Happy Friday!

Hope your investments and bitcoins are going well! 😂

Stumbled across this old post on Budgets Are Sexy when bitcoin was hovering around $130 if you can believe it! And even then most of us thought it was too expensive – if we even understood any of it (hint: we did not, lol…)

Crazy world we live in… But how fun to be in it :)

Here are my favorite finds from around the community this week – hope something inspires you!

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This method of writing and saving better –> “What can your crappy little elf do for you?”

This idea of celebrating “the middles” –> “We celebrate beginnings and ends but the middle is the hard part… Don’t wait until you’ve reached a milestone to be proud of yourself. Be proud of every step you take toward reaching your goal, whatever it may be.”

This idea of applying minimalism to more than just cleaning out closets.

This benefit of not making as much money –> “It made my transition to self-employment a lot easier because the income I had to replace was much less.”

These thoughts about Warren Buffet and his (lack of) opinion on crypto –> “I once thought the idea of Warren Buffett sitting behind his desk doing deals all day without a computer was charming. I don’t feel that way anymore… [He] doesn’t seem to want to learn or understand more about Web3, the decentralization wave, digital assets, distributive computing, autonomous and electric vehicles, AI, machine learning, virtual reality, app-based gaming, quantum computing or any of the other things that are shaping our lives today and gradually taking over from the 20th Century technologies that came before.”

This idea of a mullet portfolio 😂 –> “The unruly mess your portfolio has become if you haven’t re-balanced since before the 2020 stock market run up.”

These 8 reasons that renting isn’t “throwing your money away.”

This lesson from a life as a professional writer –> “Just because someone you admire tells you “You can’t do that” or “Nobody will take you seriously” doesn’t mean that it’s true.”

This reminder from Ben Carlson that –> “the more successful you become when it comes to your career or your finances, the more overconfident you become in your own abilities as an investor.”

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And that last one is exactly why I only “dabble” in crypto, lol… My indexing and blog game has nothing to do with bitcoin regardless of how well it’s treated me over the years. Just cuz you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you’ll be good at everything! :)

But it’s still fun to try sometimes, haha…

A beautiful crazy world we’re in!

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Good morning!

And a happy early Mother’s Day to all you amazing women out there!!! Thanks for all you do, especially for creating us! ;)

Lots of great stuff out there this week so let’s just dive in!

Favorite finds from around the community:

These long distance friendship lamps –> Friendship Lamps

This way to see if you’re a good person or not, lol –> The “Shopping Cart” Theory

This stuff you can learn from minimalism, even if you’re nowhere close to adopting it –> Let’s Clean This Mess Up

These pros and cons to Real Estate Syndication (been hearing a lot about it lately and Joel does a great job breaking it down in this post) –> What’s a Real Estate Syndication?

How much these famous memes have been selling for –> Meme NFTs!

This story at the center of this article! –> Leaving a Legacy That Matters

These thoughts on investing by Darius Foroux –> “Investing is not a goal, activity, or task; it’s a habit. It’s something you do regularly, just like you work out, meditate, read, or anything else that takes time to yield results.”

This strategy for when you want to create something but you don’t know where to begin –> The Soulja Boy Strategy

This post on efficiency –> Efficiency is the Enemy

This video that I teared up on bad!! –> I Was Almost A School Shooter [7:28]

This question to think about over the weekend –> Do You Like the Person You Are Becoming?

Be well 🙏🙏

// That’s me and my mom up top, circa 1980 :)
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Good morning!

And bye-bye Covid Beard!! Lol… Kids always get a kick out of me doing that, though the dog was much less impressed (took her about 10 minutes to trust me again!).

Always a good way to get a fresh start though :) And PS: You don’t need to wait until New Year’s to take action!! If you’ve been wishing for something for awhile now, let TODAY be the day you do something about it. I don’t care if you only spend *5 minutes* on it. DO IT!!

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTT!

And then take a pic of it and send it to me :) Hopefully it’ll be less creepy than a naked guy with their beard half shaved off…

Below are my favorite articles from the week. Be good 🙏🙏

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Favorite reads this week:

Mom Quietly Quits Household Chores to See If Her Family Notices via Upworthy — “Channeling the fed-upness of mothers everywhere, she just up and stopped doing household chores to see what would happen. Two days later, she began sharing the saga in a Twitter thread that’s as entertaining as it is satisfying.”

Kakeibo: Save Money Using Mindful Japanese-Style Budgeting via FinMasters — “A simple yet powerful personal finance philosophy that teaches you to save money and spend mindfully. All you need is a pen and a notebook.”

Die With Zero: 9 Minute Book Summary via Debt-Free Doctor — “As most books about investing discuss how to grow wealth and accumulate more, this one was the total opposite. It detailed an interested concept of how we could plan out our finances to ensure that we enjoyed life and died with, you guessed it, ZERO. I have to say it’s one of the few books I’ve read that have made me pause and rethink my view about money and life.”

Do You Have an Investing Edge? via Monevator — “In my professional capacity I’ve witnessed actual edge, firsthand. And pretty much none of these edges are available to the private investor. Let’s run through a few examples.”

What If One Dollar Was Worth One Use? via Mixed Up Money — “If you buy a product or an item of clothing, the value should always even out to $1.00 per usage. After all, why would we spend $150 on a pair of jeans if we weren’t planning on wearing them at least 150 times?”

A Piece of Early Retirement Advice via I Retired Young — “FIRE blogs often focus on the money side of the FIRE equation. Some also focus on what can be done in the new time freed up from retiring early. But not many seem to talk about how your early retirement dreams might affect your partner, or how your partner’s plans can impact your early retirement.”

We All Have a Time Machine, It’s Disguised as NOW via Financial Success MD — “Every time we say I wish I could go back in time and change something, we should go ahead and make the change NOW, so our 20 year older selves will not be kicking ourselves for not making the change when we first thought about it.”

There Are Very Few Decisions That Will Ruin Your Life via Financial Panther — “What you’ll find is that most of your worst-case scenarios are really more like a 3 or 4 out of 10 on the badness scale. It sucks, but you can bounce back. Very few are going to be – as Tim Ferris has eloquently stated – on the “holy shit, my life is over” level.”

Video of the week:

Real Estate Right Now via TikTok — one of the funniest things I’ve seen relating to this crazy market we’re in right now :) If you’ve been trying to buy a new place lately you’ll relate!!

@johnsonfilesAnybody else in this crazy fight for a home?? #realestate #housingmarket #comedy #funny #realestatetiktok #realestatehacks #houseshopping #fixerupper♬ original sound – The Johnson Files

Site of the week:

RIPMedicalDebt.org — A great option for anyone looking to give back! “With every donation, RIP uses its precise data analytics to pinpoint the medical debt of those most in need of relief… People across the country receive a letter that their debt is gone. No taxes. No penalties. Just like that, they’re free of medical debt.” [Hat tip to The Bitches for recommending this]

Quote of the week:

Saw this the other day and it hit me hard. Especially with Covid still wreaking havoc out there…

“A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one thing.” – Confucius

Damn. Brutal! But what a way to put things in perspective…

The next time you catch yourself wanting yet another bobble or upgrade in life, try to recall this line even if to just pause for a second and take in your blessings! Money can get you a lot of things, but not some of life’s most essential.

If you’re struggling with health problems yourself, please know you are in our thoughts and we wish more than anything that you get better.

You are loved.

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Good morning!

Hope your week’s been going well! Lots of GREAT reads in the community to share with you this week, but first a couple of announcements:

#1. We’re looking to add two new curators to the All-Star Money team! One to track down the best podcasts & Clubhouse/Discord discussions going on in the space, and another to help find the best YouTube videos & TikTok/Snapchat/Twitch streams, etc. So if you live and breathe this stuff, be sure to check out our jobs page and shoot us a note! –> allstarmoney.com/jobs

#2. I added up new merch on PFSwagger.com. Stumbled across the (hilarious) Mrs. Dow Jones and now obsessed with her Buy/Sell socks! Who needs the stock market when you got the SOCK market, right??! (hardy har…)

Here’s a look at some of her stuff:

To see it all, head over to PFSwagger.com.

Now onto my favorite reads of the week! Hope they start your weekend off right!

XOXO,

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Favorite reads around the community:

Wearing One Dress for 100 Days: A Review via Christian Minimalism — “I actually wore one single dress for 100 consecutive days, for at least eight hours a day. Though this minimalism experiment sounds extreme, I found it to be life-changing. Here are some of my biggest takeaways…”

How to Become a 401(k) Millionaire via Route To Retire — “So here’s something unexpected… I just became a 401(k) millionaire last week. Let’s talk a little bit more about how this happened and why it’s possible for you to do the same!”

20 Minutes a Day Can Radically Change Your Life via PropertyUpdate — “The 20 Minute Habit Shortcut involves a simple three-step process: 1. Define a daily activity that will help you accomplish a specific goal. 2. Devote 20 minutes a day to that new activity. 3. Repeat that activity every day for 30 days.”

How I Make $10,000/mo Investing in Mobile Homes via Side Hustle Nation — “The cash flow strategy with mobile homes is similar to investing in single-family homes, duplex, etc. You’re looking to buy a mobile home, get a tenant in, and operate on a positive cash flow. The main difference from an investing standpoint is that mobile homes typically cost a lot less than traditional family homes.”

Overcoming Procrastination With The Habit Rule of Half via Break The Twitch — “Here’s how it works. If a task is left uncompleted at the end of the day, cut it in half and add it to the next day’s list. If it doesn’t get done by the end of that day, cut it in half again and add it to the next day’s list. Keep doing this until the task becomes small enough to tackle.”

Wooden Spoons via Humble Dollar — “A wooden spoon will serve most purposes just as well as a silver one, and yet it is the latter that’s more desired, despite costing far more. That’s irrational but very human. Why do people value and desire silver spoons so much more?”

The Predictive Power of Fees via Occam Investing — “Given that the amount paid in fees is a great predictor of performance in investing, focusing on reducing fees is the most reliable way investors have to increase their odds of investing successfully.”

Quote of the week:

As with past quotes, this one line has shaped a lot of my thinking this week…

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.” – John C. Maxwell.

Amazing the impact a few words strung together can make! And the more I reflect on this one in particular, the more I realize how true it is. Almost ALL of my recent success has been from stacking daily habits one on top of each other…

Waking up at 5am every day, getting my *one main thing* done first in the morning, always putting a glass of water in front of me so I’m reminded to drink more, shutting down the laptop at nights and weekends, the list goes on and on…

All things I had to stop and COMMIT to every day until they became habits and incrementally improved my life. Not always easy, but you do them one at a time until you stop even noticing. It’s all about being conscious – both of your current habits, as well as your current *goals*. Without knowing either you’re just stuck on a continual time loop! And not the fun kind!

So here’s to us changing our time loops, one habit – and one day – at a time :) We have a lot more power than we think!

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Hey guys!

Happy Friday!

Nothing too juicy to report on this side – unless you’re a fan of ticks which I’ve found crawling over me multiple times this week! (the cons of having large gardens 🤢🤢🤢), so today’s newsletter will mainly just contain my favorite reads and video from the week…

Though I did start a new book that I’m really enjoying! And if you’re a fan of TOMS shoes you might too. I’ll drop a link to it down below. I was also interviewed on a podcast this week: The FI Show. Where we covered designing a work/life balance, the love and transparency within the personal finance community, how I incorporate philanthropy into my daily life, and how I was never really naturally that great with money (or even had a background in it), but still managed okay due to a number of habits and hustle over the years.

You can check it out here: Finding Your Work-Life Balance w/ J.Money

Onto this week’s faves!

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Favorite posts this week:

Winnie the Pooh Translates Financial Jargon via A Wealth of Common Sense — “This meme is perfect for finance because it’s an industry that relies on jargon as a way to sell, confuse and signal higher than average intelligence. Words are meant to impress in the world of finance and convey expertise.”

What Growing Up “Poor” Taught Me About Minimalism via Becoming Minimalist — “Not long after Mom passed away, my little family and I felt an impassioned call toward a simple, minimal life. We sold what we had to pay what we owed, and with reckless abandon, gratefully released the “American dream” and all it demanded of us. We are now three years into this amazing adventure, 100% debt-free and have never been happier or more at peace.”

WTF Is an NFT? by Budgets Are Sexy — “Non-fungible means unique, one-of-a-kind, not replaceable. Example: U.S. dollars are fungible. One dollar can easily replace another dollar. You and I could trade an old $10 bill for a new $10 and we’d both feel fine about it. That’s fungibility. So, a non-fungible item has unique properties such that it can’t be duplicated, replicated, etc.”

Your Life is Always Just Beginning via Raptitude — “With a movie, you always have to put together the story from a standing start, because you’re already in the middle of the characters’ lives. You can’t actually see what happened before the first image appears, but you can piece it together through exposition… Stories begin in the middle, and the middle is always now. Real life is like this too.”

The Little Mermaid: From Hoarder to Heroine via Yellow Brick Freedom — “Ariel reminds us that stuff isn’t the stuff of life. She reminds us that life is about living, not accumulating. It’s about swimming to the surface and using those things, what do you call them? oh—feet!”

Memento Mori: Carpe Diem’s Older Brother via Mantaro Money — “As Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, said, “every man has two lives and the second one starts when he realises he only has one”. Contemplating your own mortality allows you to get on with your ‘second life’ sooner rather than later.”

A Few Short Stories by Collaborative Fund — “Notorious BIG once casually mentioned that he began selling crack in fourth grade… Incentives drive everything, and most of us underestimate what we’d be willing to do if the incentives were right.”

The Young Buffalo 🐃 by 5AM Joel — “A young buffalo once asked his Dad… “Hey Dad, what’s the scariest thing in the world?” The father buffalo told him it was a lion! Because lions eat buffalo. The young buffalo thought to himself for a moment and then said, “OK Dad, if I ever see a lion I’ll run away in the other direction as fast as I can!” But the Dad said that’s actually the opposite of what he should do. He then gave his son this wise advice…”

If You Want To Eat the Rich, Stop Feeding Amazon via Bitches Get Riches — “Next time a warehouse worker passes out in the choking heat of an unventilated warehouse, I don’t want my three-pack of cotton sport thongs to be what paramedics find clutched in his unconscious hands. So, I quit. I stopped feeding Amazon my money. And I realized a lot when I did.”

Video of the week:

Rodney Mullen: Pop an ollie and innovate! via Ted.com — “Rodney Mullen is the godfather of street skating, and in this exuberant talk he shares his love of the open skateboarding community. He shows how the unique environments skaters play in drive the creation of new tricks — fostering prolific ingenuity purely for passion’s sake.”

Book of the week:

Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie — Got this book from my brother the other day and haven’t been able to put it down! It’s old (2012) but REALLY good. Whether you’re into business or not (but especially if you’re into business!). Here’s a snippet on Blake for those who don’t recognize the name:

In 2006, Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS Shoes with a simple business model: “With every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One.” In 2011, TOMS launched its second One for One product, TOMS Eyewear, which with every pair purchased helps give sight to a person in need by providing medical treatment, prescription glasses, or sight-saving surgery. When Blake isn’t working at TOMS, he spends his time reading, writing, fly-fishing, and participating in just about every board sport.

Quote of the week:

One last nugget to ponder as we head into the weekend :) And I can tell you from personal experience this is very much true!! Both with “stuff,” as well as other things in life.

“You don’t have to own something to love and enjoy it.”

– Cheryl Smith

A line that can serve us pretty well over time….

Happy weekend 🙏🙏

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