Apex Money Posts

Happy Monday!

I enjoy all kinds of personal finance writing. Sometimes, I’m in the mood for a bit of money philosophy and mindset.

And sometimes, I just want to see a list of little hacks and tips you can immediately use to improve my life a wee bit. Our first post of the week does that.

Every Bit Helps [humbledollar] – “IN NEW ORLEANS, a lagniappe refers to a small gift or bonus—like receiving 13 items for the price of 12, or a so-called baker’s dozen. Today, credit card points are a popular form of lagniappe, delivering a modest bonus every time you spend. But many other lagniappes are also readily available:”

Get Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable [Nir and Far] – “We may not enjoy whatever discomfort we expose ourselves to in the moment—be it a physical, mental, or spiritual hardship—but doing so is key to personal growth and even just plain contentment.”

Watch It Burn – Two scammers, a web of betrayal, and Europe’s fraud of the century. [Atavist] – “Daphne and other scammers’ pillaging of Europe’s carbon market constitutes what the media have called “the fraud of the century”—billions of euros were stolen in a matter of months. The shadowy scheme attracted established crime rings and amateur hucksters alike, many of whom knew each other. But the scam lent itself to duplicity: No one was ever sure who was working with whom, who might be screwing someone else over, or who had started the whole thing.” It’s really really really long.

It’s Friday, folks, but before you head into the weekend, we’re here with another installment of Apex Money. Let’s dive in.

How to raise a rich kid. [rich & REGULAR] — “Kids already understand what’s happening around them and they’re capable of more. But when we don’t tell them the truth or answer the questions they have, they freak out. They look for answers elsewhere and they find stuff that is wrong, biased, and scary.”

What if you invested at the peak before the financial crisis of 2008? [A Wealth of Common Sense] — “The historical 9-10% annual return in the stock market isn’t simply made up of the good stuff. Those results include some pretty gnarly periods of volatility. And one of the main reasons we get to experience bull markets like the one we are living through today is because there is always the chance of a crash like we experienced in 2008.”

Sports gambling is a gateway drug. [Business Insider] — “While more and more Americans are getting used to wagering on games from their phone, sports betting is just the start. The next step is to get people to gamble on everything.”

How to land a job if you’re over 50. [Fast Company] — “With age comes experience, which businesses desperately need as they look to cut staff while maintaining efficiency. Here’s how older candidates can showcase their skills and demonstrate their advantages to stand out in the saturated job market.”

Lastly, here’s a video that has nothing to do with money.

As part of my recent quest to learn to draw and paint, I’ve alsy been deliberately developing different handwriting. I’m teaching myself to write an entirely new alphabet. It’s challenging. And fun. And sort of pointless, I guess, except that my handwriting has become much neater.

Well, yesterday as I was watching art videos (I watch a ton of art videos nowadays), I came across this eight-minute segment from JetPens about how to get the neatest handwriting of your life.

I’ve watched this video once now, but I plan to watch it a couple of more times so that I can incorporate its ideas into my “new handwriting” project.

As a sidenote, I should point out that both Tanja (of Our Next Life) and I are big fans of JetPens. It’s just a nerdy online store where you can buy cool pens and paper and related supplies. Tanja and I are both obsessed with this sort of stuff, and we often text each other with our latest finds.

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

Good morning, money nerds. Let’s dive right into today’s batch of links.

Our first story today is spectacular. It’s a strong antidote to the deterministic ideas that have begun to cloud a lot of modern personal-finance writing (and videos). I liked this enough that, at last, I’ve added Money with Katie to my regular reads. Should have done that before.

The importance of seeking evidence to the contrary. [Money with Katie] — “Doomerism works online because it can be fun. There’s a miserable solidarity cultivated in that humorous, hopeless soil. The problem is, many of the people digging their hands in the dirt have had their backs turned to untended greener pastures for so long that they don’t even notice they’re there anymore.”

How much cash should you have in your investment portfolio? [Oblivious Investor] — “There’s nothing magical about cash. Whatever we can achieve by shifting a chunk of the portfolio from bonds into cash, we can probably achieve by just slightly bumping up the overall fixed-income allocation instead.” [Thoughtful answer to a question I had myself recently.]

A simple habit for smarter book reading. [Scott H. Young] — “Reading rebuttals can often bolster your appreciation of the original idea because you come to know which parts are conceded by even its most strident critics. When even your opponents admit that you’re right about something, it’s a strong sign that at least that part of your idea is correct. More importantly, reading thoughtful rebuttals outsources the expertise and extensive thinking required to find the flaws in big ideas to someone qualified to find them.” This is a great idea and something I already do with film. Never thought about doing it with books though.

Lastly, here’s a little something fun that has zero to do with personal finance. It’s Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” performed by…Klingons.

Ah, that’s some funny stuffy, isn’t it?

Okay, that’s it for today. I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Welcome to Wednesday, Apexians. It’s one of those days where I’m devoting our entire installment to just one piece. Because I think it’s important.

For years, I’ve been grousing about the enshittification of the internet. (I didn’t use that word, of course, until Cory Doctorow coined it last year. It’s perfect. (More here.)

I was always a vocal detractor of Twitter. I loathe TikTok, which I think embodies everything that’s wrong with modern culture. It’s a net negative for our society — and a huge one — not a net positive.

Anyhow, Ted Gioia (the honest broker) recently published a pair of articles that I think ought to be required reading for anyone who thinks seriously about modern life. Today’s installment of Apex is devoted exclusively to them.

The rise of dopamine culture. [The Honest Broker] — “The tech platforms aren’t like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies — because they will be the dealers. Addiction is the goal. They don’t say it openly, but they don’t need to. Just look at what they do. Everything is designed to lock users into an addictive cycle.”

In both articles, Gioia shares this graphic, which I think is both clever and apt.

His second piece is a follow-up to the first.

In praise of ritual. [The Honest Broker] — “I want to focus on the many positive ways people create a healthy, integrated life that minimizes scrolling and swiping and mindless digital distractions. Many of you have found joy and solace—and an escape from app dependence—in artmaking or nature walks or other real world activities. There are countless ways of being-in-the-world with contentment and mindfulness. Today I want to discuss just one bedrock of real world life that is often neglected—or frequently even mocked: Ritual.”

In that second piece, Gioia writes, “I find it revealing and disturbing that readers who work on the front lines (in education, therapy, or tech itself) expressed the highest degree of alarm. They know better than anybody where we’re heading, and want to find an escape path.”

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself browsing a couple of subreddits for university professors. The posts there echo Gioia. They’re scary.

I know this probably comes across very much as “old man bitching about young people”, but that’s not what I intend it to be. It’s not only young people. It’s all people — or at least all people who actively use modern devices and the internet. We’re all falling victim to this. Even me. Especially me.

So, that’s Apex for today. It’s probably also my personal blog for today haha. This topic is important enough to me that I want to spread it to as large an audience as possible.

I’ll be back tomorrow with our regularly-scheduled programming.

Today is Tuesday, my friends. You know what that means: Drawing class! Okay, you didn’t actually know that Tuesday means drawing class but it does. For the past week, I’ve been practicing nothing but faces. They’re challenging haha.

While I practice getting my proportions correct, you folks can enjoy these recent stories that caught my eye.

New dating app matches people only if they have good credit scores. 🤣 [Fast Company] — “Love might be blind, but it’s not fiscally irresponsible. At least not if a new dating app has its way. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Score, a new app (and website) for the financially minded, hopes to attract people with “good to excellent” credit who know the importance of monitoring their finances. No one with a credit score of less than 675 is allowed to join.” On a related note, turns out several of my financially independent friends use FIRE dating. Who knew? [Nerd trivia: This is the first time I have ever hyperlinked an emoji.]

Deepfake scammer walks off with $25 million in AI heist. [Ars Technica] — “This incident marks the first of its kind in Hong Kong involving a large sum and the use of deepfake technology to simulate a multi-person video conference where all participants (except the victim) were fabricated images of real individuals. The scammers were able to convincingly replicate the appearances and voices of targeted individuals using publicly available video and audio footage.” Craaaaaa-zy!

Do anything. [Aaron Francis] — “Know that it’s okay to change course once you’ve started. It’s okay to start something and then realize something might be better for you. That’s the beauty of action; it opens paths you wouldn’t have seen earlier.” [Fantastic advice, but one of those annoying sites where every sentence is its own paragraph. Why do people do this? It’s awful to read.]

Reversible and irreversible decisions. [Farnam Street] — “Sometimes you can handle the uncertainty or outcomes. Like trying a new restaurant after reading a review or hearing about it from someone at work. Other times, you want to remove as much uncertainty as possible. You wouldn’t decide to marry someone after one amazing date, buy a car without test driving it, or put all your money into a stock you overheard someone talking about in line at the grocery store.” [Pretty sure this is one of Jim’s favorite concepts.]

I don’t really have a “bonus” video for you today. Instead, I’ll share one of my recent favorite art videos. You’ll probably think it’s a bit lame, but I like it. It’s 20 minutes of a pro artist describing how and why he uses cross-hatching as he demonstrates in real time.

I continue to make progress on my art journey. I don’t practice as much as I ought — maybe three two-hour sessions per week instead of daily 60-minute sessions — and it’s partly because I don’t know what to practice. To that end, I’m building a library of “art exercises” on YouTube (and via photocopied art books). This crosshatching exercise is one of my faves because it’s a cool effect and it’s more difficult than it looks. (Like, that “energy field” crosshatching with the brush pen seems like it should be easy but I cannot get my results to look convincing.)

Okay, that’s it for today. See you all tomorrow!

Well, hello. It’s me, J.D., and I’m here with another week of fun stories about money (and more). I was supposed to be here last week, of course, but Real Life got the best of me. And I’m okay with that!

One of my recent projects has been to turn a corner of our “library” downstairs into an art studio. I got that finished yesterday. In the process, I found some notes from the end of January 2021 — notes about how the internet was making me crazy. I’m pleased to say that today, three years later, I’ve managed to find a (mostly) healthy relationship with the web. That mostly means I spend far less time online now than at any other point in the past thirty years.

How to spend money to maximize happiness. [Barking Up the Wrong Tree] — Strangely, this article doesn’t offer a good pull-quote (meaning the thesis is never clearly stated). That said, it’s a nice summary of the research into how money affects happiness.

The joy of not wanting things. [Becoming Minimalist] — “Imagine being freed of the desire to keep up with the ever-changing trends, gadgets, and fashions that surround us constantly. That freedom would allow us to spend our money more intentionally. It would allow us to spend our resources on those things we truly value. Imagine the joy we would feel knowing our money is not being wasted on things that don’t matter.” [Mindful spending always brings joy.]

Why you should plan to get less done. [Range Widely] — “I was falling prey to the planning fallacy on a daily basis, and that it was making the to-do lists entirely useless, and leaving me frustrated at the end of each day. The solution, fortunately, was pretty simple: put way less stuff on each day’s list. Now I put one single thing atop the day’s list that, if accomplished, will mean the workday was a clear step in the right direction.”

Failing to lose. [Novel Investor] — “Purposely losing money in the stock market seems like it should be an easy task. It turns out it takes some luck to lose money in the market. The same goes for making it.” [I love this notion: Deliberately try to lose money in the stock market. It serves to illustrate a couple of important investing principles.]

Lastly, I really like today’s video. It’s a cover of Noah Kahan’s “Call Your Mom” from Marianne Beaulieu. I think it’s beautiful. (Skip to 1:59 if you don’t want to listen to her preamble.)

Before stumbling on this video, I had never heard of Marianne Beaulieu or Noah Kahan or “Call Your Mom”. For the past few days, I’ve had Kahan’s album “Stick Season” playing on repeat. It has a melancholy vibe that I dig.

Okay, that’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow to share more!

Hello, Apexians. J.D. here. Alas, I have fallen down on the job.

Last Thursday, I flew to Phoenix to hang out with some of my money buddies at Culdesac Tempe. (Mr. Money Mustache’s post about the project.)

I packed at the last minute, as I often do. This isn’t usually a problem. I travel often, and I have a routine. But for some reason, I couldn’t get my shit together last Thursday, so I forgot a couple of things — including my laptop.

Translation: I wasn’t able to spend my free time gathering cool stuff to share with you here at Apex. Instead, I spent my freetime riding electric bikes all over Phoenix, chatting with friends, and catching the premier of the new Dune movie. (My review: I loved the first one, and this one is okay, but it didn’t live up to the crazy hype it’s getting.)

My days are packed this week, so I don’t have time to catch up now either. Instead, Apex will take this week off and I’ll pick up normal curation duties next Monday.

I apologize for depriving you of a week’s worth of cool links. I’ll make up for it next week!

Ok, despite the numerous exclamation marks, I’m not losing my mind about NVIDIA even though it added $277 billion to it’s market cap yesterday. I think it’s great that technology companies are doing well and while I don’t directly own any shares, they’re in the S&P 500 so our brokerage account balances went up too.

It’s just crazy how quickly things are moving and we’ll see if this is showing us the way forward or just some early excitement. Either way, nothing to do except enjoy the ride.

Speaking of how quickly things are changing… did you see this?

New dating app requires good credit score to join [Yahoo Finance] – “A new dating app called “Score” has been launched by financial services company Neon Money Club. Score is positioning itself as an app for financially responsible singles, requiring users to have a minimum credit score of 675 in order to join.” What time to be alive – and another reason to keep your credit score high!

Compensating compassion [Works in Progress] – “Too few people donate their organs, dead or alive. How can we make it easier to donate, but avoid the abuses that some fear from cash payments?” If you’re interested in this subject, incentivizing organ donation, this article is very thorough in looking at the data and experiences of other countries. I learned quite a bit about the various programs across the world.

Finally, I love ramen. But I love watching people hone their craft even more.

The Ramen Lord – “At Chicago’s buzziest new restaurant, Mike Satinover is obsessed with one goal: making the perfect bowl of Japanese noodles.”

Like Mike Satinover, obsess over something this weekend!

Index Funds Have Officially Won [Morningstar] – “But for active management, ill omens lurked. Although retail buyers cared little for indexing, the strategy had by the mid-’90s become the rage among institutional investors. What’s more, Vanguard 500 Index’s VFINX 20-year returns were appealing. Before long, the marketplace would notice that fund’s success. In fact, I ventured at the time, indexing might someday account for as much as … gasp … 30% of the fund industry’s assets.” I’m surprised that passive (index) mutual funds have only exceeded 50% market share in January of 2024, I suppose that’s a bit of confirmation bias on my part. Some good thoughts (and criticisms of those thoughts) on the implications of this.

What’s Driving the Stock Market Returns? [A Wealth of Common Sense] – “Earnings growth has been the main driver of stock market returns since the end of the Great Financial Crisis. It’s also worth noting that although dividend yields have been relatively low in recent decades, the growth in dividends paid out by corporations has been healthy.”

Minimalism is Neat, but Clutter Makes a Home [The Atlantic] – “I’m reconsidering these mementos and many others as I try to clear out space in the small apartment I share with my husband and toddler. But I can’t seem to give them away. So they collect in the corners of rooms, evoking the randomness of a thrift store—and not the twee, curated kind. I don’t necessarily love the look of mismatched junk congesting the nooks and crannies of my home, but the clutter satisfies a deeper emotional need. Collectively, it represents every stage of my life, the lives of relatives who have died, and now the life of my not-quite-2-year-old daughter. It connects me to people and times that would otherwise feel lost.” Ok maybe clutter isn’t so bad… and the last paragraph is a doozy. (tip of the cap to Kottke.org, who shared this article and whose gift article link you’re clicking)

We have a medley of articles – a post from my friend Robert sharing his rules for getting rich, a crazy story in The Cut about someone getting scammed out of $50k, and finally a note from the FTC about what they’re doing to stop AI impersonation.

Enjoy!

How To Be Rich: 10 Rules To Grow Wealth [The College Investor] – “Being rich doesn’t always mean having money, but 90% of the time it does. However, there are habits, behaviors, and “rules” essentially, that will allow you to get rich and grow wealth. It’s not an overnight process. There aren’t any get rich quick schemes here. What you’re going to read below are my ten rules for how to get rich and grow wealth – over time.”

The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger [The Cut] – “On a Tuesday evening this past October, I put $50,000 in cash in a shoe box, taped it shut as instructed, and carried it to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, my phone clasped to my ear. “Don’t let anyone hurt me,” I told the man on the line, feeling pathetic.” This story is unbelievable.

FTC Proposes New Protections to Combat AI Impersonation of Individuals [FTC] – “The agency is taking this action in light of surging complaints around impersonation fraud, as well as public outcry about the harms caused to consumers and to impersonated individuals. Emerging technology – including AI-generated deepfakes – threatens to turbocharge this scourge, and the FTC is committed to using all of its tools to detect, deter, and halt impersonation fraud.”