Once a week, we bring you a Roundup of recent articles on investing, personal finance, and other money-related matters.
We hope you find them informative and helpful!
Hopes fade for new stimulus checks, federal jobless aid (The Wall Street Journal via MSN). Perhaps not spending hundreds of billions more on COVID relief isn’t a bad option (see next item).
An update to the Budget Outlook: 2020 to 2030 (Congressional Budget Office). Wow. "Federal outlays are projected to equal 32% of GDP in 2020, 11 percentage points (or about 50%) above what they were in 2019.... CBO’s estimate of the deficit for 2020 is now $2.2 trillion more than the agency estimated in March 2020 — mostly because of recently enacted legislation."
Money markets have a $750 billion problem in zero-rate world (Bloomberg via Yahoo). Some "prime" money-market funds, once highly popular with savers, are shutting down.
The fall real estate market is abnormally hot as mortgage rates break records (Forbes). The average 30-year fixed-rate is at 2.86%, according to Freddie Mac. The 15-year rate is 2.37%.
One 9/11 tally: $3.3 trillion (The New York Times). Here’s an estimate of financial costs related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, published by the Times nine years ago. Interestingly, some of the figures seem small compared to recent spending on COVID-19.
And from the pundits and bloggers...
What to do if you don’t have a 401(k) (Christine Benz, Morningstar). You do have some good options.
Why even the best stocks have to crash (Ben Carlson, A Wealth of Common Sense). Something will go wrong. It always does.
Debtors’ prison (Isaac Cathey, Humble Dollar). What one man learned from getting into debt and getting out again.
Part one: Q&A with Morgan Housel author of The Psychology of Money (Abnormal Returns). Housel is one of today’s best financial writers. Part two of the interview is here.
The 2 costs that can make or break your nest egg (Liz Weston, NerdWallet). The reason many people don’t save enough for retirement is they’re spending too much on current living expenses.
Have a comment about anything in this week’s Roundup? Scroll down and "Join the Discussion" below.
