Apex Money Posts

Happy Monday!

Did you travel to see the eclipse? Jim here – we did and hopefully it doesn’t disappoint! 🙂

Here are a few posts (sorry, none are eclipse-related) that I found interesting last week:

How to stay calm in a bear market [Rad Reads] – “Now I have the unsexiest investing strategy ever. I’ve been dollar-cost-averaging the S&P 500 since 1994, when I was 16 years old. NGL, it’s single-handedly made us rich. It’s been a remarkable strategy that has enabled a life of quasi-financial freedom.” Me too!

The History of Luxury in 50 Objects, From Cleopatra’s Barge to Louis Vuitton Trunks [Robb Report] – “History’s first superyacht owner was Ptolemy IV, who ruled Egypt from 221 to 205 B.C.E. Among his royal fleet was a 300-foot catamaran that towered 60 feet above the Nile, propelled by thousands of enslaved men. But it was his descendant Cleopatra, reigning nearly two centuries later, who has captured the imaginations of poets, playwrights, and Hollywood producers. Cleopatra’s barge was the first nautical fashion statement, a blazing vessel that included silver oars, colorful sails, and a gold-encrusted hull.” Wow.

10 Life-Changing Lessons from Atomic Habits (Book Summary) by James Clear [Untap Me] – “Atomic Habits by James Clear is the holy grail when it comes to guides on habit and behavior change. In this book, he provides a highly effective, practical, and step-by-step framework to embrace new good habits and break free from bad ones. This framework is based on the best techniques from behavioral science and the book is filled with tons of examples backing it up. A must-read if you’re looking to upgrade yourself and move towards becoming the best version of yourself. In this post, we will take a look at 10 key lessons from the book.”

It’s Friday, money friends, and before you saunter off to enjoy your weekend, here are a handful of stories about money (and more) to close out the week.

Are Apple Pay and Google Pay more secure than credit cards? [How-To Geek] — “Even if your Google or Apple account were to be hacked, neither service will allow you to use, modify, or view your payment methods without you using your phone (or other device) to confirm that it is you. This ensures that a hacker won’t be able to go on a spending spree with your cards.” [For five years now, I’ve been easing into Apple Pay. I use it quite a bit now.]

The golden rules of retirement travel. [Traveller] — “Adherence to anyone’s rules will never ensure a vacation free of hiccups, where no flight is ever delayed, every tour is worth the hours put in, and every meal sublime. But learning from others may improve your chances of a good time – even when things inevitably go sideways.” This advice is couched in terms of “retirement travel”, but as a frequent traveler I’d argue it’s good advice for everyone. I agree with nearly every item on this list. (But pack your own toilet paper? WTF? Why would you do that?)

Lessons I’ve learned about death and money. [Kindness Financial Planning] — “As a financial planner, I’m privileged to be alongside people as they experience death in their own lives. I hear what it’s like and help people plan to make it easier on their survivors. I’ll borrow a bit from my work and incorporate themes I’ve seen in my career, but most of this is my first hand experience, including fighting the healthcare system, how the legal system is not well set up for aging, and tips you can take to make it easier on your loved ones.”

A short history of global living conditions and why they matter. [Our World in Data] — “Global poverty is one of the very largest problems in the world today. Is it possible to make progress against this problem? To see where we are coming from, we must go far back in time. 30 or even 50 years are not enough. When you only consider what the world looked like during our lifetime, it is easy to think of the world as static — the richer parts of the world here and the poorer regions there — and to falsely conclude that it always was like that and will always be like that.”

To wrap things up, here’s my favorite video from the past week. It’s compilation of the funniest animal videos from 2023. I love it.

So funny. Animals are awesome.

Okay, that’s it for this week. Jim will be back on Monday. I’ll see you in ten days.

Welcome to Wednesday, money nerds!

Let’s start today with a piece that echoes what I’ve been thinking and writing and saying for over five years. Something fundamental has shifted in the nature of the internet, and it’s no longer a place that I want to be. More and more, I’m not.

Why you must be suspicious of tech leaders. [The Honest Broker] — “I lived through the excitement of the early Internet — and even ran two web startups…I was filled to the brim with enthusiasm about the web, but everybody was back then. That was then, this is now. Everybody I talk to now is wary and worried about the dominant digital platforms. They don’t love them, they don’t trust them, and increasingly they don’t even want them.”

Algorithms can aid price collusion, even if no humans actually talk to each other. [The Verge] — “Algorithms might help hotels illegally collude on prices, even if no humans from those businesses actually talk to each other about them, according to US antitrust enforcers.” Could this be part of the reason hotel prices have become so insane in recent years?

Automakers are sharing individual consumer driving behavior with insurance companies. [The New York Times gift article] — “Automakers and data brokers that have partnered to collect detailed driving data from millions of Americans say they have drivers’ permission to do so. But the existence of these partnerships is nearly invisible to drivers, whose consent is obtained in fine print and murky privacy policies that few read.”

How to break dependence on your phone. [Zen Habits] — “A lot of people I talk to want to decrease their usage of phones — not necessarily decreasing to zero, but decreasing impulsive usage of their phones. Many of us tend to grab our phones anytime there’s a lull, and once you get on your phone it can lead to mindless scrolling. So how can we develop more mindful use of our phones, and become less dependent on them?”

Let’s close things down with a video that isn’t really in my wheelhouse…but I enjoyed anyhow. Here’s a 14-minute look at why daredevils all want to leap from the top of this 25-step stairway.

Like I say, not my thing. But fun to watch.

Okay, that’s it for today. Back again tomorrow with more.

HELLO, APEXIANS! Welcome to Monday. Welcome to April. We’re glad to have you here. No foolin’.

We’re going to begin and close today with a bit of meditation. This first article is particularly good, especially if (like me) you’re learning to meditate.

How to enjoy things. [Superb Owl] — “I’ve returned to the concept of wide attention several times over the course of my ~8 year journey into meditation, dreamwork, psychedelics, and introspection. Each time I rediscover it, it feels like a revelation, a metanoia that catalyzes a thousand lesser insights, a key that unlocks new states of consciousness.”

Are we morally obligated to meditate? [Vox] — “A host of other studies showed that meditation can also change your neural circuitry in ways that make you more compassionate, as well as more inclined to have positive feelings toward a victim of suffering and to see things from their perspective. Further research suggested that meditation can change not only your internal emotional states but also your actual behavior.”

Is it even possible to become more productive? [Esquire] — “Time was the problem, I assumed: There was enough of it; I just wasn’t using it right. Or maybe the problem was my attention span. I couldn’t focus. Luckily, there were products for this. First, I tried blue-light-filtering glasses. Then I bought a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato and became devoted to the Pomodoro technique.”

When did people start owning so many clothes? [/r/AskHistorians on Reddit] — “I live in an old house from the early 20th century, it is a great home, but there are barely any closets to store our overabundance of clothing. It got me thinking that in less than a century our relationship with clothing has completely changed. How did this happen? Was it a slow, inevitable shift after the Industrial Revolution and the rise of consumerism? Was it a market created by the the growth of wealth and production in the 20th century? Is it something completely different?”

Lastly, here’s a little something to help you ease into the week. Rapper Lil Jon (“Turn Down for What”, etc.) has just released an album (and YouTube playlist) of guided meditations called “Total Meditation”.

Chill vibes, man. Chill vibes.

Okay, that’s it for Monday. See you all again tomorrow.

I’ve never understood why “owning a home” is the American Dream. Buying a home is such a massive financial decision but the default always seems to be that owning is better than renting.

But it’s not. If you knew you had to move in a year, buying a home makes zero sense.

There are a lot of situations where buying doesn’t make sense but that seems to be the default. It’s kind of weird when you think about it. If you’re facing a rent vs. buy decision, our first post of the day might help:

Should You Rent or Buy a House? [Of Dollars And Data] – “Buying a home is often considered the biggest financial decision people make in their lives. As a result, it makes sense as to ask yourself whether buying is the right choice when compared with renting. Unfortunately, this decision can easily get bogged down with the many assumptions and costs that go into renting vs. buying a home.”

Speaking of owning a home… experts say you need to earmark 1-4% of your home’s value for maintenance and repairs each year… hidden costs are everywhere!

Beware The Hidden Costs [Mr. Stingy] – “Assuming a $400,000 home, that’s somewhere between $4,000 and $16,000 every year. A “hidden cost” that people normally don’t think about when buying their dream home.”

Lastly, to round out the week, I have a fun feature from the New York Times following Taylor Tomlinson’s as she crafts a standup comedy bit. I love stand up and love the craft of it, these “inside baseball” features are so much fun.

See you next week!

Hi Apexians!

My apologies for missing a few days, we’re spending a few days away from home for Spring Break and it just slipped my mind!

Hope you’re having a good week, here are a few gems I found interesting:

Are We Living in The Roaring 20s? [A Wealth of Common Sense] – “If you had told me back then how well the economy would be doing now I’m not sure I would have believed you.

I’m going to make the case that we got our Roaring 20s.”

“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” [Bond Dad] – “No economic news today, so let me take a look at the supposed killer recent GOP meme that they claim is completely unanswerable: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?””

The Naked Financial Hypocrisy of Tradwife Influencers [Money with Katie] – “I perused her site. Oh, look, I thought, a lead magnet! (In digital content marketing, a “lead magnet” is a free downloadable item you give away in exchange for an email address.) Hers just so happened to be iPhone backgrounds featuring affirmations like, “With humility, I embrace my role, upholding traditions as the keeper of our cherished home.” What struck me about her website was how familiar it felt: This was pretty transparently a content creator’s monetized hub, no different from the courses, e-books, and affiliate codes distributed by the boss-babe influencers the tradwives claim to disavow. Oh my gosh, I whispered to no one, She’s girlbossing all over us! The call is coming from inside the housewife!”

One of the big news items of the last few weeks was that the National Association of Realtors had settled their lawsuit for price fixing and collusion. A key result will be a drop in real estate commissions, which was traditionally set at 6%, as homeowners and buyers can now separately negotiate commission rates with realtors.

Sam at Financial Samurai spoke with Mike Ketchmark, the lead trial attorney on the case, and then broke down what he thought would be in the future for commissions and home prices. While Sam isn’t an industry veteran, he is a smart guy and I think his thoughts on this particular subject are well-reasoned.

The NAR Settlement’s Impact On Commissions And Home Prices [Financial Samurai] – “My conjecture is that homebuyers will be reluctant to pay more than 1% of the home’s value in commissions. For instance, a buyer may be willing to allocate up to $10,000 to their agent for closing on a $1 million property. It’s either up to 1% or a flat fee. Of course, a buyer’s agent and a buyer can agree to incentive commissions if the agent is able to negotiate a lower price.”

Fluke [Morgan Housel] – “I did a talk with a high school class last week and someone asked how I decided to become a writer. I said I didn’t, it was never planned. The path that led me here is an absurd story, and one that most of us have a version of – the pure fluke.” You have to read the story, it’s a little crazy, and I can attest to his believe that everyone has a story like this. I have a story like this (maybe not nearly as sketchy though).

Turning Pro: The Difference Between Amateurs and Professionals [Farnam Street Blog] – “Why is it that some people seem to be hugely successful and do so much, while the vast majority of us struggle to tread water? There is one thing that stands out more than others: mindset. If you want results, you need to approach things like a professional, not an amateur. It all comes down to your approach.”

In a real life Brewster’s Millions (sort of), how Anil Ambani lost $42 billion:

Welcome to Friday, Apexians. Here’s what I’ve gathered for you today. There are some gems in this batch of links!

Toward a leisure ethic. [The Hedgehog Review] — “What is time well spent? Philosophers and social critics have long pondered variations of that question and offered rather consistent insights over time, even across radically different eras. Many have extolled a leisure ethic, and none would say that time well spent lies in ambitious careerism or in drifting on a sea of addictive content. Most would agree that flourishing in time consists of free, active, thoughtful engagement with the world in accordance with one’s nature.”

The best way to get things done. [Of Dollars and Data] — “I am no productivity guru, but I’ve spent a considerable amount of time studying how people get things done and how people manage their time. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a silver bullet. There is no single way that will allow you to get more done overnight. However, there are a few frameworks I’ve found that can start moving you in the right direction.”

The couples’ guide to moving in together. [Vox] — “Without a roadmap, couples contend with problems typical of dating — how much time you’ll spend together, dealing with each other’s families — in addition to the conflicts of marriage, like division of chores and finances…To ensure you’re firmly in the ‘deciding’ camp of cohabitation, there are a number of conversations worth having with your partner about living together.”

Why people mistakenly think the U.S. economy is terrible. [White Coast Investor] — “The president honestly just doesn’t have that much of an effect on the economy, no matter how much credit they try to take when it’s going well or how much their opponents blame them when it’s going poorly. Even if presidential policies had a huge effect on the economy (which they don’t), there is such a huge lag (years or even decades) in the effects of those policies that it would be challenging for the typical non-economist to really sort out who gets credit for what.” [I think this entire article is spot-on. I think members of both parties are borderline insane when it comes to how they attribute credit and blame for the economy.]

Lastly, I did find one fun video buried in my pile of art stuff on YouTube. Here’s a short (two-minute) video that is a palindrome. Yes, I’m serious.

Nothing earth-shattering there. Just weird and fun and a good way to head into the weekend. Take care my friends, and come back Monday for more.

Yo yo yo, money nerds. Good morning. Welcome to Apex Money. Welcome to Thursday. Welcome to Spring. Let’s take a look at the stories we’ve collected for you today.

Our first piece isn’t about money at all, but it’s my favorite article from the past week. It’s interesting and well-written.

The mad perfumer of Parma. [The New York Times gift article] — “The Covid boom casually defied the entire history of perfume, in which aromatic substances have primarily been used for purposes of targeted seduction (ensnaring a mate), general attraction (wanting other people to think you smell nice) or ritual (anointing the dead, appeasing gods, expelling demons). Locked in their homes, people discovered en masse that perfume could also be a private aesthetic experience, a hobby, a form of entertainment.” [True story: One of my friends here in Corvallis is a perfume nut. His enthusiasm has prompted me and Kim to dive into this world too. I’ve been testing ~36 different samples for the past few months. I even wear a different scent to bed every night!]

How much should you tip? Five people share their tipping habits. [Time] — “If you feel like you’re being asked to tip more often than ever, you’re not alone. A November report by the Pew Research Center found that 72% of Americans say that tipping is expected in more places today than it was five years ago…To better understand tipping culture, TIME asked five people to track their spending over the course of a week, and share what they tipped on and why.”

Three secrets to being rich. [The Wealthy Accountant] — “The good news is that there are only two real ways to build financial wealth. Both are easy to apply. There is a third way to become rich that builds wealth fast and creates a much bigger pile. We’ll save the super-charged wealth building secret for last.”

How the cult of busy-ness took over the world of work. [U.K. Independent] — “Once, a leisurely life was the ultimate status symbol, but now that has been flipped around: busyness has become a status symbol…This focus on constantly doing has spilled over into our personal lives too (we all have that one friend who would love to see us but things are just so hectic right now, though they might have a brief opening in mid-July).”

I wish I had a video to share with you today, but the truth is that almost all of my video-watching time lately has been spent on art. I have another watercolor class coming up in early April, so I’m refreshing my skills. And I spent ALL DAY today researching (and “theorycrafting”) a personal palette of colors for my upcoming class — very much like this. It’s fun! (But that means I’m not watching any videos worth sharing with you folks.)

Good morning, Apexians. No big preamble today. Just a quick jump into the three heady articles I’ve curated for you today…

How big tech rewired childhood. [The New Statesman] — “Our digital lifestyle isn’t only ugly on the inside; there is also scant attention to beauty on the outside. The world’s brightest and best have effectively been bought by firms whose purpose is to perfect techniques that induce people to waste their lives hunched over a glass rectangle.”

Which is better: Your browser’s password manager or a standalone service? [Consumer Reports — “Security experts disagree on whether browser password managers offer the same level of robust security as stand-alone password managers, but one thing is clear: Both types of password managers make it easier for people to create and store unique passwords for each account.” [Hey! This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. I used to pay for a standalone password service but found it more annoying than helpful. Since switching to browser/ecosystem-based password management, I’m much happier.]

What happened when I forced myself to wake up at 5 a.m. every day for a month. [Fast Company] — “Unfortunately, my experiment didn’t produce long-lasting results. When my month was over, I immediately returned to my normal 5:45 a.m., which felt like sleeping in. I even slept until 10 a.m. on weekend mornings–a very rare occurrence for me. I feel more productive now that I’m back to my normal routine.” [Hey! This is another article that’s relevant to me. I’ve been an early riser for most of my life. During times of Peak J.D., I get up at 5:30. In recent years, though, I’ve been sleeping in until 6:30. Just this week, I’m making a push to get up at 5:30 again.]

That’s it. Short and sweet this Wednesday. I’ll be back to share more with you tomorrow.