psa thursday

This morning, almost every major brokerage halted trading on the most volatile stocks, including GameStop, BlackBerry, Bed Bath & Beyond, Nokia, and AMC Theaters.

We’re in a situation where major trading platforms are blocking retail investors – us – from placing trades, while allowing hedge funds and institutional investors to drive prices.

That is not a free market.

When you don’t let people buy, and you don’t let people sell, you’re locking people out of the game entirely.

Yesterday, I was worried that grandma and grandpa would make the wrong investment choices and irrationally bet their life savings away. Now, they’re prohibited from making any choice. ?

We deserve the right to make our own trading decisions.

For the latest updates, follow me on Twitter or Instagram (check out my stories). I’m sharing my thoughts on these platforms as things unfold.

If you blinked, you missed the biggest stock market story since the crash of March 2020. 

It’s a story that led GameStop, a brick-and-mortar company that sells *physical* video games (remember when games came on 5.25-inch floppy disks?), to skyrocket its share price by 700 percent in two weeks. 

It’s a story that explains why multiple brokerages — including Vanguard, Schwab, Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, RBG Direct Investing, ThinkorSwim, Webull, E-Trade, and more — had such high volume and demand on Wednesday that these trading platforms briefly shutdown, or had intermittent service.

It’s a story that explains why AMC Theaters rose 264 percent, um, YESTERDAY. 

It explains why overlooked retailers such as Nokia, Blackberry and Bed, Bath and Beyond rose by approximately 35 to 45 percent yesterday (as of 3:30 pm Eastern, half an hour before market close). 

And it’s a story that explains why Express rose 166 percent in a single day, with such heavy trading volume that several brokerages halted all trades of its stock simply because the platforms couldn’t keep up with the firehose of orders.

Welcome back to PSA Thursday, a weekly-ish segment in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life in the year that is 2020.

Today we provide an update on the latest news in student loan forgiveness and forbearance, plus smart strategies for student loan repayment in 2021.

Here’s what we discuss:

• When you can expect to make payments on qualifying student loans again
• What could happen in the future
• How to budget for your student loan repayments
• Should you make extra student loan payments?
• What you should do if you have private student loans
• How your employer could potentially help you pay off your loans (if they have an educational assistance program in place)

Many people in the personal finance / FIRE community have a complicated relationship with the concept of consumer spending.

They may see family, friends and neighbors demonstrate one extreme — they’re profligate spenders who will buy anything — and, in an effort to be nothing like them, they may overcompensate by becoming extreme penny-pinchers. (I see this often at the start of a person’s FIRE journey, when the pendulum is swinging sharply in the other direction). 

The reality is that neither extreme is healthy.

There’s a middle ground between being so gullible that you’ll buy anything vs. being so cynical that you build a wall that shuts real value out of your life and hampers your growth.

In recognition of that balanced middle path, today’s PSA Thursday episode focuses on five questions that you should ask yourself before making a purchase.

Welcome back to PSA Thursday, a weekly-ish segment in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life in the year that is 2020.

Today, we’re tackling one of the biggest line-items on your budget: food.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2019, Americans spent just over $8,000 on food.

If you’re on a tight budget, slashing your grocery bill is one of the easiest ways to spend less. But what if you don’t want to compromise on healthy eating?

Today’s guest, Rosemary Fotheringham, is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (FNTP) who’s also on the path to financial independence. She and her husband slashed their monthly grocery bill from $1,200 down to $300 – without eating pasta every night.

In this episode, Rosemary explains their framework for healthy eating and shares her best tips for eating well on a tight budget.

Welcome back to PSA Thursday, a weekly-ish segment in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life in the year that is 2020.

Paula Pant and Andy Hill broadcast from Dallas, where they’re part of a bare-bones skeleton production crew that’s hosting the 10th annual FinCon, a conference for a community of personal finance podcasters, YouTubers and bloggers.

On the evening before the event, they reflect on the importance of community, especially when it comes to learning about money management. Enjoy this behind-the-scenes glimpse.

Paula and Andy discuss:

• Why FinCon is a great resource for discovering others in the personal finance space. For example, content creators who cover Canada, student loan debt, parenting, etc.
• Why you shouldn’t hand your critical thinking over to someone else
• The philosophy of Afford Anything, and why that and the community come first
• Paula’s worldview on being an “expert” or a “guru” and how you can present yourself differently
• Paula puts Andy in the hot seat: how does he see himself as a content creator?
• Leading from behind

Welcome back to PSA Thursday, a weekly-ish segment in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life in the year that is 2020.

Many of us have experienced disconnection from our loved ones this year, especially with older family members. It can be difficult to stay in touch when parents and grandparents aren’t technologically savvy. They might not know how to text, how to use their cell phone to place a call, or how to initiate a video call.

We hope that can change after you listen to this episode.

To help us learn how we can stay connected with the senior citizens in our lives, we brought on Bria Sullivan. She works for a company that owns more than 300 senior living care facilities, and her role is to provide materials to teach those seniors how to use technology — anything from making a Zoom call to setting up a Chromebook to sending a text message. For the past six years, Bria has also had a supplemental side hustle teaching seniors how to use technology.

Today, she shares her best tips on how we can do the same with the elders we love.