“Hey, you put chocolate in my peanut butter…”
I’m a scientist who likes to talk about personal finance; hence, the blog. By “Science and Money,” I intend to talk about stuff that is included in the diagram on the left, not the right. It would have been more correct to call the blog “Science or Money,” but it just didn’t sound right.
“If you’re so smart how come you ain’t rich?” — Louis Jordan, among others
Personal finance isn’t just about numbers.
When choosing between a 4-year adjustable rate and a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, you’re not just evaluating the stream of payments vis-a-vis forgone investing opportunities. You need to consider how long you’re planning to stay in the house and how well you’ll sleep knowing that your mortgage payment could double in a few years. You need to run the numbers and talk it over with your spouse. Oohhh. Relationship stuff.
Investing can be as much about emotion as the numbers. The value of a stock is partly about the company’s performance (the numbers), but often, it’s more about the street’s expectations (qualitative soft stuff). I know a lot of really smart people who hung onto stock too long because they weren’t willing to concede a loss (Hint: I used to work at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies). For them, as for a lot of folks, holding on to the losing stock was an emotional issue, not a rational choice.
For about a year, I’ve written posts for my business website, Affine Financial Services, but I wanted a little more “elbow room” when it came to writing on ideas slightly off topic. “Science and Money” creates the right space for me to rant a bit.
Whether you have questions about mortgages or college financing or investing for retirement or solar energy, I hope you find something of interest at this site. Let me know if you agree, disagree, or just want to add your two cents. Your feedback helps move the conversation forward.
Science and Money Feed
Anthony
on Apr 25th, 2010
@ 4:36 pm:
Hi S&M,
I’ve noticed that you submitted to personal finance blog carnivals in the past. I want to let you know that I’ve launched a new carnival and I’d like to encourage you to submit any relevant blog posts.
Here are the submission guidelines: http://www.clearchoicecreditcards.com/submissions
and, here’s the submission form: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_10044.html
Look forward to seeing your post.
Regards
Anthony
Mark hebner
on Apr 25th, 2010
@ 7:11 pm:
Since you like science and money, you are going to like my website, http://www.ifa.com . See any of the iPortfolio pages. Let me know what you think. Best Regards, Mark Hebner
Jeff Foxx
on Apr 29th, 2010
@ 9:36 am:
I enjoyed our talk Tuesday evening on the flight to LA.
I hope you made it home safely and in good spirits for your morning walk.
I looked up your blog to get more of your interesting insights and look forward
to following your lines of inquiry, analysis and rants!
Keep up the good work and best of luck with the community construction
approval effort you are working on. Regards, Jeff
Helen
on Apr 29th, 2010
@ 8:26 pm:
Jeff:
I’m not usually so chatty on airplane trips, but I truly enjoyed our conversation. And I’m touched that you took the time to seek out my website. Thanks for the bon mots, and I hope our paths cross again one day.
Regards,
Helen.
John
on May 6th, 2010
@ 6:55 pm:
Helen,
I loved the Monte Carlo Estimator for retirement planning tool you had published on Queercents on June 09, 2009 and it sure motivates me to plan my spending and see if I will make it safely to retirement.
Did you ever manage to create v2 to include
# Taxable vs. post-tax savings.
# Moving to a more conservative investment strategy as you near retirement. This reduces the uncertainty significantly, and decreases the spread in the probability of success.
I found a few calculators; but I love your excel based tool since it is simplistic and yet does amazing number crunching.
P.S. I could not find a way to subscribe to the Science and Money blog via email. Is there another way to have the content delivered automatically?
Thank you,
John
Helen
on May 13th, 2010
@ 12:42 am:
John:
I’m so glad you like the Monte Carlo Estimator. I would (still) like to update it to include the features you mentioned. Oh, if there were only 28 hours in a day! Ditto on the email subscription option — I’ll work on it. I’m always more motivated to work on a topic if I know someone is interested. Thanks for letting me know. And thanks for following me here from Queercents.
John
on May 23rd, 2010
@ 9:16 pm:
Thank you Helen. Can hardly wait for v2 of the Monte Carlo Estimator.
BTW I managed to find the email subscription link and can now follow your posts on a regular basis.
Best,
John
Bob Munson
on Jun 29th, 2010
@ 8:53 pm:
I made some slight changes to the retirement estimator:
“Pension” in C13 and C22.
Pension1 = ActiveCell.Offset(8, 0) ‘under SocSecBene1
Pension2 = ActiveCell.Offset(8, 0) ‘under SocSecBene2
‘ and in calculating how much each person needs:
ActiveCell.Offset(i, 1) = RetNeed1 * ActiveCell.Offset(i, -1) – Pension1
ActiveCell.Offset(i, 1) = RetNeed2 * ActiveCell.Offset(i, -1) – Pension2
This is just a rough cut at pensions, since my own provides 75% to my spouse after I die, and that’s not reflected in the formulas.
Anyway, thank you for writing the spreadsheet. I learned something about Excel and my own retirement finances.
Helen
on Jul 2nd, 2010
@ 9:22 pm:
Fantastic, Bob. So glad to hear that you took the trouble to improve upon the retirement estimator. I’ll try to incorporate your suggestion in the next version. (It’s overdue for an update.)