In 1984, our family went to Orlando, Florida, for a family vacation. We went to Disney World, where EPCOT Center had opened just two years prior. I fondly remember the (now defunct) Wet ‘n Wild water park. But since we were a weird family, we also attended the four-day American Federation of Aviculture (birds!)…
There’s no shortage of reasons to consider shifting your spending away from Amazon. Wikipedia has a 17,000-word article with 423 citations on the subject! I think the downsides of Amazon are well known, but many people find switching to alternatives difficult. Even a modest shift is better than nothing!
Rather than adding to the debate about the merits of Amazon, here are some practical ways I’ve shifted some my spending away, should you decide that’s something you want to do.…
Among my friends growing up, I was the only one who didn’t get an allowance. My friends would get some spending money weekly, sometimes in exchange for doing chores. I had to do tasks for free! Child abuse, right?
My parents weren’t too poor to give me an allowance; this was all part of their sinister plan.…
One of the most popular articles I’ve written is called Why do stocks go up and down. The conclusions it draws are not what you are going to hear on CNBC or from financial analysts. It’s uncomfortable to think that stock movements have no direct connection to what they call “fundamentals” unless a critical mass believes that and acts on it in the market.…
I was motivated to major in Economics because I wanted to understand human behavior and how the world works. Especially things that don’t make any sense.…
About 10 years ago or so, I thought of creating a website called Steal This Idea, inspired by the classic book by Abbie Hoffman called Steal This Book. Not being a web designer and lacking time, the idea never became reality.
The basic concept was very simple: the world is full of people with great ideas, but few become reality, but rarely because the person with the idea doesn’t want it to be, but because they lack the resources or know-how or even time to make it real.…