Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
Rewriting Credit Contracts
How many of you would love to rewrite your credit card contract, terms, fees, and interest rates and have the bank sign off on it? A Russian man did just that. Instead of filling out a credit card form like everyone else does, he changed a few things.
He started with the fine print. That space few bother to read but has all the dirty details. He dropped the interest rate to 0%, gave himself an unlimited balance, and dropped all the fees. The best part, he added fees the bank must pay if they ever cancel or change the contract.
The brilliance of it worked. Now everyone will be trying to rewrite their terms.
Problem Solving
Investing is a mental challenge. There are ways to simplify it, take index investing, even then you still have behavior to fend against. Of course, that’s the biggest problem most of us deal with. I guarantee there’s a company out there trying to build a product or service that removes emotion from the equation.
Emotion is only part of the equation. There are perception issues for sure. When the market drops, most people only see losses. Yet, there are some that see a big opportunity. I’m sure there’s a number of reasons for both. But one article specifically cites a lack of reading. It discusses Munger’s push for worldly wisdom. He also harps on understanding the thought process and how to look at problems. Which is probably where most of us go wrong.
That’s something we can learn from Einstein’s way of problem solving. It’s about understanding the problem so definitively a solution becomes natural. You probably don’t need it to fix a light bulb. It’s certainly something we can use towards investing or any of life’s bigger problems.
Last Call
- Day Trading Is a Sucker’s Game – have to agree, I’d rather own something for months to years than days or minutes.
- Stocks: Getting Ready for a Train Wreck – reminder that staying the course and doing nothing turns out well.
- Interest Rates are Near Historic Lows – Fact Check – Keeping up with inflation should be your first goal.
- Confessions of an Institutional Investor – Great piece offering an inside view on institutional money management.
- 3 Economic Stories That Get Blown Out of Proportion – busts three big headline econ myths that keep popping up.