Apex Money Posts

Good morning, money nerds. We’re glad to see you stop by. As always, we have some of the best financial news from around the web to share with you. Are you ready?

Generally speaking, we end Apex Money installments with a video (when we include one). Let’s mix things up! Today, let’s — gasp — start with our video. It’s a brief look at why “99 cent pricing” works.

Personally, I hate this ploy, and I like to think it doesn’t work on me. But I’m probably just fooling myself. Now, let’s move on to our normal, text-based stories.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The borogroves aren’t really mimsy this time of year, but lookee here: Craigslist has, at long last, released an official app for mobile devices. It’s currently only available for Apple iOS devices, but there is a beta version for Android, if that’s how you roll.

Remember when you wanted what you currently have? [Budgets Are Sexy] — “In a world constantly pushing us for ‘more’, it sure is a nice reminder of everything we’ve already achieved/received if we actually take a second to reflect upon it. Here’s a short list of all the things I remember really wanting bad over the years — how about you?”

There’s treasure everywhere! [Financial Panther] — “There’s a natural tendency for many of us to think in worst-case scenarios. We’re often taught to play things safe, and if we do anything out of the ordinary, there’s no shortage of people who will step in to tell us all of the bad stuff that can happen. I think this often makes us forget about all of the opportunities that are out there. We make our decisions, not from a place of abundance and optimism, but rather from a place of fear and scarcity.”

How to have a true hobby, not a side hustle. [Vox] — “The next time you reach for your smartphone or tablet out of habit — or boredom — consider a more fulfilling alternative: find a hobby, or an activity that you do purely for pleasure and relaxation, not for work or necessity…Making time for non-essential activities is, in fact, essential. Challenging leisure activities — such as hobbies — improve mental and physical wellbeing, foster learning, and build communities. Oh — and it’s fun!” I love this article!

Lastly, here’s a Very Important Link for all y’all. The staff over at The Kitchn tried eight different methods of cooking bacon to find out which one was best. Can you guess which technique produced the best results? (As for me, well, I’ve never met bacon I didn’t like.)

Well, that’s certainly plenty for a Thursday. We’ll be back tomorrow with more fun stuff. Got something we should share? Send it in!

Welcome to Wednesday, money nerds! We’re back with more top money stories from around the web. Today’s letter is W, and today’s theme is women.

First up, here’s a little data visualization from /r/dataisbeautiful on Reddit. It graphs the occupational distribution of men and women in the labor force (according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics info). Nothing deep here. Just fun with numbers.

And our first actual story is semi-related.

Gendered division of labor served a purpose. To make progress, don’t erase it. Replace it. [Behavioral Scientist] — “Although women have made significant strides toward gender equity in the workplace, this does not always translate to gender equity in the household. Studies have found that women often shoulder an extra burden at home, even women who work as much outside the home as their husbands do.”

How women are changing the FIRE community — and the world. [The Wealthy Accountant] — “I don’t want to get bogged down on the inequities women have faced and instead want to focus on their contribution. Celebrating the incredible work women have done (and are doing) is certain to benefit women more than complaining. We can’t change the past, but we can do something about the here and now.”

Are you sacrificing too much for your kids? [Chief Mom Officer] — “That advice they give you on airplanes – to put on your own oxygen mask before helping your kids – applies here. Once your kids have their basic needs fulfilled, you need to make sure that you’re not fulfilling their wants at the expense of your own financial future.”

Last but not least, here’s a video that’s better than it ought to be. It’s three Russian young women performing a cover of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Can’t Stop” in their kitchen. On a trombone and ukelele. No joke…this is awesome!

That’s it for today. See you again tomorrow, money nerds. And remember: If there’s something you think we should share, send it in!

Hey hey, whaddya say, money nerds? Today is Tuesday and it’s time for some top money stories from around the web.

We’re going to kick things off by linking to ourselves. That’s right! Jim and I are the guests on the most recent episode of the always-awesome “What’s Up Next?” podcast. Doc G and Paul pick our brains to find out: Why on earth would anyone build a curation site like Apex Money? And, more importantly, is curation art?

Now, here are your regularly-scheduled money stories…

Why you shouldn’t trust numbers and stats from the mass media. [The Financial Bodyguard] — “Big numbers sound scarier. That’s why the media uses them. To drive visitors to their websites, as clickbait, to drive sales and advertising revenue. The media’s interests are not aligned with yours. Next time you see one of these headlines, ask yourself the following questions…”

The power of a meaningful life. [Scientific American] — “Who could argue with happiness? Count the journalist Emily Esfahani Smith as one. Happiness is not itself a problem, of course, but she worries that its relentless pursuit — and the self-help industry that’s grown up around that mission — has left us feeling empty, dislocated and, well, unhappy.”

“How I got rich…” [Derek Sivers] — “I don’t usually talk about money, but a friend asked me what it was like to get rich, and he wanted to know specifics, so I told him my story…When I finished telling my friend this story, he asked for more. I said no, that was it.” I love all of Sivers’ stuff. This is no exception.

To wrap things up for the day, here’s something really obscure. If you’re old like I am, you might remember that in Olden Times, back when the world was young, computer programs came on floppy disks. Or cassette tapes. Or…vinyl records? For real! Check this out…

True story: I still buy the occasional vinyl record. I just picked up U2’s “Unforgettable Fire” last week. And last month I finally acquired Taylor Swift on vinyl!

Brrrrr! It’s cold out there, money nerds! We’ve reached December and that means the start of meteorological winter in the northern hemisphere. Time to hunker down by the fire while enjoying some of the top money stories from around the web.

The Munger Operating System: How to live a life that really works. [Farnam Street] — “In 2007, Charlie Munger gave the commencement address at USC Law School…The commencement speech is an excellent response to the Big Question: How do we live a life that really works? It has so many of Munger’s core ideas that we think the speech represents the Munger Operating System for life.”

How (and why) to simplify your life. [Four Pillar Finance] — “I’m a firm believer in the idea that most people can drastically improve their life by simplifying it. By doing less things, but with more focus. By working fewer hours, but with higher productivity. By focusing less on duration and more on intensity. By saying ‘yes’ to fewer activities, but giving more energy to those activities.”

“How we bought our new car.” [The Simple Path to Wealth] — “While buying a new car is now a much better experience than it was in the ‘bad old days’, it is still a bit of a hassle. The key to making it as painless as possible is to separate the selection process from the actual buying process.”

To end things right on a Monday, here’s a beautiful two-minute video of a glider descending in the rain near Florence, Italy. Feels very wintery, doesn’t it? Set it to full-screen and enjoy the experience.

Safe travels!

If you’re in the US, I hope you’re having a relaxing day spending it with family and friends. If you aren’t, or otherwise aren’t celebrating Thanksgiving this year, the best to you and yours as most of the United States consumes what Benjamin Franklin once proposed would be our national bird!

On a scheduling note, we won’t be doing our usual curation today and tomorrow.

In lieu of this, we wanted to share some other money curation sites that we think are great and that you should consider checking out.

Collecting Wisdom, Camp F.I.R.E. Finance, and Personal Finance Blogs (dot com) are three sites that publish daily curations. If you feel like you don’t get enough, those three are great sources of wisdom and it’s fun to see the different curators’ personalities shine through. I think most people can tell the difference between JD and myself, well now you can add more voices to the mix!

See you on Monday when JD will return to his spot on the curation chair!

Happy pre-turkey day!

(if you’re outside the United States, happy regular old Wednesday!)

Today, we have a few juicy posts for you to consume:

Why the Rich are Getting Richer [ESI Money] – ESI ‘reorganizes’ and reviews Robert Kiyosaki’s book, Why The Rich Are Getting Richer. The book explains a few ideas about wealth-building that I think are applicable to everyone and I enjoyed ESI’s commentary, especially about phantom income. 🙂

My $10,000 Passive Side Hustle On Etsy Selling Printables [Debt Free Happens] – “I recently hit a milestone that I never could have imagined two years ago. As of October of this year, I hit over $10,000 in sales on my Etsy shop Modern Printable Shop selling printables (or digital products).” The internet is amazing!

How NBA executive Jeff David stole $13 million from the Sacramento Kings [ESPN] – It’s a little like when you fudge your expense reports… but for like thirteen million dollars. (in all seriousness, this story starts off pretty mundane but if you enjoy a good accounting forensics story, this will be a fascinating read)

And for a little Thanksgiving fun, here are 14 facts about the best Thanksgiving movie ever, courtesy of Mental Floss.

We’ll be back after Thanksgiving!

Hello fellow money nerds!

This week is always tricky for me because our kids’ school has half days on Monday and Tuesday and no school on Wednesday (naturally, Thursday and Friday are off). I don’t know if it’s because I’m now the parent or if I forgot, but kids don’t go to school a lot. There are a ton of holidays and half-days built into the schedule.

It’s wild.

Anyway, today’s articles have no theme other than I really enjoyed them all and I hope you do too!

7 Ways Volunteering Can Save You Money [The Dollar Stretcher] – “There are those who see volunteering as just giving your time for free, and while that’s essentially the premise, there’s a lot more to it than that. Depending on the circumstances, volunteering can actually save you money, which means not only are you giving back, but you’re also doing a little something for yourself in the process.”

How to Find Motivation to Save Money When You’re Surrounded by Reckless Spenders [Modern Frugality] – “It takes some serious willpower to forgo instant gratification for a long term reward. Saving money is hard enough. But when you’re surrounded by reckless spenders, the task becomes even tougher. Whilst you’re updating your budget spreadsheet, trying out different investing courses to become more financially stable, and generally fighting the urge to spend money recklessly, your friends are living their best lives, burning through money like there’s no tomorrow and giving you a serious case of FOMO.”

The 5 Types of Market Crash Predictions [A Wealth of Common Sense] – “JP Morgan put out a research note last week that named names of people who have called for a crash scenario in the past decade: […] Reading through these got me thinking about the different types of market crash calls. There has been such a huge influx of crash calls because of the 2008 debacle it seems only fair that we break these down by the motivating force behind these dire predictions.”

The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years [Slate] – “Slate’s books team selects the definitive works of reporting, memoir, and argument of the past quarter-century.”

How many have you read? (me? zero. Zero! I’ll have to fix that over the holidays)

Enjoy the rest of your day!

I roll my eyes whenever someone says that “their mind was blown” by something… because it’s rarely true. What they learned might be a little surprising but it’s not nearly on the level of seeing your amygdala ooze out of your earholes.

BUT… I think I’m going to share with you something that I think will come close.

There’s a state in our union that is rapidly becoming the “go-to” place to hide wealth. Last year, a Chinese billionaire transferred $4.5 billion into the state. And in the past decade, hundreds of billions of dollars have left more traditional havens (like Switzerland) to move to this state.

Want to give it a guess?

The great American tax haven: why the super-rich love South Dakota [The Guardian, but redaction in the title is mine] – “The money of the world’s mega-wealthy, though, is heading there in ever-larger volumes. In the past decade, hundreds of billions of dollars have poured out of traditional offshore jurisdictions such as Switzerland and Jersey, and into a small number of American states: Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming – and, above all, South Dakota. “To some, South Dakota is a ‘fly-over’ state,” the chief justice of the state’s supreme court said in a speech to the legislature in January. “While many people may find a way to ‘fly over’ South Dakota, somehow their dollars find a way to land here.””

Why I Change My Voicemail Weekly Though Nobody Ever Calls [Financial Pilgrimage] – “Like making my bed, setting my voicemail every week is that simple task that helps jump start my work week. […] Once my voicemail message has been recorded, our system requires us to listen back through our message in full before finalizing. Like most everyone (except psychopaths) I hate hate hate listening to the sound of my own voice. (Seeing myself on video is infinitely worse.) Yet, every Monday I put myself through this tiny bit of mental anguish. Why? […] The periods in my life in which the most intense growth has occurred have been during times where I was most uncomfortable. While there is a fine line of when too much discomfort could result in extreme anxiety or even failure, we often need to be placed outside of our comfort zone to grow.”

Financial Freedom Mindset [Handful of Thoughts] – “At the age of 32 and a half, (I know a weird age to reflect on), it hit me. If I was going to work until the traditional retirement age of 65 then I would have to work for as long as I had currently been alive! Just the thought of that depressed me. My job was enjoyable, but it’s not what I wanted to devote the majority of my time and energy to for the next 30+ years. I wasn’t ready to just up and quit my job but something had to change – I needed a mindset shift. So after a lot of thought and reflection I adopted a financial freedom mindset.” Maria shares her approach to establishing her financial freedom mindset and working towards making it a reality in her life.

Before you go, do you love LEGOs? If so, it probably comes as no surprise that there’s a robust secondary market of collectors, investors, and resellers:

Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing [Medium] – “In 2000, you, enterprising investor, might have bought some index funds from the S&P 500 and, financial meltdown and all, ended up doubling your money by today. By contrast, if you invested in one (or several) collector’s edition LEGO Imperial Star Destroyers for $270, you would have made quintupled your money. Today, the same factory-sealed set can fetch over $1,500.”

!!!

Hello, money nerds. It’s Friday. But you knew that already. Typically, Jim and I would bring you a daily dose of money news, but I’ve commandeered today’s edition of Apex Money from him to write about something entirely different.

If you follow me at Get Rich Slowly, you know that I suffer from depression and anxiety. This has been especially bad over the past month, and I don’t know why. But last week, on a whim, I watched last year’s documentary about Mr Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?“.

Then, because I’m a nerd, I dove deep. I started reading about the live of Fred Rogers. More importantly, I started listening to what he said. I started paying attention to his philosophy.

Within 24 hours, I was feeling better about myself — and about the world.

Mr. Rogers made a mission out of speaking to children. He wanted to connect with them where they were. But let me tell you: He connected with this fifty-year-old man. His message of radical love and acceptance was just what I needed to hear. He believes that it’s important for every person to learn how to love — and to be loved in return.

So, today’s edition of Apex Money has nothing whatsoever to do with money. It has everything to do with Mr. Rogers. But I promise you that if you take the time to read and watch the pieces here, you’ll be better for it.

Ready?

Can you say…”Hero”? [Esquire] — “He was barely more than a boy himself when he learned what he would be fighting for, and fighting against, for the rest of his life. He was in college. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. His name was Fred Rogers. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. It was a television.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BZlyxS37Kk

What would Mister Rogers do? [The Atlantic] — “He lost, and that the digitization of all human endeavor has devoured his legacy as eagerly as it has devoured everything else. But that he stands at the height of his reputation 16 years after his death shows the persistence of a certain kind of human hunger — the hunger for goodness. He had faith in us, and even if his faith turns out to have been misplaced, even if we have abandoned him, he somehow endures…”

Next, here’s a story that’s not about Fred Rogers but about Tom Hanks, another prototypical “nice guy”. Hanks plays Rogers in new movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which is out in theaters today.

This Tom Hanks story will help you feel less bad. [The New York Times] — “Tom Hanks is as nice as you think he is and exactly what you hope him to be, which is great unless you are someone trying to tell a good story about him, with elements like an arc and narrative tension. ‘Saintly Actor Playing Saintly Public Television Children’s Host Mister Rogers Is Saintly’ is not a great story. But what am I supposed to do? He sat facing me, cheerful and focused and willing. Maybe this could just be a story that makes you feel better.”

Finally, here’s three-and-a-half minutes of Mr. Rogers bloopers and outtakes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB54__etV7A

My hope is that at least one Apex reader will consume all of these pieces today and find that her life is better because of it. Because mine was.

Thank you for joining us, neighbor. Please know that you are loved. And please tell somebody you know that you love them.

We’ll be back on Monday with articles that are actually about money.

Have you ever watched Trading Places?

It was released in 1983 and stars Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. The premise was a bet between two rich brothers, Randolph and Mortimer Duke, that centered around nature vs. nuture. They made a wager to see what would happen if you switched the circumstances of two people on opposite sides of the economic and social spectrum. They swapped the lives of Aykroyd’s character, who was a managing director of the commodities brokerage firm, and Murphy’s character, a street hustler.

Some parts of the movie don’t stand the test of time, as often happens with movies, but overall it’s an entertaining movie that costs the Duke brothers more than they anticipated when they make a bet on frozen concentrated orange juice futures.

Today’s curations, if you can believe it, will be entirely about bets that were both good and bad:

The Trade of the Century: When George Soros Broke the British Pound [Priceonomics] – “In 1992, George Soros brought the Bank of England to its knees. In the process, he pocketed over a billion dollars. Making a billion dollars is by all accounts pretty cool. But demolishing the monetary system of Great Britain in a single day with an elegantly constructed bet against its currency? That’s the stuff of legends.”

How I got sucked into the cryptocurrency craze and walked away with $13 million [The Hustle] – “This is the first-person account of Dan Conway, an ex-middle manager in corporate America who made a fortune betting his life savings on cryptocurrency.” He bet his family’s life savings plus equity in his home on Ethereum. It worked out for him (if you don’t count how the stress may have taken years off his life!) but this was foolishness.

The making of Amazon Prime, the internet’s most successful and devastating membership program [Recode] – “It’s easy to forget now, but Amazon wasn’t always the king of online shopping. In the fall of 2004, Jeff Bezos’s company was still mostly selling just books and DVDs.” Then Jeff Bezos made a massive bet that people would pay an annual fee to get free two-day shipping. And now Amazon is worth $900 billion.

Do you remember the NBA ref that was caught fixing NBA games? His name was Tim Donaghy and earlier this year ESPN broke down how it all unraveled for him.

Have a great day, send this to a friend you think will enjoy it, and don’t make any stupid bets!