Mid Year Credit Card Rewards Summary = $685

I've made $685 in rewards on our credit cards so far this year.   Rewards across the cards are :

Barclay card = $314
Chase Freedom = $124
Fidelity Amex = $145
Costco Amex = $20
Amex Blue Cash = $49
US Bank Cash+ card = $23
Citi dividend = $0
Citi Premier = $0
Discover card = $10

Total = $685

So far this year I haven't signed up for any credit card bonus deals like I had last year.   This is just cash back on purchases.    A lot of it is from 5% deals like the 5% we make on Amazon, grocery and gasoline purchases on the Barclay card.

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Best of Blogs for Week of June 3rd

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

TheBigPicture lists the Top 50 Social Influencers in Personal Finance & Wealth

He also asks Do $100 Million Apartments Mean We Are in a Bubble ?

MyMoneyBlog talks about Callan Inflation Hedge Comparison, 10-Year Return Forecast 2016 which includes data on the asset returns of various asset classes for the past 15 years as well as their projections for the next 10 years.

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Average Profit Margin is 7.5% For 212 Industries

Apparently the public opinion is that businesses have a profit margin of 36%.     However the actual average profit margin for 212 industries is 7.5%.

I'm simply paraphrasing what is covered in the article The public thinks the average company makes a 36% profit margin, which is about 5X too high from the American Enterprise Institute.

This isn't the same as saying that the average business has a margin of 7.5% but that the average among industries is 7.5%.   But its useful to know that a lot of industries have lower margins.

That article got their data on industry margins from Yahoo's business site.

A lot of industries have low profit margins.     Grocery stores are at 1.4%.    Movie theatres are 1%.   It also includes those industries that are losing money (at least temporarily).      Oil and gas drilling and exploration is at -6.8%.       On the other hand there are industries that make pretty high profit margins.    Wireless communications is at 29.7%.   Real estate development is at 38.7%.      Regional Midwest banks made 24.1%.    Around the middle are things like restaurants at 7.5%, jewelry stores at 7.6% and multimedia and graphics software at 7.1%.

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Best of Blogs for Week of May 27th

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

MyMoneyBlog tells us about Free FICO Score For Everyone via CreditScoreCard, No Credit Card Required

MMB also talks about Credit Card Churning vs. Sustainable, Efficient Sampling

DQYDJ made a Compound Annual Growth Rate Calculator (CAGR)
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