Alexis Akira Toda

Alexis Akira Toda

Mathematical economist

Website updated

less than 1 minute read

Published:

After spending several days, I significantly updated my website. Below is a list of the main changes.

  • Previously, there was a “Research” page that I created manually. But it was tedious to list all papers in a consistent style (e.g., journal names in bold, coauthors in italics, etc.), so I automated it.
  • I omitted publication information except the journal name and year, because I don’t think they are very important, and one can easily find them by clicking the link to the published paper.
  • I searched for all my paper drafts on my computer and added slides whenever I found them.
  • I merged “Conference proceedings” with “Other publications” because I don’t see a reason to keep proceedings as a separate section, given that I don’t have many.

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529 qualified expenses

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I opened 529 accounts for my kids about 15 years ago. Their nominal balances have grown by about 200% over this period. (Actually, this is something that I regret. I enrolled in targeted date funds without thinking too much. Investment returns have suffered since 2020 because the portfolio’s bond share increased and inflation was high. I should have invested 100% in stocks instead.)

Is it worth keeping the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card?

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As I occasionally use Marriott, a few years ago I got the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card because it was offering a welcome bonus. I won’t go into details, but the basic structure is that the annual fee is $95 and the benefits are 6 Marriott Bonvoy points per dollar spent on Marriott stays and an annual Free Night Award (worth up to 35,000 Marriott Bonvoy points). The value of a Marriott Bonvoy point is about 0.8 cents. (Regardless of the credit card use, Marriott Bonvoy members earn an additional 10 points per dollar spent on stays. As an automatic Gold Member with the American Express Platinum Card, I get a 25% bonus, so 10 points become 12.5 points. But these points are not included in the above calculation because they are independent of the credit card.)

Tracking spending

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In this post, I mentioned that Fidelity Full View provides account syncing for Fidelity customers. Dividing spending into categories, it also presents a pie chart of spending. The picture below is my own example; I erased the specific amounts and kept only the percentages. In general, to save money, it is best to focus on spending categories with large shares, which in my case are home, children, food, travel, etc.