Hey, money nerds. It’s one of those days where I devote the entirety of Apex Money to one article. Why? Because I believe it’s both interesting and important. To that end:
There’s no such thing as a price anymore. [The Atlantic archive link] — “Prices aren’t just changing more often — they’re getting more complex, too. Fees, long the specialty of banks and credit-card companies, have proliferated across industries. Previously self-contained products (toothbrushes, movies, Microsoft Word) have turned into subscriptions, while previously bundled items (Wi-Fi at hotels, meals on airplanes) are now sold separately. Buying stuff online means navigating a flurry of discount codes, often just expired. Meanwhile, prices are becoming more personalized as companies hoover up customer data.”
Fascinating stuff. And frustrating. Forced subscriptions, forced bundles, and surge pricing have all been driving me nuts for several years now. Ultimately, so long as the U.S. is a de factocorpocracy, this kind of bullshit is only going to get worse and worse.
Good morning, friends, and welcome to another day of Apex Money.
Today’s first article should prove useful to me in the near future. I’m about to earn a regular income for the first time in years, so I’ll no longer qualify for subsidized health insurance. It’s time for me to dive into the healthcare marketplace!
How to choose the right healthcare plan for you. [Bitches Get Riches] — “Choosing the right healthcare plan can be intimidating, especially if you’re doing it for the first time. The stakes are high; the options are confusing; there’s often a small window during which you can make the choice before you lose your chance; and the whole thing highlights the merciless jank that is our healthcare system! Luckily, there’s an incredibly easy, 100% foolproof way to make the decision. Here’s our secret.”
Letting go of keeping up. [Reactor] — “Give yourself space. Step away from the internet. Ignore the websites that want you to rate and review art like it’s a toothbrush or a new pair of sneakers. Don’t even keep a list of books read, if you don’t want to. What we get from reading is not quantifiable, not a statistic to earn or an item to collect. It’s an experience, a process, an education, a gift.”
“37 pieces of career advice I wish I’d known earlier.” [Ryan Holiday] — “This post is about…things I wish I’d been told when I was just starting and things I still tell myself. Some of them might be exactly what you need to hear right now. Some might not apply to you yet, or ever. That’s okay. Whether you’re just starting out, looking to make a big change, or aiming to reach new heights in your current role, I hope you’ll find something here that helps you navigate your own unique path.”
Today’s non-financial video is right in my wheelhouse. It’s a twenty-minute compilation of Charles Schulz drawing Peanuts. I’ve seen some of these segments elsewhere before, but this industrious fellow has compiled a ton of them into one video. It’s awesome.
I continue to take art classes (I have three going right now!), and I’m making clear and obvious improvement. But I’m still a long way from being able to draw a comic strip, which is my ultimate goal.
Heigh-ho, money nerds. J.D. here with another week of Apex Money. I apologize for missing yesterday’s installment. I was hard at work in Real Life preparing for a variety of upcoming events. But I’m here today. And boy, do I have some great stuff!
I believe all three of these articles are fantastic and well worth your time:
“My advice to young people (or, The lies I tell myself).” [Jason Liu] — “You’ll notice that I use the word ‘choosing”‘frequently. I genuinely believe that we are always making choices and that we have the ability to choose. Choosing can be terrifying because it means we are accountable for our decisions, and there are infinite options before us. It is also frightening because once we have made a decision, we must live with it, it is the death of optionality. But I believe that choosing is the only way to live authentically.”
To make sure grandmas like his don’t get conned, he scams the scammers. [NPR] — “Kitboga, also called Kit, is a millennial with a knack for improvisation. He’s among the most popular of so-called scam baiters, a term used to describe those who aim to waste scammers’ time otherwise spent ripping off innocent victims. It’s a lucrative gig for some of the biggest creators in the genre who, like Kit, have quit their jobs to scam bait full-time, often broadcasting their humorous schemes on YouTube and Twitch. As internet scams spike, with victims losing more money than ever, scam baiters like Kitboga are trying to get more than just laughs.”
Anatomy of a credit-card rewards program. [Bits about Money] — “The heaviest credit card spenders — and this fact is both uncontroversial and flies in the face of what many personal finance columnists believe — are wealthy and sophisticated. They use credit cards primarily as payment instruments. Issuers compete aggressively for their business, which is quite lucrative. This is not because they pay much in interest, because while they have higher headline APRs they only rarely revolve balances. It is because ‘clipping the ticket’ via interchange on a high volume of transactions is an excellent business to be in.”
And, of course, we’re going to close out the day with a video completely unrelated to money. This one is a three-minute clip about a bulldog who is obsessed with bowls.
Animals are so funny — just like humans.
Okay, that’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more fun stuff for you. See you then.
It’s Friday, money friends, and before you saunter off to enjoy your weekend, here are a handful of stories about money (and more) to close out the week.
Are Apple Pay and Google Pay more secure than credit cards? [How-To Geek] — “Even if your Google or Apple account were to be hacked, neither service will allow you to use, modify, or view your payment methods without you using your phone (or other device) to confirm that it is you. This ensures that a hacker won’t be able to go on a spending spree with your cards.” [For five years now, I’ve been easing into Apple Pay. I use it quite a bit now.]
The golden rules of retirement travel. [Traveller] — “Adherence to anyone’s rules will never ensure a vacation free of hiccups, where no flight is ever delayed, every tour is worth the hours put in, and every meal sublime. But learning from others may improve your chances of a good time – even when things inevitably go sideways.” This advice is couched in terms of “retirement travel”, but as a frequent traveler I’d argue it’s good advice for everyone. I agree with nearly every item on this list. (But pack your own toilet paper? WTF? Why would you do that?)
Lessons I’ve learned about death and money. [Kindness Financial Planning] — “As a financial planner, I’m privileged to be alongside people as they experience death in their own lives. I hear what it’s like and help people plan to make it easier on their survivors. I’ll borrow a bit from my work and incorporate themes I’ve seen in my career, but most of this is my first hand experience, including fighting the healthcare system, how the legal system is not well set up for aging, and tips you can take to make it easier on your loved ones.”
A short history of global living conditions and why they matter. [Our World in Data] — “Global poverty is one of the very largest problems in the world today. Is it possible to make progress against this problem? To see where we are coming from, we must go far back in time. 30 or even 50 years are not enough. When you only consider what the world looked like during our lifetime, it is easy to think of the world as static — the richer parts of the world here and the poorer regions there — and to falsely conclude that it always was like that and will always be like that.”
Let’s start today with a piece that echoes what I’ve been thinking and writing and saying for over five years. Something fundamental has shifted in the nature of the internet, and it’s no longer a place that I want to be. More and more, I’m not.
Why you must be suspicious of tech leaders. [The Honest Broker] — “I lived through the excitement of the early Internet — and even ran two web startups…I was filled to the brim with enthusiasm about the web, but everybody was back then. That was then, this is now. Everybody I talk to now is wary and worried about the dominant digital platforms. They don’t love them, they don’t trust them, and increasingly they don’t even want them.”
Algorithms can aid price collusion, even if no humans actually talk to each other. [The Verge] — “Algorithms might help hotels illegally collude on prices, even if no humans from those businesses actually talk to each other about them, according to US antitrust enforcers.” Could this be part of the reason hotel prices have become so insane in recent years?
Automakers are sharing individual consumer driving behavior with insurance companies. [The New York Times gift article] — “Automakers and data brokers that have partnered to collect detailed driving data from millions of Americans say they have drivers’ permission to do so. But the existence of these partnerships is nearly invisible to drivers, whose consent is obtained in fine print and murky privacy policies that few read.”
How to break dependence on your phone. [Zen Habits] — “A lot of people I talk to want to decrease their usage of phones — not necessarily decreasing to zero, but decreasing impulsive usage of their phones. Many of us tend to grab our phones anytime there’s a lull, and once you get on your phone it can lead to mindless scrolling. So how can we develop more mindful use of our phones, and become less dependent on them?”
HELLO, APEXIANS! Welcome to Monday. Welcome to April. We’re glad to have you here. No foolin’.
We’re going to begin and close today with a bit of meditation. This first article is particularly good, especially if (like me) you’re learning to meditate.
How to enjoy things. [Superb Owl] — “I’ve returned to the concept of wide attention several times over the course of my ~8 year journey into meditation, dreamwork, psychedelics, and introspection. Each time I rediscover it, it feels like a revelation, a metanoia that catalyzes a thousand lesser insights, a key that unlocks new states of consciousness.”
Are we morally obligated to meditate? [Vox] — “A host of other studies showed that meditation can also change your neural circuitry in ways that make you more compassionate, as well as more inclined to have positive feelings toward a victim of suffering and to see things from their perspective. Further research suggested that meditation can change not only your internal emotional states but also your actual behavior.”
Is it even possible to become more productive? [Esquire] — “Time was the problem, I assumed: There was enough of it; I just wasn’t using it right. Or maybe the problem was my attention span. I couldn’t focus. Luckily, there were products for this. First, I tried blue-light-filtering glasses. Then I bought a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato and became devoted to the Pomodoro technique.”
When did people start owning so many clothes? [/r/AskHistorians on Reddit] — “I live in an old house from the early 20th century, it is a great home, but there are barely any closets to store our overabundance of clothing. It got me thinking that in less than a century our relationship with clothing has completely changed. How did this happen? Was it a slow, inevitable shift after the Industrial Revolution and the rise of consumerism? Was it a market created by the the growth of wealth and production in the 20th century? Is it something completely different?”
Welcome to Friday, Apexians. Here’s what I’ve gathered for you today. There are some gems in this batch of links!
Toward a leisure ethic. [The Hedgehog Review] — “What is time well spent? Philosophers and social critics have long pondered variations of that question and offered rather consistent insights over time, even across radically different eras. Many have extolled a leisure ethic, and none would say that time well spent lies in ambitious careerism or in drifting on a sea of addictive content. Most would agree that flourishing in time consists of free, active, thoughtful engagement with the world in accordance with one’s nature.”
The best way to get things done. [Of Dollars and Data] — “I am no productivity guru, but I’ve spent a considerable amount of time studying how people get things done and how people manage their time. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a silver bullet. There is no single way that will allow you to get more done overnight. However, there are a few frameworks I’ve found that can start moving you in the right direction.”
The couples’ guide to moving in together. [Vox] — “Without a roadmap, couples contend with problems typical of dating — how much time you’ll spend together, dealing with each other’s families — in addition to the conflicts of marriage, like division of chores and finances…To ensure you’re firmly in the ‘deciding’ camp of cohabitation, there are a number of conversations worth having with your partner about living together.”
Why people mistakenly think the U.S. economy is terrible. [White Coast Investor] — “The president honestly just doesn’t have that much of an effect on the economy, no matter how much credit they try to take when it’s going well or how much their opponents blame them when it’s going poorly. Even if presidential policies had a huge effect on the economy (which they don’t), there is such a huge lag (years or even decades) in the effects of those policies that it would be challenging for the typical non-economist to really sort out who gets credit for what.” [I think this entire article is spot-on. I think members of both parties are borderline insane when it comes to how they attribute credit and blame for the economy.]
Yo yo yo, money nerds. Good morning. Welcome to Apex Money. Welcome to Thursday. Welcome to Spring. Let’s take a look at the stories we’ve collected for you today.
Our first piece isn’t about money at all, but it’s my favorite article from the past week. It’s interesting and well-written.
The mad perfumer of Parma. [The New York Times gift article] — “The Covid boom casually defied the entire history of perfume, in which aromatic substances have primarily been used for purposes of targeted seduction (ensnaring a mate), general attraction (wanting other people to think you smell nice) or ritual (anointing the dead, appeasing gods, expelling demons). Locked in their homes, people discovered en masse that perfume could also be a private aesthetic experience, a hobby, a form of entertainment.” [True story: One of my friends here in Corvallis is a perfume nut. His enthusiasm has prompted me and Kim to dive into this world too. I’ve been testing ~36 different samples for the past few months. I even wear a different scent to bed every night!]
How much should you tip? Five people share their tipping habits. [Time] — “If you feel like you’re being asked to tip more often than ever, you’re not alone. A November report by the Pew Research Center found that 72% of Americans say that tipping is expected in more places today than it was five years ago…To better understand tipping culture, TIME asked five people to track their spending over the course of a week, and share what they tipped on and why.”
Three secrets to being rich. [The Wealthy Accountant] — “The good news is that there are only two real ways to build financial wealth. Both are easy to apply. There is a third way to become rich that builds wealth fast and creates a much bigger pile. We’ll save the super-charged wealth building secret for last.”
How the cult of busy-ness took over the world of work. [U.K. Independent] — “Once, a leisurely life was the ultimate status symbol, but now that has been flipped around: busyness has become a status symbol…This focus on constantly doing has spilled over into our personal lives too (we all have that one friend who would love to see us but things are just so hectic right now, though they might have a brief opening in mid-July).”
I wish I had a video to share with you today, but the truth is that almost all of my video-watching time lately has been spent on art. I have another watercolor class coming up in early April, so I’m refreshing my skills. And I spent ALL DAY today researching (and “theorycrafting”) a personal palette of colors for my upcoming class — very much like this. It’s fun! (But that means I’m not watching any videos worth sharing with you folks.)
Good morning, Apexians. No big preamble today. Just a quick jump into the three heady articles I’ve curated for you today…
How big tech rewired childhood. [The New Statesman] — “Our digital lifestyle isn’t only ugly on the inside; there is also scant attention to beauty on the outside. The world’s brightest and best have effectively been bought by firms whose purpose is to perfect techniques that induce people to waste their lives hunched over a glass rectangle.”
Which is better: Your browser’s password manager or a standalone service? [Consumer Reports — “Security experts disagree on whether browser password managers offer the same level of robust security as stand-alone password managers, but one thing is clear: Both types of password managers make it easier for people to create and store unique passwords for each account.” [Hey! This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. I used to pay for a standalone password service but found it more annoying than helpful. Since switching to browser/ecosystem-based password management, I’m much happier.]
What happened when I forced myself to wake up at 5 a.m. every day for a month. [Fast Company] — “Unfortunately, my experiment didn’t produce long-lasting results. When my month was over, I immediately returned to my normal 5:45 a.m., which felt like sleeping in. I even slept until 10 a.m. on weekend mornings–a very rare occurrence for me. I feel more productive now that I’m back to my normal routine.” [Hey! This is another article that’s relevant to me. I’ve been an early riser for most of my life. During times of Peak J.D., I get up at 5:30. In recent years, though, I’ve been sleeping in until 6:30. Just this week, I’m making a push to get up at 5:30 again.]
That’s it. Short and sweet this Wednesday. I’ll be back to share more with you tomorrow.
Hey hey, folks. It’s Tuesday here at Apex Money — and everywhere else on Earth too! (Except for the places where it’s already Wednesday.) As always, we’ve gathered some great links to share with you.
What are we assuming? [Young Money] — “The longer that one of these ideas remains true, the more that we believe it will continue to remain true. And if an idea persists long enough, we treat it as a law, and we begin to make decisions based on these laws. But it’s important to remember that these “laws” are only underpinned by two things: observations of patterns and assumptions that these patterns will continue. Dependence on these assumptions can be dangerous.” [This is an important article making an important point. The older I get, the more I’ve come to understand the importance of questioning your fundamental assumptions about everything.]
How much should you spend on vacation? [Art of Manliness] — “Remember that what you see online are just small slices of life, from a small slice of all the people you know. Everyone is not going on amazing vacations all the time. And just because an amazing trip fits one person’s budget, doesn’t mean it’ll fit yours in your current season of life.”
Maybe you can’t retire yet, but maybe you can stop worrying about earning so much? [Flow Financial Planning] — “Coast FIRE is the state of finances where you don’t need to add to your retirement savings anymore, as long as you don’t withdraw from it. This means that, yes, you have to have a job that pays for your current lifestyle (and taxes, of course)…but that’s it. Which really opens up the world of job possibilities!”
Let’s wrap things up today with yet another video that has nothing to do with money.
A few months ago I re-watched Singin’ in the Rain. It was one of my favorite movies when I was younger — from high school to early adulthood. But I hadn’t seen it in maybe twenty years. I’m pleased to say that it’s just as good as I remembered. Better even! It’s just so brisk and funny and entertaining. Great stuff.
