When the housing market comes up in the news, it seems like the names Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac always enter in to the conversation. However, no one ever explains who Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac is, just assuming that everyone knows. Most people have no clue. So, here’s a short guide to who Fannie & Freddie are, and why you should (or shouldn’t) care.

The first reason you might care about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac is because they might own your mortgage! But let’s understand the history first before getting to that…

Fannie Mae is a nickname for the Federal National Mortgage Association. The Federal National Mortgage Association is a strange entity that is sort of half government and half private. It was created a long time ago by the Franklin Roosevelt administration as a “government-sponsored enterprise” that would help banks do more lending by purchasing the mortgages the banks gave to their customers. The United States was in the midst of the Depression at the time, and banks were not necessarily forthcoming when people asked for mortgages. However, once they knew the government was willing to buy that mortgage and take all the risk of repayment while the bank got the upfront profit, they changed their tune.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

I just heard another person give the tired rant about how kids are soft from getting participation trophies, how these trophies make them think they’re great when they’re not, how the kids who excelled got shortchanged by getting the same trophies as the kids who were terrible, blah, blah, blah.

I get it.

But I disagree with it. I think participation trophies are good, and I’ll tell you why:

Participation trophies encourage you to try things.

Kids know the best players on their teams. They know who runs the fastest, who scores the most goals. No participation trophy is going to fool them into believing everyone is the same. Kids start measuring themselves against others before they are out of diapers. Any parent could tell you that, assuming they are paying any attention.

The participation trophy isn’t telling kids, “You’re the best.” It’s telling them, “It’s awesome you tried! Keep trying things!” (Even if you didn’t finish first.)

I don’t know the statistics, but I’m sure less than 1/10 of one percent of us will ever be a professional athlete. The other 99.9%+ will compete in the work world, on playing fields where the rules are ever-changing and the “goal” is more than a little fuzzy. (Other than to make money, of course.) For those of us not literally throwing touchdowns, we could use a few more symbolic participation trophies in our lives.

Most people like to run their robotic vacuums when they’re not home, so that little critter can do its work without getting underfoot. But sometimes you’ll want to run it when you are home, and, since it takes a while to do its job, you’ll want a robot that can vacuum quietly.

In our research (as well as a little personal experience), the brands Eufy, Ecovacs, and iRobot (Roomba) are generally very quiet across all models. Eufy in particular is mentioned by many to quietly go about its business so you can watch TV or talk on the phone or let your baby sleep. However, the Roomba line of robot vacs has a long history of being very effective at the cleaning itself, with few complaints from its many purchasers. Combine that with its quiet nature, and that may be the best choice.

• We calculate that the “average” American household has a net worth of $109,798. If we were to subtract home equity (the amount of money people have paid toward their mortgages) from the calculations, the median net worth would be just $35,053.

We put the word “average” in quotes because in mathematical terms the number above is actually an estimation of the median net worth, which is the net worth at exactly at the midpoint between the lowest and highest net worth amounts. Because the extremely rich control such a high percentage of wealth, we believe looking at the median net worth is a better gauge of how the “average” American is doing financially. Using the mathematical average would skew the number higher than what feels “real” to most Americans.

As a reminder, net worth is calculated as assets minus liabilities. Assets mainly include money and real estate (in particular, people’s homes), while liabilities include debt on credit cards, loans, etc. Note that net worth can be a negative number if a person’s debts are more than their assets.

It is also worth noting that for many Americans much of their wealth is tied up in their primary residence, so the net worth of the household does not necessarily reflect the day-to-day financial well-being of the household in terms of access to liquid cash flow. This is why we also include the statistic for non-home equity net worth above.

Who are the richest people in the world? There’s no exact science to figuring it out, and most people aren’t telling. But there are ways to make educated guesses, whether it’s finding the major shareholders of successful public companies or seeing who has inherited great wealth. Regardless of how it’s calculated, these 15 people top the lists:

Jeff Bezos – Amazon.com CEO and the company’s largest shareholder has an estimated net worth of about $124 billion. After stalking (not literally) Bill Gates for the title for a number of years, Bezos has shot past Gates, who’d long been the richest. Based on Amazon’s track record, Bezos is likely to hold this spot for a long time to come.

Bill Gates – Estimated Net Worth: $106 billion. Despite giving away plenty of his wealth through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the billions keep piling up. Gates still owns at least $20 billion in Microsoft stock, but he has spread his investments around since leaving the company and his investments have done quite well.

Bernard Arnault – The richest man in France is the Chairman and CEO of luxury brand conglomerate LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy), which also includes brands Dom Perignon, Tag Heuer, Christian Dior, Fendi, Sephora and more. Estimated net worth: $89 billion.

Amazon sells everything, right? Well, not everything, but all sorts of things you never would’ve expected back when they just sold books. Including some really, really expensive things. In the interest of nothing more than curiosity, we decided to find the 7 most expensive things on Amazon.

To be clear, we are only looking at items for which Amazon.com is the seller; Amazon partners are not included in this list. Here’s what we found:

1. Classic Lighting Maria Theresa Chandelier – You’ll most definitely get free shipping if you buy this $50,000+ chandelier that looks like you might find it in some disgraced, deposed dictator’s ostentatious castle from the turn of the 20th century. That’s not a knock — it’s a darn good-looking light fixture.

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2. Fluke Networks OptiFiber & CertiFiber Pro QUAD OTDR and OLTS for Fiber Optics Certification and Troubleshooting – If you’ve got $30,000 or so lying around, you can get this very expensive device that does some sort of testing of the fibers in data centers. That’s all we know, but if you are someone that understands exactly what this is for, you could buy it on Amazon.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

Foreign transaction fees make no sense; it doesn’t cost your credit card company anything to let you use your credit card outside of the United States. Nevertheless, many persist in charging you a 3% fee for international purchases, especially if your card does not have an annual fee.

But not all credit cards! Here’s a list of credit cards with no annual fee that don’t charge the dreaded foreign transaction fee. We’ve listed our choices for the best cards first, but all will do the job:

• Wells Fargo Propel American Express Card – Generous rewards credit card with no annual fee and no foreign transaction fees. Rewards include 3 points per dollar on dining purchases, travel & transit (from flights to gas stations to ridesharing), and streaming services, as well as 1 point per dollar on all other purchases.
• PayPal Cashback Mastercard – This excellent credit card should broadcast its lack of foreign transaction fees, but keeps it buried in the fine print. That’s too bad, because it’s one of our favorite cards on this list. You’ll earn 2% cash back on all of your purchases with this one, a reward that’s hard to beat. Earnings go in to your PayPal account, where you can either use them or have them transferred to your regular bank account. Like all these cards, there’s no annual fee. Issued by Synchrony Bank.

• The median household income in the United States is $61,937.

This figure from the U.S. Census is actually the figure from 2018, reported in September of 2019. It is the latest figure available.

Note that technically the median is not the same as the average, though we are using the two terms interchangeably here. The median income is the absolute middle, meaning there are the same number of households above that number, and the same number of households below.

Median is actually a better representation of today’s world than the average would be, because income averages are inevitably skewed by the super rich at the top of the scale, making the “average” household appear to be wealthier than it is.

Remember that the average would be the total of all households’ income divided by the number of households. If Bill Gates’ household makes $1 billion per year and 99 other households make $40,000 – $60,000, we would not consider the average of $1 million+ to be truly representative of that group of households. That is how the super rich can alter this type of statistic. (We can see this when we look at the mean household income for 2018 of $87,864 — much higher than the median household income.)

Dog ownership can be as expensive as you want to make it. If your precious pooch needs organic food, a custom dog bed shaped like a hot rod, diamond-studded collar, etc., things can really add up. Even if you have more modest ideas of what a dog needs, dog ownership is still not cheap.

In 2020, you should figure on spending $1700 in the first year you have a new dog, and about $850 per year afterwards. If you get a purebred puppy, add 20% in the first year and 10% every year after.

Seem high? Let’s look at the likely purchases you’ll make for your dog in the first year and then later on:

Cost of Your Dog in the First Year

• Acquiring the dog: $75 (if from a shelter) and up. We’re going to assume a shelter dog here; purebred puppies will be more, maybe much more.
• Food + treats: $450 – $550, depending on the size of the dog.
• Vet bills, including vaccines, spay/neuter, heartworm & other maintenance pills: $550
• Crate & dog bed: $200
• Food bowl, collar, leash: $75
• Pet cleaner for the inevitable messes your dog makes: $50

The average yearly U.S. salary for a full-time worker is $47,788.

Technically, that number is the median salary, meaning half the population makes more and half makes less. This is a more accurate picture of the labor market than an “average” salary estimate, as a true “average” salary would be skewed higher by the very few who earn tens of millions (or more) per year.

We base this average/median off of Bureau of Labor Statistics data that report a median wage/salary of $919 per week in the third quarter of 2019.

That number represents workers across all ages, sexes, education levels, professions, etc.