That whole concept of “buy now, pay later” never made much sense from a phrasing perspective. If you haven’t paid for it yet, you haven’t bought it. In the strictest sense that’s really just a seller giving you a loan. “Sign and drive”, now that makes more sense. These arrangements aren’t always the best deals [...]

Thanks to the NY Federal Reserve we get access to all kinds of data about the credit and borrowing situation of ourselves and our fellow citizens. Here’s an update on where we stand.   Total Consumer Debt & Composition This chart shows what our consumer debt situation actually looks like. Obviously, mortgages make up the [...]

It’s been reported before that money does buy happiness. But, in fact, that happiness seems to die off around $75,000 in income. Making more than that doesn’t seem to provide incremental units of happiness. Now, with a new study, we’ve found indications that happiness can still be bought above the $75k threshold. Using international data, [...]

If you haven’t seen the Gatsby movie yet I won’t spoil the ending for you. But if you don’t know how it ends you probably don’t care how it does either. This past weekend the remake of The Great Gatsby opened to $50 million in box office sales, putting it behind just Iron Man 3. [...]

Observers of the daily movement of the stock market have long noted the interesting peculiarities about these markets. One of them is the market’s love/hate relationship with the economy. There’s a headline just about every day about how the market is reacting to some kind of economic datapoint. A good jobs report, a bad durable [...]

Most of us are aware of the costs associated with payday loans. Not necessarily because we’ve used those services, but because they became a topic of great discussion during and after the financial crisis. Most payday lending stores will offer a customer something like $350 today if they pay them back $400 in two weeks. [...]

If you live in Columbia, SC and want to move to Manhattan, you’d better hope for a big raise. Because if you currently make $80k in South Carolina you’re going to need more than $100,000 in increased income to maintain your standard of living in the Big Apple (according to CNN Money’s cost of living [...]

It’s May 1st, which in the world of Wall Street means everyone’s talking about one of the most inexplicable phenomenons in investing. It’s almost like Voldemort, you don’t even want to say it. Sell in May and stay away. This is the idea: markets don’t do well in the warmer months, so sell all your [...]