Happy New Year, money nerds! Welcome to 2020. I hope the coming twelve months treat you well.
To start things off right this year, here’s a website I recently discovered: The Happy Broadcast. Says author Mauro Gatti:
I’m honestly fed up with all the bad news everywhere. I am not a journalist or an influencer, but I want to use my art to spread some positivity. I want to create something positive as an anti-venom to the vitriolic rhetoric that pervades our media. That’s why I illustrate and share positive news from around the world in the hope that it brings you some happiness and inspires you to spread some good news yourself!
I think this is an awesome idea for a site. In fact, I started something similar (but not nearly as good) almost a decade ago. If you’re looking for a positive site, check out The Happy Broadcast.
A goalless 2020. [Fervent Finance] — “I’m at a point where I’m happy, healthy, and my wife and I can provide for the life we want to currently lead. 2020, for me, is going to be a goalless year. I want to do a better job of enjoying the here and now, without getting caught up in what I ‘should be’ doing or striving for.” [Related reading: A reconstruction of goals.]
A financial planning calendar for 2020. [Kiplinger] — “Whether or not you make financial New Year’s resolutions, you no doubt want to improve your bottom line in the coming year. With that in mind, we have some suggestions for bolstering your finances each month, ranging from budgeting in January to checking up on your insurance coverages in April to reviewing your estate plan in October.”
“The best money we’ve ever spent on other people.” [Vox] — “At the very end of 2018, we started publishing an essay series called The Best Money I Ever Spent. Less a collection of musings on the best or most underrated or cheapest versions of products, it’s meant to be an exploration of what value means to different people…Here, at the end of 2019, we wanted to depart somewhat from the format we’ve established. Instead, we asked writers to tell us about the best money they’ve spent on someone else, or that someone else has spent on them.”
Lastly, here’s a vision of tomorrow from 1993. That year, AT&T ran a series of commercials that I remember well. They showed what our technological future might be like.
I hate most advertising, but I remember that these commercials really intrigued me. Some of the stuff seemed like science fiction! The crazy thing now, twenty-six years later, is that all of this stuff has come true — and almost exactly as these commercials predicted.
I wonder what the next twenty-six years will bring us…