Category: General

Today, I want to share one story, which is not money related but life-related, and three powerful ideas I took away from that story:

Meet Virginia Apgar, the unlikely anesthesiologist who saved newborn babies [Massive Science] – “The newborn’s skin was blue and he wasn’t breathing. A few years earlier, the doctors would have documented the baby as stillborn, not believing there was anything they could do to help. If this were the mid-1950s though, a recent development in the field of obstetrics would have given them hope – the Apgar score. The newborn’s 1-minute Apgar score indicated that the newborn was in poor condition, but they treated him with oxygen. Sure enough, his 5-minute Apgar score showed improvement. Maybe he had a chance after all. Virginia Apgar’s invention helps saves newborns.”

1. There are tens of millions of human beings who owe their lives to Virginia Apgar. Probably more like hundreds of millions. How wild is that?

2. She began medical training in 1929 and, as in many fields, women were “drastically underrepresented.” She would become a surgeon but pivoted to anesthesiology because her mentor thought she’d have a hard time attracting patients. As a result, she was present for a lot of births and it’s shocking that 1 in 30 died at birth – in part because obstetricians abandoned babies that looked “too sick to survive.”

Gender discrimination is bad. And after reading this story, you might be tempted to think that gender discrimination is good. It steered her to precisely where she needed to be to devise the Apgar score. In reality, you should think of it as – “gender discrimination created a world in which this level of coincidence was necessary.”

If there were no discrimination, it’s likely someone else, far earlier, could’ve come up with this score. The more brains we have working on a problem, the better, especially on problems that society doesn’t realize are problems!

3. She never retired.

I remember a conversation I had with my dad (when I was a kid) about working.

He asked me who I thought was “happier” – the CEO of a large company or the janitor at that company?

I, predictably, said the CEO. He was in charge, was more powerful, and made waaaaaay more money.

My dad said the janitor had a clear cut job, was in control of his work, and didn’t have to stress about it once he was done. He may not have made more money but he wasn’t getting calls over the weekend about handling a crisis. The point of the conversation wasn’t who was happier but that you need to think a little more about a question before answering. Surface level is often not the whole story.

For some, becoming a CEO might be a dream job only because you don’t know all that comes with it. It’s like social media – you see all of the good and none of the bad. With a CEO, there’s a tremendous amount of responsibility and stress because a lot of people depend on you. One misstep and you could cost many people their jobs. You may be well compensated but that all depends on how well you handle that stress. 🙂

The Dream Job That Wasn’t [The New Republic] – “The concept of the dream job still persists, likely because so many of us are working in what the late David Graeber called “bullshit jobs,” or are simply not employed at all. Finding your dream job is a seductive idea: the do-gooder, Protestant version of the FIRE movement—rather than trying to escape work, why not try loving it instead? It’s a relatable impulse, but I imagine most dream jobs are more like running a lighthouse bed-and-breakfast for 40 paying guests than a paid vacation.” (did you know that cookbook recipe tester was even a job???)

Advice for Giving Advice [The Irrelevant Investor] – “I’m doubling down on my own advice. Lessons cannot be taught in the stock market. They can only be learned through experience.”

Lock It In [The Belle Curve] – “When I read about investors making millions on Tesla in the Wall Street Journal, I get nervous. I am also insanely happy for their good fortune. There is no greater luck than winning the lottery. It is not supposed to be this easy to make money in the stock market. Preserve and grow capital yes, but outright make a fortune? No. Money made this easily can be lost in the blink of an eye.” When a football team has won the game, they kneel on the ball to run out the clock. They don’t try to get more points. The game has been won and risking the win to pad the score is foolishness no matter what the game.

The Magical Art of Selling Soap [Laphram’s Quarterly] – “But American advertising—and cosmetic advertising in particular—traces its origins to the decidedly less-than-rational hodgepodge of science, magic, and faith that formed the culture of medicine and “wellness” in the late nineteenth century. The first efforts at national advertising were launched by patent-medicine manufacturers, whose elixirs, pills, drops, and ointments promised customers miraculous physical and mental transformations. For all of its purported down-to-earth rationality, the advertising industry had deep roots in magical thinking. This was a past it would never completely leave behind: that was, in fact, integral to its cultural success.”

One of the benefits of the pandemic is that we’ve spent a lot of time with our kids. It’s certainly been challenging and there have been many difficult times, but on the whole we’re thankful to have this “bonus” time with them. (yes, this is a bit of reflective silver lining thinking going on here!)

As we age, the data shows that we spend an increasingly greater amount of time by ourselves. We spend less of it with our family, which reminds me of this great Wait But Why post titled The Tail End, more of it with a partner, but increasingly more of it with just ourselves:

Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? [Our World in Data] – “Who we spend time with evolves across our lifetimes. In adolescence we spend the most time with our parents, siblings, and friends; as we enter adulthood we spend more time with our co-workers, partners, and children; and in our later years we spend an increasing amount of time alone. But this doesn’t necessarily mean we are lonely; rather, it helps reveal the complex nature of social connections and their impact on our well-being.”

A Brief History of Consumer Culture [The MIT Press Reader] – “Over the course of the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff.” Eye opening.

A long time ago, I used to be a software engineer. One of the things you learn in computer science is that computers can’t be 100% random when they generate numbers. You can simulate something that closely approximates randomness to a human being but it’s never truly random and that’s bad for security.

What computers use is a “seed” to generate these numbers and the key is using a seed that is random. In less rigorous environments, programmers may use a digit in the time or something similar. But even that is not “safe” enough — so this company is using something different – lava lamps:

So cool!

Working for yourself has benefits and drawbacks – one of the big drawbacks is that there isn’t much of a playbook for what you should be doing.

You learn by making mistakes and a lot of new business owners make the same mistakes over and over again.

First post of the day is by Piggy of Bitches Get Riches and it covers 11 mistakes she made and how you can avoid them:

11 Awful Mistakes I Made as a Self-Employed Freelancer, and How YOU Can Avoid Them [Bitches Get Riches] – “In order to get work as a freelancer, you need to prove that you can do it. And in many fields, that means having a lengthy list of former clients you can use as references, or a nice thicc portfolio.

When I started freelancing I… did not have those things. Instead, I bumbled around like a drunk baby panda until I fell into success entirely by happy accident.”

How Owning Assets is Better than a Job. [The Frugal Expat] – “As we get closer and closer to our retirement ages, people want to make sure their assets can cover them as they age. The problem is that if you have not acquired enough assets you will have to continue to work.” A good reminder though easier said than done!

Fun tongue in cheek syllabus for making new friends! 🙂

Course Syllabus for Making New Friends as an Adult [The New Yorker] – “Making new friends as an adult is difficult, especially for students who have just turned thirty and are approaching the precipice of death. This class will teach you how to navigate this emotionally demanding field, so that you can finally make new friends who will never find out about that one time you ate mulch for seven dollars.”

Who else is currently watching Schitt’s Creek for the first time?

It’s hard to avoid the turmoil of the last few weeks, especially as we get closer and closer to Inauguration Day this Wednesday.

It can be really easy to fall into the trap of doomscrolling social media or constantly hitting refresh on news sites.

I implore you to do something else – check in on a loved one. See how they’re doing. If you feel like you’re constantly bombarded by negativity, do something positive for you and someone you care about.

Why You Should Monitor Your Parents’ Finances – And How To Do It [Cameron Huddleston] – “I started getting involved with my mom’s finances after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 65. It was a role I never expected I would have to take on. I had no choice, though, but to help her.

My mom was living on her own at the time of her diagnosis. So, I couldn’t sit by and let her declining memory lead her to financial ruin. In fact, it took a lot of oversight and careful planning to ensure she had enough money to cover the cost of her care as Alzheimer’s disease left her unable to care for herself.

Truth be told, I should have been paying more attention to my mom’s finances before her Alzheimer’s diagnosis. As I learned, waiting for an emergency to get involved can be a mistake. And new research backs that up.”

The worst financial decisions I’ve made [The Twenty Percent] – “A lot of the time money bloggers seem to have all the answers and get it right all the time. But, that’s simply not true. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. To boost transparency and show we really are all in this together, I’ve decided to share some of the worst financial decisions I’ve made.” I made the list with my whoopsie!

Ivy Bells: A Spyhunter Series Story [Truly Adventurous] – “After plans for the most expensive covert operation in U.S. history are stolen, the future of the free world rests in the hands of two teens and a professional spy hunter.”

It’s Friday, my friends, which is usually a light-hearted day at Apex Money. But I’m not feeling light-hearted. My heart is heavy watching the deep divisions in the U.S. manifest themselves as violence.

On Facebook, I’ve been vocal about calling for my liberal friends to listen to conservatives. I’ve been vocal about calling for my conservative friends to let go of their crazy conspiracy theories. As you might expect, both sides think I’m nuts. Each side thinks that it holds the moral high ground while the other side is dead wrong. Both sides think that I’m a fool for trying to get people to talk to each other.

This is the way the world ends.

I’m not joking.

Fortunately, I think that most Americans want the country to survive. We don’t want revolution — not even those who support Trump. One of the things that gave me hope this week was Arnold Schwarznegger’s amazing (and spot-on) video response to the Capitol violence.

Here are some other things that give me hope…

Resources for taking care of your mental health and wealth. [Dear Debt] — “What we’ve gone through this week with the siege of the U.S. Capitol is traumatic and unsettling…I wish I had something amazing or profound to say to help us get through. But I don’t. What I do have are some tools and resources that may help you take care of yourself during these difficult times (and any time).”

1273 people share their best life lessons from 2020. [Mark Manson] — “A couple weeks ago, I reached out to my email list and asked, ‘What have been your biggest lessons from 2020?’ Over a thousand people replied…After spending the greater part of a week combing through the emails, some major themes emerged.”

112 bits of good news that kept us sane in 2020. [Reasons to Be Cheerful] — “You could be forgiven for thinking that 2020 was little more than a slow-motion train wreck broken up into 365 individual units..Yes, it was a most difficult year. But it was also a year of problems solved, hopes sustained and seemingly insurmountable challenges met.”

Why we can’t stop longing for the good ol’ days. [The Wall Street Journal, so possible paywall] — “When exactly were the good old days?…The most popular answer seemed to be the 1950s, so Mr. Feifer asked historians whether Americans in that decade thought it was particularly pleasant. Definitely not, they said. In the 1950s, American sociologists worried that rampant individualism was tearing the family apart. There were serious racial and class tensions, and everyone lived under the very real threat of instant nuclear annihilation.”

And that’s it for this week in money. We’ll be back on Monday. We hope you will too.

Today is Thursday, and you’re at Apex Money. I wish we could keep it Thursday for a few days. Maybe a few months. You know, like the movie Groundhog Day. I have some very real trepidation about this weekend — and next week. Can’t we just freeze time?

We cannot freeze time of course, so instead let’s dive into our money stories for today.

A brief history of consumer culture. [The MIT Press Reader] — “The notion of human beings as consumers first took shape before World War I, but became commonplace in America in the 1920s. Consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the world.”

Lazy: A manifesto. [Stay Strong] — “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence, or a vice: It is an indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration.”

The more we can google, the less we know. [Real Life] — “Not-knowing, however uncomfortable or painful, is intrinsic to life. Science, art, religious practice, relationships with other people, attempts to understand politics or history: all arise from the kind of curiosity we ask Google to release us from. To the extent that it hides the unknown behind a scrim of facts, and encourages us to see the world’s plurality as something we can skim, Google also reduces our equipment for living.”

I really like today’s video feature. It’s so…nerdy. While watching a James Bond movie from 1985, Max Piantoni became fascinated by the spy’s computer (an Apple IIc). He wondered if he could learn to replicate in real life (and in 2020) what he saw on screen. So he set out to do it. Here are the results:

Like I say, it’s pure nerdery. But it’s fun nerdery.

Speaking of fun nerdery, I’ll be back tomorrow with one final installment of Apex Money for this week. Join me, won’t you?

Welcome to Wednesday, my friends. We’ve reached the middle of an especially long week. I don’t usually celebrate Wednesdays, but this feels like something to celebrate for once. Let’s do that by looking at some money stories.

What’s the secret to working quickly and productively? [Harvard Business Review] — Fascinating interview with Philippe Starck, a French product designer. “I am sort of a modern monk. My wife and I have a collection of cabins in the middle of nowhere, and we stay out of everything. We don’t go to dinners. We don’t go to cocktails. We don’t go to movies. We don’t watch TV. I don’t use my energy on other people. I just work and read.”

What hundreds of American public libraries owe to Andrew Carnegie’s disdain for inherited wealth. [The Conversation] — “Carnegie argued that handing large fortunes to the next generation wasted money, as it was unlikely that descendants would match the exceptional abilities that had created the wealth into which they were born. He also surmised that dynasties harm heirs by robbing their lives of purpose and meaning.”

Whatever happened to waterbeds? [Mental Floss] — “For kids and adults alike, waterbeds used to be the coolest—until suddenly they weren’t. After a heyday in the late 1980s in which nearly one out of every four mattresses sold was a waterbed mattress, the industry dried up in the 1990s, leaving behind a sense of unfilled promise and thousands upon thousands of unsold vinyl shells.”

Lastly, here’s a clever 4-1/2 minute mash-up of fifty years of music (51 years, actually). The always-awesome DJ Earworm has selected one song from every year between 1970 and 2020, then smushed them together into this video. It’s fun!

And that’s all I have for you today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more of the best in personal finance. Until then, take care…

Ah, Tuesday. In January. It’s cold. It’s dark. Chaos consumes the world. But here at Apex, we have money links for you. Juicy, delicious money links. Let’s taste them, shall we?

How to teach kids about money, saving, and investing. [Refined by Fire] — In July, I heard Mr. Refined by Fire give a presentation on how he’s taught his children about money. I was impressed. His approach is smart and effective. Over the past several months, he’s been compiling his approach into a series of articles. This is the seventh of that series (and it links to previous pieces).

Keeping your medical records could save your life. [One Frugal Girl] — “If you’ve never experienced a major medical crisis, you’ve probably never thought or worried about your medical records. Before I got sick, I believed doctors quickly diagnosed patients, medical mistakes rarely happened, and medical professionals were the keepers of my medical history. Then I fell ill with a condition doctors couldn’t identify. The experience forever shattered my beliefs.”

“Why I’ve changed my mind on Bitcoin.” [Of Dollars and Data] — “Though I have changed my mind on Bitcoin, I haven’t necessarily changed my view on how one should invest in it. I believe that the only prudent way to invest in this asset class without any long-term negative repercussions is to hold no more than 2% of your portfolio in it.” [Related: what’s driving Bitcoin mania on Axios. The answer? Institutional investors, which means this time is different.]

You might have already seen today’s video. More than 25,000,000 have since it was released a couple of weeks ago! It’s a three-minute clip of the robots from Boston Dynamics dancing to “Do You Love Me” by The Contours. Wow.

Here in 2021, we have robots that can frickin’ dance, but we still have humans who refuse to get along with one another. What a world.

Good morning, money nerds! Are you ready for another week? I am. And I’m hopeful that everyone will remain calm, cool, and collected. Please?

I’ve gathered some top recent stories about money and personal finance to share with you. Let’s dive in!

Today I’m leading with a story from my Apex partner, Jim. I like it.

What you should do with all of the financial advice on the internet. [Wallet Hacks] — “The internet makes financial information accessible to a lot more people, which is great. But it also comes from generally unknown sources which means you have to do your homework. As they say, you can’t believe everything you see on the internet.”

“How spending 13 minutes a day on self-care changed my life.” [Fabric] — “The term ‘self-care’ comes with so much baggage and has been hijacked by brands to try to sell us something. But if I’ve learned anything in therapy, it’s that if I’m not well, nothing in my life is. So I knew I had to do something to engage in self-care that was meaningful, easy and free.”

The truth about inflation truthers. [A Wealth of Common Sense] — “The government isn’t suppressing the ‘actual’ inflation number. And if they were, they would also be suppressing reported economic growth which is something no politician in their right mind would ever do. Inflation is a tricky concept to understand but that doesn’t mean you should listen to the inflation truthers.”

And on a related note (actually taken directly from that blog post), here’s a seven-minute video comparing life in 1973 with life today…and how today’s life is actually less expensive. It’s an interesting look at the changing cost of goods and services, and why it’s so difficult to compare the past with the present.

And that’s all I have for this Monday. I’ll be back tomorrow to share more fun money stories with you. See you then!