Apex Money Posts

Howdy howdy, money nerds. It’s Thursday, and we have some cool stories about money to share with you. Today’s email is pandemic-themed (although not heavily so). Let’s dive in.

During the pandemic, a small town in Washington has been printing its own currency. [The Hustle] — “Fournier’s central idea is pulled straight from Tenino’s own history. During the Great Depression, the city printed sets of wooden dollars using that exact same 1890 newspaper printer. Within a year, the wooden currency had helped bring the economy back from the dead.” [This isn’t as wild as it might seem. The U.S. didn’t have a standardized currency until just after the Civil War. Instead, there were lots of local currencies like this.]

Gardening is associated with greater happiness of urban residents. [Princeton University] — “As civic leaders and urban planners work to make cities more sustainable and livable by investing in outdoor spaces and recreational activities such as biking and walking, Princeton researchers have identified the benefit of an activity largely overlooked by policymakers — home gardening.”

“What I learned from trying all 81 MasterClasses.” [SF Gate] — “I found that the classes are worth the time, but the real question for most people is the price. Even though I’ve revisited more writing courses since the end of my quest, I don’t think there are enough to keep my attention for more than another month.”

How is the economy recovering? Watch the dentists. [The New York Times, so possible paywall] — “Dentist offices tend to be stable businesses that stick around for decades, unlike restaurants that open and close frequently…If you need your teeth cleaned or a cavity filled, the dentist is the only option. This makes them, in the eyes of some economists, the perfect barometer for gauging the country’s recovery from the shock of the pandemic.”

My girlfriend is a dental hygienist, so I’ve been able to watch second-hand how her dentist’s practice is struggling to cope with the coronavirus. It hasn’t been easy. And you know what makes it worse? Asshole clients who want to get all political because the office has basically become a hazmat zone. It’s not really a choice. And besides, this is one of the most at-risk professions out there. Even if you’re a virus denier, don’t be a dick when you go to the dentist this summer. It’s tough enough for the employees already.

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

Welcome to Wednesday, Apexians. Glad to have you hear. As always, we’ve collected some great recent articles about personal finance that we hope you will find as interesting as we do. Let’s get right to them.

Let’s lead with our video today. I know we just shared something from The Financial Diet on Monday, but let’s go back to that YouTube channel again. It’s a consistent source of high-quality video content about personal finance. In this case, here’s Chelsea Fagan with a 27-minute video about the six secrets she learned working for rich people.

“I am extremely invested in the concept of financial transparency,” Fagan says. “There’s basically nothing about the finances of my business or my life that I wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing — or don’t already share on Twitter — because I realize that one of the most insidious things about wealth is how keeping it secret can make you less accountable to the community that you live in.”

Trading sportsbooks for brokerages, bored bettors wager on stocks. [The New York Times, so possible paywall] — “The last time Americans showed any serious appetite for stock-market speculation was the tech-stock frenzy of the late 1990s. Since then, investors have embraced safer options, like set-it-and-forget-it index funds based on the premise that trying to beat the market is a waste of time. That started to change in earnest last year.”

The importance of having backup plans. [Financial Panther] — “I’ve now been self-employed for a little over a year and things are going pretty well. But of course, I’m not so naive to think that nothing can go wrong. Like any risk-averse lawyer, when I made the leap to self-employment, I did so knowing that I had a lot of backup plans in case.”

Implementing and refining the “Spend Safely in Retirement Strategy”. [Oblivious Investor] — “A couple of years ago, we discussed a paper [that] looked at an assortment of retirement spending strategies and evaluated them based on several different criteria. The authors then put forth a strategy that they referred to as the ‘Spend Safely in Retirement Strategy,’ which generally does a good job of satisfying the various (often competing) criteria…But the basic, two-step plan described above (and in the original report) leaves an assortment of open questions. And when it comes time to actually implement the strategy in a real-world situation, you must come up with answers to those questions.”

That’s it for today, my friends. I’ll be back tomorrow with even more info about how to master your money — and your life. See you then.

Why, hello, money nerds! It is I, J.D., your humble host. And your late host.

Jim and I generally aim to have each installment of Apex Money posted by 8 a.m. Pacific (5 a.m. Eastern) every weekday. And honestly, we both like to work in advance, which means being a week ahead. But due to lack of sleep Sunday night, I completely spaced curating links yesterday. Oops.

But it’s still Tuesday, so this installment counts as “on time”, right? Well, unless you get these by email, of course, in which case you wont see this until Wednesday haha. Anyhow, here are your links for today!

How much is enough? The levels of financial autonomy. [CityFrugal] — “The problem of not having enough money, at least for me, is a problem of perspective. I fixate on what I don’t have enough money to do – namely, quit paid work altogether and join the ranks of the financially independent – and ignore the freedoms I already have.”

How to make extra money in a small town. [Financial Best Life] — “A small town might not offer all of the same opportunities (or as many), as a big city, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a lucrative side hustle or start a successful small business. Let’s take a look at some of the challenges and opportunities associated with working in a small town and some creative ways you can start making money. ”

How to rent a vacation home during the pandemic. [Consumer Reports] — “The country may be reopening, but the risk of COVID-19 remains. Until a vaccine is developed, this is a reality Americans will ‘have to contend with every time they step outside,’ says Amesh Adalja, M.D…This new reality extends to vacation plans. Over the new few months, many Americans will weigh whether a trip makes sense. ” [Related: A rural vacation destination worries it may be swallowed by the pandemic.]

And to wrap things up, here’s a video I’ve had open in my browser for a couple of weeks. It’s short. And simple. And you may have seen it before (it has more than 4,000,000 views on YouTube). It’s a 1974 interview with science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke in which he makes the bold claim that by the year 2001, computers will fit on a desk and be able to do all sorts of stuff.

What do you think? Was Clarke correct? 🙂

Okay, that’s it for Tuesday. I’ll be back tomorrow — and I’ll be on time — with more great stories about personal finance.

Welcome to Monday, money nerds. You’re at Apex Money, and these are some of our favorite recent financial stories from around the web.

Comparing median incomes and home values across the United States. [Accidental Fire] — “So, if I were moving to another part of the country, were still working, and wanted to buy a house and settle down, what would I look for? Well, I’d want an area with higher median household incomes, but lower median home values. In short, a place where I would tend to earn more but where homes are cheaper. ”

How to find a money mentor. [One Frugal Girl] — “It doesn’t matter if you are financially savvy or have absolutely no idea how to manage your money. We all need a way to bounce ideas around with someone who is willing to listen. A money mentor allows us to talk about money matters and financial decisions without judgment or worry.”

“Worldschooling: How our children are educated as we travel.” [Physician on Fire] — “It’s been nearly six months since I retired from medicine and started slow traveling internationally with my family. I expected there would be a lot of questions. I was half right. I have been asked a lot of questions, just not on the topic I expected. [People] want to know how we’re educating our children when we travel for months at a time.”

I haven’t mentioned Financial Diet in a while, but I love this YouTube channel. It’s money advice from women, for women (and everybody else). In this episode, one woman talks about tracking her spending for a decade — since she was thirteen.

As somebody who has tracked his spending on and off for almost thirty years, I love this video. Maybe you will too.

That’s it for Monday, my friends. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more great stories from the world of personal finance.

I would like to ask a favor of you.

Regardless of your politics, I would like you to watch this six-minute video with an open mind.

It’s just six minutes. But it encapsulates what many are feeling.

Learn about Tulsa.

Learn about Rosewood.

Have a good weekend.

When we had our first kid, we opened a 529 plan in the state of Maryland. The tax benefits on the front side are are minimal (you don’t get much of a deduction) but it grows tax free as long as you use the expenses on education. It’s a pretty solid deal and now that we have three kids, we increase our chances at least one of them goes to college. 🙂

If you don’t know 529 plans too well, my friend Robert at The College Investor has a great guide.

529 Plans: The Ultimate Guide to College Savings Plans [The College Investor] – “Nearly every state in the United States has some type of 529 plan to help families save for college. These plans are designed as tax-advantaged accounts – which give you tax benefits to save for college.”

Speaking of kids, a little over a week ago, I was excited to watch the SpaceX launch. I was trying to explain to our kids how amazing it was that a private company was in charge of sending human beings into space. They got excited about it because everyone loves space and I’m tempted to show them Apollo 13 sometime in the near future. We’ll see when that might be but I remember loving that movie.

If you get jazzed up about space too, you might enjoy this article about the Voyager mission:

Voyager: Inside the world’s greatest space mission [BBC Future] – “In 1977, two spacecraft started a mission that has redefined our knowledge of the Solar System – and will soon become our ambassadors on a journey into the unknown. BBC Future looks at their legacy, 40 years after launch.”

The power of the transmitter on Voyager is around 12 watts and peaks at 20 watts – equivalent to your refrigerator light bulb!

Kidnapping: A Very Efficient Business [The New York Review of Books] – “In Argentina in the early 1970s, leftist guerrillas started snatching executives of multinational companies and demanding ransoms. This culminated in the payment of $60 million to the Montoneros, a Peronist guerrilla group, for the release of the brothers Juan and Jorge Born, executives at the grain-exporting firm Bunge & Born and the sons of its president. The ransom seems noteworthy for its heft—at about $275 million in today’s money, it stands as the largest one paid in a conventional kidnapping case.”

How’s that for a side hustle?

When I heard that Minneapolis was going to “defund and dismantle the police department,” I was surprised. Completely shutting down the police department doesn’t feel like the solution – you still need policing.

But “defunding” doesn’t necessarily mean what I assumed. The police are called upon to respond to many situations where they are not the best solution. They respond because they’re often the only solution available – which is not a good thing. Defunding would mean shifting budget away from the police department so it can go to other programs so those programs can respond to situations they are better suited for.

Like in any budget, there’s excess and unnecessary spending. I saw it first hand in the defense industry – you spend the money or you don’t get as much next time. It’s better to waste it on a few expensive toys now than have your budget cut and need the money for something important later.

Defund the police? Here’s what that really means. [The Washington Post] – “To fix policing, we must first recognize how much we have come to over-rely on law enforcement. We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue. […] Defunding and abolition probably mean something different from what you are thinking. For most proponents, “defunding the police” does not mean zeroing out budgets for public safety, and police abolition does not mean that police will disappear overnight — or perhaps ever. Defunding the police means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need. It means investing more in mental-health care and housing, and expanding the use of community mediation and violence interruption programs.”

It Only Takes One Toxic Employee To Infect The Entire Team [My Quiet FI] – “There is a disease spreading across offices everywhere, and no, I’m not talking about COVID-19. I’m talking about the power one single toxic employee can wield. And left to their own devices, they become an office plague, infecting and destroying everything they touch. Like cancer they need to be cut out before it’s too late.

Because make no mistake about it, these people will literally kill your culture.”

A police station is no different than an office.

Last Christmas, a movie featuring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx titled Just Mercy shared the story of lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s quest to exonerate Walter McMillian. We don’t watch many movies in the theaters (three young kids!) so we didn’t catch this one but it’s a story that needs to be more widely shared.

60 Minutes covered this story in 1992 and pulled it from their archives:

UPDATE: Google made Just Mercy available for free on Youtube.

Incredible stuff.

A little context before this next post – Patrick McKenzie is an American who has lived in Japan since 2004. I first learned about him on Hacker News when he was working on and writing about his side project, Bingo Card Creator. I enjoy reading his writing and this article is a fascinating insight into his perspective on work and business in Japan.

Doing Business In Japan [Kalzumeus] – “I heard a great line about this once, and unfortunately I cannot remember the source: “Most people want to become wealthy so they can consume social status. Japanese employers believe this is inefficient, and simply award social status directly.” The best employees aren’t compensated with large option grants or eye popping bonuses — they’re simply anointed as “princes”, given their pick of projects to work on, receive plum assignments, and get their status acknowledged (in ways great and small) by the other employees.”

A treasure chest hidden in the Rocky Mountains for a decade has finally been found [CNN] – “Thousands of brave souls have ventured into the Rocky Mountains for the past decade, searching for a treasure chest filled with gold, rubies, emeralds and diamonds.

But that adventure has finally come to an end. The treasure has been found.” (we first mentioned this in September of last year)

I want to see what was really in the chest!

Lastly, before you go – what’s your guess as to what’s happening here?

Belgian man has been receiving pizzas he never ordered for years [The Brussels Times] – “A 65-year-old man in Flanders says he is “losing sleep” because he has been receiving pizzas he never ordered for nearly a decade, sometimes several times a day.”

Free food for life!

Hey Apexian – Last Friday, J.D. shared how he lost readers when he spoke up about social and racial issues.

No matter what position you take, even the most innocuous ones, someone will hate it. Many someones will hate it. Then suddenly, they will turn on you, call you horrible names they’d never have the guts to say in person, and then unsubscribe. It will not matter how much you’ve helped them, sometimes those animalistic instincts take over.

But I don’t mind losing people this way. I’d rather not have them in my life.

Then there are those who are just as passionate but are willing to have a conversation. Those conversations are important because that’s how you learn and grow. They may be uncomfortable because you are forced to reconsider your world view but it is necessary to lean into them because they are rare.

How the Personal Finance Sphere Upholds Systemic Racism [Our Next Life] – “Words mean things, and debt and slavery are simply not comparable on any level. An enslaved person could not declare bankruptcy and escape slavery. A person in debt does not transfer that debt to their children and their children’s children the way all an enslaved person’s offspring were owned as chattel from birth. And with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, even escaping a slave state for a free state didn’t guarantee a former enslaved person’s freedom. They could be forcibly returned to their “owner” by the “good guys” in the abolitionist state. There is no world in which you can equate that to debt, something that can be paid off and eliminated and which does not deny you personal liberties beyond simply having to dedicate some of your income to its service.”

You can walk away from that post thinking “I don’t mean that when I use that word,” but closes your mind to the possibility that the words you use are hurting people. It speaks to your intent and not to the result of your words, which ultimately is what matters.

Embracing Conflict- my talk at the EconoME conference [rich & Regular] – “As a first generation immigrant of Jamaican parents, I’ve had to pick and choose the aspects of the culture I wanted to carry forward and what parts I’d rather leave behind. Naturally, my selective adoption of cultural practices created an internal conflict because the more I let go of my born identity, the less I identified with people who’d nurtured it…my family.”

Here’s his talk (it’s 9 minutes and the first few mirror his post, but keep going):

Powerful.

Well, Apexians, I lost my first readers yesterday for standing up about something. Honestly, this is why I’ve never stood up for something before. I’ve been too timid. Or maybe a better word is “cowardly”.

But here’s the thing. I dislike covering the political aspects of personal finance because I believe money ideas are important for everyone, and I don’t want to cloud things by getting into political arguments. Doing so doesn’t help anyone improve their bottom line. That said, racial equality isn’t a political issue — it’s a moral one.

If this notion offends you, by all means unsubscribe.

Trust me, there’s no danger that Apex Money will become all about politics all the time. (And there’s no danger that Get Rich Slowly will either.) And if it makes our conservative readers feel any better, I’m also losing liberal readers because they don’t think my actions are enough. Go figure. I just can’t win.

But you don’t come to Apex Money to hear me pontificate. You come for the links. And while I’m not completely back to money links today, I do have a few. Let’s get to them!

We’ve just experienced the best 50-day market rally ever. [LPL Research] — “The 39.6% gain in 50 days was the greatest 50-day rally ever, besting the previous best in October 1982. What’s important to note here is that many of these rallies took place coming off major market lows, and delivered quite strong returns going out 6 to 12 months.”

Folks: When the market drops, you do not panic and sell. You buy, if you can. End of story.

How airlines use rewards cards to drive growth. [Privacy Blog] — “For decades, airlines have leaned on rewards cards for their steady revenue stream—particularly during industry contractions. In fact, the billions in revenue generated by U.S. airline rewards cards and loyalty programs can, at times, outpace overall sales growth.”

People are emerging from coronavirus isolation with carloads of stuff to donate. [CNN] — “Thrift stores around the country are getting a deluge of donations from people who’ve had months to think about the things they don’t need while sheltering at home during the coronavirus pandemic.”

“My white privilege.” [The Non-Consumer Advocate] — “I’m a liberal middle-class white woman raised in a family that abhors racism, and I end each blog post since November 4th, 2016 with a dig against Donald Trump. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t benefit from white privilege. This hard truth is a difficult pill to swallow.”

To wrap things up, our video feature is a Google Talk from financial coach Shawn Rochester, author of The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America. In this 75-minute presentation, he examines the various costs that contribute to the wealth gap between blacks and whites.

This talk is long but it’s very interesting.

Okay. That’s it. Let’s all hope the weekend is nice, quiet, and peaceful and filled with sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns. And maybe a few Taylor Swift videos. Jim will be back on Monday to take you through another week. Until then, stay well.