The Return Of The Bond Vigilante… In Japan + MORE

It’s Friday mother lovers
, which means you all have likely checked out mentally in anticipation of the upcoming weekend. So today I propose a simple question…
If you had be selfish and spend $5,000 by the end of today, what would you buy? 

See what I did there? I said you had to be selfish with it…

In 2010, Congress passed the Tax Hike Prevention Act, which among other things reduced the payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2% starting in 2011. For two years, workers saw higher take-home income than they would have had the law never existed, and consumers responded favorably by using the extra money throughout the two years to save, invest, pay off debt, and spend…

This is a true story. A man walks into a Target store and asks to see the manager. The manager asks if he can help, and the man produces an advertisement that his daughter received in the mail at their home. It was for diapers, wet wipes, strollers and other baby gear.
“My daughter is only 16,” the man said…

When I first began investing in college with the money I earned from odd jobs in high school, I had no idea what I was doing. Online investing was a new concept back in 1997 and I couldn’t believe I could randomly press some buttons to buy and sell stocks. I was hooked and would purposefully arrange my college classes around market hours to get in some feverish trades…

This is a post from staff writer Holly Johnson. This year, our office welcomed a 24-year-old professional into our tight-knit group. Aside from making everyone else in the office feel really, really old, it’s been fun and exciting learning what the younger generation is into these days. Let’s face it — her life is much more exciting than mine…

I’m approaching 50 years old. I remember when my mom became 50 and I thought “Man, she’s old.” 🙂
Anyway, CNN Money ran a series on “Best Moves if You’re _____ Years Old.” This one is the piece for those 45 to 54 years old and contains a target investment mix at age 50 as follows:

39% U.S. Stocks
40% Bonds
21% Foreign Stocks

I get the U…

On Wednesday, I was sitting at the library trying to come up with an idea to blog about. Actually, I had a “to blog” list, but none of them struck a chord with me, so I started reading some magazines instead. Luckily, I found an article in Money Magazine that I can comment on – “My very cheap day” by Kristen Bellstrom…

It is really, really easy to fall into a trap of paying lip service to the things we think ought to be important but that we don’t actually find important in our day to day lives.
“Oh, I should be spending less money,” says someone waiting in line for a large coffee and a breakfast pastry at a local coffee shop…

Looking for a job can be stressful. While job search engines are great, using social media to land a job is a sometimes overlooked, but fantastic tool in finding a job. It allows you to showcase your work how you’d like, be creative, and connect with people very easily.
Here’s how to use social media to find a job:
LinkedIn
The most important social media to use in your job search is LinkedIn, since recruiters often search the site for potential candidates and job searching is it’s primary role…

Happy Friday everyone and cheers to everyone who has a long weekend. It has been a week of curveballs for my husband and I. We aren’t stressed per say but there have been numerous detours and extras to deal with this week at work and personally. Not to mention, one of our cars died twice so which was not helpful…

Successful Americans are paying too much for insurance yet don’t have enough coverage. Those are the findings of a recent survey from ACE Private Risk Services.
It’s easy to see how the situation developed. Most successful people didn’t start that way. In their young-adult years, they did the responsible thing and bought the insurance they needed…

NFL Player, Evan Mathis, taking his frustrations out on an IRS sign.The IRS, a bureau of the Department of Treasury and the same agency that will be enforcing the Obamacare “tax”, is tasked with enforcing the laws that help determine what organizations can be considered non-profit and tax-exempt…

Investing is arguably the most complicated and intimidating topic within personal finance. Understanding (and making use of) two key investing concepts will go a long way toward demystifying the process while dialing down the fear factor. Let’s get started! (See also: The 10-Step Staircase to a Comfortable Retirement)
Compound Interest
At first glance, this one seems like no big deal…

I have a confession to make: I have a ton of gift cards. Most of them were acquired through rewards from my credit card, since you can get them at a discount using cash back rewards. Not only do I save money through using gift cards because I get them at a discounted rate, you don’t feel the financial impact as much (which could be a good or bad thing depending on the person)…

A writer for Consumer Reports knocked $480 off his annual cable expenses during a phone call with customer service.He didn’t use his work affiliation to get the deal. He used a technique anybody can: Call, mention the competition’s deals, and ask for a reason to stick around.Check out this short video showing how Money Talks News founder Stacy Johnson did it and saved $90 in a 15-minute call:Read 5 remaining paragraphs on MoneyTalksNews…

Original blog can be found HERE
[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick]
On April 11, The Dollar Vigilante went public stating that shorting Japanese government bonds (JGBs) was an effective means of “profiting from The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It” (TEOTMSAWKI)…

We may not see the connection between our mental health and our wallets, but a new study suggests that sad people make poorer financial decisions compared to their happier counterparts.
The reason, according to Jennifer Lerner of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and colleagues Ye Li and Elke Weber of Columbia University who published their study in the Psychological Science journal last year, is that sad people exhibit what’s known as “present bias,” meaning they tend to value the present over the future, choosing immediate gratification and ignoring the greater gains associated with waiting…

(Guest Post by Emily as part of our Side Hustle Series)
I didn’t have much of a choice about becoming a guinea pig for medical research, but maybe that was the intention of my employer? The research institute I worked at created a ready supply of healthy volunteers for its ongoing clinical trials and studies by paying us trainees less than the living wage in one of the more expensive counties in the US…

When my wife and I first decided to have a baby, the first financial thought that came into my head was this: How much will it cost to raise a child?
Looking online, I found a lot of simple answers. Some estimates even put the cost at as much as $300,000 over the course of raising them from birth to 18 years old…

It was the first week of school, sophomore year of college. I’m sitting in a 300+ person lecture for a math course required for my business degree.
In walks the TA (teacher’s aide). And it’s his first lecture. A new TA for a 300-person lecture? This is odd, I thought. Turns out he’s leading the course…

During a recent trip, I had the pleasure of talking with a retired couple who are spending their golden years touring the world. Italy, China, Mexico, Hawaii — they’ve seen it all, and some places more than once. While I didn’t want to ask personal questions about how they could afford such luxurious trips, I was amazed that this seemingly-average couple was able to achieve travel goals that most can only dream of…