Which is Better: Buying or Renting a Home?

Is it better to rent a home or buy one? It all depends. The TED-Ed lesson compares two people who made different choices. The amounts of money thrown around here are scary, because I've never had that much. But it's all relative. I told my kids to buy a house once they've decided where they want to live for many years to come. Otherwise, rent until you are ready to settle down. Princess bought one, where her kids can make all the noise they want. Dr. Dolittle rents. She and her husband come to my house and cosplay as house owners, mowing my lawn and doing other maintenance. Personally, I get a lot of satisfaction out of owning my home, but I never had to sign a 30-year mortgage. That's really scary. 
   

Late Stage Capitalism

(via Pleated-Jeans)

What a Deal!

(via Give Me a Sign)

How Tonga Made $100 Million Renting Space in Outer Space

The smallest countries of Oceania, spread across the Pacific, aren't rich, but some of them make a surprising amount of money by getting creative and looking to the future. Vanuatu makes a ton of money by selling citizenship. Tuvalu prospers by leasing its .tv internet domain. And Tonga was fortunate enough to be the retirement home of a satellite expert, who saw a fortune in the starry skies above his new homeland. There's money to be made in selling, or in this case renting, what you have plenty of. For Tonga, that was its isolation, which gave them a large swath of the empty space overhead. Half as Interesting explains how Tonga leveraged its location and international pacts about the use of space to make millions of dollars passively. What happened to the money is another story. This video is only around five minutes- the rest is advertising. 

Things That Are Making You Broke But Take 10 Seconds To Stop

The modern world of internet apps makes everything simple and convenient, particularly spending money. When all you have to do is push one virtual button to buy something, the price doesn't hit you nearly as hard as handing over cash. That price may look small now, but when it's multiplied over time, you'd be shocked by the total. Automatic payments often go ignored, but the effect on your bank balance adds up, and suddenly you're broke and you don't even know how it happened. Chill Dude Explains goes over ten ways your money is disappearing while you don't even notice. Not all of them are due to the convenience of the internet, but all are easy to miss if you aren't paying close attention. 

70 People Reveal How To Count Money in Their Country

In this video from Condé Nast Traveler, we watch people from around the world count the same stack of dollars. On the surface, it looks like most of them are doing it the same way, but when you look closely, there are variations that would be hard to replicate once you've learned your own way to count cash. Too bad we don't get to practice as much as we should. And you have to wonder whether these ingrained habits will fade away as we move closer to a cashless society. (via Boing Boing) 

Pizza Math

(via Bad Newspaper)

Taxing the Rich

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— Patsy “Resistance Kitty” Evans Ph.D. (@drharmony.net) May 16, 2026 at 1:13 AM

Oh, the humanity!

Ridiculous

From Married to the Sea.

Predictions

(via Bored Panda)

When You Win the Lottery

The odds of winning millions of dollars in a lottery are very, very small, and are only slightly improved by buying a ticket. But occasionally people win. The problem is that most winners believe they are now rich, when they have little understanding of how much money it takes to live like a truly rich person. Your payout is not going to be what you were led to believe, and it can be drained really quick when you see yourself as set for life. 

First, there's income taxes. Then you need to pay people to manage your money. Then you need to consider your life span and how to make a limited amount of cash last before you quit your job. This TED-Ed lesson takes a hypothetical $3 million lottery jackpot and shows how it will not make you fabulously wealthy. However, it can provide you with a comfortable life if you manage it wisely. Personally, I have managed to avoid the curse of wealth by not buying a ticket.  

Captain Obvious Strikes Again

What's most amazing about this is the fact that the WSJ needed a “study” to figure it out.

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— TweetLD (@tweetld.bsky.social) January 31, 2026 at 10:33 PM

Robert Reich on It's a Wonderful Life

Robert Reich looks at the economics of the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Well, let's say the opposing economic philosophies of George Bailey and old man Potter. It's all obvious in the story, but the questions apply to more than just a small town. Is it better to be rich, or to see everyone around you doing okay? Is life about community or competition? Your answer says a lot about you.   

Debit PIN

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— nathanwpyle (@nathanwpyle.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 2:40 PM

Bargain

(via Bad Newspaper)

ATM Fees

(via reddit)

Millionaires!

Calm down, this prediction is from 1978. (via Weird Universe)

Finding the Most Efficient Way to Fight Poverty

Jesus said the poor will always be with us, but that doesn't absolve us from trying to do something to help those who struggle to survive. There have been all kinds of antipoverty programs launched all over the world, with mixed results. Some approaches fail, while others show minimal results, and some that are promising in the short term don't hold up so well in the long term. The most promising idea is to give money directly to the poor and let them decide how to best use it. After all, poverty comes in all flavors.  

Of course, massive global antipoverty programs face barriers that make research difficult. Sometimes grants to struggling nations end up in the pockets of corrupt leaders. Funding sources, whether from governments or private foundations, can rise and fall on a whim. An enormous amount of charity funding is dedicated to saving lives in an emergency, such as famine, and aren't designed to address generational poverty. But even when a program is deemed to be ineffective in lifting a majority of recipients permanently out of poverty, it means the world to the ones who made it out.  

Comparing the Wealthiest of the Wealthy

At 19 minutes, this video is a bit longer than any I would normally post, but I couldn't stop watching even though the subject matter is depressing. We are well aware that Elon Musk is the richest man in the world today. But how does that compare to wealthy men from history? That's a sticky question for a number of reasons. First, you have to adjust for inflation. But that's still just numbers. Then you have to separate personal wealth from state riches under their control. How wealthy was each of the historically richest men compared to other people of his time? And what was the foreign exchange rate then? And most importantly, how can we really define wealth- by units of currency or by power over your neighbor? 

The Corridor Crew wrestles with each of these questions to determine the wealthiest man in history. That is/was probably something these rich guys are/were personally proud of, while the rest of us look at it as a sin. The video tries to alleviate our anger by portraying these guys as goofy CGI contestants in an elimination contest. (via Memo of the Air) 

What You Want

From Married to the Sea.