The Personal Financier – A Personal Finance Blog Personal Finance Blog

New research points to high correlation between wealth and satisfaction We like to think money doesn’t really make that much of a difference. The intuitive truth is that it does, but we must be careful not to jump to early conclusions. In an article by David Leonhardt for the NY times titled “Maybe Money Does [...]

A multitude of reasons suggest commodity prices might not remain this high for long (oil just might) My post on “The financials of 2008 – What will we talk about” has proven itself so far (to my great surprise). True, I didn’t think the credit crisis would prove to be so deep but my thoughts [...]

Talk of investment risk is abundant but what is investment risk really? Stock investments are risky; Investing in corporate bonds is less risky but still carries some risk; Investing in government bonds is risk free; we each have our own risk preferences and should invest accordingly, and so on and so forth. We all know [...]

Stock market etymology for the curios The famous New York Stock Exchange Bull sculpture is a beautiful work of art. The bull, seemingly moving, is radiating raw, yet restrained power, with surprisingly gentle grace as it prepares to storm up Manhattan. The statue, created by artist Arturo Di Modica in 1989, was apparently placed illegally [...]

The American Economics Blog Carnival hosted my article “Is Present Value – Value in the Present? The Economic sense behind Net Present Value” and featured some interesting posts. I especially liked: Fuels Costs, High Gas Prices and the Real Estate Investor @ BiggerPockets This article discusses some interesting effects high gas ...

Can’t see the forest for the trees? Budgeting is an essential part of managing our personal finances. The story doesn’t end there though. We can and should learn to leverage our budget and the historical and future data it holds. By analyzing this data we can spot trends, problems and opportunities and increase our financial [...]

Increasing the tangibility of your savings and rewarding yourself for achievements is crucial for success in this long term effort. Saving money consistently is hard. The temptations and needs are numerous. There will always be just one more thing to buy to make everything perfect. How do we resist the urge and how do we [...]

The heap paradox as a powerful metaphor with surprising results. Making the long and tedious process of saving small sums of money more rewarding and more tangible is a formidable effort. We all lose hope when we only manage to save 100$ each month, thinking desperately we will never get to see them amount to [...]