Financial Well-being

Special muni  bonds category called Build America Bonds  seems to offer very decent return as safe bond. For example, one of inexpensive etfs in this muni category, Invesco Taxable Municipal Bond ETF (BAB)  , offers 6% coupon rate for half of such bonds in it's portfolio. Overall coupon rate comes out to be in 4.25% range. This seems to have resulted in total return for this ETF for last 1,3,5,10  years timeframe to be in 7.5%  range. This is almost 3% higher  than Total Bond index for similar time horizons. These long term  muni bonds were mainly issued in 2009-2010 by states/municipalities to finance state level major projects to spur growth after 2008 great recession. Federal government has been providing significant (35%) subsidy  towards interest payment to bond issuer . This, in turn, enabled  these bonds to offer better  rates than traditional munis. BAB seems to have outperformed  broad bonds consistently since it's incepti...

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." Quote by Warren Buffett. Perhaps applies to novice crypto speculators who have lost most of their so-called conservative  stable coin high yield savings investment. Perhaps this tide is just a beginning . Bank runs are contagious. Anyone with historical understanding of great depression era bank runs (when there was no concept of FDIC insurance) knows it.  Crypto investing space seems to be crowded by all these saving and loan fintechs involved with unrealistic high-yield  saving products (kind of like 1990 era Indian Kuber  chit fund paying 24% APR interest). Such kind of lending products are based on irrational  assumption that crypto currencies valuation will keep increasing to maintain such high yield. https://www.wsj.com/articles/fdic-scrutinizing-voyagers-marketing-on-safety-of-customer-deposit-accounts-11657212266?st=87j85augzujggle&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink Also, recent ...

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index etf (VTI) is ETF based on CRSP Total stock market model developed by top UChicago economists. It is a combined index of top 2500 stocks (based on market cap) representing almost 95% of the market cap of total stock market. Vanguard Total Stock Mkt Idx Adm (VTSAX) is underlying mutual fund for this ETF. If one wants to do automatic periodic monthly investment, one should buy VTSAX instead (as most of brokerage allow periodic investment in mutual fund only ). Money invested in a given company is proportional to their market cap weightage and so giant and large cap ones get most of money (70%) and rest goes to mid caps and small caps. S&P 500 based large cap stocks represent approx 70-75% of total domestic stock market capitalization and so investing into a mutual fund/etf based on this index provides a broad large cap  coverage for sure. However remaining 25-30% domestic stocks fall into mid cap (15-20%) and small cap (10-15%) market cap. ...