This weekend’s reading list brings you articles ranging from the usual realm of economics and investing to AI, Influencers, and Crypto with a link to Ron Lieber’s Your Money article in case you missed it!

ICYMI

• Here is the Ron Lieber article “Letter to a Young Crypto Enthusiast” in which Yaanely Espinal is quoted. (NYT)

Economics

• Here is a great interactive on income distribution (what percentile are you in based on wealth, salary, location) and the cost of living, including the ability to compare two places. This might be useful to use if you have students run scenarios living in particular cities with particular salaries. (Bloomberg)
• Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown of Axios take a slightly broader look at how inflation seems to be cooling over the summer months, as it did a bit the last two summers, but it is still stubbornly higher than where we want it to be. They compare this summer to previous summers and see some hopeful differences this year.
• Are consumers too optimistic thinking inflation is subsiding? (WaPo)
• Streaming services are getting more expensive. Disney just announced another price increase. (marketingbrew.com)
• Retail sales this month was a good news/bad news situation: higher than expected increase in retail sales leads folks to believe higher interest rates will be around longer if consumer demand is not slowing down. (CNBC)

Investing

• Bond yields have seen yields not seen since 2008. Seeking Alpha discusses the prospects for additional upward movement in light of the information gleaned from minutes from the recent FOMC.
• A Wealth of Common Sense looks at the corollary—when bond yields are up, prices are down. 2023 could be the third year in a row with losses in the ten-year.
• And mortgage rates hit the highest level in 21 years this week. (CNN)

Insurance

• Blue Shield of California drops CVS Caremark as their pharmacy benefit manager and will shop for drugs for its customers at Amazon and Mark Cuban's lower cost sources.  Is this the beginning of the end for the PBM model?  (CNBC)

Paying for College

• Judge ruled allowing the Biden loan forgiveness revamp to proceed. 800,000 eligible and 200,000 have already received help. (Yahoo Finance)

Career

• AI has been in the news a lot recently. Here are two articles related to the job market and AI.
• The WSJ (subscription may be required) describes AI related job postings with outrageously high salaries.
• Knowledge@Wharton discusses a paper recently published looking at consumer preferences for which goods and services they would be comfortable with being created/delivered by AI, and where human labor input would be important to them.

Personal Finance

• The WSJ (subscription may be required) lists 25 finance tips for students entering college. It might be interesting to see if these 25 would make it on your list?

Influencers

• As with child actors, child influencers need to be protected in terms of ensuring the earnings they bring in are paid to them. Illinois is the first state to enact a law doing just that. (ABC)

About the Author

Beth Tallman

Beth Tallman entered the working world armed with an MBA in finance and thoroughly enjoyed her first career working in manufacturing and telecommunications, including a stint overseas. She took advantage of an involuntary separation to try teaching high school math, something she had always dreamed of doing. When fate stepped in once again, Beth jumped on the opportunity to combine her passion for numbers, money, and education to develop curriculum and teach personal finance at Oberlin College. Beth now spends her time writing on personal finance and financial education, conducts student workshops, and develops finance curricula and educational content. She is also the Treasurer of Ohio Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy.