[Hi guys! Thought we’d change it up today and drop my *personal newsletter* here so you can get an idea of what they look like… Each week I share my favorite articles and notes from around the community, updates on my projects, personal stuff, and any other interesting nuggets I think people might find helpful. They go out once a week on Fridays, and you can sign up to it here if interested.  Hope you like it! Now take it away, J. Money! ;)]

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Good morning!!

Happy Halloween Weekend!!

Y’all dressing up or hitting any wild parties??! I wish I could say I was, but unless you count chaperoning a thousand kids as they hit event after event after event all weekend as juicy, I most certainly will not be lol…

Though I did find these killer shoes a few days ago I’ll be celebrating with ;)

Aren’t they just perfect for Halloween??? Super cheap too as they were “lightly used” (I love vintage stores so much…)

As for my costume, I’ll probably just go w/the tried and true “skeleton rock star.” Which consists of basically just wearing a black shirt with skeleton bones on it and rocking my ‘hawk. Though perhaps this year with the shoes addition I’ll call myself a “killer rock star”? Hmm…

If you’re still looking for some good – and frugal – costumes, here are a few of my favorites from an old blog post of mine: 16 Last-Last Minute Halloween Costume Ideas

• Static Cling – Wear normal clothes and safety pin socks and lint to it!
• Christmas Tree – My all-time favorite costume ever: Wear all green, wrap yourself in Christmas lights, and then plug yourself into the wall :)
• Chick magnet – Tape a bunch of Barbie dolls to yourself. Or use pictures of hot girls!
• Smarty Pants – Tape smarties candies to your PANTS
• The Tanning Bed – Tape glow-sticks up and down your arms. Then go around the party, entrapping people in your embrace: Instant tanning bed.
• Pinterest board! Dress in all white, then hang a cork board around your neck with pictures of cute houses, tattoos, book cases and whatever else people like to “pin”
• Random Hook-up – Drape a lot of random colored extension cords around you, haha…

Whatever you end up going as though, I want pics please :)

Or you can just stay home and binge Elite Edge Money all night long – that’s probably the best *treat* for you… Less calories and not nearly as scary! Yum!

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Posts on Budgets this week:

The Gucci Mane Guide to Greatness — A review of Gucci’s latest book on becoming better versions of ourselves… Not nearly as good as his Autobiography I devoured earlier, but still chalk full of great takeaways that I share here.

The Power of Rewards (AKA In Which I Bribe My Kids to Behave…) — It may not be at the top of the Parenting 101 handbook, but boy does bribing sure work Here are a handful of examples I’ve incorporated into our household lately.

*To get these posts automatically emailed to you on the day they come out, sign up to my blog newsletter https://eliteedgemoney.com/subscribe/.

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Favorite Articles Around The Community:

My First 6 Months of Early Retirement Sucked Shit: What They Don’t Tell You about FIRE @ Bitches Get Riches – “My body and my subconsciousness understood exactly what was happening to me. “You are very, very depressed,” they told me with crystal clear enunciation. “Sleep ten hours a day, invest 200 hours into a video game you don’t particularly like, and put cheese on EVERYTHING until this passes.””

Want to Be a Lazy Seeker of Financial Independence? Invest in Your 20s. @ We Want Guac — “Almost all of today’s most famous investors are wrinkly old fartbags. This tends to give the impression that A. it’ll take you multiple decades and unfathomable luck ‘til you can enjoy wealth, B. all the good investing opportunities dried up decades ago, or C. young people just shouldn’t try to get ahead until they’re older and wiser. Not so! It’s actually the youngest investor in the room that’s the most powerful.”

Diversify Your Friends And Financial Goals @ A Teachable Moment – “Studies prove that having friends attracts more than good times. Good friends boost the immune system and help protect you from catching a common cold.  Different types of friends provide the most significant value add.”

Waste a Few Hours, so You Don’t Waste Years @ Darius Foroux — “Being productive doesn’t mean utilizing every waking minute to do productive things.  Sometimes, spending a day doing various things around the house, maybe taking a walk or doing some reading, can actually be more useful. These moments help us examine our lives.”

Expectations and Reality @ Collab Fund — “Imagine a life where almost everything gets better but you never appreciate it because your expectations rise as fast as your circumstances. It’s terrifying, and almost as bad a world where nothing gets better.”

My Favorite Nomad Travel Tools! @ A Purple Life — “Somehow I’m going into the 3rd year of my retirement and my nomad travel life. During that time, I’ve amassed an arsenal of tools to help me on the road. Previously, I discussed general tools I love to use in my day-to-day life that help it seem like I have my shit together , but today I want to focus on things that help me be a more effective traveler.”

Ultimate Detailed Price Battle!!! Is Shopping At A Warehouse Club Really Saving Anything? @ Chief Mom Officer — “When I remove all the items I couldn’t buy at Aldi’s because they didn’t have an equivalent or where I wouldn’t want the alternative option for my family, it’s clear that shopping at BJ’s is the winner for us. Those items would cost $285 at BJ’s compared with $333 at Aldi’s. The cost savings is over $100 when compared with Target, and almost $200 when compared with Price Chopper!”

(Hat Tip to Lazy Man and Money who came out with a different conclusion when he analyzed the costs for his family… How about you?)

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News & Nuggets Around The Community:

Interesting news and clips that caught my eye this week…

• Ali from All Options Considered celebrates 4 years of being FI– woo!
• “It’s as hard to start and run a small business as it is to start a big one. You will suffer the same toll financially and psychologically as you bludgeon it into existence… So if you’re going to dedicate your life to a business, which is the only way it will ever work, you should choose one with the potential to be huge.” – Stephen Schwarzman via Darius Foroux
• “When you buy a home to live in with a plan to later rent it out, you’re doing two things at once. You have to consider the property more from an investment perspective and less from an emotional “I love this house” perspective. This isn’t always possible (or advisable), but, if you live in a hot rental market and have aspirations of building a passive income stream, buying a home that can be turned into a rental can be a great option.” – Frugalwoods
• “I was at a gas station filling up when a man came up to me, excited to see the car I was driving. He gushed over how cool he thought the car was and asked how I could afford it. Embarrassed by the attention and eager to shift the focus to something else, I truthfully explained that I had eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day for an entire year to pay for the car. Upon hearing that, his smile waned and I could tell that he doubted the sacrifice was worth it.” – Humble Dollar
• “Decades ago, when I was in Sales, the top contact at my largest customer made a comment to me that I’ll never forget. I was moving on to a new job, and Fred gave me what turned out to be one of the biggest compliments of my life. “You’ve always looked me in the eyes,” he said. “If someone doesn’t make eye contact with me, my experience has taught me to not trust them. You make excellent eye contact, and you’ve been one of the people I’ve trusted most in my career.” When you’re talking with someone who matters in your life, look into their eyes.” – The Retirement Manifesto

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New Job Opp on The Scene!

(From my friends over at the FIRE app, Topia)

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Get paid to think about FI!

We’re on the lookout for an ultra-passionate person from the FI community who wants to join Topia to lead and manage the Topia community. If you love FI and want to get paid to spend your days, thinking, talking and breathing FI then look no further! This could be a full-time or part-time role (min. 15 hours a week).

What this role entails:

• Regular chats with Logan & Grant to talk through the monthly community plan and give updates on how the community is doing
• Drive daily FI conversations, engagement and discussions within the Topia community
• Plan, schedule and manage virtual events within the community
• Find and post FI content into the relevant areas of the Topia community

If you think this could be a good fit please reach out to logan@topia-app.com

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And that’s a wrap!

Hope you get more treats than tricks this weekend!

// For previous newsletters: Archives
// To connect further: @Twitter | @Facebook | @Instagram | @LinkedIn

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Liked this? You can sign up to get this newsletter in your inbox every Friday here!

Hope you found it helpful :)

[This post, Tricks and Treats 💰, was first published by J. Money on Elite Edge Money]

Happy Spanksgiving!

Hope you’re all safe and enjoying the holidays :)  

Here are some fun and interesting personal finance reads from around the web…

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The Best Chrome Extensions For Online Shopping $$$ by Route to Retire –  Since it’s Black Friday today, and Cyber Monday is around the corner, check out these Chrome browser extensions that help save you money! They are all 100% free, run in the background, and most let you know if the product you’re looking at can be found cheaper elsewhere… sometimes much cheaper!

My First Word: “More” by Living With Money –  “More. One syllable, four letters, but so much is packed inside that word. One simple question is enough to upend your entire thought process…  “Do I need more?””

The Ten Commandments of Personal Finance by Len Penzo –  My favorite one is Commandment #8… “Keepeth thy spouse involved in the financial decision process.”  By the way, did you know that more Americans can list the ingredients inside of a Big Mac than can list the actual 10 Commandments?! 

Map of Used Cars (Interactive Tool!) by Playing with FIRE – Using local data from all over the U.S., this awesome tool gives a side-by-side comparison of the most reliable used cars. Check out average resell prices across regions, depreciation schedules, and calculate your total cost to drive using the calculator.

Getting More From My Emergency Fund With 3% and 5% Interest Savings Accounts by Financial Panther – “I currently have $33,500 that I earmark as an emergency fund. $13,500 of it earns 5% interest. $20,000 of it earns 3% interest. It’s a big emergency fund, but it’s also money that’s earning rates of return that beat inflation. When you think about it, these accounts basically allow me to get the best of all worlds – I get the safety of a savings account while also getting a high rate of return.”

What we learned from interviewing 12 nomadic couples and individual travelers by Nomad Numbers – “About 6 months ago I started to look for other couples and individuals that have become nomadic like us to understand their origin story and travel lifestyle… In this blog post, you will be discovering what all of these interviews have in common and what sets them apart. You will also have access to top advice and resources from our interviewees if you are interested to start designing your own life.”

Which Accounts Should You Use to Invest for Retirement? [Interactive] by Adam at Minafi – “This interactive article shows which accounts YOU should focus YOUR time on learning about. To get started investing you don’t have to know everything – that’s what the experts are for. Instead, you just need to know which account (or accounts) are going to be most beneficial for your specific situation.”

The Money Deck (KickStarter Campaign) by Ben Barrett-Forrest and Nicholas Fleming – This could be a great gift for a friend who might need help learning about saving, investing, retirement, credit, the economy, common money mistakes, and more! “A whimsical, pocket-sized guide to personal finance, concisely captured on 52 casino-quality playing cards”  

The Youths Are Coming For The Housing Market by A Wealth of Common Sense – This post talks about why people in their 30s are going to be buying a lot of houses in the coming years :)  Very interesting stuff!

Sick of Uncertainty? Read This. by Sarah Newcomb, Morningstar –  “To maintain your cool as a long-term investor, you simply must find ways to see past the immediate crises. We can do this by turning our attention away from the uncertainty of things we can’t control and toward things that are certain and things we can control.”

And lastly, a fun video!…

Cucumba! (VIDEO) by Macka B – This is a few years old, but I only just found out about it! A great reminder of the simple and surprising benefits of basic vegetables.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy some cucumbers and learn all the words in this video.

Have a fantastic weekend. Catch you all next week!

~Joel 

[This post, Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s Some Good Reads From Around The Interwebs…, was first published by 5am Joel on Elite Edge Money]

Happy Friday, y’all!

Here are a handful of good reads and fun stuff for personal finance nerds from around the web recently …

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How my Grandfather Saved Money via Margin Matters — “My grandmother outlived my grandpa by about 5 years. It wasn’t until after her death in 2016 that my dad tells me a story in which I immediately responded with, “Those are the kinds of stories you need to be telling your grandkids!””

Who Pays for This? via Collaborative Fund —  “We’re all just guessing, but when this is all over – however you want to define that – it would not surprise me if the direct federal cost of Covid-19 is something north of $10 trillion… I’ve heard many people ask recently, “How are we going to pay for that?””

Buying Coffee Is My New Charitable Cause via Impersonal Finance —  “Businesses are hurting and I find myself needing an extra jolt in the afternoon to stay motivated while working from home. It’s a win win for both parties.”

Australia FIRE Survey 2020 and Interactive Dashboard! via Aussie FIREbug — “While the answer to each question is very interesting in itself, I decided to take things a step further and create what could possibly be the very first interactive FIRE dashboard … ever?”

68 Bits of unsolicited Advice via Kevin Kelly, The Technium — “Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways, a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.”

My thoughts on the “Passive Investing Bubble” via Early Retirement Now — “When I hear the word “bubble” referenced in the popular media my BS radar is flashing red. Everything is called a bubble these days.”

How to Become a House Sitter via The Travelling Housesitters —  Despite COVID, there is still a big demand for both long and short term house sitters. People have empty second homes that need care, and some remote workers are finally hitting the road to explore their country! **Be safe and check local guidelines before booking any travel**

The Story Behind Statement Cards via Stefanie O’Connell Rodriguez —  “That’s not to say I think we should send expensive gifts or write people checks every time they get a promotion or pay off a credit card, but I do think something as simple as a greeting card can be a powerful way to acknowledge a milestone – like paying off a car or moving out on your own – which can take people years of hard work to accomplish.”

COVID-19: The Fall And Rise Of Jobs via Accidental FIRE —  “I found a cool new mapping site that shows this rise and subsequent fall of the unemployment rate in bi-weekly intervals at a county level for the entire United States.”

Free Vending Machines For Homeless (Video) via Rex Chapman, Twitter — “In the UK, these vending machines have water, fruit and other basic items for the homeless to access for free. Here’s how!”

Shark of the Ocean (Video) via @demarjaysmith — “Don’t put yourself down. Motivate yourself. Keep yourself UP.” Bookmark this and watch it in the mornings when you need motivation! ;)

And lastly, a short 6 Question Financial Quiz via FINRA Investor Education Foundation —  I only got 5 out of 6 right :( But apparently that’s better than the average Californian respondent. Take the quiz and tell me how you do!

Happy Friday and have a great weekend! I’m off to go take some photos of my feet! :)

– Joel

[This post, Good Personal Finance Reads From Around the Interweb!, was first published by 5am Joel on Elite Edge Money]

Morning!

Ready for a whole new month to start tomorrow??! Remember when it was literally just April or March? Or New Years? Or partying like it was 1999??? ;)

Pretty crazy how time flies, but at least we’re still all around and LIVING it!

(And if you’re not still around but somehow still managing to read this, check out the piece below on Lake Lanier which might be a more fun place for you to be hanging out ;))

For everyone else – enjoy these articles that got me thinking all month long! Some great tips and exercises in them!

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Investing for Seven Generations by JL Collins — “The story goes, this idea originated with the Iroquois and is based on creating sustainability over the generations. It is commonly applied to environmental stewardship today, but it occurs to me that it applies equally to matters financial.”

How to Grasp Large Numbers Using Dollar Bills via EHD.org — “Whether you stack it, spread it, line it up, or spend it, we hope you’ll think of money and large numbers in a new way after you read this section.”

Should You Tell the World How Much Money You Make? via NY Times — “Ms. Green recently asked readers of her “Ask A Manager” website to share their job title, where they live and how much they make each year… Within a half-hour, she had 1,000 responses. A day later, so many people posted their salaries her website froze. So far, three weeks later, she has more than 26,000 responses, everything from an accountant in Chicago who makes $90,000 to a librarian in Austin who earns $39,000.”

5 Nuggets of Productivity Wisdom via ALifeofProductivity.com — “Your head is for having ideas, not holding them. This is the central tenant of David’s system, and in my opinion, this sticky idea is why his ideas have amassed such a large and loyal following. We have a limited amount of mental bandwidth to give to whatever we’re doing—and we shouldn’t waste any amount of this bandwidth on storing information and unresolved commitments in our head. We need to externalize those into some sort of system.”

Finding Your Purpose After Financial Independence by CanIRetireYet.com — “With all our focus on the mechanics of saving and investing, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Is financial independence really your goal, or is your ultimate purpose something that lies beyond the dollars, something that wealth enables but doesn’t deliver on its own? ”

“My Three Cents” New Series via Yahoo! Finance — “My Three Cents, hosted by Jen Rogers, features raw and spirited conversations with celebrities and other newsmakers about the role money plays in their everyday lives. What did they learn about it growing up? How much money do they want? How much do they need? And are they impulse buyers or agonizers? Stars get candid in chats that are wide-ranging, deeply personal… and fun.”

The 5 Minute Pitch by MyWifeQuitHerJob.com –> “The 5 Minute Pitch is a Shark Tank like show where we’ll have 32 contestants pitch us their business for the chance to win $50,000 in prize money. But unlike Shark Tank where the sharks take a piece of equity in the business, we are giving $50,000 to one lucky company with no string attached!”

Smartphones Are Toys First, Tools Second by David Cain — “I’m going to see if I can make my phone into the empowering digital supertool it would sound like to a 20th-century person. I want it to be as useful, and as boring, as I can make it. I want it to be attractive for intentional, practical uses, but not for a reflexive diversions—a Swiss Army knife, not a carnival, in my pocket. This is my latest lifestyle experiment. I will make my phone as utilitarian as possible, for 30 days, and see what I learn.”

Some interesting facts:

“San Francisco has the most billionaires per capita than any other city… For every 11,612 people in San Francisco, the study says, there’s one billionaire. And that’s a much smaller ratio than the second most billionaire-dense city. In New York City, there are 81,211 inhabitants for every one billionaire.”
– Money.com

“We’ve got approximately 54 million ounces here [West Point Mint] that we store, which is about 22% of the nation’s gold.” – Fox5ny.com

“At some point in the middle of this decade, the number of active cellphone subscriptions grew larger than the number of actual people on this planet…” – Quartz

“Within the next 50 years, Facebook could feel more like a place for the dead than the living. According to academics from the University of Oxford, by 2069, the dead could outnumber the living on the social network. The number of dead users on Facebook is growing at an unstoppable rate. In 2012, eight years after the platform launched, 30 million users had died. Today, it has over two billion users and an estimation of 8000 users die every day.” – TheNextWeb.com

“In northern Georgia sits Lake Lanier, a massive man-made lake with a dark history. In order to get it to the depth they wanted, the US Government bought or forced out over 250 families, 15 businesses, and 20 cemeteries so they could fill over 50,000 acres of prime farmland with water. At the bottom of Lake Lanier are entire intact ghost towns, left as they were when the government flooded them… Survivors of various accidents have reported feeling as if invisible hands were dragging them deep beneath the water.” – Ranker.com

Video of The Month ;)

A fun parody of Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” by money coach and author, Fiscal Femme. With cameos from other financial bloggers for good measure! –> “Sa-Vings – an Ariana Grande ‘7 Rings’ Parody”

Here’s to June!

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Killer pic up top by Comfreak via Pixabay

[This post, Favorite reads this month ⭐, was first published by J. Money on Elite Edge Money]

Hidey-ho, neighbors!

Your boy’s out at FinCon today – our yearly financial blogging conference – so instead of using my brain to conjure up some wise words of financery for y’all, I’ll be temporarily shutting it down and sharing other peoples’ wise words of financery instead. (Real word)

But if you come find me at the pool or in the halls over the weekend, I promise to turn my brain back on for you and hang! This stay-at-home daddy ain’t staying at home this weekend, baby – ow ow! Party time! (And, SLEEP, time! ;))

Now onto my favorite reads (and podcasts) from around the web…

There were some great ones this month!

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Why I’m Retiring from Personal Blogging by Cait Flanders — “I don’t want to be an expert. I just want to be a human… I want to go for long walks and spend time in nature, and not take pictures as proof. I want to get a good night of sleep and a bad night of sleep, and not turn it into a discussion on the internet… I want to make big financial decisions and small financial decisions, and not have to justify them or worry what people will think. I want to have regular days and big days and happy days and sad days. I want to go through an experience and not wonder which parts would fit best into a blog post. I want to live and not share every detail anymore. I just want to be a human in this world.”

Copy This by Ms. Liz Money Matters — “Not long after we finished building our dream home, a gal who worked for me and her husband started building theirs not far away. They liked our home and they wanted to copy some things we did. No problem. We all drove around the community, walked through unfinished homes and stole ideas from others… When they were getting ready to move in, I realized there was one big thing they didn’t copy.”

Decluttering Challenge: One Month, One Item Per Day by Waffles On Wednesday — “Unless you are already a minimalist, finding one item to get rid of every day is actually very easy. Although we have already combed through our belongings many times before, somehow more and more stuff finds its way back into our humble abode. So I picked a strategy that made this decluttering goal even easier. I would pick one area: one cabinet, one drawer, one closet and start there. I would head to that spot every day and remove an item that I didn’t need/ use anymore and be on my way. It made it easy. Every day, I knew exactly where to go to accomplish my goal.”

How to Break The Cycle of Pointless Conversations by Life’s Too Good — “Have you ever been stuck in a game of ‘Why don’t you do this…?’ with someone who keeps coming back at you with ‘Yes, but…’? … This kind of ‘game playing’ almost always serves the purpose of reinforcing our negative feelings or blaming others for our bad feelings… We need to stop playing games and to start making real changes in our life in order to move forward.”

Why Kirk Cousins Turned Down $90 Million From The Jets to Join The Vikings by CNBC — “Despite earning $23.9 million in his last season with the team, the star quarterback admits to still living on a strict budget.  He tells GQ that he and his wife drive a dented GMC Savana van that he purchased from his grandmother in 2014 for $5,000. He also says that during the summer months, he and his wife live in his parents’ basement. Then, for the first few months of the year, he says they spend time living in Georgia with his in-laws.”

Fool Me Three Times And I Give Up by Collaborative Fund — “Pavlov’s dogs became famous for what they learned: when the bell rings, food is coming, so drool. Less known is what happened to the poor dogs in 1924. A massive flood swept through Leningrad, where physiologist Ivan Pavlov did his research. The water came right up to the dogs’ cages…”

Guy Creatively Arranges His Massive Library of Books Into Imaginative Scenes by My Modern Met — “Bookstagrammer James Trevino uses his massive library of books for more than just reading. With a shelf arranged like a rainbow, he pulls from his collection and transforms the texts into imaginative displays. Each book cover acts like a stroke of paint; when they are placed together in specific formations, they produce images that are best viewed from above.”

‘Priceless’ 300-year-old coin that men had to buy to avoid Peter the Great’s ‘Beard Tax’ in Russia is discovered in a ruined 17th Century building by Daily Mail — “Minted in 1699, the copper coin is only the second known example of the coin. It shows an image of a beard and moustache and the words ‘Money Paid’. Dubbed the ‘beard kopek, the coin was part of Peter the Great’s 1987 ‘beard tax’. He banned all facial hair but then introduced a coin-based system that allowed people to pay to keep their beards.”

The Middle Class Retirement Nightmare by Daily Reckoning — “In 1971, you could buy a new Ford F-150 for $2,500. At $4 an hour, it took 625 hours to buy the truck. Today’s model costs $30,000, and the average hourly wage is $26. So the wage earner has to work for 1,154 hours to get a standard F-150… You can do the same calculation for housing. An average man paid about $24,000 for the average house in 1971. Today, he pays $371,000. Priced in time, the house cost 6,000 hours in 1971 and 14,269 hours today.”

The Thin Green Line: Why You Should Be Skeptical of Financial Blogs by Get Rich Slowly — “Blogging has become more business-like and less personal. A decade ago, most blogs — even money blogs — were rooted in the author’s individual experience. Nowadays, most big financial blogs have a minimal editorial voice… The trouble with the rise of blogging as a business is that the business has become the focus for most financial blogs. Financial bloggers aren’t making decisions based on what’s best for their audience. They’re making decisions based on what’s likely to bring them the most income.”

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Other Quick Nods

• Fidelity Zero-Fee Funds Lure About $1 Billion in First Month via Bloomberg — “So far none of Fidelity’s rivals have chosen to match its zero fee offer.”
• Sip of Hope — “The world’s first coffee shop where 100% of proceeds support proactive suicide prevention and mental health education.”
• Azlo.com — “Fee-free small business banking that helps entrepreneurs start, grow, and succeed. ” Possible new option if you’re on the hunt? (Hat tip: @Otterwize)
• DebtandCupcakes.com <– just an awesome blog name :)

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Podcast(s) of The Month

I’m biased with these, but I thought they came out pretty well :) Particularly the first one as it was the first time I was interviewed by someone outside of the financial space. If you miss hearing me on the Afford Anything Podcast (formerly the M.O.N.E.Y. show), you’ll enjoy these!

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J. Money: Budgets, Building Wealth, and Living Well on The Distilled Man Podcast — “Today on the podcast, unorthodox finance blogger J. Money shares how to get a better handle on your money…and your life. We talk about the the importance of tracking your net worth (no matter how small), the biggest financial mistakes most people make, why challenging mainstream lifestyle norms can be the easiest way to build wealth, and more.”

Track Your Net Worth and Become a Young Millionaire – with J. Money on Marriage, Kids and Money Podcast — “J. Money and I review: how and why he started tracking his net worth in the first place, what methods he used to grow it from $50,000 to $850,000 in 10 years, and why his priorities have changed in the last few years… This net worth boosting conversation is real, honest and genuine. Enjoy!”

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Graphic of The Month :)

(Courtesy of BiggerPockets.com, a fantastic real estate investing community)

Hope these inspire you while I’m gone!

If you miss me too much, just read through all 2,471 posts previously published here and you’ll quickly get over it: Elite Edge Money Archives

Tootles,

[This post, This Month’s Favorite $$$ Reads (And Listens!), was first published by J. Money on Elite Edge Money]

Happy 4th of July y’all!

Got a bunch of fine reading material for ya today when you’re bored of relaxing and/or hanging out with your family (or both) ;)

I’m out at the beach all week soaking up some good family quality time myself, but sadly there’s no sleeping in or lounging when you’ve got a TWO-MONTH OLD on your hands! Womp womp…

Still – I’m making the best of it and keeping sane with a little metal detecting action which only adds to my coolness ;) If anyone would like to sprinkle in a little treasure in the sands here though, I’d greatly appreciate it! A guy can only take so many bottle caps before he loses hope!

To my favorite finds around the web lately…

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Favorite Articles This Month:

The Ultimate Pantry Challenge Guide via Happy In The Hollow –“It’s happened again. Despite my best intentions, I’ve been finding myself playing pantry Tetris. The cupboards are almost full and yet we buy more and try to carefully navigate the latest cans into the tiny empty spaces. It’s time for another pantry challenge!”

Can You Retire In Thailand With $200,000? via Free at 33 — “After living in Chiang Mai, Thailand for about four months now, I’ve had an opportunity to get a good sense of costs in one of the best cities in the world for value-minded people who also appreciate a relatively high quality of life. It’s been a tremendous experience for me thus far, exceeding my expectations in just about every manner conceivable.”

DiamondsSuck.com — “I recently got engaged, and found myself in the market for a suitable engagement ring. Over the past few months, I’ve done quite a bit of research on diamonds and the diamond industry. What I learned, quite frankly, pissed me off.”

What I’m Teaching my Son about Money via Mr. Money Mustache — “Instead of a physical piggy bank, my boy prefers to keep his money in the Bank of Mr. Money Mustache, a spreadsheet that contains every transaction he makes with money. To make a deposit, he just hands me some cash. To withdraw, he asks me for cash or has me buy something for him online. But for every dollar that remains in the account, he accrues interest at a 10% annual rate with monthly compounding. I’m excited about the teaching value of this…”

Unlearning via Derek Sivers — “You learned things that were true back then, but now they’re false. You got successful doing things one way, but now that way is moot. You still consider yourself an expert, but that expertise has expired.”

Life Is More Than Compounding Money via Intelligent Fanatics.com — “On January 9, 1995, 101 year-old Anne Scheiber left a $22 million fortune to Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women. The school had never heard of Anne Scheiber before. Virtually nobody had heard of Scheiber before… It continues to draw attention, for the wrong reason.”

 Interesting Nuggets / Announcements:

The Crispy Cabbage blogger came out with a productivity app –> Half Hour Hank ($0.99) // Get points for completing tasks, and use its “randomizer” to help you decide which to tackle first :)

Harry Campbell, aka “the rideshare guy,” came out with a new book –> “The Rideshare Guide: Everything You Need to Know about Driving for Uber, Lyft, and Other Ridesharing Companies” ($10’ish)

I found a FANTASTIC tool that helps you find your largest emails taking up space so you can nix them and keep your bandwidth low –> FindBigMail.com (Free) // Got my inbox from 98% full to 44% within minutes!

I found another great bill-killing app that will analyze your expenses and help you cancel any unwanted/fraudulent billing right there from inside the app –> TrueBill.com (Free) // Also good for requesting overdraft/late bank fees, as well as negotiating cell phone and cable bills easier (Not free)

You guys remember our “Gay, Non-White, Man of Muslim Faith” friend from last year who was having trouble seeking financial stability? Well, he stopped by the blog again this month – a year later! – to update us on how things are now going… Which I’m happy to say much better :) You can find his update in the comments section below JJNL’s comment towards the top.

**Fun Bitcoin Facts**
(via NapkinFinance.com)

• The first Bitcoin ATM was installed in October 2013 in Vancouver, Canada
• You can use Bitcoin to pay for travel on Virgin Galactic to the moon, or for a Subway sandwich in Allentown, PA
• One unlucky man from London lost $7.5 million in Bitcoins when he threw away his computer hard drive. The device is now buried in a landfill near his home.
• Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twin Harvard graduates famous for their lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg are betting big on Bitcoin. They claim to own 1% of all Bitcoin in existence.
• Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer paid 10,000 Bitcoins (roughly $25) for two Papa John’s pizzas on May 22, 2010. He did not know that it would be worth around $150 million today. Since then, May 22 is celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day to celebrate the most expensive pizzas in history.

And Lastly, The Video of The Month!

Courtesy of Tonya Stumphauzer, who now gives us a way to subtly nudge our friends who can use this miracle product the most ;)

“Feeling down because you’re broke AF? Not sure where to turn? Introducing Budgeta, the first accountant-prescribed solution for your financial woes that is safe, effective, and we like to think addictive in a good way.”

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Some of the links in the “Interesting Nuggets/Announcements” section I get compensated for – and I thank you in advance if you buy/subscribe to anything :)

For more readings/watchings:

• May’s favorite articles
• April’s favorite articles
• March’s favorite articles

[This post, Favorite Financial Nuggets This Month!, was first published by J. Money on Elite Edge Money]

Good morning my fiscal friends! How art thee and thine’s money this week? Art thou happy and glee? My friend Lil’ Kim certainly is ;)

You might remember her as my very 1st money coaching client and she’s still working hard to reach FIGMY$HIT status. Lately she’s taken a renewed interest in starting her own photography/art business up again so I’ve been giving her some homework assignments there. Mainly, “find a way to earn $100 this month with it!” And as that picture shows, mission completed :) (Go Kim!)

Anywho, was feeling like a proud papa so had to share… The hardest part with side hustles is getting your first client, so if you start with that out of the gate you’ll not only learn real fast if what you’re offering is good (the “real” world is a lot different than the textbook world!), but you’ll get in the habit of asking for money. After all, as they say on Shark Tank, a business that doesn’t make money isn’t a business – it’s a hobby. So be sure to ask for what you’re/your product is worth!

Other Money Wins This Week:

• We turned in our two weeks notice to daycare!!! As soon as Mrs. eliteedgemoney is done defending her dissertation she’ll be defending our boys from getting into trouble all day long at the $ household ;) And we’re both excited and terrified at the same time, haha…
• I maxed out my SEP IRA to the tune of $11,000 and change. You might have seen this in our latest net worth update, but we shot it straight into VTSAX with Vanguard which gave me a high stronger than Bob Marley on 4:20. (Was 4:20 a “thing” back in his day?)
• No Spend Month II is complete! 40 days of no spending on anything outside needed expenses to survive – minus a few slip ups (mainly tip jar related). I wish I could say it was as enlightening as the first time we took this on 7 years ago, but the sad fact is I didn’t learn a thing. No epiphanies this time around, but at least it reaffirms that my spending habits are aligned with how I want them to be. Which of course is the point to it all :) (For those who joined me in this, how did your journey go??)
• I saved $237.96 more with Digit. I guess they forecasted my daycare savings? ;)
• I invested $10.35 more through Acorns. They round up your transactions and invest the pennies into a portfolio for you. You can see my full review of them here.

Stuff That BLEW in Money This Week:

• Capital One is kicking me out of my business account. They didn’t say why (other than “restructuring” or something lame like that), but I’m pretty sure it’s because I don’t pay them jack to use their accounts :) So now I’ve been downgraded to a different business account and if I deposit anything more than $5,000/mo they’re going to charge me $1.00 each additional $1,000. What the freak is that about?? Needless to say I’m on the hunt for a new business account… (which USAA doesn’t offer, arghh). What do you hustlers use?
• My wife has to spend $200+ for a graduation gown she doesn’t even get to keep. “I don’t even spend $200 on a dress that I DO get to keep – what the f*ck?” was her exact response. Followed by “Do you think they’ll notice if I just show up in normal clothes?” Haha… Go for it mama!
• Some asshat stole my credit card info and tried buying something halfway across the country. Which USAA caught in a matter of seconds and shut it down – along with my credit card – and promptly re-issued us a new one. This was the 3rd time in a year it’s happened to us (they say they’ve seen an incredible upswing in hacks lately), but luckily the annoyance levels have been diminished since I’ve already made a list of all the places my credit card is attached to. So within minutes of receiving the new card all I had to do was log in to a few places and update the accounts. IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE THIS YOURSELF I HIGHLY ADVISE DOING SO! Saves you a butt ton of time and stress in the future.

This Week Around Blog Land…

Our early retired friend Go Curry Cracker’s story went viral! He had a great feature in Forbes which then got picked up by Yahoo Finance and then shot across the front page of a half dozen other media sites back to back to back. They’re all a little slow since we  featured his kick-ass “I quit to travel the world forever” story here first on this blog (uh thank you), but super proud of him for all the coverage and fully taking advantage of this opportunity to grow his blog over night. He literally got more hits in 24 hours than I have in an entire month – hah! And I won’t be bashful and omit that he’s a blog coaching client of mine either ;) *tips hat*

[UPDATE: Jeremy tells me he’s at the hospital right now awaiting the birth of their first baby :) Send him good thoughts and prayers – it’s miracle time!!]

Fellow blogger, and former Early Retirement chaser, Johnny Moneyseed launched a new coffee shop. Epic Bean Fair Trade & Organic Coffee – a brick and mortar store which also offers subscription services to anyone who would like fresh coffee delivered right to their door. We’ll be featuring his journey on this blog here shortly, specifically because he dropped his race to early retirement to jump right into the coffee world!, but in the meantime check out his new shop: EpicBean.com. Congrats bud!

Speaking of coffee, if you want to see how 32 of us entrepreneurs drink ours, check out this article from another blogger who’s getting into the coffee space online: RoastyCoffee.com/coffee-entrepreneurs. You might remember Matt as the former half of the Listen Money Matters crew.

Life Comma Etc launched a new eBook on helping people get paid to freelance write. It’s called “Five Figure Writer” and shows the email template and tips Sarah used to earn $59,000 her first year freelancing. You can pick it up for a cheap $19 bones. (Congrats Sarah!)

Financial Companies That Came Across My Desk:

As we did last week, I thought it would be helpful to feature some of the services and products that I came across in the $$ world this week. I haven’t poked around these guys in depth (so please be sure to do so yourself) but I wanted to highlight ’em here vs keeping them hidden in my brain ;) Any I start using and fall in love with myself will get its own dedicated review in the future…

Achieve Lending — These guys might be worth looking into if you’re looking to condense/refinance or get new student loans (or any other *private* loans it looks like) They bill themselves as the “first ever search engine for student loans,” and a good blogging friend of mine started working for them which leads me to believe their legit :) You plug in what type of loan/refinancing you’re looking to get, along with the amounts and some other info, and then it pops out a list of options that match up. If you try it out let us know how it goes!

CreateaMonthlyBudget.com — This is a pretty cool idea: “Work out your monthly budget using this free tool to download a useful spreadsheet. See how much you are spending and how much you can afford to save throughout the year.” Spits out a nifty pie chart at the end of it too.

Cinch Financial —  These guys have been all over the place lately. In a nutshell they show you only “the best products” for what you’re looking for (credit cards, insurance, mortgages) and state they’re unbiased, but the part that really caught my eye was their billsnap feature: “Take a photo or upload an image of your mortgage, credit card, insurance, or other big bill. Our experts will tell you if you can pay less, and exactly how.” Not sure how that works with privacy stuff, but quite an interesting concept!

A Giveaway You’d Actually Want to Enter:

Lady Antebellum (the country group) and Quicken Loans are teaming up to pay the mortgages for 7 lucky people for an entire year as part of Lady’s Wheels Up 2015 Tour.

“All you have to do is impress a panel of judges with your creativity, clarity and reasons for deserving a mortgage break. The mortgage prize is worth a minimum $12,000 to a maximum of $24,000 (principal and interest only)”

Want to give it a shot? You can enter here: ladyantebellum.com/7for7

Awesome New Music I’m Listening to…

This guy recently wrote a piece for Priceonomics on how much his musical duo makes busking (ie street performing), and I followed the rabbit hole down through his personal blog where he shares how much he made his first year blogging and onto his musical act: The Dirty Little Blondes. It’ll make you sick how cute and awesome these two are (bf/gf duo) but my damn is their music good.

Here’s my favorite of their songs so far:

And that’s what went down in my hood this week… How about you? Anything juicy in your money or biz? Do you use any of the companies I featured above?

Hope y’all have a great weekend… Don’t forget: Freedom > Money > Stuff!

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PS: Let me know if any of you guys come across any cool $$$ companies too and I’ll consider featuring them here (as well as any of you bloggers doing big things!)

PPS: Here’s last week’s recap if interested: Money, Business and Overall Bad-Assery

[This post, Last Week Today: Coffee, Money, Hustling, Music, was first published by J. Money on Elite Edge Money]