We wonder if “maths” includes personal finance?
Daily chart: which country has the cleverest kids? Since 2000 the OECD has tested school pupils in rich countries every three years on reading, mathematics and science. This year, students in Shanghai topped the chart in each discipline.
What is it about a ridiculously expensive education that brings out the ramen-eater in all of us?
On my 3rd cup, on my way to the 4th
Keep pushing, kids! Finals week is almost over!
^Very important comma placement
There has been a lot of press (mostly negative) about microfinance in India. A recent New York Times article highlights concerns such as poor lending practices, increased rates of borrower suicide, and a movement against making loan payments. (You can read how one of our Causes, ACCION, responded to the article here.) Some people are suggesting that these problems could mean the end of the microfinance industry as a whole. But no story is ever “black and white”, and in the world of finance it’s often possible to connect one crisis to another.
The New York Times is sick of reporting about all the different options for taking on our massive budget deficit, so it set its interactive feature monkeys to figuring out how to make you do it. They made this.
Super fun. See how easy it is to actually make decisions like cutting off Medicare benefits for the elderly. Raise taxes! Cut defense spending! Destroy NASAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
They say lifelong habits start early. But what does that mean when it comes to sharing financial information on social media sites? See the full report here (in a new window).
(via visualeconomics.com)
SpendGrowGive helps you understand where your money goes. But do you ever wonder what the rest of America is spending on? As usual, there’s a handy infographic explaining it all! Click to see the full-size version in a new window.
(via creditloan.com)
Today at TILE we talked about saving money. What really comes to mind when you think about saving? Why is it a good thing to do? Is now a good time to start?
For many young adults in the TILE community, saving is kind of hard to get your head around. You know you should save, but you probably don’t have a lot of experience doing it. Maybe even the most basic components of savings, such as yield, risk, and time horizon, make you feel like a social psychology major in advanced physics or an English-only speaker in mainland China. It’s really not as hard as you think, though. We narrowed down the process to three steps: First, have money to save. Second, set up an account. Third, make a commitment to start saving now.
Today at TILE we talked about heading back to school and about the banks that were lurking around the student center last semester. As we mentioned earlier, there are a whole bunch of new rules governing the way banks are allowed to operate, and this includes credit card companies. But how will these new rules impact your ability to get a card? Or the banks’ ability to give you one? Are back-to-school credit card offers a thing of the past? And is it good or bad that credit may be harder to come by for many young adults?
This year, there are new rules – specifically, the Credit CARD Act – which may put an end to banks soliciting you for new business. Card companies are no longer allowed to market credit cards within 1,000 feet of a college campus (kind of like a restraining order), are prohibited from hosting tables at events, and can’t give away “gifts” (you know, size XL t-shirts and teddy bears branded with the bank logo) to entice you to sign up. Maybe most importantly, if you are under 21, you can’t get a card at all unless you have a co-signer.
Today at TILE, we talked about the prospect of deflation in the economy. Is it really happening? Why does it seem economists and the markets keep changing their minds on the subject? What can even be done about it?
Imagine you are camping in a forest and you’ve made a fire to cook with – if it gets out of control, everything burns up and eventually you’ll have a problem on your hands. That’s kind of like rapid inflation. But if it burns out, you’ll end up cold, hungry, and probably pretty miserable. That’s more like deflation, and if there’s too much, it can be really hard to get that fire going again. In the world of economics, the goal is to have slow and steady growth – not too much and not too little. In other words, inflation is when the economy “heats up” – prices rise faster than the value of the currency being used to purchase goods and services. In contrast, deflation is when the economy “cools off” to the point where the world becomes too sluggish – prices of goods and services even start to contract, such that a vicious spiral of non-growth or negative growth can overtake us all.
The TILE team had mixed reactions to all of these news events… reactions that may be familiar to anyone watching the newspapers or trying to read the markets. Across all topics, initial optimism about each item seemed to fade the more the team thought or read about it. Regarding the capping of the oil well (a seemingly great piece of news), there was a great deal of skepticism: “I don’t believe it,” and “this is a very minor victory considering the damage that’s already been done.” On the financial reform bill, there was a lot of confusion about what the legislation meant and whether it would actually improve the financial sector. The Goldman settlement evoked a lot of different reactions, from the positive to the unimpressed to more socially focused, such as “what do people around the country think?” and “I have friends who intern there – how will this affect them?”