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Apex Money Posts

Are smart thermostats worth it?

Welcome to Thursday, money nerds. My name is J.D. Roth and I’ll be your host as we explore some of the best recent articles from the world of personal finance. Ready? Let’s dive in!

“My ever-changing relationship with my clothes.” [Frugalwoods] — “This post isn’t about money, but it is about how material things can take on too much importance in our lives. How we can define ourselves by what we own–by what we buy.”

Are smart thermostats worth it? [Consumer Reports] — “Some people might find that a simpler thermostat suits their needs better than a higher-end model with automation. People who understand and appreciate how smart thermostats work — essentially letting their house get warmer or colder sometimes — tend to be satisfied with them.”

The affordable housing crisis explained. [Bitches Get Riches] — “The United States is currently in an affordable housing crisis…It is now significantly harder for a 25-year-old American to make rent than it was for me ten years ago when I was that age. And if they’re struggling to make rent, it’s exponentially harder for them to save up a down payment to buy a home.”

How to spot fake reviews on Amazon. [Wired] — “The overwhelming majority of fake positives are five-star reviews, and false negatives tend to be one-star reviews, so you are more likely to find legitimate reviews in the middle. Canny fake reviewers understand that overselling is a problem and may award four stars rather than the full five, but no one is paying for two- or three-star reviews.”

To close things out today, here’s a fun story from TV show 60 Minutes. It’s a 14-minute segment explaining how a retired couple from rural Michigan discovered a loophole in the state lottery — and made millions of dollars for themselves and their friends.

I’ve always wondered if something like this were possible. It’s seemed to me that there must be instances where gambling odds are such that a person could come out ahead if they placed their bets properly. Now I know this does happen from time to time. Fun story.

That’s it for Thursday. I’ll see you tomorrow as we head into the weekend…

A Relentless March Foward

The Plutus team cannot believe its Wednesday already. We are so stoked to share this week’s curations with you.  Also, if you haven’t done it already, please check out the Plutus Foundation by clicking on this link. See you next week!

Here’s what we wanted to share with you this week.

A Relentless March Foward. [Banker on Fire] — “Ben likes to keep things simple. Thus, he only has a few simple rules when it comes to personal finance. He saves 25% of his after-tax pay and spends the rest on whatever his heart desires. Whenever he lands a raise, Ben saves 50% of the after-tax amount and uses the rest to reward himself even more. And… that’s it. Ben gets on with living his life, without spending too much cognitive energy on personal finance.”  (Submitted by J. Money.)

How to Stop spending Money (And Save Hundreds Each Month!). [HIs and Her Money] — “Not sure how to stop spending money, especially on things you don’t need or want? There are many ways to stop spending unnecessarily, but you should know a few things. Here are our top tips to help you stop spending money.” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

How to Plan Your Estate. [The Military Wallet] –. “Do you know what will happen to your property, belongings and debt when you die? What about your children? If you haven’t created an estate plan, now’s the time to start. Here’s how.” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

The secret life of leftovers.

If you’re looking for stories about personal finance, you’ve come to the right place. This is Apex Money and I’m J.D. Roth. Today, I’ve gathered these gems to share with you.

“How my co-workers and I advocated for 20% raises.” [Good-bye Whine to 5] — “We advocated for a raise, pay equity, and succeeded. It’s possible, y’all. A major component of our ability to advocate for better pay in benefits is because we were transparent with each other about our wages. Having the courage and support to advocate for that kind of change, and for it to be successful, will stay with me forever.”

The Health Work Love Play Dashboard. [Brewing FIRE] — “Think of the dashboard as a set of fuel gauges, measuring four core facets of your life: health, work, love, and play. Each of these areas is integral to leading a full, meaningful existence. It’s important to occasionally take inventory of these areas, to ensure that we are not neglecting some part of our life.”

“Why I pick up trash at the beach.” [Ryan Holiday] — “But then one morning on my walk with my kids, a thought hit me that was both freeing and indicting. How many times do I have to walk past this litter, I thought, before I am complicit in its existence. Even if I moved to a place where this didn’t happen, I thought, it would still be happening here.” I do this too, and always have. It’s a simple way to make the world a better place.

The secret life of leftovers. [The New Atlantis] — “The sad truth is that our existing systems lack the infrastructure necessary to help people make wise food consumption a habitual part of daily life. Very few people can deal with the hassle, or work up the willpower, to use burlap sacks and glass jars for packing a lunch, or carry around Tupperware to bring home restaurant leftovers in something other than leaky Styrofoam boxes.” True story: I’ve taught my dog the keyword “leftovers”. When I say it, I mean she gets to lick my bowl or plate. It’s one of her favorite words.

That’s it for today. The folks from the Plutus Foundation will be filling in tomorrow, but I’ll return on Thursday with more great stuff. See you then.

The end of the world as we know it.

Good morning, friends! It’s J.D. here again for another week of sharing links to the best stories about mastering your money — and your life.

I had a crazy thing happen to me last week. I’ll write the full story at Get Rich Slowly once I have a firm conclusion, but the basics go something like this: Took my car in to the dealership to get it serviced. While there, they offered me $33,000 for it.

I bought the car for $35,990 just 26 months ago, and I’ve never really liked it. It’s fine. But it’s a small SUV (Mini Countryman) and I’m more of a small-car kind of guy. I regret the purchase.

Well, I took the dealer’s offer to another car lot, and that second dealer agreed to match the offer. So, it appears that I’ll be upgrading to a car more fitting my wants and needs — a Mazda Miata. But we’ll see. The deal isn’t done yet.

Anyhow, you’re not here for my automobile adventures. You’re here for hot, juicy personal-finance links. Let’s get to them.

In remote Alaska, meal planning is everything. [Eater] — “Bettles is part of a vast array of rural Alaska communities, most of them Alaska Native, that remain disconnected from America’s road-based supply chain…When you move to a rural place like Bettles, it fundamentally changes the way you think about how to procure food and how to create a community in which to share it.”

“Somebody died and now I’m stuck dealing with this mess.” [Ms. Demeanor on Tumblr] — “This is an eighteen page book that you can print out, download, share, and give away; it is meant to be used to collect information about funeral planning and account management after a death OR you can use it BEFORE you die and give people information so they’re not stuck playing Nancy Fucking Drew while trying to keep seventeen cousins who crawled out of the woodwork from gutting each other.”

Prepper FI: Taking control of your future beyond just money. [Women’s Personal Finance] — “Most of the PrepperFI people that I’ve encountered are pretty logical…Most of us have a fair amount of trust in the markets, at least for the time being. Maybe you’d call it hedging your bets? Hope for the best but plan for the worst? When people mention HUGE market downturns, I’m rarely concerned about the thought of losing money. If the global economic system were to collapse, I’m worried about war, looting, starvation…I’m thinking MAD MAX.”

Related to that last story, here’s a 12-minute video from Kurzgesagt, one of my favorite YouTube channels. It tackles a question that’s been on my mind (and the mind of many others): Is civilization on the brink of collapse?

(I think this video is incorrectly titled. It’s more about whether humanity could recover from a collapse. But it’s still interesting.)

That’s all for this Monday. See you folks tomorrow…

What’s Keeping You From Your Dream Life?

Our first piece is aimed at medical professionals but applies to everyone. It’s a good framework for thinking about your dream life and how to go about achieving it.

All too often, we go along a path without giving that path much though. We progress through the stages and end up at a destination we never wanted. We thought we did, when we started, but because we didn’t evaluate it along the way… we just kind of end up somewhere less desirable. Sometimes we need a reminder to consult the map and see if our journey is still going where we want to go.

What’s Keeping You From Your Dream Life? [Passive Income MD] – “I became an attending and thought I was set. Then I realized that I wasn’t in control of my time and life and I wanted more. I wanted to live the dream life I thought I was always striving for. So how do you achieve your dream life? It’s simple (but not necessarily easy). Similar to how you used goals and discipline to get you through med school, you can make a plan to achieve your ideal life. ”

I love a good heist. Or code cracking. And not like the other one I shared this week where it was an inside job that someone entered in rogue code, that’s just plain theft.

The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code [Bloomberg Businessweek] – “On the evening of Nov. 6, 2001, all of Hong Kong was talking about the biggest jackpot the city had ever seen: at least HK$100 million (then about $13 million) for the winner of a single bet called the Triple Trio. The wager is a little like a trifecta of trifectas; it requires players to predict the top three horses, in any order, in three different heats. More than 10 million combinations are possible. When no one picks correctly, the prize money rolls over to the next set of races. That balmy November night, the pot had gone unclaimed six times over. About a million people placed a bet—equivalent to 1 in 7 city residents.”

There’s a $20 bill with a Del Monte banana sticker on it! It sold for $396,000 in 2021!

Wow!

Life is not a game

Our first post for today is from JD’s site, Get Rich Slowly, but it is NOT written by JD!

It’s written by Michael Laurence and it shares an important message.

Life is not a game [Michael Laurence on Get Rich Slowly] – “Comparing yourself to others has no good outcome. Either you look around and consider yourself inferior to your peers (which makes you insecure and unhappy), or you deem yourself superior (which makes you arrogant and egotistical). Neither is conducive to happiness or to being a good person.”

Why Early Retirement Isn’t Just About Escaping a Sh*tty Job [Route to Retire] – “However, the part that frustrates me is that your job doesn’t necessarily define what you need out of life. In many cases, more time is what you’re after. And, in order to gain that extra time, early retirement very well might be the right answer for many folks.”

This next piece isn’t about money, per se, but about disruption. It’s a fascinating piece and I hope you enjoy it!

https://aeon.co/essays/a-history-of-disruption-from-fringe-ideas-to-social-change [Aeon] – “On 3 April 1917, a crowd gathered to meet a train arriving from Helsinki at Petrograd’s Finland Station. The train carried Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He greeted his audience with a speech calling for the overthrow of Russia’s government – and, six months later, he made this happen. The world changed.”

Can’t Take It with You

Is it Wednesday already? The Plutus team could not wait to share these awesome articles with you. Also, if you have a minute, please learn more about the Plutus Foundation. Enjoy!

Here’s what we wanted to share with you this week.

Can’t Take It with You. [Young Money] — “I’ll take you anywhere in the world for two weeks, name the spot.” The year was 2008, I was a few months shy of my eleventh birthday, and my grandma, Mama Ruth, had just offered me one hell of a proposition.”  (Submitted by J. Money.)

Sustainable Funds: How to Invest Without Killing the Planet. [Bravely Go] — “If you’re someone who care about clean water, fair pay, animal welfare, or worker’s rights, you’re probably interested in making your financial plan sustainable as well. You can use an ethical bank, shop local, and yes, invest in sustainable funds! But like…what’s the deal with them? How do they work? Are the secretly BS?” (Submitted by Tarsha.)

Top 5 Tips for School Shopping on a Budget. [The Frugal Expat] –. “It’s that time of year again. As August rolls around, parents, children, and teachers start thinking about school again. With school comes supplies and new clothes for the fall…Here are the five top tips for getting through this school shopping season without breaking the bank.”(Submitted by Tarsha.)

 

Irrational time allocation in decision-making

I absolutely love this first one – it’s an academic paper and the abstract is very academic (WORDY) but the gist is this:

We spend too much time on decisions where the differences are really small.

Should I bulk buy tomato sauce at Costco or by the jar at my local store. The difference between the two decisions is mere cents.

But we don’t shop around for car insurance or mortgage loans or “big” things. And that’s a huge mistake because we’re spending our time on things that, ultimately, will matter very little at the cost of spending time on things that do.

Irrational time allocation in decision-making [The Royal Society of Publishing] – “Empirical evidence suggests that in many ecologically relevant situations, decision difficulty and the relative reward from making a correct choice, compared to an incorrect one, are inversely linked, implying that it is optimal to use relatively less time for difficult choice problems. This applies, in particular, to value-based choices, in which the relative reward from choosing the higher valued item shrinks as the values of the other options get closer to the best option and are thus more difficult to discriminate.” The gist is that we spend too much time on a choice where the two options are pretty close in value.

My Twelve Rules for Life [Russ Roberts] – ““Whoever has the most toys, wins” is not one of my twelve rules for life. There are many things that are more important than accumulating material well-being, especially when you’re young and a little tougher. Take the job that uses your skills and that enhances those skills over the job that pays more. And take the job that makes you feel good about what you’re accomplishing for others over the one that doesn’t.”

How an Iowa Man Cracked the Lottery [Artful Living] – “His boss, an Iowa deputy attorney general named Thomas Miller, was retiring in July 2014 after nearly three decades of prosecuting everything from murder to fraud. He had hired Sand four years earlier and made him the youngest prosecutor in a nine-attorney team that handled challenging cases all over the state. Now, Miller was offloading cases to colleagues. This one, having to do with a suspicious lottery ticket worth $16.5 million, was full of dead ends. Investigators didn’t even know if a crime had been committed. The most tantalizing pieces of evidence were on a DVD: two grainy surveillance clips from a gas station. Sand slid the disc into his laptop and pressed play.” This story is so circuitous but so much fun to read. Also, amazing how much work went into tying everything together once they started tugging on the thread. 🙂

The Roads Not Taken

Jim here – our first post today really resonated with me because I definitely bought into the narrative of American culture, hustle, and work.

Now that I’m older, I realize that that level of “optimization” of our careers is unnecessary. In fact, it may even be bad. As our kids get older, I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea that maybe our kids would benefit from a gap year between high school and college (and to seriously consider if college even makes sense!).

When I hear about student loan forgiveness, the eye watering aspect of it that always shocks me is just how much debt some kids are carrying. I was lucky to escape college with ~$35,000 of debt and the great fortune to start a personal finance blog that earned good money on top of my salary.

Maybe rushing into the next thing is a bad thing. Maybe taking a breath isn’t so bad.

The Roads Not Taken [Jillian Johnsrud] – “Our lives are full of roads not taken. Paths diverged, and we made a choice. One choice pulled us farther away from the other choice. Maybe you have regrets. But most likely, you don’t. The choices we made brought us to where we are now. The mistake is thinking that once the paths diverged, they will never loop around again. There were lots of good reasons you didn’t choose that other path at the time. But what if you had another chance? Would you still be interested? Is there still a spark of curiosity or excitement?” Good food for thought and I love that rule of thumb she uses.

You Bet! [Memo by Howard Marks to Oaktree Clients] – “… you make the best decision you can based on what you know, but the success of your decision will be heavily influenced by a) relevant information you may lack and (b) luck or randomness.” This 15-page memo is long but reads quickly and gives you a good way to think about investing (and a games).

Inside the Organized Crime Ring That Stole Nearly $1 Million Worth of Bikes From Denver Retailers [5298] – “Like most 3 a.m. phone calls, the one that woke Lisa Kaveggia on September 8, 2019, delivered unwelcome news: Mojo Wheels, the Denver bike shop she’d owned for 31 years, had just been burglarized. Kaveggia roused herself and, still in her pajamas, rushed to the store. When she arrived, she found a gaping hole where Mojo’s front entrance used to be. The door lay inside the showroom—knocked off its hinges and out of its frame—and a section of wall was visibly pushed in.”

Why restaurant prices have soared.

Hey, everyone. J.D. here with four more stories about personal finance, including one that answers a question that’s been bugging me for a year now: Why are restaurant prices so high right now? The article I’ve linked is possibly behind a paywall for you, so I’ll spill the beans: The answer is complicated. All restaurant costs have been skyrocketing (and for a variety of reasons), which means prices have been soaring too. As a guy who eats out a lot, this has caused some pain in my budget. Time to cook more from home, I guess. (And that’s essentially what our first article is about.)

Eating healthy on a budget. [Less Debt, More Wine] — “You probably already know that eating well costs money. But did you know that it also takes time and effort? And even though it may seem like a luxury, eating healthily can be more affordable than you think. If you want to eat healthier without spending too much money, try these tips.”

Why restaurant prices have soared. [The New York Times, so possible paywall] — “At restaurants around the country, staff shortages, supply-chain logjams, the Ukraine war and other forces have driven up the price of nearly everything…We designed a check that reflects the complicated reality of running a single restaurant in 2022, and the sometimes-hidden costs and causes that have led it to charge more.”

Is geo-arbitrage a financial fairy tale? [Mr. Tako Escapes] — “The Tako family recently moved from the Seattle area to a small town not far from Tucson, Arizona. This was a move of about 1500 miles (2414 kilometers). Generally speaking, Arizona is considered a ‘lower cost’ state, but the numerous issues we’ve run into during our move have actually made it very costly.”

“Our 90-day cruise experience.” [FI Heroes] — “We spent the last three months living on a cruise ship. That’s right, we finally made our Value Cruising dreams come true! We booked eight back-to-back cruise itineraries on one ship that started its journey in Florida and ended in London. Since leaving the U.S. back in April we have visited 43 different cities across 15 different countries.”

That last story amazes me. I wish it had more actual numbers. I want to know how much it costs to live on a cruise ship for three months! I’ve subscribed to FI Heroes now, though, so that I can catch follow-up articles as they appear. That was a fun read.

Okay, that’s all for this week. Jim will be back on Monday with more great stuff. See you then.