Track Your Money: Saving Advice From Rockefeller
The Advice "Now let me leave this little word of counsel for you. Keep a little ledger, as I did. Write down in it what you receive, and do not be ashamed to write down what you pay away. See that you pay it away in such a manner that your ...

Food Fridays: Kick Your Vodka up a Notch
First of all, a small announcement. I have a lot of year-end festivities coming up, so this will likely be my last post until January. On that note, I toast you with three links about vodka. 1. Making fruit-infused vodka This comes from the blog Modern Beet, which suggests making infused ...

Separating Equilibrium: Why Expensive Gifts Aren’t Always Proportionally Better
If you want to give a great gift, you do not need to spend tons of money. In fact, I'd say that many times the more you spend on a gift, the less value you will get. This is not just frugality advice. It is based on a game theory result. ...

Food Fridays: Vegetarian Cassoulet and Two Great Comments
I was tickled that Google referred a searcher to its French translation of my blog. To appease the search engine gods, I offer a French-inspired recipe today. It is a recipe for vegetarian cassoulet, which I recently prepared: Vegetarian cassoulet is a hearty meal and goes well with bread, and a little ...

Google Does Not Even Understand English Sometimes

The Tragedy of the Commons: Working During Holidays and Why Thanksgiving Almost Didn’t Happen
I will never work during the Christmas holidays again. Not after what happened last year. I was looking forward to the end of the year. A big deadline had passed, and my expected workload involved quantitative modeling, which was both manageable and enjoyable (this is nerdy stuff that I really like). ...

Money Makes You Numb
If you want to be rich, should you save more or earn more? So far, I've written primarily about saving more by recommending you drink from the tap, curb your subscription costs, and cut back on other regular expenses. Earning a high salary gives you the potential to save more. It is ...

Food Fridays: Eating Well While on the Clock
I was going to post a recipe today, but I felt it would be lost on my readers who are too busy to cook. I was thinking about my friend who is an investment banker in New York. He works about 60-80 hours a week. Most days, he is at the ...

Financial Tools
In response to a reader request, I have created a separate page dedicated to the financial tools and spreadsheets that I develop. So far, I have put up the popular "The Simple Expense Tracker" and the "APR and APY Converter." Stay tuned as more tools are upcoming, like how to track investment ...

The Strategy of Surprise: Will the Fed Cut the Rate Next Week?
The hot topic in the investing world is whether the Fed will cut the federal funds rate next week. The word on the street is yes, it is basically certain: Federal funds futures show traders see a 100 percent chance of a reduction in the benchmark rate [in December], with a ...

Mind Your Information
Do you write a lot of interests on Facebook? Do you share your current location? I'm amazed how much information people put on social networking sites like Facebook. I try to keep things private and now I am even happier with that decision. If you are sharing a lot about yourself, then you ...