Feed items

This article is by staff writer William Cowie.

Exchange-traded funds (commonly known as ETFs) are a relative newcomer to the American investment scene, having been approved to be publicly traded by the New York Stock Exchange just over 20 years ago. However, in that time, they have managed to capture about $1.7 trillion in investor money. Why are they so popular, and should you consider investing in them?

Over the past 40 years we have witnessed a major shift in how America funds retirement. The chart below shows how private employer pensions and other defined benefit plans have been displaced by defined contribution plans (things like IRAs, 401(k) plans and others):

(source: Investment Company Institute)

This article is by editor Linda Vergon.

A 2006 study from The William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan showed how media coverage of the 2004 tsunami influenced charitable donations. For their analysis, they had to isolate the effect media coverage had on donations, so they controlled for tax incentives, agency-specific effects, and “donor fatigue” (meaning that more exposure to an event caused people to be less willing to donate). What they found was that donations increased by 13.2 percent for the average relief agency after an additional minute of network news coverage. A single 700-word story in the “New York Times” or the “Wall Street Journal” increased donations by 18.2 percent.

This article is by staff writer Kristin Wong.

I get frustrated when people don’t understand what it means to be frugal. A few criticisms of frugality I’ve come across:

• Frugality is a waste of time.

• Frugality distracts you from earning more money.

• Frugal people deny themselves of any enjoyment.

I’ve already written in detail about how these arguments are silly. They might apply to being cheap, but they don’t apply to being frugal.

The point of being frugal

My two favorite splurges are dining out and travel. Over the past few months, I’ve splurged quite a bit. One night, driving home from dinner with a friend, a little voice in my head said:

This article is by staff writer Lisa Aberle.

While it wasn’t a dark and stormy night yet, an ice storm was coming. The last time we’d had an ice storm, we were kidless, and we lost power for five days. The romance of sleeping in front of the fireplace quickly cooled off along with the temperature in the house. If we lost power again, 39 degrees just wasn’t going to be acceptable with two kids.

That’s why my husband took a trip out to the shed to get our generator ready to combat a potential loss of power.

Except he couldn’t find the generator. After a few minutes of brainstorming (Did I put it somewhere else?), he called someone who frequently borrows our stuff.

“Your generator?” said The Borrower, “Yeah, when you were out of the country last year, I let somebody borrow it. I’ll give him a call.”