A few articles that caught my attention over the past week:

• What If Your Credit Score Measured Your Financial Potential–Not Past Mistakes (Fast Company)?

Munir’s New York startup, RevolutionCredit, has a tagline of “Be More Than a Score”–which has an anti-Orwellian ring to it. His big idea is to use behavioral science to predict how someone might behave in their personal finances, augmenting the past-facing number kept by the credit bureaus, all other indicators be damned. “Most of the credit scoring models that exist today, in the U.S. or outside, are mainly transaction-data-based,” he says. “This means they are mostly backward-looking and negative selection. The RevolutionCredit model is both forward-looking and positive-selection based.”

• How the guy who got crushed in his $1 million bet with Warren Buffett makes excuses for his lame performance (Bloomberg):

My guess is that doubling down on a bet with Warren Buffett for the next 10 years would hold greater-than-even odds of victory. The S&P 500 looks overpriced and has a reasonable chance of disappointing passive investors. Hedge funds mitigate risk in bear markets, while seeking to participate in some of a bull market. Investing in hedge funds is a bet against continuing bull markets; investing in the S&P 500 is a bet on a continuing bull market.

• Making personal finance fun: interview with Penny Hoarder executive Liz Cole (Forbes):

We strive to have people walk away after reading our content with an accessible, valued piece of information they can employ that very day. Whether it be an app they can download immediately or something else.

• What’s the average student loan debt in every state (USA Today)?

Here’s a state-by-state breakdown of the average student loan debt, from lowest to highest, for the class of 2015. The Project on Student Debt also lists student-loan-debt data by school. (Note: North Dakota is not included in this list, as TICAS did not include states where useable data reflected less than 30% of the state’s bachelor’s degree recipients in 2015.)

Utah

2015 graduates with student loan debt: 41%
Average debt: $18,873

• Should you opt into text alerts from your credit card company (Bankrate)?:

While the largest banks have had mobile alert programs for years, the network requirements aim to make digital and mobile contact ubiquitous with cardholders as alerts can stop fraud quickly. That saves cardholders the hassles related to card fraud, and it saves issuers money that’s lost when a card is used illegally. These network requirements mean that while consumers may decline to receive mobile alerts, banks must offer to send them.

• Where is most advertising done today (Big Picture Blog)?

• Data never sleeps infographic (hat tip to Big Picture Blog with source of Domo): Editor’s note: as data grows exponentially, the need for quality curation grows too!

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.