By: Laura Walton AFC® We don’t teach kids about thermodynamics by letting them play with a box of matches so why do we teach them about investing by encouraging them to play stock market games? There’s a new stock market game out. Stockpile is a startup designed to allow investors to buy fractional shares of stocks with…
By: Laura Walton AFC® This was Richard Thaler’s response to how he would spend the $1.1M awarded him for the Nobel Prize in Economics. You see, his focus has been on the irrational decisions we make about money. His point is that people are human. Economists have long thought that people would make rational choices…
By: Laura Walton AFC® The Foundation is in Phoenix this week meeting with ASU students in the Dorrance Scholarship program, kicking off our second 3rd Decade class in the Phoenix-Scottsdale-Tempe area and finishing up a series of financial education classes for the employees of a Phoenix law firm – whew! So, for this week’s blog, I want…
By: Laura Walton AFC® He said “I’m not going to freeze my credit.” She said “I think I will.” That was the conversation at our house this week. What are you going to do? Here’s my message from Equifax: Equifax, one of the big three credit reporting bureaus, the very folks who track and report…
By: Laura Walton AFC® I promised a more objective way of choosing a financial planner in my recent blog on how advisors dress. How they charge is a good place to start. Not only will it tell you the cost of the service, but it will give you a good idea who you’re dealing with.…
By: Laura Walton AFC® From psychologist Daniel Kahneman and economist Angus Deaton we learned that higher incomes, over about $75,000 a year, didn’t make us any happier per se, they just allowed us to spend more. A new study says that increased happiness depends on the way we spend that extra money. This study says that if…
By: Laura Walton AFC® As with many favorite recipes, the ingredients are simple but the dish is a crowd pleaser that is served time and again with predictable results and rave reviews. As you know, Warren Buffett’s secret investing ingredient is the low-cost S&P 500 index fund but, he says, the mega-rich can’t believe that…
By: Laura Walton AFC® An odd question but one that was the topic of a recent Michael Kitces blog where I learned about “countersignaling”. The Kitces blog is a popular one with financial planners; this one was written by Derek Tharp, a Research Associate at Kitces.com and a Ph.D. candidate in the financial planning program at Kansas…
By: Laura Walton AFC® It was the end of the year and I was getting my car serviced when the new service manager introduced himself and gave me some FIAT swag – a nice water bottle customized to fit the holder. Then he asked if I’d consider buying an extended warranty. My car was just…
By: Laura Walton AFC® In a recent Freakonomics episode, four heavy hitters chatted about active versus passive investing. Sound dry? Not at all! Below I’ve shared some of the best of the podcast but I heartily recommend listening to these super-heroes of the everyday investor. First, let me introduce you to the speakers: Kenneth French,…