Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone, Powered by NAFCU

I love a good rule of thumb.  The world is complicated. Rules of thumb can communicate something complicated in a useful, simple manner. Perfect? No. Useful. Yup!

This popped into my brain as I’ve been learning more about British naval history. Britain relied on its Navy as an island. In the 19^th century, Britain adopted the two-power standard. What is that? Britain’s navy had to be as strong as the world’s next two largest navies combined by measure of the number of battleships.

That is a concept you can understand, and it makes sense. It is easily calculated. It is useful.

My Dad has a couple good rules of thumb that he passed on.

1. Never buy a car that has a book value more than 33% of your salary.
2. Never buy a home that costs more than 3x your salary.

What is your favorite rule of thumb? Now, on to the reading pile!

• 4-day workweek gets shorter with practice. (WSJ) Related: CU 4-day workweek pilot exceeds expectations. (CUTimes)
• Look at this chart plotting U.S. population growth against housing inventory. Mind-boggling. (Twitter)
• Member-Member executives: Be sure your CU completes NAFCU’s 2023 Federal Reserve Survey. (NAFCU)
• A flood of new workers has made the Fed’s job less painful. Can it last? (NYT)
• Are you telling your members the whole truth? (Forbes)
• Americans’ trust in institutions is dropping. (Brookings)
• Unemployment claims remain historically low. (Calculated Risk) Tech layoffs make headlines, but the data is the data. The U.S. economy keeps chugging along.
• Japan’s population dropped 800k last year. (CNN) Population collapse is something I’ve been seeing discussed more and more recently.