Category: General

Happy Taylor Swift Day, my friends! Today my personal hero turns 34. I’ll be celebrating by listening to her discography on random play all morning and afternoon. But you know what? That’s no different than any other day…

Our first piece today comes from my favorite money blog and it’s about an interesting subject I’ve been thinking about recently. It’s a complicated subject, in my opinion, and there aren’t any easy answers. But Lauren does a fine job of wading through the subject:

Second-hand stuff is more expensive than ever. [Bitches Get Riches] — “In addition to the increased authentic demand for secondhand goods, there’s intense new artificial demand in the form of resellers. If you browse the same secondhand sources frequently, you’ll see this happen all the time. A freecycle dresser gets snapped up quickly, only to reappear a few weeks later with a fresh coat of paint, nicely staged photos, the phrase ‘midcentury modern’ in the description…and a $400 price tag.”

Loss aversion: Understanding and overcoming your fear of letting go. [Becoming Minimalist] — “Loss Aversion, simply put, is our tendency to prefer avoiding losses rather than acquiring equivalent gains. It’s a concept that often appears in conversations around behavioral economics analyzing why people make the financial decisions they make. In economics, it is seen over and over again that for people, the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining.” [This is me. I can’t get rid of anything in my life because of loss aversion. It’s a real problem. I call it “scarcity mindset”, though, not “loss aversion”.]

It’s okay to ditch financial practices that no longer serve you. [Blueprint for Financial Prosperity] — “If you’re looking at certain practices and wondering if you can give them up, tell yourself you’re giving it up temporarily. See if it has an impact. If it does, go back. If it doesn’t, let it go. Try to build and mold your financial systems to work with your tendencies and is a net positive, instead of trying to force change on yourself to fit your financial systems.”

I was going to add another fun video for you all today, but then I realized my entire recent watch history is watercolor videos. I mean, there are some great watercolor videos out there, if you’re into that sort of thing. But some how I think the target audience for these if very small haha. So, no video today.

But I’ll be back tomorrow to share more great stuff! See you then.

Top of the morning to you and welcome to Tuesday. This is Apex Money, and I’m your host J.D. Roth. As Jim and I do every day, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite recent stories about money — and more. Today’s features lean to the “and more” side of the equation. 😉 Enjoy!

Just your handyman. [Plough] — “I’m a handyman. People hire me to fix things. My jobs start when someone tells me about something they’d like me to build, or some problem they want me to solve: we need to put a window in the north wall; we want a tile tub surround; this sink is leaky; our old fence is rotten and needs replacing; we’d like to paint our kitchen cabinets. Each call or email is a window into a more complicated situation.” [Something about this reminds me of Wendell Berry.]

In 1970 Ireland, pubs briefly replaced banks — and it worked. [VinePair] — “In 1970, Ireland’s citizens got a taste of life without bank tellers when most of the nation’s banks closed for roughly a year. One might think that meant the day-to-day transactions that keep any capitalist society in motion came to a sudden halt, but guess what? They didn’t.” Fascinating!

Why randomness doesn’t feel random. [Behavioral Scientist] — “We ascribe meaning too readily to the clustering that randomness produces, and, consequently, we deduce that there is some generative force behind the pattern. We are hardwired to do this.”

I think I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but I’ve only recently “discovered” the amazing Olivia Rodrigo. Her music makes me feel like I’m a kid again. It gives me that same feeling as listening to my favorite bands when I was 12 or 13.

Anyhow, what’s fun about Rodrigo is that she’s grown up during the digital age. She’s 21 (I think) right now, so YouTube has existed for most of her life. And wouldn’t you know it, but there’s ample documentation of how she’s evolved as a singer since she was four years old. Crazy.

This poorly-produced compilation video gives a sort of overview of Rodrigo’s growth. (I’ve skipped ahead past a lot of fol-de-rol to get to the singing.)

Girl’s had confidence from the start. Wow. Her vocals might have been weak at times, but she’s kept at this for 17 years. And now she’s one of the biggest stars in the world.

Good morning, friends! J.D. here with another week of Apex Money. I’m late with this Monday post because I lost all day yesterday to a high fever. All I could do was stay in bed and be miserable. I didn’t have the energy to read about personal finance. But today? Today, I feel much better.

So, here are some of the cool stories I’ve found to share with you all…

The three-legged stool of retirement [The Retirement Manifesto] — “Just like money, both health and time can be optimized by thoughtful investment. If you’re not exercising, start now. If you’re wasting your time doing things that don’t matter, rethink your priorities. Ultimately, health and time are the scarcest resources in our lives. It’s a shame more of us don’t act accordingly.”

“I ditched my iPhone for a flip phone.” [Coveteur] — “My flip phone experiment felt like a success. I had more meaningful connections with friends and strangers and more space for independent, creative insights. To be honest, even with some of the friction that comes with using a flip phone, I didn’t really miss my smartphone.”

Why Americans’ “YOLO” spending spree baffles economists. [BBC] — “Despite past trends, US consumers are spending at record levels. Economists are mystified – and struggling to forecast an end point. Throughout a period of sky-high interest rates, depleted savings and grinding inflation, Americans have spent with abandon.”

“My four anti-personal-finance-expert beliefs.” [A Wealth of Common Sense] — “My relationship with personal finance has evolved as I’ve aged and changed my habits. Many of the personal finance rules written in stone will always apply…However, there are other personal finance commandments I don’t completely agree with anymore.”

That’s it for this Monday. I’ll be back tomorrow with more. See you then!

Happy Friday Apexians!

I’ve always loved the idea of FIRE, financial independence retire early, but really only the first half. Financial independence is great. I’m on board.

Retire early? Eh, not really something I was super interested in. I was, however, never in a toxic career (as we’ll see in our second post).

And, more importantly, I always wanted to remain useful… which is the subject of our first post.

You Can Retire Early, But Never Stop Being Useful [Abandoned Cubicle] – “Leaving a paycheck, managers-by-carousel, silly meetings, and other corporate nonsense behind won’t kill you. But if you leave a job where you sit on your duff all day only to wind up sitting on your duff all day and subsequently doing nothing to improve yourself or serve others, then it’s game over.”

Exiting A Toxic Career Of Software Engineering [Financial Mechanic] – “When saving and strategizing to leave the workforce, it’s crucial to make a plan for what you are retiring to. That’s what I write about— my journey to financial independence and what I am doing now after turning in my notice. But I realized I haven’t shared much about what I’m retiring from. Most of my career happened in parallel with writing this blog, but I didn’t write much about it as it happened. I want to share the story of my career, and why the refrain “I could never retire, I love my job too much!” was something I never related to.”

And before we jump into the weekend, here’s a wild story of someone who pretended to be a prince!

The Prince [Truly Adventurous] – “In the cafe, he was watching an elegant Serbian woman in conversation with a prince, a tall man in his late fifties with abundant charm. The prince was telling her about coveted diplomatic passports that he could secure for her wealthy friends for a few thousand euros each. (The prince denies talking about the passports.) Diplomatic passports, in theory, would allow easy passage through most of the world as well as other rarefied perks. The woman was surprised that these could be purchased.

The prince had to go in a hurry, saying he had an important phone call, in the process leaving behind the bill. Tamenne saw his chance. He approached the woman. He told her there was reason to believe the prince was a fake, profiteering off of unsuspecting people.”

It’s long but entertaining if you like slow burns.

Enjoy the weekend!

Who can’t use a few laws of getting rich? 🙂

A Few Laws of Getting Rich [Morgan Housel] – “There are a million ways to get rich, most of which involve exploiting specific niches and one-off opportunities, to say nothing of luck. Universal rules about how to get rich are hard to come by. But losing money, or losing happiness when you have money, or becoming a slave to your money – those stories tend to have common denominators. They are so common you can call them laws.”

Life Expectancy [Our World in Data] – “Across the world, people are living longer. In 1900, the average life expectancy of a newborn was 32 years. By 2021 this had more than doubled to 71 years. But where, when, how, and why has this dramatic change occurred? To understand it, we can look at data on life expectancy worldwide.” This article is like an index. It shares some data but also links to articles going into greater detail on some of the statistics, like the life expectancy one. Very interesting if you’re curious why we’re living longer.

You’ve probably heard that eyewitness reports, while still useful, can be notoriously unreliable because they are subject to bias (and simple error). It’s easy to misremember, which is why I always hang up my car keys on a hook by the door. Turns out, there’s a study on it.

Eight Ways Your Perception of Reality Is Skewed [Greater Good Magazine, U.C. Berkeley] – “But it turns out sight is much more complicated than that, according to the new book Perception: How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds, by University of Virginia psychologist Dennis Proffitt and Drake Baer. What we perceive in any given moment is not only determined by sensory input, but by our personal physical abilities, energy levels, feelings, social identities, and more.” There are some really clever studies in this article.

The big news of last week was the passing of Charlie Munger. His business partner, Warren Buffett, gets all the attention but if you ask most people, I suspect preferred the directness and candor of Munger.

I really enjoyed Rob Berger’s video Remembering Charlie Munger:

Do you live in an ingredient household? [The Frugal Girl] – “It’s a home that stocks mostly, well, ingredients, instead of ready-to-eat foods. Like, instead of oatmeal packets, you might have jars of oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon, and there’s milk in your fridge. You can eat oatmeal for breakfast, but you do have to make it.” We’ve made it a point to try to be more of an ingredient household, it’s always a work in progress!

I love hearing stories of what was valuable in ancient times. The classic one is Tulip mania, when tulip bulb prices skyrocketed in the Netherlands, but did you know that Tyrian purple was also highly prized? A Roman edict issued in 301 A.D. made it the “most expensive product in antiquity” – more than 3 times its weight in gold!

Tyrian purple: The lost ancient pigment that was more valuable than gold [BBC] – “That invention was Tyrian purple, otherwise known as shellfish purple. But though this noble pigment was the most expensive product in antiquity – worth more than three times its weight in gold, according to a Roman edict issued in 301 AD – no one living today knows how to make it. By the 15th Century, the elaborate recipes to extract and process the dye had been lost.”

Humans are such funny creatures. 😂

I love Darius Foroux’s writing, especially this one that we discovered through Rob Berger’s weekly newsletter (Rob also had a great video on Remembering Charlie Munger on his channel):

If You Want to Achieve Your Dreams, You Have to Be A Little Crazy [Darius Foroux] – “If you want to achieve your dreams, you have to be relentless about making them happen. It takes a lot of focus and drive to achieve one’s goals. That’s because our dreams are usually out of reach. Why else would it be a dream? It’s not easy. And there’s a high price to pay for pursuing it. That’s why only crazy, driven people go after their dreams.”

One of the key lessons from Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens is the incredible power of stories. I want to extend that idea with this next article in which the stories you tell about yourself are critically important:

The transformational power of how you talk about your life [BBC] – “People who tell more positive stories and stories with more elements of redemption (for example, that time that you lost your job, but ended up switching career paths into something you enjoy much more) tend to enjoy greater wellbeing, at least based on research with Western samples, in terms of more life satisfaction and better mental health. So do people whose stories express a greater sense of being a protagonist in the events of their life and having more meaningful communion with others. For example, the episodes they remember frequently involve loved ones and close friends, such as that hilarious hen night in Brighton, or shared hobbies, like the time they and their cousin went to cooking classes together. Engaging in more autobiographical reasoning and having greater structure to one’s life story also correlates with greater wellbeing.”

Finally, are we nearing the end of retirement as we know it?

The End of Retirement [The Walrus] – “It’s time for the famous social contract to hold up its end of the bargain and take care of me, the way it did my father before me, to deliver on the idea that retirement is my right after a life of work and the promise that I will have the time and means to enjoy it. Except none of that happened. The year since my retirement party has not been a dreamy passage to a welcoming future but a nerve-shattering trip into the unknown. My debt is swelling like a broken ankle; my hard-won savings may or may not be sucked into the vortex of an international market collapse. Can I keep my house? Who knows? The macroeconomy is messing with my microeconomy. The future keeps shape-shifting. And none of the careful planning I put into my retirement is going to change that.”

Good morning, friends, and welcome to meteorological winter! December is here, and with it comes winter festivities. (And, if you’re me, two weeks in Hawaii haha.) First, though, let’s look at some recent money stories.

Die with zero. [The Boston Advisor] — “We work hard as wealth managers to make sure our clients don’t run out of money, and clients work hard to avoid financial insecurity. A book pushing us to spend early and often seems counter-intuitive. However, Perkins is on to something.”

“The longer I do this, the less I care about results.” [Ryan Holiday] — “It’s an incredible thing to be a professional baseball player or to get to write books or to do whatever is that we’re called to do in life. But being outcome oriented, results driven is to spit in the face of that. Instead of being present, you are basically thinking, ‘I can’t wait for this to be over so I can find out whether it was worth it or not.’ And let me tell you, the world is not kind to that kind of neediness. It is not kind to that kind of ingratitude either.” That’s some wisdom, my friends.

Adulthood is a mirage. [The Cut] — “While some of us feel like teens in private, most people who responded to my survey experience that feeling only when we’re exposed to other people’s expectations. And yet, if most of us are experiencing versions of the same insecurities, who is left to do the judging”

The paradox of happiness. [The Alchemy of Money] — “The good life is not a destination but a process, not a having but a being and doing. Working towards it doesn’t require lots of research, fancy tools, or a business. It requires commitment, action, and a bit of courage to be different. In a world caught up in emotion and status games, it may even feel like a quiet act of rebellion.”

And we’ll close things out this week with a video from our buddy, Rob Berger. Here he is with an 18-minute ultimate year-end financial checklist.

That’s all I have for you this week. Jim will be back on Monday to take you into mid December haha.

Hey hey, everyone. Today is Thursday, I’m J.D. Roth, and this is Apex Money. I’ve gathered some great stories about money (and more) to share with you. Let’s dive in.

What do retirees do all day? [A Purple Life] — “I find recording what I do in a day takes very little time and the benefits far exceed the time spent, so I think I’ll keep doing it until that balance shifts. This type of recording also allows me to do something fun: compare my second year of retirement to my third! I have actual data to show what I did more of, less of and generally what changed in how I spent my time.”

Why really rich people worry about money. [RadReads] — “Let’s look at some core human fears. There’s the fear of irrelevance. Of insignificance. Of being forgotten. The fear of unworthiness. Of being unloveable. Of being alone. The fear of being a bad person. Many driven professionals use ambition and money to paper over these fears. It’s why you strive up the curve of prestige and prominence. Only to discover that this core fear persists.” Be sure to watch the first embedded video. It’s interesting. (Also, holy shit the formatting on this article sucks. It’s mind-numbingly bad. One sentence per line? Come on. So difficult to read.)

Margin of safety. [ESI Money] — “I am NOT saying that how I did it is how anyone else should set up their specific margins of safety. As you’ll see, mine are a bit overboard and frankly are too much. If I had backed off a bit I could have had lower but still solid levels of safety and have retired earlier.”

The good news on safe-withdrawal rates. [Morningstar] — “Retirees who are willing to employ more-flexible strategies or make other modifications to a basic approach of using 4% as a starting point for withdrawals and then adjusting that dollar amount each year for inflation can enjoy even higher starting withdrawals, assuming they’re willing to accept other trade-offs, such as fluctuating year-to-year real cash flows and the possibility of fewer leftover assets at the end of a 30-year period.”

Some good stuff there. And I’ll be back tomorrow with more good stuff to see you into the weekend. Join me, won’t you?

Welcome to Wednesday, money nerds! Today’s installment of Apex Money is one of those editions with a theme: minimalism. Take a look…

A mentality of hyper-consumption. [Money and Meaning] — “We could have stopped working so hard, for so many extra years. We could have arrested climate change. But consuming more and more is our version of ‘success’ and ‘the good life’. We consume unconsciously, even going into debt to do so. As a society, we have a spending problem that masks a much deeper spiritual malaise.”

The top decluttering tips of all time. [No Sidebar] — “Decluttering is less about the quantity of items you remove and more about the quality of life you’re creating. Each discarded item is not just making room in your home, but also making space in your mind for clarity, peace, and joy.”

The magic link between minimalism and money. [Simple Money] — “By owning only what you truly need and cherishing experiences over possessions, you can pave the way for a secure, fulfilling financial future. So, if you’re looking to take charge of your finances, it might be time to consider decluttering more than just your closet.”

The secret to being rich is not to buy anything. [The White Coat Investor] — “It’s OK to spend your money. It’s OK to splurge. But after you do, spend a moment to reflect on whether it was worth it. I suspect you’ll conclude that, a lot of the time, it was not. Whether you’re rich yet or not, remember that the secret to wealth — at least once you’ve developed an income that causes you to read this website — is to stop buying stuff.”

Okay, that’s all I have for you today. See you again tomorrow, friends!