Tech's best source for bad news

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

Colleges create financial aid confusion

The toughest test for college-bound students may be just understanding their financial aid letters, said Paulina Cachero and Francesca Maglione in Bloomberg. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, "more than 90 percent of schools either understate the net price of attendance or don't include it in financial aid letters." When they do, the language can be difficult to decipher. Nearly two-thirds of schools don't label whether the financial aid they're offering is federal, state, institutional, or private, even though all contain differences in "what money needs to be repaid, what doesn't, and what requirements must be met to ensure the aid keeps flowing." It's common for schools to withhold information about costs like housing and books. And comparing offers poses another challenge, because "there's no standardization in how schools present their financial aid packages."

Don't underestimate dividend stocks

"What has made Warren Buffett's stock portfolio so successful over time?" asked Akane Otani in The Wall Street Journal. One answer: His appreciation of dividend-paying stocks, which represent the majority of the companies he invests in. "This year, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is expected to rake in about $5.7 billion in cash from its stock portfolio." Nearly a fifth of that money will come from Chevron, which has increased its dividends for 36 consecutive years. But Berkshire will also collect more than $1 billion in dividends from Coca-Cola and American Express, even though Buffett hasn't bought more of their stock since the 1990s. Buffett's "secret sauce" is "choosing businesses that have been able to stand the test of time through many economic cycles — and raise their dividends, too."

Tech's best source for bad news

The website Layoffs.fyi has become an essential chronicle of the tech downturn, said Lora Kelley in The New York Times. Roger Lee started the site as a side project in 2020, but it now gets at least a million views per month —  "and more than that in busy periods with lots of layoffs." Lee, who calls himself "the bearer of bad news," has now cataloged more than 450,000 global tech layoffs. Media organizations have begun to cite Layoffs.fyi as a source for real-time layoff figures. A bonus: The site includes links to the lists of laid-off colleagues that have emerged at many companies as a way to attract headhunters and new job offers. 

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.