Hi friend,
The first time I ever invested, I opened up an eTrade account, probably sometime around 2007 - 2008. I put $200 into it, and I picked the worst lot of stocks one could have picked right before the housing crash. I chose some random stocks in the financial sector. I think I bought Washington Mutual, a local bank that flamed out and failed as the Great Recession was kicking off. And I'm pretty sure I lost all my money over a few short days.
The fact that I had just graduated with a finance degree and I lost $200 betting on stocks felt embarrassing at the time, but I look at the experience like paying tuition. I learned how to set up my account, poke around on eTrade, make trades, and got first-hand experience of how it felt to take a risk and experience loss.
It's weird, but the experience of losing my money was a priceless lesson that I'm thankful for it. It's colored my perspective on investing. It made me realize that while I love taking some risks, the great majority of investing is boring. It's plain vanilla; it's an unsexy, slow, steady, disciplined endeavor. Do you have a costly financial lesson that ended up being priceless in the end? Hit reply and share.
Your favorite finance friend,
|
|
P.S. I'm curious to know how many of you have taken the plunge and purchased an NFT. I'm also interested to know how many of you loathe the fact that I even asked. If you want to share your thoughts on Web3, NFTs, and the promise or stupidity of the blockchain, don't be shy; hit reply! I'd love to hear your thoughts.
|
|
|
1. 🏠 Will I Regret Spending Half My Paycheck On Rent? (Paco for Refinery29) In this month’s Taking Stock, we’re discussing if and when it's worth it to voluntarily spend more on rent — and how much is too much?2. 📣 Gen Z Teens Talk $ (The New York Times)3. 🛒 Introducing Amazon Brand Detector (The Markup) “A browser extension that reveals Amazon brand and exclusive products while you shop on the site”4. 🤓 A Bookkeeping Thing - How to Catch Up On Your Bookkeeping (HYG Original) How good would you feel if you caught up? Not necessarily saying it would feel great while you caught up, but you could get there. Here's how.
🤓5. 🏄♂️ Time millionaires: meet the people pursuing the pleasure of leisure (The Guardian) “We cannot accrue time, or invest it and watch it grow. It runs away from us; we slip and slide in its wake. Perhaps time isn’t a bank account, but a field. We can grow productive crops, or things of beauty; roses for the pruning and topiary hedges to be trimmed. Or we can simply do nothing, and let the wildflowers grow. Everything is of beauty, everything is of equal value.”6. 👀 The hidden benefits of renting (over buying) (Radreads) “I’ve talked to many professionals who view buying a home as a status symbol. Or said differently, the money burning-renter possesses some sort of JV life status. But for most people, buying a home represents their single largest investment – by far. Do you really want such a sizable purchase to be driven by the pursuit of status? Maybe the renters are the high status ones. After all, they’re paying for flexibility. Optionality. The ability upgrade (or downgrade) careers, lifestyles and life circumstances.”7. 👨🏫 A Normie’s Guide to Becoming a Crypto Person (Intelligencer) “While some corners of the crypto world are still toxic and absurd, it’s also a fascinating and (strangely) optimistic place — where a global army of people with competing philosophies, living mostly on Twitter and Discord, all in some way believe crypto will fundamentally remake the world (and, in the process, everything we believe about value, money, and the internet). This is a guide to actually understanding that universe, whether you simply want to sound literate at a dinner party, know the difference between a bitcoin maxi and an NFT scenester, angle for a promotion by showing off more tech fluency than your boss, or leave your PR job to become memer-in-chief at a new coin exchange.”8. 👩💻 Loving Your Job Is a Capitalist Trap (The Atlantic) “The more pertinent question, then, isn’t 'How can I change my career path to do work that I love?' but rather 'How can I wrangle my work to leave me with more time and energy for the things and people that bring me joy?' Another solution is to diversify our meaning-making portfolios—actively seek out new places to root a sense of identity and fulfillment. No one should entrust the bulk of their sense of self to a single social intuition, especially one within something as tempestuous as the labor market.”
|
|
🤓 Did you hear? We're offering a portion of our classified ad space to newly created, not-yet-profitable, BIPOC, or female-identifying owners through 2021 free-of-charge to our subscriber community. Do you have a project or business that could use a boost during these weird times? Let us know about it, and we'll schedule it to appear in The Nerdletter. 🤓
|
|
The Nerdletter is written and curated by Paco de Leon and a tiny editorial support team. Please consider several ways you can contribute to this important mission – an inclusive conversation about money, finances, and capitalism for Creatives.
We can't do this work without you. Thanks for being part of the crew and reading this far. Peace.
|
|
|
|
Our home office is located in Los Angeles, California, the traditional lands of the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples. We acknowledge with gratitude the traditional custodians of this land and pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.
|
|
|
|
You received this email because you subscribed to The Nerdletter, a weekly newsletter.
You can unsubscribe at any time. Or, you can buy some sweet merch here.1920 Hillhurst Ave # 1089, Los Angeles, California, 90027, United States of America ©The Hell Yeah Group 2021
|
|
|
|