Sorry about the schedule slip last week - everyone's fine now, but we spent a few days in the hospital last week. I promise not to abandon my favorite readers, even in the middle of summer! So, here's an extra helping of articles for this weekend...
But first... Brexit!
A lot of elite corners aren't too happy about Great Britain's (non-binding) choice to extricate itself from the European Union, but I've got something for you... it happened without firing a single bullet. (Editor: It looks like that isn't true, see this Wiki article on Jo Cox.)
More people in the world, and less violence needed to declare independence. That's a good thing, right?
I've been mainly following the Economist's coverage, but leave a comment if you have a favorite place to get your Brexit news.
Links We Liked!
- The Mercury News had some... news... about people leaving the Bay Area due to the (very high) cost of living. (I'll be staying here, for now.)
- A nice collection of five-word quotes on advice for new graduates from Morgan Housel at the Motley Fool. Lots of contributors we link to here often are featured, so go read through them all!
- Money Beagle discusses which generations took the most damage from the Great Recession. I am most sympathetic to people who started their career between early 2008 and roughly end of year 2011 - graduating to disappearing interviews and job offers and having to accept lower starting salaries (not to mention psyche damage) is a huge deal going forward for Millennials.
- An argument in the New York Times that college is unaffordable for people who are in higher income brackets and ostensibly have a lot of money.
- Ironman at Political Calculations realized we're probably going to see a negative revision to GDP last quarter - go read why.
- Nelson at Financial Uproar discusses optimism, realism, and getting rich - and explains why optimism might help with the process. And yes, being positive helps when the "sky is falling" around you - whenever you feel like that might be the case, anyway. He also called DQYDJ crazy (in a way, that is!).
- Hackaday had a nice piece on dealing with age-related decline (cognitive and physical!) while remaining a "Hacker". (Hacker is, of course, a positive term when used properly). I've had bad eyes since I was roughly 10 or 11, so a combination of contacts and head-worn magnifiers is what I use when soldering small parts.
- Sherry at Save. Spend. Splurge. thinks you all need to learn basic math... stores are pulling one over on your because of the general innumeracy in the population Arm yourself, and find the better deals!
- Congrats to our buddy J$ on finding a new rental house in an expensive and difficult-to-search area, and avoiding the scammers!
- Buzzfeed shares the gory details of internal Uber driver-earning data. In some locales, drivers earned less than $13.25 an hour.
- Paul at Asset Based Life discussed the psychology of updating his net worth math and watching it drop $28,000 - but go read, there's a twist! (He also linked to us inside that article - don't get stuck in a loop!)
- At Funny About Money, a discussion on the value of someone risking life and limb cutting palm trees. We had some sort of a palm when we first moved here, probably only 20-25 feet tall, but growing under the foundation - I took it out with about 50 continuous whacks of an axe (ask my friend who was there, I swear!).
- At Oddball Stocks, a discussion of investing gurus and flexibility - for gurus, there isn't really a "One True Formula".
- Free By 50 had a nice piece on how the "401(k) fee" discussion is dominated by lower quality 401(k) plans in tinier companies - but if you weight it by population, 401(k) fees really aren't that bad.
- Quartz tells us that Millennials are weaker than their parents - Millennials have weak grips. Call it the dead fish handshake generation. (My advice? Go deadlift - you'll quickly build up a grip just keeping the bar in your hands while your back does most of the work).
And the article of the week!
- A 30-something Millennial, on the same side of the Snapchat divide as yours truly, discusses how his rent-free parental charity subsidizes his ridiculous spending habits. I think the phrase to use here is: "I literally can't even."
Enjoy!
