personal finance

A Big Think talk in which hedge-fund manager William Ackman goes through the basics of finance and investing in under an hour. It is pitched as a crash course on the most important concepts.

First session of MIT 15.401 Finance Theory I (Fall 2008) taught by Andrew Lo, giving a course overview and introducing core finance concepts. The course ran during the 2007-08 financial crisis.

A Last Week Tonight segment on retirement plans, high fees and bad financial advice, with comedic sketches. It explains how fees eat into retirement savings and favors low-cost passive investing.

The first lesson of Martin Shkreli's introductory investing and finance course, running about two and a half hours. His related tutorials cover reading 10-K filings and building DCF models.

Author JL Collins discusses his book The Simple Path to Wealth at Google, covering avoiding debt, simple index fund investing, and retirement accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs. It is an hour-long interview in plain language.

Ben Felix explains how to compare renting and buying a home by looking at unrecoverable costs, and distills it into the 5% rule of thumb. It is framed for a Canadian audience but broadly applicable.

A short clip from the film The Gambler in which John Goodman's character gives a monologue about the 'position of fuck you': building enough financial security that you owe nobody anything. The scene is a compact statement of financial independence as freedom.

The opening lecture of Jordan Peterson's 2017 University of Toronto personality course. He defines personality from historical, constructivist, psychoanalytic, behavioral and neuropsychological angles.

Ben Felix argues that common beliefs about renting versus buying are wrong: homes are not great investments, mortgages are not a wealth hack, and ownership does not reliably bring happiness.

A 2006 Saturday Night Live fake infomercial with Steve Martin and Amy Poehler selling the sure-fire way out of debt: don't buy stuff.

A short Globe and Mail animated explainer on why renting can leave you as well off as buying a home. It walks through a rent-versus-buy comparison using Toronto numbers and the opportunity cost of a down payment. The video notes it dates from 2015 and the housing market has changed since.

Ben Felix explains how to decide between renting and buying a home, weighing financial and non-financial factors. He argues that renting is often as good or better than owning, both financially and for well-being.

Rational Reminder podcast episode with Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money. They discuss how investing success depends more on behavior than knowledge, the role of luck and the dangers of emulating top investors.

The Tokyo Llama channel details how the creators found and bought an abandoned akiya minka house in Japan. It covers process, costs, taxes, financing and risks of renovation.

UCLA professor Dario Nardi presents brain-imaging research suggesting that different Myers-Briggs personality types use their brains in different ways. He discusses how each type can reach a state of creative flow. It is aimed at a general audience.

A VPRO documentary on quantitative analysts who designed the mathematical models and high-speed trading systems behind modern finance. It features figures such as Paul Wilmott and asks what risks come from treating markets as a machine.

Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns explains how a land value tax differs from an ordinary property tax, why it makes economic sense, and why it is rarely used. It is a short six-minute explainer.

Tom Scott visits Yale's archives to look at a 367-year-old bond from a Dutch water authority that is still paying interest. Finance professor Geert Rouwenhorst explains how it works.

A one-minute clip from the film Minority Report showing digital signage that recognizes a passerby and personalizes ads to him by name. It depicts a vision of targeted advertising driven by biometric identification.

A clip from the movie Minority Report showing personalized advertising that recognizes a person as they walk through a mall.

The full-length Numberphile interview with mathematician and hedge fund founder Jim Simons. He discusses his path from mathematics and codebreaking to founding Renaissance Technologies, his use of algorithms in markets, and his philanthropy.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on payday loans and predatory lending, covering how they trap borrowers and target the elderly and military. It features Sarah Silverman.

A Wendover Productions explainer arguing that major airlines make much of their profit from loyalty programs and co-branded credit cards rather than flying. It frames airlines as quasi-banks that sell points in bulk, using United's pandemic-era loan as a hook.

A Jordan Peterson university lecture on the Big Five trait openness to experience, covering creativity and intelligence. It explains how IQ is measured, how well it predicts life success, and the Pareto distribution of creative output.

Gary Vaynerchuk's Web 2.0 Expo keynote on building a personal brand in social media. He urges keeping a day job while building something on the side, with passion and persistence, in a loud and profane style.

Patrick Boyle analyzes SpaceX's IPO prospectus, covering its financials, speculative products, AI business, related-party dealings, compensation, and a governance structure with minimal shareholder rights.

Patrick Boyle examines SpaceX's planned IPO at a roughly $1.75 trillion valuation. He covers the merging of other Musk companies, orbital data center claims and the fast-track index rules that may help the listing.

Ben Felix rebuts common arguments for holding only US stocks, such as past outperformance and international revenue exposure. He supports the case for international diversification with cited academic research.

A TED interview in which Chris Anderson talks with Jim Simons about his life: code-breaking, math, founding Renaissance Technologies, and his philanthropy in math education and origins-of-life research.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on auto lending, showing how lenders steer vulnerable buyers into subprime loans and crushing debt. It uses comedy sketches to explain the practices.

A Last Week Tonight segment on credit reports, explaining their outsized role in people's lives and how often they contain critical errors.

The bank run scene from It's a Wonderful Life, in which George Bailey explains to depositors why the bank cannot pay everyone back at once.

Jason Calacanis interviews investor Chris Sacca on This Week in Startups. Sacca discusses what makes a founder, his investments such as Kickstarter, and his personal story of losing money and recovering.

Not Just Bikes explains the Strong Towns argument that car-dependent American suburbs cost more to maintain than they generate in taxes. It describes the growth Ponzi scheme that props up municipal finances.

Dan Olson's long Folding Ideas video on the GameStop meme stock phenomenon, its online community and the conspiracy thinking around it. It runs over two hours.

The first video in Not Just Bikes' Strong Towns series explains the financial instability of North American cities, based on Strong Towns research. It argues that low-density suburban growth costs more to maintain than it brings in.

Audio of Charlie Munger's 1995 Harvard speech on the psychology of human misjudgment, laying out a framework of cognitive biases and mental models for decision making. It covers factors like incentives, social proof and denial.

Bill Gurley's talk at the All-In Summit 2023, titled 2,851 Miles after the distance between Washington and San Francisco. He describes how incumbents use lobbying and regulation to entrench themselves, followed by a conversation with the hosts.

Episode 4 of Mike Maloney's Hidden Secrets of Money, explaining how currency is created through a chain of IOUs among the Treasury, banks and the Federal Reserve. It covers bonds, Fed checks, debt, taxes and fractional reserve lending, from a gold-and-silver advocate's viewpoint.