The dash refers to the dash on your tombstone. Happy Monday. 🙂
Live Your Dash with No Regrets [Simple by Emmy] – “In their research on regret, Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medvec found that “people’s biggest regrets tend to involve things they have failed to do in their lives…Actions cause more pain in the short-term, but inactions are regretted more in the long run.””
Worth vs. Worth It: Homeownership [The Golden Albatross] – “Guest post time! This article is another from friend of the blog, Chris Pascale. Never one to shy away from the controversial money topics, Chris takes on the homeownership versus renting debate. He does this by comparing the running costs of homeownership to renting over decades. In doing so, Chris concludes that while owning the property in which you live is usually a money-losing proposition, it’s a vastly smaller money-losing proposition than renting. Therefore, since we all have to live somewhere, owning is the most efficient use of one’s housing money.” Emphasis is mine but this is a sensible look at the buy vs. rent discussion. We sold our first home at a loss (we bought it during the mid-2000s housing boom) and I made this same calculation to realize we paid $600 a month to live in a townhouse that would’ve cost us more than $2,000 a month.
​​What’s the Point of 15-Minute Grocery Delivery? [Vice] – “Experts wonder if any innovation could allow a company to turn a healthy profit by delivering food in minutes for no additional cost without making life miserable for workers. But the question of what success would mean is almost as profound. What will a city filled with rapid-delivery grocery startups look like? And, for all the costs, what will we really have gained? These companies operate only in dense urban neighborhoods where a grocery store is rarely more than a 10-minute walk away.” This sounds more like a company trying to steal market share through differentiation than creating a benefit someone truly needs. Also, didn’t Domino’s try this decades ago and have to quite because it’s dangerous? That was pizza and 30 minutes! This quote lower down in the post is especially grim – “One of the great paradoxes of modern global capitalism is that we make enormous amounts of food, ship it all over the world, keep it fresh and edible throughout the entire process, and sell it for remarkably little; and yet, a shocking amount of it gets thrown out while people go hungry just a few miles away.”
I think a postal banking system would be amazing, if it can be executed properly, because it can save people a ton of money over check cashing places and generates some more revenue for the USPS. Wal-Mart was already an OK solution but there are far more post offices.
USPS Begins Postal Banking Pilot Program [The American Prospect] – “The United States Postal Service (USPS) has taken the most dramatic step in a half-century to re-establish a postal banking system in America. In four pilot cities, customers can now cash payroll or business checks of up to $500 at post office locations, and have the money put onto a single-use gift card. It’s the most far-reaching executive action that the Biden administration has taken since Inauguration Day.”