Apex Money Posts

Welcome to Thursday, money nerds, and welcome to Apex Money. I did end up missing an installment yesterday, as I’d worried I might — but not for the reasons I thought.

You see, I got my COVID booster on Monday afternoon. And while I experienced few side effects with the first two doses last spring, this dose laid me low. Boy howdy! I was down with flu-like symptoms for 36 hours. I’m still not back to normal, but at least I have the ability to focus on stories about money.

So, let’s get to them.

Why you should always get multiple estimates on home repairs. [I Pick Up Pennies] — “It is a universal law that you should never go with the first bid on a home repair. And yes, you’d think it goes without saying. But sometimes even those of us who know better…don’t know better.” [This reminds me of a similar experience I had recently. I received a bill for a home repair that seemed high. I called to ask for clarification. The company had made an error and dropped the charge by 67%!]

Personal finance tips and tricks to manage your money. [One Frugal Girl] — “The birth of my first son coincided with a messy time in my life. In addition, to sleepless nights and new mom worries, I was reeling from my husband’s newly expanding small business and an unexpected pink slip. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we lost sight of simple money management tasks…The solution was easier than we expected. We designed an automated system to remind us of upcoming financial chores and events.”

Why everyone thinks the inflation numbers are wrong. [A Wealth of Common Sense] — “I know it can feel cathartic to complain that the government is manipulating the official inflation statistics but the truth is whatever the stated average inflation rate is it will always feel useless to the vast majority of households. When it comes to inflation, no one is average. Your personal circumstances will determine your true inflation rate more than anything else.”

Let’s close things out with one of my favorite videos in recent months. This is a 37-minute YouTube segment from Home Studio Simplified that breaks down how the Bee Gees’ smash hit “Staying Alive” was produced out of 22 individual recording tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1vok-EtAQw

I’m not saying that I want to watch this sort of thing all the time, but this one time was fascinating.

And that’s it for today, everyone. I’ll be back tomorrow to take you into your weekend. See you then…

Apexians, I am calling upon you for help! You see, I’ve recently become fascinated with houseplants. So, today (as if she were bringing home a stray kitten) my girlfriend brought me this:

But what is it? We don’t know. Kim salvaged it from the dumpster of the dentist office where she works. It’s maybe three feet (a meter) tall, has sort of palm-like stems, and lovely long variegated leaves. Is it a dieffenbachia? Maybe. But some (including Kim) vote that it’s aglaonema.

Can you help?

Okay, enough with the mystery plants. Now let’s look at some stories about money, shall we?

The financial and emotional cost of fun. [Money Hungry] — “I’m a member of a number of closed Facebook groups in the personal finance space and I’m often struck by how infrequently people talk about intentionally adding fun into their lives. In all of the work talk why aren’t we also entitled to joy?”

Should we be worried about inflation? [Mr. Money Mustache] — “Inflation has been around since the dawn of money, so we know that it can co-exist with an increase in prosperity. But for the past few decades, the rate of inflation in most rich economies has been extremely low, which means it simply hasn’t been at the top of the news headlines. Until today, when inflation has made a sudden return…So should we be worried?”

Why are poor people poor and rich people rich? [Bitches Get Riches] — “Poor people aren’t just poor in dollars. They’re poor in time, because they’re obliged to sell so much of theirs to make ends meet. As such, poor people may have no choice but to export or defer these tasks. They won’t go to the doctor because the bill scares them, and they die earlier because of it. They eat junk food because it’s either the only food they can access, or possibly the only luxury they can afford. Poverty is a cycle that creates the illusion of laziness.” [Here’s my long response to this article.]

Today’s video feature is actually about money, for once. It’s a 19-minute video from the Economics Explained channel on YouTube that attempts to answer the question: Do we actually need taxes?

And that’s it for today! If you have any thoughts on my mystery plant, let me know. Comments are open. (Or you can reply by email.) Otherwise, come back tomorrow for more!

Hey, money nerds. It’s J.D. here at the helm of Apex Money this week. My posting may be sparser than normal this week. I’m dealing with Big Stuff in my personal life at the moment, which means I haven’t really read anything about money over the past two weeks. The links I’m sharing today are articles I read a while back.

Anyhow, I’ll do my best to keep you supplied with fresh, juicy personal-finance stories…but I may miss a day or two.

To start, though, let’s look at a l-o-n-g article that I found fascinating. It’s a deep dive into why the town of Galesburg, Illinois has fallen on hard times. And it’s a story that simply re-inforces my own recent decision to move to Corvallis, Oregon — a city that has deliberately taken steps to preserve its downtown core while placing strict limits on growth and development.

If you have even a passing interest in local government and/or city planning, this article is interesting.

Why Galesburg has no money. [Inland Nobody on Substack] — “This isn’t a story about how the factories left or greedy union pensions, this is a story about how we’ve chosen to develop our town over the years. We have mostly chosen to build single family homes with large lots and commercial buildings that are auto dependent. It’s what every town was doing so I’m not here to shame anyone for what has happened. But the numbers tell us that we can’t keep going down this path.”

A grand unified theory of buying stuff. [Wired] — “Years ago, I asked a friend what kind of case she planned to buy for her shiny new flip phone. She paused, a little offended. ‘I don’t like to buy stuff for my stuff,’ she said. Those words drilled directly into my hippocampus, never to depart. She’s right! I thought. Don’t buy stuff stuff! So simple! I have tried to keep to that principle ever since, and it has gone about as well as you would expect…”

After the Beanie Baby bubble burst. [Vox] — “Looking back at a mad rush around often-colorful, often-cutesy, questionably useful odds and ends, it’s hard not to see what’s currently going on in the NFT market and wonder whether it’s Beanie Baby-esque. There’s a similar level of unbridled optimism and a rush to claim ownership over relatively arbitrary items in the belief that their value will go up. The nascent arena is also plagued by scams and potential crimes.”

Sorry, no video today. I’ve been reading few money stories and watching even fewer YouTube videos. But you know what? When I head to bed here in a few minutes (I generally write my Apex installments they night before you see them), I intend to watch random YouTube stuff, so I may have a good video for you tomorrow. 😉

Anyhow, that’s it for today. More good stuff Tuesday…or Wednesday, if my personal life is as crazy on Monday as it has been the past couple of weeks.

This next one is a new post from Leif about an older story – that of Benjamin Wallace splurging on a bunch of ridiculous things like a night in a hotel that cost $30,000.

It’s quite the story.

The Curious Splurges of Benjamin Wallace [Physician on FIRE] – “As our financial system was recovering from the depths of the Great Recession around 2010, Mr. Wallace set out on a mission to stimulate the economy, one ridiculous splurge at a time. There were two questions he was hoping to answer. First, could he get someone else to bankroll this Brewster’s Millions style spending spree? The answer, surprisingly, was “yes.” While there were some expenses that were deemed too extravagant, GQ Magazine actually reimbursed many of his purchases in exchange for an article. Second, when buying the best of the best, do you really get what you pay for? Is it worth it? And would it make him happier?”

He does a TED talk about it all too, talking about some of his experiences (his dryness is quite entertaining):

I’d be willing to try an 8oz Wagyu ribeye for $160… 🙂

Dividend Champions List for 2022 [Dividend Growth Investor] – “A dividend champion is a company which has a 25 year record of annual dividend increases. There are only 137 such companies in the US today. I believe that becoming a dividend champion is no accident, and it is a result of a strong business that has generated earnings growth for a long period of time. These are the types of businesses I like to study, and potentially consider at the right time for my dividend portfolio. I believe that the dividend champions list offers a more complete picture than the dividend aristocrats.”

How A.I. Conquered Poker [The New York Times] – “Good poker players have always known that they need to maintain a balance between bluffing and playing it straight. Now they can do so perfectly.”

Have a great weekend!

Matt Ranger is a data scientist with a economics background and I discovered his post on bitcoin price manipulation earlier this week and was enthralled. He walks you through how it all went down last July in great detail (and Matt is savage, I love it):

An Anatomy of Bitcoin Price Manipulation [Single Lunch] – “It’s commonly said that “cryptocurrency markets are manipulated”. Today, you’ll see one example of how that particular sausage is made. The SEC cites price manipulation as a primary concern when rejecting bitcoin ETF applications. Some crypto hedge funds retort that “markets can’t be manipulated because they’re too big”, which we’ll show is nonsense.”

It reminds me a lot of what I read in Trust Me I’m Lying, which Matt mentions in the post.

What Inflation Will Do to Your 2022 Taxes [Wall Street Journal] – “Inflation indexing was enacted in 1981, after years of inflation as high as 14.8%. While taxpayers’ income had risen with inflation, tax brackets remained fixed. As a result, people owed higher taxes due to nominal, but not real, increases in income.”

Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work [Leiden University] – “A basic income would not necessarily mean that people would work less. This is the conclusion of a series of behavioural experiments by cognitive psychologist Fenna Poletiek, social psychologist Erik de Kwaadsteniet and cognitive psychologist Bastiaan Vuyk. They also found indications that people with a basic income are more likely to find a job that suits them better.”

Avoiding The Boulders Of Financial Destruction [Mr. Tako Escapes] – “Higher consumer prices however, do tend to be sticky. We won’t be going back to 2019 prices anytime soon. Once your utility bill goes-up for example, it doesn’t go back down. The same goes for rental rates and housing prices. They tend to rise and ‘stick’ to those higher prices due to a variety of societal factors.” Up like a rocket, down like a feather, as they say.

Teller Reveals His Secrets [Smithsonian] – “Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself. David P. Abbott was an Omaha magician who invented the basis of my ball trick back in 1907. He used to make a golden ball float around his parlor. After the show, Abbott would absent-mindedly leave the ball on a bookshelf while he went to the kitchen for refreshments. Guests would sneak over, heft the ball and find it was much heavier than a thread could support. So they were mystified. But the ball the audience had seen floating weighed only five ounces. The one on the bookshelf was a heavy duplicate, left out to entice the curious. When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable”

The Casino Chip Forgers Who Scammed Vegas For Millions [Cheating Vegas S1 EP3 | Wonder]

I enjoyed this next post because of what Jonathan shares in his criticisms. I wouldn’t normally share book reviews on Apex Money but these criticisms are more like a peek into what’s truly important in life, which is lightly covered by the actual book but expanded upon by Jonathan:

Die With Zero: How to Spend (All) Your Money [My Money Blog] – “Today, my three kids went to their great-grandmother’s and great-aunt’s house. My wife spent her youth climbing a large lemon tree in the yard. Her grand-aunt is 93 years old and the kids got to help her pick the lemons and made (very messy and sticky) lemonade together. My wife reminisced about how she used to do the exact same thing (including the messy and sticky part) with her late grandmother. That was also a priceless memory, but it has little to do with money. It was more about love and making an effort to spend time together.”

How to Remember You’re Alive [Raptitude] – “When you view life as something you’re returning to — rather than something that has never not been happening — it feels like the gift it perhaps always should. It’s just so damn interesting to be alive and experiencing things, and choosing what to do during those experiences.”

The Fall of the Billionaire Gucci Master [Bloomberg] – “Authorities say Ramon Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, perfected a simple internet scam and laundered millions of dollars. His past says a lot about digital swagger, and the kinds of stories that get told online.” The scam was quite common but rarely do you see the perpetrators flaunt their ill gotten gains like this!

Does Not Compute [Morgan Housel] – “The first step to accepting that some things don’t compute is realizing that the reason we have innovation and advancement is because we are fortunate to have people in this world whose minds work differently from yours. Beyond Nash are people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, whose personalities are equal parts brilliant and absurd, and the absurd can’t be separated from the brilliant – you have to accept the full package. We’d never get anywhere if everyone viewed the world as a clean set of rational rules to follow.” Great post about rationality that starts with two war stories and is a great look at human nature and how logic doesn’t always (and often doesn’t) rule the day.

Relax, it’s OK to slow down [Tawcan] – “Navigating through this global pandemic has been extremely hard for everyone. We all are mentally drained. Some of us have been in survival mode for many months, trying to get by and just making it to the next day. […] So, take the time to pat yourself on the back for maneuvering through this tough difficult period and making sure you and your family are doing OK. And know that it is OK to slow down.”

A fun little clip about how Andre Agassi read Boris Becker’s serve and how he had to hide it:

Being a great returner is all about problem solving 👀

On his 51st birthday, remembering @AndreAgassi's fascinating method of reading one of the best serves in the world…

(via @Unscriptd) pic.twitter.com/U3I1TcjZuO

— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) April 29, 2021

It’s yet another freaky Friday, friends! But before you head off to enjoy your weekends, I’ve gathered a few final stories about money (and more) to share with you…

What does your dream cost? [Bitches Get Riches] — “The road to the things you want most may be unfairly long and winding. But that is all the more reason to drive it in daylight, with GPS. Today, I’m going to walk you through some strategies to price out the kind of ambitious, lifelong dreams that feel so hard to quantify. Hopefully it’ll inspire you to do the same with your own bucket list!”

How to create your own personal financial calendar. [Less Debt, More Wine] — “A Financial Calendar can help you start working towards getting a month ahead on your finances when you’re struggling in the vicious paycheck to paycheck cycle. A Financial Calendar has every single bill due date throughout the entire year. Not just monthly bills, but also quarterly, semi-annual, and annual bills. Every. Single. Bill. Due. Date.”

The shady business of selling futures. [Wired] — “Selling futures is a business that feeds off uncertainty — and uncertainty is its true product…That’s why it’s important for everyone to be aware when the future is being used as snake oil to persuade us of the inevitability of what is really just another marketing plan. Asking who will benefit from a particular future vision is a good start; so is following the money.”

Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen. [The Guardian] — “We are not now facing simply a normal anxiety about attention, of the kind every generation goes through as it ages. We are living in a serious attention crisis – one with huge implications for how we live.” I feel like this is an important subject. My friends and I talk about it often in casual conversation. We know that our attention spans have collapsed. We just don’t know how to fix them.

There are two “year end” videos that I await eagerly every year. The first (and best) is David Ehrlich’s “best films” countdown, which is always so so amazing. (But which doesn’t get released until late January.) The second is D.J. Earworm’s United States of Pop, a mash-up of some of the year’s most popular songs.

Well, here’s the United States of Pop 2021…

Great stuff, as always.

And that’s it for this week. Jim will be back on Monday with more of the best of personal finance. Join him!

Today is Thursday, my friends, and this is Apex Money, your source for the juiciest money stories from around the web. Oh — and other interesting stuff we want to share haha. Let’s get started.

The quest to find the world’s best rice. [Taste] — “Japan has around 300 brands of short-grain japonica rice that go by names like Yume Shizuku (Dream Droplet), Seiten no Hekireki (Bolt from the Blue), Tsuyahime (Shiny Princess), and Mirukii Kuiin (Milky Queen). Each one is a unique cultivar that’s been grown by plant breeders for some combination of traits: stickiness, starch density, big kernels, high yields, early maturation, heat resilience, pest resistance.”

How to be successful. [Sam Altman] — “I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter. Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you’ve already reached a baseline degree of success (through privilege or effort) and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success. But much of it applies to anyone.”

Cage-free is basically meaningless (and other lies your egg carton is telling you). [Lifehacker] — “If all of this seems like too much to remember, you can always build a coop and raise your own hens, or source your eggs from a local farm. The yolks in local farm eggs have a darker color and richer flavor than factory farmed eggs, and come with a nice smug feeling of moral superiority. (My favorite eggs come from my dad’s chickens, but Vital Farms, which is rated very highly on ol’ Organic Egg Scorecard, are a very close second).” [Our household is also devoted to Vital Farms eggs.]

Lastly, here’s a YouTube video I found recently, and about which I find myself thinking several times a week. (Seriously!) It’s a two-minute clip explaining the “veil of ignorance” thought experiment from philosopher John Rawls. It’s a way of trying to think about what’s fair and just when it comes to communities and societies.

Okay, that’s it for Thursday. I’ll be back here tomorrow to see you into the weekend. Take care!