A year ago, I started seeing ads for Kalshi, a prediction market platform, all over social media. At first I ignored them. Then they started appearing during commercial breaks while I was watching the World Cup. Apparently, I wasn't clicking "Not Interested" aggressively enough. The ads claimed prediction markets were a smarter way to make money by predicting current events. Some influencers even described them as investing. That immediately raised a question: Are prediction

I'm currently watching the FIFA World Cup—my favorite sporting event. A friend and I have even placed a few bets on the matches. We couldn't approach gambling more differently. He'll happily throw hundreds of dollars on long shots. I stick to "sure things," and even then, I rarely bet more than $20. Gambling makes me nervous. But here’s the strange part. That same person who hesitates to bet $20 won't think twice about investing $20,000 in a stock. You might be thinking, “But

I get an email every time my FICO credit score changes. This week, I finally checked it for the first time in months. 847. After years of hovering around 835, I was suddenly three points away from perfection. Naturally, I ran to tell my wife because we're just competitive enough to compare credit scores. Unfortunately for me, she's one of the fewer than 2% of Americans with a perfect 850, so I never win. Apparently an 847 credit score still loses in my house. When I look at o

Here’s a story that has stuck with me for over 30 years. When I was still in college, my best friend, who was majoring in Finance, once asked me what Annual Percentage Yield (APY) I was getting on my savings account with the local bank. “About four percent,” I confidently told him. There was just one problem. I had absolutely no idea what APY I was earning. At some point, someone had told me it was around 4%, and I assumed it stayed there forever. Because that's how banks wor