Apex Money Posts

Good morning, money nerds! Are you ready for another week? I am. And I’m hopeful that everyone will remain calm, cool, and collected. Please?

I’ve gathered some top recent stories about money and personal finance to share with you. Let’s dive in!

Today I’m leading with a story from my Apex partner, Jim. I like it.

What you should do with all of the financial advice on the internet. [Wallet Hacks] — “The internet makes financial information accessible to a lot more people, which is great. But it also comes from generally unknown sources which means you have to do your homework. As they say, you can’t believe everything you see on the internet.”

“How spending 13 minutes a day on self-care changed my life.” [Fabric] — “The term ‘self-care’ comes with so much baggage and has been hijacked by brands to try to sell us something. But if I’ve learned anything in therapy, it’s that if I’m not well, nothing in my life is. So I knew I had to do something to engage in self-care that was meaningful, easy and free.”

The truth about inflation truthers. [A Wealth of Common Sense] — “The government isn’t suppressing the ‘actual’ inflation number. And if they were, they would also be suppressing reported economic growth which is something no politician in their right mind would ever do. Inflation is a tricky concept to understand but that doesn’t mean you should listen to the inflation truthers.”

And on a related note (actually taken directly from that blog post), here’s a seven-minute video comparing life in 1973 with life today…and how today’s life is actually less expensive. It’s an interesting look at the changing cost of goods and services, and why it’s so difficult to compare the past with the present.

And that’s all I have for this Monday. I’ll be back tomorrow to share more fun money stories with you. See you then!

The first article today is about Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy, and talks about the wide world of travel “hacking” and travel loyalty points. It’s interesting on its own but the biggest piece in all this is that these programs create two side effects (quotes are from the article):

• Airlines make a fortune off these points – “A major reason points-and-miles trips exist is because airlines turn a more stable profit by minting their own currencies than by selling actual airline seats.”
• And people who use cash are subsidizing people who use rewards cards – “According to a 2010 policy paper by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the average cash-using household paid $149 over the course of a year to card-using households, while each card-using household received $1,133 from cash users, partially in the form of rewards. It remains a regressive transfer to this day.”

Users of cash are paying more because of these programs – they, in effect, are subsidizing the programs. And people who use cash are often poorer than those who have better credit and can get these more valuable cards.

The Man Who Turned Credit-Card Points Into an Empire [New York Times] – “Brian Kelly, The Points Guy, has created an empire dedicated to maximizing credit-card rewards and airline miles. What are they worth in a global pandemic — and why are they worth anything at all?”

My Cost of Mindlessness: A $500 Insurance Deductible [Budget Life List] – “As I am speedily exiting our driveway, I am jolted from my mindless reverie as I smash into my neighbor’s parked pickup. I feel blood drain from my face as I hear the backup camera screaming at me.

What a way to meet my new neighbors.” The importance, and practice, of being present cannot be overstated.

Money Laundering Via Author Impersonation on Amazon? [Krebs on Security] – “Patrick Reames had no idea why Amazon.com sent him a 1099 form saying he’d made almost $24,000 selling books via Createspace, the company’s on-demand publishing arm. That is, until he searched the site for his name and discovered someone has been using it to peddle a $555 book that’s full of nothing but gibberish.”

This next story is one I’ve read before, it follows Michael Larson and his epic run (he won over $110k) on Press Your Luck, but it also includes what happened after he left the show. Be warned, and you probably expect this, it’s sad.

Who Wants To Be a Thousandaire? [Damn Interesting] – “Larson was not allowed to return as champion since he had surpassed CBS’s $25k winnings limit. As all of the perplexed parties parted ways, CBS executives were called to a meeting to dissect the episode frame-by-frame. In spite of their efforts they could find no evidence of wrongdoing or rule-breaking, so after a few weeks they grudgingly mailed Larson his check. Some people at CBS didn’t want the over-extended episode to be released to the public at all, but it was ultimately decided to air it in June as an awkwardly edited two-parter.”

I’ve known Stefanie O’Connell Rodriguez for several years and I found her latest post on setting goals for 2021 to be especially valuable given her 2020. She lived in New York City last year and her business was shut down for 7 months. Her husband was out of work for 10 months (he’s a stagehand on Broadway).

Oh, and this was right after they got back from their honeymoon in New Zealand.

So if there’s anyone who is at the intersection of “smart with money” and “severely impacted by the pandemic,” it’s Stefanie.

How to Set Money Goals for 2021 [Stefanie O’Connell] – “While I may not know when my husband will return to work, or whether my business will continue it’s post-lockdown recovery, or when we’ll be able to return to our life in Manhattan, I’m setting resolutions for 2021 as a practice of financial optimism.

Research shows that optimism pays – literally. Optimists are more likely to have an emergency fund, to enjoy greater career gains and higher incomes, and to experience less financial stress.”

How Billionaires See Themselves [Current Affairs] – “… if there is a central recurring theme to billionaire literature, it is this: an insistence that what has made the billionaire rich is helping other people rather than helping themselves. The billionaire wants to explain to us that what might look like the steady hoarding of wealth and a feudalistic imbalance of power is, in fact, the product of defensible moral choices and a fair system.” So many good nuggets in this one – even if it is a wee bit cynical (and long). 🙂

A Massive Fraud Operation Stole Millions From Online Bank Accounts [Wired] – “Researches from IBM Trusteer say they’ve uncovered a massive fraud operation that used a network of mobile device emulators to drain millions of dollars from online bank accounts in a matter of days.”

This one has nothing to do with money but I found it so fascinating I had to share it with you:

How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus [WHYY] – “Viruses such as HIV have been infecting vertebrates for probably a couple hundred million years, according to Chuong. So, according to evolutionary biologists, once upon a time some retrovirus infected an egg-laying vertebrate. And by chance, that virus settled into that animal’s egg cells. And it just so happened that that particular infected egg met a nice sperm and got fertilized. The baby that was hatched — whatever kind of protomammal it was — now had copies of that virus’ DNA in all its cells. This virus didn’t kill the baby — if it had, we wouldn’t be sitting here as humans telling this story. What it did was give this offspring a premium feature.”

Reading that was like reading about how there were once 9 different species of “human beings” – homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis, Denisovans, etc.

When it comes to goals, I don’t set them. I know folks who set concrete goals (SMART!) and that works very well for them.

Personally, I like to set directional “sign posts.” These are things I hope to accomplish sometime in the next few years. They’re not necessarily goals, in the traditional sense (they fail the T in SMART), and they can move as I see fit. The way I think of them in my head is that “I want to go in this direction at a relatively quick speed.”

When I read this article by Darius Foroux, I was struck how I basically create his version of a 5-year plan, except I don’t think of it as a five year plan. I also don’t focus on the sign posts themselves and focus more on my output towards that sign post:

The Life Plan: How To Plan Your Days, Months, and Years [Darius Foroux] – “We have so many opportunities and shiny things that grab our attention that we’re likely to get paralyzed by indecision. So many of us just wander around without a clear purpose. With planning, you can avoid that type of time-wasting and aimlessness.”

Inside the Surprisingly Big Business of Spotify’s Secretive White-Noise Spammers [OneZero] – “Primarily through a shell label called Peak Records, Ameritz fuels hundreds of generically named Spotify artist pages, such as White Noise Baby Sleep and Relaxing Music Therapy, with literal static. There appears to be a real appetite on the platform for music to play while you fall asleep, with some of these artist pages reaching hundreds of thousands to millions of streams every day, according to data viewed by OneZero via Spotify for Artists. With Spotify paying around a third of a penny per stream, revenue from few of these top accounts can be comfortably estimated at upwards of $1 million per year, each.” Only a matter of time before Spotify cracks down and removes these – not sure why these people are agreed to get interviewed though!

10 Best Money Tips for 2021 From the Experts [Smart Money Mamas] – “When it comes to running a profitable business, most people think that if you make more things, you make more money. Not so. The million dollar business owners do one thing really well.” (that tip comes from Dana Malstaff of Boss-Mom and I love it.

Incidentally, “directionally correct” refers to a business consultant term that means “let’s not quibble over the details, this is roughly correct.”

A fun, and accurate, list that’s quick to go through and worth the time.

100 Tips For A Better Life [ideopunk] – “4. “Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.” Lots of good gems in this one.

We all make mistakes but we don’t all recognize them and this is an honest introspection that everyone should be doing:

A Reflection on my 2020 Financial Mistakes [Thrifty Hustler] – “2020 is a rollercoaster ride for me as I have mentioned in my 2020 Year End Blog Post. The first quarter was awesome and then it went downhill from there and then it sort of picked itself up before the year ended. Even though my perspective of 2020 is on the optimistic side, mainly because of the growth of this blog that I’m really really surprised to see, my financials were not doing that great.”

A little look back, now a little look forward:

My Top Money Moves For 2021 [Banker on FIRE] – “Thus, as boring as it may sound, my biggest focus area for 2021 by far is to continue doing well at work.” Not something you see often from folks writing about early retirement, focusing on doing more at work today.

Anti-New Year’s Resolution: 21 Things You Need to Try in 2021 [Money Life Wax] – ” No doubt, 2021 will be the year you finally stick to your New Year Resolutions. You are going to make it happen. There will be no turning back and you will finally hit all of your goals!

The last 15 years are behind you… you mean business! But then, something happens… in what seems like in instant, February 1st rolls around and you have already resorted to looking towards 2021!

So what if instead of adopting a million goals for 2021, you joined the “Anti-New’s Year Resolution” movement and focused on things to try in 2021?”

I love the idea of Anti-resolution. 🙂

Hello, 2021!

I have a fantastic track record when it comes to New Year’s Resolutions – I can’t remember the last time I’ve broken one.

Before you get too impressed, it’s because I don’t set New Year’s Resolutions. 🙂

That’s not meant to be cheeky, I don’t think a resolution would work for me and so I’ve never done them. For some, they’re great and work well. It’s the start of new habits (or at least the exploration of a new habit), new behaviors, and new starts.

For others, perhaps like me, they’re less helpful. So do what works for you, that’s probably one of the keys in life!

I do, however, enjoy fresh starts and flipping the calendar over to 2021 represents a big fresh start.

The Magic of a Fresh Start [zen habits] – “When we miss a few days of meditation, or eat junk for a week because of various celebrations, or fall off from writing our book … instead of making that to mean that this whole thing is a waste of time or that we somehow suck … we can look at it as a Fresh Start.”

This next one is an interview with Financial Imagineer, who plans goals in five-year spans:

New Year Goals: From a Swiss Multi-Million Banker [2021] [The Millennial Money Woman] – “My wife and I started imagineering our lives in 5-year steps starting in 2006. The year 2021 marks the end of our third planning cycle. So far, we have had a 100% success rate.”

And this last one can help put a lot of things into perspective:

Michael J Fox: ‘Every step now is a frigging math problem, so I take it slow’ [The Guardian] – “Parkinson’s, he said, had made him quit drinking, which in turn had probably saved his marriage. Being diagnosed at the heartbreakingly young age of 29 had also knocked the ego out of his career ambitions, so he could do smaller things he was proud of – Stuart Little, the TV sitcom Spin City – as opposed to the big 90s comedies, such as Doc Hollywood, that were too often a waste of his talents.”

Well, friends, we made it. It’s the last day of a very, very strange year. Thank god.

To celebrate, here’s my absolute favorite find from 2020 — and it’s something I only discovered two days ago. Here’s the video for Melody Gardot’s song, “From Paris with Love”.

Turn up the volume, make it full screen, then listen and watch again and again and again, as I have over the past 48 hours.

This song (and video) so perfectly encapsulates my personal philosophy. It’s joyful. I love it.

And with that, let’s close our eighteenth month here at Apex Money — and draw the shades on 2020. Jim and I will be back next year with more great stories from the world of personal finance. We look forward to having you along for the ride.

Wednesday is hump day — even when it comes at the end of the year. And “hump day”, of course, only exists because of our need to work work work. Today, let’s look at some stories about the world of employment…

The commas that cost companies millions. [BBC Worklife] — “How much can a misplaced comma cost you? If you’re texting a loved one or dashing off an email to a colleague, the cost of misplacing a piece of punctuation will be – at worst – a red face and a minor mix-up. But for some, contentious commas can be a path to the poor house. A dairy company in the US city of Portland, Maine settled a court case for $5m earlier this year because of a missing comma.”

Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work. [The New Yorker] — “For teams straining under e-mail’s shortcomings, Slack arrived like a digital analgesic, curing multiple pain points all at once. This palliative effect propelled Slack toward its astronomical valuation just six years later. The problem with this trajectory is that no one stopped to ask if it made sense to optimize this style of work in the first place.”

The data-driven case for vacation. [Harvard Business Review] — “Over the past three years, we have partnered with the U.S. Travel Association to more clearly understand the relationship between well-being and taking time off from work. Our hypothesis has been that without recovery periods, our ability to continue performing at high levels diminishes significantly. This is in direct conflict with the common misconception that the longer you persevere at work, the more successful you will become.”

Sorry. No video today. I didn’t find anything worth sharing. That’s pretty rare! Maybe you all should send me something cool that you’ve watched recently.

Today is Tuesday, my friends, and this is Apex Money, your source for the best personal-finance articles from around the web. Here’s what we have for you today.

Your lifestyle has already been designed. [Raptitude] — “All of America’s well-publicized problems, including obesity, depression, pollution and corruption are what it costs to create and sustain a trillion-dollar economy. For the economy to be ‘healthy’, America has to remain unhealthy. Healthy, happy people don’t feel like they need much they don’t already have, and that means they don’t buy a lot of junk, don’t need to be entertained as much, and they don’t end up watching a lot of commercials.”

Reflecting on financial mistakes. [One Frugal Girl] — “I’ve never made a significant financial mistake, but the little ones still bother me immensely. I can spend days feeling bad because I forgot to use a coupon, left money on the counter, or didn’t buy an item when it was on sale. I’m over forty now and tired of feeling this way. My scarcity mindset has kept me trapped in this negative spiral for way too long. It’s time to make a change.”

How to spend your money for maximum happiness. [Popular Science] — “What most experts can agree on is this: there are ways to spend our money that are more likely to elicit joy. So next time a commercial has you itching to pull out your wallet, hit pause and consider these three tips on where to invest your cash.”

Today’s video is from Sarah, the Budget Girl. In this 26-minute clip, she talks about how mental health affects your finances.

As some of you know, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. I struggle with depression and anxiety, and I have no doubt that these issues affect my finances in ways both obvious and subtle. Over the past two years, they’ve had huge effects in my life.

Okay, that’s plenty for Tuesday. I’ll see you tomorrow with more fun stories from the world of personal finance!

Good morning, my money nerds! We’re nearing the end of 2020, for which I think it’s safe to assume we’re all celebrating. To get you started this week, here are some of our favorite recent money articles. (Two of these are from The New York Times today. Because that may be behind a paywall for some of you, I’ve included an “extra” story today.)

An oral history of the world’s biggest coupon. [The New York Times] — “The 20 percent off coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond — a homely and oversize mailer known as Big Blue — is omnipresent, unmistakable and a joy to deploy in the chain’s endless aisles. It’s also an oddball marketing achievement where the promotion became a stand-in for the brand itself.”

“How do I make money when I inherently hate the system?” [/r/financialindependence on Reddit] — “’m Black and from the hood. Me and everyone I know has been stuck in perpetual poverty our whole lives. I articulate myself, and I suppose I’m fairly clever. But as far as knowledge on how to make money work for me, healthy work patterns, wealth building habits, and financial literacy I have none.”

Giving billions fast, MacKenzie Scott upends philanthropy. [The New York Times] — “All told, Ms. Scott — whose fortune comes from shares of Amazon that she got after her divorce last year from Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder — had given more than $4 billion to 384 groups, including 59 other Y.W.C.A. chapters.”

Supercharging your financial bullshit detector. [Incognito Money Scribe] — “As a creative endeavor, financial success depends on knowing what to include as well as what to exclude; being able to separate good advice from bad advice; telling the truth from the bullshit. A good bullshit detector can go a long way in making better financial decisions.”

To conclude, here’s something that has nothing to do with money, but which I think is important nonetheless.

I know a lot of people who behave as if the news reflects reality. It doesn’t. Whether your news comes from the mainstream media, social media, or alternate sources, it provides a distorted version of the real world. It provides bits of the truth, but it is not the Truth.

Last year, Our World in Data published a small article that reflects one small way in which the news presents us with a distorted view of reality. They asked: Does the news reflect what we die from? The answer, of course, is “hell no”.

Again, this is one small example but it’s representative of the problem, as a whole. Fundamentally, the news is entertainment. It’s a product. News producers want viewers. So, they’re going to present stories that draw viewers, even if that means those stories create a distorted lens through which to view the world.

Okay, that’s it for the first day of the last week of this year. I’ll be back tomorrow with more good stuff. See you then!