Get A Hedge: Helping You Beat the House in The Game Of Life

I probably should preface all further posts by saying that I am in no way certified in personal finance, accounting, tax laws, actuarial, or anything of the sort. My background is in math and science. My opinions I share here are solely my own, and should in no way constitute any professional advise on any matter. Conversely, enlisting the service of actual professionals on these topics is likely often a good idea. Glad we got that out of the way. Perhaps it’s just the way I’m wired, but I like to quantify things as much as possible. While this might prove tiring for my spouse (sorry!), it’s often quite true that you can’t control what you don’t measure. I can clearly recall asking a professor, “which type of YY solution is better, A or B” (details redacted to prevent boredom), to which she replied, “I have no idea. It depends. Calculate the cost of both and figure it out yourself.” I am constantly reminded of this concept. Just the other day I was shredding some junk mail,

That last post. Disability insurance?! Really? B-O-R-I-N-G. Let's talk about something more fun. How about gambling and boxing? The night was August 26, 2017. Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor in "The Money Fight" in "The Biggest Fight in Combat Sports History". Incidentally, I have a personal connection to other events from this night, but we'll get there in the future. The fight was later estimated to be the most bet boxing match ever. Surely most of the betters were choosing the man who had won 49 straight professional boxing matches over the man who had won none, right? Of course not! Who goes to Vegas to take the 'safe' option? "We learned the public is more willing to overlook statistics and take a shot with a big payout," Jay Rood, vice president of MGM Resorts race and sports, said. It is estimated that about 94% of the bettors took the 3.75/1 odds for McGregor to beat Mayweather, instead of the -475 odds the other wa

The purpose of this blog is to combat our innate human bias of misunderstanding key statistical concepts from having dire impacts on our lives. Fear not: I am not going to derive the Poisson  Distribution. The crux of my hypothesis is this, we are very good at understanding the implications of  likely negative scenarios and how they impact us financially. For example, you know your home air conditioner has a reasonably high chance of breakdown. Fearing an expensive repair bill, you opt for the home warranty plan so you won’t get caught flat footed next summer. Where we are less adept is understanding and planning for the implications of more seemingly remote negative scenarios. For example, you suffer a home accident falling off a ladder while working a DIY project and become disabled. This presents a problem because now you can no longer perform the duties at that great job and provide for your family. You do have disability insurance, right? Lower probability (hopefully) than you