The conventional wisdom was "It's dumb to hold cash when inflation is over the rate you can earn." I absorbed that conventional wisdom, and it led me to make some dumb decisions.
Posted March 26, 2009 - 14:40 by Andrea Dickson
Credit cards are fun for the whole family, until the bills start rolling in and you are expected to hand over your hard-earned money for the stuff you bought on plastic. In this week's Best of Personal Finance round-up, the web's PF bloggers look at debt of all kinds.
Posted November 11, 2008 - 04:23 by Philip Brewer
If there are two pieces of financial advice that get hammered more often than any others, they're "Get out of debt" and "Put enough in your 401(k) to get any corporate match." With times getting tough--making both debt reduction and saving seem more urgent than ever--how do you balance those two choices?
Posted July 15, 2008 - 11:08 by Philip Brewer
There's a certain class of ways to get free money or free stuff simply by paying attention, keeping track, and being careful. I don't do these things. It's not because they don't work; it's not even because the risk-adjusted earnings don't pay for the time spent. It's because time--and especially time spent paying attention--is very precious.
Posted May 2, 2008 - 06:47 by Philip Brewer
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.
Posted April 11, 2008 - 13:50 by Philip Brewer
When investing in things that pay an interest rate--things like CDs and bonds--it's tempting to try to get the maximum interest rate, and then to try to lock up that rate for as long as possible. There's an alternate strategy that provides good, stable returns with a lot less stress and a lot less need for predicting the future: Laddering.
Posted December 23, 2007 - 15:14 by Nora Dunn
Annual fees, grace periods, balance transfer options…it's a wonderful world of credit card jargon out there, and depending on your needs and planned uses for credit cards, it pays to look at your options. Following are the various ways in which credit card companies can get some money out of you and how you can avoid it.
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