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Apex Money Posts

Finally! A stock-market crash!

Welcome to Wednesday, money nerds. This is Apex Money, where Jim and I scour the web to find the most interesting stories about money (and more). Here are a few of the pieces I’ve liked lately…

Finally! A stock market crash! [Mr. Money Mustache] — “If you really understand [stock-market crashes] and really feel excited about them, you can drop the fear and stress out of your investing life, which means you will live a life that is both wealthier, and more fun. So let’s cover each point properly, so you can be excited about all this as I am.”

How to sell your inherited coin collection. [Budgets Are Sexy] — “Once you know what you have in the collection, it’s then about finding the best ways to hawk them! Which can be done using any of the methods listed below, or in combination of the good ol’ fashion way of listing them methodically online.” (Confession: I’m sharing this more for myself than for you. I’ve inherited a coin collection from my cousin, and I need to figure out how to sell it.)

Cash and therapy reduce criminal behavior. [Vox] — “A month after the intervention, both the therapy group and the therapy-plus-cash group were showing positive results. A year after the intervention, the positive effects on those who got therapy alone had faded a bit, but those who got therapy plus cash were still showing huge impacts: crime and violence were down about 50 percent. But Blattman didn’t dare to hope that this impact would persist.”

And that’s all I have for you today. Come back tomorrow for more great links, won’t you?

How credit scores run (and ruin) our lives.

Good morning, friends! Great to see you here once more. Here’s a look at the money stories I’ve collected for you today.

How to ace the most common interview questions. [Fast Company] — “As the Great Resignation, Reshuffle, Rehire, cycle heads into a new phase, here are the top 15 behavioral interview questions you should be prepared to answer in upcoming job interviews.”

The future of you: How to not regret your career in ten years. [Young Money] — “This framework is career-agnostic. Figure out what interests you, find people pursuing that path who appear both satisfied and successful, and see how they did it. No two paths are identical. But you can derive lessons from others and inject your own flair.”

How credit scores run (and ruin) our lives. [The Walrus] — “This score is like your financial first impression. A poor first impression doesn’t just jeopardize your ability to borrow money or make purchases; it can also limit where you can live and what kinds of job you can get: credit checks on prospective tenants and employees are increasingly the norm.”

To wrap things up today, here’s a great story about a social-media platform I hate: TikTok. I feel like I’m just too old to get it. To me, TikTok epitomizes everything that is wrong with the internet and society today. (I’m serious about this.)

Anyhow, this 23-minute video from Vox and The Pudding is fascinating: We tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral.

I may not like TokTok, but I this investigation is interesting. Very interesting. I watched the whole thing and felt like I wanted to share it with you. So I am.

The good life (and how to get it).

Howdy howdy, Apexians. Hope you had a great weekend. Me, I’m looking forward to this week. You see, for years I’ve been wanting to re-design my primary site (Get Rich Slowly). This week, I’ve set aside time to actually do the work. If all goes according to plan, I’ll dive in on Thursday morning, then come out next Monday with a slick new “de-design” that I feel proud of. Not sure I can make this happen, but I’m hopeful that it’s possible.

Meanwhile, of course, I have lots of great money news to share with you. Here are a few recent articles I’ve enjoyed.

The young, rich, anti-capitalist capitalists. [Vox Recode] — “Attempts to invest ethically aren’t exactly new. The concept of socially responsible investing dates back centuries, and today there are a variety of approaches that fall under this umbrella. In recent years, they’ve attracted increased skepticism about their efficacy and ethics.”

The different kinds of bullshit. [Collaborative Fund] — “Jeff Bezos once said there are different kinds of smart. Distinguishing the various flavors is important because if you think smarts comes in just one form, you’ll miss dozens of other nuanced varieties. Bullshit is the same. It comes in countless forms, some harder to spot than others. False modesty, projecting, double standards, hypocrisy, tugging at heartstrings – these aren’t lies; they’re subtle forms of bullshit, which is why they’re so prevalent.”

The good life (and how to get it). [Inc. magazine interview from 2001] — “It’s not uncommon for people to want to believe they’re trapped, and often those people will do the ‘must be nice’ thing with us — must be nice to have a company, so you can take the whole summer off; must be nice to have enough money to go to Bolivia. The assumption is that the way we live is a rich-people thing, an arrived-people thing, something few can afford (and by afford, I mean in time as much as in money). We always wish we could show people our younger selves, the Pete and Laura who had no money and were building things from scratch. We were surprisingly the same as we are now.” Great interview, but I especially like the end of the article where there’s a list of things that make freedom and simplicity easier.

That’s it for today. Those three articles are all relatively long, so let’s call that good for a Monday. I’ll be back tomorrow with more great stuff. See you then!

The Top Idea in Your Mind

You made it to Friday!

A few quickies today for you that aren’t meant to teach as much as they are meant to make you think a little bit as we go into the weekend. I hope it ignites a few brain cells and helps create some insight. 🙂

The Top Idea in Your Mind [Paul Graham] – “I realized recently that what one thinks about in the shower in the morning is more important than I’d thought. I knew it was a good time to have ideas. Now I’d go further: now I’d say it’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.”

Thinking in Bets: How to Make Decisions Like a Poker Player [Frontera] – “Thinking in bets is a decision-making framework developed by former professional poker player Annie Duke. In this article, you’ll find two real-life examples of how people —mistakenly— evaluate decisions based on their outcomes. Then, you’ll see why it’s wrong and how to take luck into consideration by thinking like a poker player.” Make positive expected value decisions and you will win… over the long run. 🙂

Guy Fieri, Elder Statesman of Flavortown [New York Times] – “Guy Fieri looks as if he has prepared his whole life to be a middle-aged rock star. He has grays in the famous goatee now, a faint tan line beneath his chain necklace and a pair of hulking middle-finger rings that do not slow his incorrigible fist-bumping. He talks about the higher purpose of his “namaste” tattoo, and feigns outrage when no one recognizes his Dean Martin references. He revels, still, in conspicuous consumption, double-fisting naan and tandoori chicken during a recent television shoot here at a strip-mall Indian restaurant tucked between a nail salon and a wax center.” Might be behind a paywall for you but this article was fun to read – I only ever caught a few minutes of Diners, Drivethrus, and Dives but I love the career he’s made for himself.

J.D. is back next week! Have a great weekend!

Don’t Anchor Yourself To Your Portfolio High-Water Mark

In my (Jim’s) blogging “career,” I’ve experienced quite a few market bubbles, bull runs, bear runs, crashes, what have you. For the crashes and bear markets, in the moment, they’ve always been hard to manage emotionally. It’s why I’ve developed skills to help me cope, essentially, when it feels like there’s disaster around the corner (or disaster on top of me).

So I always look forward to reading how other people manage these times, especially when they are fellow bloggers who have been at it for nearly as long. I’ve never met Jonathan in person but he’s always felt like a kindred spirit in the blogging world.

Read his post on what he focuses on instead of his portfolio balance, especially now that it’s off its high:

Don’t Anchor Yourself To Your Portfolio High-Water Mark [My Money Blog] – “Inside various financial forums, I am seeing the “anyone else worried?” 😓 posts as most portfolios are down double-digits. For a retiree with a $1 million portfolio, seeing $100,000 or $200,000 of value evaporate is understandably stressful. However, much of this is because your portfolio’s all-time high, or high-water mark, is a relatively arbitrary number. Just because at one moment in time, there were a few willing buyers of your assets for a given price at a time where you weren’t looking to sell, doesn’t mean you should anchor yourself to that number.”

I love scambaiters too!!!!!!

Scambaiters: Meet the modern-day heroes who scam scammers [Get Rich Slowly] – “One of the things I’m passionate about is scammers. I hate them. Scammers are evil, evil people who prey on the most vulnerable members of society. They take advantage of social constructs in order to manipulate people into parting with their hard-earned money. No surprise then that one of my favorite sub-genres of YouTube videos is “scammers getting scammed”. Scambaiters are modern-day heroes. As much as I despise scammers, I think scambatiers deserve high praise.”

I find it astounding, but it also makes sense, that we ship honeybees.

A day in the life of a honeybee trucker [Freight Waves] – “Pollinating the seemingly endless fields of almond trees in California requires 85% to 90% of all honeybees available to pollinate in the U.S., Yaddaw said. Bees are trucked into California from across the country. Browning’s Honey operates over 30,000 hives. The company has its bees moved about six times in a year between states, including North Dakota, Idaho, California and Texas. In addition to almonds, Browning’s Honey bees help pollinate crops such as apples, seed canola and cherries.”

Don’t get a home warranty

We don’t have a home warranty and the only other friend who has had one had a good experience, but I recently read this blog post about Shu Chow’s experiencing taking his warranty company to arbitration. While I hope never to have to deal with something like this, it’s fascinating how casual it seemed.

So I Took a Huge Corporation to Arbitration. This is How it Went. [Shu Chow] – “Last Fall, my hot water heater started to leak. I called my home warranty company, (Hereafter, HWC. I KNOW, I KNOW, HOME WARRANTIES ARE NOT WORTH IT.) and due to a computer system failure that spanned multiple days, they were unable to send a contractor to fix my water heater. […] After about five calls of runarounds, I realized that customer service channels would not help me and I had use the legal system.”

3 Attainable Characteristics That Drastically Improved My Quality of Life [Route to Retire] – “Try new things / Adventurous spirit. By far, I think this is one of the best ways to increase your quality of life. “Stepping out of your comfort zone” is a phrase you hear tossed around quite a bit so it tends to get watered down somewhat. However, until you actually start doing it on a more regular basis, you might now realize just how powerful it really is.”

The astronomical price of diesel is making everything more expensive [NPR] – “You know the commercial that says America runs on a certain brand’s coffee and donuts? In truth, America runs on diesel. Just ask a trucker, a farmer or a factory owner. And right now, they are all hurting. That’s because the machines that power their businesses need diesel, which is commanding nosebleed level prices right now. At around $5.50 a gallon, diesel prices are up a whopping 75% more than last year and blew past all-time record recently.”

Don’t get too high on your highs and too low on your lows

Hello hello, Happy Tuesday! Jim here with this week’s Monday starter pack of money posts.

There’s been a lot of financial turmoil lately. The stock market is down 20%, inflation is up a lot (Series I bonds are offering a yield of nearly 10%), and crypto is doing crypto things.

One of the fascinating parts about crypto is how much attention it gets but how much wackiness is involved too. During the dot com boom, you had craziness too but since the tech stocks were publicly traded, you had some assurance that it wasn’t an outright scam. No such protections with crypto (it’s a feature not a bug!). So I’m gobbling up the Terra Luna stuff:

How the Anchor protocol helped sink Terra [The Verge] – “As of this writing, Luna is worth less than a cent, and its sister token Terra, which was meant to be pegged to a dollar as a stablecoin, is worth 6 cents. An investor, who told reporters from Yonhap News Agency he’d lost 2 to 3 billion won (about $2.3 million), was arrested for trespassing after he entered Kwon’s apartment complex, looking for the master of stablecoin. Kwon’s wife requested police protection after the incident.”

Set in Canada but applicable to the US too, as their two big credit bureaus (TransUnion and Equifax) and two of the big three in the US (they are missing Experian!). How Credit Scores Can Run—and Ruin—Our Lives [The Walrus] – “It was the summer of 2019, and her husband, Dave, had died two years earlier after a long battle with cancer. Somehow, TransUnion had mixed up husband and wife, marking Monaghan as dead. Luckily, she is nothing if not meticulous. She had kept careful records of everything that could establish her existence—purchases, appointments, calls. She set to work fixing the mistake. How hard could it be? she thought.” Turns out, *surprise*, very hard. Two flippin’ years.

From Corey Booker: Don’t get too high on your highs and too low on your lows – https://twitter.com/CoryBooker/status/1528151010685992962

Great little video and a good reminder, no matter your politics.

Memorial Day

Jim here, welcome to Monday.

We’re observing Memorial Day in the United States today and as a resident of Washington D.C., I’m friends and neighbors to many both active and retired military personnel. I want to take this time to recognize those who have made the greatest sacrifice so that we may enjoy our freedoms.

No stories today, be back tomorrow.

Why are airline ticket prices so high right now?

It’s Friday, my friends, and I’m here to take you into the holiday weekend with a handful of articles about personal finance (and related subjects). Take a gander at what I’ve gathered together fror you…

Why are airline ticket prices so high right now? [The Week] — “Domestic air travel won’t be cheap this summer — prices for tickets jumped 18.6 percent in April alone, due to everything from higher fuel costs to demand for seats. On top of that, schedules are being reduced as carriers work to address their staff shortages. Here’s everything you need to know.” Kim and I want to fly to Colorado to see her mother this summer. We keep balking at ticket prices…and prices just keep going higher.

The unstoppable bots behind the videogame console shortage. [The Verge] — “MoreMore than a year on, it’s still hard to buy a new PlayStation or Xbox without some help. Flippers have become notorious for snatching up the fresh restocks offered online with the help of ultra-fast buying bots, forcing everyone else to buy units off the secondary market for egregious, 100-dollar markups. But after delving into the console reselling underworld, I was shocked to learn that resellers aren’t the primary problem.”

The mind-blowing exploits of Australia’s craftiest conwoman. [Truly Adventurous] — “One Melbourne jewelry store owner, who felt a friendly connection with the businesswoman who’d dropped $600 at her shop, agreed to go for coffee at a Moonee Ponds milk bar. It turned out to be an expensive mistake, costing her $76,780 after Jody stole her ID and drained her bank account. ”

Lastly, here’s an essay from Penny Red at Substack: “All the Best Things About Europe with None of the Genocide.” It’s a detailed look at the Eurovision Song Contest and what makes it great.

As an American, I’m only vaguely aware of Eurovision. I don’t know how it works. I’ve never seen a performance. I don’t know who any of the past winners have been. All the same, I was entertained by this article, and it prompted me to watch several Eurovision videos, videos like these:

Donatan & Cleo (from Poland) — We Are Slavic (so hilarious)

Citi Zēni (from Latvia) — Eat Your Salad (so hilarious)

Lordi (from Finland) — Hard Rock Hallelujah (2006 winner — so hilarious)

Subwoolfer (from Norway) — Give That Wolf a Banana (so hilarious)

Jamala (from Ukraine) — 1944 (2016 winner — not hilarious)

Anyhow, now I’m wondering how an American like me can watch along with the Eurovision Song Contest. Maybe on one of the UK streaming platforms? I’ll have to find out. Looks entertaining.

“I lost $50,000 (and I feel fine).”

Good morning, sleepyheads. Welcome to another day of personal finance here at Apex Money. Let’s take a look at the stories I’ve gathered for you.

We’re going to start with a video featuring comments from Warren Buffett at the most recent Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting. Here’s one of my financial heroes explaining why he won’t buy Bitcoin…ever: “If you offered me all of the bitcoin in the world for $25, I wouldn’t take it.”

(I found this video via the excellent Millennial Revolution blog, by the way.)

“I lost $50,000 on paper (and I’m doing just fine).” [We Want Guac] — “Having lost $50k on paper doesn’t affect my life; it shouldn’t affect the lives of my fellow 20-something investors, either. Whether the stock market goes gangbusters this year or continues into the red, I’ll be doing the same thing either way: sticking to the plan.”

Politics and personal financial planning. [Oblivious Investor] — “If you do or don’t like the person in the White House, and you begin to let that feeling make you think that you can predict what the stock market is going to do over the next month (or 48 months), you’re in for a rude awakening. No one person has that much control over the stock market.”

Reputation rankings for the 100 “most visible” companies in the United States. [Axios] — “The two-step process starts fresh each year by surveying the public’s top-of-mind awareness of companies that either excel or falter in society. These 100 ‘most visible companies’ are then ranked by a second group of Americans across the seven key dimensions of reputation to arrive at the ranking.” Interesting list. At the top is Trader Joe’s, a company I love. Two companies I am growing to hate — Amazon and Google — are higher on the list than I would have expected. (Note that my dislike of Amazon and Google isn’t based on politics; it’s based on the shitty quality of their products.)

And our final story today has nothing to do with money. All the same, it’s interesting and insightful.

Pop stars on life after the spotlight moves on. [The Guardian] — “Armed with a batch of potentially indelicate questions – because who likes to discuss failure? – I began to reach out to musicians from various genres and eras, those who hadn’t died young, but were still here, still working, to ask them what it was like in the margins.”

And that’s all he wrote. I’ll be back tomorrow to take you in to the long weekend…