Welcome to Wednesday, money nerds. I’ve got some great stories for you today. Enjoy!
The 11 cognitive distortions that make you miserable. [The Art of Manliness] — “We highlight the eleven cognitive distortions that people engage in on the regular, and which may be making you feel miserable. With each, we’ve included the definition Burns gives of the distortion in his newest book, Feeling Great, along with a thumbnail sketch of it that can help you recognize that distortion in your own life.”
Popular family safety app Life360 is selling precise location data on its tens of millions of users. [The Markup] — “Marketed as a safety app, Life360 is popular among parents who want to track and supervise their kids from afar…But Life360’s location-based features are also sources of data points for a growing, multibillion-dollar industry that trades in location data gathered from mobile phones. Advertisers, government agencies, and investors are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for location data and the insights that can be derived from them.”
Has the 4% “safe” withdrawal “rule” changed? [Advisor Perspectives] — Here’s a new article from William Bengen, the man who “invented” the 4% rule! He writes: “Recently a highly respected financial publisher issued a research paper claiming that the ‘safe’ withdrawal rate from tax-advantaged retirement portfolios could be as low as 3.3%, due to the high valuations of financial investments. As you may know, as an outcome of ongoing research, I recently increased my estimate of the ‘worst-case’ withdrawal rate to 4.7% (for a 30-year time horizon). How do we make sense of these two widely disparate results?”
The insane resurgence of vinyl records. [The Hustle] — “In recent years, though, something odd has happened: Vinyl has made a small but mighty comeback…Last year, for the first time since 1986, vinyl records outranked CDs in annual sales. This year, they’re on pace to more than double CD revenue.”
As a guy who has a small but growing collection of vinyl, I’m unsurprised. Of all the physical ways to own and listen to music, vinyl gives the most satisfaction. I love it.
Today’s non-financial video comes from Xiran Jay Zhao on YouTube. In this 18-minute clip, she explains why American Chinese food deserves respect (and why the MSG fear is a hoax).
I’ll confess: I love American Chinese food. It’s yummy! And while a lot of my friends try to yuck my yum, I don’t care. They don’t have to eat General Tso’s chicken. That leaves more for me.
In fact, I’m out of here to go get some Chinese food for lunch. I’ll see you again tomorrow with more great money stories.