Personal

TEDxCUNY Workshops

Here is a short update on what I have been up to. I taught two workshops, with the theme Money Matters, at TEDxCUNY. Some of you who came to my workshop may be reading this right now! Thanks for visiting the blog and I hope you find what you are looking for.

Retirement

Enough Writing, Time to Take Action

In January of 2019, I taught a room full of CUNY students at Macaulay Honors College, my alma mater, about how to invest for retirement. Most of the students were sophomores and juniors with little to no knowledge of investing and how to prepare for retirement.

Retirement

Is Health Insurance Crazy Expensive in Retirement?

Health insurance is a controversial matter in the United States. However, people do deserve access to affordable health insurance. Health insurance, after all, is a crucial concern for retirement due to the complications of old age, including a higher risk of health problems.

Young Professionals

The Great Wage Stagnation

Over the past few decades, the cost of goods and services seem to go up without fail. In order to keep up with the increasing prices, one would expect the salary of an average person to go up at the same rate as well. However, this has not happened.

Consumerism

Consumerism and Spending Money You Don't Have

Americans love consumerism and are always buying whereas businesses are constantly coming up “great” and “new” ways to help us pay even when we cannot afford it. While businesses “encourage” us with marketing to purchase goods we do not need and cannot afford, we are digging ourselves into a hole.

Retirement

The Minimum You Need to Know about Inflation

Inflation is an increase in the price of goods and services over time. Since inflation will erode your wealth, it can delay your retirement. Inflation is a natural part of the economy so we cannot avoid it. We can only understand and prepare for it.

Retirement

"Financial Independence Retire Early" and is it right for you?

Financial Independence Retire Early, FIRE for short, is a community of people who want to stop working for money and would much rather enjoy life. To achieve this, they are aggressively saving and investing between 20% to 50%+ of their salary.

Retirement

How much do you really need for retirement?

Happy New Year! With 2019 here, you are yet another year closer to retirement. Recently, the idea of retiring before 62 and freedom from financial constraints have become more popular. Ultimately both can be achieved through understanding how much we need for retirement using the 4% withdrawal rate.

Retirement

Robo-Advisors and Retirement

Robo-advisors are the lazy way of investing. The idea is that we answer a questionnaire and give money to a company that automates investing for us. However, with a little work on our side, I would argue robo-advisors aren’t necessary at all when it comes to saving for retirement.

Retirement

The Uncertainty of Social Security

2034 is the year Social Security benefits will “run out”. It is a BIG problem if the Social Security Program cannot support us. If you are born after 1972, then you and generations of people may be significantly unprepared for retirement and will even have to work in old age to support themselves.

Budget

Beginner’s Budget Guide

Everyone eventually develops their own budgeting habits. This guide is meant to start you off with the basics. The first step is recording and categorizing our monthly expenses. We need to know where our money is going each month.

Recession

Survival Guide for the Recession

For many of us right out of college, we have never experienced a recession. Economics 101 and news headlines for the past year tells us we are long overdue for a recession. No one knows when the recession will happen, we only know the economy is cyclical and it is coming.

Investing

17 Easy Steps to Open Roth IRA and Invest

A few of you asked about the actual process in registering for an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). Together, we will walk through 17 easy steps to opening and investing in a Roth IRA. This guide will give you an overview of opening an account.

Bonds

Why Young Professionals Don't Need Bonds?

Bonds, especially U.S. treasury bonds, are one of the safest investments in the world. As we know, safe investments will have lower returns. Bonds are essentially debts or IOUs we are granting to an entity.

Retirement

The Simple Guide to Retirement for Young Professionals

Are you up for a talk about retirement? As the saying goes, “it is never too early to start”. According to the Federal Reserve, in 2016 families with a head of household under the age of 35 had only $32,500 in retirement accounts while age 55–65 had only $374,000.

Investing

The Warren Buffett Itch

What do we do when we have an itch? We scratch it. If we scratch an itch too much, we hurt ourselves. For the majority of people, investing in individual stocks is an itch. At many points in our lives, we want to scratch the itch and invest in individual stocks.

Index Funds

What are total market index funds?

A total market index fund is a type of mutual fund. Mutual funds are investment vehicles that allow you to easily diversify your investment across various investment securities. For example, a mutual fund may contain 200 different stocks and 20 different bonds.

Emergency Fund

What is an Emergency Fund and why is it important for retirement?

An emergency fund is money set aside for financial emergencies. It seems like a pretty straightforward concept, but there are plenty of things to consider.