I’m a huge fan of Bloomberg’s Matt Levine,1  who is basically smarter and funnier than anyone writing about finance. Anyway, I was annoyed to read yesterday’s Op-Ed by Gregory Mankiw (whose textbook of course we all had to have in College) Mankiw’s a Harvard professor with all the respect that comes with that, and he’s [&hellip

The Houston Chronicle recently started running my stuff, and I’m excited. In honor of my introduction to Houston, I’d like to offer a personal story about my very first trip to Houston. Best of all, this anecdote has a pithy financial moral at the end. In Spring 2001 I lived in New York City and [&hellip

This is the most expensive post I’ve ever written, as it cost me over $80 to conduct research. I took out two payday loans this month in downtown San Antonio, TX. The natural joke to make here is “something, something, the death of journalism,” when finance columnists/bloggers need to take out monthly payday loans. Maybe instead [&hellip

It’s silly season in stock market news again. By that I mean the regular “stock market reaches new highs, hooray!” headlines and commentary. I’ll start by unpacking some reasons why this is silly news, and how you can be a much more sophisticated reader of financial news. I admit upfront that you’ll risk being a [&hellip

Note: An ex-student of mine reached out to ask a question many face… Is it best to use savings and investments for graduate school, or to take out loans? Dear Banker,  I saw you answered  a question from a former student about paying down debt and being unemployed on your blog. So I thought I [&hellip