Apex Money Posts

How the other half lives.

Yawn. Good morning, sleepy-heads! I know it’s early, but I’m here once again to share some interesting articles about mastering your money — and your life! Are you ready?

Secrets of the MIT poker course. [Mental Floss] — “Poker, I realize, is a skill in the way language is a skill. It’s a set of rules under a structure of infinite nuance and variance. Professionals separate themselves from the pack with an ingrained understanding of these nuances — smart decisions, made instinctively. I couldn’t expect to learn a language in two weeks, and poker would be no different.”

Inside the wild world of government auctions. [The Hustle] — “Once an item falls out of use, organizations running the gamut from state colleges to law enforcement to the Environmental Protection Agency auction it off to the public. And sometimes, an extraordinary item ends up in the hands of someone like [you].” Wanna buy a lighthouse? A helicopter? An ambulance? Government auctions might be your best bet!

Drivers of high-cost cars are less likely to yield to pedestrians. [Journal of Transport & Health] — “Two naturalistic experiments examined if upper-class individuals behaved more unethically while driving. They found that upper-class individuals (as indicated by vehicle status – make, age, and appearance) were more likely to violate California state law and cut drivers off at a 4-way intersection. In a separate study they also found that upper-class individuals were more likely to violate California state law and cut pedestrians off at a marked intersection.”

Jacob Riis, the photographer who showed “how the other half lives”. [My Modern Met] — “In 1890, Riis compiled his photographs into a book, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. Featuring never-before-seen photos supplemented by blunt and unsettling descriptions, the treatise opened New Yorkers’ eyes to the harsh realities of their city’s slums. Since its publication, the book has been consistently credited as a key catalyst for social reform.”

Reading this (and looking at the photos), I was reminded of Betty Smith’s excellent novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Smith’s story covers events between 1900 and 1918 while Riis’ photos are from the 1880s. Despite the time difference, they’re depicting the same sort of life in the same location. I think it’d be interesting to see a version of Smith’s book illustrated with Riis’ photos.

That’s it for this Thursday! I’ll be back tomorrow to usher you into the weekend…

Welcome to Wednesday, Apexians. If you’re looking for the best stories about money, you’ve come to the right place. Every day, Jim and I dig deep on the internet to find the most interesting and useful stuff to share with you. Here’s what we have today.

Disruption starts with unhappy customers, not technology. [Harvard Business Review] — “In the common scenario that executives think technology is trying to disrupt their business, they try to find a way to develop that technology internally or buy it from others. Major auto companies like GM and Ford are a good example: they have spent billions to buy and then build electric and autonomous driving technologies…What these companies seem to have missed is that the most common and pervasive pattern of disruption is driven by customers.”

The common pricing mistakes that destroy luxury brands. [Jing Daily] — “Pricing mistakes are common in luxury and are one of the biggest culprits behind value destruction. One common mistake — surprisingly — is pricing a brand too low. This happens because managers aren’t fully aware of the Added Luxury Value they create.”

A retirement calculator worth your time. [The Retirement Manifesto] – “NewRetirement is a retirement calculator that’s worth your time. If you prefer to have an expert walk your retirement planning journey with you, they offer the flexibility to only pay for what you need. NewRetirement offers the entire gamut, and it’s a package that can help you achieve a great retirement.”

To wrap things up this Wednesday, here’s a video that has nothing to do with money. It’s a look at P!nk, the border collie from Pickerington, Ohio who has won the Westminster Dog Show 16-inch agility class three years in a row.

I love my pup. She’s intelligent, alert, and very food-motivated. This makes her easy to train. But I don’t think there’s any way I could get her to run an agility course like P!nk does. Who knows, though? Maybe I should try.

That’s it for today, my friends. I’ll back tomorrow with more great stuff. See you then.

It’s Tuesday, money nerds, and this is Apex Money. Every day, Jim and I bring you the best in money stories from around the interwebs. Our goal is to entertain and educate.

Today, we’re going to lead with our daily video instead of end with it. It’s our feature story. In this twenty-minute talk, Nina Kollars explains how she innocently ordered discount coffee pods from eBay…but ended up an unsuspecting participant in triangulation fraud.

This story is both fascinating and frustrating. And it’s entertaining, especially for money nerds like you and me. Kollars writes:

“This talk chronicles the obnoxious amounts of obsessive research and tracking that became my new hobby — stalking Nespresso fraudsters and my decidedly non-technical attempts at developing a generic search profile and reporting the fraudsters to anyone who would listen…Ultimately I just ended up with a LOT of coffee; a lingering sense that I had committed several crimes; and no faith left in humanity.”

Personal savings: A look at how Americans are saving. [Deloitte] — “While the personal savings rate has been trending upward, average savings—calculated using the Consumer Expenditure Survey—has been on a broad declining trend since 2010–2012 for consumers across income levels and for key working-age groups.”

Practical strategies for spending less on transportation. [The Fioneers] — “Any way you look at it, there are ways to reduce your reliance on personal vehicles. Reducing the number of cars is the most effective way to cut your transportation expenses. But I understand that these are no small changes. If moving or switching jobs is too much to commit to right now, you can also look at reducing the cost of owning a car.”

Expert advice on what to keep in a “go bag”. [Why Is This Interesting?] — “The notoriously tough Green Beret training pipeline and real-life deployments put them in some unfriendly places, and we asked them to write about what average people should be thinking about when it comes to disaster preparation…Here’s a list of very pragmatic things to do and think about, from two guys that know.”

Have a story that you think we should share with your fellow Apexians? Send it in!

Good morning, money nerds! It’s Monday, and that means new money stories fresh from the word mines. Here’s what Jim and I have found for you recently.

To start, let’s talk about current events. We don’t delve into the mainstream news cycle often here at Apex Money (and for a variety of good reasons), but today we’re going to make an exception. The Coronavirus has begun to infect U.S. communities. (Here in Oregon, the first cases appeared in a school just a few miles from me!) Our first story today is all about the facts regarding COVID-19.

The WHO sent 25 international experts to China. Here are their findings on the coronavirus. [/r/China_Flu/ on Reddit] — “The WHO has sent a team of international experts to China to investigate the situation, including Clifford Lane, Clinical Director at the US National Institutes of Health. Here is the press conference on Youtube and the final report of the commission as PDF after they visited Beijing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Chengdu. Here are some interesting facts about Covid that I have not yet read in the media.”

Two ways to play the game of life. [Farnam Street] — “How you play the game of life will define the learning you pursue. Finite players need training. Infinite players need education. Why? According to Carse, ‘to be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.’ If you play life as a finite game, you train for the rules. If life is instead an infinite game, you focus on being educated to adapt to unknowns.” This is a new concept to me, and I love it.

“I used to love cars. Here’s what drove me away. [Wired] — “How did I evolve from a person who looked for every excuse to get behind the wheel to a person who mostly avoids driving? What happened? Over two decades, I can point to six experiences that corroded my love affair with cars.”

Seven benefits to living in a smaller home. [Modern Simplicity] — “We left our big McMansion behind in Texas last year to move to small-town Oklahoma and downsize into a much smaller house. We’ve found there are many benefits to living in a smaller home. Today, I want to share a few of those with you.”

Our final item today is also about living in a smaller home. Here’s a four-minute video tour of a 200-square-foot house in the heart of Tokyo. This Japanese couple could only afford to buy a small plot of land on which to build. They decided to make the most of it.

That’s it for today, money nerds. We’ll be back tomorrow with more great stories from around the web.

It may seem like privacy has become a bigger issue in the digital age but privacy, or lack thereof, has been around for ages.

If you thought Facebook and their numerous breaches, or their overt selling of data to the likes of Cambridge Analytica, was bad – ha, you haven’t seen a thing! This stuff has been going on for a long long time.

The “Junk Mail” Men: Selling Your Data for over a Century [Saturday Evening Post] – “Like magic, seemingly, you scroll past an advertisement for the perfect product. Something you’ve been looking for (or dreaming of?) for as long as you can remember. But how did they — the big tech sorcerers — know?

Data, of course. Your age, interests, location, and browsing behavior are all fed into algorithms to present you with advertisements that align with your lifestyle. Ever since the internet became a who’s who of everyone, tech companies have been fine-tuning this practice, But predicting which products will most successfully part you from your money — targeted advertising — has been around for as long as the post office.”

If you haven’t done so recently, remember to check your credit reports at least once a year. The data isn’t necessarily being “sold” per se, but it’s very important and now is as good a time as any for a reminder to check them. You can do so at AnnualCreditReport.com.

If selling your data was scary, you may not want to read this next piece.

Criminals aren’t always the brightest in the bunch

When I heard about Barbara Corcoran, real estate mogul and one of the sharks on Shark Tank, lost nearly $400,000 in a wire transfer scam – I was a little surprised until I read about the scam itself. (she got it back)

Then I read about how an Instagram “influencer” got caught with a far less sophisticated scam:

How not to steal $1.5 million: Inside an Instagram influencer’s alleged debit card scam [Quartz] – “A brazen Instagram scam came to an end this week. On Thursday (Feb. 13), federal authorities arrested Kayla Massa, an Instagram and YouTube “influencer,” charging her with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud. She and her accomplices allegedly recruited victims over Instagram, asking them to hand over emptied-out bank cards, with the accounts then being used to deposit large amounts of stolen money.”

WHO FALLS FOR THIS!?

A rando on the Internet asks you if she can pay to “use” your bank account to make deposits? And you say yes??? Glad they were caught, can’t believe they thought this would work.

That Time Obama Pardoned a Guy Who Stole Charlie Sheen’s Honus Wagner Card [Sports Illustrated] – “A Coen Brothers-esque tale about knuckleheaded kitchen staffers at the All-Star Café, a Hollywood A-lister, the Mona Lisa of baseball cards and a plan that went horribly wrong.”

Despite the appearance of Obama’s name, this one doesn’t involve him (outside of the pardon) and would make for a fun TV movie.

Lastly, for some fun, here are the 48 Laws of Power, animated edition. The video is just 29 minutes and covers every law in Robert Greene’s bestseller. (the animation for Law #4 is my favorite)

Get after it today!

Unless happiness is avoiding lines at Disney!

You Can Pay $750 An Hour And Walk On Rides At Disney World [Inside The Magic] = “Have you ever wanted to walk onto attractions at Magic Kingdom? Or get a great seat for the shows at Disney’s Hollywood Studios? Maybe you’ve been dying to ride Flight of Passage in Disney’s Animal Kingdom but have been trouble getting a Fastpass. Well, you may be able to take advantage of this, plus so much more thanks to a VIP tour at Disney World. But it comes at a price.”

It blows my mind that:
1. You can pay to avoid lines at Disney
2. How freaking expensive it is… but those lines are no joke!

The Curse of a High Income [Perpetual Money Machine] – “Regardless of income level, the vast majority of people spend very nearly everything they earn, if not more. Most people know that living paycheck-to-paycheck is a problem. What they may not realize is that the higher their income, the bigger this problem actually is. Common sense tells us that more income is always better, but that’s not always true. If you have a high income and are spending it all, then you might be in serious trouble with limited options.”

An interesting, and related, video to the previous post — Why Those Who Feel They Have More Give Less [PBS Newshour]

Have a great day and consider sending this to a friend!

Last week’s stock market drop was unprecedented. Scary.

But if you lived through the start of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, last week didn’t feel as scary. The coronavirus is something we need to be mindful of but the financial crisis was something completely different.

When Bear Stearns collapsed, there was talk about an entire financial meltdown. Institutions make bets with one another and then they make bets on those bets. It’s like a line of dominoes… the system collapses if someone in that chain can’t pay out on claims… and that’s what happened.

Not only was there panic, it was legitimate too. We have to see what happens with the coronavirus and its impact on the economy of the world but no one is arguing all trade will collapse immediately and forever.

As you think about your investments, one thing to think about is that if you are a long term investor, you will see falls like this. I’m 39 and I’ve seen three major ones (2001 dot com bust, 2008 Great Recession, and now this most recent one 2020 coronavirus).

The Price of Admission [Compound Advisors] – “Before investing, many will tell you that they can easily stomach a 20% decline. They can “tolerate” such a risk. But when it actually happens, and real dollars are at stake, the true test begins.”

Volatility and the Day I Met John [The Human Advisor] – “In 2014, the world learned about Navinder Sarao. As a young man in London, Sarao taught himself how to trade stocks from his bedroom, starting in 2003. Over the coming years, he learned high-frequency traders were squeezing people like Sarao out of the market. So, Sarao built a system to outfox the high-frequency traders. We will never truly know precisely how much responsibilty Sarao held for the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010, but it appears he was involved. In 2016, Sarao was extradited to the US. He plead guilty to the brand-new offense of “spoofing” along with wire fraud. Both are felonies.”

Is there such a thing as good debt? [Hope + Cents] – “The idea is that if the debt is going towards an asset that will appreciate — increase in value — then that is good debt. If it’s going towards something that will depreciate — lose value — then that is bad debt. Mortgages and business loans? Good debt. Car loans, credit cards? Bad debt. That’s what they say. […] But there is a problem with categorizing debt as either good or bad. In fact, there are a few problems.”

Have a great day!

One idea that has been rolling around in my mind the last few weeks is to picture what the world will look like in 100 years and what you fight against.

There are technologies that are inevitable. Just as horses would be replaced by the car, we know there are things we won’t do in 100 years. In those cases, why fight the march of progress? I don’t believe we need to support everything, but we should remove our resistance to it.

There’s no doubt in my mind that we will rely more on solar power. It may not look like solar panels on top of everyone’s home and we may not store it in batteries, but we will get a greater share of our energy needs directly from the sun (rather than indirectly, as we do today).

So why fight it?

Another example – giving people the ability to thrive by removing some financial insecurity in their lives. It may not look like universal basic income or single-payer health care, but we will reach a point where our society offers that luxury either through the government or private industry. So as you think about the things you fight against, consider the inexorable march of time.

Our first article looks at Gravity Payments, a company that offered every employee a salary of at least $70,000 and how it’s doing after five years.

The boss who put everyone on 70K [BBC] – “In 2015, the boss of a card payments company in Seattle introduced a $70,000 minimum salary for all of his 120 staff – and personally took a pay cut of $1m. Five years later he’s still on the minimum salary, and says the gamble has paid off. […] The headcount has doubled and the value of payments that the company processes has gone from $3.8bn a year to $10.2bn.”

History is Only Interesting Because Nothing is Inevitable [Collaborative Fund] – “Nothing that’s happened had to happen, or must happen again. That’s why historians aren’t prophets. Wars, booms, busts, inventions, breakthroughs – none of those things were inevitable. They happened, and they’ll keep happening in various forms. But specific events that shape history are always low-probability events. Their surprise is what causes them to leave a mark.” This article is fascinating because it examines what people felt and tried predicting leading up to the Great Depression. What I find most fascinating is think about what people were saying leading up to the Great Recession (housing prices are crazy! but no one really knew about CDOs, the true culprit) and this most recent correction (a correction has been imminent for years but everyone pointed to trade war, not coronavirus).

And finally, another day, another Ponzi scheme!

Escape Artist [Airmail] – “Inigo Philbrick is a Ponzi-scheming gallerist who got in over his head. Now he’s gone missing—with a pack of furious collectors on his trail”

Have a great day Apexians!

Why, hello there little Apexians. How are my favorite money nerds today? To finish the week, Jim and I have once again collected some of our favorite money stories to share with you. Enjoy!

Don’t quit your job before asking yourself these questions. [Harvard Business Review] — “Is it time to quit my job? This is a question we’ve all asked ourselves at one point or another. Most people wait until they feel they must leave their job or organization, and that puts them at a disadvantage. They might end up choosing an ‘exit job’ rather than the right next career step. Don’t let this happen to you.”

Why did the U.S. give up on mass transit? [Citylab] — “One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support…While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not.”

The biggest wastes of time we regret as we get older. [Kristin Wong at Lifehacker] — “We spend a lot of energy looking for shortcuts to save time, and sure, those shortcuts add up. But when I look back, my biggest time regrets aren’t spending too much time on Twitter or mismanaging my daily tasks. Those are bad habits, but there are bigger, more systematic time wasters that have really gotten in the way.”

This last news item has nothing to do with money but it has a lot to do with wasting time. And if you’re old like I am, it might be useful to keep you up to date on pop culture.

Are you on TikTok? [Quartz Obsession] — “You might be baffled by the rise of TikTok. It’s a short-form mobile platform where users can create 15-second video clips set to music. That humble function belies its massive popularity. One of the most popular apps of all time, TikTok has been downloaded an estimated 1.3 billion times. But, unless you have a pre-teen or adolescent in your life, you may have missed the memo.” [Related: What happens when TikTok fame fades?]

A friend urged me to download TikTok a couple of weeks ago. I’ve browsed through it a couple of times but I have to be honest: I don’t get it. Like Twitter, it seems mostly pointless. It’s difficult to convey complexity and nuance in 140 characters; it’s similarly difficult to do anything meaningful with 15 seconds of video. And most of what I’ve ssen on TikTok is, well, dumb. But hey: I’m old!

To wrap things up, here’s a curious little video from Now I Know. Today is February 28th, as I’m sure you know. And because this is a leap year, tomorrow is February 29th. There is not February 30th…unless you lived in Sweden in 1712.

On a related note (also from Now I Know), North Korea has its own numbering system for years.

That’s it from us at Apex. You all go out and have a great weekend. We’ll see you in March!