Author: J.D. Roth

It’s yet another freaky Friday, friends! But before you head off to enjoy your weekends, I’ve gathered a few final stories about money (and more) to share with you…

What does your dream cost? [Bitches Get Riches] — “The road to the things you want most may be unfairly long and winding. But that is all the more reason to drive it in daylight, with GPS. Today, I’m going to walk you through some strategies to price out the kind of ambitious, lifelong dreams that feel so hard to quantify. Hopefully it’ll inspire you to do the same with your own bucket list!”

How to create your own personal financial calendar. [Less Debt, More Wine] — “A Financial Calendar can help you start working towards getting a month ahead on your finances when you’re struggling in the vicious paycheck to paycheck cycle. A Financial Calendar has every single bill due date throughout the entire year. Not just monthly bills, but also quarterly, semi-annual, and annual bills. Every. Single. Bill. Due. Date.”

The shady business of selling futures. [Wired] — “Selling futures is a business that feeds off uncertainty — and uncertainty is its true product…That’s why it’s important for everyone to be aware when the future is being used as snake oil to persuade us of the inevitability of what is really just another marketing plan. Asking who will benefit from a particular future vision is a good start; so is following the money.”

Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen. [The Guardian] — “We are not now facing simply a normal anxiety about attention, of the kind every generation goes through as it ages. We are living in a serious attention crisis – one with huge implications for how we live.” I feel like this is an important subject. My friends and I talk about it often in casual conversation. We know that our attention spans have collapsed. We just don’t know how to fix them.

There are two “year end” videos that I await eagerly every year. The first (and best) is David Ehrlich’s “best films” countdown, which is always so so amazing. (But which doesn’t get released until late January.) The second is D.J. Earworm’s United States of Pop, a mash-up of some of the year’s most popular songs.

Well, here’s the United States of Pop 2021…

Great stuff, as always.

And that’s it for this week. Jim will be back on Monday with more of the best of personal finance. Join him!

Today is Thursday, my friends, and this is Apex Money, your source for the juiciest money stories from around the web. Oh — and other interesting stuff we want to share haha. Let’s get started.

The quest to find the world’s best rice. [Taste] — “Japan has around 300 brands of short-grain japonica rice that go by names like Yume Shizuku (Dream Droplet), Seiten no Hekireki (Bolt from the Blue), Tsuyahime (Shiny Princess), and Mirukii Kuiin (Milky Queen). Each one is a unique cultivar that’s been grown by plant breeders for some combination of traits: stickiness, starch density, big kernels, high yields, early maturation, heat resilience, pest resistance.”

How to be successful. [Sam Altman] — “I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter. Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you’ve already reached a baseline degree of success (through privilege or effort) and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success. But much of it applies to anyone.”

Cage-free is basically meaningless (and other lies your egg carton is telling you). [Lifehacker] — “If all of this seems like too much to remember, you can always build a coop and raise your own hens, or source your eggs from a local farm. The yolks in local farm eggs have a darker color and richer flavor than factory farmed eggs, and come with a nice smug feeling of moral superiority. (My favorite eggs come from my dad’s chickens, but Vital Farms, which is rated very highly on ol’ Organic Egg Scorecard, are a very close second).” [Our household is also devoted to Vital Farms eggs.]

Lastly, here’s a YouTube video I found recently, and about which I find myself thinking several times a week. (Seriously!) It’s a two-minute clip explaining the “veil of ignorance” thought experiment from philosopher John Rawls. It’s a way of trying to think about what’s fair and just when it comes to communities and societies.

Okay, that’s it for Thursday. I’ll be back here tomorrow to see you into the weekend. Take care!

Welcome to Wednesday, money nerds, and welcome to another installment of Apex Money. Let’s dive right in.

The car shortage could change buying behavior forever. [Axios] — “Supply chain disruptions could have a silver lining for automakers if Americans can be trained to order the exact car they want — color, features, bells and whistles — and then wait a month or so for it to be delivered.”

The morality of manipulation. [Nir and Far] — “As the march of technology makes the world a more addictive place, innovators need to consider their role. It will be years, perhaps generations, before society develops the antibodies to new addictions. In the meantime, users will have to judge the yet unknown consequences for themselves, while creators will have to live with the moral repercussions of how they spend their professional lives.”

It’s not about the cards you’re dealt; it’s about the hand you play. [Female in Finance] — “There are things in life you won’t get to choose. No one chooses their starting point, but it’s up to you to choose where you end up. And although you may not get to choose your starting hand, you do get to choose how to play. It’s up to you to play a poor hand well. And that takes hard work.”

Everyday sayings explained. [Stylist] — “Every phrase, saying or proverb starts somewhere, and thanks to the Phrase Finder, we’ve uncovered the (often disputed) authors, meanings and stories behind some of the most commonplace sayings. The results are surprising, and prove it wasn’t just Shakespeare changing our language.”

Today’s video features is something completely different for me. It’s a five-minute segment from CrowsEye Productions on YouTube that features a woman getting dressed in the style of 7th century Britain.

To me, this is fascinating although it’s not anything I would have ever sought out on my own. Now that I’ve watched it, though, it gives context to all of the Arthurian stuff I like to read. And you know what? The CrowsEye YT channel has tons more like this exploring clothing and customs of years and centuries past.

Hey hey, Apexians, welcome to another day of money stories. And other stuff. Let’s start today with “other stuff”.

Last Monday, The New York Times wrote about Wordle, a web-based word game that’s only been around for a few months, but which has already gone from a project designed for one person to a habit formed by hundreds of thousands of people. Pretty impressive.

You can read the NYT piece, Wordle Is a Love Story, or you can play game here. It’s free, easy, and fun. (Sunday’s Wordle was my first “failure”. I didn’t solve it!)

Now let’s get to the money stuff. Today’s three articles all explore a related theme: scarcity and abundance.

“The results of my anti-frugality experiment in 2021.” [Financial Mechanic] — “I had a unique New Year’s resolution [in 2021] for a frugal financial blogger. While many people vow to get their spending under control, create budgets, or start investing (all very noble goals), I thought I could try something new. After living extremely frugally for years, I wanted to try something totally different: spending more.”

“Is this the condition that I so feared?” [Accidental Fire] — “I’ve always had a scarcity mindset in life…I tend to catastrophize things. It brings anxiety. You would think that being financially independent would cure that, but deep seated beliefs and behaviors are nagging things and hard to kick.”

Appreciate what you have while you have it. [One Frugal Girl] — “Sometimes we find ourselves dreaming of better circumstances without appreciating what we have. Maybe you want a better relationship with your parents, a more exciting job, or to add more adventure and spontaneity to your life. While it’s essential to have goals, it’s just as important to spend time reflecting on the things we take for granted.”

Okay, that’s all I have for this Tuesday. I’ll see you again tomorrow with more fun stuff…

Hello, my friends! Welcome to another week of Apex Money. Every weekday, Jim and I collect interesting articles from around the web that explore the world of money and self-improvement — and whatever else piques our interest.

Here’s what I have for you today.

Crypto: The good, the bad, and the ugly. [Seldo.com] — “Every time I dig into crypto I find things that seem stupid, or useless, or actively bad. But so many people are into it! I’m a big fan of the wisdom of crowds, especially when it comes to technical choices, so a big crowd of people doing something that seems stupid really eats at me. I must be missing something! So here, mostly to help me think about it for myself, I’m going to examine all the things that are good about crypto, and then all the things that are bad.”

What happened when people in a New York town started getting $500 monthly checks. [Fast Company] — “HudsonUP started in the fall of 2020 with 25 low-income recipients receiving $500 a month for 5 years. One year in, as the program inducts a new cohort of 50 more beneficiaries, organizers have released a report that illustrates how the supplemental cash assisted the first group. They found that employment more than doubled among surveyed recipients, who also reported better health, mended relationships, and the agency to spend their money as they see fit…” [Very small sample size, obviously, but interesting.]

100 ways to slightly improve your life with minimal effort. [The Guardian] — “Whether it’s taking fruit to work (and to the bedroom!), being polite to rude strangers or taking up skinny-dipping, here’s a century of ways to make life better, with little effort involved…”

Today’s video features is an old one. In this talk from 2003, design critic Don Norman discusses beauty, fun, pleasure and emotion, as he looks at how good design makes people happy.

It’s an interesting concept and goes a long way to explaining why I choose some of the products that I choose. I drive a Mini Cooper. I use Apple computers and phones and tablets. When we bought out new house in August, I ordered a womb chair (which, at long last, arrives tomorrow!).

I know that not everyone cares about design, and that’s fine. But as Norman explains in this video, I get great joy every day from using things that are beautiful and well designed.

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

Welcome to the last day of the year! Before we wave good-bye to 2021, I’m here with a few final financial stories to share with you.

What are the most satisfying products and services you’ve ever purchased? [/r/fatFIRE on Reddit] — “Someone posted a question asking how to ensure they get the best product. It got me thinking about the most satisfying products and experiences I’ve consumed in my life. Thought I’d share mine and ask others to share as well.” This is, essentially, a list of expensive things that rich people have bought that they believe were worth the money.

My silent battle with inflation. [Happily Disengaged] — “A few weeks ago inflation came to slap me in the face as I sat in my car ordering two Starbucks coffees with my wife. I thought the dude taking the order had just got my order wrong. So when I pulled up to the window I asked him to repeat the order, then the price…$8 for two coffees! Shit. And I still went through with the transaction.”
How to arrange for your digital legacy. [The Verge] — “If you’re reading this, odds are that you’ve got a lot of digital stuff, both on your own devices and floating around in the cloud: backups, photos, tweets, Facebook messages, texts, you name it. If you’re no longer around to pay attention, these can hang around for a very long time — and some of it may be important to your survivors. (For example, who else has the passwords to your bank accounts and credit cards?)”

To close out 2021, here’s one last video. It’s a mix of fun and financial. Loyal reader Julie (who also writes the awesome One Frugal Girl blog) sent us a 17-minute YouTube segment from Wendover Productions that explains how the airlines quietly became banks.

This is fascinating stuff. If you have a few minutes, you should watch it. The bottom line is that airlines lose money on their core business, transportation. They earn their money on their loyalty programs. No wonder airlines pitch their credit cards so hard!

That’s it for this year. We’ll be back in 2022 with more great stuff. See you then.

Good morning, money nerds, and welcome to the second-to-last day of the year! Here at Apex, it’s just a day like any other, which means I’ve gathered some recent cool money news to share with you. Take a look!

How to take control of your time next year. [Women Who Money] — “In my daily routines, I get urgent tasks done. But I wasn’t using blocks of time or scheduling consistent time to work on my resolutions or goals. Nor was I giving a time limit to mindlessly scrolling social media or checking emails.”

Daily habits that can change your life forever. [Becoming Minimalist] — “The direction of our lives is decided more by the daily choices we make than anything else. And these choices are more influential to the person we are becoming than we often realize. Habits become ingrained, automatic, and often slowly creep into your life so subtly that they become routine. So if you want to change your life, start by changing one thing that you do each day.”

Do retirees want constant, increasing, or decreasing consumption? [research paper from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College] — “When households have assets and their health, they keep real consumption relatively flat over their retirement. This pattern is evident when comparing wealthy and healthy households separately and when the top tercile is ranked by health status. For those with less wealth or with health issues, consumption declines more over time…But the results suggest that the decline most likely reflects wealth and health constraints as opposed to true preferences.”

That’s all I have for you today. Come back tomorrow for one final Apex installment for 2021. It’s gotta be good, right?

Welcome, my friends, to another day of Apex Money. As always, Jim and I are out here scouring the interwebs for the most interesting stories about how to master your money — and your life. Here’s what we have for you today.

“Nine things I learned about productivity this year.” [Raptitude] — “In 2021 I began to dissect my lifelong problem of severe procrastination, instead of just wrestling with it…One thing that helped a lot was distilling my observations about the machine into a dozen or so single-sentence ‘laws’ that describe how productivity and procrastination seem to work, at least for me.” [David’s articles always seem like they’ve been written directly to me.]

Single women outpace male counterparts in homebuying. [San Bernardino Sun] — “Homebuyer surveys conducted by the National Association of Realtors over the past 40 years show single females have made up the second-largest demographic among U.S. homebuyers since 1981, steadily overshadowing single guys in the housing market.”

“How we’ve lived on one income for 20 years.” [Women Who Money] — “Living on one salary isn’t for everyone. Each family’s circumstances are different. But we’re fortunate to be able to make it work for us. Hopefully, sharing our story and tips helps other families consider living (and thriving) on one income!”

“My annual budgeting process.” [Budgets Are Sexy] — “Today I’m gonna run through a quick overview of my annual and monthly budgeting process. It’s super simple and doesn’t take me much time — about an hour at the start of every year and 20-30 mins each month.”

By far the biggest cognitive dissonance in my own personal life is this: I believe strongly that animals are smarter than most people credit (and that they lead rich emotional lives) — yet I am an avid carnivore. I love meat. This personal moral crash makes me feel guilty AF…yet I only occasionally commit myself to plant-based eating.

Anyhow, last week I found this 15-minute video that shows a guy keeping a grocery-store lobster as a pet. It’s fascinating. And it’s challenging my status as a self-described “meatatarian” one again…

I’ve long refused to eat octopus because they’re simply too smart and too intelligent. (Yet, I still eat pig. I am a bad man.) Turns out many researchers believe lobster are almost as intelligent as octopi. I don’t eat lobster often. Now, maybe I never will.

Okay, that’s all for today. I’ll see you again tomorrow with more good stuff!

Hello hello, Apexians! Sorry I missed yesterday’s update. I blame the Christmas holiday. And snow. We don’t get much snow here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, and we especially don’t get snow that sticks around. But we got a bunch over the past couple of days, and I’ve been enjoying the weather instead of looking at money articles.

But have no fear. I won’t leave you hanging for two days in a row. Here are some of the stories I browsed today while taking a break from shoveling sidewalks…

I’m 70 years old and can’t spend my savings. [Bogleheads] — “I’m 70, live in northeast U.S. Wife one year younger. I have $6 million in investments and a $1 million mortgage-free house. No debt. $60,000/year in social security (starting right now) and $25,000/year in income from my part-time job as a lawyer (mostly as arbitrator, work from home (before Covid) low stress). I can’t spend money without feelings of anxiety. it’s really painful.”

This block used to be for first-time homebuyers. Then global investors bought in. [The Washington Post] — “These new corporate landlords present serious competition for aspiring home buyers like the Baltimores. The couple has been seeking for years to buy an affordable house for themselves and their three children, now 11, 7 and 6. They want what many families want: good schools and a quiet neighborhood. Global investors, it turns out, were shopping for the same.” [This is a very real problem, and one of the main reasons home prices are so high right now.]

The sad death of the American mall. [Slate] — “The afterlife of a dead mall is interesting. Schools are moving into malls; some students are completing high school in a converted Macy’s in Vermont. A Dillard’s in Texas is now a radio station. Malls are becoming home to community colleges and libraries and offices. The Eastmont Town Center in Oakland, California, is home to a Center for Elders’ Independence, Social Security offices, and a lab.”

Lastly, here’s a silly little 2-1/2 minute video from Big Red Button on YouTube that explores the question: What would your life be like if you sold all your stuff and spend the money hiring people to do everything for you?

It’s not really serious about answering this question. But it’s short and amusing and worth a watch.

Okay, that’s it for today. Assuming no blizzard tonight, I’ll be back again tomorrow with more great money stories. Snow you then. 😉

Hello, Apexians, and welcome to Friday. No fancy lead-in today. Let’s just dive into our links.

Is college worth it? A comprehensive return-on-investment analysis. [The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity] — “Most students attend college in order to get a better job with a higher salary. But the financial returns to college vary widely depending on the institution a student attends and the subject he or she studies. While prospective students often ask themselves whether college is worth it, the more important question is how they can make college worth it.”

Are you prepared for a prosperous 2022? [Women Who Money] — “A financial plan can provide a road map for the upcoming year and help you stay on track. Somewhere between the eggnog and the bubbly, carve out some time to establish your financial goals and strategy for 2022. To make your money goals a reality, an actionable plan is ideal. After all, planning without action won’t yield results.”

The many worlds of enough. [More to That] — “The world of Enough you occupy today is completely foreign to the one you occupied a decade ago, as it should be. But how did you arrive here? Was your trend primarily sculpted through external events like lifestyle shifts, pay changes, and new environments? How much course correction have you done after conducting an honest audit of your ambitions? Have you done this at all?” [This is a great article.]

There’s more to investing than just risk and return. [Morningstar] — “The more I know, the more I can’t be bothered with the arcane, the volatile, the hard to understand. Instead, I crave simplicity, peace of mind, and the ability to be asleep at the switch and know that things will be OK. I also put a big premium on my time. If an investment requires frequent monitoring, I’m out.”

The great organic food fraud. [The New Yorker] — “A farm’s organic certification is good for a year. It doesn’t get used up by sales. If a farmer has only a dozen organic apple trees, but agrees to sell you a million organic apples, you’re unlikely to learn that you have a problem merely by looking at the orchard’s certification.”

I’m afraid that’s all I have for you today. No fun video or anything! Jim will be back to take you into Christmas, then I’ll see you again in ten days to guide you into 2022. See you then!