Category: General

Hello, Apexians, and greetings from the Big Easy. It’s J.D. here again to keep you company.

As I do once each year, I’ve made the migration to Fincon, the conference for folks in the financial media. I’m trying to be retired from the financial media (except Apex Money), but I will never miss Fincon. For me, it’s not a conference; it’s a place to hang out with old friends — and meet new ones!

During breaks here and there, I’ll continue gathering interesting stories about money (and more!) to share with you. Let’s start the week with a great piece published 30 years ago. Here’s some excellent insight The Meaning of Life:

The road to self renewal. [PDF article from March 1994 Stanford alumni magazine] — “The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on character. You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you; they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.”

“How I got to the bottom of a vexing toilet-paper mystery.” [Slate, via Mr. Robert Berger] — “That is how I found myself on a Zoom with Gregg Weaver, a senior scientist at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, to talk about toilet paper R&D. He informed me that the scalloped edges were not merely aesthetic, though he did allow that some people thought they looked good. Wavy edges, Weaver said, are designed to solve the No. 1 problem consumers have with toilet paper: the incomplete tear.”

Everything you can’t predict. [Young Money] — “Predicting the future is easy, but predicting who wins in that future is much, much more difficult. By 2001, plenty of tech experts could have told you that cloud computing was going to emerge as an important technological development in a decade. But how many of those experts would have predicted that an online bookstore would dominate the cloud market?”

Our final piece today has nothing to do with money. It has nothing much to do with anything, in fact. It’s just a fun little trifle. Here’s a 14 April 1967 television news broadcast from Cedar Rapids, Iowa as the station transitions from black-and-white to color:

Recently at my personal blog, I wrote about what life before electricity in rural America. Well, I experienced life before color TV. Growing up in the 1970s, most of the families I knew had B&W sets. The rich folks had color TV. (My family had no TV at all until about 1982? 1983?) But by the time I was in junior high, everyone had color television.

And that’s all I have to start today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more great stuff. Join me, won’t you?

I don’t know who came up with the idea that you work full-time for forty five years and then retire.

You’re supposed to start at twenty years old, grind your face off until you’re 65, and then suddenly you stop? It’s insanity.

And remember when Tim Ferriss started talking about “mini-retirements” and a “four hour workweek” and some folks lost their minds? The programming runs deep.

But today, we’re going to start off with some counter programming… with a post from our friend Joe. Why not build an ideal life you don’t have to retire from?

Are You Living Your Ideal Life? [Retire By 40] – “That’s a great suggestion. You don’t wait until retirement to be happy. You need to enjoy the journey. Ideal life is funny, though. It changes as you go through different stages of life. What is ideal now probably won’t be in 15 years.”

Do Hard Things if You Want an Easy Life [Darius Foroux] – “Remember this as you go through life. If you run into challenges and think it’s too hard, remember why you do what you do. You might be doing hard things, but you do it because you don’t want to have a hard life.”

Dying at Home [Humble Dollar] – “MANY OF US SAY THAT, if we have to die, we’d like to die comfortably in our home. Luckily, hospice—a Medicare-covered model of gentle, holistic end-of-life care—is ready to help with that goal. Maybe.”

When it comes to saving for your retirement, there are a lot of tools at your disposal. The 401(k) gets most of the attention because so many people have access to it, but it’s not the only option.

In fact, for the folks who don’t have access to one through work (or it’s a bad option), our friends at Physician on FIRE share six great alternatives.

Six Best 401(k) Alternatives: Save For Retirement Without a 401(k) [Physician on FIRE] – “A 401(k) is a popular retirement savings plan that allows you to set aside a portion of your salary, often with matched contributions from your employer, for long-term investment and tax-deferred growth. However, not everyone can take advantage of a 401(k), like those who are self-employed. There are also some individuals who may want to diversify their retirement investments beyond their 401(k) plan.”

How To Talk About Money Without Stressing Yourself Out [Fatherly] – “A conversation about money involves success, but also your ability to provide, and when you question that, it hits at your confidence and self-worth.”

Eat beans and scratch your own back – expert advice on how to age better, inside and out [The Guardian] – “orget lifespan: increasingly, healthspan – the years that we feel healthy and active – has become the holy grail among gerontologists. “You only need to watch the Veteran Games to understand the capacity of the human body to age well,” says physiotherapist Bhanu Ramaswamy.”

Happy Monday! Jim here with your personal finance gems today.

The first one is a bit of a doozy…

Accounting for the Widening Mortality Gap between American Adults with and without a BA [Brookings Papers on Economic Activity] – “We examine mortality differences between Americans adults with and without a four-year college degree over the period 1992 to 2021. Mortality patterns, in aggregate and across groups, can provide evidence on how well society is functioning, information that goes beyond aggregate measures of material wellbeing. From 1992 to 2010, both educational groups saw falling mortality, but with greater improvements for the more educated; from 2010 to 2019, mortality continued to fall for those with a BA while rising for those without; during the COVID pandemic, mortality rose for both groups, but markedly more rapidly for the less educated. In consequence, the mortality gap between the two groups expanded in all three periods, leading to an 8.5-year difference in adult life expectancy by the end of 2021.”

8.5 year difference!

Getting Rich is Good for the Environment [Trip of a Lifestyle] – “But the easiest way to get wealthy is to live a simple, frugal life, leaving you with a surplus of income every month to be invested. Incidentally, it’s also one of the best things you can do for the planet…”

The Magic Loop [Lenny’s Newsletter, written by Ethan Evans] – “The Magic Loop is a process through which any employee may systematically grow at a company. It is reliable in its results, with a simple core of five basic steps. In this post, we first present the Loop in its most straightforward model. We then follow up with variations, optimizations, and special circumstances that users will find over time.” Thanks to J. Money for finding this!

Welcome to Friday, money nerds! J.D. here with one last installment of Apex Money this week before you head off to have a bit of fun. Let’s look at the stories I’ve gathered for you today.

How to talk about money without stressing yourself out. [Fatherly] — “You want to talk about it with your spouse. Scratch that. You need to talk about it with them, but it’s hard to bring up at length. Maybe it’s something you’ve always handled. Maybe your parents kept quiet about bills and income because it wasn’t polite or kids didn’t need that burden — another great tradition passed on. None of this is rare.”

Too much of a good thing. [Mr. Stingy] — “The older I get, the more I feel like I’d rather have a lower savings rate [sic], and spend more money on meaningful things today. Yeah, it’s gonna delay my retirement by more than a decade, but that’s not a problem if you like your work.”

Move fast and fix things. [CNBC (!?!)] — “Mark Zuckerberg’s five-word motto “move fast and break things” spawned Meta’s multibillion-dollar success and inspired an entire generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. It’s also terrible advice, according to Harvard Business School-trained leadership expert and author Anne Morriss. In a TED Talk earlier this year, Morriss decried the idea behind Zuckerberg’s phrase, suggesting instead that CEOs and leaders everywhere should ‘move fast and fix things.'”

How to be lucky. [A Lawyer and Her Money] — “An acquaintance baked a cake, and implored us to take extra slices. So I did, to be nice. And she thanks me by commenting that I was really lucky that I didn’t have to struggle with my weight. Bear in mind, that I’ve known this woman for a year. She has no reason to know if I’ve struggled with my weight…It bothered me. I’ve noticed other people making similar assumptions. People keep telling me I’m so lucky for things that I work really hard at (but they don’t tell me I’m lucky for things that are equally difficult or are just plain luck).”

To wrap things up today, here’s a video from a YouTube channel that you folks recommended: This Is Our Retirement. It’s a seven-minute video answering the question: Is it possible to retire on $300,000?

And that’s all for this week! Jim will be back on Monday to share the good stuff he’s gathered recently. I’ll return in ten days…sort of. I’ll actually be in New Orleans for Fincon, so as soon as I hit “publish” on this round-up, I’m going to begin gathering articles for mid October. 😉

Well, hello Apexians. I apologize for not publishing a round-up yesterday. As I mentioned earlier this week, I somehow lost all of the links I’d collected to share with you, which meant I had to start over from scratch. Not a problem except that I had planned a Very Busy Tuesday for myself. As a result, I never found time to re-gather stories for Wednesday!

No matter! Here it is Wednesday morning, and I’m pulling together material for Thursday and Friday. And you know what? I finally made time to review your suggestions for new sources. I’ve added them all to my feed reader, so they should show up soon in curation. Like…today! 😉

The great divergence. [Strong Money Australia] — “If the FIRE movement has proven anything, it’s that amassing wealth and living with greater freedom is now possible for the average middle class person. This simply wasn’t possible for most of human history. All it takes is learning, action, and consistent effort. A willingness to do things differently from others is the key.” [This is a long, meandering, ranting post but it’s well written and I enjoyed it.]

“Most people rely on parents for material support into adulthood. [Science Daily] — “A new study finds that only a third of adults in the United States did not rely on their parents for some form of material support between their late teens and early 40s.”

More millennials are signing prenups. [Axios] — “Half of U.S. adults say they’re open to signing a prenup, according to new data — preconceived notions about romance and matrimony be damned. More fiancés (millennials in particular) want to protect their assets before they tie the knot by signing prenups, contracts previously linked to only the rich and famous.”

I’m going to end today with an article that has nothing to do with money but everything to do with my favorite subject: animal intelligence. The New York Times Magazine recently published a piece called “The Animals Are Talking. What Does It Mean?” [free gift article], which explores research that shows animals communicate. With language.

I know a lot of people think I’m crazy when I argue that animals are just as smart as people, that they have rich internal lives. We, as a species, have come to believe that we are unique. We’re not. More and more, research proves this. It’s just that for so many years — millennia! — we haven’t taken the time and effort to actually try to understand the animals around us. Now that we’re doing so, scientists are finding that we’ve been far too anthropocentric in our views.

Anyhow, this is an interesting story and a good read.

(Do you really want to hear how crazy I am? I’ve been arguing that animals are intelligent for decades. I have a broken website about animal intelligence that I really ought to revive because there is so much research about this lately. But the older I get — and this is the potentially crazy part — the more I begin to believe that plants are intelligent too. And insects. There have been a couple of recent articles about insect intelligence, and believe it or not there are many books — and lots of research — into plant intelligence. My best summary of it is that J.R.R. Tolkien came close to capturing plants when he created the Ents.)

Okay, I guess that should have been a post at my personal blog hahah. And maybe it will be.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more great stuff about money…and smart vegetables.

Welcome to Tuesday, everyone. Somehow, someway, I lost all of the links I’d collated for this week already. I must have accidentally closed the file I was using to compose these daily updates, so now I have to recollect everything from scratch haha. Oh well.

There’s no difference to you, obviously, but here I am on Monday night when I ought to be going to bed. Instead, I’m trying to remember which articles I’d found to share.

Let’s try these on for size:

Retirement budgeting 101: Tips for pre-retirees. [Ask the Money Coach] — “As you approach retirement, it’s important to have a clear understanding of your future expenses. By knowing what to expect, you can effectively budget and plan for a comfortable retirement. Let’s take a closer look at some common retirement expenses to help you get started.”

Why luck isn’t real. [Of Dollars and Data] — “We know luck is real. We know luck impacts our investments, our careers, and our lives. And we’ve all been on the receiving end of some form of good or bad luck at some point in our past. But, believing in luck does very little to help us…After all, if you believe in luck, what lesson do you learn after facing a setback?”

“When I stopped trying to self-optimize, I got better.” [The New York Times gift article] — “The tactic of subtraction goes against the grain of the so-called mind-set revolution, in which it seems everyone is adding this or that quality to their mental approach. The growth mind-set. The abundance mind-set. The gratitude mind-set. But in this genre of self-optimization, if it can be called that, we are adding more and more duct tape to something that isn’t broken — our mind — until it is so covered we lose sight of the beautifully designed machine underneath it all and it thus becomes, in fact, broken.”

I read that last article two weeks ago, and it’s really stuck with me. I was just thinking about it on today’s dog walk, in fact.

More and more, I find that I’m trying to remove optimization from my life too. When I optimize, I become overly focused on metrics. Metrics are only side effects. They’re outcomes. When I pay too much attention to these outcomes, I become unhappy. But if I focus instead on the underlying processes that produce these outcomes, my life gets better.

Okay, that’s it for today. Back with more tomorrow, folks!

Hello, my friends. J.D. here for another week of Apex Money.

Does it feel like fall where you are? Here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, it is almost stereotypically autumnal. I like it. Mornings are cool. Afternoons are warm. The light is golden and angular. Leaves are beginning to turn. Apples and pumpkins and other harvest goodies are everywhere.

There’s a reason that October is one of my favorite months.

But enough of that. Let’s look at the links I’ve gathered for you today.

The magic loop: A framework for rapid career growth. [Lenny’s Newsletter] — “The heart of the Magic Loop consists of five steps. Some of these steps will require substantial time and effort, but they lead to not just rapid career growth but also a great relationship with your manager. The Loop is used to grow both your personal skills and abilities as well as your career, responsibilities, and compensation.”

Can grocery stores curb food waste with dynamic pricing? [Eater] — “Can [dynamic pricing] also work at grocery stores, where an estimated 119 billion pounds of food gets wasted each year? A recent study from U.C. San Diego’s Rady School of Management suggests that it might. Robert Sanders, the study’s author, used economic models to show that if grocery retailers used dynamic pricing to adjust prices for perishable foods based on how long they’ve been on the shelves, retailers would likely dramatically curb food waste.”

The new phone call etiquette: Text first and never leave a voicemail. [The Washington Post gift article] — “We spoke to an etiquette expert and people of all ages about their own phone pet peeves to come up with the following guidance to help everyone navigate phone calls in 2023. These will vary depending on your relationship, your age and the context of the call. The closer you are to someone, the less the rules apply. Go ahead, FaceTime your mom with no warning while brushing your teeth.”

Lastly, there’s something that has nothing to do with money. It’s a 25-minute video from the 1 Coin Only channel on YouTube that looks at the top 10 arcade games from every year between 1980 and 1989.

I loved video arcades when I was a kid. If I’d had more money or lived nearer to one, I would have been obsessed. But I was poor and far from the nearest arcade, so they held an especially magical appeal. This video is a fun nostalgia trip for me.

And that’s all for this Monday. Come back tomorrow for more!

When I was a kid, I’d ask my parents about money and was always told – “don’t worry about it.”

Money was something for adults. Kids had to focus on school.

I diligently focused on school, did my part, and turned out fine through dumb luck and an aversion to risk.

With kids of my own, I’ve decided that we should talk about money to demystify it. To treat it for what it is, a tool, and not pack it with all the emotion so many people associated with money. We don’t get emotional about hammers and whether we have enough nails, why should we pack so much into dollars?

Why don’t we talk about money? [moneytalks101 on substack] – “Numerous studies show Americans would rather discuss anything but money, including marital problems, mental illness, drug addiction, race, politics, sex and religion. Yet, according to one study, 90 percent of Americans are stressed about their financial well-being.

Truth and transparency are our best tools for overcoming what society has deemed a sore subject. Before fixing any problem, we must face it. That gets easier with time and intentionality. This project is proof.”

FWIW, Bruno Mars is better.

Why I Sold Our Target Date Retirement Funds [The Retirement Manifesto] – “I’m a big fan of target date retirement funds and have had them in my 401(k) for years. During my working years, while I was still accumulating for retirement, they made a lot of sense. They automatically rebalance, they offer instant diversification, and they become more conservative as retirement approaches. But now that I’m retired, they have some flaws.” Target date funds are great until they’re not. And it’s important to know when that is (for Fritz, it was when he retired).

And this last one is short:

Why now is the the time [Intentional Wisdom] – “Whatever it is you think you’d regret not doing, take action to get it done – TODAY. Life is ephemeral. The people we love are here for a shorter time than we recognize. So take some action. I promise you won’t regret it.”

Enjoy the weekend!

Simple is usually better, but people don’t make as much money when you buy simple things. 😂

The art of keeping it simple [Financial Times] – “1. How many assets do you really need in your long-term portfolio?

In principle, you do not really need more than two: a global equity fund and a broad bond fund in your own currency, with the relative amounts a function of your return needs, ability to withstand short-term drawdowns, and need to control long-term risk on your ultimate portfolio. This gives you very good diversification, clarity and simplicity on what you are holding, and high liquidity with minimum costs if held through passive funds, mutual or exchange traded (ETFs).”

Tomorrow Is Not Your Friend [Minihabits] – “It’s natural to think of tomorrow in an opportunistic way. Tomorrow is a new day and a fresh start… but so was today! Remember when you thought so yesterday? Since we only live in today and it accurately predicts what we’ll do later, tomorrow is relatively worthless. And that’s not all. Tomorrow’s mere presence seems to lead us into poor decisions. Not only is it not your friend—tomorrow is your enemy!”

The Truth About Aging—Why Some People Seem to Age Faster Than Others [Blue Zones] – “However, no two people age the same. Although age is the principal risk factor for several chronic diseases, it is an unreliable indicator of how quickly your body will decline or how susceptible you are to age-related disease. This is because there is a difference between your chronological age, or the number of years you’ve been alive, and your biological age – your physical and functional ability.”

FYI, free at-home COVID-19 tests are back – get them from the USPS.