A blog about things I find useful
I tend to check out a lot of books from the library. Here’s a list I currently have on my shelf. I want to love reading books, but I find it hard to finish them because: It seems to me that most books could & should be summed up in a couple of bullet points. … Read more
Unless you have been sleeping under a rock for the past decade or two, you may have noticed that interest rates have fallen quite a bit. This is manifest in a few obvious places: the interest rates available to investors (e.g. bond yields) and the rates at which borrowers can borrow (e.g. mortgage rates). Below … Read more
A friend of mine who reads this blog emailed me recently for advice about about tax loss harvesting (abbreviated TLH in this article). The allure and promise of TLH, to pay less in taxes, is indeed sexy. Who doesn’t like this promise? TLH is one of the major supposed value-adds of robo-advisors like Wealthfront and … Read more
The 2020 edition of FreeTaxUsa is now live (link). Despite the scammy name, it’s a great piece of software that I’ve used since 2016. They give the federal software away for free and charge a modest fee for state tax filings. Since I’m cheap (understatement of the century), I do my state filings on my … Read more
Another month, another update. A few random comments. Good Reads/Listens/Watches The Social Dilemma (link). A documentary about the consequences of wide-spread social media usage. Basically, it concludes that our attention is the end product that is produced (and sold to the highest advertising bidder) by Google/Facebook/etc. That’s a pretty fascinating paradigm. I’ve heard of this … Read more
Overview 2020 is almost over (good riddance!), so perhaps now would be an appropriate time to assess your 2020 tax withholdings for taxes due in April 2021. I find it slightly annoying that TurboTax & TaxAct don’t update their tax calculators until mid-late November, so perhaps my spreadsheet can fill the void for someone wanting … Read more