Author: Jim Wang

As our lawmakers debate yet another massive stimulus bill, the stock market does its thing. It overreacts.

Three Reasons Stocks Are Rising [The Atlantic] – “A common answer to that question is that “the stock market is not the economy.” This observation is very popular, technically true, and often useless. Furniture sales, food service employment, and average home values in Idaho aren’t the whole economy either, because the economy is a machine of many parts. By comparison, people don’t go around screaming “My neck is not my body!” as if it means something. Your neck is a part of your body, and the stock market is a part of the economy; in both cases, if the former is acting in an irregular way, it’s probably worth looking into.”

Something you may be pondering in this Groundhog’s Day type of world we’re inhabiting:

What to Do When Work Feels Meaningless [Harvard Business Review] – “In dire times, it’s natural to question the meaningfulness of your work. When your world is shaken by a massive disruption, your job may seem insignificant and even pointless. On the other hand, crises can also heighten feelings of purpose and connection — something we saw in studying the response to 9/11 in New York and to the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto. As one ICU director who lived through that outbreak told us, “I felt something important could happen at any minute and that I had to be at work.” An ICU nurse recalled: “There was a sense that if we don’t lock this down, nobody will. We were the few. A lot of people bonded in unusual ways.” Crises lead many people to find deep value in their jobs, develop professionally, and grow personally.”

Do you think this is true?

You Can Be Anyone You Want To Be In 5 Years Or Less [Addicted to ROI] – “I was lucky enough to have found Keller Williams Realty, which has been awarded the top training company across all industries numerous times. My goal was to close on a transaction every month in my first year, that would have me earning more than I had been working full-time. Plus, one deal a month for a new agent was the expectation that was set for me by the office, that was until I met Anna.

The office assigned us a mentor, an agent who would show us the ropes and help us fine-tune our skills. I vividly remember the day I stopped by Anna’s office and saw a calendar of sorts on her wall. It read “I close four transactions every month” and she was tracking her business on a weekly basis. She was consistently closing 4 transactions every month and crushing it.”

A Security Breach Exposed More Than One Million DNA Profiles On A Major Genealogy Database [Buzzfeed News] – “First GEDmatch, the DNA database that helped identify the Golden State Killer, was hacked. Then email addresses from its users were used in a phishing attack on another leading genealogy site.”

What’s scary about stealing DNA data is that unlike credit card numbers or passwords or other information, you can’t change DNA. You can change your username and passwords, you can freeze your credit report, and you can move – but your DNA is your DNA.

Enjoy the weekend and J.D. returns as your friendly neighborhood money guide on Monday!

Today’s going to be a bit of a grab bag of articles. One of the fun things about doing Apex is that I accumulate articles that I think are really good into a separate file.

Then, when it’s my turn to host a week, I try to weave them into a theme.

Today has no theme except that all the posts in this one are very good, deserve more attention, and I hope you find one that is valuable for you (or someone you care about) right now. If so, please forward it along to them so they can enjoy it too.

OK let’s get into it!

What is the 30 Day Rule? | Take Control of Impulse Spending [Millennial Money Man] – “Impulse spending is one of the hardest habits to curb. But there’s one powerful practice that can help you make smarter purchases and save money: the 30-day rule.

It’s simple in theory and you’re not denying yourself anything, but what the 30-day rule teaches you can ripple across your financial life so you’re making more responsible choices overall.

We’ve all been in situations when the 30-day rule would prevent impulse spending, and you’ll find yourself there again and again. So the next time you’re there, try the 30-day rule and see what happens.”

Debt Freedom Doesn’t Equal Wealth [The Budgetnista] – “I’m saying that as much as I love and value tackling debt, it’s important to remember that doing so will NOT build wealth.”

Adam should’ve titled this the Ultimate Guide because it’s that great, but I suppose “complete” is fine too. 🙂

The Complete Guide to Withdrawing Funds Early From Your 401(k), IRA and Roth IRA [Minafi] – “The three most popular retirement accounts used in the United States are the 401(k), the Traditional Individual Retirement Account (also just called an IRA), and the Roth IRA. Each has slightly different rules for accessing them.”

And now the “fun” article – The Real Butlers of the .001 Percent [GQ] – “Call it Downton Abbey syndrome: The newest trend among the world’ s ultra-rich—like, royalty-grade, private-plane-owning Scrooge McDuck rich—is to have a butler. But what type of person would willingly give over his life to serving the outrageously moneyed? As ** David Katz ** discovers, these are men and women with boundless grace, innate propriety, and the wherewithal to quickly hide six hookers on a mega-yacht.”

Now go out (or stay in) and seize the day, Apexian!

The first article today offers a big promise but highlights a quote I’ve loved for years:

To Live Remarkably, Repeat This 1 Affirmation Every Single Day for the Rest of Your Life [INC] – “Every accomplishment is based on action, not on thought… yet the thought is always father to the deed. Achievement starts with an idea, a perspective, a point of view, and an attitude: the attitude that no matter what, you will do what it takes to reach your goals — and live the life you want to live.”

This next one is tough to read but powerful:

The game of life: Maria Konnikova on what she’s learned from poker [The Guardian] – “Down on her luck and fearful for the future, the writer decided to chance her arm. She soon found it was the perfect gameplan.”

The Secrets of Real-life Wedding Crashers [MEL Magazine] – “When 36-year-old writer Orly Minazad told her white American friend that she and her fiancé crashed at least 10 weddings in one summer to gather intel and inspiration for their upcoming nuptials, it took a good minute or two to peel her friend’s jaw off the floor. “She couldn’t believe that I’d gone to all these people’s weddings uninvited,” she says. “And I couldn’t believe she hadn’t!””

Candy Land Was Invented for Polio Wards [The Atlantic] – “If you were a child at some point in the past 70 years, odds are you played the board game Candy Land. According to the toy historian Tim Walsh, a staggering 94 percent of mothers are aware of Candy Land, and more than 60 percent of households with a 5-year-old child own a set. The game continues to sell about 1 million copies every year.”

See you tomorrow!

When it comes to building wealth, a lot of attention is paid to creating “passive streams of income.”

One of the more popular articles on WalletHacks.com is one that discusses the 7 income streams of millionaires, which is a look at an often cited state that millionaires have at least 7 streams of income.

The allure is in the idea that you can make money “passively” as if it’s a magic bullet. In fact, J.D. talked about this in his post passive income vs. passion income – passive income can sometimes be used to trick you into an MLM scheme.

The reality is that income streams may be passive but getting them set up is often extremely active and today’s posts all focus on this concept:

My 4 Current and 4 Future Passive Income Streams [Physician on Fire] – “Now that I don’t work a W-2 job, my cash flow situation and taxation look a lot different than they did before, and passive income sources play a more prominent role in my life. I realized I currently have four broad categories of passive income, and I’ll be adding another four significant income sources in the future. Let’s review them, shall we?”

Create Massive Leverage Through Passive Real Estate Investing [Passive Income M.D.] – “My own definition of passive income is “income that is not proportional to the time you put into acquiring it.” I’m certainly not saying it doesn’t take any time. It’s just income that comes from a more effective and efficient method than the traditional formula (time in = money out).”

5 Ways to Use Extra Cash Flow [The Physician Philosopher] – “Now that we are faced with extra cash flow each month that no longer goes towards student loans and car payments, we have to determine where to put the extra money. With a desire to be intentional with our financial life, here are several ideas or places where extra cash flow could be spent.”

And before you go, a look at the world of face masks:

The Secret, Absurd World of Coronavirus Mask Traders and Middlemen Trying To Get Rich Off Government Money [ProPublica] – “The federal government and states have fueled an unregulated, chaotic market for masks ruled by oddballs, ganjapreneurs and a shadowy network of investors.”

See you again tomorrow!

This visualization of the Coronavirus (and the body’s response) is amazing.

Inside the Coronavirus [Scientific American] – “One cell can release hundreds of virus copies. It typically dies because its resources have been used up, or it is killed by the immune system. Some viruses head off to infect more cells. Others are exhaled into the air.”

This next post is short but sweet, great for you to read if you’ve ever been tough on yourself:

The Gordian knot of identity and achievement [Radreads] – “How do you talk to yourself when your striving falls short? Or when you botch a big presentation? In one of his most famous posts, Seth Godin rhetorically asks who is the world’s worst boss?”

The Super Power of Positivity and Confidence [Life Outside the Maze] – “What pessimists do not realize is that they are not simply commenting on their lives, they are creating them. Pessimism can be corrosive to organizations and to people. At the same time, optimism is more than a sunny disposition, it is a world view. It is a strategy for life and has made a huge difference in my trajectory.”

The Promising Results of a Citywide Basic-Income Experiment [The New Yorker] – “Participants have also put the money toward rent, car payments, and paying off debt, as well as one-off expenses for themselves or their children: dental surgery, a prom dress, football camp, and shoes. They’ve also been able to cut back on working second and third jobs; one participant, a forty-eight-year-old mother of two who works full time at Tesla, was able to stop working as a delivery driver for DoorDash. Alcohol and tobacco has accounted for less than one per cent of spending per month.”

Enjoy the day!

That’s the title of a video about a talk Malcolm Gladwell gave at Google and it explains an important theory – relative deprivation theory.

It’s fascinating and important to know – and he summarizes it quite well in this 9-minute video. “We don’t form our self-assessments based on our standing in the world, we form our self-assessments based on our immediate circle.”

Invest a few minutes to understand this theory because it’s really powerful.

This all goes back to the idea that happiness is relative. If you are around people who have more wealth, show it off more, then you will feel poorer. If you are around poverty but you have enough, you will feel wealthier. As the outdated saying goes, happiness is making $1 more than your brother in law.

But what Gladwell is saying is that it goes beyond happiness and taps into motivation. You can learn how to use these engines of motivation to create environments where you are more likely to thrive. The University of Maryland may not be as exclusive as Harvard but you’d rather be a UMD graduate than a Harvard drop out. It’s also much cheaper. 🙂

The Self-Made Man [Slate] – “I’ve always admired what my father accomplished, and how he accomplished it, while not quite sharing his confidence that his experience was repeatable, especially in our current economic moment. The yawning gap between the dearly held ideal of the self-made man and the difficulty of actually improving your station in America, particularly if you’re poor, made me wonder about the utility of the rags-to-riches story. Is it a healthy myth that inspires us to aim high? Or is it more like a mass delusion keeping us from confronting the fact that poor Americans tend to remain poor Americans, regardless of how hard they work?”

The Meltdown at the Museum of Ice Cream [Forbes] – “Maryellis Bunn, 28, built a business that promised customers happiness, sprinkles and ice cream. The playground-meets-art installation was an instant hit with the Instagram generation. But ex-employees say that a darker reality lives under the gauzy filters.”

Brain Gain: A Person Can Instantly Blossom into a Savant–and No One Knows Why [Scientific American] – “Some people suddenly become accomplished artists or musicians with no previous interest or training. Is it possible innate genius lies dormant within everyone?”

Have a good weekend!

Quick PSA in case you haven’t done this in a while – but you can check MissingMoney.com to see if your money (in an old bank account or a security deposit or whatever) has been sent to your state’s unclaimed funds department. This happens a LOT – if you’re due money but the sender can’t find you, they’ll turn it over to the authorities and you’ll have to get it that way.

The downside is that you often won’t know how much it is (you’ll get vague information like <$100 or >$100) and getting it will require a little extra work. But it’s your money!

Onto the gems for today:

It’s OK to Spend Your Savings [She Picks Up Pennies] – “Rather than allowing myself to wallow in scarcity, what if I decide savor the fact that I’m in a position where I can bail myself out? If learning that you can count on yourself isn’t a reason to celebrate, I don’t know what is. We spend so much time celebrating the act of savings, that we forget to acknowledge what that savings affords us.” (Thanks Stefanie O’Connell!)

Speaking of pennies…

Is It Time To Kill The Penny? [NPR] – “Banks and laundromats are scrambling. Arcades and gumball machine operators are bracing for the worst. Grocery stores are rounding their prices to even dollars or rejecting cash altogether. The specter of the coin shortage lurks everywhere.”

Probably not but it’s always fun to see this topic come up again.

And a gem before you go, did you know there is a school for auctioneers?

Of course there is!

Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Master Auctioneer? [Texas Monthly] – “[Mike “McGavel”] Jones was a National Auctioneers Association Hall of Famer who started out dirt poor and decided to get rich, specializing in the sale of large ranches and the liquidation of industrial properties. We wanted to get rich too, he assumed, unless we were idiots. With that, he launched into the characteristics of the auctioneer chant we would be learning. Live bid-calling is like a series of contracts, and when an auctioneer says “Sold,” accepting the bid, the highest bidder is on the hook. Therefore, each part of the chant is crucial. “A chant is made of three components: a statement, a question, and a suggestion,” Jones began.” If you like deep dives into off the beaten path areas (I love that stuff!), this one is for you. For example, the chant you use (that melodic filler in between taking and announcing bids) will vary for the type of auction – a cattle auction vs. a real estate vs. antiques, etc. It gets even more detailed and juicy, especially when you get to the part about ringmen and the action.

As someone who has worked from home for over a decade now, there are some things that I’ve grown very accustomed to that I hope will become more mainstream.

Here are just a handful:

1. Companies focusing more on output and productivity instead of hours
2. Companies realizing that comfortable employees perform better
3. The end of meetings that have to fit the scheduled time
4. Employees realizing they owe their jobs as much as their jobs owe them – very little
5. Flexibility and autonomy are key

The “Great Pause,” as some have started calling it, is a big wake up call.

The Great Pause Was an Economic Revolution [Foreign Policy] – “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. It is a plausible formulation, even in its comical effect. And yet, the current crisis proved the opposite. Capitalism was remarkably easy to stop—or at least to interrupt. All that was needed was a genuine environmental crisis, a crisis where the external conditions for a capitalist economy were suddenly removed.”

But not everything has to do with work – because while Covid-19 may have paused the economy, but it didn’t pause a lot of other things.

New Habits Learned in 2020 (So Far) [Emily Guy Birken] – “It has been heartening to see a sweeping change in sentiment across the United States (and the world) in regards to Black Lives Matter. I have seen such a change in myself, as well. While I have always supported the movement, it was on the back burner in my head. I felt that voting and occasional donations were enough to show my support. Not only do I want to keep hold of the level of passion I feel now, I want to make sure that this passion remains strong throughout our society. We are seeing major changes that can be good first steps toward reckoning with our country’s history of systemic and overt racism.”

FIRE in this time [Vicki Robin] – “Against the backdrop of the fire and rage in Minneapolis following the police murder of George Floyd, reminiscent of police beating of Rodney King in LA in 1991, nearly 30 years ago, with many black deaths in between, what could possibly be the relationship of financial independence and the FIRE community to the unraveling in our society?

Are we quiescent on the edges, tending to our own business of careful managing of our money to reach financial independence? Are we concerned but powerless given our debts and gratitude for secure jobs we want to keep? Do we wonder what the connection might be between our brilliant strategy of buying our freedom through building capital and the unfair system that affords us the opportunity? Is the unrest close at hand for you or far away – and does that make a difference in how we respond?” (thanks to Michelle at Frugality and Freedom for sharing this with me!)

5 reasons why we shouldn’t rush to ‘get back to normal’ [The Twenty Percent] – “Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to get my hair done again and have drinks with friends. But, there are other aspects of ‘normality’ I think would be best left behind. This is particularly true for financial matters, as the current system does not work for enough people.”

A video to round out your day from Tim Harford at TEDGlobal 2011 about the God Complex – feels like a few of our leaders have this complex in spades (this was not a pointed political statement, watch the video to see what I mean):

See you tomorrow!

Sometime in the last ten years, entrepreneurs began to be celebrated as much as athletes and rock stars.

I think Shark Tank had a lot to do with it.

It was the first time, at least that I could remember, you saw people share their businesses on TV and sign big deals to sell a stake of it. It didn’t matter that there was some TV magic involved (many of the “agreements” fizzled out after the taping ended and real negotiations began), it was just fun to see people talk about their businesses.

It showed everyone was that entrepreneurship is messy (and hard). Very messy (and very hard).

One area of business you don’t often see is behind the scenes, such when co-founders fall out or partnerships dissolve…

How I Lost $100 Million in 60 Days [Medium] – “My true story of moving to Silicon Valley for a role on an eccentric billionaire’s reality TV show where I lost big, but also won a new life.” A bit of a harrowing rollercoaster of a tale but an enjoyable read.

Five lessons from the first 6 months of entrepreneurship [rich & Regular] – “It’s been six months since we officially shifted our thinking to turn this blog into a business and the journey has been crazy, in a good way. As expected, we’ve had ups and downs and we’ve learned a $hit-ton in the process. So to make sure we don’t forget this precious period, here are five lessons we’ve learned from our first 6 months of entrepreneurship.”

If you’ve ever felt like you could play Monday Morning CEO:

If Everyone Else is Such an Idiot, How Come You’re Not Rich? [The Atlantic] – “If you see a person–or a company–doing something that seems completely and inexplicably boneheaded, then it’s unwise to assume that the reason must be that everyone but you is a complete idiot who is blind to fairly trivial insights such as “people desire inexpensive and conveniently available movie services, and will resist having those services made more expensive, or less convenient”. While it’s certainly true that people do idiotic things, it’s also true that a lot of those “idiotic” things turn out to have perfectly reasonable explanations.”

Sometimes starting a real business is too hard… and it’s much easier to be a con artist:

Instagram Influencer and Prolific Car Collector Arrested for $430M ‘Cyberscam’ [The Drive] – “Out of all the colorful characters in internet folklore, few are as well-known as the scam-tastic influencers. You know, the kind who recommend you buy their multi-step programs to build wealth, hack financial markets, or magically amass fortunes by being a positive ray of light in today’s dark world. As it turns out, many of these folks’ social accounts are nothing but facades to lucrative (and oftentimes corrupt) businesses. Case in point, 38-year-old Instagram influencer Raymond “Hushpuppi” Abbas, who was just arrested for his alleged involvement in a multi-million dollar “cyberscam,” per various reports. Also, he’s apparently a big car guy. Surprise, surprise!”

Happy Tuesday and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Money is such an interesting phenomenon. If you want to look at the strictest definition, it’s an agreed upon store of value and a medium of exchange. You work, you get paid, and that money has purchasing power everywhere you’d want to spend it. So simple, yet so complicated.

What do you spend it on? After you satisfy your basic needs, you start looking at entertainment, signaling, and all the other fun things money can buy.

But at its core, money is the same. It’s what you do with it that makes all the difference.

But have you considered how the existence of money has changed us? One person has:

How Money Forever Changed Us [More to That] – “It’s interesting how money is accepted as an inevitable force in our lives, yet when we take out the concept and wrap it in unfamiliar packaging, it seems weird and dumb.” This first post is long but full of fun illustrations and the last quarter of the post is where it starts getting really fascinating (when you see “Materialism isn’t about the accumulation of goods. It’s about the fulfillment of possibilities.” then you will have reached the good stuff), please enjoy it!

Speaking of things money can buy, ever wonder how baseball cards are authenticated?

How the world’s most expensive trading cards get authenticated [Popular Science] – “When a card arrives at our office, we first make sure it’s real, then assess its condition on a scale of 1 to 10. Because copies have sold for millions at auction, the Wagner used to be a popular target for forgeries. These are easy to spot: Up close, modern printing patterns look much different than the old methods. It also helps to have in-depth knowledge on what the collectible should look like. For example, a 1948 Leaf Bob Feller, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, always has a sort of out-of-focus look. If you’re not an experienced grader, you might examine it and say, “Oh, it’s blurry. It’s not real.””

I quit my job at the start of the pandemic to launch a company. Here’s what I’ve learned in the first 90 days. [The Profile] – “Today marks exactly 90 days since I started working on The Profile full time. Here are the 10 biggest things I’ve learned in the last three months.” She saved the best insight for last, make sure you read #10.

Did you know you can buy caves?

The Cave Kingpin Buying Up America’s Underground [Outside] – “John Ackerman has spent millions procuring a majority of the known caves in Minnesota, which add up to dozens of miles of underground passageways and likely make him the largest cave owner in the U.S. He collects and charts them in the name of preservation, but his controversial methods have created many opponents.”

I have a favor to ask – can you think of someone who would enjoy this? Please forward it to one person and it would make my day!