Most people see “DLA” on their credit report and skim past it. Date of last activity doesn’t sound as urgent as “late payment” or “collections,” but it matters more than it looks — especially if you’re dealing with old debt, or trying to figure out whether a dormant account is still worth keeping open.
Continue reading “DLA on credit report: what the date of last activity actually means”
Not an Italian luxury car.
No. Pareto was the Italian economist that came up with the 80/20 rule. He figured out 20% of the richest families held 80% of the wealth (this is probably worse nowadays). More generally stated, the 80/20 rule says that 80% of the results come from 20% of the inputs, you spend 80% of your time doing 20% of your tasks, etc, etc.
I’ve already blogged about Buffet’s annual letters twice: in 2018 I wrote about a few quotes, and in 2019 I wrote about some lessons learned.
Now I have to confess that after some six or seven years of reading them they are getting a bit repetitive, although there is always something new. This year the new thing is some interesting idea Buffett shares from a quasi-obscure book from 1924 I had never heard about before: “Common stocks as Long Term Investments” by Edgar Lawrence Smith.
People land on this question for an understandable reason. Someone’s told them a CPN will give them a fresh start — a clean credit history, no trace of the old one, a new nine-digit number to use instead of their Social Security number on credit applications. It sounds like a solution. I want to explain clearly why it isn’t, and why the people selling them are either misinformed or actively running a scam.
Continue reading “What is a CPN? (And why you should avoid it)”
Let’s face it, we live in a culture that glorifies busyness. The business of busyness. It’s as if being busy is a badge of honor that we wear with pride. We fill our schedules to the brim with meetings, appointments, and endless to-do lists. But why? Are we really accomplishing anything or are we just spinning our wheels?
