End of September 2024 Update - October 8th, 2024

Joint Taxable Brokerage

As always, once we know how much we spent after taxes we move the excess amount into our taxable brokerage.

Income after taxes: $15923.44

Expenses after taxes: $7311.94

Purchased 34 shares of VTI.

The bigger expenses this month were paying the yearly property taxes for our home at around $2500 and buying our plane tickets for our cruise in Alaska summer 2025 (around $1000). I think Fidelity let me trade with more money than was in the account since they knew the dividend deposits for VOO and VTI were pending.

Thoughts on the economy and jobs

The overall labor market is getting better with anecdotal evidence that software engineers are starting to land more interviews and offers. My thoughts on Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models are that they will augment worker's ability to do their work faster. This could result in greater efficiency to pull in deadlines and schedules. However, it could result in the elimination of lower skilled jobs such as data entry and copyrighting.

The mythical soft landing

The Federal Reserve appears poised to perform the mythical soft landing, but I'm still nervous that the yield curve is inverted:

US Treasury Ten Year Bond versus US Treasury Three Month Bill

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y3M

US Treasury Ten Year Bond versus US Treasury Two Year Bond

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y#0

Pundits are saying historically after the yield curve has finished its inversion a recession will occur shortly afterwards. Here's to hoping "this time it's different."

Insurance rates are spiking

This year our insurance costs for our home, two cars, and umbrella rose by 40%. I spoke with my work colleagues and they all received similar (or more) insurance increases. With multiple hurricanes hitting the east coast of the US, I wonder if we'll continue to see such large rate increases in the future as the companies try to spread the pain. This will only result in more insurance companies trying to leave states that are prone to natural disasters.

US Stock Market health

The US stock market seems poised to end the year well as smaller rate cuts are on the horizon. Inflation is in check and the smaller cuts are designed to help the job market by making money cheaper for companies to borrow. This will reduce capital expenditure and research and development costs which increases the company bottom line. It remains to be seen whether companies will treat Artificial Intelligence as an augmentation to meet tight schedules/deadlines or to replace lower level employees. I am an eternal optimist so I hope it's the augmentation path.