In this post, we’ll go over the basics of budgeting, show you how you can go about creating a budget for yourself, and teach you about some things you can do to make budgeting less painful and more rewarding. Read More >
In this post, we’ll cover a few of the biggest things people overlook when making financial decisions. Once you have a solid understanding of these concepts and have incorporated them into your own financial decision-making, you’ll find that you’ll be better able to not only make decisions that make sense, but also decisions that make cents. Read More >
In this post, we will examine the fundamentals of the idea of retirement in it’s current form, present an argument that a government-supported retirement is a thing of the past, and then cover what you can do to make sure you’ll be able to enjoy a comfortable retirement without having to rely on the government. Read More >
Building wealth requires that you do some things that are relatively unexciting. If you think about it, spending money is fun. Saving money, on the other hand, can be as boring as watching paint dry. This makes it hard for people to stop doing what they aren’t supposed to do and start doing what they are.
In this post, we’ll tell you about some of the basic things you need to do in order to build your wealth and explain how these things work so that you not only have an idea of what you need to do, but why you need to do it. Read More >
The truth is, for many people, the main thing holding them back from achieving the things they want in life is the way they think. People who are able to build wealth and accomplish the goals they set for themselves continuously think about the world differently than people who are complacent and find themselves stagnant instead of accelerating toward the life they want.
In this post, we’ll show you some of the differences between how wealthy and successful people think and how people who aren’t wealthy and successful think, as well as give you some pointers on how you can alter your mindset so you can think in a way that allows you to achieve the levels of wealth and success you want in your life.
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In this episode, titled Chimerica, we take a look at the globalization of finance and learn a bit about both the good and bad parts of options, hedge funds, and diversification.
The episode is called Chimerica because Ferguson envisions the relationship between China and America like they are combined into one big country, where one part of the country (China) is extraordinarily good at saving their money and funds the consumption habits of the other part (America), who is extraordinarily bad at saving their money and has a seemingly insatiable appetite for purchasing more things than they need. Read More >
In this episode, titled Safe As Houses, Ferguson explains how the landscape in the housing market went from only the financial elite owning property to home ownership being made affordable for just about everyone.
He explains how this was done by transferring the risk associated with issuing mortgages to uncreditworthy borrowers by selling the mortgages to an investment bank, the investment bank mixing a bunch of bad mortgages with a few good mortgages, and selling the bunch as investments to investors and institutions looking for a higher return on their money.
Ferguson also introduces a relatively new concept in finance called microfinance, which we think will help many developing countries become developed in an accelerated amount of time. Read More >
So far this series, Ferguson has taught us about the origins of money, the practice of lending, the emergence of banks, the invention of bonds, the formulation of the bond market, the origination of the publicly traded company, and the formation of the modern stock market.
In part 4 of the series, titled Risky Business, we move on to the next financial innovation that changed the financial world… insurance. In this episode, Ferguson shows us how insurance went from being invented to protect the wives and children of Scottish ministers upon their death all the way to the emergence of modern day derivatives markets, where some hedge funds make profits of billions of dollars a year. Read More >
In Part 1 - Dreams of Avarice, Ferguson explained where money originated, where lending money began, and how it grew to the larger-scale business of banking.
In Part 2 - Human Bondage, we learned how the ability to sell debt obligations to raise money allowed countries to rise to prominence and how the ability to buy and sell those instruments formed a market where bonds could be traded.
In part 3 of the series, titled Blowing Bubbles, Ferguson takes us back to the origins of publicly-traded companies, stock markets, and the bubbles that have accompanied them from the very beginning.
The ability of investors to invest in a company, share in the success of that company, and be able to sell their ownership stake in the company if they felt their profits were at risk, formed the basis for how stock markets work today. Read More >
In part 1 of this series, titled Dreams of Avarice, Ferguson took us on a journey (both back in time an geographically) to where money originated, where the practices of lending money began, and where the practice of lending money grew from small-scale operations to the larger-scale business of banking.
In this part, Ferguson explains how bond markets work and describes the events that led to the origination of bonds and the bond market, which were the next financial innovations (after the invention of money and the practice of money-lending) that changed the world. Read More >