Author: Jim Wang

Do you struggle with decluttering?

This mindset towards it might be the very thing that “clicks” for you (because it did for me):

The Joy of Decluttering [No Sidebar] – “When I was in high school, I owned a puffy vest from The Gap. The color was a shade of powder blue, with vertical elastic ribbing on the sides. (They literally ‘don’t make them like that anymore.’) It was a staple of my wardrobe at the turn of the millennium. It carried me through school days, to hike in the woods, and to spectate evening high school football games. It even had pockets! In the year 2000, who needed a coat when you had a puffy vest!? I wore mine constantly….until one day, I didn’t wear it anymore. At all.”

The Best Items to Resell for Profit [Flea Market Flipper] – “I started doing a little bit of research on eBay. I noticed a consistent pattern; the larger items listed on eBay with freight shipping as an option were selling quickly and for much more money than the local sales. This is where I had my “aha” moment.” I love how a side benefit of this is that they are keeping things out of the landfill.

Choosing, tracking, and data visualizing all of the happiness [Accidentally Retired] – “A few years ago, I started tracking my happiness using Jim Collins’ system that he devised and spoke about on The Tim Ferriss Show. And, last month I launched the Happiness Spreadsheet, so that you too can track your happiness. If you track your happiness long enough using this method, as I have, then you will eventually start to see the patterns in your good days and bad. From there you can start to make some tweaks.” Brilliant.

The title of this post will only make sense if you read the entirety of the first post we’re sharing today:

How to Live With Dying [The American Scholar] – “In hindsight, I ought to have listened to Aristotle: all virtues, intellectual or physical, are realized by aiming for a particular goal or mark, like taking aim at the center of a distant target. The bull’s-eye is obviously in the perfect midpoint, equidistant from all of the target’s edges. To hit this specific mark, to become virtuous, one must find a compromise between radical opposites. Aristotle argues that this is the essence of all virtuous behavior—determining the golden mean or midpoint between two degenerate extremes.”

64-year-old retiree who left the U.S. for Mexico: 7 downsides of living in a beach town for $1,200 per month [CNBC Make It] – “It all started during a vacation there in 2005; I’d felt a deep happiness I couldn’t ignore. This radical decision changed my somewhat ordinary life a million degrees for the better and I have absolutely no regrets. I wanted an adventure, and boy, am I having one!”

As restaurants reopen and life returns to normal…

Six Rules for Dining Out [Tyler Cowen in The Atlantic] – “A BAD OR MEDIOCRE meal is more than just an unpleasant taste, it is an unnecessary negation of one of life’s pleasures—a wasted chance to refine our palates, learn about the world, and share a rewarding experience. Virtually every locale offers some good meals at a good price. But too often, amidst the clutter of our days, we don’t find them—at least not consistently.” I have a food rule that I don’t order a dish at a new restaurant if it’s already a favorite at my local spot. Chances are it won’t live up to my favorite place and if it is better, then I’ve ruined my favorite place for it. It’s a lose-lose.

The secret to saving money? Stop wanting it!

Not Wanting Something is as Good as Having It [The Escape Artist] – “What if you could be a Zen Warrior and be happy with minimal possessions? I’m talking about unlearning what we have learned from the advertisers and marketeers. I’m talking about no longer putting consumer knick-knacks on a pedestal that they doesn’t deserve to be on.”

The 5-Hour Workday [Four Pillar Freedom] – “I’m able to make significant progress on my businesses with a shorter workday simply because I spend my time only doing things that move the needle. I spend no time commuting, no time in meetings, no time providing project updates to my superiors, and no time emailing back and forth with people.”

So You’re a Celebrity Who Wants to Buy a House [Vice] – “ello, my famous and exorbitantly wealthy friend! I understand you’re interested in purchasing a home. You’ve come to the right place. Here at Realty Solutions for Stars Like You Incorporated, helping you find the mansion, multiacre estate, villa, château, chalet, or otherwise fancily-named residence of your dreams isn’t just what we do—it’s our passion. We know that your time is precious, and that you can’t be bothered to browse through Zillow or attend various open houses like a normal human being. That said, buying property will, unfortunately, take a modicum of time and effort on your part. But worry not! To make the process as painless and undemanding as everything else in your life, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to acquiring real estate for high-profile, high-net-worth individuals like yourself.”

The Vampire Ship [The New Republic] – “How the seizure of Europe’s largest heroin shipment created bloody fallout throughout the world—and sparked still-raging political corruption scandals in Turkey, Greece, and the Middle East.”

But I did want to share this post for a few reasons:
1. You learn about Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)
2. You learn about how “Ethereum” handled a massive hack.

The Dao of DAOs [Not Boring by Packy McCormick] – “Unlike a traditional fund, in which institutions and high net worth individuals (Limited Partners or LPs) invest money into a fund that other people (General Partners or GPs) invest into companies, investors in The DAO would be able to vote on proposals based on pre-set rules, established in smart contracts. Each person’s vote was weighted by the number of tokens they held, which was based on how much they had invested. If a proposed project received enough votes, the smart contract automatically triggered the investment of The DAO’s funds into the project’s ETH wallet.”

1. What really caught my eye about this was when the DAO was hacked and thieves stole ~$50 million (now worth $6.6 billion), the Ethereum core team decided to hard fork the ETH blockchain. A fork is basically like a cloning of the blockchain and now there are two of them. It’s a little like another dimension and in the new Ethereum dimension (which is the one now known as Ethereum), the theft never happened!

Of course, this all relies on everyone accepting the new version and using it over the old version. I think that’s pretty cool but also kind of goes against the idea of decentralized money because the core team was able to do this.

2. The part about DAOs is a little more complex (a DAO is a decentralized organization!) but worth digging into if you’re interested in this type of thing. I find it fascinating to think about.

If you’ve had NFTs on the brain, here’s a story for you:

My Mother Risked It All on the Beanie Baby Boom [Gen] – “In just one month in 1997, $500,000-worth of Beanie Babies were sold on eBay, “totaling 6.6% of overall sales.” Between 1994 and 1999 the annual rate of return on Beanie Baby investment was 170%. We laughed when we asked my mom what her shelves of Beanie Babies were worth, but she’d made an investment with proven returns.”

Invest in Index Funds and Gamble a Little [Even Steven Money] – “I have allowed myself to invest up to 10% of my portfolio in individual stocks of my choosing. If I have a 1 million dollar portfolio I allow myself to accumulate up to $100,000 of individual stocks. If I want to buy shares of Nike stock (NKE) that’s totally fine, but the value cannot exceed $100,000 if that’s the case one of two things need to happen.”

I think this is healthy and something I also do, except for the individual stocks I pick high growth dividend stocks because even though I like to gamble, I like cash flow too. 🙂

What can investors do in the face of low returns? [Monevator] – “However when academics like the number-crunchers behind the Credit Suisse Global Investment Yearbook warn us to prepare for low returns in the future, you have pay some attention. The respected trio of Dimson, Staunton, and Marsh are not a 1960s folk outfit who sang about sandals, but rather three London-based academics. And they dropped their prophecy of doom in the latest edition of their Yearbook.” Eek.

Why an Animated Flying Cat With a Pop-Tart Body Sold for Almost $600,000 [New York Times] – “A fast-growing market for digital art, ephemera and media is marrying the world’s taste for collectibles with cutting-edge technology.”

I’ve always wondered, but never researched, why the marriage penalty existed.

Its history is very interesting and worth reading:

How the U.S. Tax Code Privileges White Families [The Atlantic] – “The U.S. tax code can seem like a neutral, or at least equally punishing, system. But that misses how it has privileged white people—particularly white married couples—and preserved the racial inequality that has long defined America. Take the joint return, for instance, a policy that was designed to give a tax break to married (heterosexual) couples in which only the husband worked in the paid labor market. That setup favored white couples, whose familial structure was most likely to fit its mold. And it came at the expense of Black married couples, including my parents.”

The tax code can be discriminatory even if there was never any intent ahead of time. The solution is to fix that system or you are complicit in its discrimination. And, as it turns out, the fix is quite simple.

Letting Go of Childhood Toys and Memorabilia [One Frugal Girl] – “When I see those old toys, I picture my boys’ chubby little hands playing with the pieces. I imagine their smiling faces looking up at me with utter delight. I remember the moments of their first few years and relish in the memories of that time in my life. While I consider myself a minimalist, I struggle to let go of them.” I struggle with this one too.

A Lot of the Woo-Woo Probably Works [Raptitude] – “There’s something I miss about the days when most people I knew thought meditation was nonsense. In the early 2000s, I was a hardline skeptical type, but I did this one woo-woo-ish thing, because its benefits were obvious enough to me.”

My dad once told me that if there is something that people have been doing for thousands of years, it probably works. It might not be provable beyond a reasonable doubt with science but it can’t be all wrong.

Amazing video on how cats walk [via @RexChapman on Twitter] – “Cats have a precise method of walking called ‘direct registering’. Their hind paws fall inside the place of their forepaws — minimizing noise and visible tracks — while ensuring more stable footing. Amazing…”

The many emotions of redundancy [Paul Wilson on Linkedin] – “Like many other people I was recently made redundant. It is a huge shock to lose your job and that has been amplified by the uncertainties of lockdown and the emotional rollercoaster of the last 12 months. […] Alongside sadness I also felt moments of intense anger. If I was honest with myself most of the anger I felt about redundancy was due to ego. Why have I been made redundant? Why have THEY done this to ME? I was particularly angered by the timing. Everyone had made sacrifices throughout the last year and this felt like a poor way to repay that sacrifice – particularly as our client scores had gone up, employee scores had remained stable and we were profitable as a business unit.” A very honest look at what it’s like to be fired.

Solve Problems Before They Happen by Developing an “Inner Sense of Captaincy” [Farnam Street] – “If we want to get away from glorifying those who run around putting out fires, we need to cultivate an organizational culture that empowers everyone to act responsibly at the first sign of smoke.”

Get Rich versus Stay Rich [The Belle Curve] – “Few things compare to the high of making millions off a concentrated bet; whether that bet is on a single stock, building a business, or working for a successful start-up. I imagine the brain responds to this high in the same way it does to addiction. The temptation to chase the next high is all-encompassing. I talk to investors all the time who can’t stop chasing that high.”

Cartoons [Mapologies] – “It is surprising how often the names of the three nephew of Donald [Duck] have been adapted to the local audiences. More than other cartoon characters. Just some languages uses the English names literally or their transcription. Other chose native names which sound more familiar: in Spanish (diminutive of John, George, James in Spain; Hugh, James and Louis in America; except in Argentina where they are Hugh, Frank and Louis), Portuguese (diminutive of Hugh, Joseph, Louis; in Brasil before had other names) and Catalan (diminutive of John, George, James).” It’s about a more than just Hewey, Dewey, and Louie and it’s quite fun to dig into the other names.

Salt!

How a Salt Monopoly Could Spike Car Accidents in the Midwest [BIG by Matt Stoller] – “Michael Milken, private equity, and a salt roll-up are showing we’re in for shortages and price spikes.” This was fascinating to read because of its discussion of the importance of salt (I did not know the magnitude of its importance in transportation) but also the larger implications of a roll-up in the industry.

How We Removed 80% of Our Unhappiness in The Home [Keepin’ It Frugal] – “In 2020, we removed 80% of our unhappiness in the home. Using the 80/20 rule, we took stock of what grated on us most, and one by one started eliminating them. The results were huge.” We started doing this at home too, finding those areas that bother us and slowly fixing them so they don’t bother us anymore. A lot of it is organizational (kids toys!) so very fast, just have to get your hands on it. Those pesky bebbles!

It’s Friday so two pieces of candy today —

Something fun for you to play with – draw an iceberg and see how it’ll float. (kinda)

Something fun for you to watch – How to impress a woman.

Stockton’s Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off [The Atlantic] – “Two years ago, the city of Stockton, California, did something remarkable: It brought back welfare. Using donated funds, the industrial city on the edge of the Bay Area tech economy launched a small demonstration program, sending payments of $500 a month to 125 randomly selected individuals living in neighborhoods with average incomes lower than the city median of $46,000 a year. The recipients were allowed to spend the money however they saw fit, and they were not obligated to complete any drug tests, interviews, means or asset tests, or work requirements. They just got the money, no strings attached.”

What happened next will (not) shock you!

How To Prepare For Prosperity [His & Her Money] – “You must be ready to be completely done with the debt that you have in your life. It gets hard being in the same place every single month, being in debt and being in over your head with bills. You have to get yourself to the mental space where you are tired of it and ready to get out of the hole you have dug yourself in. […] Believe you can do it. The change will not be comfortable. Be prepared for that too. Just remember this is going to lead to the best future for you and your family.”

NFTs are a dangerous trap [Seth Godin] – “BUYERS of NFTs may be blind to the fact that there’s no limit on the supply. In the case of baseball cards, there are only so many rookies a year. In the case of art, there’s a limited number of famous paintings and a limited amount of shelf space at Sotheby’s. NFTs are going to be more like Kindle books and YouTube videos. The vast majority are going to have ten views, not a billion. It’s an unregulated, non-transparent hustle with ‘bubble’ written all over it.”

This is just a cool drone video inside a bowling alley:

An interesting thought experiment – what would change in your life if you were rich? As in Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos rich…

Being Rich – What Would Change in Life? [Route to Retire] – “It’s hard to digest everything you could do if you had an unlimited amount of funds. Being rich – like really rich – would certainly give you the power to change the world if you wanted.”

12 Things I Remind Myself When Markets Go Crazy [A Wealth of Common Sense] – “3. Your gains will be incinerated at some point. Investing in risk assets means occasionally seeing your gains evaporate before your eyes. I don’t know why and I don’t know when but at some point a large portion of my portfolio will fall in value. That’s how this works.”

Is investing a zero-sum game? [Occam Investing] – “To understand whether investing is a zero-sum game, a useful place to start is a concept known as Sharpe’s Arithmetic of Active Management. Sharpe’s arithmetic begins with the premise that the equity market is owned by two kinds of investors: a) market cap indexers, who own every equity in the market in proportion to its market capitalisation (known as “passive investors”), and, b) active investors, each of whom owns a portfolio of equities which they believe will outperform.” That’s just a teaser but the summation is that active management is for the birds. 🙂

Speaking of which… how flipping cool is this??? I also learned a new word – “murmuration.”