Brent Esplin

What Do Credit Cards and Mosquitoes Have in Common?

The American Mosquito Control Association declares, “Mosquitoes cause more human suffering than any other organism.”  Wikipedia quantifies this suffering, stating “Nearly 700 million people get a mosquito borne illness each year resulting in greater than one million deaths.”  Those who escape the worst consequences of mosquitoes still don’t get off unscathed.  Mosquitoes have ruined countless…

Save More Tomorrow TED Talk

In the past I have written about “Save More Tomorrow,”, an innovative plan that uses the principles of behavioral finance to help people increase their retirement savings over time.  Here is a link to my prior post, titled “Use the ‘Wimpy’ Savings Plan to Increase Your Savings Rate“. I recently ran across an interesting TED talk by Shlomo Benartzti,…

Index Funds vs. Actively Managed Funds: 2014 Results

I advocate investing in low-cost index funds as opposed to trying to find actively managed funds that outperform the market.  Many studies have shown that, over time, this will almost surely give you the best results.  So how did this method work in 2014?  The January/February issue of Money Magazine had some interesting statistics.  The…

When the Market Goes Crazy, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There

Stock markets have had a rough couple of weeks to start the New Year.  They recovered a bit Friday but they are still down considerably since January 1.  Although the year is young the Dow has already suffered several triple-digit losses, sometimes on consecutive days. When this happens people become restless and wonder what they…