Thing One A Couple Of Yield Questions For Your Consideration Interest rates and bond yields are once again getting a lot of attention. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury is now hovering around 5%, so I thought I'd address two questions that help explain why that matters. Q: Why is the 10-year Treasury yield so significant? A: The 10-year Treasury is one of the most important interest rates in the financial world because it serves as a benchmark for borrowing costs t

Thing One Don't Let a Teaser Rate Keep You From Getting the Protection Your Family Needs You've probably seen ads like this: "Grandparents can get $250,000 of life insurance for as little as $33 a month!" Maybe that's possible for a very small number of people in very specific circumstances. But the key phrase is "as little as." That's marketing language—not a promise. Your actual premium will depend on your age, health, the type of policy, and many other underwriting

Thing One What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen: A Lesson for Today’s Policy Debates The 19th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat offered a timeless warning about how we evaluate economic policy. In his essay What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, he wrote: “...In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is s

Thing One Choose Carefully Several years ago, the organization that oversees the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards conducted a revealing experiment. They wanted to see whether prospective clients would truly evaluate an adviser’s competence—or simply respond to confidence and presentation. They hired a professional DJ, gave him a crash course in financial buzzwords, dressed him in a sharp suit, and placed him in front of individuals actively searching for f

Thing One Why Starting an Exercise Plan Might Help You Understand How to Think About the Economy I was recently browsing health and fitness websites for exercise “secrets” when I came across an article that made me think about the similarities between an individual trying to get in shape and the political class trying to “get the economy in shape.” The article was called Why Crunches and Sit Ups Do Not Get You Six Pack Abs. The opening paragraphs hit me like a ton of br

Thing One Friedman's Four Things Explains Poor Public Anything Milton Friedman, a renowned economist and author once explained that...

Thing One More On What To Do When Cash Yields Are Dropping In a recent post, we talked about the idea that with the Federal Reserve...

Thing One Aha Moments While The Lights Were Out Hurricane Helene has come and gone now but my thoughts of her linger as the devastation...

Thing One A Matter Of Perspective As the Federal Reserve prepares to cut interest rates in anticipation of a softening economy (mainly...

Thing One Got Hospital Bills? "Hospital Prices Are Arbitrary, Just Look At The Kingsbury’s $100,000 Bill”. That was the headline of a...