Apex Money Posts

Hey hey, Apexians. Welcome to another week in the wacky world of personal finance!

I’ve mentioned before that One Frugal Girl is one of my favorite money blogs. Jewels has been sharing thoughtful, interesting articles for almost a decade now. Lately, she’s been on fire. I want to share every article she writes with you, but I’ve been exercising restraint.

Anyhow, today we’ll lead with just one of her recent articles…

“Did limiting beliefs about money make me a millionaire?” [One Frugal Girl] — “I’ve reflected on that memory many times in my life, and every time I’ve viewed it through the eyes of a child. Every time, until I watched the little girl and her father. As I watched that father struggle with the financial decision to buy his daughter a flute, I thought about the mental hurdles involved in contemplating his options. Should he disappoint his child or go into debt to pay for a flute he couldn’t afford?”

A detailed guide to a No-Buy Year. [Becoming Minimalist] — “With the new year approaching, it’s the perfect time to think about adopting a no-buy year challenge. Let me offer you the benefits of a no-buy year, the challenge rules, and necessary preparation. Plus, eight examples of people who attempted a no-spend year just to encourage you.”

Debunking worthless online security practices. [Ars Technica] — “Many security and privacy practices are things learned second- or third-hand, based on ancient tomes or stuff we’ve seen on TV—or they are the result of learning the wrong lessons from a personal experience. I call these things ‘cyber folk medicine’. And over the past few years, I’ve found myself trying to undo these habits in friends, family, and random members of the public.”

That’s it for this last Monday in November. I’ll be back tomorrow with more juicy links. Come back for a taste!

With the Thanksgiving holiday weekend coming up, this will be the last Apex Money until next Monday, when J.D. takes back the mantle. I just wanted to quickly say Thank you for being a reader and subscriber, we both enjoy sharing these articles with you and hope you enjoy reading them!

Onto a few gems for today:

Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance [Farnam Street] – “We often focus on trying to be brilliant, yet many great people get far more mileage out of avoiding making stupid mistakes. Amateurs win the game when their opponent loses points, experts win the game by gaining points.” Anyone who has played chess or golf inherently knows this. In chess, you want to avoid blunders. In golf, it’s bad shots. Avoid those and you’ll be in great shape!

How to Invest Without Knowing the Future [Compound Advisors] – “In fact, admitting that you don’t know where the markets are going is often the best thing you can do as investor. Why? Because it will lead you to diversify your portfolio and prepare it for the many possible outcomes that may arise. What are some of those potential outcomes that might come as a surprise to market participants? I can think of a few today that stand out…”

The Cantillon Effect: How the Rich Get Richer [The Curiosity Chronicle] – “The Cantillon Effect is an economic concept on the distributional consequences of new money creation created by Irish-French economist and philosopher Richard Cantillon in a 1755 paper. In simple terms, the Cantillon Effect says that the flow path of new money matters—those closest to the source and entry point of the new money benefit first and most handsomely. The robust monetary and fiscal response to COVID-19—and a surging wealth inequality problem—has re-ignited the discussion over the distributional consequences of the crisis response and thrown the Cantillon Effect back into the mainstream lexicon.”

Finally, this last one has nothing to do with money but I found this New Yorker documentary entertaining. How does the Stockholm Boys’ Choir handle their performers going through puberty (and their voices crack)?

Have a good holiday!

Many people have heard of bitcoin, ethereum, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies.

Fewer people have heard of blockchain, DeFi, and DAOs. (maybe more after this past week and ConstitutionDAO)

I’m not particularly Web3 savvy myself in terms of hands on experience but I think it’s important that everyone understand the concepts behind Web3. It’s for sure here to stay and you’ll want to be closer to the leading edge of it.

What Is Web 3.0 & Why It Matters [Fabric Ventures] – “Web 3.0 enables a future where distributed users and machines are able to interact with data, value and other counterparties via a substrate of peer-to-peer networks without the need for third parties. The result: a composable human-centric & privacy preserving computing fabric for the next wave of the web.”

Everything You Need to Know About DAOs… You Learned in Elementary School [Sarah Wood] – “If you’re reading about DAOs, you’ve likely come across crypto jargon like wallet, tokens, governance, proposals, off-chain, on-chain, among other confusing terms. This inaccessible language could make you feel like you don’t belong in the conversation. I know it did for me. The good news is that we actually already know much more about DAOs than we ever imagined.”

10 Lessons from 5 Years of Investing in Crypto [Mr Stingy] – “I can’t guarantee you’ll make money in crypto, but I can guarantee you’ll learn amazing things by experiencing it for yourself. In fact, if you invest enough time in the space, your biggest challenge might not be making money — it might be about crypto taking over your life. Because crypto trades 24/7 and moves so fast, you might end up with unhealthy habits. I’ve been playing around with NFT mints recently so I’ve occasionally had to wake up at 4 a.m. I’ve read too many horror stories of people burning out. Your relationships might also suffer, especially if you’re neglecting face time with loved ones. What good is all the money in the world if you don’t have anyone to share it with?”

How Four NFT Novices Created a Billion-Dollar Ecosystem of Cartoon Apes [Rolling Stone] – “Bored Ape Yacht Club became internet rock stars by making NFTs of grungy simians that aren’t just viral images — they’re tickets to a whole new lifestyle.”

Ambition is defined as “a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.”

But sometimes you share your ambitions with people and they say that you’re “too ambitious,” as if that’s a good thing. This can be especially hard to hear when you’re in your younger formative years and when you hear it from people who are older or that you look up to.

Why I Learned to Keep My Ambitions to Myself [Too Ambitious] – “Ambition is a way of taking yourself seriously, a way of being generous with yourself. Which, if you’re anything like me, is not easy to do. Women are conditioned to tone down their accomplishments and be modest about their aspirations. Ambition also makes people deeply uncomfortable. Which is why, for better or worse, I’ve learned to keep my ambition to myself.”

The vulnerability of being broke (even temporarily) [I Pick Up Pennies] – “This month, the last week was nerve-wracking, as I watched my bank balance drop lower and lower, knowing my check was days away. Then as I started scraping the bottom of the bank balance barrel, checking the mail every day and not finding my check. Every new expense that came up made me more tense. And I despaired as purchases I’d already been putting off from earlier in the month could no longer be put off. I’d stress out each time I bought something I couldn’t pay for immediately.”

Why thieves love to steal catalytic converters [The Hustle] – “Catalytic converter theft has always been a problem. But in the past few years, reported incidents have skyrocketed by more than 11x. Auto repair shops that used to see 2-3 of these thefts every month are now seeing as many as 6-8 per day.” Many years ago, I’d heard about people stealing catalytic converters but I had no idea they were worth this much!

Hey, look! It’s a bonus day here at Apex Money.

Generally speaking, Jim and I only publish on weekdays. Today, however, I have a collection of stuff that I feel is worth sharing, but for which I didn’t want to devote a regular Apex installment. So, I’m posting on Saturday.

Astute readers may have noticed that Jim and I have different views of cryptocurrency. He and I have never discussed it, but my impression is that he’s cautiously optimistic and/or intrigued by the technology. Me? I’m pretty pessimistic. It doesn’t feel like the future to me. It feels like a scam.

Obviously, I could be wrong. Time will tell.

https://twitter.com/sigridellis/status/1458551074491600909

Anyhow, I recently read a series of l-o-n-g articles that explore flaws with cryptocurrency (and the related non-fungible tokens). These pieces are interesting and well-worth reading, but I felt like I didn’t want to waste a regular Apex Money installment on them. Thus the weekend edition.

Let’s start with this 21-minute YouTube video from Slidebean that explains how Bitcoin (and the blockchain) works.

And now let’s take a look at this handful of articles that explore real-world reasons that crypto and, especially, NFTs are, well, sort of a scam.

Why NFTs are bad: The long version. [Antsstyle] — “This long article explains technical and economic details to explain both why NFTs are bad, why they don’t work (they don’t do what they claim to do), and explains the hype surrounding them.”

“A lot of people are asking me to make NFT games but I won’t because I’m not an idiot.” [Doc Burford on Medium] — “If crypto’s strength is that there are no banks, no central authority, then you can’t also want a central authority to intervene when someone breaks the rules. You can only have one or the other. You cannot have the government, who you destabilized with monopoly money, intervene (with what budget? you ruined their currency somehow!) whenever your monopoly money is in jeopardy.”

A consistent mistake that cryptobros make. [Doc Burford’s follow-up to his previous article] — “The whole culture would have to change to make your technology work. And that almost never happens unless the use case is simple, intuitive, and the benefits are tangible. Refrigeration made sense to people because it made storing food easier. Cellphones made sense because suddenly you were reachable anywhere and you could play snake. The blockchain? You keep shouting ‘you don’t understand it’ at everyone who tells you it sucks because either they’re smarter than you and understand it sucks, or they don’t understand what it’s used for because it’s a bad technology that isn’t simple and intuitive enough to work.”

Now, I realize that many, many people disagree with me and with these articles. You might be one of those people. And I get it. Like I say, I could very well be wrong. But at this point, I don’t think I am.

Does this mean that I don’t have money in crypto? For the moment, yes. I may indeed put some of my cash there, but if I do I’m not going to delude myself that it’s an investment. Because it’s not. It’d be me deliberately trying to take part in this pyramid scheme and hoping that I’m not one of those left holding the bag…

[Important note: Comments are open for this particular article.]

Hello, money bosses, and welcome to the Friday edition of Apex Money. Today, as I sometimes do, I want to lead with our non-money video.

You see, last night Kim introduced me to a Netflix series called “7 Days Out”. Each episode documents the final week leading up to some big event: the Kentucky Derby, the Westminster Dog Show, etc. Here’s a trailer for the series.

The episode we watched last night was about the renovation and re-opening of Eleven Madison Park, the world’s best restaurant.

My friends, I am here to tell you that this was an amazing 48 minutes of television. It is mind-blowing to watch all of these people — people at the top of their game — and their incredible attention to both detail and quality. I enjoyed this so much (and found it so inspiring) that I’m eager to watch every other episode in the series.

Check it out.

Okay, here are the final few money links for this week. Enjoy!

Experts from a world that no longer exists. [Collaborative Fund] — “Most things evolve, and evolve faster than people’s beliefs. It’s a tricky thing that leads to a long history of older generations whose success came from understanding the new rules of their era not recognizing that the rules may have changed again.” [J.D.’s note: This articulates something I’ve noticed as I’ve entered my fifties. I used to be progressive. But now the world has progressed beyond me — and that makes me feel very, very old.]

Where Americans find meaning in life. [Pew Research Center] — “Fewer Americans now mention finances, jobs or travel as a source of meaning in life than in 2017. The share of U.S. adults who bring up their material well-being – including references to feeling safe, secure, able to cover the basics, living comfortably or being well-off – has dropped from 29% to 18% over the past four years. This decline has been concentrated among two groups in particular: married adults and White Americans. In 2017, both groups were among the most likely to point to material well-being as a source of meaning.”

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.”

Lastly, over the weekend I had a conversation with a friend about how much I loathe companies like The New York Times, which will allow you to subscribe via the web but which subject you to a stupid, stupid phone-based customer-retention process in order to cancel. “That ought to be illegal,” I said. Turns out, now it is. The FTC is cracking down on this sort of bullshit. Thank god. But what puzzles me most is why a company like NYT, which generally has a good reputation, would think that it’s okay do behave like this in the first place.

That’s all I have. Jim will be back on Monday to take you into Thanksgiving. See you soon!

Hello hello hello! Welcome to yet another day of Apex Money. Let’s dive right into the delicious money stories, shall we?

How does your MBTI personality type affect your income? [Visual Capitalist] — “Extroverts are much more likely to have higher incomes if they are quick to share thoughts, have high energy, and like being in the public eye. Thinkers also score high on income potential, especially if they enjoy debates, make rational decisions, and moderate their emotions.”

Will real estate ever be normal again? [The New York Times, so possible paywall] — “House hacking, cash flow, passive income, financial independence: These are the buzzwords, but they aren’t new concepts. This is the natural culmination of the way in which housing has been transformed into an investment vehicle over the last 50 years — and it’s a recognition of the economy younger generations have inherited.”

Net given: A better money metric to track. [Seed Time] — “What was really exciting, is that I felt when we really did not have much money at all, we still had this desire in our heart to give. And so we started tracking our giving and it was exciting to be able to see that number go up. Even though we still had a ton of debt and we still had other things that we needed. We were in a hole financially that we needed to dig ourselves out of, but the number that actually meant the most to us was how much we gave.”

The most important decision in life. [Of Dollars and Data] — “The quality of your relationships will affect your lifetime happiness more than just about anything else. And your partner (i.e. the person you will spend the most time with) is a significant part of that equation. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be happy as a single person, but there is some research suggesting that married individuals are marginally happier than their single counterparts.”

There are those who wonder if my vocal public adoration of Taylor Swift is a joke. Hell no, it’s not a joke. She’s an amazing musician, entrepreneur, and person. She kicks frickin’ ass.

Last Saturday, she was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. She performed one song — a ten-minute version of “All Too Well” in front of a short film based on the lyrics. It was amazing. Even non-Swifties are raving about this…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2uxc01fUXU

You know one of my favorite things about Swift? She’s not perfect, and she doesn’t pretend to be. This performance is “pitchy”, as they say, but who cares? It’s so raw and true and vulnerable. Terrific stuff.

Speaking of terrific stuff, I’ll be back tomorrow with a final day of favorite finance stories for the week. Come back to share them with me, ‘kay?

Welcome to Wednesday, money bosses. You’ll find it no surprise that I’ve collected some excellent money stories to share with you today. Let’s get to them.

I spent 44 years studying retirement. Then I retired. [Wall Street Journal, but this is a version that bypasses the WSJ paywall] — “Some retirees, if they can control events, plan a clean break from what went before and head in new directions. In my case, and knowing a lot about the experience of others, I foresaw continuity for myself across the transition: same person, same interests, same relationships. What is clear now is that I have arrived at a place that is further than I had imagined from the worker that I was, from the setting where I worked, and from the younger man that I had been. I have arrived only to embark.”

The booming underground market for bots that steal your two-factor authentication codes. [Vice] — “With these bots that cost a few hundred dollars, anyone can start getting around multi-factor authentication, a security measure that many members of the public may assume is largely secure. The bots’ existence and increased popularity raises questions on whether online services need to offer more phishing-resistant forms of authentication to protect users.”

In the supply chain battle of 2021, small businesses are losing out to Walmart and Amazon. [The Washington Post] — “Small retailers and manufacturers, already crushed by large national brands during the pandemic, are being disproportionately walloped by delays, shortages and other supply chain disruptions ahead of the holidays. In many cases, they’re losing out to giants like Walmart and Amazon, which are spending millions to charter their own ships and planes to move merchandise. Independent shop owners, who have no such recourse, say they’re often the last in line for products because manufacturers prioritize larger, more lucrative contracts.”

And today’s fun non-financial video is a blast from the past. It’s a 17-minute home movie called “Heavy Metal Parking Lot”, which documents heavy-metal music fans gathering in 1986 for a Judas Priest concert in 1986.

This was the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, and I have to say: All of this seems so, so familiar. It makes me nostalgic.

Okay, that’s all I have today. I’ll be back tomorrow with more. Join me, won’t you?

Calling all Apexians! Calling all Apexians! Come in, Apexians! It’s time for another day of interesting money stories from around the web. Here’s what I have for you…

The code that controls your money. [Wealthsimple Magazine] — “When your boss hands you your paycheck, odds are it was calculated using COBOL. If you invest, your stock trades run on it too. So does health care: Insurance companies in the U.S. use ‘adjudication engines’ — software that figures out what a doctor or drug company will get paid for a service — which were written in COBOL. Wonder why, when you’re shopping at a retailer you will see a clerk typing into an old-style terminal, with green text on a black background? It’s because the inventory system is using COBOL.” [See also: This conversation about the article on MetaFilter.]

If you don’t ask, you don’t get — so keep asking! [Filled with Monday] — “If you don’t ask, you don’t get means that even if there’s a chance that the other party could be annoyed, it’s the only way to get what you want. If you never ask for things, why would people ever give them to you? People are not mind readers. The easy way to get things you want is to just simply ask for them.”

Dave Ramsey, corporate media, and how we talk about financial distress. [Columbia Journalism Review] — “In this economic moment, and for much of Ramsey’s career, being relatable to a wide audience means invoking financial pain, and vice versa. Individual debt saturates the country, and has for decades—over the same amount of time that media consolidation has been in full swing, with companies leveraging vast amounts of debt to become larger and larger, The Ramsey Show has created an archive of individual financial distress akin to Studs Terkel’s in Hard Times.” [This article long article doesn’t seem to have a clear thesis — not a strong one, anyhow — but it’s interesting nonetheless.]

The same stories again and again. [Collaborative Fund] — “In hindsight we view bubbles as periods when people lose their minds, tempted with dumb decisions and overconfidence. That’s partly true. But there’s another cause: People who spend their whole careers working hard amid uncertainty view the new era of prosperity as their deserved reward, the entire point of putting in years of long hours to begin with. So rather than a warning sign, the bubble is seen as crossing the finish line and being patted on the back after a long journey.”

My cousin Duane came to visit a couple of weeks ago. His throat cancer is getting worse, but he’s still fighting! After an afternoon toodling around our town, we came home and watched comedy on YouTube. It was at that time that Duane introduced me to the glory of British quiz shows.

These “quiz shows” — Would I Lie to You?, QI, Countdown, etc. — are only loosely games. There’s a game going on, sure, but it’s really just an excuse for the panel of comedians to have a good time as they entertain the audience. They feel like the shows I used to love on American TV in the late 70s and early 80s.

Anyhow, as an example of how much fun they are, here’s a twelve-minute clip from Would I Lie to You? during which one team is trying to guess which member of the opposing team is actually telling the truth.

I think it’s funny, funny stuff and I wish there were more shows like this on television nowadays. Perhaps you will like it too.

Okay, that’s all I have for today. Come back tomorrow for more!

Good morning, money nerds, and welcome to another week of Apex Money. This is the place where we gather interesting money stories from all corners of the internet to share with you. Let’s dive right in.

How to increase your savings while spending. [Behavioral Scientist] — “This ‘saving through spending’ setup is an innovative way that government, financial services companies, retailers, and tech companies are working together to help people grow their retirement savings. By combining saving with everyday spending, programs in places as diverse as Mexico, Australia, and Spain are hoping to help solve the problem that too few people are saving enough for retirement, especially for those with lower incomes who fall outside of traditional pension and retirement structures.”

I retired at 30 and now I’m lost, depressed, and don’t know what to do. [/r/financialindependence on Reddit] – “In all, what was supposed to be an amazing journey has turned into one of the darkest periods of my life. I don’t want to go back to work just for the sake of filling my time, and I also don’t know how to move forward either. It’s been hell feeling the time tick away with nothing to do and nothing I have to do. I wish I had read this line before and taken it to heart: retire to a life, not away from one.”

There is no such thing as enough money. [Incognito Money Scribe] — “There is never enough money, if you can’t see the riches in front of you now. The question shouldn’t be: how much money is enough? It should be: how much more clarity do you need to see the rich, joyful things happening all around you?”

Our last piece today is video that’s almost money related. On YouTube, James Hoffman (who does great videos about coffee) reviews Aldi’s absurdly cheap single-cup coffee brewer.

To me, this is entertaining regardless whether you’re in the market for a new coffee brewer. Heck, I don’t even have an Aldi within 500 miles of me. (Although I do see there’s now one in Fresno, which is 571 miles away.) I don’t know why, but I love have James Hoffman nerds out on coffee stuff.

Okay, that’s it for Monday. I’ll be back tomorrow with more. See you then!