Ah, my first Thoughtful Thursday column since I got back from my trip out to California. I feel I’ve missed so much, more than a week of posts at all the blogs I follow and emails from all the other sites I frequent. It’ll take me a little while to catch up, but with so many great writers out there, it’ll be fun the whole time. Here are a few of the articles from this last week that I’ve enjoyed:
How to get a Federal Job – Over on My Life ROI, there’s some good advice for anyone who hopes to gain a job with the federal government. It’s a pretty article, and given how crummy the broader economy has been doing lately, having a job with excellent benefits and almost no chance of disappearing sounds downright perfect.
Credit Card Reform Treats College Students Like Babies – Stephanie (who is, as always, Poorer Than You) makes note of the recent changes in the laws regulating credit card companies. In particular, she focuses on the new rules requiring college students under twenty-one to have proof of ability to repay or get a parent to cosign. I’m less upset by these requirements than others seem to be; if we were talking about a group other than college students, having proof of income or a cosigner would be required anyway. To my view, all this does is make it harder for credit card companies to guilt parents into paying off their children’s debt on cards about which the parents didn’t even know. Of course, as with any legislation, I’m certain there will be unintended consequences, but we’ll have to see what happens once this becomes law.
Peer-To-Peer Lending With a Twist – As you might be aware, I do some investing with Lending Club, where I make loans to other individuals and get paid interest back in return. So, it was with great interest that I read the post about Pertuity over on No Debt Plan. Apparently, rather than make individual loans as with Lending Club or its nearest rival, Prosper, Pertuity allows you to put your money into a single fund, from which all the interest is paid and all the loans are made.
It’s an interest concept, sort of a mutual fund for peer-to-peer lending. The ability to pull your money out of the investment without having to sell the loan is plus, as is not being dependent on the reliability of any one borrower. But, given the relatively low cost of each individual loan on sites like Lending Club, it shouldn’t be too hard to assemble your own diverse portfolio without too much money and effort. Plus, there is the added personal touch of knowing that your money is going to, say, help someone to consolidate their loans and get out of debt. Still, Pertuity is something to keep an eye on for the future.
Investment Clichés: Helpful or Not? – On The Writer’s Coin, there’s talk about whether investment clichés are helpful. In particular, he focuses on whether the oft-quoted ‘8% average return’ on stock investments is useful, especially given the always present warning on investment products, ‘past results are not indicative of future returns’. Personally, I think it is easy to put too much emphasis on that 8% (or 10%, 12%, or whatever figure you hear), and assume that just because that’s the average stocks have returned in the past, you can expect that return each and every year. Still, for long-term planning, you need to have some idea of what to expect in the future, and these clichés serve as a good place to start your research. (Note: start with the clichés, but by all means, don’t stop there.)
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