Author: Jim Wang

The first time I’d heard the term Last Lecture, it was from Professor Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University. My biggest (academic) regret was not taking his class, Building Virtual Worlds. There was a massive waiting list and I let that deter me.

His Last Lecture is a fantastic talk about achieving your childhood dreams and is a must watch for every single human being. He gave it on September 18th, 2007 and would die on July 25th, 2008 of pancreatic cancer.

Our first article comes from Graham Weaver, founder and managing partner of the private equity firm Alpine Investors, and a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also gave a Last Lecture on how to live an asymmetric life. Our first article is a blog post that covers what he talked about (in case you weren’t in the mood to watch it):

How to Live an Asymmetric Life [Graham Weaver] – “I learned that, yes, it is possible to reduce one’s downside, but it is not possible to eliminate it. The better strategy is to seek opportunities where the possibility of gains wildly outweighs what you can lose, which is typically capped at 1x your investment.” It starts with a brief story about investing but the meat is in body of the article when he writes about how to build an asymmetric life, very well done and starts off with a banger – Do Hard Things.

100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying [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” There are some silly ideas on this but you may find a few one’s you’ll try.

Why do some artists become famous? [Big Think on Youtube]

It’s Jim again and for the first time in 2024 – so Happy New Year!

I want to start off the year with something bright and cheery as we look back on the ways the world got better in 2023.

The Year in Cheer: 177 ways the world got better in 2023 [Reasons to be cheerful] – “Cancer fatalities in the US are down 33 percent from 1991, amounting to 3.8 million deaths avoided. […] In California, a 400-acre oil field is being transformed into a nature preserve. […] Curved blades in next-gen hydroelectric turbines allow 99 percent of aquatic life to safely swim through them.”

OK one post looking back, one post looking forward. Those are the rules!

24 Rules for 2024 [Jonathan Clements on Humble Dollar] – “WHAT SHOULD YOU DO with your money next year? The same things you should have done this year, and the year before, and the year before that. The rules for a successful life—financially and otherwise—are, I believe, pretty timeless. What rules? Here are 24 of my favorites.” #3 is always good advice but don’t skip #12.

Finally, I love a good allegory and Katie from Money with Katie draws up a great one about money and preferences:

Learning to Like Beer in a World Full of Champagne Propaganda [Money with Katie] – “The families we see on TV? Upper middle class, at least. The personalities we see online? Most live (or pretend to live) top 1% lifestyles, often fueled by the very fact that the job of “influencer” pays handsomely, even if your niche is “van life rock climber.” The average car payment in the US is $729, which means—depending on where you live—even a short trip to the grocery store will probably surround you with relative opulence.”

Hello hello Apexian!

This marks the final Apex Money post of the year, as we will be taking the next week off. J.D. will return to kick off 2024 with posts that he forgot to share in 2023! 😂

In true end of year fashion, we will start with a post that looks back on 2023:

Six charts that defined the markets in 2023 [Axios] – “Egg prices peaked at $4.82 a dozen in January and then started, er, cracking, but falling prices for these staple ovoids didn’t curb the Great American Egg Price Freakout of 2023.” Once you get past the first chart, which is about GDP, you get into charts that reflect public consensus and understanding – like egg prices, housing prices, etc.

Happily Ever After [Humble Dollar] – “In late 2021, I split my portfolio in two. One part I’ll use to fund my retirement, while the other part I’ll leave to my two kids. This “bequest” portion consists of my three Roth accounts, which are roughly a quarter of my overall portfolio. Because I don’t foresee ever touching this money, I’ve invested the entire sum in stocks.” Clever.

Wealth is the Control of Time [Investment Talk] – “When you think about it, money is a funny thing. Over the centuries, a diverse list such as seashells, massive stones, gold nuggets, salt, beaver pelts, and pieces of paper were all accepted as money. For many people today, money is just pixels on a screen. While certain forms of money performed better than others, its function remained the same across millennia—to enable time and energy expended in the present to be exchanged elsewhere and at a later date.” Money = time!

Finally, as this is the last post of the year, I want to say thank you for subscribing, reading, and enjoying this little project of J.D. and mine. We do it for fun, we hope you enjoy it, and we wish you a prosperous and healthy new year!

J.D. will be back on January 1st (or thereabouts) with our first edition of 2024!

I like long lists of facts and this, entirely financial related, one delivers!

There are so many good ones it was hard to use one in the excerpt and they all have sources.

75 Facts from 2023 [The Idea Farm] – “Money.com estimates in 2020, 44% of workers with FSAs forfeited money, and the average amount was $408 per person. Workers forfeited approximately $3 billion in 2019 and $4.2 billion in 2020.” Use your FSA money!!!

Exploring the purpose of life [The Beautiful Truth] – “What is the purpose of life? Whatever you may think is the answer, you might, from time to time at least, find your own definition unsatisfactory. After all, how can one say why any living creature is on Earth in just one simple phrase? For me, looking back on 18 years of research into how the human brain handles language, there seems to be only one, solid, resilient thread that prevails over all others. Humanity’s purpose rests in the spectacular drive of our minds to extract meaning from the world around us.”

This is a fun video of the smallest to the largest thing in the Universe video. The size of a person is the mid-point and they compare small and large things of equal multiples, it’s really quite well done and worth the twelve and a half minutes:

OK, I’m a sucker for A Christmas Carol. For me, it’s the quintessential Christmas story, second only to Die Hard. (I’ve never watched A Christmas Story)

And so when my friend Joe from Stacking Benjamins sent us their podcast episode, I knew I had to listen to it.

Just check out the cover art:

It’s called Doug and the Three Ghosts and really funny (and financially educational!). And quirky. 😂😂😂

Kyle Deschanel, the Rothschild Who Wasn’t [Vanity Fair] – “When Kyle de Rothschild Deschanel arrived in New York nightlife and venture fundraising circles a few years ago, he was an instant hit. Equal parts charm, enterprise, and fabulous family wealth, he seemed to live on a 24/7 carousel of mega-dollar deals and raucous parties. It was almost as if he had conjured his entire existence out of thin air. What if he had?”

Eleven theories for how to achieve true happiness [Clearer Thinking] – “The question of how to achieve true happiness has been debated for thousands of years. In this article, we’ve summarized eleven approaches to happiness, new and old, that are popular today.”

Oniomania (n.) – an abnormal impulse for buying things

Beware this as we enter this last week before the festivities crescendo!

Shop Till You Drop [Humble Dollar] – “HERE’S A RECIPE FOR disaster: a good internet connection, plenty of storage space, lots of time on your hands—and credit cards.”

Help with Christmas: Free gifts and resources for low-income families [Wealthy Single Mommy] – “Need help buying Christmas gifts this year? You may be eligible to participate in one of these organizations below that help financially struggling families get free Christmas toys for their kids. For holiday gifts for low-income families, keep reading about Christmas assistance programs.”

Five Ways Mindfulness Helps You Age Better [Greater Good Magazine] – “As I get older, I notice that my peers and I are starting to lose some of the abilities we once took for granted. Aging brings unwelcome changes in our physical fitness, joint health, cognition, and more. And, of course, our pending mortality looms larger for us than it did in our youth. What can we do to have more health and happiness in that later part of life? One possibility is to become more mindful.”

Happy Friday Apexians!

I’ve always loved the idea of FIRE, financial independence retire early, but really only the first half. Financial independence is great. I’m on board.

Retire early? Eh, not really something I was super interested in. I was, however, never in a toxic career (as we’ll see in our second post).

And, more importantly, I always wanted to remain useful… which is the subject of our first post.

You Can Retire Early, But Never Stop Being Useful [Abandoned Cubicle] – “Leaving a paycheck, managers-by-carousel, silly meetings, and other corporate nonsense behind won’t kill you. But if you leave a job where you sit on your duff all day only to wind up sitting on your duff all day and subsequently doing nothing to improve yourself or serve others, then it’s game over.”

Exiting A Toxic Career Of Software Engineering [Financial Mechanic] – “When saving and strategizing to leave the workforce, it’s crucial to make a plan for what you are retiring to. That’s what I write about— my journey to financial independence and what I am doing now after turning in my notice. But I realized I haven’t shared much about what I’m retiring from. Most of my career happened in parallel with writing this blog, but I didn’t write much about it as it happened. I want to share the story of my career, and why the refrain “I could never retire, I love my job too much!” was something I never related to.”

And before we jump into the weekend, here’s a wild story of someone who pretended to be a prince!

The Prince [Truly Adventurous] – “In the cafe, he was watching an elegant Serbian woman in conversation with a prince, a tall man in his late fifties with abundant charm. The prince was telling her about coveted diplomatic passports that he could secure for her wealthy friends for a few thousand euros each. (The prince denies talking about the passports.) Diplomatic passports, in theory, would allow easy passage through most of the world as well as other rarefied perks. The woman was surprised that these could be purchased.

The prince had to go in a hurry, saying he had an important phone call, in the process leaving behind the bill. Tamenne saw his chance. He approached the woman. He told her there was reason to believe the prince was a fake, profiteering off of unsuspecting people.”

It’s long but entertaining if you like slow burns.

Enjoy the weekend!

Who can’t use a few laws of getting rich? 🙂

A Few Laws of Getting Rich [Morgan Housel] – “There are a million ways to get rich, most of which involve exploiting specific niches and one-off opportunities, to say nothing of luck. Universal rules about how to get rich are hard to come by. But losing money, or losing happiness when you have money, or becoming a slave to your money – those stories tend to have common denominators. They are so common you can call them laws.”

Life Expectancy [Our World in Data] – “Across the world, people are living longer. In 1900, the average life expectancy of a newborn was 32 years. By 2021 this had more than doubled to 71 years. But where, when, how, and why has this dramatic change occurred? To understand it, we can look at data on life expectancy worldwide.” This article is like an index. It shares some data but also links to articles going into greater detail on some of the statistics, like the life expectancy one. Very interesting if you’re curious why we’re living longer.

You’ve probably heard that eyewitness reports, while still useful, can be notoriously unreliable because they are subject to bias (and simple error). It’s easy to misremember, which is why I always hang up my car keys on a hook by the door. Turns out, there’s a study on it.

Eight Ways Your Perception of Reality Is Skewed [Greater Good Magazine, U.C. Berkeley] – “But it turns out sight is much more complicated than that, according to the new book Perception: How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds, by University of Virginia psychologist Dennis Proffitt and Drake Baer. What we perceive in any given moment is not only determined by sensory input, but by our personal physical abilities, energy levels, feelings, social identities, and more.” There are some really clever studies in this article.

The big news of last week was the passing of Charlie Munger. His business partner, Warren Buffett, gets all the attention but if you ask most people, I suspect preferred the directness and candor of Munger.

I really enjoyed Rob Berger’s video Remembering Charlie Munger:

Do you live in an ingredient household? [The Frugal Girl] – “It’s a home that stocks mostly, well, ingredients, instead of ready-to-eat foods. Like, instead of oatmeal packets, you might have jars of oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon, and there’s milk in your fridge. You can eat oatmeal for breakfast, but you do have to make it.” We’ve made it a point to try to be more of an ingredient household, it’s always a work in progress!

I love hearing stories of what was valuable in ancient times. The classic one is Tulip mania, when tulip bulb prices skyrocketed in the Netherlands, but did you know that Tyrian purple was also highly prized? A Roman edict issued in 301 A.D. made it the “most expensive product in antiquity” – more than 3 times its weight in gold!

Tyrian purple: The lost ancient pigment that was more valuable than gold [BBC] – “That invention was Tyrian purple, otherwise known as shellfish purple. But though this noble pigment was the most expensive product in antiquity – worth more than three times its weight in gold, according to a Roman edict issued in 301 AD – no one living today knows how to make it. By the 15th Century, the elaborate recipes to extract and process the dye had been lost.”

Humans are such funny creatures. 😂

I love Darius Foroux’s writing, especially this one that we discovered through Rob Berger’s weekly newsletter (Rob also had a great video on Remembering Charlie Munger on his channel):

If You Want to Achieve Your Dreams, You Have to Be A Little Crazy [Darius Foroux] – “If you want to achieve your dreams, you have to be relentless about making them happen. It takes a lot of focus and drive to achieve one’s goals. That’s because our dreams are usually out of reach. Why else would it be a dream? It’s not easy. And there’s a high price to pay for pursuing it. That’s why only crazy, driven people go after their dreams.”

One of the key lessons from Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens is the incredible power of stories. I want to extend that idea with this next article in which the stories you tell about yourself are critically important:

The transformational power of how you talk about your life [BBC] – “People who tell more positive stories and stories with more elements of redemption (for example, that time that you lost your job, but ended up switching career paths into something you enjoy much more) tend to enjoy greater wellbeing, at least based on research with Western samples, in terms of more life satisfaction and better mental health. So do people whose stories express a greater sense of being a protagonist in the events of their life and having more meaningful communion with others. For example, the episodes they remember frequently involve loved ones and close friends, such as that hilarious hen night in Brighton, or shared hobbies, like the time they and their cousin went to cooking classes together. Engaging in more autobiographical reasoning and having greater structure to one’s life story also correlates with greater wellbeing.”

Finally, are we nearing the end of retirement as we know it?

The End of Retirement [The Walrus] – “It’s time for the famous social contract to hold up its end of the bargain and take care of me, the way it did my father before me, to deliver on the idea that retirement is my right after a life of work and the promise that I will have the time and means to enjoy it. Except none of that happened. The year since my retirement party has not been a dreamy passage to a welcoming future but a nerve-shattering trip into the unknown. My debt is swelling like a broken ankle; my hard-won savings may or may not be sucked into the vortex of an international market collapse. Can I keep my house? Who knows? The macroeconomy is messing with my microeconomy. The future keeps shape-shifting. And none of the careful planning I put into my retirement is going to change that.”