Category: General

The Guardian asked 100 centenarians, or people who are over the age of 100, for their best life advice:

‘Keep your eyes open – and leap into the future’: 100 centenarians’ 100 tips for a life well lived [The Guardian] – “What’s the secret to making it into triple figures? Never stay stuck in the past, keep a diary … and dance while you still can” WOW.

Why Buying Gasoline In the Morning Can Save Money [Len Penzo dot Com] – “Gasoline expands when temperatures rise, but the energy content of gasoline is directly related to its weight, not its volume. The end result of this expansion results is less energy per gallon.”

History is fascinating and it never occurred to me that peopled lived on London Bridge (and, in fact, inhabited bridges was common in Europe!).

Life across the water: exploring London Bridge and its houses, 1209-1761 [The Past] – “When it was completed in 1209, medieval London Bridge was the only fixed crossing of the Thames downstream of Kingston-upon-Thames (until Fulham Bridge was built in 1729). Remarkably, it was also home to some 500 people – equivalent to the population of a small medieval town. In London Bridge and its Houses, Dorian Gerhold has scoured the archives of Bridge House – the medieval charity that managed the bridge – to find out more about the community that lived on this extraordinary structure, as Chris Catling reports.”

One of my favorite phrases, that I never get to use!, is “eating your own dog food.”

It might surprise you to learn that many active managers don’t invest their money in their own funds… they prefer passive index funds. Hmmm…

How Do Active Managers Invest Their Own Money? [The Big Picture] – “Many of the comments from active managers were eye-opening, but none more than “All my own money is in index funds” topped only by “I wouldn’t invest in my own fund.”” You don’t say!

Warren Buffet released his letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders for 2022. I enjoy reading these letters and I hope you do too!

2022 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders – “At this point, a report card from me is appropriate: In 58 years of Berkshire management, most of my capital-allocation decisions have been no better than so-so. In some cases, also, bad moves by me have been rescued by very large doses of luck. (Remember our escapes from near-disasters at USAir and Salomon? I certainly do.) Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years – and a sometimes-forgotten advantage that favors long-term investors such as Berkshire. Let’s take a peek behind the curtain.” Time is your best friend!

One of the challenges of being a saver, especially if it’s something that’s ingrained in you from childhood (as it was with me), is that it’s very difficult to spend.

While I don’t feel visceral pain when I spend money, it’s pretty close that I understand how someone could feel it (if that makes sense).

This podcast episode between Brandon (Mad Fientist) and Ramit was great:

Ramit Sethi – How to Spend (and Actually Enjoy It) [Mad Fientist Podcast] – “On today’s episode of the Financial Independence Podcast, I welcome back Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You to Be Rich! I needed someone to come on the show to provide some tough love and Ramit was the only person for the job. As Ramit mentioned during our last interview, FIRE people are great at knowing what NOT to spend on but we’re not good at knowing what to spend on.”

You’re not bad with money. But you can get better. [Vox] – “Given its pervasiveness, having debt shouldn’t be a personal reflection on those who have it, yet carrying any amount of debt can be embarrassing and shameful, says licensed marriage and family therapist Nicolle Osequeda, who is also a member of the Financial Therapy Association. However, recognizing how emotions interplay with finances is the key to changing the narrative around your relationship with money. Osequeda offers insight on the insidious ways debt impacts every aspect of life.”

Do you remember Crazy Eddie’s? I remember these as a kid and had no idea this all went down!

The Popular Electronics Chain That Scammed America:

Defying Financial Gravity: Achieving Your First $100,000 [Financial Imagineer] – “Reaching a lofty financial goal such as achieving your first $100k or $1 million is much like defying financial gravity and rocketing into orbit. Just as it takes an immense amount of energy to break free from the gravitational pull of Earth and launch into space, so too does it take a lot of hard work, discipline, grit, and dedication to reach the milestone of your first $100k.”

It’s Okay Not To Boast About Your Wealth And Chase It Aggressively [Making of a Millionaire] – “We don’t know how not to share our wealth with the world because we loop it into our identities. If we don’t have x, y, and z, we’re not sh*t or aren’t doing sh*t right. Wrong. Modest lives are meaningful, too.”

This next one isn’t about money per se but as someone who loves to make stock out of rotisserie chicken (and I worked a summer for Heinz back in the day), I found it fascinating.

Lost in the Stock [Eater] – “This is multinational corporate industrial cooking in its most pure form. The company is not making soup; it is making, according to its website, “savory taste solutions.” It ensures that it is legally safe and sterile, it separates and process the carcass, fat, broth, and meat, and then sells off the broth concentrate to companies who in turn add sugar, or salt, or carrot juice, or yeast extract, or all of the above. Those companies then put a picture of a farm or a kid eating soup on a website and tell you that their soup is just like mom’s. When I asked my Symrise representative why chicken broth from a box in a grocery store will never reduce down to a demi-glace, his answer was technical and plain. “The difference is the total protein content,” he wrote. “A typical Aseptic single strength broth only has 1-3 g protein per serving. The demiglace which you create is much higher in protein.” But I would humbly suggest that the real answer is “because that’s not what the corporations that hired us asked for.””

Now a days, people try to come up with ways to become rich. They may have an invention that took off, or maybe won the lottery. They tried everything to get rich and succeeded. Do they have what it takes to stay rich?

Check out what we have for you this week Plutus Family!

Everyone Says I Need a Roth IRA. Do I really? [Women Who Money] — “What could be more attractive than being able to salt away thousands of dollars each year, have that money grow over decades free of tax, and then withdraw both what you contributed and what you earned in dividends with no tax liability at all?”  (Submitted by Tarsha.)

Do you Have a Treasure Map? [Wallet Hacks] —”The Treasure Map is the qualitative explanation of our financial setup. It is a Word document that explains the purpose of each account, the point of contact, and how each of the pieces fit together. Our treasure map starts with our financial map – which is a drawing of how our accounts are interconnected. Together, they give you a complete picture of our finances.” (Submitted by J. Money.)

Getting Rich vs Staying Rich. [Fi Physician]— “Once you are rich, you aim human capital towards staying rich. While you should keep some concentration going (do what you love or what you are good at), it is also time to take some cards off the table. You’ve got to stay rich, too.” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

As we ease out of the the long weekend of President’s Day, I thought I’d share two articles about work.

And one about a heist!

What really motivates workers (and it’s not money) [The Spectator] – “I recently learned from my assistant the trick of working all morning, taking a few hours off in the afternoon, then working again in the evening. You get more done than you do in a solid day, but it feels like you’re on holiday. In truth this shouldn’t surprise us: the best way to solve a difficult crossword clue is not to stare harder at it, but to go and take a break.”

The mystery of the disappearing vacation day [Washington Post] – “Did you know that Americans are about half as likely to be taking vacation in any given week as they were 40 years ago? Neither did we! When we spotted this alarming trend in an obscure government time series, our eyebrows shot up so far our ears popped.”

Bellagio Bandit: How One Man Robbed Vegas’ Biggest Casino and Almost Got Away [Rolling Stone] – “Tony Carleo stole $1 million in chips – then checked himself into casino’s hotel to live like a king” Wait, what???

If someone walked up to you and asked you how much you made, would you tell them?

27 People on the Streets of New York Talk About How Much Money They Make [The New York Times] – “We asked nearly 400 people to tell us how much they earn. Here are two dozen who actually spoke to us.” 👀

Is $200k a Year a Good Income? [Of Dollars And Data] – “For this reason, I don’t just consider $200k a year to be good income, but a very good income. Even if you reside in a high cost of living area like Manhattan, $200k a year would put you in the top 25% of households according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Yes, that’s the top 25% among some of the highest earning households in the world.”

Finally, a nice good con!

Inside Wealth-Conference Con Man Anthony Ritossa’s Wild Web of Lies [Vanity Fair] – “In short, Sir Anthony’s summits are so chockablock with luminaries that many associated with the event may have failed to ask one fundamental question: Who the hell is Anthony Ritossa? After a yearlong investigation, including interviews with sources from a dozen countries, Vanity Fair uncovered the truth. It turns out he is a Wall Street washout, a world-class con man and an inveterate fabulist with a bogus CV and persona—a 53-year-old Australian who fancifully purports to be an heir to a 600-year-old European olive oil fortune.”

Oh dear!

Enjoy the long weekend, we’ll be back on Tuesday with the next edition of Apex Money!

AI and ChatGPT have been the talk of the Internet for a few months now and a few days ago, J.D. and I had an interesting chat about it after he watched this first video:

I’ve been thinking about it a lot as well and walked away from my chat with J.D. thinking that we’re going to be OK. Right now, AI is good at recreating what we already know. It isn’t capable, yet, of creating anything new.

So when I stumbled upon this next article by one of my favorite writers, Ted Chiang, I had to share it with you:

ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web [The New Yorker] – “But, despite ingesting a vast amount of information, it hasn’t been able to derive the principles of arithmetic, either. A close examination of GPT-3’s incorrect answers suggests that it doesn’t carry the “1” when performing arithmetic. The Web certainly contains explanations of carrying the “1,” but GPT-3 isn’t able to incorporate those explanations. GPT-3’s statistical analysis of examples of arithmetic enables it to produce a superficial approximation of the real thing, but no more than that.” (there is no snippet I can pull that does the article justice)

The part that ties our two pieces together is when Ted Chiang writes about being a writer. Specifically, you have to write to get better at writing. It’s in the practice that you get better at it. It’s the Helsinki train station all over again.

AI will change how we live our lives, much like how the Internet did, but it remains to be seen to which degree. But you must pay attention!

Hey Plutus family, it’s that time again. Check out what we have for you this week!

Unclaimed Funds: Look for Them! [Surviving and Thriving] — “You might be owed money. Go look for it! And if you find any, I hope you’ll come back and report it, to encourage other readers.” (Submitted by J. Money.)

Fear of (No) Commitment. [Money by Lisa] —”Some time ago, I read a research article that sought to answer the conundrum, why do some people carry debt when they have the means to pay it off? On its face, it doesn’t appear to make sense to simultaneously have a persistent, interest-accruing credit card or personal loan balance and a better-than-bare-minimum savings account balance. Then again, by now, I think that we all appreciate that financial decisions are about one part math and two parts emotion. So, what gives?” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

21 Life-Changing Minimalist Experiments to Try in Your Home. [Becoming Minimalist]— “Society is constantly calling us to expand and upgrade every area of life: our home, our car, our kitchen, our wardrobe, our technology…. A Living with Less experiment provides us the opportunity to see if there is a more intentional, more focused, better way to live.” (Submitted by J. Money.)

Running your own business, whether it’s online or off, is tough.

Being a freelancer, which is a business, is oftentimes even tougher. It’s a grind and many times it’s a solo grind.

I enjoyed reading this first post for today by Laura, a freelance writer and blogger at Every Day by the Lake, on what she learned in the first five years of being a freelance writer:

A Freelance Writer Reflects on Five Years In [Women Who Money] – “As a few dollars turned to thousands, I realized I had met the goal of my sabbatical: finding a location and schedule-independent way to earn a living. That way, I could fully show up for myself and those I loved.”

Rule #1 of Building Wealth: Play Defense With Your Money [Darius Foroux] – “To me, this is Rule #1 of building wealth. As the investing legend Warren Buffett says, “Never lose money.””

Doing Less Is Hard, Especially When We’re Overwhelmed [Behavioral Scientist] – “Jumping right to “more” means we fail to consider “less.” Even when less would be a far better choice.”