Senaro

there are two APRs on most credit cards and your minimum payment doesn't reach the higher one. purchase interest gets drained first, then purchase principal. the cash advance just sits there compounding at 30% the entire time. i built senaro.ai to model this.

@middle_class_us the 72-month part is the trap. stretching a $35K auto loan from 60 to 72 months shaves about $96 off the monthly payment. costs $1,491 more in interest. lower payment, longer hook.

Middle class used to mean: spouse, house, kids, new car. Now it means: roommate, rent hike, child-free “for now,” 72-month payment. Costs tripled, wages didn’t. We didn’t lose the dream. We were priced out.

@scottlincicome National debt past 100% of GDP, first since 1946. Households on the same trajectory. $6,580 avg cc balance at 24.99% on min payments = $11,842 in interest over 20+ years. 66% of each payment never touches principal.

The national debt just exceeded 100% of GDP for the first time since 1946: wsj.com/economy/u-s-de…

@KobeissiLetter For households carrying a balance, PCE at 3.5% means rate cuts stay off the table. CC APRs stay locked. On the avg $6,580, $122 of the first $192 minimum goes to interest. $10,618 in lifetime interest before the balance hits zero. Inflation isn't the worst rate they pay.

BREAKING: March PCE inflation, the Fed's preferred inflation measure, rises to 3.5%, the highest since August 2023. Core PCE inflation rises to 3.2%, the highest since November 2023. In the first month of the Iran War, US inflation hit a 3-year high. April's data will be interesting.

$250/mo for 20 years pays the bank $60K. The same $250/mo in an index at 8% would be $147K instead. The minimum payment isn't standing still. It's compounding for whoever holds the loan.

@ramit Rents dropping is real cash flow back to households. What lands on cc debt changes the math. $200/mo extra on $10K at 24.99% cuts payoff from 290 months to 40. Interest from $18,535 to $3,962. Minimums alone push you to 2050.

I promise: You’re not going to magically feel better about money when you have more of it Notice: There is essentially ZERO conversation about declining rents Memphis rents are down 16.1%. Phoenix & Atlanta down 15%. Vegas & San Diego down 14%. Nashville and Denver down 13%. Austin down 20%!! Yet you won’t see this in mainstream media. It’s simply too far fetched for Americans to imagine that housing prices go up — and down — in America Yes, housing is historically expensive. This is a huge problem!! But when prices go down, we almost never hear about it In fact, the people who rightfully complained about housing prices are not talking about lowered rents. They don’t even realize it! And if you told them, they’d deny it! This is one reason people feel so bad about money. Even when rents are down 15% — meaning you can save *thousands* per year — few people even realize it. It is simply not a part of their worldview, even when it is factually occurring Money is less about the numbers in your bank account and more about how you feel about them

@DeItaone Market pricing hike risk now, not cuts. The household side of this trade doesn't care which way the Fed leans. $4,500 at 25.99% throws off about $97 a month in interest, before any principal moves.

TRADERS NOW SEE RATE HIKE AS MORE LIKELY THAN RATE CUT THIS YEAR Wall Street traders now see a slightly higher chance of a Federal Reserve rate hike than a cut this year, following hawkish signals from policymakers. Interest-rate futures show an 11% chance of a hike, up from 5% earlier Wednesday and zero on Tuesday, while the odds of a rate cut sit around 2%. Although the Fed kept language suggesting cuts are more likely, three Fed presidents opposed it, and Chair Jerome Powell signaled it could be dropped soon as inflation remains persistent.

@Barchart The cut isn't coming. But the carrying cost math doesn't need it to move. $25/mo extra on a $7,500 balance at 24.99% saves $5,562 in interest over the life of the debt.

JUST IN 🚨: There is a 0% chance of an interest rate cut at the next FOMC 👀

@KobeissiLetter futures up another 5% on the strike news. when households put fuel on plastic instead of cutting elsewhere, $100/mo of oil-shock charging compounds to a $113K opportunity cost at 8% over 30yrs. shocks like this don't end when the headline does.

BREAKING: President Trump has "rejected" Iran's proposal to open the Strait of Hormuz and the US has prepared a plan for a "short and powerful" wave of strikes on Iran, per Axios. Details include: 1. Trump says he will keep Iran under a naval blockade until they agree to a nuclear deal 2. After the strikes, which would likely include infrastructure targets, the US would press Iran to negotiate again 3. Trump sees continuing the blockade as his primary source of leverage 4. Trump said Iran's oil storage and pipelines "are getting close to exploding" because Iran can't export oil due to the blockade US oil prices surge above $107/barrel on the news.

@charliebilello Gas spikes show up at every pump. CC minimum payments don't. But $5K at 24% paying just the minimum runs 224 months with $8,414 in interest. 65 cents of every dollar paid goes to interest.

Gas prices in the US have moved up to $4.23 per gallon, their highest level since August 2022. The 42% spike over the last 9 weeks ($2.98/gallon to $4.23/gallon) is the biggest we've seen in the past 30 years.

@StockMKTNewz End of an era at the top, but the math at the kitchen table doesn't shift with the Chair. $8,000 on a card at 26.99% on minimums runs 22 years and $15,708 in interest. Powell or whoever's next, that bill keeps printing the same way.

Today is Jerome Powell's last FOMC Press Conference as Chairman of the United States 🇺🇸 Fed Today is the end of an era

Fed day. The market's tracking 25 basis points. Meanwhile the avg household card balance of $6,580 at 26.99% APR takes 21 years on minimum and racks up $12,732 in interest. For every dollar paid, 68 cents goes to interest, not principal.

@unusual_whales Worth running the math on why. $85k income with normal debts ($300 student, $450 auto, $185 cc min) tops out at a $255k conventional mortgage. Same income debt-free, $313k. That's $58k of buying power eaten by everyday debt service.

First-time buyers made up 21% of all purchases in the US, per the National Association of Realtors. That’s down from 24% over the previous year and the lowest share recorded by NAR since 1981.

@SoberLook 3.4% headline PCE is the forecast. The household-side cost is what hits the budget every month. $10K on a credit card at minimums is around $186/mo of interest before principal moves, and $16,653 over the payoff.

Goldman expects December headline and core PCE inflation to be 3.4% and 2.6%, respectively.

@NickTimiraos Whatever label fits today, the average cardholder is carrying $6,580. About $122 of every monthly payment goes to interest before principal moves. Stretched to minimums, the math runs past 20 years and the issuer collects more than $10K on top.

One of the more memorable lines of Jay Powell's tenure came almost exactly two years ago when he dispatched a question about stagflation. Inflation had been steadily improving, the economy was solid, and the premise was far enough removed from reality that Powell quipped, "I don't see the 'stag' or the 'flation,' actually." Fast forward to this week. Powell's last meeting as chair caps a stretch in which the parallel to the 1970s isn't as easy to dismiss. The focus this week—aside from the looming "regime change"—will be on a quiet committee debate over whether to admit that rate cuts are off the table. wsj.com/economy/centra…

@PeterMallouk Cost of waiting a year is more brutal than people expect. $500/mo at 7% over 30 years lands at $609,986. Start a year later, same plan, and you wind up at $563K. That's about $47K gone.

Wondering which month is the best time to start investing? The right answer is any month. Just start!

@BrianFeroldi 1% in fees doesn't sound like much until it compounds. $1,000/mo for 30 years at 8% gets to $1.49M. At 7%, it's $1.22M. That's $270K of fees you'd never see itemized.

Index investing vs active management, visualized:

@amitisinvesting days like this morning are why the emergency fund sits separate from the brokerage. for a stable W-2 with $4,000/mo in essentials, the floor's around $12,000 (3 months). anything above that goes to investing.

Stocks are down big this morning on a WSJ report that OpenAI missed internal revenue targets at the end of 2025. Few thoughts on why this might not be as bad as it is being interpreted: - Part of the reason OpenAI did not meet its revenue backlog is because they did not have the proper compute needs. Jassy, Dario, and Altman have all said if they have more compute, they could grow faster. The bottleneck of energy/power/land seems to be a much bigger story than “missing revenue targets” because if the compute constrains are the reason for the miss, that’s an issue with supply, not demand. - Maybe OpenAI missed internal forecasts because of $GOOGL and Anthropic seriously beginning to take marketshare. If that is true, that is NOT bearish semis/ai, that is more bearish OpenAI. The compute will just shift from OpenAI spending to Anthropic and Google spending. So, if OpenAI cancels a datacenter, it’s bad for the parties involved but if Google ends up taking up that datacenter, the same money continues to be spent on all the different providers that go into building out that compute. - $SOXX just did 18 green days in a row. It was looking for ANY reason to sell off. Obviously some names have just gotten way ahead of themselves, for example $ARM, which began to trade at 70 p/s. The WSJ article may have been what was needed to give a reason to a selloff which quite frankly did not need a reason after the run it’s had. Overall, feels more like a general headline about a company not fully living up to its expectations vs a systematic issue around compute constraints. Big Tech reports on Wednesday and all eyes will be on what they have to say around capex, roi, growth, and more. $NVDA $AMD $MSFT $META $ORCL

@Budgetdog_ Math checks out. Even compounded monthly, $1,000/mo at 14.8% lands around $271,894 in 10 years. The line that catches me is year 9. That's when interest earned passes everything you put in.

From 2016–2025, the S&P 500 returned ~14.8% 🟢 If you just invested $1,000/month: You put in $120,000 & ended with ~$287,000 ($167k growth). During that time, we had the COVID crash, 2022 drawdown, war headlines everywhere, interest rate increases, etc. Same fear. Different headlines.

@elerianm Three-digit Brent always lands on household budgets a few months out. Say it's another $50/mo out of a typical wallet. Invested over 10 years, that $50 a month is $9,147.

Brent oil is back at $110. #economy #oil #energy #markets

@JavierBlas Big structural shift on the energy side. The household side of an oil cycle is a lot quieter. $5K on a credit card paying just the minimum is about $93/mo in interest. $7,830 by the time it's paid off.

🚨🚨🚨🚨FULL STATEMENT: UAE says it's leaving the OPEC oil cartel from May 1. "... Following its exit, the UAE will continue to act responsibly, bringing additional production to market in a gradual and measured manner, aligned with demand and market conditions..."