Motivation

I've wanted to keep a blog for awhile now to comment on the news/trends of the economic and financial worlds. At first the plan was to educate and invite discussion on investment ideas and personal finance. I recently started investing in stocks on my own (and looked into bonds but after learning their jargon and minutiae, decided the few available to the small fry like me weren't worth it for now), and thought my experiences with trading it and learning about them could help other young investors like my friends being paid handsomely in Silicon Valley who have some money sitting in a bank account otherwise earning some ridiculously low amount of interest. (Or they could be spending everything on hookers and coke.)

While I'm sure a few people would certainly benefit from that, it felt like too narrow a focus. So I put this idea on the backburner. Once election season heated up, it was impossible to avoid all the partisan, half-baked economic ideas coming out of the mouths of our wonderful candidates. (For the record, I despise politicians of all stripes: red, blue, green, purple, orange ... you name it, especially when they espouse flawed economic theories to pander to their constituents or attack their opponents).

Aha, so here's a pretty big issue ... but the more I thought of it, the more it seemed like addressing these economic falsehoods would be akin to taping band-aids on a gunshot victim. Polticians will keep gushing ad nauseum and people will keep believing. It wasn't until I read this article in the Economist that I connected it to another big problem I've been all too aware of: mathematical illiteracy. Then it all became clear: so many of our current problems and misconceptions can be directly attributed to a huge and growing inability to comprehend math and numbers. The article isn't even news. Similar studies have been done years ago showing the same results.

An example I'll explain in greater detail later: the student debt issue (Before taking out a loan, do people understand first, what type of loan they're agreeing to? Do they understand what is a percent, much less the difference between 3.4% vs 12%, or how compounding interest works?). From all the stories of students deeply in debt, I'm willing to bet the answers for many of them are a resounding "No."

Fractions???

So maybe this blog won't save my hypothetical gunshot patient from dying anyways. My childhood hero Albert Einstein used to say "Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, but I'm not sure about the former." At least perhaps it will make you readers think about math, economics, and finance differently from what the tv, the news, or local politician tries to pull over your eyes.

The potential topics are limitless, so feel free to post questions you have, and I'll try to answer as many as I am able to.