Author: Jim Wang

I don’t know if I’d call it a mini-retirement but every few years, we take a long vacation of several weeks over the summer.

We are fortunate in that both my wife and I have flexible work schedules. We can reduce our hours, take vacation, and be able to “live” in areas for a longer period of time so our kids can enjoy a different culture and lifestyle. They’ve been amazing life experiences for ourselves and our kids and hopefully we can continue to do them!

How to Negotiate a Mini-Retirement [Millennial Money] – “A mini-retirement is when you strategically save money and plan to take an extended time off of work (could be from 1 month to 6 months or more), so you can follow your passions – whether that’s traveling the world or launching a non-profit.” This was a guest post on Millennial Money by the amazing Jillian Johnsrud. The post is great but make sure you pop on over to her personal blog and subscribe. (tip of the cap to Alien on F.I.R.E. for sending this to me)

You Weren’t Born to Pay Off Debt and Die [Cait Flanders] – “What you don’t have to do forever is live with debt. You don’t have to spend every month calculating how much you can afford to put towards debt repayment, while continuing to use credit, and staying in the never-ending cycle of borrowing money and trying to pay it back. It’s not an easy cycle to get out of; I know that firsthand. But it is a cycle that will not only control your finances, it will control your mind and your life—and our time on this planet is far too short to let debt control your life.” Many thanks to Jim of Elemental Money for sending this to me.

If you had to pick a hot area of the stock market before the pandemic, marijuana stocks were a good choice. If you wanted to pick the next spot for a startup flameout, marijuana companies were a good choice.

Lavish Parties, Greedy Pols and Panic Rooms: How the ‘Apple of Pot’ Collapsed [Politico] – “MedMen was the country’s hottest pot startup—until it flamed out. Its fall has exposed the gap between “green rush” hype and the realities of a troubled industry.”

Years ago, while talking with a friend contemplating a career change, I asked him what he’d say if the roles were reversed.

What if I was working somewhere that didn’t excite me? That I was only continuing to work at because I’d spend the last five years there? I didn’t mention the idea of “sunk cost” or how we were both young and, despite five years at a company, still in the infancy of our careers. Just changing the perspective was enough to convince him of something I could see very easily – he should make the move.

It’s hard to give ourselves advice because we’re so very much in our own lives. But if we can trick our brains just a little bit and set outside of ourselves, we can often identify and address many of our concerns.

That’s why I enjoyed this article – Treat Your Life Like a Business [MonkWealth]

Can Money Buy Happiness? [The Wallet Wise Guy] – “Reaching their financial goals gave them the freedom to pursue the things that really mattered to them…even if those things weren’t necessarily bigger homes, cars, or retirement accounts.” Having the money doesn’t mean the things you want are the things you can buy.

The Science of Developing Self-Control in Life [Darius Foroux] – “Why is it so difficult to improve yourself? Every day, we have the choice to do something that pays off later instead of now. Going to the beach, binge-watching tv shows, reading gossip, drinking alcohol, smoking, or every other pleasurable activity in life always gives you an instant payoff.

You temporarily feel good. But in one year, two years, five years from now, you look back and you see no progress in your life. In life, we have to deal with a concept called “entropy.” Entropy is the Second Law of Thermodynamics and stands for the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system. The basic idea is that everything inside a system moves towards disorder.”

Price is perception… and this is clear when you look at wine:

The pandemic has been terrible but if you wanted to find a silver lining, this might be it.

What We Leave Behind [No Mercy / No Malice] – “Covid-19 has presented an opportunity to envision our lives when turned upside down, powder redistributed. We can start over. We hoard relationships and the accoutrements of a life others have fashioned for us. We often don’t know any better, or don’t have the confidence to draw outside the lines until we’re older. My colleague professor Adam Alter has done research on the regrets of the dying. One of the biggest: not living the life they wanted to lead, but the life others chose for them.”

🔮 The exponential march of solar energy [Exponential View] – “This plunge in prices has far exceeded any credible forecast. Solar electricity in 2020 is roughly half the cost I projected in 2011, and one quarter the cost the International Energy Agency (the IEA) projected in 2010. Both the world’s foremost energy authority (the IEA) and possibly the world’s biggest optimist on solar (me) were wrong.”

You can’t stop the sun!

And before you go – here’s everything you need to know to survive Covid-19 from sci-fi and horror movies (both funny, scary and sad at the same time):

With unemployment at historic levels, it’s time to revisit the idea that during a recession is the best time to start a business.

Is a Recession Really the Best Time to Start a Business? [Marker/Medium] – “Considering how awful it is to be a human now, it seems like an even worse time to become an entrepreneur. [..] Some of the entrepreneurs I spoke with come from money and have prestigious business degrees. Others are working with whatever resources they can scrape together. All of them seem to think that right now is a perfectly reasonable time to start a business.”

I think that everyone should start some kind of side hustle, whether it’s a business that can grow into something big or just a little extra cash on the side. It provides insurance for your income.

One country, two monetary systems [JP Koning] – “For a few months now, something strange has happened to Yemen’s banknotes. Old rials and new rials have ceased to be fungible. Any rial note that was printed prior to 2016 is now worth around 10% more than newer rial notes.

More generally, the entire Yemeni monetary system has split on the basis of banknote age. From a Western perspective, it would be as if every single U.S. banknote issued with a Steve Mnuchin signature on it, the current Treasury Secretary, were worth 10% less than bills signed five years ago by his predecessor Jack Lew.”

The Three Sides of Risk [Collaborative Fund] – “In investing, the average consequences of risk make up most of the daily news headlines. But the tail-end consequences of risk – like pandemics, and depressions – are what make the pages of history books. They’re all that matter. They’re all you should focus on. We spent the last decade debating whether economic risk meant the Federal Reserve set interest rates at 0.25% or 0.5%. Then 36 million people lost their jobs in two months because of a virus. It’s absurd.”

Just so we don’t end on a bit of a down note…

Axios Sports: 50 Best Sports Documentaries [AXIOS] – “👋 Good morning! The bad news is ‘The Last Dance’ is officially over. The good news is there are hundreds of other sports documentaries waiting to be watched, and this morning, we’re hooking you up with our ‘Top 50 of all time.'”

Have a good week!

As I read things on the internet, I file them into a folder to share with you guys on Apex.

Sometimes I reach into the bag and see a nice little grouping that fit into a theme. Then I usually throw a “fun” article that involves some heist or gambling or hack or whatever because those are like a piece of candy to me (I hope you like those too!).

Today, there is no theme other than I found all of these articles fascinating in their own little way.

The Million-Dollar Price Tag Of Being A Stay-At-Home Parent [Costa Rica FIRE] – “Being in Human Resources and having grown up in New York City, a progressive and PC place, I instinctually wrote this entire post to be gender-neutral (i.e., working parent in lieu of working mom). But generally, in dual-career households, the question/ burden/ dilemma of “should I stay at home or continue to work?” mostly falls on the mom. With two adult daughters, do I try to influence my daughters to make the same choice I did?”

The Man Who Thought Too Fast [The New Yorker] – “Frank Ramsey—a philosopher, economist, and mathematician—was one of the greatest minds of the last century. Have we caught up with him yet?” One of the hallmarks of smart people is how quickly they recognize people who are smarter than them.

How Airlines Use Rewards Cards to Drive Growth [Privacy] – “For decades, airlines have leaned on rewards cards for their steady revenue stream—particularly during industry contractions. In fact, the billions in revenue generated by U.S. airline rewards cards and loyalty programs can, at times, outpace overall sales growth. And that cash definitely comes in handy as airlines plan for a ‘dire scenario.'”

OK here is your gambling article!

The Fascinating Origins of Greyhound Racing [The Paris Review] – “Coursing was a brutal forerunner of the modern greyhound race. A live hare would be given a head start, and two greyhounds would be set loose to chase it. Whoever tracked down the rabbit won the race. The sport was not for everyone. When the dog caught the hare, one spectator said, “It really sounds quite a bit like a child’s scream” Some say Smith, at the Hot Springs meet, was shocked by the sound. Others say that he was unbothered, but shrewdly identified the shrieks as hindering the sport’s popularity.”

Even without the shrieking of rabbits, this isn’t for me.

Have a good weekend. 🙂

While we enter in Week (I have no idea anymore) of the pandemic, I wanted to share a few articles I’ve saved up and thought were a little excessive before the pandemic.

Now that unemployment has hit Great Depression levels, these stories are even more absurd.

But here they are:

Is the World’s Best Butter Worth 50 Dollars a Pound? [Saveur] – “In a tiny creamery just off the barn, St. Clair reached into a refrigerator and took out a pound of her product—four dandelion-yellow balls in a large Ziploc bag. A former New Yorker with no experience in food production, she began making butter almost by accident, after buying a pair of Jersey cows. Wanting an expert opinion, she mailed unsolicited samples to Thomas Keller; he called back to say he wanted to buy all of it, and eventually asked her to acquire more Jerseys.”

Silicon Valley Is Quietly Building Its Own Wall Street [Medium] – “[Eric Ries] conceived of an exchange that would allow companies to benefit from the sale of common stock, while insulating them from short-term stock-market pressures, which he saw as destructive to corporate innovation.”

This one is poignant as it’s dated April 1st, I should’ve sent it out in April when I first saw it (sorry!):

This Looks Like a Depression, Not a Recession [Medium] – “JJust weeks after the stock market crashed in 1929, President Herbert Hoover assured the country that things were already “back to normal,” Liaquat Ahamed writes in Lords of Finance, his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the financial catastrophe. Five months later, in March 1930, Hoover said the worst would be over “during the next 60 days.” When that period ended, he said, “We have passed the worst.” Eventually, Ahamed writes, “when the facts refused to obey Hoover’s forecasts, he started to make them up.” Government agencies were pressed to issue false data. Officials resigned rather than do so, including the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

World’s first Animal Crossing interior design service launches, offering consultants £40 an hour to perfect in-game homes [Pocket Gamer] – “Homeware brand Olivia’s has launched a consultancy service that’s now taking applicants for interior designers to help Animal Crossing: New Horizons players perfect the look and feel of their in-game homes. Budding and professional interior designers are being offered upwards of £40 an hour to provide this much-needed service, and it’ll be available to players worldwide.”

It just shows that pandemics hit people differently.

For some, it’s a huge struggle.

For others, they’re hiring interior designers for a virtual house. Wild.

Have a great day!

When You Have No Idea What Happens Next [Collaborative Fund] – “Do we know more about what’s going to happen in the next 12 months today than we did in January? You’d think so. We now know there’s a pandemic that shut the economy down. We didn’t know that in January. But remember what Daniel Kahneman says. “The correct lesson to learn from surprises is that the world is surprising.”

The things we thought about the world in January now look oblivious. But what does that tell us about our view of the world today? Couldn’t the world change in as surprising a way between April and June as it did from January to March? Of course it could. That should be the main takeaway of 2020.”

Hmmmm… it’s a great point. More important than the lead are the two ideas he offers up next as to what to do instead of trying to predict.

Also, this video is really funny – Julie travels through time to explain the pandemic to herself:

The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months [Guardian] – “When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman.” I read a lot of books as a kid and there are few that I remember as much as Lord of the Flies.

The article has a bit of build-up but the payoff is worth it. Six boys, ages 13 to 16, survived on an island for 15 months. It’s wild.

Time to read some history Apexian!

Remember a few weeks ago when Robinhood was unavailable? Amidst some of the most violent stock market volatility, one of the darlings of the fintech world wouldn’t let customers in to trade.

Remember when the price of oil briefly went negative? Turns out it had a similar effect on Interactive Brokers:

Oil Crash Busted Broker’s Computers and Inflicted Big Losses [Bloomberg] – “At midnight, Shah got the devastating news: he owed Interactive Brokers $9 million. He’d started the day with $77,000 in his account.”

Fortunately, IB is going to make it right out of their own pocket but that can’t be a good feeling.

The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from? [Grist] – “Pedestrians have taken over city streets, people have almost entirely stopped flying, skies are blue (even in Los Angeles!) for the first time in decades, and global CO2 emissions are on-track to drop by … about 5.5 percent. Wait, what? Even with the global economy at a near-standstill, the best analysis suggests that the world is still on track to release 95 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in a typical year, continuing to heat up the planet and driving climate change even as we’re stuck at home.” 5.5% drop is the largest yearly drop on record but just wait until you see where the emissions are really coming from (only 20% of global carbon dioxide emissions is from transportation) and why it’s so hard to reduce it.

Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds [The Guardian] – “Europe’s first national, government-backed basic income experiment did not do much to encourage recipients into work but did improve their mental wellbeing, confidence and life satisfaction, according to the first big study of a Finnish scheme that has attracted fresh interest in the coronavirus outbreak.”

The amount provided wasn’t a lot – €560 a month, or $600 a month.

I was born in the United States but both of my older two generations were immigrants to where they would spend most of their lives. My parents grew up in Taiwan and most of my grandparents were escapees from mainland China. I always felt very fortunate and thankful that my life story started in the United States.

This next story hit home for me:
Sizzler and the Search for the American Dream [Eater] – “My dad dreamed of steak dinners every night. My mom dreamed of lace doilies and matching china. We children dreamed of nothing. We had no idea what to expect.”

Enjoy the week Apexian.

It surprises some people that I don’t set goals.

I don’t set them each year, I don’t set them each quarter… I don’t even set them within a day.

I don’t set business goals, I don’t set personal goals, I don’t set them in a house, I do not set them with a mouse, I do not set them here or there, I do not set them anywhere.

I don’t set them for two reasons and they are perfectly encapsulated in two posts, one published very recently and one from 2013:

This is a post in which Alex West explains how goals interfered with his life. I don’t know Alex at all but I read this and his epiphany encapsulates a lot of why I don’t set goals – they’re arbitrary and when you reach them, you just set higher goals. The most I do in setting goals is to say “it’d be nice if I…” and that’s the goal.

This post by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert but of so much more, covers something I read in greater detail in his book:

Goals vs. Systems [Scott Adams Says] – “In my new book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, I talk about using systems instead of goals. For example, losing ten pounds is a goal (that most people can’t maintain), whereas learning to eat right is a system that substitutes knowledge for willpower.”

Ok now get to the section where you read this – “Compare the goal of exercising 3-4 times a week with a system of being active every day at a level that feels good, while continuously learning about the best methods of exercise.”

Many times in life we yo-yo because willpower is the tool we use rather than building a good system. We exercise hard, then stop, then exercise hard, and convince ourselves interval training is the best. (it is for some things)

To improve something, you need a simple process and you aren’t trying to kill yourself. Pavel Tsatsouline studied some of the best powerlifters and came away with a very simple weight training protocol you can read on the Tim Ferriss blog. It’s short, it’s doable, and it doesn’t call on you to kill yourself every time you go to the gym.

Oh and stretch because it increases your strength by 10%. (if you listen to a lot of Tsatsouline, mobility is a word he uses a lot…)

When I was younger, my favorite magazine was Wired. It was printed on amazingly thick paper and I loved the heft of the magazine, the vibrant colors, and also the content of the magazine. As a young nerd, it was the equivalent of candy for the brain.

When I saw this next post, I recognized the name but couldn’t place it. Kevin Kelly. Kevin. Kelly.

Where had I heard that name?

Oh! He was the founding editor of Wired Magazine! And on his 68th birthday, he shared 68 bits of advice that I loved reading. They’re like 68 bits of candy for life improvement.

68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice [Kevin Kelly] – “Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.”

Also, I learned a new word – pronoia! Such a good word!

If you are feeling the weight of the crisis, here are two articles that may help:

Personal Finance During a Crisis [A Wealth of Common Sense] – “Personal finances can be overwhelming to most people when things are going well. All of the different accounts, saving options and investment vehicles can be confusing especially when you consider you’re completely on your own when it comes to learning about this stuff. If personal finances are confusing during normal times, they can paralyze people during an economic crisis.”

What To Do When It Seems Like The End Of The F***ing World: 5 Steps To Cope With The Uncertainty [Money Side Up] – “I wanted to fall back on my psychology roots and what I have learnt in terms of; sleep, exercise and nutrition to provide 5 key tips for maintaining psychological wellbeing throughout these troubling times.”

And I want to leave you with a beacon of light to take with you over the weekend – it’s about the 90 vaccines currently in development:

The race for coronavirus vaccines: a graphical guide [Nature] – “More than 90 vaccines are being developed against SARS-CoV-2 by research teams in companies and universities across the world. Researchers are trialling different technologies, some of which haven’t been used in a licensed vaccine before. At least six groups have already begun injecting formulations into volunteers in safety trials; others have started testing in animals. Nature’s graphical guide explains each vaccine design.”

Go forth and conquer Apexian!