Dave Ramsey and Asset/Liability Matching

While I don't personally follow Dave Ramsey's advice, I do occasionally read his column in the Sunday paper. In spite of that, generally I think it's good advice and more people would do well to follow it. With private debt levels at very high levels right now, especially household debt, it makes sense to take a close look at how we use debt and whether or not its appropriate.

His most recent post gave me pause for concern though. A family has some money saved in a mutual fund for their son's college tuition. Dave recommends keeping the money there "until right before you write the checks." His rationale is that he returned 16% last year and he's hoping to get at least another 10% this year.

This is not sound advice. The reason comes down to asset/liability matching.

Is Housing an Investment?

The conventional wisdom says that it is. I'd like to suggest it's a little more complicated than that. Rather than suggesting that housing is an investment, I will argue that housing can be an investment and spell out under what conditions it is.

To some extent I will be relying on the Graham & Dodd definition of an investment. According to Graham & Dodd (from Security Analysis):

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.

 Regarding speculation, two types of speculation are classified (Graham & Dodd):

1. Intelligent Speculation - The taking of a risk that appears justified after careful weighing of the pros and cons.
2. Unintelligent Speculation - Risk taking without adequate study of the situation.

Most home buyers would classify as not giving "adequate study of the situation".

So when is a house an investment? 

That's an Empirical Question: Part III

This is a follow-up in a series exploring what the difference between "empirical" versus "mathematical" versus "philosophical" questions. For the other posts in the series see:

That's an Empirical Question: Part I
That's an Empirical Question: Part II

I'd like to consider a thought experiment though I think you can probably find some similar at manufacturing firms in the real world.

Income Inequality in the US

Here's income inequality in one simple chart.

Are stocks a good value relative to alternatives?

To explore the question about stocks we'll need some criteria and we'll need to look at some various metrics. For simplicity, I will be assuming that "stocks" means the "market" and more specifically the S&P 500. All data and conclusions will be relative to that. The main alternative investment we'll look at are Baa rated corporate bonds.

Do philosophers know particulars?

In Methodists Vs Particularists, I suggested that philosophers who are particularists may not, in fact, be so. It's possible that there are no particulars that are known per se but rather a broad set of "methods" that are employed. This may not be explicit criterion per se; as a result I shall refer to these simply as "heuristics".

We'll consider a common "simple" example in philosophy: color identification. I believe that most children learn color identification via ostensive definitions. Consider the following scenario:

Methodists Vs. Particularists

In Intuition in Philosophy, I suggested that one difference between, say, mathematicians and philosophers is that philosophers will willingly privilege an intuition over a derived result whereas the mathematician will reject the intuition in favor of the derived result. To some extent I think this characterization may not have been entirely accurate. At the very least some clarification needs to be made.

I here will argue that many philosophers are particularists whereas mathematicians tend to be methodists. "Intuition" plays a role in what particulars the philosopher claims to have knowledge. This allows for there to be something along the line of "mathematical intuition" of which I think is believed to be present by many mathematicians. I will briefly sketch out the issue here.

On the Existence of Santa Claus

While this is a very broad topic which this one blog cannot do justice, I would like to consider one argument against the existence of Santa Claus in more detail. The strategy will be to show that this argument is inadequate given two considerations.

The crucial piece of evidence for this argument is a statistical tendency for children of wealthy families to receive gifts totaling a higher value than children of poor families. This leads to two general claims.