Apex Money Posts

It’s Friday and so I wanted to share a video that I found fascinating and it’s about how so many English words have nautical origins. This has nothing to do with money but, if you’re a nerd like me in non-money areas too, I hope you’ll enjoy this short 9 minute video.

Ahoy!

Why is English Awash in Sailors’ Jargon? [Otherwords]

When you first start learning about taxes, one common misconception is how they work. It’s easy to see tax brackets and think “oh, the more I make the more I’m taxed.” That part is true.

But our tax rates are marginal, meaning you’re only taxed at that higher rate for those dollars in that bracket.

This can get extra complicated in retirement, so I found this explainer quite useful to help me understand it.

Effective vs. Marginal Tax Rate in Retirement: Why Taxes Don’t (Usually) Cause People to Go Broke [Oblivious Investor] – “If you have read about retirement tax planning, you have likely read about how people’s tax rate in retirement is often much higher than they’d expected. You may have even heard it referred to as a “tax torpedo.””

If so, there’s a new scam involving a Mexican drug cartel.

Timeshare Owner? The Mexican Drug Cartels Want You [Krebs on Security] – “The FBI is warning timeshare owners to be wary of a prevalent telemarketing scam involving a violent Mexican drug cartel that tries to trick people into believing someone wants to buy their property. This is the story of a couple who recently lost more than $50,000 to an ongoing timeshare scam that spans at least two dozen phony escrow, title and realty firms.”

Yet another reason not to buy a timeshare. 🤣

Do you know what it is?

It’s not sexy. It’s not headline grabbing. But it works.

Regular contributions to a retirement account and time.

The Number One Way Americans are Becoming Millionaires [Morningstar] – “The number-one way Americans become millionaires isn’t through timely real estate purchases or being early investors in startups. The formula is much simpler: consistent buying, usually in the form of automatic contributions from every paycheck into a retirement account.”

Remember, the phrase “May you live in interesting times” is a curse.

We have four kids and we’ve traveled with them a bunch.

It’s hard. We’re super fortunate in that our kids are pretty well-behaved, so we don’t have the restaurant meltdowns, but the logistics of traveling is always difficult. Especially with six total.

I view it like hiking a mountain. It’s Type 2 fun. It’s a grueling experience with highlights and you’re happy to have done it.

Is Traveling With Young Kids Worth It? [Kate Wang on Physician on Fire] – “A lot of friends asked me whether I thought our Asia trip was “worth it.” It’s hard to answer that for others because people have different concepts of worth. My goal for the trip was for the kids to have fun in China (check), for them to meet their extended family for the first time (check), for me to pay my respects to my grandparents’ tombs (check), and spend time with family (check).

I ate a lot of takeout meals quietly in the hotel while irritable/sick kids slept, and I also had to remove screaming children from restaurants multiple times. I didn’t go to the same restaurants I used to haunt as a child-free person and didn’t get to see many of the friends I would have wanted to see. But it was still “worth it ” because my goal was met.”

For the internet savvy, you’re probably used to email spam by now. That email from your bank isn’t really from your bank (this is why I used a classified email address), but sometimes it looks so real.

Now we have to contend with AI-produced spam that includes our personal information (because so much of it is leaked so often!):

A next frontier for spam and scams [Seth Godin’s Blog] – “Please be on the alert for:

Spam that includes your name, address, phone number and other personal details.

Phone calls that are from human-sounding bots that pretend to be from friends or trusted brands.”

I love ordering fajitas. It’s not because it comes out on a sizzling platter, though I enjoy that too, but it turns out that helps sell the product.

I find it fascinating how “marketing” influences all aspects of our lives and in the case of today’s article, the author reveals how menu design and presentation influences us by appealing to our senses.

The Sizzle and Steak Edition [Why is this interesting?] – “A sizzling platter hits something in the brain, and makes you more hungry, or at the very least, have order envy. This tweet was a direct hit, judging by the retweets, responses, and smoke it threw off.”

It also led to this article which dives into the design of a restaurant’s menu.

I’m still ordering fajitas though. But not oysters at the same place that has fajitas.

Ever go on vacation and find that after a few days, it starts to get a bit stale?

You’re not alone. “Dishabituation” kicks in around hour 43.

The Exact Hour You Hit Peak Vacation Happiness—and How to Make That Feeling Last [The Wall Street Journal] – ““You kind of habituate to joy, to the great things around you,” said Sharot, whose recent book, “Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There,” co-authored with Cass R. Sunstein, offers strategies to disrupt the lulling effects of routine. Sharot argues that finding ways to dishabituate—again and again—is the secret to making the most of every precious vacation day.”

Seems a bit cruel to share this article near the end of September, rather than the start of May or June, but here we are.

The days are long but the years are short.

Food for thought.

Life is short [Paul Graham] – “Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it’s impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.”

So true.

When you’re younger, you think professional athletes have a charmed life. It’s because you only see the highlights (much like social media) and usually only of the superstars.

I was born in the 80s and a basketball fan, so our super stars were the likes of Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, Charles Barkley, etc. As a kid, I didn’t yet know about the darker sides of their very human lives.

It wasn’t until I was older did I fully appreciate it, so today’s story comes from the world of tennis. Tennis, much like other solo sports like golf, is a league of freelancers. You pay your own way and, hopefully, win money in tournaments. Most professional golfers and tennis players barely scrape by.

‘I’m good, I promise’: the loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player [The Guardian] – “All serious tennis players – from gods such as Agassi to college players like I was at the time – have to grapple with isolation. For people who are comfortable with it, pro tennis can be a refuge: they find it behind a hotel door, with headphones on in a far-flung airport and, above all, inside the white lines of the court. The downside is that the victories are often private, too. When you remove the headphones, there is probably no one around to talk to; and even if there is, you probably don’t speak the same language. We were a strange cohort: sharing courts, canteens and coaches around the world but remaining ultimately alone.”