Apex Money Posts

Never a bad idea to listen to Warren Buffett:

Avoid Unforced Errors and Stay Humble: Warren Buffett’s Leadership Lessons [The Wall Street Journal] – “Over dinner at one of Buffett’s favorite restaurants in Nebraska, the now-closed Piccolo Pete’s, William C. Foote witnessed the Berkshire CEO’s values in action. A fan approached Buffett to autograph a dollar bill but only had a $20. 

Buffett sprang into action, asking the table if anyone had a $1 bill, saying: “I don’t want the guy to waste $19,” Foote said. “Though a truly unique capitalist celebrity, he was very humble and approachable.””

Makes total sense.

The High-School Juniors With $70,000-a-Year Job Offers [The Wall Street Journal] – “Elijah Rios won’t graduate from high school until next year, but he already has a job offer—one that pays $68,000 a year.  

Rios, 17 years old, is a junior taking welding classes at Father Judge, a Catholic high school in Philadelphia that works closely with companies looking for workers in the skilled trades. Employers are dealing with a shortage of such workers as baby boomers retire. They have increasingly begun courting high-school students like Rios—a hiring strategy they say is likely to become even more crucial in the coming years.”

Hmmm… I like this study because it focuses on more than money, it looked at six domains – happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability.

We may be a wealthier nation, but hardly a flourishing one when you ask regular Americans…

What makes people flourish? A new survey of more than 200,000 people across 22 countries looks for global patterns and local differences [The Conversation] – “What does it mean to live a good life? For centuries, philosophers, scientists and people of different cultures have tried to answer this question. Each tradition has a different take, but all agree: The good life is more than just feeling good − it’s about becoming whole.

More recently, researchers have focused on the idea of flourishing, not simply as happiness or success, but as a multidimensional state of well-being that involves positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment − an idea that traces back to Aristotle’s concept of “eudaimonia” but has been redefined within the well-being science literature.”

I bet you’ve heard that Pablo Escobar had a bunch of pet hippos that, when he was killed, escaped and made little hippos. Well, there are now nearly 200 of those hippos…

The Wild Story of What Happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos [Smithsonian Magazine] – “Today, the descendants of Escobar’s hippos are believed to number nearly 200. Their uncontrolled growth threatens the region’s fragile waterways. Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer joins us to recount this strange history and explain why Colombian conservationists have embarked upon an unusual program to sterilize these hippos in the wild via “invasive surgical castration,” a procedure that is, as he has written for Smithsonian magazine, “medically complicated, expensive and sometimes dangerous for hippos as well as for the people performing it.” Then, ecologist Rebecca Lewison tells us how her long-term study of hippo populations in Africa offers hints of how these creatures will continue to alter the Colombian ecosystem—and what authorities can do about it.”

I can’t imagine what it must be like living in the disaster-prone areas of Florida (hurricanes) and California (wildfires), the stories of people opening their homeowners insurance bill and seeing it triple would cause a lot of stress. (and that’s if you can even get insurance!)

David Champion from Can I Retire Yet? wonders…

Does the Cost of Insurance Threaten Homeownership? [Can I Retire Yet?] – “An event as improbable as the Marshall fire would have been unimaginable a generation ago, all the more in the wintry month of December. But once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters have become so commonplace we’re learning about the next before we’ve had time to wrap our heads around the last.

Risk pooling—the business model whereby the many subsidize the few—demands we all pay for events like the Marshall fire. Fair or not, this means homeowners who live in relatively “safe” areas pay to subsidize those who do not.”

As an elder Millennial (born 1980), I found breakdown and deeper dive fascinating.

How the Highest-Earning Millennials Made It to the Top of Their Generation [The Wall Street Journal] – “Pay grew much faster in higher-wage industries than in lower-wage industries between 1996 and 2018, according to a 2024 study in the American Economic Review. Tech is among the lucrative 5% of fields that accounted for more than half of that difference, along with science, engineering and finance.”

In a resounding rebuke of early retirement, Warren Buffett announced that he’s retiring this year at the ripe age of 94. 😁

Retirement Is a Lie: Warren Buffett’s Exit Proves We’ve Been Thinking About It All Wrong [Best Wallet Hacks] – “For many, retirement is a carrot that is dangled in front of your face to keep you working. Call it a myth, a lie, or any other word… but it’s to keep you doing something you don’t want to do so you can reach “retirement” when you can start doing what you want to do.

But here’s what we can learn from someone who was one of the best investors of all time and who retired when he was 94 (or at least declared his intentions to retire):”

A pretty good (three year old) Reddit guide for new homeowners:

New Homeowner’s Guide 101 [Reddit] – “Home ownership can be a great way to build equity in yourself. Home repair and DIY can be an enjoyable, money-saving pastime. Or perhaps you just want a dry place to sleep that you don’t need to think about.

Here is a quick guide.”

Soup to nuts, it covers a lot of ground (some of which may not apply), and worth certainly a scan to see if you’ve missed anything.

I always enjoy reminders that money can make you happier, up to a certain point, and that true insight can come from the lessons taught by those who have lived it.

Specifically, I mean the takeaways from the now famous Harvard study that long-time subscribers to Apex Money are likely familiar with:

Can Money Make You Happier? [Wit and Wisdom] – “During the Great Depression, Harvard researchers began tracking the health and happiness of a group of students. They were hoping to uncover the long-term ingredients for a happy life. The control group was comprised of Harvard College sophomores (the Grant Study group), including students like John F. Kennedy, Jr. who would go on to become our 35th President.

Today, only 19 of the original 268 participants are still alive, and they are in their 90s. Over the course of their lives, these participants endured a barrage of poking and prodding. Every two years they were asked detailed questions about their marriages, job satisfaction and social lives, including their personal and professional victories and defeats. Every aspect of their lives was an open book.“

I don’t usually share side hustle stories but this was new to me and kind of fun to learn about.

I hope you agree!

He Makes $1,000/Week Handing Out Flyers for Local Businesses [Dollarsprout] – “Martin De Anda took a flyer gig on a whim. He figured it’d be a one-off — a quick job posting flyers around Los Angeles for a small business that found him on Airtasker, a local gig app where people get paid to complete odd jobs nearby.

But that one task led to another. Then another. Before long, Martin was earning steady money flyering full-time — and today, he brings in around $1,000 a week, occasionally looping in others to help keep up with demand.

Here’s how he turned a simple errand into a reliable income stream — and why his success might be more replicable than you’d think.”

Sometimes old school is cool. Especially if you’re making $1,000 a week doing it!