The Cost of Milk for My Household Is Negative
My family gets paid to drink milk because we take advantage of a dairy rebate program.
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Household Income, Net Worth, and Unemployment Rates By Education Level
The most recent statistics on household income, net worth, and unemployment, sorted by education level, are really interesting. Following our discussion about the splits that have emerged along geographic fault lines in the electoral body, I thought it would be important to highlight the economic differences and how enormous the income inequality is for the…
If Our Banks Were Structured Like Pictet & Cie, The Banking Crisis Wouldn’t Have Happened
In Switzerland, there is a 207 year old private bank called Pictet & Cie that caters to the the richest of the rich. It has total assets under management of of 373 billion Swiss francs, or just shy of $400 billion in United States terms.
The Top 14 Federal Income Tax Payers of 1924
In Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, Kevin Phillips looks at the biggest Federal income tax payers shortly after the income tax was introduced. Taxpayer Taxes in 1924 Dollars Taxes in 2012 Dollars John D. Rockefeller (oil) $6,278,000 $84,249,292 Henry Ford (autos) $2,609,000 $35,012,170 Edsel Ford (autos) $2,158,000 $28,959,856 Andrew Mellon…
When You Borrow Money, You Are Renting Someone Else’s Savings
When people talk about “borrowing money”, it isn’t entirely accurate. What is really happening is renting someone else’s property. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about credit card debt or student loan debt. Imagine I own a $100,000 lake cabin. You want to take your family on a vacation this summer, so you approach me and…
Earning Money on Your Money
One old definition of “being rich” is when your money earns money. This afternoon, I was writing a piece and reviewing the dividend yields on some of the common stock holdings owned by my household personally, outside of the business, when I began quantifying that in the back of my mind. How much would it…
The Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Discounts 101
The Berkshire Hathaway shareholder discounts at Nebraska Furniture Mart end in a few hours, with the discount at Borsheim’s cutting off tomorrow. The furniture buyer with whom I am working has spent the past week finalizing my spreadsheet, locking me into the enormous savings that are available. [mainbodyad]Taking advantage of the stockholder pricing is one…
As Taxmageddon Approaches, How Should Investors Prepare for 43.4% Taxes on Dividends?
Last night, I published my monthly updates for the Investing for Beginners site at About.com, a division of The New York Times. One of the articles I wrote has to do with something called Taxmageddon. As the law stands now, in eight months, Americans will face one of the largest tax hikes in history, with…
Change the Way You Think About Business Ownership and You Can Change Your Life
Shortly after World War I, Raymond Poincaré, the Prime Minister of France, decided against partnering with Royal Dutch Shell to fund the energy needs of the French people. One of his military commanders, Colonel Ernest Mercier, worked with 90 banks and businesses to establish a new oil company called French Petroleum Company (er, technically, Française des Pétroles Compagnie since they weren’t speaking English). The name might sound prosaic but keep in mind this was the era of “General Electric” and “Standard Oil”. The new undertaking began operations on March 28th, 1924. Today, that business is known as Total, S.A. and it is one of the six supermajor oil powers on the planet.
You Can Still Get Rich and Make Money In a Terrible Economy with a Miserable Stock Market
Towards the back of the most recent General Electric annual report is an interesting graph. It shows what an investor would have experienced by putting $100 into three different investments: GE shares, the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It assumes that dividends were reinvested in each respective investment when they were distributed. How were you rewarded for six years of patient investing, assuming you added no fresh cash outside of the dividend reinvestment? Take a look.