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If you graduated from college with a mountain of debt, student loans are a fact of life. But there are ways to make paying them easier. Find out how.

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With the Federal Reserve promising to keep the Fed Funds rate at 0% or close to 0% for years, it’s good to think about potential inflation on the horizon. Specifically, we should learn about investments that can hedge against inflation and also benefit from inflation. If our income and our investment returns are not beating

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Some credit cards are better than others when it comes to the holidays. Here is our selection of the best credit cards for holiday shopping.

The holiday gift-buying season can be a great time to net cash back rewards on purchases you’re already planning to make. So long as you stick to a budget, you’ll come out on top when you choose a great cash back rewards credit card for your holiday shopping. While we track the best overall cash back cards, here we focus especially on cards ideal for holiday shopping.

What to Look For

What should you look for when choosing a new credit card for gift buying? We’re going to look at cash back rewards cards, since they have the most flexible, easy-to-use rewards. But choosing a travel rewards card could also serve you well, especially if you’re planning a vacation in 2016. The goal, though, is to get the maximum amount of rewards possible on gifts you’re already planning to buy. In other words, even if a store credit card has great cash back rewards, it won’t do you any good unless you can pick up at least some of your gifts from that store. Also, while we recommend budgeting for the holiday season well before you begin shopping, a good credit card can help if you’re going to come up short. Some of the cards we’ve highlighted here feature 0% introductory APRs. So if you need to spend a bit more than you’ve got banked, you’ll have at least a couple of months to pay back your purchase before you incur any fees. Other things to consider include protections offered by a particular credit card. For instance, some cards offer return protection, refunding a purchase even if the retailer won’t take your return. Others offer purchase protection, which will cover replacement costs if the gift is stolen or damaged. If you’re planning any large purchases of electronics, big toys, or other warrantied items, look for a card that offers a warranty extension. Of course, these offers are all detailed and complex. So, if you’re choosing a card for one of these considerations, make sure to read the fine print. Related: 9 Ways Credit Cards Can Save You Money

Best Cards to Use

With those parameters in mind, here are the top 6 best cash back credit cards to use this holiday season:

1. Chase Freedom

The Chase Freedom is our top pick for holiday shopping. It offers 0% introductory APR on purchases for 15 months. Chase Freedom offers 5% cash back on categories that rotate quarterly. Typically, Chase typically offers 5% cash back categories in the 4th quarter on shopping on Amazon.com. Plus, you can earn a $150 cash-back bonus when you spend $500 on purchases within three months of opening this card. Note that this is a recent increase from a $100 bonus that the Chase Freedom card offered in the past. Other benefits of the Chase Freedom card include purchase protection, which offers up to $500 per claim to cover purchases from damage or theft for 120 after purchase. It also offers extended warranty protection on eligible warranties of three years or less. With these additional protections, and the broad bonus categories through the end of the year, this is a great option for those who plan to do most of their shopping online.

2. Discover it^® Cash Back

The Discover it^® Cash Back cash back card isn’t the best everyday rewards card, since it has a relatively low 1% cash back on everyday purchases. However, it features 5% cash back in categories that rotate quarterly. In October to December 2015, the cash back bonus category is great for gift buyers. The bonus is included for purchases at Amazon.com, department stores, and clothing stores. Plus, new cardholders of the Discover it^® Cash Back will earn double cash back for the first year’s worth of purchases. The cash back will hit your account automatically at the end of the year, so this could be a great option for “saving” on holiday purchases in 2016.  Other benefits include the ability to freeze your card through a mobile app if you notice any suspicious activity and the $0 fraud liability. You’ll also get extended warranties, price protection, and purchase protection on purchases made with this card.

3. Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express

For excellent cash back benefits, check out the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express. This card offers 6% cash back year-round on up to $6,000 in purchases at supermarkets. Think you can’t buy Christmas gifts at a supermarket? Think again! Many supermarkets carry gifts during the holiday season, and they nearly all carry gift cards. You can give the gift cards as a gift, or purchase and use them to buy physical gifts at a 6% discount. If that 6% cash back isn’t enough to convince you, you can get 3% at U.S. gas stations. It also offers 1% cash back on all other purchases. Plus, when you spent $1,000 in purchases within three months of opening your account, you’ll get a $250 statement credit.  They’ve also added a few new bonus categories; 6% cash back on select US streaming services (like Netflix, Hulu and others) and 3% cash back on ground transportation. Besides all this, the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express offers a 0% introductory APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months. It also offers extended warranty benefits for warranties of five years or less, purchase protection for 90 days from the date of purchase, and return protection for up to $1,000 per calendar year.

4. U.S. Bank Cash+ Visa Signature Card

The U.S. Bank Cash+ Visa Signature Card offers 5% cash back on the first $2,000 of combined purchases in any two categories that you choose quarterly. It also offers 2% cash back on one everyday category – like gas or groceries – and 1% cash back on everything else. With no limit on the total cash back you can earn, this is a great everyday use card. And if you’re smart about setting those two bonus categories, you can save some serious money this holiday season. This card also offers $0 fraud liability, active account monitoring to detect potential fraud, and mobile account alerts.

5. Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card

When it comes to earning great rewards for holiday shopping, you may want to think outside the box. The Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card from Chase offers great rewards if you’re planning to do most of your shopping on Cyber Monday – or otherwise online through Amazon.com. The card offers 3% cash back on all Amazon.com purchases, 2% cash back at gas stations, restaurants, and drugstores, and 1% cash back on all other purchases. Plus, when you sign up now, you’ll get an instant $80 credited to your Amazon.com account upon approval. One benefit of the Amazon.com Visa card is that you don’t have to sign up for rotating bonus categories. If you’re an Amazon junkie, just pick up this card around the holidays. You can use the $80 bonus to buy yourself or someone you love a little extra something.

6. Target REDcard

One interesting thing about the Target REDcard is that it comes in two flavors: debit and credit. The debit card hooks up to your existing checking account and automatically debits purchases from the account. So you aren’t worrying about overextending yourself on credit, but you’ll still earn rewards. The credit card operates like a traditional store credit card with rewards. Rather than getting cash back in the traditional sense, the Target REDcard debit card offers a 5% discount on any purchase from Target. That can add up to big savings throughout the year, especially if you plan to do lots of your holiday shopping at a Target superstore. Other benefits include free shipping online, additional savings for pharmaceuticals, and an additional 30 days to make returns. This fee-free debit card also gives 1% of your purchase amount to the K-12 school of your choice. The Target Visa Credit Card offers the same basic benefits, and a few more. It allows you to make purchases elsewhere, and offers a handy bill pay service, if you’re looking for that sort of thing.

Get the Most from Your Card Over the Holidays

When it comes to holiday shopping with a credit card, you can earn some serious cash back. The average American spent around $730 on holiday gifts, food, and other purchases in 2013. If you spend that in a 5% cash back category with one of the above cards, you’ll net $37 in savings. Of course, your real goal when spreading holiday cheer is to spend smart and stick to your budget!Some credit cards are better than others when it comes to holiday spending. Here is our selection of the best credit cards for shopping this holiday season.

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A bullish indicator gives investors more confidence to buy or hold a position. There are many variables to track when making an investment decision. However, this bullish indicator has been flashing green since 2Q2020 and is still flashing green today. As I was updating my post on helping people decide whether to pay down debt

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Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) are some of the riskiest yet most rewarding stocks on the market. Learn about IPOs and whether they are worth the risk.

The post How to Buy an IPO Stock and Is It Worth the Risk? appeared first on The Dough Roller.

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We’re staying in San Francisco and making a home-cooked meal after some morning tennis. We’ll then do a group video call with my sister in NYC and our parents in Honolulu. Despite a difficult year, there is still so much to be thankful for. We need to all be thankful for the

The post Thankful For Luck: A Phone Call That Changed My Life For The Better appeared first on Financial Samurai.

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Playing games on your smartphone won’t make you rich but these 6 games and apps let you have fun and earn some extra cash.

The post 6 Game and Apps That Pay Real Money appeared first on The Dough Roller.

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Mobile home insurance can protect you from a number of financial catastrophes, including theft, natural disaster, and liability for injuries on your property.

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Ever since I was young, I’ve been a collector with the little money I had. As an adult, it’s so fun to be able to buy things I couldn’t afford as a kid. Some of my favorite memorabilia include retro-Jordans and He-man figures from the 1980s. I still remember paying a couple bucks in high

The post Otis: A Fun Way To Invest In Cultural Assets (Sneakers, Sports Cards, Art) appeared first on Financial Samurai.

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Having a “fair” credit score may make securing a loan more difficult, but loan options do exist. Here's how to get a loan, even if your credit isn't great.

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With Memorial Day wrapped up, Americans are getting ready to head back to work.  For many, the next day to look forward to is Independence Day, which happens to also fall on a Monday this year.  A few years ago, when I was working the nine-to-five lifestyle, I used to mark my calendar with all of the holiday day’s off.  I realized after a few years that these days not only represented time off, but also a budgeting nightmare. When you think about all of the holiday’s we celebrate, they all have one thing in common and that’s spending money.  Whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Independence Day, Valentines Day or a litany of other holidays, the urge to spend is present.  Think about it … between gifts, barbecues and nights out, hundreds if not thousands of dollars is spent on items you probably never budgeted for.   Here are a few spending tips to make sure that you’re not on the hook for hundreds of dollars worth of expenses every time a holiday rolls around.

Plan Ahead

If you wait until the last minute to plan a holiday party or budget for a Valentines Day dinner, the debt you didn’t expect can quickly turn into late payments and over limit fees on credit cards and other types of revolving debt.  Planning ahead can allow you to see just how much you can afford to spend and the urge to wow your friends of loved one won’t be as great.  By sitting down and spending some time looking at the upcoming holidays, you might be able to find a few inexpensive (or even free) ways to spend your time off.

When You’re Hosting, Ask For Help

I’ll be the first to admit that when I have friends and family come over, even for small occasions, I like to go the extra mile.  Whether that means spending a little more money in decorating the place or buying more food and drink for everyone to have, I splurge.  It’s a terrible habit that I’m working on and if you find yourself in the same situation, it’s time to ask for help.  This can be done in a couple of ways:

• Have guests bring items.  The more people you invite, the less you’ll have to do on your own but be careful.   Planning this way can lead to disaster if guests with important items don’t show up.  Make sure you are still in charge of the main items being served, but your guests take care of everything else.
• Charge your guests a cover.  I know this one sounds awkward and in poor taste, especially if you offered to host, but having people chip in a couple of bucks shouldn’t turn friends and family the wrong way.  If everyone contributed $5 for the entire day, you’ll be able to defray some of the costs.

Romance Can Be Cheap

Getting away from the group gatherings on this one, spending time with a loved one doesn’t have to break the bank.  Spending time to prepare a picnic, a home cooked meal and a well written card makes all the difference.  Yes, spending a few hundreds dollars to have a plane sky-write a message will win you points but the same reaction can be achieved with a song, craft or a long day together.  Remember that if you spend a lot of money once, it may be expected of you in the future.A little smart shopping can save you big bucks this holiday season. Here are a few tips to avoid overspending during the holidays.

The post How to Avoid Overspending During the Holidays appeared first on The Dough Roller.

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The decision to pay down debt or invest is a personal one. It depends on a lot of factors such as risk tolerance, your number of income streams, liquidity needs, family expenses, job security, investing acumen, retirement age, inflation forecasts, and bullishness about your future in general. I’ve had hundreds of people ask me whether to

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Since 2007, the Michelin Guide has awarded The French Laundry their highest rating of three stars. Unless you’re really rich or a politician, you will likely have to wait months to get a reservation at this Yountville, California restaurant in Napa Valley. Deca-millionaire California Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife were spotted having an opulent dinner

The post How Rich Must You Be To Dine At French Laundry Like Gavin Newsom? appeared first on Financial Samurai.

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President-elect Joe Biden proposed numerous changes to the economy during his campaign. Here's how those changes may impact the economy and your finances.

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In your retirement years, the last thing you want to do is worry about money. That's why low risk investments are crucial for seniors.

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What banks charge wire transfer fees? How can I avoid wire transfer fees? What are the alternatives to wiring money?

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There are good times to retire early and then there are bad times to retire early. I’d like to highlight the worst times to retire early to prevent you from living a suboptimal life. As someone who retired in 2012 and mentally un-retired by 2014, I feel it’s my duty to share all the landmines

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Have to work on Cyber Monday? No worries, if you plan ahead, you could score some smart buys on your lunch break. Here are 11 tips to finding the best Cyber Monday deals.

During the holidays, my goal is to have 90% of my shopping done before Thanksgiving day. That way I can spend time with my family and relax instead of worrying about gift buying. With that said, it’s savvy to wait to buy certain gifts on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. When we first published this article back in 2015, Cyber Monday was relatively new. But now it’s well established that you’ll find some of the best deals on Cyber Monday. And you also won’t have to wait in those famously massive Black Friday lines. For Black Friday, most major retailers publish their deals in advance. So you can peruse the online deal notices or newspaper fliers to decide which stores you want to put on your shopping list. And many stores do offer more online deals on Black Friday, though the best deals on that day are often found in the stores. And for the best online deals, you may need to wait over the weekend. Cyber Monday deals aren’t often published ahead of time. So you have to pay attention to them on the day of, or they may sell out before you even see that the deal is available. So be sure you approach Cyber Monday prepared to score some major deals with our shopping tips and tricks.

1. Check Out Last Year’s Sales

Again, Black Friday deals are usually published well in advance. This is less often the case with Cyber Monday. But that doesn’t mean you have to be clueless about the deals most places are likely to offer. Check out last year’s sales by Googling for the flyers from your favorite stores and retailers. This can give you an idea of the general content of Cyber Monday sales, so you know which websites to peruse first.

2. Check Prices

It used to be that you needed to go to a separate website to find the best deals and compare the pricing of the items in your cart. Those sites, including DealNews.com and CyberMonday.com, still exist. But they’re not the most efficient way to check prices any more. Instead, you can now install toolbars or apps on your actual desktop or laptop browser to compare prices as you shop. For instance, Shoptimate is a Google Chrome app that automatically compares prices of the items you’re interested in. You can also install price checking apps on your phone, which you can use to find the best prices on the items you’re buying on Cyber Monday.

3. Look for Added Discounts

Before you automatically pick up your next iGadget from the store with the lowest price on CyberMonday.com, type the store or item name into a coupon code site. RetailMeNot.com, CouponCabin.com and DealCatcher.com are three good options. These sites can help you find free shipping, added discounts, or other value-added coupons that will bump prices lower–even if you wind up paying a higher ticket price on a particular item. Another good option here is, again, an app or extension. Honey is an example of an excellent Chrome extension that automatically searches for and applies coupon codes to your cart. Just run it before you check out, and it will find the optimal combination of usable coupon codes for the items you’re buying from any given retailer.

4. Follow Your Favorites and Get Customized Offers

While the websites mentioned above will help you easily compare pricing for a variety of items, you may find even better deals if you follow your favorite stores, products, and brands on Facebook or Twitter. It’s common for brands and stores to offer their most loyal customers better deals through their social media outlets. Many stores now even give you customized deals based on your shopping habits. This strategy will be most useful if the retailer is its own brand, as with a clothing store. It’s not unusual for clothes to be found at a big discount, so follow your favorite brands before Cyber Monday for more deals.

5. Sign Up for Emails

Brands see your inbox as valuable advertising space, especially since you have to actually give them your email address for them to be able to legally send you emails. So go sign up for the email lists of your favorite brands. You might just get a sneak peek at Cyber Monday deals or an alert as soon as the deals become available. Sometimes you’ll also snag a coupon for additional discounts when you first sign up for an email list. This might stack on top of your Cyber Monday deals, or net you a discount on full-price items that also make it into your cart. Just remember that you can always unsubscribe from these emails later on. But email is an excellent way to find out about the best deals early on.

6. Set up Ahead of Time

One of the biggest problems consumers report on Cyber Monday is lag times online. If you’re shopping for some of the hottest items, they might disappear before you can check out–even if you’re one of the first shoppers to hit the web. To streamline your shopping process–and give yourself the best chance to land the best deals–set yourself up for easy purchasing ahead of time. If you have some idea which online stores you’re likely to use, set up an account, if you don’t have one already. This takes loads of time out of the process of checking out once your shopping cart is full. If you don’t know where you’ll shop online, opening a PayPal account or Google Pay account can streamline the checkout process. Most retailers will now take one or both of these options, and you can automatically set up your shipping address for faster checkout.

7. Take a Look at Policies Ahead of Time

If you’ve shopped with a particular retailer before, this may not be a huge deal. But if you’re looking at shopping with a new-to-you retailer, research their shipping and return policies before you buy. Many retailers have flexible policies here. But if you end up paying through the nose for shipping or have trouble returning items that don’t work for you, you’ve just created more hassle for yourself.

8. Check for Bonus Points

As you’re planning your Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping, take time to research different payment options. Making the right choice–whether it’s paying by PayPal, by credit card, or through a specialized shopping program–can net you more savings in the long run. For instance, one year, PayPal offered price match guarantees and free return shipping for any items bought through its system. Several credit cards also offer price matching and bonus points around the holiday shopping season. You might even check into programs like U-Promise, which could put money into your child’s college savings account while you shop Cyber Monday deals.

9. Use the Best Rewards Credit Card

Since you’ll be shopping online, you’ll likely be paying with a credit card. As such, there’s no reason to forego cash back with the right credit card. My personal favorite cash rewards card is the Citi Double Cash Card because it pays 2% cash back (1% with every purchase + 1% when you pay for those purchases.) However, the Chase Freedom is a serious contender. It pays a $150 cash bonus when you spend $500 in the first three months. Whatever cash back credit card you use, be sure not to overspend and to pay your card off in full the following month.

10. Get Going Early

Some retailers do hour by hour deals for Cyber Monday. These are often published ahead of time, so pay attention to when your most-wanted items go on sale, and set a reminder on your phone to check out the deals at that time. But often more general deals are available at the very beginning of Cyber Monday shopping–usually beginning at midnight the night before. And those deals will go until the product sells out. You don’t necessarily have to get up at 3 AM to make Cyber Monday worth it, but pay attention to the deals that are available, as you might find one or two that make it worth getting up at a weird time or taking a late lunch break to catch an hourly deal.

11. Start with a List and a Budget

Of course, all the bargain shopping in the world isn’t worth it if you’re ultimately spending money you don’t have on stuff that you don’t want or need. So start out Cyber Monday like any other shopping trip–with a list and a budget. Maybe everything you’re buying on this day isn’t for holiday gifts, and that’s fine. But make sure you think through the things you want to buy before you start typing in your credit card information multiple times in one day! With these Cyber Monday shopping tips, you could stock up on stuff you want to gift or have, and you’ll spend less money doing it.Cyber Monday is a great time to find deals on items like electronics and holiday gifts. But before you buy, read this article to learn how to save more.

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Faced with large, unexpected expenses? The right credit card can get you through it. Find out which are the best credit cards for emergencies.

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What’s the deal with Black Friday? It involves money, and a lot of it. And money impacts stock. So what are the best stocks to buy for Black Friday? Before you make any changes to your portfolio, here’s what you need to know.

Another Black Friday is fast coming upon us. While consumers are focused on the hope of deep discounts on major purchases, is it also time to investigate the best stocks to buy for Black Friday. After all, Black Friday is more than just a day anymore. Many retailers get a jump on the day, kicking off big sales events as much as a week early. In a real way, Black Friday has become a mini-season all its own, which is why it has such a big impact on retail sales. But does it have any real effect on stocks?

The Stocks that MAY Benefit from Black Friday 2018

Despite the fact that Black Friday is hardly a game changer for the stock market, there are certain stocks that may warrant closer attention. Obviously, retail chains are at center stage. But you have to be very selective even if you go that route. You probably already know if a given retailer will do well during Black Friday weekend. If they have a strong product line going into the holiday season, one that’s generating a lot of buzz and rising sales, Black Friday may only strengthen their case. There are also certain types of retailers that tend to do especially well during Black Friday, and the holiday season in general. For example, electronics are typically a big seller. Due to their usual high cost, electronics, including entertainment equipment and computers, tend to do very well with the Black Friday crush. Another is major jewelry store chains, since jewelry is a top gift item for the holidays. But one sector you may not have given much thought to is restaurants. With so many people out shopping all day on Black Friday, and into the weekend, people need a place to eat–or to take a break from shopping. Restaurants are a natural choice, and certain chains may see an increase in holiday sales as a result. And of course, with so many people shopping online these days, Amazon seems like a sure bet no matter what’s happening with the big retail chains.

How is the Stock Market Affected by Thanksgiving and Black Friday?

In the grand scheme of things, the stock market is not heavily affected by Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Perhaps the biggest effect of Black Friday on the stock market is in this predictive value. A strong Black Friday can be an indication of a strong holiday season. In the retail sector, the holiday season can make or break the entire year. If Black Friday is strong, it’s likely sales will be strong for the season, leading to increased revenues and earnings. But there’s more than a bit of speculation in that assumption. That’s the way it will work if Black Friday indicates a rising sales trend. If it goes in the other direction, and sales come in below expectations, it could be an indication of a weaker than expected holiday season. If that’s the case, the retail sector may experience a bad quarter, and a bad year overall. Compounding the problem is that such sentiment can carry into the new year. After all, fourth quarter performance is a strong indicator of what will play out in the coming year. That may be more significant in the retail sector than any other.

What Stock Investors Should do when Black Friday 2018 Comes

For the most part, if you’re a long-term investor, about the only thing you should do on Black Friday is go shopping looking for deals like everyone else. If you’ve already set your investment allocation, you’ll want to stick with it through relatively minor events, Black Friday. There’s nothing about this shopping event that should motivate you to materially change your portfolio. Whatever allocation you deemed appropriate throughout the year should be exactly where you stay. If the stocks you’re currently holding in your portfolio are fundamentally sound, there’s no need to make a change based on the upcoming holiday season. If there is any insight to be gained, it might be that the stock of a retailer that has been struggling all year might be worth selling if it experiences lackluster sales during Black Friday. That could be an indication the company will continue to struggle going into the new year. Of course, every other investor will be aware of the same situation, so it’s unlikely you’ll get the jump on selling.

Playing the Historical Bounce – December and January

Apart from any potential retail plays over the Black Friday week, there may be something of a short-term strategy at this time of the year. Historically, stocks stage a year-end rally, that carries into the new year. Increasing your portfolio in October and early November might provide something of an upward bounce in the next few months. Based on the graph below, which includes data from 1928 through 2018, it turns out September is historically the worst month in the stock market, losing an average of 1%. But the market then turns modestly higher in October and November, before staging a two month rally in December and January, that represents the strongest two month stand of the year. (Source: Stock Market Indicators: Historical Monthly & Annual Returns, Yardeni Research, Inc, September 29, 2018) Rather than focusing on any bounce that might result from certain retail stocks that might benefit from Black Friday holiday, it might be more a matter of positioning for a general market upturn. If there is a play during this holiday week, that one might be the most predictable.

How Much of Your Portfolio Should You Commit to Black Friday Stocks?

If you’re looking for professional advice on this, we recommend Personal Capital’s Wealth Management Service. You can contact a personal advisor by phone, via a web conference, through email or even online chat. Realistically, if you’re generally satisfied with your investment portfolio, the only strategy–and it’s a minor one at best–may be to put a very small amount of your portfolio into the stocks of companies you think will do extraordinarily well through the holiday season. But even that is probably a decision you’ve already made. Otherwise, you can feel free to ignore your portfolio, and jump into the Black Friday fray with the crowd.While consumers are focused on the hope of deep discounts on major purchases, is it also time to investigate the best stocks to buy for Black Friday.

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Loans are a fact of life, but it's important to get a good interest rate. Read on to find out what kind of rate you can expect.

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Having honor and pride are good traits. But having honor and pride can also be detrimental to your quest for financial freedom and living a better life. Life is already hard enough. Don’t make it even harder by being so stubborn! I assume that many of you are suffering from burnout just like me. Every

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There could be changes to your 401k if a bill proposed by the House goes into law. Find out what the bill says and how it could affect you.

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Times are tough. Whether you earn a lot or just get by, watching where your money goes is important. There are lots of ways to watch your spending, investments, and more. But since you probably have a cell phone in your pocket all the time, apps are a great option.

Understanding your cash flow is a major part of successfully managing your finances. How much is coming in, when it hits your bank account, and where it’s going are all important aspects of financial success. Luckily, the market is saturated with money management apps designed to help you see your bank balance, track your spending, and analyze your habits. Plus, there are also apps that will help you make better financial decisions, based on the data gathered from your accounts. And the best part? You can access your financial situation wherever you go. Many money management apps are viewable online, as well as on your mobile device, making it easy to take care of your finances no matter where you are. Here are 11 of the best money management apps you should consider:

1. Personal Capital

Personal Capital is one of the best money management apps available. It’s lets you track your budget while including information about your investment accounts. The interface is intuitive and the visuals are easy to see on desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone. Graphs of your investments by asset class, investment account, or individual investment are easy to read, making it easy to track your investment performance and manage your portfolio. You can even get help from an investment professional in some cases. Personal Capital’s budgeting functions aren’t quite as robust or intuitive as some of the other money management tools, but they get the job done. The main advantage to Personal Capital is the fact that your investments are considered in the equation, giving you a holistic view of your total financial picture.

2. Mint.com

Mint has long been a popular budgeting website and app, and not without reason. Like Personal Capital, Mint offers access to your investment accounts in addition to budgeting tools. But for Mint, the budgeting portion is the stronger offering, while the investing section feels a little like an afterthought. Mint is a great option if you want to keep a super detailed budget. You can create as many budget categories as you want, and you can categorize transactions on the go. Mint automatically pulls transactions in from your bank accounts and credit cards, so they’re all in one place. Mint also analyzes your spending and provides insights into your habits, letting you see where you could improve. Finally, the app also has a nice bill pay feature reminding you when bills are due. You can even pay bills from the app.

3. Acorns

Acorns takes your virtual change out of your account. But instead of saving it, Acorns invests the difference. The app allows you to start investing with virtually no effort. You just set it up, and get going. You can use Acorns just to round up your transactions, but you can also set up recurring withdrawals to your account, or boost your account with a one-time transaction. Acorns also has a new shopping app type function, called Found Money. When you shop with certain brands, the brand partners will automatically invest in your Acorns account. Check out our review of the app here.

4. YNAB

YNAB (You Need a Budget) will cost you $6.99 per month, but the first month’s fee is waived, and the company claims that new budgeters save $200 in their first month. Even if you don’t save quite that much with the help of YNAB, the app can still be worth the monthly fee. The philosophy underlying YNAB is “a job for every dollar.” You’re encouraged to place a premium on thinking ahead and determining where your money goes ahead of time, from investing to saving up for a vacation to paying the bills to buying groceries. Like many other money management apps, YNAB offers bank syncing and support for mobile devices. You can also use YNAB to help you set financial goals and make the most of each dollar you earn.

5. PocketGuard

Looking for a money management app that will also actively help you find savings in your regular spending? PocketGuard might be just the thing for you. Sync up your accounts and PocketGuard will track and help you analyze your spending. You can then use that information to help you build a better budget. PocketGuard also picks up on recurring bills and even looks for better deals. You can identify spending trends month-to-month, track individual bills, and use the app to save money in the long run.

6. Dollarbird

Is your primary budget issue figuring out what you need to pay in the future? Maybe you’re afraid to spend $10 on lunch, even if your bank account is fairly flush, because you can’t remember when your student loans are due. Dollarbird can help with that. Dollarbird is free with premium add-ons. The idea here is to put your budget into calendar form. You get an at-a-glance view of upcoming expenses. Color code transactions by category and easily enter recurring transactions, like your paycheck and utility bill. The app lets you see your projected balance, so you know how much money you can safely spend. One limitation here, though, is that Dollarbird doesn’t sync with your bank accounts. You’ll have to enter transactions manually, but that’s pretty simple to do–and that means you end up with a more hands-on approach to your money.

7. Mvelopes

One of the most popular budgeting strategies is the “envelope” strategy. You divide up your cash, put it in envelopes, and spend in that category until the cash is gone. If you want to move that old-school budgeting technique into the 21st Century, Mvelopes can help. Mvelopes translates your credit card and digital spending into a cash-style budgeting system that keeps track of where your money is going. You can create a budget and the app will take care of the rest. You do need to pay for the service, though. Mvelopes has plans starting at $4 per month. You can pay more, though, and get access to a wider variety of features, including financial coaching services.

8. Wally

Wally is a stripped-down budgeting app without a lot of bells and whistles. However, the unique features it does have are worth exploring. First of all, Wally supports nearly all foreign currencies. If you’re a digital nomad, spending time outside the country, Wally can be a great help to you. Next, Wally allows you to save pictures of receipts so you can keep track of important items related to taxes and business without dealing with paper. Each time you log in, Wally lets you know how much money you have, and what’s left in the budget until the end of the month. With that information, and the ability to manage your finances without paper in almost any currency in the world, it’s no wonder that Wally is popular with millennials.

9. Good Budget

Goodbudget is built on the concept of an envelope budget. You get 10 envelopes for free, but if you upgrade to Plus, you get unlimited envelopes for $6 per month. As with most envelope-based systems, you have to stop spending when an envelope is empty, or move money from a different envelope. One of the biggest advantages associated with Goodbudget is that you can create a shared budget in your household. Goodbudget is compatible across iPhone and Android devices, so it doesn’t matter what others are using. Use Goodbudget to set shared goals, keep each other accountable, and plan your budget in a way that everyone knows what’s happening.

10. Spendee

Spendee is yet another visual app that syncs with your bank accounts. It automatically downloads transactions and categorizes them. It also allows you to share certain parts of your budget with others. Assign money to virtual wallets and Spendee will keep you on track. You can also share specific wallets with friends, allowing you to encourage accountability as you work toward your goals. You don’t have to share your entire budget, though, which is important if you want to maintain your privacy. Spendee also offers a travel mode that supports multiple currencies when you’re abroad.

11. Albert

Do you wish you had a personal finance assistant? You probably want Albert. Using aspects of artificial intelligence mixed with human guidance, you can get personalized information about your current financial health–and what you can do to improve it. Albert automatically creates a budget for you, based on your income, spending habits, and bills. Not only that, but Albert helps you set money aside in a savings account, analyzes your bills to help you identify where you overpay, and even alerts you when a free trial is coming to an end. You can use Albert for free, but if you’re willing to pay a small premium, you can text human experts to get a little extra help reaching goals like investing more and paying down debt. Technology offers you the chance to understand your finances and improve your money management skills. Find the right money management app to match your style and watch your situation improve. Check out Episode 306 of the Dough Roller Podcast below, where Rob discusses #4 on the list, YNAB, as well as another financial management app, eMoney.If you're like most people, you have a smartphone and you care about your money. Here are the 3 best money management apps on the market right now.

The post The Top 3 Money Management Apps for Growing Your Net Worth appeared first on The Dough Roller.

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She showed up late and confused to her first silent retreat, but Caverly Morgan eventually trained for eight years in silence at a Zen monastery. Now her mindfulness-education program Peace in Schools is part of the high-school curriculum in Portland, Ore. Steve Levitt finds out what daily life is like in a silent monastery, why teens find it easier than adults to learn meditation, and what happy children can teach their parents.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The post “I Am Not This Voice. I Am Not This Narrative.” | People I (Mostly) Admire Ep. 7: Caverly Morgan appeared first on Freakonomics.

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It's more important than ever to get food and groceries delivered right to your door. We've found the best apps for food delivery and much more!

The post Best Food Delivery Apps appeared first on The Dough Roller.

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One of my biggest regrets was not buying a multifamily investment property in my late 20s. Instead of taking advantage of multifamily investment opportunities to generate more passive income, I decided to buy a four bedroom, three and a half bathroom single family home instead. The house wasn’t huge at ~2,300 sqft. But it was

The post The Best Multifamily Investment Opportunities Post-Pandemic appeared first on Financial Samurai.

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Generally, financial gurus recommend that you get 5-20 times your annual income in life insurance coverage. But what if you have no income because you’re a full-time, stay-at-home parent? Or what if you contribute a few hundred bucks a year to the family bank account from your side hustle, while you mostly stay home with the kids? We all know that zero multiplied by anything is zero, but that doesn’t mean that a stay-at-home parent should not have life insurance. In fact, as a stay-at-home parent, you make hugely valuable contributions to your household — contributions that would cost your family a pretty penny should something happen to you.

The Value of a SAHM (Stay-At-Home Mom)

According to a recent Salary.com survey, the value of a stay-at-home mom in 2016 (sorry, dads, you weren’t part of the survey this time) would cost about $143,000 if you had to outsource those jobs. The survey looked at the services provided by a typical homemaker, including housekeeper, child care, chauffeur, and more. If you had to hire someone else to take care of all those services, you’d pay a lot to do it. But does that mean that a stay-at-home parent needs more than $1 million in life insurance? Probably not. Related: The Complete Guide to Life Insurance The truth is that in single-parent households, not all of these services are outsourced. Yes, if something happened to you, your spouse would have to pay for daycare and would probably like to pay for extra services like housekeeping. But plenty of working single parents clean the house, make the lunches, plan the doctor’s appointments, run to school and soccer practice, and still work.

The Goal is Something In Between

While your stay-at-home parent services are invaluable for your family, you don’t want to wind up with more life insurance than you can afford. So when you’re deciding how much term life insurance coverage to buy for yourself, you’ll have to do some personal calculations and some hard thinking. Here’s one process for deciding how much life insurance to carry for the stay-at-home parent in your family:

Step 1: Calculate What You Actually Need

First, talk about what life would look like if that parent died. No one likes to think about this possibility, but to make good life insurance decisions you must. Which services would the surviving spouse need (or want) to outsource? Look into the cost of full-time child care in your area and include that in your calculations. You may also want to check out things such as housekeeping services. Remember to look at the ways a stay-at-home parent saves your family money, as well. For instance, many stay-at-home moms are able to shave hundreds off the monthly grocery bill by meal planning, couponing, and cooking at home. If something happened to this parent, the family’s food costs could go up quite a bit. Related: How to Create a Bare Bones Budget Also look into counseling services. If something happens to your children’s primary caregiver, chances are they’ll need some professional help to cope in a healthy way. How much would some basic grief counseling or therapy cost your family? Again, it’s not fun to think about these possibilities, but it’s essential to choosing the right amount of life insurance for a stay-at-home parent.

Step 2: Figure Out How Much It Costs

Second, research how much life insurance coverage would cost. Term life insurance rates are typically low. But if you’re a one-income family living on a tight budget, you may not be able to afford much coverage. On the other hand, if rates are very low, you might be able to afford the luxury of more coverage. The key is to make sure you can pay for it, even if you get into a bind financially. Not paying your premiums can result in a termination of coverage, which is not a place you want to find yourself.

Find the Cheapest Insurance Quotes in Your Area

Step 3: Decide How Much to Buy

Finally, choose how much coverage you want. Your best bet is to apply through a broker, so you can get the best deal on the amount of coverage you need. It’s also easy to get life insurance quotes online. A SAHM is possibly the most important job as a mom, and part of that job is making sure your children are cared for in all eventualities. One option to consider is Policygenius’ tools and insights to help you decide on the best insurance policy for you and how much to plan for. Another company to consider is HealthIQ. They’ll give steep discounts based on how in-shape you are. So if you have a good diet, exercise, and maintain a healthy lifestyle, you might find that they have the cheapest plan for you. One Broker Option: Looking for Life Insurance? Quotacy Can Help Having the right type of life insurance coverage for both parents in a family can give you peace of mind. You can sleep well knowing that you’re protecting your family, and especially your children, in the worst possible circumstances. If one partner in your family stays at home with the kids, calculating life insurance needs can be more complicated, because you can’t just multiply your annual income. Take the time to figure out how much coverage the stay-at-home parent warrants, though. It is an important step in making sure your family is well-protected. Life insurance is crucial for every family, but how much life insurance does a stay-at-home parent need? These are the things you need to consider.

The post How Much Life Insurance Does a Stay-at-Home Parent Need? appeared first on The Dough Roller.

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Are you looking to make extra money and cut back on your electricity use? Here is my OhmConnect review that will help you do just that. I have partnered with OhmConnect and I will be talking about if OhmConnect is legitimate and safe, average OhmConnect earnings, and more.

If you live in California, I found a really easy opportunity to save some extra money.

If you’re a California resident, you can earn hundreds of dollars a year by connecting your utility account to OhmConnect. All you have to do is agree to help reduce your electricity usage one hour per week.

Here’s a quick summary on OhmConnect – OhmConnect is a free service that rewards California residents for saving electricity with PayPal cash or gift cards. You receive a notification about once per week to save energy for an hour. If you save energy, you receive cash.

Not only are you helping the environment, which is OhmConnect’s mission, you are also able to make some extra money.

The average OhmConnect member earns between $100 to $300 each year. And, some users have earned over $2,000 in their first year.

It is extremely easy to use OhmConnect too!

In fact, I think it’s a no brainer if you are a California resident. There is nothing to lose.

Today, I’d like to talk about OhmConnect and you may be able to save electricity, help the environment, and make extra money.

Here’s my OhmConnect review.

 

What is OhmConnect?

When many different households are using electricity all at the same time, it causes dirty and inefficient power plants to be used.

More and more states and cities are switching to paying their residents for saving energy, as it’s more affordable for them and better for the environment.

This is where OhmConnect comes in.

OhmConnect is a free service that helps you use energy when it is the cleanest, and rewards you with cash and gift cards for saving electricity.

OhmConnect does not charge you any fees, and you don’t have to install anything if you choose not to.

OhmConnect also does not change your utility bill.

All OhmConnect does is that they simply ask you to turn off appliances or reduce your electricity for an hour or two each week. If you save enough energy during an OhmHour event, you then earn points, and those points can be used for PayPal cash or other prizes.

 

How much money can you make with OhmConnect?

If you save enough energy during an OhmHour event, you then earn points, and those points can be used for PayPal or other prizes.

10,000 points equals $100. So, you can think of each point as one penny. For a regular OhmHour, the maximum amount is 2,000 points per hour. So if the OhmHour is one hour, you can earn a maximum of 2,000 points. If it’s two hours, the maximum is 4,000 points, and so on.

The amount that you can earn with OhmConnect depends on how much electricity you can save.

OhmConnect earnings, on average, for each member is around $100 to $300 each year.

One San Diego resident gets paid nearly $500 a month for saving electricity. You can read all about him and how he did this here – California Man Hacked His Energy Bill – Now He EARNS Almost $500 Per Month!

 

How does OhmConnect work?

OhmConnect is easy to use.

In order to use OhmConnect, you must have an online account with one of these three California utility companies: Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) or Southern California Edison (SCE).

Here are the steps to take:

1. Simply click here to sign up for a free OhmConnect account
2. Connect your OhmConnect account with your utility account
3. Receive notifications on when to save energy from OhmConnect. The utility company lets OhmConnect know when a time of high demand is, and then OhmConnect lets you know.
4. Save energy. OhmConnect members can save energy by giving thermostats a break, turning off the AC, and so on.
5. Get rewarded. If you use less energy than you were predicted to, you get rewarded with cash payments or an entry for a prize.

 

How can you save energy?

There are many different ways that you can save energy. Some options include:

• Unplugging unused electronics. Computers, TVs, chargers, and more all use power even when they aren’t turned on.
• Adjusting your heating or air conditioning temperature.
• Using smart devices such as a smart thermostat or a smart plug. With a smart thermostat, you can save up to 10% on heating and cooling.
• Skipping running the dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer, power tools, and more until after the OhmHour is over.
• If you have an electric hot water tank, you may be able to wrap it in an insulating blanket to reduce heat loss.
• Keeping your refrigerator closed as energy is used to cool it back down after you are done.
• Turning off lights around your home.

It is actually very easy to do this, as you can see!

 

Who can use OhmConnect?

To use OhmConnect, you must have an online account with one of these three California utility companies:

• Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E)
• San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E)
• Southern California Edison (SCE)

 

What is an OhmHour? How often are OhmHours?

An OhmHour is a short amount of time (usually on weeknight evenings) when demand for electricity is high.

This is because everyone tends to come home from work, and everyone is in their home watching TV, doing the dishes, cooking food, starting laundry, and more.

You can also set the hours that you prefer to receive OhmHours, and usually are given around a day’s notice to prepare.

One easy way to save more electricity, and thereby make more money with OhmConnect is to use smart devices. Smart devices are things such as smart thermostats and smart plugs. These smart devices connect to your home’s internet and can be controlled from anywhere, which can allow you to take advantage of OhmHours even when you’re not at home.

How can you increase your OhmConnect earnings?

You can earn more money by hitting your OhmHour goals many times in a row.

Another way to make money with OhmConnect is by referring other households to them. With an OhmConnect referral, you get paid $20.

 

How does OhmConnect make money? Is OhmConnect legitimate? Is OhmConnect safe?

Yes, OhmConnect is a legitimate company and it is safe to use.

So you are probably wondering why OhmConnect offers this as a service.

That is a reasonable question!

In the U.S., energy is traded on a market. Planning is done to make sure that supply and demand are balanced, and so that there are no electricity blackouts. OhmConnect trades energy in these markets as well. They don’t actually create any new energy, they simply reduce as a community, which has the same effect as contributing energy to the grid.

OhmConnect is paid daily, monthly, and annually, and they in turn reward their users for saving electricity.

As you can see, OhmConnect is a no brainer. If you live in California and use one of the eligible utility companies, then it pays to help the environment.

Plus, it is so easy!

You can click here to sign up for OhmConnect.

I hope you enjoyed this OhmConnect review.

Are you interested in trying out OhmConnect? What do you do to save electricity? 

The post This Company Pays California Residents Hundreds Of Dollars A Year To Save Electricity appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.

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The modern world overwhelms us with sounds we didn’t ask for, like car alarms and cell-phone “halfalogues.” What does all this noise cost us in terms of productivity, health, and basic sanity?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

Peter TYACK: Humans and animals have evolved in environments that have a lot of noise. We have noise from rain. We have noise from thunder. We have noise from other animals like birdsong or crickets chirping. But human industrial activities also have introduced a lot of noise that are quite different from the sounds that we and other animals have evolved to live with. 

Peter Tyack — T-Y-A-C-K — is a behavioral ecologist, at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.

TYACK: And I’ve studied the sounds of mainly marine mammals, and that’s given me an entry point to understanding how sound travels in the ocean, which is quite different from what we’re used to on land. 

Different how?

TYACK: We as terrestrial mammals are used to vision being the great distance sense. We can see things from very far away, much further than we can hear. But if you’ve snorkeled in the ocean, you know you can only see about 10 meters, something like that, but you can hear much further away. So, the key difference between life on land and life underwater is that for a mammal that wants to understand what’s far away, they really need to rely on sound in the ocean.

Sound in the ocean therefore exerts a lot of leverage. Sometimes this is good news. Consider a recent experiment by scientists working at the Great Barrier Reef off of Australia. When a coral reef is healthy, it’s quite noisy with the sound of marine activity, and that noise attracts more activity. But a patch of coral reef that’s dead or dying is quiet. So, the scientists went to these quiet patches and placed speakers underwater to play the sounds of a noisy reef.

It seems to have worked, attracting lots of fish, who stayed on. Here’s how the researchers put it: “Acoustic enrichment shows promise as a novel tool for the active management of degraded coral reefs.” So, there are beneficial ocean sounds and the opposite. Peter Tyack was once studying whales in the Bay of Fundy, off the Canadian coast. It was generally a good place for whales to be, with lots of appetizing food:

TYACK: But there also are shipping channels near there.

As part of his research, Tyack recorded the calls that whales make:

TYACK: But always in the background was the sound of shipping noise. 

Researchers like Tyack had never really thought much about this background noise. It was just there. But then all of a sudden it wasn’t. The change came with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

TYACK: All of a sudden, the ships that were plying the ocean in that area stopped. 

This drop in ship traffic was only temporary. But it happened to coincide with some other whale research that was happening in the Bay of Fundy:

TYACK: Researchers from the New England Aquarium had been sampling feces from whales to look at stress hormones. It wasn’t part of a noise experiment at all. 

It was just your standard whale-feces research.

TYACK: But what they found was that if you compared the stress hormones in whales before 9/11 and after 9/11, their stress hormones actually went down after 9/11. 

I’m guessing you didn’t wake up this morning thinking you’d be hearing about whale feces and stress hormones. But noise? You probably think about noise all the time. I know I do. Especially as the pandemic has rearranged our world, our routines, our soundscapes. Think how hard it can be to control the background noise in these new settings, especially when someone else is generating the noise. If whales are stressed out by noise, how about you? Before we answer that question: let’s gather some more whale evidence. Peter Tyack told us about another type of whale:

TYACK: A very poorly known set of toothed whales called beaked whales.

When U.S. Navy ships in the Bahamas ran exercises using sonar — that’s “sound navigation and ranging,” which emits bursts of underwater sound — these beaked whales had trouble.

TYACK: Over a period of a few hours, whales would strand by ones and twos over tens of kilometers of beach. 

Tyack and his colleagues wanted to learn just how sensitive the whales were to these sounds. So, they developed tags to track the whales’ behavior and then dropped speakers in the water to play their own sonar noise, first at very low levels.

TYACK: What we found was that at quite low levels of exposure, much lower than the levels that actually cause hearing damage, the animals would stop making their echolocation clicks, then stop foraging, and they would then do a very long, slow ascent to the surface. 

This surfacing is unhealthy for the whales.

TYACK: It may cause an explosive decompression syndrome in which they get gas bubbles in their body, like a diver with the bends, that could even cause animals to die at sea. Or they may panic and strand on shore. 

Why would the whales have such a drastic reaction to such low levels of sound?

TYACK: This is something that’s seen in a lot of wildlife, that if they interpret a sound as a threat, they’ve evolved anti-predator responses. And these may cause them to show pretty strong responses at relatively low levels of sound.

The science shows that most humans are not nearly as sensitive to sound as whales. Still, you have to consider what kind of responses we are having — knowingly or unknowingly — to all the noise around us. Even if it doesn’t seem particularly “noisy.”

TYACK: We’re just used to the baseline of the ambient noise around us. So, if you grow up in New York, your baseline is the sounds of planes flying overhead and fire engines going by. And that’s something that you don’t really pay attention to.  

Most guidelines say that sounds above 85 decibels are physically harmful. But think of all the baseline sounds we barely notice. Normal breathing is around 10 decibels; a computer fan, 20. The hum of a refrigerator is around 40 decibels. A dishwasher, 75; a window air-conditioner: more than 80. Then there’s the drive-by D.J.’s, the renegade fireworks that punctuated New York City during the pandemic this summer, usually late at night. And of course the quintessential 21^st-century sound: the one-sided cell-phone call. Today on Freakonomics Radio: the economics of noise.

Josh DEAN: One very economics-y thing that I worry about is that noise is very susceptible to a race to the bottom. 

How people suffer from noise:

Margaret JASTREBOFF: He said, “I’m not afraid of sound. Sound is making me upset.” 

And what can be done about it:

Arline BRONZAFT: One word and that’s the word called “respect.”

*      *      *

Here’s a question to start with: what is particular about sound?

HAGOOD: Sound doesn’t respect barriers very well. As many people have pointed out, there are no ear lids.

That’s Mack Hagood. He is a scholar of sound at Miami University in Ohio, and the author of a book called Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control.

HAGOOD: Sound has always been a challenge to our sense of autonomy. 

Emphasis on the “always.”  

HAGOOD: We can look back at the famous stoic Seneca, back in ancient Rome, who wrote that if you were truly in control of your own consciousness and emotions, then you should be able to withstand any sort of sound. And yet eventually Seneca moved out of Rome to the Roman suburbs because he couldn’t stand the noise anymore.  

Noise like carpenters at work and musicians in the public square.

HAGOOD: So, I kind of picture he’s moved out by IKEA.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, writing in 19^th century Germany, complained that the cracking of horse whips “paralyzes the brain … and murders thought.” I submit that if people like Schopenhauer and Seneca considered noise worthy of their attention (and disdain), we may follow suit.

HAGOOD: Absolutely. And sound has changed a lot in modernity and the world has gotten noisier. So, we have new kinds of factory noise. We have new kinds of noise from transportation — railways, automobiles, airplanes. And then we have new kinds of ways of consuming sound itself: through the radio—. 

Pegeen FITZGERALD: We kept you awake, but now, pleasant dreams, and be with us again tomorrow night, will you?  

HAGOOD: —through the television.   

Oprah WINFREY: I’m Oprah Winfrey, and welcome to the very first national Oprah Winfrey Show! 

And through podcasts, of course.

HAGOOD: On the other hand, we are also becoming more finicky when it comes to sound.  

Some people, for instance, seek out sounds that trigger what’s called A.S.M.R., or “autonomous sensory meridian response.” That’s a tingly, relaxing feeling some people get when listening to the sound of, say, a bar of soap being carved or typing on a keyboard. Plainly the modern menu of sound is a vast, all-you-can-eat buffet. But just as plainly, many sounds are thrust upon us, which has had significant consequences.

HAGOOD: We’ve gotten new diagnoses that have popped up that just never existed before. 

Hyperacusis, for instance, a rare but debilitating sensitivity to certain frequencies and ranges of sound. Or phonophobia, a fear of sound. And then there’s misophonia, a condition that was identified relatively recently. The name means hatred of sound. Although the man who named misophonia admits the name is imperfect.

Pawel JASTREBOFF: Misophonia, God forbid, should not be translated literally as a hate to sound. 

That is Pawel Jastreboff.

Margaret JASTREBOFF: I would say like this:

And that’s his wife Margaret Jastreboff.

M. JASTREBOFF: Misophonic reaction is negative reaction to specific sounds, or sounds in very particular situation, produced by one or two specific people or in specific situation. 

Okay, that’s a little bit helpful. So, misophonia is a negative reaction that certain people have to certain sounds in certain situations?

M. JASTREBOFF: Oh, it’s a long story.

The Jastreboffs run the Jastreboff Hearing Disorders Foundation Clinic in Maryland. Before that, they were medical-school professors at Emory University.

P. JASTREBOFF: Yes. Still professor emeritus, which actually gives me a great privilege of having free parking.

It was at their clinic that Margaret Jastreboff first noticed this interesting new condition. Some patients reported an extreme sensitivity to certain sounds. Typically, this would be diagnosed as phonophobia — a fear of sound. But that label was upsetting to these patients. Margaret recalls how one of them stormed out of the examination room:

M. JASTREBOFF: He screamed at me, and he said, “I’m not afraid of sound, I’m not fearful. Sound is making me upset. I cannot control my reaction.”  

The Jastreboffs found there were a range of specific sounds that upset different patients.

P. JASTREBOFF: For example, a sound of a door closing or airplane flying or sound of eating or sound of kissing, for example — interesting case. 

Why would someone have no problem with most sounds but become distraught over the sound of eating or kissing?

M. JASTREBOFF: So, we start thinking about this and we realized that it’s not only fear. It is something definitely more complex. 

One of the most common misophonia triggers is the sound of chewing. You may dislike the sound of someone chewing their food. But for someone with misophonia, the sound is excruciating. Where does this come from?

P. JASTREBOFF: What I believe, what I’m proposing, misophonia reflects subconscious connection. 

A subconscious connection with, in all likelihood, an unhappy event. Imagine you’re a little kid at Sunday dinner with your whole family and your grandfather’s dentures fall out onto the table. The feeling you had then — an icky feeling — could become subconsciously associated with the sound of anyone chewing. And it could subsequently generate an automatic, physiological reaction. To treat patients with misophonia, the Jastreboffs have drawn on a method used to treat people with tinnitus. That’s a disorder most of us think of as a “ringing in the ears.”

P. JASTREBOFF: But is not necessarily ringing. It can be any kind of a sound — can be hissing, can be sound of insects. There’s some people who are hearing Christmas carols.

Just to be clear: people with tinnitus hear these sounds when there are no actual Christmas carols, or insects.

P. JASTREBOFF: Basically, it’s a perceiving of a sound. It is not created by hearing. So, tinnitus is phantom auditory perception. 

Some people with tinnitus aren’t particularly bothered by it; for others, it generates an intense emotional response. One treatment is called Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, or T.R.T., which was developed by Pawel Jastreboff and a colleague, Jonathan Hazell. It is  a combination of psychotherapy — including stress management and relaxation exercises — and sound therapy, like using white noise to mask the tinnitus sound.

P. JASTREBOFF: So, even if you’re hearing the sound, this signal is not spreading to the emotional system, and it’s not causing an emotion, and it’s not causing any reaction. 

And this is the therapy the Jastreboffs have been trying with patients suffering from misophonia. They’ve had at least some success with about 80 percent of their patients, and early clinical studies have shown promise. Even for the majority of us who don’t suffer from something like misophonia or phonophobia, it’s still easy — at least I’d argue it’s easy — to appreciate that noise can generate strong emotions. Though not always in predictable ways.

Just as one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the scale of noise appreciation is a sliding scale. The very same chewing sound that may torment someone with misophonia can delight someone who experiences A.S.M.R. Your favorite song in the world might be my least favorite. You can tell a lot about how someone feels based on whether they describe something as “sound” or as “noise.”

HAGOOD: So, the definitions of noise and sound are often debated in the field of sound studies. 

That, again, is Mack Hagood, the sound scholar (or maybe the noise scholar).

HAGOOD: When most people talk about noise, the argument is, the world has gotten noisier and we need to do something about it, right? And it’s true. Some of these sounds are objectively damaging to our health. But history doesn’t just change the sounds around us. It also reshapes how we define what’s noise. History also reshapes the senses themselves. What actually sounds pleasing and displeasing to us, how we listen, how we learn to listen, how we engage with sound. We’ve been trained by technologies like the telephone and headphones to listen closely and evaluate sounds in a particular way that’s different from in the past. And so we have this new pressure to survive through our ability to concentrate. And that’s when noise starts to seem like a real big problem. 

Here’s one very reductive definition of sound versus noise. Sound is something I make, or choose to hear; noise is something you make, or choose to hear. This isn’t a real definition; I just made it up. But I don’t think it’s all that wrong. If you look at surveys where people are asked what sounds they hate the most, the answers aren’t very surprising: loud interruptions like garbage trucks and sirens and car alarms. Also snoring. And: loud phone conversations — other people’s loud conversations, of course, not our own. Our own noise rarely bothers us.

This is good evidence that when a noise does bother us, it’s not necessarily the sound waves themselves. It’s what they represent — or maybe fail to represent. Consider the one-sided cell-phone call — or, as it’s been named, the halfalogue. Why is that so much more annoying than hearing two people talking? Some academic researchers asked that very question and came up with a plausible answer: when we hear just one side of a conversation, our brains are compelled to fill in the missing information. Imagine reading a book with every other page torn out. The cell-phone halfalogue is noise we can’t ignore. And because we can’t ignore it — or control it — we find, as Seneca wrote a couple thousand years ago, that our very autonomy has been challenged.

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When you think about sound and noise, it’s easy to point out all the detriments. But as with anything that exacts a cost, there are benefits as well, often massive ones. Consider all the music you love, the conversations you have, the pre-pandemic thrill of being in a big crowd during a celebration. We should also appreciate the strategic application of sound for the benefit of our species, and other species. We already mentioned how scientists at the Great Barrier Reef drew fish back to dying reefs by playing audio of a healthy reef. And hear this: scientists at the University of Washington recently began using ultrasound “acoustic tweezers,” that can manipulate a kidney stone and help clear it through the urinary tract. That said, it is wise to be aware of the downsides of noise, especially noise that we can’t control.

TYACK: People have studied children, for example, in Munich, both in a place where there was an airport and where an airport was going to be built. 

That, again, is the behavioral ecologist Peter Tyack.

TYACK: And when they closed the old airport and moved to the new airport, the children in the new area all of a sudden had cognitive problems related to learning with language tasks. It wasn’t loud enough to affect their hearing. It didn’t affect their immediate health. But there were problems with, say, in school, being able to understand complicated linguistic problems. 

Other research has found that airport noise has negative effects on various cognitive and physical dimensions, even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors and pollution. Other studies have looked at the noise generated by highways and subways.

BRONZAFT: Let me talk about my work on subway noise. 

That is Arline Bronzaft.

BRONZAFT: Professor emerita of the City University of New York. And I do research and write on the effects of noise on people’s mental and physical health. 

She’s also on the board of a nonprofit called GrowNYC, which runs environmental programs in the city.

BRONZAFT: And we also have a section on noise, in which we give advice to people on how to lessen the noise levels in their lives. But if you go to our noise site and you are seeking assistance with a noise problem, you can contact me directly. 

Stephen DUBNER: Now, you’re not saying that you go down to 311 and take the calls. You’re saying this is a separate channel. 

BRONZAFT: Actually, the people who contact us at GrowNYC have not been able to get the assistance through 311, through their public officials, with their managers of their buildings or their landlords. And I get the most difficult cases. Do people contact me? The answer is yes. 

The board members of GrowNYC are appointed by the mayor, and to date, Bronzaft has made it through five of them. She is a legend in the world of noise research. But that was not her original plan.

BRONZAFT: Noise found me. 

In the 1970s, Bronzaft was teaching environmental psychology at Lehman College, in the Bronx.

BRONZAFT: A student asked to speak to me after class and said, “My child goes to a school next to an elevated train. And the noise from that train disrupts the classroom every four, four-and-a-half minutes. And we intend to sue the City of New York in order to improve the education of our children, because we believe the train noise is disrupting their learning.” To which I said, as the wife of an attorney, “You need data to prove that the children aren’t doing as well in that class.” And she said, “Will you help us?” 

This turned into Bronzaft’s first study on the effects of noise, at P.S. 98 in Upper Manhattan. One side of the school building faced a nearby elevated subway; the other side faced away. Bronzaft matched second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade classrooms on the quiet side and on the noisy side, where a passing train would push the sound readings from 59 decibels to 89 decibels. Then she compared the average reading scores from the two sets of classrooms.

BRONZAFT: And the children exposed to the transit noise were nearly a year behind in reading by the sixth grade, and the teacher had difficulty teaching.

The published paper got a lot of attention.

BRONZAFT: But I had not really responded to the mother’s request. She asked me to help the children. And so, I went back to the school, and with the aid of the principal, we went to the Board of Education and we asked for acoustical ceilings in the classroom, and I was able to persuade the transit authority to choose the site adjacent to that school to test out a new procedure to quiet the noise on the tracks. And they agreed. And when I looked at the reading scores in the now-quieter classroom and compared it to the reading scores of the children on the quiet side of the building, it turned out they now were the same. 

It’s worth noting that Bronzaft’s subway research, as with similar studies at airports and elsewhere, have some limitations. For one thing, Bronzaft couldn’t randomly assign students to the noisy versus quieter classrooms. There were also relatively few classrooms to choose from, so there might have been some natural variation. In any case, this kind of research led to Bronzaft becoming a scholar of both the physical and psychological aspects of this issue.

BRONZAFT: Sound is a physical phenomenon. Noise is a psychological one. Sound comes into the ear. It travels to the brain and it registers in the temporal lobe. And then we further identify what the sound is. But noise lets you know whether that sound is disturbing, is bothersome, is hurting you, and that’s a psychological phenomenon. 

DUBNER: Which part disturbs us more about noise — the intrusion itself, or the fact that in most cases, we don’t have an ability to control it? 

BRONZAFT: So, I would say both. The actual sounds that you’re hearing is disturbing your sleep. And there’s a phenomenon in psychology called learned helplessness. It means no matter how I try, I can’t stop it. And that is also costly to one’s health. 

DUBNER: Can you talk a bit more about any trade-offs you can think of in noise reduction? For instance, New York City subways are still, as far as I know, steel-wheeled, which are noisier than rubber. So, then I get to thinking, well maybe steel wheels are safer or they’re more durable or whatnot. But there is no such thing as a free lunch.

BRONZAFT: I understand that companies are in business of making money. But what about the medical costs for people who live near noisy airports? And the data have demonstrated increased cardiovascular disorders for people who live near airports. Doesn’t that cost money? So, if you asked me, do the companies that produce the noise through their products, through their activities, are they holding the upper hand? Yes. But we’re paying for it, because medical costs in this country are high. So, are educational costs. Remember, if the children were a year behind in reading, how much would it have cost to remediate their learning deficits?

In Bronzaft’s work as an advocate for New York citizens, she’s dealt with all sorts of noise complaints. Among the most common are pervasive bass sounds.

BRONZAFT: Yes. 

DUBNER: Are you in the mood to imitate a pervasive bass sound?

BRONZAFT: You can do that better than I. I could speak to bass sounds. 

DUBNER: Would you please?

BRONZAFT: Yes. If you live above a bar or a music establishment, you not only hear the bass, but if you’re lying in bed, you will feel it. The bass sounds are low-frequency sounds. Usually we talk about noise in the mid-range of the frequencies, but when you talk about bass music, you’re talking low. Bass sounds have taken up more of a center stage today with wind-turbine introduction. Because wind turbines are now seen as an alternate source of energy.

However, the wind turbines generate the low bass sounds. And the laws that have been passed to regulate the sound levels of wind turbines have been on the A-scale, the mid-range, where we commonly measure the levels of sound. And they’ve sort of ignored the low bass. And so you find a great uproar from citizens living with turbines saying they don’t want them.

So, let’s pull back and get a sense of the overall societal costs of noise pollution. What does the economics literature have to say about that?

Josh DEAN: It really doesn’t exist. 

That’s Josh Dean.

DEAN: I’m an assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. 

So, economists really haven’t calculated the costs of noise pollution?

DEAN: There’s a very large history of psychologists using noise in laboratory experiments, both to understand the impacts of noise per se, but then also using noise as a kind of tool in order to understand other things, like how our working memory works and how our attention works. But there’s really nothing in economics and there’s really not much in terms of how this affects economic outcomes. I think I, in scouring the literature, managed to find three other papers that have looked at this question, including one from 1935 with 20 subjects. 

Dean scoured the literature because he had become personally interested in the topic, while working on a different project, in India.

DEAN: I was living in Delhi and I was in a cafe trying to work, as lots of grad students do. And I kept getting distracted by all of the horns honking and the people selling things. And I had a light bulb moment where I realized if I’m having trouble doing this, inside of this nice cafe, what is this like for people who have to live and work in this kind of noise without even the minimal escape that I’d been able to find? 

DUBNER: And when you think about noise as a research subject, what made you go to productivity versus, let’s say, the health outcomes, physical or mental-health outcomes, or other potential downstream effects of noise? 

DEAN: Some of it is just that you want something that is relatively easily measurable and quantifiable. And productivity is nice in that way. And it’s particularly nice in that you can put a dollar value on it. If you tell someone, “The noise in your factory is causing a 5 percent decrease in productivity,” that means something to them in terms of making the decision of whether to abate noise. If you tell people something like, “Twenty-five percent of your metal workers have disabling hearing loss,” you have to take another step of trying to convince people that that means that you should care about this, right? And so productivity is an easier outcome both to study and to then use to persuade people to care about the problem. 

DUBNER: Wow. That was a very compelling, if depressing, answer.  

DEAN: Isn’t that what economists are supposed to be good at? 

So, Josh Dean set out to personally expand the scant economics literature on noise and productivity.

DEAN: There were three research questions that I was interested in answering. The first is kind of, is there an effect of noise on productivity? Full stop. And if so, how big is that? 

DUBNER: In other words, you were not believing the 1935 paper. 

DEAN: Well — I would like some more robust evidence. And so, that’s the first goal. And then the second goal is to understand what is the underlying mechanism by which noise affects productivity. So, there’s this psychology literature that suggests possibly something like inhibiting attention or working memory, but it could also be something like reducing the effort of workers because they don’t enjoy being put in noisy working conditions. And depending on what the mechanism is, that is going to lead to different conclusions about where we should expect this to matter and what the right policy response should be. And then the last question is to understand how much scope there is for workers to adapt to noise by doing things like purchasing hearing protection or avoiding noisy working conditions. 

How workers adapt to noise — that is something most of us struggle with at some point, especially if your work involves any cognitive tasks. Some of us struggle more than others — and I am raising my hand here. I’ve always been badly distracted by noise, even the casual background conversation that most people seem to power right through. When I first started working in newsrooms, I wore foam earplugs all day every day (and yes, I was ridiculed for it).

Later came noise-cancelling headphones, a total godsend with the additional benefit of signaling to co-workers that you don’t want to be interrupted. Noise-canceling headphones have since increased in popularity, as is evident when you walk through any public space these days. A team of scientists in Singapore has even invented what’s being called “noise-canceling headphones for your apartment.” It’s an array of speakers that emit sound waves calculated to cancel out the incoming noise. So, the appetite to mitigate the noise of modern civilization is plainly strong; as for the exact cost of all that noise? That is what Josh Dean wanted to figure out. So, he set up a study with two main experiments.

DEAN: So, the first experiment is really designed to answer this question of, what is the impact of noise on productivity? And to do so, I recruit a group of manual laborers who are used to working in noisy factory conditions, and bring them to a textile training facility.

This facility was just outside of Nairobi, Kenya. There were around 100 workers in the study, and they were being trained to sew pockets for clothing.

DEAN: And then while they’re performing a standard sewing task, I randomly expose them to engine noise, which we think is representative of some of the major types of noise you might worry about — thinking loud industrial machines, think cars on the street. 

Significantly, engine noise also doesn’t have any informational content. It’s not like that one-sided cell-phone call you’re subconsciously trying to participate in; it’s not even like overhearing a T.V. or coworkers chatting. Now, you may be wondering how Dean was able to randomly expose these workers to engine noise.

DEAN: So, what’s nice about this training facility is that they also train automotive mechanics, and for that reason, they have car engines mounted on wheels. So, I’m able to both randomly assign workers to rooms and then randomly assign which room is noisy. 

DUBNER: And what do you do about the exhaust? I assume you want to isolate the noise and not the air pollution. 

DEAN: Right. So, we have the car engine out in an open courtyard with the exhaust pointing away from any access points to the room, and then to double-check that none of the exhaust accidentally bleeds in, we measure the CO2 levels of the room. 

DUBNER: How many decibels louder is the room with the engine than the quiet, quieter room? 

DEAN: So, it’s seven decibels louder. 

DUBNER: Oh, that’s not very much. 

DEAN: Well, decibels are tricky to interpret because they’re on a proportional scale. So, three decibels is the detection threshold of human hearing, and a 10-decibel change is perceived as twice as loud by humans. So, it’s not very intuitive. I think the more intuitive way to think about it is, if you go from having a kind of normal dishwasher going in the background in the control condition to having a vacuum cleaner right next to you. 

So, these textile workers would spend a few days in training and then get randomly assigned to rotate through noisy and less-noisy rooms. They were paid for each pocket they sewed as long as it was deemed acceptable by an impartial judge. After two weeks, Dean had enough data to see how the noise affected productivity.

DEAN: So, what we find is that if we double how loud the room feels, the workers are about 5 percent less productive on this task. And just to put that number in perspective, we also randomly assigned how much we were paying participants based on their production. And there, if we double their payment from five shillings per pocket to 10 shillings per pocket, that only increases productivity by around 3 percent. 

DUBNER: So, if you had to describe the magnitude of this effect in lay terms — and since we’re talking about clothing, let’s put it in small, medium, large or extra-large — how would you describe the change in productivity, then? 

DEAN: I would say a medium-sized effect relative to the other means we know of affecting productivity. There’s another great paper that looks at the effects of an intensive, months-long management intervention in a textile factory in India. And what they find is that that increases output by 9 percent. And so, this 5 percent effect is about in line with the other means that we have of affecting the productivity of workers, which suggests that it’s an economically meaningful environmental input. 

There was another tangential finding from this experiment that was of interest to Dean: when it came to being distracted by noise, it didn’t seem to matter how good a given worker was at sewing pockets. In other words, a high level of skill didn’t lessen the noise distraction.

DEAN: Right, exactly. If you have a distractor, you’ve got to slow down a bit to focus on what you’re doing to make sure that you’re doing it right. And that slowdown factor just appears to be constant. 

And then there was the second experiment within Dean’s study. This one was meant to understand why productivity falls in noisy conditions. Was it about the cognitive strain, or perhaps due to decreased motivation or physical weariness? In this case, Dean ran a condensed version of the first experiment but rather than sewing pockets, the workers performed tasks that tested skills like attention and working memory — as measured against a placebo task that didn’t involve any cognitive input at all. The result? Workers did slightly worse on the cognitive tests and slightly better on the placebo task.

DEAN: So, what I think we learned from the two experiments is that noise can impact productivity and that this seems to come through this cognitive channel.

DUBNER: So, how much can you generalize, or would you want to generalize, these findings to productivity in other areas where noise is a factor? Let’s say an open office with conversations going on in the background, or a hospital with dinging alarms and so on.

DEAN: There’s two questions you have to ask yourself. The first is, how similar is the noise? And in particular, along those two dimensions, of informational content and how constant the noise is. So, if you are extrapolating to a setting like an open office, you could imagine that the effect would actually be much worse because the noise that you’re being exposed to has informational content associated with it, right? So, I’m working on selling a product or a spreadsheet and I hear the person in the cubicle right next to me talking about basically the same thing. That’s much harder for our attention to filter.

And then the other is the task. This is why it’s important to know that the mechanism really does appear to be impairing things like attention and working memory, because that lets us think about the fact that the places we should expect this effect to show up are tasks that have demands on attention. 

DUBNER: I just want you to talk for a moment about noise or noise pollution, as what an economist would, I assume, call a negative externality, yes? This is something that I have to put up with that I am not causing. And yet, the person that’s producing it is not paying a price. So, can you just draw that, scenario for me and how you think about it as an economist in the modern world that’s producing a lot of noise? 

DEAN: Sure. I think actually we don’t have to just even think about the modern world. There’s this great book on the history of noise by Goldsmith, and he talks about the first noise-pollution ordinance to manage this externality where I’m creating noises that are beneficial to me but bother all of the people around me. It dates back to the 6th century B.C.E. 

DUBNER: Wow, no joke. 

DEAN: It was a Greek colony, and they had such a problem with their potters and tinsmiths and tradesmen making noise and bothering people that they banned them from working in the city. Another example that I really like is, in 1787 when the founding fathers were working in the Pennsylvania State House on the Constitution, they apparently spread dirt on the cobblestone streets outside in order to prevent themselves from being distracted.

I think noise is one of the oldest externalities that we’ve had to deal with, and it is a natural byproduct of a lot of things that you want to do. It’s a byproduct of getting around. It’s a byproduct of making things, it’s a byproduct of entertainment. And just by its very physical nature affects everyone who is around you. And it’s something that you don’t really think about or you don’t fully appreciate the impact that it has on other people. And it’s a problem for governments and those who try to manage externalities have been dealing with literally since ancient times.  

The U.S. used to have a federal Office of Noise Abatement and Control, as part of the E.P.A. But it was defunded in the early 1980’s, which shifted responsibilities to state and local governments. So, there are rules on the books in most places that limit, for instance, when construction can happen and how loud it can be. Same for garbage trucks, and bars, and even personal lawn-mowers. There are even prohibitions against ice-cream trucks playing their jingle once they’re parked at the curb. But, of course, there’s a big difference between having a noise code and enforcing it. In New York City, between 2010 and 2015, there were about 1.6 million noise calls via the 311 complaint line. Only 1 percent of the cases where the NYPD confirmed noise resulted in a summons. Josh Dean again:

DEAN: So, one very economics-y thing that I worry about is that noise is very susceptible to a race to the bottom. You get louder, which means that in order to compensate, I have to get louder, which then makes you get louder. Some car manufacturers in India have recently started advertising that they can make their car horns extra loud for you. There’s no intrinsic reason you need a really loud car horn, right? You have a really loud car horn because everybody else has loud car horns. And this kind of strategic interplay means that you can get noise levels that really quickly spiral out of control.

HAGOOD: Fighting sound with sound is what I see people doing with these different kinds of technologies, sort of pacifying the space around them in order to maintain their own control of their own attention and their own state of mind.

That, again, is the sound-and-noise scholar Mack Hagood. His concern about a race to the bottom isn’t so much that the world will get unbearably loud. It’s that we will focus on individual, behavioral problems at the expense of wider, structural solutions.

HAGOOD: I mean, is it your jerk coworker who slurps ramen noodles? Are they the problem or is it the open plan office that someone decided was a lot cheaper and more efficient to design? Have we fallen into certain patterns where we’re so used to controlling the sounds around us that we don’t think to take off the headphones? And this is the real problem, is there can never be enough control. The more control we get, the more sensitive we become to noise. And if we could magically wipe out all the sound in the world, then we would hear the sound of our own tinnitus, because tinnitus gets louder in a vacuum. So, I think we just need to think about this path, because I do not think happiness lies in that direction.

In which direction does happiness lie?

BRONZAFT: You will find that one word would really cut back on noise intrusion, and that’s the word “respect.”

And that again is the noise whisperer Arline Bronzaft.

BRONZAFT: I think if respect came back and people understood that their sounds can intrude on the lives of others, I think the 311 calls would drop drastically.

To be clear, Bronzaft is not advocating for silence or anything close to it.

BRONZAFT: Even though I write a great deal about noise and speak about it, I am trying to say to people, “Listen, there are such good sounds out there.”

Although many of these good sounds can’t fully return until the pandemic subsides. Especially in such a naturally noisy and crowded place as New York.

BRONZAFT: I do not want the children cheering on the Macy’s Day Parade to stop cheering them on. When the ball falls on New Year’s Eve, I want the people to shout out and enjoy the moment. I’m not asking for the music venues to shut down. I’m not. I think the vibrancy of the city, the parade, the ball falling, the music that we hear in our city, these are all positive things. So, let’s not lose sight of the various wonderful sounds the city does have. Just tune down the ones that are intrusive and harmful to our health.

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Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Daphne Chen. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Mary Diduch, Corinne Wallace, Zack Lapinski, and Matt Hickey. Our intern is Emma Tyrrell, we had help this week from James Foster. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; the rest of the music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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