Apex Money Posts

It’s Monday, my friends, and this is Apex Money. I’m here to share some of the best personal-finance stories from around the interwebs. Stories like these…

How this all happened. [Morgan Housel at Collaborative Fund] — “This is a short story about what happened to the U.S. economy since the end of World War II. That’s a lot to unpack in 5,000 words, but the short story of what happened over the last 73 years is simple: Things were very uncertain, then they were very good, then pretty bad, then really good, then really bad, and now here we are. And there is, I think, a narrative that links all those events together. Not a detailed account. But a story of how the details fit together.”

Your wealth is mostly due to luck. Be thankful. [Financial Samurai] — “I firmly believe that it was mostly luck (~70%) that helped me a basic level of financial independence at age 34. Of course, effort is also required to get ahead, but it’s not the main reason. There are plenty of people who work much harder than you or I, yet will not achieve what we have. The more we can recognize our luck and not take our luck for granted, the more prosperous we’ll become.”

If you don’t decide how to spend your money, someone else will. [The Belle Curve] — “Money is a funny thing. It is a human construct and a very helpful mechanism created to move goods and services around efficiently. We need enough of it to survive, a little more to be comfortable, and maybe a little extra to chase our dreams. But somewhere along the path to earning, saving, investing, and growing wealth, most of us lose sight of the bigger picture. The saving and investing part becomes addictive. Our good behaviors with money have been rewarded, and we watch our wealth grow. How could we ever get off this hedonic treadmill, and why would we want to?”

How the week became a measure of time. [Aeon] — “Weeks serve as powerful mnemonic anchors because they are fundamentally artificial. Unlike days, months and years, all of which track, approximate, mimic or at least allude to some natural process (with hours, minutes and seconds representing neat fractions of those larger units), the week finds its foundation entirely in history.” [Fascinating stuff!]

Today’s non-financial video is from — you guessed it! — Taylor Swift. It’s December 13th, and as every Swiftie knows, that means it’s Taylor’s birthday. Today she turns 32. To celebrate, here’s the official video for her holiday song, “Christmas Tree Farm”.

This video is a gift to her fans: lots of home video of a young Taylor. SO FUN! (Also fun is her re-recorded “old-timey” version of the song.)

That’s it for Monday. Come back tomorrow for more of the best from the world of personal finance!

p.s. Much to my delight, December 13th is also the birthday of my pal Grant Sabatier from Millennial Money. Happy birthday, Grant! Each year on his birthday, Grant gets a text message from me celebrating Taylor’s birthday. Because I’m a good friend like that. 😉

A few months ago, all of Twitch was leaked online. Everything.

Source code. Payouts. Everything.

The juicy part, as it always tends to be, is how much money some of the streamers were making:

It’s pretty wild to learn that some streamers were making five and six figures every single month. The reality is that it’s no different than many other industries, especially entertainment. This isn’t much different than sports or musicians. You have those at the very top making great money but the vast majority of them don’t.

Up all night with a Twitch millionaire: The loneliness and rage of the Internet’s new rock stars [Wall Street Journal] – “Ten hours a day, streamers are broadcasting lives of obsession and wealth for an unforgiving crowd. How long can any of them last?” And this guy is one of the high earners! (15th!)

Comfort Zones Are Where Dreams Go To Die [1500 Days to Freedom] – “While I was installing solar panels and demolishing/rebuilding my kitchen, I was also preparing for one of the biggest (and most terrifying!) challenges of my life, speaking in front of 400+ fellow humans at EconoMe. Today, I’ll tell you how I got the speaker gig, why I did it, what I got out of it, and why you should attempt similarly scary things.”

Finally, I enjoyed this piece about The Rock:

Dwayne Johnson Lets Down His Guard [Vanity Fair]

My stock market investments include some dividend growth stocks and mostly Vanguard mutual funds, including the subject of our first post – VTSAX.

Bogleheads, or big fans of Vanguard and their founder Jack Bogle, absolutely LOVE VTSAX (and the ETF cousin VTI). What’s not to love?

Invest in the total market for just 0.04% each year. That’s four bucks on ten grand!

It’s based on an index created at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business – learn all about it:

The Mutual Fund That Ate Wall Street—Based on an Index Few People Know About [The Wall Street Journal] – “That fund is the $1.3 trillion (yes, trillion, including all share classes) Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSAX) and its exchange-traded-fund shares. The fund, from Vanguard Group, now accounts for 10% of all assets in U.S. stock mutual funds and ETFs in the market, according to Morningstar Inc. No other mutual fund or ETF comes close to it in asset size. The next largest is an $821 billion Vanguard S&P 500 index fund. The paradox is that this biggest beast among funds is tied to the most unassuming of stock indexes—the CRSP U.S. Total Market Index, developed at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.”

Ex-Car Salesman Tells All: How To Beat The Auto Dealerships At Their Own Game [Money Under 30] – “When you want to beat car dealerships at their own game, you need to be prepared, understand the true value of what you’re buying, and skip all the extras they try to get you to buy.”

Finally, a useful little plugin to find out if a brand on Amazon is actually Amazon itself – courtesy of our very own J.D. Roth (not that he made it, but that he found it) – Amazon Brand Detector.

This one has nothing to do with money but carries lessons everyone should use in their life about learning lessons in private, pride, and how if you don’t then you might have to pay a terrible cost in public:

We Only Ever Talk About the Third Attack on Pearl Harbor [But What For?] – “As he had hoped for when his small force set sail, 24 hours off of Oahu thick weather greeted him with conditions that made it unlikely a defending fleet could detect him before it was too late. As darkness fell the night before, his fleet began its approach, charging full speed towards the unaware island, running with lights off and in radio silence amongst rain squalls, low clouds, and strong wind. Pitching in the heavy seas, the admiral held his planes until just before dawn when they were 60 miles offshore. Then, while still in complete darkness, 152 planes took off. Just as the new day’s sunlight was finally hitting the island, the planes emerged from the clouds to find the world’s greatest naval base helplessly asleep beneath them.”

We just got back from a vacation overseas and it was our first vacation, first flight, and first of a lot of different things during the pandemic.

We were Covid tested 4 days before we left the United States for the Bahamas (requirement for entry into the Bahamas and to stay at the Cove at Atlantis) and Covid tested within one day on our return (which was Monday, when the rules changed due to Omicron). Practically everyone wore masks correctly (a few tourists didn’t cover their noses but every employee was right), the airports felt safe to me, flights were busy but not full (Southwest), and it was a fun time without much travel anxiety.

We didn’t, however, get on a cruise. I knew my friend Leif at Physician on FIRE did since we chatted about it beforehand, and I was eager to read about this experience (I am similar to him in my appreciation for cruises, like but don’t absolutely love but his epic 30 day itinerary, that never happened, looks pretty crazy):

Taking a Cruise During the Pandemic [Physician on FIRE] – “In November of 2021, my family of four, which included 3 fully vaccinated people over the age of 12, and one partially vaccinated child under 12, took our chances on a 5-day Royal Caribbean cruise from Tampa to Cozumel, Mexico, with a stop at the cruiseline’s private island, Coco Cay. I’ll detail how things went, what safety precautions were in place, and what limitations we experienced traveling as a family that could not yet be fully vaccinated.”

Selling Everything We Owned Has Been Truly Liberating [Route to Retire] – “Selling everything and just taking off and leaving is a dream a lot of folks have… even if it’s just a fleeting thought. To actually do it though sounds crazy. Who would do something like that?! Yeah, we were those people. We got rid of just about everything we owned and headed to Panama in the summer of 2019. […] What we didn’t realize at the time though was just how liberating selling everything we owned would be.”

Ten 5-Minute Money Actions to Help Your Finances [Becoming Minimalist] – “You’re not going to change your entire financial situation in one afternoon. Making changes in how you spend, save, earn, and give takes time and discipline. But you can make small positive changes in just a few minutes. And those small changes pile up—especially when we do them repeatedly. Your first step in the right direction doesn’t need to be a big one.”

Why Rich People Avoid Consumerism [Darius Foroux] – “In the inflationary world of 2021, some new cars are sold ten to thirty percent over their asking price. This is the primary example most media outlets use when they cover inflation. It’s so telling of the time we’re living in. People would rather pay more for a new car than drive their existing one for another year. Consumerism at its height.” The opening story doesn’t quite match the title but the main point of the article is good – “there’s no rush.”

The $5 billion hoard of metal the world wants but can’t have [Mining.com] – “On an industrial park about an hour’s drive toward the South China Sea coast from Ho Chi Minh City sit giant mounds of raw metal shrouded in black tarpaulin. Stretching a kilometer in length, the much-coveted hoard could be worth about $5 billion at current prices.” A fascinating little story about an aluminum stockpile.

Let’s Talk about Ghastly Dishwashers [American Institute for Economic Research] – “Dishwashers used to wash all the dishes in under one hour. Now they take two hours, three hours, and four hours, and still don’t get the dishes clean. So much for saving on energy. Less water, sure, but more electricity — and what does it mean to save resources when the thing doesn’t work?” Ours works fine but it does take flipping forever. Even the hilariously named “Speed 60” setting takes 70 minutes.

This is Jim!

Due to the power of the internet, I actually crafted this email on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving because I knew I was going to be busy the week before that (we went on vacation) and I’m 99% sure I’ll have Internet… but I’m not 100% sure. 🙂

So, if J.D. chose these already (or if this says that J.D. wrote it because I didn’t get a chance to switch it over), my apologies. 🙂

Today’s gems are good if you like heists:

The Greatest Unsolved Heist in Irish History [Atlas Obscura] – “Four days before the king was due to arrive in Dublin, the jewels went missing. The story of this theft would eventually involve a sex scandal, conspiracies that pointed the finger at both sides of the political spectrum, the occult, drunken pranks, bankrupt celebrities, sham trials, and an incredibly effective hush campaign from the top rung of the political ladder. The jewels have never been recovered.” Emphasis mine. 🙂

The Wildest Insurance Fraud Scheme Texas Has Ever Seen [Texas Monthly] – “When federal agent Jim Reed drove in to a small airport in the East Texas city of Athens mid-morning on September 15, 2014, he was expecting to find a straightforward case of arson—an easy case for the new guy. He introduced himself to the Athens Jet Center’s co-owners, two brothers in their seventies named Wayne and Gaylon Addkison, who led Reed to a small jet, a 1971 Cessna 500 Citation I, that looked like it had been barbecued on a rotisserie. “It was burned in half,” Wayne Addkison recalled. “The nose tipped on the ground and the back half was on the ground too.””

Finally, not a heist but a good article all the same:

9 Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires: What You Need to Know [After School Finance] – “You, too, can set a clear vision for the things you want in your life. As it relates to money, that vision is usually about what you want money to provide. For example, you may want to experience grand vacations, or you may want to quit working for money earlier in life. These are the visions. Once you understand what you’re aiming for, you can put plans in place to get there.”

See you in the future!

Let’s end our week with something fun! Every year, Tom Whitwell shares a year-end list of “52 things I learned in 20xx”. On Wednesday, he released his 52 things I learned in 2021 list.

You should definitely go check that list out when you have time, because there’s some interesting stuff there. But for the time-crunched among you, I’ve collected a few of my favorite pieces to share in today’s installment of Apex Money.

China’s ‘lipstick brother’ livestream has record $2 billion day. [BNN Bloomberg] — “China’s Li Jiaqi, a top livestream salesman widely known as the ‘lipstick brother’, sold $1.9 billion in goods on the first day of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s annual shopping festival, as the country’s consumers splash out despite an economic slowdown.”

South African students are selling school wi-fi passwords for lunch money. [Rest of World] — “In theory, Wi-Fi at schools across South Africa, like at Thabo’s, is meant for students and their teachers. But many from the poor households dotted around schools feel the free Wi-Fi offered to students should be opened up for households too. While household poverty in South Africa’s townships encourages students like Thabo to leak Wi-Fi passwords for cash, on the other end of the transaction is a desperate need for cheap internet access.”

Daughters, managerial decisions, and gender inequality. [Maddalena Ronchi] — “We find that women’s relative earnings and employment increase by 4.4% and 2.9% respectively following the birth of the manager’s first daughter. These effects are driven by an increase in managers’ propensity to replace male workers by hiring women with comparable education, hours worked, and earnings. In line with managers’ ability to substitute men with comparable women, we do not detect any significant effect on firm performance.”

The differential impact of major life events on cognitive and affective wellbeing. [SSM – Population Health] — “We evaluated the individual and conditional impact of eighteen major life-events, and compared their effects on affective and cognitive wellbeing…Several commonly cited events had little, if any, independent effect on wellbeing (promotion, being fired, friends passing), whilst others had profound impacts regardless of co-occurring events (e.g., financial loss, death of partner, childbirth). No life events had overall positive effects on both types of wellbeing, but separation, injury/illnesses and monetary losses caused negative impacts on both, which did not display hedonic adaptation.”

And to close things out for the week? Well, here’s a fun McDonald’s training video from 1970. I love it.

I worked at McDonald’s during my junior year of high school. People think I’m joking when I say this but I’m not: That McDonald’s gig was probably my favorite job I ever had. We were a good crew, and we had a good manager. We were good, and we knew it. We took pride in doing well, and our store was the top McDonald’s in the state. Ah, good memories.

Okay, that’s it for now. Jim will be back next week — assuming he’s home from his Bahamas vacation. I’ll have more fun stuff for you in ten days. Take care!

Good morning, friends, and welcome to another beautiful day.

Today, we have a couple of stories about TikTok influencers. I loathe TikTok with a fiery burning passion. I believe it typifies everything that’s wrong with communication and relationships today, and yes I know that makes me sound like an old man haha. Still, it’s interesting to read about folks who are doing cool stuff with the platform.

How an Excel influencer on TikTok manifested her way to making six figures a day. [The Verge] — “Kat Norton is a Microsoft Excel influencer. She has over a million followers on TikTok and Instagram, where she goes by the name Miss Excel, and she’s leveraged that into a software training business that is now generating up to six figures of revenue a day. That’s six figures a day. And she’s only been doing this since June 2020.”

Our second TikTok story is a “bonus” link since it’s from The New York Times (so may be behind a paywall for you) and isn’t really money related…

Performance artist becomes TikTok phenom because of 2007 Starburst commercial. [The New York Times] — “In 2007, the performance artist Jack Ferver appeared in a cunningly strange commercial for Berries and Cream Starburst candy, playing a ‘Little Lad’ in antique garb who sang and danced about his love for berries and cream…Fourteen years and many iterations of social media culture later, the podcaster and comedian Justin McElroy uploaded a clip of the ‘berries and cream’ song and dance to TikTok, where mining 2000s nostalgia had become a trope.”

And now on to our NON-TikTok stories…

Why women may be better investors than men. [The New York Times, so possible paywall] — “Heroes or villains, winners or losers, real or imagined, our iconic investors are very, very male. But that’s a mistake — because it turns out that women are often better at investing. Fidelity offered up the latest evidence this month: Over a 10-year period, its female customers earned, on average, 0.4 percentage points more annually than their male counterparts. That may not seem like a lot, but over a few decades it can add up to tens of thousands of dollars or more.” [See also: Fidelity’s 2021 Women and Investing Study]

Always ask for what you want. [Chris Guillebeau] — “The right kind of risks are asymmetrical, which means that the potential reward far outweighs the potential loss. If you’re looking for a way to level-up your life, start taking more of these risks. You can do so right now, today, by identifying disproportionate opportunities in your life. The easiest asymmetrical risk you can take is to simply go through life asking for what you want.”

Okay, that’s all I have for you. I’ll be back tomorrow to see you into the weekend. Ciao!

Welcome to Wednesday, my nerds, and welcome to a handful of money stories from other corners of the web. Let’s dive right in.

The best damn food and drink guide (2021). [SparkToro] — “Welcome back to the best edible, potable guide to gift-giving the Internet has to offer. Like last year, we’ve assembled a lengthy list of food and beverage gifts from around the web. And, like last year, we have absolutely no ulterior motive. None of these links have affiliate codes, there’s no kickbacks, we’re just sharing products we (and people and our networks) have loved so you can spread consumable joy whenever gifts are called for.”

Smart year-end tax moves to make now. [AARP] — “As 2021 nears an end, you can use strategies that will greatly benefit you when you file your taxes next year. Notice that I said ‘benefit you’, rather than ‘reduce your taxes’, because the goal is to make more money after taxes. Here are a few ideas to consider, along with some caveats.”

What’s a safe retirement spending rate for the decades ahead? [Morningstar] — “Given current conditions, retirees will likely have to reconsider at least some aspects of how they define their ‘safe’ withdrawal rate to make their assets last. Our research finds that retirees can take a higher starting withdrawal rate and higher lifetime withdrawals by being willing to adjust some of these variables — tolerating a lower success rate or forgoing complete inflation adjustments, for example.”

To wrap things up today, here’s a video I shared at Get Rich Slowly yesterday. It’s a long one. It’s a 103-minute look at how the lines work in Disney theme parks.

Perhaps that sounds boring to you. I was interested enough to give it a go, then eventually watched the whole damn thing. There’s more to this subject than you might expect.

And that’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more great links for you. Come back to see them!

Today is Tuesday, and you’re a money boss. Because you’re a money boss, you’ve made your way to Apex Money. It’s here you’ll find fresh new money links every weekday. Let’s look at what I’ve gathered for you today.

Wise words on investor behavior. [Novel Investor] — “When it comes to investing, it’s often what you don’t do that matters most. The best example of this is misbehavior. Unfortunately, not nearly enough investors see it that way. And why should we? We’re bogged down with messages about owning the right investments for today’s environment. Which leads to market timing and forecasts. Two things were terrible at, by the way.”

The long game always wins. [Financial Panther] — “There’s an interesting truth that I think applies to everyone. If you give yourself enough time, you can achieve almost anything. As simple as that sounds though, the reality isn’t so simple. For many of us, time is a luxury we don’t have. Sometimes, it’s on us. We lack patience and we want things to happen fast. And when they don’t happen fast, we give up. We live in a world built on instant gratification.”

Advertising invades your dreams. [Aeon] — “Advertisers have begun invading our sleep in an attempt to place their products in our dreams. This is neither metaphor nor fiction; it’s a fact. The night before Super Bowl LV, the beverage company Molson Coors ran what they called the ‘world’s largest dream study’. They explicitly aimed to place images of Coors beer, along with positive imagery (of refreshing alpine rivers, for instance), into dreamers’ minds.”

Let’s close things out with one non-financial story. It’s a New York Times profile of one of my favorite filmmakers, Hayao Miyazaki.

Hayao Miyazaki prepares to cast one last spell. [The New York Times] — “Miyazaki’s heroines outnumber his heroes. Within the world of anime, these characters are called shojo, girls of an in-between age, no longer quite children and not yet women; but where shojo were typically passive figures subject to romance narratives, Miyazaki’s girls display formidable know-how and independence. They take on jobs, organize households, fight battles and rescue boys from near death — all matter-of-factly, without ever trumpeting notions of girl power.”

Miyazaki’s films are magical. I’ve been a fan since 1997, when my best friend Sparky first dragged me to a screening of Princess Mononoke. I was blown away. If you’re unfamiliar with this Japanese genius, here’s a six-minute YouTube video that collects highlights of his work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4fYKnTPPeY

That’s it for today! See you all tomorrow…