Category: General

One size fits all advice doesn’t often work for everyone perfectly but a lot of advice works pretty well for most people. Save early and often is good advice. Maybe it’s “suboptimal” (based on how your income may change over your lifetime) but not having a habit of saving, and then trying to “figure it out” in middle age, is also suboptimal.

The Worst Kind of Financial Advice [A Wealth of Common Sense] – “Far too many “experts” these days profess to have the singular piece of advice that will solve all of your problems.”

Your Career Is Just One-Eighth of Your Life [The Atlantic] – “Five pieces of career advice, shaped by economics, psychology, and a little bit of existential math […] Even if, like me, you don’t quit your employer, you should constantly look to quit your job—the precise set of roles for which you are salaried—and push yourself into discomfort zones. Role-switching is important not because quitting is so wonderful, but rather because sampling from different skills and fields is helpful, provided that you’re prepared to pounce on an area that clicks for you. Explore, then exploit.”

The Queen’s Duck [Brian Wigginton] – “A feature added for no other reason than to draw management attention and be removed, thus avoiding unnecessary changes in other aspects of the product.” Hahahaha!

Student loans have been in the news lately because of President Biden’s push to forgive some student loans. Personally, I don’t feel strongly either way. I paid off my $35,000 in loans but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get all hot and bothered if someone else gets a hand.

That said, I’ve long believed colleges are businesses. We all knew this with “for profit” colleges but all colleges are like this. That’s why Harvard continues to charge tuition even though they have an endowment of over $53 billion (as of 2021).

That leads us to our first article of the day (don’t worry, the last video I share is lighthearted and fun!):

The Single Most Important Thing to Know About Financial Aid: It’s a Sham [Slate] – “Colleges claim to award scholarships based on merit or need. In reality, they’re just charging the most they think families will pay.”

Report: Big U.S. Banks Are Stiffing Account Takeover Victims [Krebs on Security] – “When U.S. consumers have their online bank accounts hijacked and plundered by hackers, U.S. financial institutions are legally obligated to reverse any unauthorized transactions as long as the victim reports the fraud in a timely manner. But new data released this week suggests that for some of the nation’s largest banks, reimbursing account takeover victims has become more the exception than the rule.” Now more than ever, secure your accounts!

Retirement Giants Band Together to Help Job-Switchers Transfer 401(k)s [Bloomberg via WealthManagement.com] – “The two retirement giants, along with benefits administrator Alight Solutions, created a jointly owned consortium to automate the transfer of millions of 401(k) balances below $5,000 when workers change employers. An estimated $92 billion is taken out of retirement savings each year due to cash-outs, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).” This is great for all involved – brokers because they get to manage more money but consumers too because they aren’t tempted (sometimes inadvertently) to cash out small 401(k)s.

I love magic and this video about Markobi, the 2022 World Champion of Magic, is great! I love how casual and faux haphazard / slopped he is:

Enjoy the weekend!

I love this first article – from the child-prodigy founder Dr. Alex Oshmyansky to Mark Cuban to why Oshmyansky got into drugs at cost (when Martin Shkreli jacked up the price of a drug to $750 a pill) – it’s awesome on every level.

CostPlusDrugs.com is going to change prescription drugs and I’m here for it and hope more people hear about it.

Meet the Genius Who Convinced Mark Cuban to Sell Drugs [D Magazine] – “Since the pharmacy opened at the beginning of the year, the company’s Twitter feed has been filled with customers singing its praises. Jennifer Fariello Moldwin is a nurse practitioner in New York who recommends the service to many of her patients. A specialist in urology and gynecology, she has patients who were paying $300 to $400 per month for their medications and are now paying $30 per month via Cost Plus. “It’s timesaving for us, it’s cost saving for the patients, and it’s timesaving for the patients,” she says.”

Outside the Parameters of a Normal, Safe Life [Retire Before Dad] – “A salary is like an addiction, enabling people to maintain a comfortable lifestyle at the cost of 40-50 per week. The addiction squeezes tighter when our families grow, and a steady income becomes necessary to cover monthly expenses. It’s more comfortable to steer clear of big risks, such as changing careers or starting a business, in favor of predictability — even if the status quo is unfulfilling.”

The next time Wikipedia asks for a donation, ignore it [Unherd] – ” He put the running costs at $10 million a year. Being generous, as some costs fall every year, let’s double that. Wikipedia can operate quite comfortably with the cash it has already, without running another banner ad, for twenty years. So where does the money go? Not on the people doing the actual work on the site, of course. Wikipedia’s Administrators and maintainers, who tweak the entries and correct the perpetual vandalism, don’t get paid a penny — they’re all volunteers.” oh, hmmm…

Happy Hump Day Plutus family!  Please take a moment out your busy week and enjoy these great articles we have for you this week. See you next week!

Here’s what we wanted to share with you this week.

10 Numbers That Will Change Your Investing Perspective. [Mantaro Money] — “0. Nought. Nothing. Nada. That is the amount of times the S&P 500 (the de-facto proxy for the global stock market) has provided a negative return over any 20 year period since 1926. To use another number to illustrate the point: 100%. The S&P 500 has provided a positive return over any 20 year period since 1926 100% of the time.” (Submitted by J. Money.)

Moving From Semi-Passive to Fully Passive Income. [Lazy Man and Money] — “I was getting ready to write my monthly passive income report and took a little look into our equity investments and real estate investments. I wanted to figure out whether selling our investment property and investing the money in the stock market was the right move. It’s the classic stocks vs. real estate question.” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

Time and Money: How Our Perception changes as We Age. [Retire Before Dad] — “Approaching retirement, we’re more willing to spend money to save time. Why mow the lawn when you could be playing golf or Bridge? And what good is all that wealth if we have no time to enjoy it? Time was valuable all along.” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

When people first started blogging, back in the Stone Ages, it was a lot of personal stories. Personal stories still exist but they’re more often the minority of blog articles these days.

I discovered a great one from back in the day (ok, it’s from August 2019) from Financial Pilgrimage:

A Young Family’s Roadmap to Building Generational Wealth [Financial Pilgrimage] – “Reflecting on my family’s story, we’ve made many mistakes. In our late 20s, we thought we were doing everything right, but in hindsight, there was a lot we were doing wrong. Being able to rebound at age 30 was tough, but not as tough as it could have been. Yet, despite our challenges, we also did a few things right.” It’s a familiar story (owned a home but weren’t house poor, had car payments but not crazy, and $50k in student loans – very relatable) with some good advice applicable to anyone.

Is Having Too Many Choices (Versus Too Few) Really the Greater Problem for Consumers? [Behavioral Scientist] – “Afew decades ago, the idea that there could ever be too much choice was, for some, a controversial claim. It ran against cultural narratives—especially in the United States—and classic economic theory that assumed having more options was always better than having fewer. A larger assortment of alternatives, so conventional wisdom went, gave each of us a better shot at finding something that better satisfied our preferences. And, if any of the additional options didn’t appeal to us, we were free to ignore them.” Analysis paralysis!

The Witch of October Is Here: Remember Short-Term Pain = Long-Term Progress [Enterprising Investor] – “The month of October strikes fear in the hearts of many Wall Street veterans — and for good reason. Over the last 123 years, 7 of the 10 worst days in US stock market history occurred during this seemingly haunted 31-day stretch. But there’s nothing supernatural about these October scares: They are the remnants of the 19th century agricultural financing cycle. During the 1800s, farmers harvested and shipped their crops to market in the fall, paying for the operation with large withdrawals from their local banks. These banks, in turn, withdrew funds from larger New York City banks and trusts to replenish their reserves, which made Wall Street financial markets especially vulnerable to panics. Even after the United States transitioned to an industrial economy and re-established a central banking system in the early 1900s, the memories of past Octobers seem to have conditioned investors to erupt in panic out of habit. October 2022 may be just the latest manifestation.” That is fascinating to learn but the actionable gem of the post is this one – “In the meantime, we need to steel our nerves, rebalance our portfolios, and trust that the pain we suffer now will be rewarded in the future.”

Hey Apexians – Jim here – I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never been scammed too badly. I’ve paid for things I never got (with methods that weren’t protected) but I’ve only ever been out about a few hundred dollars. It’s a high price to learn a lesson and it’s a mistake I haven’t made in many years.

My heart breaks for folks who have been scammed by family… like in our first post.

Debt Demands a Body [Longreads] – “Over the course of the next three years, as my mother’s gambling addiction escalated, she took out another student loan, and then another, and then so many others that the amounts and institutions from which she borrowed knotted together into something big and impossible to disentangle, but the accumulation of which was about $125,000. It seems that none of the private lenders were alarmed by the rapid acquisition of increasingly large amounts of money — more than I would ever need for my state-school tuition — a record of lending they would have seen when they pulled my credit. It might be that they noticed and didn’t care.” Wow. Just wow.

What No One Understands About Your Job [The Atlantic] – “Several weeks ago, I asked readers to tell me what people don’t get about their jobs. I thought we might receive several dozen replies. Instead, we received several hundred. We heard from teachers and professors; from opera singers and orchestra musicians; from corporate executives and tech workers; from screenwriters, playwrights, and book editors; and from sailors and summer-camp directors.” Fun little insights from these jobs.

How To Check Your Tax Refund By State [The College Investor] – “Each state follows a unique process for refunds. You may or may not be able to check the status after filing. If you want to find out where your refund is, we have directions for how you may be able to check this, depending on what state you’re in. To check your refund status, submit your personal information such as Social and tax ID.”

This will be useful in a few months!

One of the enduring rules of the internet is that when someone asks for advice, there is a 99.999999% chance they will not follow through on that advice. (especially if that advice was given for free!)

The reality is that most people will not follow through. They have enough activation energy to ask but not enough to continue. It’s like an extreme New Year’s Resolution.

But that represents an opportunity for those who are willing to.

Most People Won’t [Bryce.vc] – “But every once in a while someone puts themselves out there. Makes the leap. Faces rejection or failure or worse. And comes out the other side. Better. Changed. Bolder.”

A Very Tough Year [The Irrelevant Investor] – “Buy low sell high. Be fearful when others are greedy. Etc, etc. It’s easy to be brave when stocks are going up. But putting money on the line when nobody else wants to takes actual courage and intestinal fortitude. You’re never going to buy the bottom, and you’re almost always going to regret it in the short term, but if you can stomach the pain, you’re usually rewarded over the long term.”

Retiring Right [Humble Dollar] – ““It,” in this case, is retirement. In January, I’ll celebrate my 60th birthday. I have no intention of fully retiring, but I am thinking about how to work less, travel more and prep my finances for the years ahead. As I sketch out my plans, I’m drawing not only on a lifetime of writing and thinking about personal finance, but also on an even more valuable resource: you.”

Enjoy the weekend!

I find the idea of love languages to be powerful in that it opens your mind to how different people respond to different things. If you like words of affirmation, you might think words of affirmation impact others the same way. It’s only when you learn “all” the love languages that you realize that people respond differently. It can be very eye opening and powerful.

Being generous is similar. If you think donating money to a charity is the only way to be generous, it’s hard to be generous if you don’t have space in your budget for it.

Fortunately, it’s not the only way – there are many ways. In fact, many of them do not involve money or even charities. It is about being generous to other people.

It’s very powerful.

50 ways to be ridiculously generous—and feel ridiculously good. [get it done] – “Behaving generously doesn’t necessarily mean “donating money” or “giving away your last cookie.” Those are two options, sure, but there are plenty of other ways to be generous. You can share knowledge freely, instead of hoarding it. You can send a handwritten note, instead of a text message. You can make eye contact, instead of checking out and staring down at your phone. You can introduce a friend to someone they ought to meet and help them secure a new job, client, or opportunity. You can do big things, simple things, all kinds of things. Here are 50 ways to be ridiculously generous—and feel ridiculously good.”

Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 book about flies [it is NOT junk] – “A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence’s The Making of a Fly – a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists – consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from $1,730,045.91 (+$3.99 shipping).” 👀 huh???

And our last one for today, a look inside credit repair companies:

Credit repair companies offer to “fix your credit,” for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

We sent a DoNotPay employee to interview for jobs at credit repair companies to figure out how they do it so that we can automate it and replace them.

This is what we discovered:

— Joshua Browder (@jbrowder1) September 18, 2022

We are back Plutus family! Join us for happy hour on October 6th! Plutus Voices is coming back to New York City’s Upper East Side next week for happy hour, networking, and a great discussion.

Tickets are free, but the number of available tickets is low. A waitlist will be available for those who miss the first opportunities to RSVP. RSVP now at plutusvoices.com/nyc22

Here’s what we wanted to share with you this week.

How Will I Take Advantage of Today? [Becoming Minimalist] — “You and I are different, I’m sure, in countless ways: Our family, our upbringing, our location, our career, our passions, our hobbies, our goals. But there is one thing that all of us have in common: We woke up this morning. And we have been provided this day to make the most of it.”(Submitted by J. Money.)

How Does Buy Now Pay Later Work: The Worrying Reality. [Money-Side-Up] — “Buy Now Pay Later is offered as a method of payment by companies such as Klarna. In fact, some of the UK’s biggest brands are already using In-store to boost their business and enhance the shopping experience. This includes the likes of New Look, Halfords and H&M. It even bridges the gap between the virtual and physical world. With the flexibility of online shopping, now in your physical store.” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

What Does Success Look Like and How Does It Feel? [One Frugal Girl] — “What does success look like? When you hear the word success, what do you picture? Growing up, success meant luxury goods and over-the-top experiences. I grew up watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, where the host, Robin Leach, explored the yachts, mansions, and luxury car collections of the world’s wealthiest people. Then signed off …” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

Welcome to another week of Apex! It’s Jim back at the helm and today’s headline article is actually a podcast where Michelle discusses poverty. It’s insightful because it shares a perspective that isn’t often shared.

I don’t want to give too much away but it’s 100% worth listening (and reading the show notes) because often times what you experience and see don’t tell you the complete picture.

It can also, at times, tell you the wrong story too.

Experiencing White Homelessness as a Black Person in a White Town [Michelle is Money Hungry] – “They were noticing something that I’ve lived with for quite a long time and I think that there is some insight into the issue of poverty, policy and what I’ve learned and observed as a Black woman experiencing white poverty in a primarily white city. This insight I think will also show you why I think Americans are completely unserious about tackling poverty, because of how I see people reacting to the white poverty in my town.”

The $18k Roof Repair | The Importance of Financial Reserves [The Darwinian Doctor] – “After consideration of the above factors, we decided to go ahead with the full replacement of the roof on both the duplex and the garage, plus removal of the chimneys. The cost breakdown for all this was $17k, but it turned out to be $18k due to additional materials needed during the repair.” Emergency funds, especially if you own rentals, is critical!

The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books [New Yorker] – “You were a girl who wanted to choose your own adventures. Which is to say, you were a girl who never had adventures. You always followed the rules. But, when you ate an entire sleeve of graham crackers and sank into the couch with a Choose Your Own Adventure book, you got to imagine that you were getting into trouble in outer space, or in the future, or under the sea. You got to make choices every few pages: Do you ask the ghost about her intentions, or run away? Do you rebel against the alien overlords, or blindly obey them?” I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books!