The Daily Economy

Many young adults have extremely limited credit histories. This means that we need to build our credit scores by starting to think about different credit cards and loans.

You’ve probably heard about it a hundred times, and you know it’s important, but what exactly is a FICO score? Understanding what factors go into to calculating your credit score is extremely important to your financial success. Imagine going to school and not knowing what factors contribute to your grade. It would probably be hard…

Today we release the July edition of AIER’s Business Conditions Monthly, our bird’s-eye look at the economy. This month’s edition includes an overview of the labor market, including an account of the progress made since the Great Recession, as well as a look at the challenges that remain.

Following a string of stronger economic data, this morning’s retail sales report showed some unexpected weakness in a key area of the economy.

This month the current business-cycle expansion, which started in June 2009, has reached the 73-month mark. This makes it equal in length to the previous expansion, which lasted from November 2001 to December 2007. Since there are no signs of an imminent recession, it is a good bet that the current expansion will last more…

With Treasury Secretary Jack Lew planning to shrink Alexander Hamilton’s image on the $10 bill, opponents of the plan are making their feelings known in an interesting way.

The Washington Post highlights AIER’s rankings of best college towns and best post-college destinations in a prominent article this week. Author Jeffrey Selingo, former editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, writes about the factors that go into a student’s decision about where to go to college, and finds that the location matters a lot.

Uber may have changed the way people look at taxi services, but as a story in yesterday’s New York Times shows, it is not immune from the same calls for regulation that another “sharing economy” service, Airbnb, has faced in recent years.

In order to be in a position to pursue your dreams, you need to have your financial basics down. The most important of these is your ability to pay bills on time. The key to accomplishing this is to stay organized. The importance of paying your bills on time cannot be overstated. Late payments negatively…

Median household income has remained stagnant over the past quarter century, when controlled for inflation. With rising needs like cell phones, computers and cable TV, many U.S. households have had to go into debt to maintain a middle-class standard of living. This has provided a boost to the overall economy, because consumer spending makes up…

Investors are buying stocks. The level of stock ownership as a share of portfolios is at a level only seen in 2000 and 2006-2007. The share of mutual fund investments in stock funds is almost 62 percent, according to data from the Investment Company Institute. It makes sense that investors are favoring stocks. Bond yields…