I've seen this '50/30/20 rule' recommend before, in the UK press (financial articles) and by banks [1] and financial resources.
I'm interested in it's origin, whether it still holds true today (is the advice still valid) and alternatives strategies for comparison (given today's current economical climate, rising inflation and interest rates).
given that it's a 1/3 rule elsewhere, it would be interesting to know indeed. it's split a bit differently than your link, but it's a third of your after-tax income to go toward living expenses, a third toward your home and the last third toward savings and investments.
Lots of so called challenger banks offer virtual cards which can be used with merchants you do not trust, thus mitigating the risk of them having your ACTUAL card number which they can abuse/leak.
Yes, but if you already have PayPal, it's much easier to just use it as opposed to:
1. get an account with a new back
2. transfer funds
3. have new temporary card issued
4. use that card to pay
Can anyone recommend some good blog articles or books (aimed at lay people) on how the global economy works, bank interactions with other banks, and government management of inflation and interest rates?
I'd like to understand a bit about both the previous crash and the current banking crisis, but feel I need to do some background reading first.
Be careful out there reading blogs. Maybe I'm biased because I have a degree in Econ from MIT, but I'd highly recommend starting out with the "orthodox" treatment of the subject, as you'd learn at a university. To that end Core Econ[0] is a very solid, free, engaging, easy to read book that covers it. Chapter 10, "Banks, money, and the credit market", is particularly what you're asking about. You can take a look at the authors and editorial board[1] and you'll see they're a bunch of professors and professional economists at banks, that sort of thing.
I've had some thought provoking fun reading, e.g. unorthodox "Austrian School" economics by Mises, but you should be wary of reading blogs, as lots of incorrect things in Econ can sound convincing if you don't have the right background.
In the words of Joan Robinson "The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists." Everything written by mainstream economists should be taken in such light. Being a professional economist is not the authority you suggest it is.
As opposed to the arm-chair economists writing blogpost with an agenda?
Economics is not an exact science like maths or physics. "The Economy" is the collective human activity. It depends on so many actors. Actors who don't have full information, and who don't actually behave in a rational way.
Yes, I would be weary of anyone who speaks in absolutes and you should use your own common sense and judgement.
That the Austrian School is being singled out is particularly interesting right now, given that they are highly critical of fractional-reserve banking precisely because it might generate crises such as the one we're living through. Chapter 10 of the Core Econ book does not feature the word "fractional" and only talks about reserves and money creation in passing [0]
So I hope that, like the Index, you warning steers people towards instead of away from austrian aconomics :)
I started college as a business major focusing on finance. Ended up switching to software but got enough finance under my belt to know the basics.
Definitely start with learning the basics of the "standard" models used by mainstream economists today. Whether you end up going down the rabbit hole of Austrian economics or bitcoin madness, it's best to know what the mainstream view is first IMO. Know your enemies, and all that
>> The thing that people don't understand about these elite, neoclassical economists from Harvard, MIT, etc. is that while their whole brand is being "empirical" and objective, they are as ideological and politically driven as the most ardent Maoist who ever existed
As a layperson with no economic credentials, I’d recommend books with a bit of entertainment value, even if they may gloss over some details. It’s still important to understand the basic theory and mechanics of the financial markets, but it’s equally important to understand the human factors and politics involved, and some of these more narrative books are helpful in that regard.
I found The Big Short both entertaining and enlightening on the 2008 crash, a while back I also read “The Number” by Alex Berenson, which focuses more on corporate equities and the rise of earnings per share as a driving metric.. I did also read about half of an older book called “Secrets of the Temple”, which gives a history of how Paul Volcker handled the inflation crisis of the 80s. That was more dense but really helped solidify my understanding of the Fed. I’ve also recently started “Random Walk through Wall Street”, which again is mostly equities-focused but so far seems to give a balanced take on the financial and human factors.
As far as explaining the most recent crisis, I’ve found this blog [0] to be the most informative, approachable and somewhat entertaining. Very clear explanation of what exactly the BTFP program is doing, with a healthy amount of speculation about how it could be abused and potential effects of that. Disclaimer that it’s written by a crypto researcher, but there’s very little content about crypto.
Have a look at "Investing in Stocks, How to Win Big! Strategizing, Positioning, and Leveraging for Success" by Kishore Mishra. It's self-pub on Amazon. The title is truly horrendous, the text would benefit from an editor, the layout would benefit from professional typesetting, etc. But it's written by an EE. I started reading it a while ago and liked how he approached the explanation from the ground up. It spoke to my engineering mind. Unfortunately I had to set it aside and it's been on my shelf for a while. But I'm thinking of picking it up again.
I had discovered this author by reading another book he wrote entitled "Advanced Chip Design, Practical Examples in Verilog". Also self-pub and also suffering from lots of self-pub issues. But the essentials were more-or-less there.
Oh crumbs, you're going to get wildly different understandings depending on what camp the books come from. Personally, I'm of the view that the most coherent understanding comes from the MMT crowd, but much of that is quite subtle and open to deep misinterpretation (and regularly is). Warren Moslers' writings are excellent, but make you think https://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/. Neil Wilson writes in a very accessible way and has bite size articles that cover many things you're talking about: https://new-wayland.com/blog/ (IMO, that blog is full of gold).
It does not cover everything you asked for, but Ray Dalio has a excellent 30 min. video that explains ELI5 how the economy works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0
Lords of Finance - a nonfiction book by Liaquat Ahamed about events leading up to and culminating in the Great Depression as told through the personal histories of the heads of the Central Banks of the world's four major economies at the time.
That's none of your concern, plus it's far too complex for someone like you to understand - a lot of complex math and statistical models that only we can understand. Just leave everything to us.
Reading this[1] and getting the data structures/mental model correctly internalised in my head.
Although I do use git from the cli (or magit) primarily, this knowledge has helped me pick-up front end tools intuitively and have helped others when I've never used their preferred tool. All of this doesn't seem possible unless you've put in the effort learning what's going on behind the scenes. That is to say, git itself it neither user friendly nor intuitive it must be learned.
Knowing mercurial (hg) beforehand did slow my learning progress a bit with all the false-friends. You may find it easier to learn if you don't have to re-learn some naming.
This is my answer too. The main git book is very well written. I stopped reading just before it got into rebasing and had to pick that up from the internet due to work requirements, but the book was so solid in explaining the basics that I understood outside stuff almost immediately.
I think one thing that’ll help OP, is to learn everything on the command line. The fine grain control is worth the extra effort. I’ve hated almost all git GUIs in most IDEs because they won’t let me do weird things like grafting branches which is a very advanced concept for them but once you understand git, it is a very simple operation.
Meditation audio can also work, but for me, the gaps of silence are too long, and my brain starts churning/processing. (I know the point of meditation is to overcome this.)
