On The Agenda

1. The true ROI of grad school

2. What types of insurance are actually worth it ^LUMINARY

3. The mortgage rates are too damn high

4. How to tackle all that debt ^LUMINARY

5. Are we finally investing cleanly?

6. Inflation picked up in August, cause for concern? ^LUMINARY

Should you really go to grad school?

From Nate Hoskin, Founder & Lead Advisor

43% of all graduate degrees actually lose you money.

Return on Investment (ROI) measures the value of an investment relative to its cost and this is how anyone should analyze higher education because, at the end of the day, it is a financial investment that has to make you money in order to be worth it.

If you’d like to calculate your personal Grad School ROI, you can use The Measure of a Plan’s Grad School ROI Calculator. Today I’ll show you which graduate degrees are usually worth it.

What type of school should I go to?

Ivy League schools have the best ROI which is no surprise, but interestingly public universities have the second highest chance of actually making you money. Private for-profit schools have a 64% chance of losing you money.

What should I study?

The best fields of study are computer science, math, engineering, and nursing while MBAs and the arts have the worst ROI.

MBAs most likely have such a low chance of making money because this includes everything from online state MBA programs to a Stanford MBA. Because they have proliferated, the average ROI goes down.

How much should I pay?

If you’re going to go for it, go for it. The cheaper graduate degrees are only beaten by far more expensive degrees.

When it comes to graduate degrees, but particularly MBAs, one of the most important factors is where you go, not so much what you spend.

So is grad school worth it?

On average getting a master’s degree is going to make you an extra $59,000 in your lifetime. That said, it will cost you 3 years of your life and put a lot of debt on your plate so you have to ask yourself, why are you going to grad school?

Should J Lo really be insuring her butt? Maybe ^{LUMINARY SECTION}

J Lo’s butt is insured for $27 million dollars and you can get paid if you buy one baby and accidentally get a second one free, but what types of insurance are actually worth it?

Some policies you just can’t live without like car, health, and home or renter’s insurance.

On the other hand, there are policies that pretty much no one needs like…

The mortgage rates are too damn high

From Jon Scott, Lead Author 

If you’re around age 30 or older, you will probably realize the title of this section is a play on the Rent is Too Damn High Party by Jimmy McMillian.

How to tackle all that debt  ^{LUMINARY SECTION}

With student loan payments starting up next month, managing debt will become that much harder for millions of Americans. With some individuals facing thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands in debt, the question becomes how to prioritize that debt.

Here are some key takeaways:

Measuring Clean Investment

From Bennett Fees, Economic Research Associate

This week I wanted to share a fantastic resource put together by the Rhodium Group and MIT’s CEEPR which tracks clean investments in manufacturing, energy and industry, and retail. The Clean Investment Monitor is updated quarterly and puts into perspective the recent increase of investments in this area. Here is a breakdown of the progress since 2018.

This shows a substantial $213 billion spent, or a 37% annual increase in clean investment this last year. To share just another graph, here is the breakdown of manufacturing investments by technology.

Here, we see a rapidly scaling investment in this area, dominated by batteries, where in Quarter 2 alone, investment hit $13.6 billion dollars, a five-fold increase from just two years ago.

All of this is to say that, while reaching global climate goals is still far away, it is positive to see an increase in these areas - better now than never.

Inflation picked up in August, cause for concern? ^{LUMINARY SECTION}

CPI data was released on Wednesday showing a .6% uptick in inflation during August. Over half of this increase was due to gasoline prices with the index for housing prices and food also increasing. Yet, food and energy prices are particularly volatile which is why “core” CPI which excludes those categories is still decelerating. The graph below shows the increase in headline CPI in blue and Core CPI in red.

It’s important to remember, however, that how we measure inflation will determine whether we think it’s increasing. For instance, take this chart from the Financial Times showing Jerome Powell’s preferred breakdown of Core inflation into three categories: core goods, housing services, and core services ex-housing - this last category being the most important.