Thoughts on Things

There are lots of great annual fee credit cards out there with big spend bonuses and perks but for the average consumer who either doesn’t have the time or expertise to take advantage, there are enough great free cards that should cover all bases. For someone who mostly spends on Restaurants or Travel (taxi, flights, hotels), and Amazon for just about everything else, my spending habits can be captured with the following 4 cards: Uber Visa, Citi DoubleCash, Amazon Store Card, Chase Freedom These 4 cards will allow you to average 2-5% cash back all of your purchases, and best of all – no annual fees! Uber Visa: 4% on restaurants, 3% on hotels/airfare, 2% on online purchases (Uber included), 1% on everything else. No foreign transaction fees! Chase Freedom 5% on categories (up to $75 back) - only use during the quarter that is relevant (Q1 gas stations and commuter transportation, Q2 grocery and drugstores, Q3 restaurants and movie theaters, Q4 Walmart and department Stor...

MongoDB (MDB), one of the biggest names in NoSQL databases has gone public! Investors rejoice as the stock shoots up over 30% in its debut on the NASDAQ last week, putting it’s market cap at over $1.5 billion. In a CNBC interview with CEO Dev Ittycheria on IPO day, he claimed that MongoDB sees itself as a partner to cloud giants like Amazon and criticizes traditional database technologies as archaic. The company also touts the Stack Overflow survey of 64,000 developers that reported MongoDB as their preferred database to work with. For the average retail investor potentially looking to jump on the MongoDB ship, there are a few contextual points you will want to understand with regards to these comments. Unless you work with both NoSQL and traditional relational databases (RDBMS) on a daily basis, there will likely be knowledge gaps you will want to fill before deciding whether or not to invest. First, a three sentence description of SQL and NoSQL . SQL - involve...

Personal finance is a tricky subject for young workers, as it is often a scary and unfamiliar path. Whether or not you took personal finance classes in college, it will definitely be something you need to prepare to deal with, as your actions (or inactions) will have drastic consequences. With current interest rates, putting money in a traditional savings account is akin to stuffing money under a mattress. Here I seek to highlight alternative methods of saving that will preserve and grow the value of your money. Why does preservation of capital matter? For simplicity sake assume you graduated in 2013 and have been working for the last 3 years taking home an average of $100K a year. According to U.S. Inflation Calculator , you effectively lost $6.6K over that time just due to inflation (2.2%). Another way of putting it, the average prices for goods and services have increased 2.2%, thus eroding your purchase power. So what exactly are these better uses to grow your savings? The foll...

While I believe that picking individual stocks can be perceived as gambling, I still do it, because it’s a game where with some proper research and luck, you can beat out the consensus estimate for particular companies. I am still completely of the belief that for most investors looking to dabble in stocks, the best way is still to buy an index of the broader market (ex. SPY). Here, I wish to expand on the sentiment that you should “Never invest in a business you cannot understand” – Warren Buffett. The corollary of this is “Buy what you understand”, which includes such tactics as investing in products or services that you use the most (eg. Apple, Microsoft, etc.). Buffett’s rule seems very simple and unimaginative at first, but I believe that there is more to it than meets the eye and I will show you one way I turn this motto into an investing strategy.   The Case of Apple   When we begin to think about the companies we know, Apple quickly comes to mind. It’s a ...