Apex Money Posts

Welcome to Wednesday, my friends. We’ve got some money links for you. Are you ready?

Today, let’s lead with our video feature. From His and Her Money, here’s a 43-minute interview in which one wife describes how she got her husband on board to become debt-free. Good stuff, right?

How to do the things you keep avoiding. [Raptitude] — “The Cloud is not the Task, but from a distance it appears to be. The Task is what you have to do. The Cloud is all the immaterial, psychological stuff that condenses around a Task when you’re thinking about it without doing it. It’s a byproduct, made of intolerable, insoluble problems that aren’t really about the task, like self-doubt and the pain of past mistakes.”

Positive feedback loops. [Zen Habits] — “Negative feedback loops will cause us to not do the activity. Positive feedback loops will cause us to stay with it for much longer. Think about the design of your plan to change your behavior: is it designed to give you positive feedback or negative feedback? Most people ignore this component entirely.”

Why four women decided to downsize their homes and declutter their lives. [Real Simple] — “Meet four women who decided to live a downsized life, from an interior designer who realized she wasn’t using half of her house, to a podcast host who wanted to finally stop being a messy person. They share their motivations, strategies, and challenges—plus the rewards of their newfound simplicity. Here’s what happened when they decided to live with less.”

That’s it for Hump Day. Join us again tomorrow for more of the best from the world of personal finance!

Good morning, y’all! You ready for a plate of piping hot personal-finance links to go with that cup of coffee? Good. You’ve come to the right place. Dig in!

An introduction to ugly produce delivery services. [The Fioneers] — “I [finds] these services appealing for two reasons. First, these services ship the produce directly to your house, compared to a CSA that typically requires you to pick it up from a central location. The ugly veggie services also provide the option of customizing the size of the box you want and the products inside. CSA shares provide a lot of food, and I wasn’t sure that we could use it all.” Kim just told me about these services last week!

An illustrated guide to bitcoin. [The Hustle] — “At this point, nearly everyone has heard of bitcoin. But many folks still don’t quite understand how the currency is created…In this illustrated guide, we’ll cover the following: how bitcoin is created (a process called mining), how the economics of mining have changed over time, the effects this process has on power consumption.”

“I ditched texting and picked up the phone.” [Outside magazine] — “I thought that I’d wind up among the ‘enlightened’, a digital ascetic who prioritized attentiveness above all else. Instead, I’m grateful for the many avenues of connection out there. Sometimes the facelessness of a text can be a balm, just like the connectedness of a call.” I’ve been experimenting with more phone calls in 2021. So far, I like it.

To close things out today, here’s a video I love. As you may or may not know, you used to be able to buy complete kits to build your own home from Sears. These kits were affordable and popular. Well, here’s a TV news story that profiles an entire neighborhood in Carlinville, Illinois built from Sears homes.

Love it!

Okay, that’s all for Tuesday. I’ll be back tomorrow with more awesome stories. See you then.

Why, hello my friends. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had the pleasure of posting at Apex Money. You see, my neighborhood got clobbered by a rare Oregon ice storm, which meant we lost power for nine days (and internet for eleven). Thanks to Jim for covering for me last week. Now, at last, things are back to normal.

That means it’s time to dive into some of the best money stories from around the web. Let’s do it!

Strangers took in a delivery driver for five days after she was stranded in the Texas storm. [CNN] — “The couple said they were not going to let Timmons sit out there in the cold. Daytime turned to night and soon dinner was upon them. It was Valentine’s Day and the couple made steak with blue cheese, broccoli and a salad. It was a much better meal than Timmons imagined she’d be getting that night, she said.”

Tracking down a mentor from 40 years ago. [No Mercy/No Malice] — “Forty years later, I was 13 again with a generous man who makes me feel less invisible. Approaching his 70th birthday, Cy was taking stock of his blessings, getting remarried, and considering selling his business and easing into retirement. In my fifties, I’m also taking stock of my blessings, and trying to repair my deficits. Life is so rich.” This story starts slow but ends well.

The market value of my father. [Wealthsimple] — “When the novelist Joshua Ferris’s family blew up, his mother revealed a truth: his father was worthless, a con man. A bad investment in their lives. But years later, a mysterious book about Wall Street showed up—a gift from his father—that began to change the story.”

An ode to low expectations. [The Atlantic, so possible paywall] — “Strive for excellence, by all means. My God, please strive for excellence. Excellence alone will haul us out of the hogwash. But lower the bar, and keep it low, when it comes to your personal attachment to the world…If you can get a buzz of animal cheer from the rubbishy sandwich you’re eating, the daft movie you’re watching, the highly difficult person you’re talking to, you’re in business.”

Finally, this investment calculator at calculator.net is a handy tool for playing with all sorts of parameters related to an investment plan. The calculator includes tabs for modifying contributions, return rates, starting investment, final balance, and more. Nerdy but fun.

Okay, that’s it for my first day back from winter “vacation”. I’ll see you tomorrow with more of the best from the world of personal finance…and beyond.

What happens when the largest stunt school in the world puts out a highlight reel of what its students can do? You get this. (a lot of the footage, if you’ll notice, comes from a drone flying around the school!)

Now that you’re fired up, watch this video and don’t cry:

I’m not crying, you’re crying!

Finally, to fire you off into the weekend, here is a collection of videos that Vimeo has considered the videos of the year. They’re all short (a few minutes), and my favorite was the Nike commercial You Can’t Stop Us but this one, Facing It, really makes you think:

One of the positives (specifically for us) from the pandemic is that we’ve developed a little workout group with some of our friends. These are friends we’ve known for years, vacationed together, etc; (so we’re already close), but we haven’t all been on shared group threads talking about fitness (and other random topics) like this.

It turns out that sharing experiences, even if you aren’t near each other physically (we are spread out across the Eastern United States), can bring people closer:

Sharing experiences, even from afar, can bring people closer [Chicago Booth Review] – “But we also prefer to experience separate events, good or bad, at the same time, suggest University of California at Los Angeles’ Franklin Shaddy and University of Florida’s Yanping Tu, both recent graduates of the Chicago Booth PhD Program, and Booth’s Ayelet Fishbach. For example, knowing that your friend is having a root canal on the same day as you may make it feel like a shared experience—and make it a little easier to handle.”

For the month of February, we’ve been doing the same core exercises (courtesy of Matty Maggiacomo) and we’ve reveled in our shared misery together.

“Fake Famous” and the Tedium of Influencer Culture [The New Yorker] – “A new documentary follows three nobodies who are trying to become social-media famous, which involves buying followers and staging photo shoots in a kiddie pool.”

How Marketing Changed the Way We See Avocados [Scientific American] – “Once upon a time, Americans didn’t know what to do with “alligator pears.” Now we can’t get enough” Alligator pears!

Skip this post if the answer is no. 🙂

20 Ways To Be Happier in Life [The Retirement Manifesto] – “The last year has been tough on all of us. With that COVID thing floating around, increasing tension between political classes, Social Media run amuck, etc, it’s time to take a break from all of the negativity. With that in mind, here are 20 ways to be happier in life, based on my personal experience.”

Create life mantras and goals, to enjoy life and increase happiness [Accidentally Retired] – “A few years ago, I started to create a Life Crafting notebook. It was created simply using the Notes app on my iPhone to jot down things I wanted to remember to better my life. My Life Crafting notebook now includes various different tidbits of things that I wanted to remember to enact in my life. Everything from Life Mantras, and goals, to date night Ideas, to quotes I like, and key highlights from books I have read.”

The growing share of spending on recreation [Federal Reserve of St. Louis] – “The FRED graph above shows the percent of real personal consumption expenditures devoted to recreational goods and services. Between 2002 and 2019, this share has almost constantly increased. (The sole exception being the dip between 2008 and 2009, during the Great Recession.) To be precise, the share of recreational expenditures has increased 57%, which is worth more than half a smile.”

The Algebra of Wealth [Scott Galloway] – “I know a lot of people who make an extraordinary amount of money, but few people who are rich. Rich is having passive income greater than your burn. People on a path to money focus on their earnings; people on a path to wealth also focus on their burn. Joseph Heller said, “It takes brains not to make money.” (Note: I think he was casting a favorable light on his starving artist friends). This may be true, but it definitely takes brains to hold onto it (i.e., money).”

Craft a Better Life Than Your Parents [Retire Before Dad] – “My Dad retired in the early 2000s at the age of 56. I was broke, unemployed, and living with my parents at the time. But I set the goal to retire one year younger than he did. In my mind, it was the best way to measure how I could live a better life than my parents.”

Why The Active vs Passive Investing Debate Misses The Point [Banker on Fire] – “Instead of debating the merits of active vs passive investing, it’s far more productive to focus on actual investing.” The problem with most investors isn’t what they’re invested in, it’s that they aren’t investing enough.

How North Face Athletes Compete for Expedition Funding [Outside] – “The company sponsors some of the best athletes in the world, from Emily Harrington to Alex Honnold, all of whom are vying for a slice of the brand’s annual budget to support their expeditions. The process can be as competitive as getting into an Ivy League university—except, if approved, the athletes are often taking on death-defying adventures.”

What happened last week in Texas and their power grid was horrifying. It was made worse when politicians started using the story to push their agendas, even while people were without power, water, and shelter.

(J.D. faced his own weather and power crisis too in the Pacific Northwest, which is why you’re getting me for a second week!)

One of the common stories was that wind power was to blame. As it turns out, it wasn’t the fault of wind power but a lack of winterization across the entire system (and that the system was on its own grid to avoid federal regulation). My point isn’t to debate that particular issue but to point out that it’s important that we focus more energy on how we can improve our own ability to think and come to conclusions of our own.

We are often told what to think and what to believe but we aren’t taught how to think – because that makes us less vulnerable to manipulation.

5 Mental Frameworks Exceptional People Use Every Day [Value.app] – “The highest-performers don’t use “tricks” or “hacks” to achieve greatness. They use mental frameworks that fundamentally change the way they see the world. Below are the five mental models that I’ve identified exceptional people use every day…”

How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught [Farnam Street] – “No skill is more valuable and harder to come by than the ability to critically think through problems. And schools don’t teach you a method of thinking, you have to do the work yourself. Those who do it well get an advantage and those that do it poorly pay a tax.”

How I Became a Poker Champion in One Year [The Atlantic] – “One of the world’s best players taught me his unique psychological style of play—and it worked.”

Last one is a fun one – The Puppet Master Who Brought ‘Star Wars’ to Life [Great Big Story]

SPACs have been hot lately – in 2020, there were nearly 250 new SPACs that raised $83 billion in capital. They basically allow a private company to go public really quickly. Here’s how they work:

What Are SPACs and Should You Invest in Them? [Money For The Rest of Us] – “Special Purpose Acquisition Companies or SPACs are non-operating publicly-listed companies whose purpose is to identify and purchase a private company, allowing the acquisition target to have publicly listed stock.” This is a really great explainer – easy to understand.

the diminishing returns of productivity culture [Culture Study] – “Automation was also positioned as a sort of cure-all for America’s industrial slump: a way to close the gap between their global competitors, particularly Japan and Germany. It promised to decrease inefficiencies and increase productivity — and productivity, as Robert MacNeil put it in his intro to an episode of PBS Newshour in 1980, was the “in” word of the year: “Everyone who thinks he knows what’s wrong with this country wants to improve productivity.””

Everytime I see the word thief, I think about the kids book the Brief Thief. This one is, however, about eggs.

The Egg Thief [Outside] – “For decades Jeffrey Lendrum helicoptered up and rappelled down to aeries on cliff faces from Patagonia to Quebec, snatching unhatched raptors and selling them, investigators believe, to wealthy Middle Eastern falconers. This week in London, one of the most bizarre criminals in modern history goes on trial for the fourth time. Here is his story.”

South Korean boy investor with 43% gains is new retail trading icon [Reuters] – “Kwon pestered his mother to open a retail trading account last April with savings of 25 million won ($22,400) as seed money, just as the benchmark KOSPI index began recovering from its biggest dip in a decade.”

4 Ways Financial Independence Changed Our Lives (Work, Health, Time, Mentality) [Financial Mechanic] – “The most remarkable part about how financial independence (FI) has changed our lives is in how little, at least from the outside, it’s had any visible effect. The best way to sum this up is—wealth is what you can’t see.” A good guest post on Financial Mechanic written by Jenni and Chris from TicTocLife.

Fun little read on the $GME saga and “the guy who got GameStop:” (this isn’t the Roaring Kitty guy everyone talks about)

The Beach Bum Who Beat Wall Street and Made Millions on GameStop [The Ringer] – “Mike McCaskill spent years scouring the stock market and betting on long shots. Then he found the opportunity that changed his life—and helped spark the mother of all short squeezes.”

GME is the gift that keeps on giving. Good for him!