Author: J.D. Roth

Good morning, money nerds, and welcome to another week of Apex Money. Each weekday, Jim and I share a handful of our recent favorite stories about money (and more) collected from blogs, news sites, and YouTube. Let’s get started.

The smart money is in cash. [Study from the Federal Reserve Board] — “We find that financial literacy is strongly predictive of having three months of liquid savings, controlling for income, income variability, and even parental resources. We also find that financial literacy predicts liquid savings across the income distribution. These results indicate that accumulation of an emergency fund is not simply a function of income.”

The $0 home makeover. [Surviving and Thriving] — “Thanks to lockdowns and layoffs, we’ve spent a lot more time at home in the past couple of years than some of us would like. Not everyone can afford to redecorate. But almost anyone can move a few things around.”

Seven low-maintenance plants to help you beat the winter blues. [Consumer Reports] — “The key to making it all work? Find plants that fit your lifestyle and the time and energy you’re willing to devote to them. To help you get started, we turned to experts for their take on the ones that are prime for beginners and people with little time to care for them.” [Yes, my previously-mentioned houseplant obsession is still going strong. Now I’m trying to convert you too. ;)]

To close things out today, here’s a fun little video that has nothing to do with money. Or anything else, for that matter! It’s simply a recreation of the film Titanic using a housecat.

If you’ve never seen any of the other film parodies from Owlkitty, you should check them out. They’re all short and they’re all clever.

That’s it for Monday. I’ll be back tomorrow with more. See you then.

Well, we’ve made it to another Friday, money nerds. But before you sally off into the sunset for some much-needed relaxation, I’ve gathered one last batch of money stories to share with you this week. Here you go…

What I learned from starting a vending-machine business. [Action Economics] — “This vending machine business is in line with my long term goals. I want to take massive imperfect action to move my life forward and I want to create opportunities for my children to build wealth and learn finance at a young age to give them a massive head start when they enter adulthood.”

The secret superpower of the mini-retirement. [Josh Overmyer] — “These steps allow the mini-retiree with low or no income to make massive changes to the amount of future taxes owed, all because they have planned ahead a little bit. This is not ‘cheating’ the tax code – it is making smart decisions and paying only the taxes due and not a dollar more.”

How thinking about ‘future you’ can build a happier life. [BBC Worklife] — “In one experiment, the participants were presented with various scenarios in which they could either receive a smaller reward soon or a larger reward later. As expected, participants who felt a greater connection to the future were much more willing to delay their gratification and wait for the bigger sum.”

Should you die with zero? [RadReads] — “Meet Bill Perkins and his provocative book Die With Zero. The concept is deceptively simple. If you die with > 0 in your bank account, you failed at fully optimizing your life.There’s a lot here to unpack. A lot of nuance. And a lot of things we don’t like openly discussing.”

To close out the week, here’s a cynical little four-minute cartoon from Steve Cutts. It’s called “Happiness”. It’s a comical (yet sad) look at the rat trap that is the modern pursuit of happiness.

With that, let’s head into the weekend. Have a good one, my friends!

Hey hey. Not a lot of time for witty conversation in today’s installment of Apex Money. So, let’s just jump into the meat of these recent money articles I’ve found worthwhile…

How to save money on pets. [Bitches Get Riches] — “A lot of this advice will be about preventative measures: taking care of your pet’s health to avoid expensive vet bills or getting serious about training to avoid replacing expensive items like furniture and shoes. You can save money on pets by acknowledging that they are weird little creatures who don’t understand our strange and human ways, and that it is our responsibility to teach them and be understanding of what gets lost in translation.”

Investing during high inflation. [Millennial Revolution] — “When we sat down to do our 2022 portfolio review and decided on changing our asset allocation at the end of December, the primary reason for increasing our equity allocation to 90% was, again, because the math told us that the dividends were enough to more than cover our living expenses. The second reason was because we knew that inflation would stick around for a while and equities provide a good inflation hedge.”

An introduction to dollar-cost averaging strategies. [Quantpedia] — “Imagine you won a significant amount of money and you want to invest it in a particular investment. You can either invest it all at once or spread it into multiple smaller investments over time. If you chose to spread the investments, you picked a strategy called dollar-cost averaging. When an investor applies dollar-cost averaging (DCA), they invest the money in equal portions at periodic intervals, regardless of the market conditions. This way, they eliminate the emotions that come with rising and falling markets.”

What we lose when work gets too casual. [The New York Times, so possible paywall] — “The loss of workplace formalities like fixed start and stop times, managerial hierarchies with clear pathways for advancement and professional norms that create boundaries between personal and professionally acceptable behavior only hurt workers. Though the pandemic-era transformation of white-collar work seems empowering at first, we should not be deceived: Many of these changes mostly benefit employers.”

I’ll be back tomorrow with one final installment to carry us into the weekend. Join me, won’t you?

Welcome to Wednesday, money nerds, and welcome to another edition of Apex Money.

A few weeks ago, I shared a video about how airlines quietly became banks. Well, I recently discovered an old article (from August 2019) about how Starbucks has done something similar.

Starbucks, financial superpower. [Moneyness] — “Stored value card liabilities are the money that you, oh loyal Starbucks customer, use to buy coffee. What you might not realize is that these balances simultaneously function as a loan to Starbucks. Starbucks doesn’t pay any interest on balances held in the Starbucks app or gift cards. You, the loyal customer, are providing the company with free debt.”

Translation: Starbucks customers have purchased more than $1.6 billion in gift cards. This amount is, effectively, an interest-free loan to the company shared by many millions of people. The company is free to use this free cash to generate greater returns by investing it. Crazy!

“Should I be worried if I get a letter from the I.R.S.?” [The Military Wallet] — “Most IRS letters are not a crisis. If action is needed, you typically have time to deal with the issue. The IRS does try to work with taxpayers to find reasonable solutions.”

How to cure yourself of investing FOMO. [Wallet Hacks] — “FOMO, whether investing or otherwise, relies on a cognitive bias known as scarcity. We assume that when things are scarce, they are more valuable (gold has value strictly because it’s scarce!). We may, and often do, make bad decisions when influenced by this scarcity bias.”

Today’s video features is all about science! Here’s a 17-minute YouTube clip from the Veritasium channel that looks at the longest-running evolution experiment in the world. For 33 years, researchers at Michigan State University have been evolving E. coli bacteria at a rate of six or seven generations per day. They’ve now had the equivalent of nearly two million years of human lifespan. How have they changed?

I love this stuff. It makes me feel small, but it makes the universe seem even more wondrous. Yay! (More about this experiment here.)

Okay, that’s all for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more interesting links for your edification. See you then…

Good morning, Apexians, and welcome to Tuesday. This morning, if all goes well, I’ll be baking bread. I started my “no knead” dough yesterday afternoon (which is really just a few minutes ago in Real Time, but that’s kind of confusing, no?), which means it ought to be ready for a quick fold and second rise at about the time this edition goes live.

But you know what? I’ve been working on my “no knead” bread recipe for a couple of months now. (I use both Bittman’s recipe and the Cook’s Illustrated modified version.) And despite having baked dozens of loaves, I always struggle with the brief “not kneading” period of kneading before the final two-hour proof. It just never seems to work like it’s supposed to. Never. Not once. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong…

But you’re not here to talk about baking, are you? You’re here for excellent articles about money (and other related topics). Let’s get to them!

Will your spending decline in retirement? [Monevator] — “As it happens, there’s a large stack of research that suggests people really do see their spending decline in retirement. At least on average. And if this turns out to be you, then the amount you need to retire should be less daunting than previously advertised.”

The high cost of an easy job. [Of Dollars and Data] — “The easy choices come with hard consequences…later. They show up where you might not expect them. With regret. With nostalgia. With sadness. The easy way out always has hidden costs. The question is: are you willing to pay them?”

A generation of American men have given up on college. [The Wall Street Journal] — “Men dominate top positions in industry, finance, politics and entertainment. They also hold a majority of tenured faculty positions and run most U.S. college campuses. Yet female college students are running laps around their male counterparts.” [This article is fascinating, as is the trend it explores.]

And that’s all I have for this Tuesday. Time for me to go put my first loaf of bread in the oven. I’ll be back tomorrow, though, to share more news about personal finance…

Welcome to February, my money nerds, and welcome to another week of Apex Money. To kick things off, I have an interesting little essay that does a good job of capturing much of my personal world view.

Dreams and kindness are all we have. [Interfluidity] — “Unmediated, outside of the temptations of commerce, the humans are mostly remarkably good to one another. It’s people being awful that goes viral on the apps, but those videos are absurdly unrepresentative. When our imaginations and conversations are dominated by salacious, mediated events, we become tempted to override our own gentleness, to prosecute cruelties in the service of an imagined cause with little connection to actual humans here and now.”

For fifteen months in 2015 and 2016, Kim and I traveled across the U.S. in an RV. We met all sorts of people form all sorts of backgrounds with all sorts of beliefs. During those fifteen months, we had encountered two rotten apples. Of the thousands of others we dealt with, everyone was pleasant and kind. But you’d never know that if you believed what you saw on the news…or on Reddit.

And here’s the rest of today’s news…

How we’re establishing a family money philosophy with our children. [Frugalwoods] — “Our oldest child, six-year-old Kidwoods, started asking about money this fall and her curiosity reached an inflection point earlier this week thanks to a school book sale flier advertising a $7 unicorn book. So here’s my non-expert, imperfect tale of how we’re teaching money management to our children. Well, really just to Kidwoods since Littlewoods (age almost four) remains unimpressed and uninterested.” [This is an excellent, thoughtful article.]

Everything must be paid for twice. [Raptitude] — “You can pick up Moby-Dick for a dollar at a garage sale, but it’s a wasted dollar if you don’t subsequently pay a significant second price: sixteen hours of attending closely to long Victorian commentaries on whales and the men who hunt them. And you’ve got many more debts competing for those same sixteen hours.”

The small steps of giant leaps.[Farnam Street] — “When you look below the surface, giant leaps aren’t really giant leaps at all. They’re a series of ordinary choices that suddenly become noticeable. If you look for the magic moment, you’ll miss how ordinary becomes extraordinary.”

To wrap things up today, here’s an hilarious two-minute video I found on Twitter. It’s a commentator (from St. Louis, I think) laying out how bleak February is.

Give this man a Pulitzer pic.twitter.com/jRdHP3hTJI via @ShawnHils

— Taylor Lorenz— ON BOOK LEAVE (@TaylorLorenz) February 4, 2022

Honestly, it’s not February that’s bleak in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. It’s January. And we’re past that. February actually brings signs of hope. In fact, right around this time of the month is when we get our first warm, sunny days of the year. Temps climb to 15 or 16 or 17 (the low 60s, if you’re still a Fahrenheit user), and we Oregonians don shorts for a couple of days.

Then things turn wintry again haha.

Okay, that’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more money news. See you then!

Well, money nerds, we’ve made it to the end of another week. With all that’s been going on in the world for the past couple of years, sometimes it’s difficult to believe that’s possible. But it is!

So, stock market crash, be damned. Crypto crash, be damned. Rising prices, be damend. Let’s look at

The effects of retirement on sense of life purpose. [Association of Psychological Science] — “Overall, our analysis demonstrates that retirement, as a crucial developmental milestone, may be some- thing to be celebrated rather than feared for many people. In particular, the findings suggest that the poli- cies to increase mandatory retirement ages may have adverse impacts on the well-being of socioeconomically vulnerable populations.”

What intentional spending actually means. [ The Fioneers] — “Intentional spending means that I know what’s most important to me, and I spend my money in alignment with my values. I’d also extend this definition to include time because we ‘pay’ our time to get money. So, being intentional also means that I could spend less money so that I can ‘pay’ less of my time to get more of it. ”

Is saving money hard? [Can I Retire Yet?] “What is the relative importance of the technical aspects (what to do and how to do it) in personal finance? What role do psychological aspects (understanding why we do things and using that knowledge to promote better behaviors) play? Where should we focus our attention?”

To close out the week, here’s something completely unrelated to money. I’ve mentioned before that if I weren’t writing about money, I’d be writing about animals — specifically, animal intelligence. You see, I believe animals lead rich emotional lives and are far more intelligent than most humans credit.

Well, here’s a a story from Hakai Magazine that asks: Can we really be friends with an octopus?

Octopuses can solve puzzles, use tools, deceive others, adapt their behavior to unfamiliar situations, communicate through pattern and posture, and, it seems, form impromptu social bonds with each other and other species. No other invertebrate demonstrates such extraordinary intelligence and behavioral flexibility. Where exactly did all this intellect come from?

Animals are amazing.

Now, if you no longer need me, I’m going to go watch a movie. Based on this Reddit thread about recent film masterpieces, I’m going to watch The Florida Project. If the trailer is any indication, I’d say that no film more suited to me (as J.D.) exists in this world. I’m eager to view it….

Welcome to Thursday, money nerds, and welcome to Apex Money. I did end up missing an installment yesterday, as I’d worried I might — but not for the reasons I thought.

You see, I got my COVID booster on Monday afternoon. And while I experienced few side effects with the first two doses last spring, this dose laid me low. Boy howdy! I was down with flu-like symptoms for 36 hours. I’m still not back to normal, but at least I have the ability to focus on stories about money.

So, let’s get to them.

Why you should always get multiple estimates on home repairs. [I Pick Up Pennies] — “It is a universal law that you should never go with the first bid on a home repair. And yes, you’d think it goes without saying. But sometimes even those of us who know better…don’t know better.” [This reminds me of a similar experience I had recently. I received a bill for a home repair that seemed high. I called to ask for clarification. The company had made an error and dropped the charge by 67%!]

Personal finance tips and tricks to manage your money. [One Frugal Girl] — “The birth of my first son coincided with a messy time in my life. In addition, to sleepless nights and new mom worries, I was reeling from my husband’s newly expanding small business and an unexpected pink slip. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we lost sight of simple money management tasks…The solution was easier than we expected. We designed an automated system to remind us of upcoming financial chores and events.”

Why everyone thinks the inflation numbers are wrong. [A Wealth of Common Sense] — “I know it can feel cathartic to complain that the government is manipulating the official inflation statistics but the truth is whatever the stated average inflation rate is it will always feel useless to the vast majority of households. When it comes to inflation, no one is average. Your personal circumstances will determine your true inflation rate more than anything else.”

Let’s close things out with one of my favorite videos in recent months. This is a 37-minute YouTube segment from Home Studio Simplified that breaks down how the Bee Gees’ smash hit “Staying Alive” was produced out of 22 individual recording tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1vok-EtAQw

I’m not saying that I want to watch this sort of thing all the time, but this one time was fascinating.

And that’s it for today, everyone. I’ll be back tomorrow to take you into your weekend. See you then…

Apexians, I am calling upon you for help! You see, I’ve recently become fascinated with houseplants. So, today (as if she were bringing home a stray kitten) my girlfriend brought me this:

But what is it? We don’t know. Kim salvaged it from the dumpster of the dentist office where she works. It’s maybe three feet (a meter) tall, has sort of palm-like stems, and lovely long variegated leaves. Is it a dieffenbachia? Maybe. But some (including Kim) vote that it’s aglaonema.

Can you help?

Okay, enough with the mystery plants. Now let’s look at some stories about money, shall we?

The financial and emotional cost of fun. [Money Hungry] — “I’m a member of a number of closed Facebook groups in the personal finance space and I’m often struck by how infrequently people talk about intentionally adding fun into their lives. In all of the work talk why aren’t we also entitled to joy?”

Should we be worried about inflation? [Mr. Money Mustache] — “Inflation has been around since the dawn of money, so we know that it can co-exist with an increase in prosperity. But for the past few decades, the rate of inflation in most rich economies has been extremely low, which means it simply hasn’t been at the top of the news headlines. Until today, when inflation has made a sudden return…So should we be worried?”

Why are poor people poor and rich people rich? [Bitches Get Riches] — “Poor people aren’t just poor in dollars. They’re poor in time, because they’re obliged to sell so much of theirs to make ends meet. As such, poor people may have no choice but to export or defer these tasks. They won’t go to the doctor because the bill scares them, and they die earlier because of it. They eat junk food because it’s either the only food they can access, or possibly the only luxury they can afford. Poverty is a cycle that creates the illusion of laziness.” [Here’s my long response to this article.]

Today’s video feature is actually about money, for once. It’s a 19-minute video from the Economics Explained channel on YouTube that attempts to answer the question: Do we actually need taxes?

And that’s it for today! If you have any thoughts on my mystery plant, let me know. Comments are open. (Or you can reply by email.) Otherwise, come back tomorrow for more!

Hey, money nerds. It’s J.D. here at the helm of Apex Money this week. My posting may be sparser than normal this week. I’m dealing with Big Stuff in my personal life at the moment, which means I haven’t really read anything about money over the past two weeks. The links I’m sharing today are articles I read a while back.

Anyhow, I’ll do my best to keep you supplied with fresh, juicy personal-finance stories…but I may miss a day or two.

To start, though, let’s look at a l-o-n-g article that I found fascinating. It’s a deep dive into why the town of Galesburg, Illinois has fallen on hard times. And it’s a story that simply re-inforces my own recent decision to move to Corvallis, Oregon — a city that has deliberately taken steps to preserve its downtown core while placing strict limits on growth and development.

If you have even a passing interest in local government and/or city planning, this article is interesting.

Why Galesburg has no money. [Inland Nobody on Substack] — “This isn’t a story about how the factories left or greedy union pensions, this is a story about how we’ve chosen to develop our town over the years. We have mostly chosen to build single family homes with large lots and commercial buildings that are auto dependent. It’s what every town was doing so I’m not here to shame anyone for what has happened. But the numbers tell us that we can’t keep going down this path.”

A grand unified theory of buying stuff. [Wired] — “Years ago, I asked a friend what kind of case she planned to buy for her shiny new flip phone. She paused, a little offended. ‘I don’t like to buy stuff for my stuff,’ she said. Those words drilled directly into my hippocampus, never to depart. She’s right! I thought. Don’t buy stuff stuff! So simple! I have tried to keep to that principle ever since, and it has gone about as well as you would expect…”

After the Beanie Baby bubble burst. [Vox] — “Looking back at a mad rush around often-colorful, often-cutesy, questionably useful odds and ends, it’s hard not to see what’s currently going on in the NFT market and wonder whether it’s Beanie Baby-esque. There’s a similar level of unbridled optimism and a rush to claim ownership over relatively arbitrary items in the belief that their value will go up. The nascent arena is also plagued by scams and potential crimes.”

Sorry, no video today. I’ve been reading few money stories and watching even fewer YouTube videos. But you know what? When I head to bed here in a few minutes (I generally write my Apex installments they night before you see them), I intend to watch random YouTube stuff, so I may have a good video for you tomorrow. 😉

Anyhow, that’s it for today. More good stuff Tuesday…or Wednesday, if my personal life is as crazy on Monday as it has been the past couple of weeks.