Tag Archives: financial technology

saving for, and spending in, retirement

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As I move deeper into my 50s, the idea of retirement starts to feel less theoretical and more real. Now, I can’t picture myself going “cold turkey”, at a desk full time one day and on a golf course full time the next day. For one thing, I have never golfed. I could take it up, but I’m not sure it is the first thing I would take up if I had more leisure time. I picture myself more fading out of the full time work force, working part time or taking on work-like projects and hobbies whether paid or unpaid, and gradually exploring different ways I could be spending my dwindling mortal time until I figure out how I actually want to spend it. (You would think I might know that, but I don’t, and people who do are lucky. Then again, maybe it is more of a journey than a destination for most people, and the best I can do is mindfully be on that journey rather than die at a desk.)

Anyway, enough philosophy. One study that gets mentioned a lot is the Trinity Study, which is where the idea of a “safe withdawal rate” of about 4% of your savings each year comes from. It’s a starting point, but a few issues as I understand them are that (1) the study assumed you drop dead 30 years after retiring, which most people don’t actually want to do, (2) it didn’t consider inflation, and (3) it didn’t consider that you might want to leave money to a spouse or heirs. So it’s better to project your savings and spending out to the end of your life (which you might want to take an optimistic view of, because that is the conservative choice in this particular context, because technology is improving, and because it is the only life you have), set objectives (like no more than 10% chance of running out of money and leaving $XYZ to a spouse), project it out probabilistically (using DIY methods if you really know what you are doing, a professional if you don’t, or my favorite, DIY without really knowing what I am doing and an independent opinion from an expert), and make decisions from there. The good thing is that if you make decisions and/or the external world changes, and you don’t like how that changes the projection, you can adjust your decisions any time. Anyway, here is one blogger who goes into extreme detail on all this. I am sure he is one of many professionals and amateurs out there and I can’t vouch for him, but he appears to have credentials, cites evidence, and the articles are interesting.

apps for splitting bills

This Learnvest article mentions a few apps for splitting bills that I hadn’t heard of.

  • Splitwise: If your group is taking turns covering expenses (“you get this dinner; I’ll get the next”), track them with Splitwise. This app keeps a running total of who’s covered what, so you can settle the difference at the end via Venmo or PayPal.
  • Billr: Perfect for large parties, this app lets you split a bill with up to 16 people so each person pays for what they ordered, plus their portion of any shared items, tax and tip. You can also send each person a copy of the split bill in a text or email.
  • Divvy: Snap a photo of your bill and drag each item to the appropriate person (uploaded through your contacts) and Divvy will automatically add up what each person owes, plus tax and tip.

personal carbon trading

I heard “personal carbon allowances” mentioned recently, and hadn’t heard of it before, so I grabbed this from Wikipedia:

Personal carbon trading is the generic term for a number of proposed emissions trading schemes under which emissions credits would be allocated to adult individuals on a (broadly) equal per capita basis, within national carbon budgets.[1] Individuals then surrender these credits when buying fuel or electricity. Individuals wanting or needing to emit at a level above that permitted by their initial allocation would be able to purchase additional credits from those using less, creating a profit for those individuals who emit at a level below that permitted by their initial allocation.

Sounds good in principle, although I think a carbon-based sales tax would be simpler and more straightforward. This concept assumes that people have time and motivation to sit around, do research, make rational choices, and engage in transactions to maximize financial gain. Busy people balancing careers, families, and the minuscule leisure time left over don’t necessarily have time to do this. For this to work, I think it would have to be pretty automated. Maybe a future of automated, computer-controlled financial transactions and markets could pull this off.

financial technology

Here is an article about new “financial technology” by the author of a book called Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible.

For example, even as we debate the relevance and usefulness of traditional financial institutions such as banks, another revolution is underway in the world of money. A mere decade after we thought we had mastered the intricacies of asset securitization, shadow banking and credit default swaps, an entirely new financial phenomenon has emerged. It is called FinTech – short for financial technology. FinTech involves the plumbing and wiring of the financial system. It is changing how we borrow, how we save, how we raise money for companies even how we assess our future; its possibilities, risks and relationships.

Some of these innovations you may already know: PayPal, Bitcoin, Financial Engines, Kickstarter, Prosper.com and Venmo. They are apps, payment systems, crowdfunding vehicles and peer to peer lending sites. Their use has spread rapidly along with other technological improvements in how we get things done. However these companies are the tip of a very large iceberg.

Many of the innovations in finance are buried in the complex, business to business infrastructure of the economy. These include new ways of detecting fraud, recording transactions, routing orders, valuing assets and even discovering hidden patterns in big data; massaging the fast, continuous flow of news, trades, tweets, satellite images, and Facebook posts. Financial companies – from the big players like Goldman Sachs and Blackrock down to your local bank and financial advisor believe FinTech will fundamentally alter their businesses — and they are rushing to get out ahead of competitors. This is because FinTech innovation tends to disrupt the existing structure. It disintermediates customers and providers of financial services, replacing them with peer-to-peer lending, instant money transfers, loans without loan officers, and investment without investment banks. These innovations are transformative, empowering and create a new infrastructure for exploring even greater opportunities but they threaten the status quo in ways that the securitization wave of the 2000’s never approached. Securitization mostly involved the same big players that ruled the markets in prior decades. FinTech brings a different cast of characters who are defining new communities of investors, new sources of knowledge and unfortunately new kinds of scams and risks. The top FinTech companies today include a lot of new names. How many of us have been following the likes of Credit Karma, Market Axcess, Square, Stripe and SoFi?

I’m all for cutting out the middlemen trying to rip us off. And I’m still looking for the perfect app for splitting a restaurant bill among a large party.