I’m back!
I wanted to share a fun email I received from Anne, a loyal Apexer, about an article she read on Apex:
I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for posting that Vice article about Airbnb scams. Two days ago, I booked my first ever Airbnb reservations–for an upcoming trip to Miami and the Florida Keys.
After reading that article, I revisited the two listings I had booked. I’m confident that the Miami listing is legit, but I’m just as confident that the listing in Big Pine Key is a total scam. The listing itself had disappeared, but a search turned up an identical listing under a different host’s name. Most of the reviews were glowing (fake, no doubt), but a few of them detailed the very things that the folks in the Vice article experienced.
Fortunately, I read the article (thanks to you!) within the 48-hour full-refund period, so I canceled for a full refund. After 48 hours, I would have gotten only a 50% refund. So you just saved me many hundreds of dollars and prevented my family and me from having a ruined vacation. Thanks so much!! You two do a fantastic job of curating must-read articles. I love Apex Money!
We love you too!
If you have a similar story, or you just want to tell J.D. and me that we’re awesome, please do! We love hearing how awesome we are! 🙂
Onto today’s great gems of personal finance:
Should You Invest At Market Highs? [Can I Retire Yet?] – Chris Mamula gives a very detailed and thorough answer to the age-old question of what to do with your investment dollars when it feels like the market is at its high? “You now have money. You want to invest. Markets are near record highs. Investing your money is scary. So what should you do?”
Spoiler alert: It’s to keep investing but read the post to convince yourself if you find yourself on the fence about it.
From House-Hacker to Landlord: A Complete Financial Breakdown [Tis But A Moment] – “I purchased my first home with the intention of one day turning it into my first-ever rental real estate venture. Now, two years later, it’s time to test the theory: was buying my first home with the intention of renting it out indefinitely a good idea?” Tis goes through some real-life numbers of her experiencing renting out a spare bedroom (a roommate, not AirBnb-style) to renting out the whole thing when she moved in with her partner.
The Evolution of Frequent-Flyer Programs [The Points Guy] – Eric Rosen takes a deep dive into how frequent flyer programs have evolved over the years. He goes back as far as the late 1970s and focuses primarily on the United States. It’s a fun look at how simple they used to be and how incredibly complex they have gotten.
Polygon has a great feature in which they look back at the last 10 years of pop culture. This includes the best games, movies, comics, and more. In its list of games, I hadn’t even heard of two of the top five (#3 and #4), so that should give you an indication of how much fun I am.
If you’ve read something particularly awesome, please let us know!