Here are my predictions for what’s in store in 2024 and what that means for creative businesses. They’re a result of reflecting on the last year, observing larger trends and chatting with folks across various creative industries, from creators who make money on social media to to small business owners, artists, and folks in the podcasting industry. A lot of this may be anecdotal, but some of these patterns are worth paying attention to. Let’s dig in.
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Are You Falling Prey to Lifestyle Creep? Here's How to Tell and What to Do About It /
Lifestyle creep happens when two things in your financial life increase: your income and your spending. Specifically, lifestyle creep happens when you spend your extra income on things that upgrade your lifestyle; as opposed to maintaining your current lifestyle after your income increases.
Read MoreThe Lazy Person's Guide to Building Wealth (Part 2): Investing for Beginners /
Welcome to part 2 of “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Building Wealth.” If you missed part 1, get caught up here. If you’ve ever been curious about investing in the stock market but are honestly puzzled about how to get started, this guide is for you. If you question whether investing in the stock market is a realm reserved only for Wall Street moguls or the already rich, this guide is also for you. By the end of it, you’ll have everything you need to know to start investing.
Read MoreAn Open Letter to Buy Now, Pay Later Companies. Your product is like cigarettes for people’s financial lives. /
Dear Buy Now, Pay Later companies,
The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
“Consumers need this,” you say. “We’re giving them options and flexibility in uncertain economic times,” you say. If you shut one eye and squint the other, you may be able to fool yourself into seeing what you want to see. That’s the beauty and the curse of the human mind. You’re asking them if they’d like to be kicked in the crotch or punched in the face. Options!
Read MoreThe Secret to Managing Money as a Couple: Split the Check /
Navigating the intersection of love and money can be tricky, especially if one partner is more of a spender than the other. There is one method of managing finances that can help every couple find the balance between working towards the same financial goals, while also maintaining some level of autonomy. It’s called “splitting the check.”
Read MoreFive Financial Rituals to Adopt in the New Year /
We don’t always get what we give. At least, that’s what the Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto discovered in the 1800s while harvesting peas from his garden. Pareto observed that 80% of the peas came from only 20% of the peapods, demonstrating an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. Wondering if this pattern would repeat itself in other areas of life, Pareto began to look at different data sets to confirm his findings.
While this principle might skew and not always hold one hundred percent of the time, the general principle that 80% of effects result from 20% of causes holds. Less than 10% of the population owns 80% of the stock market. Few social media accounts are responsible for most misinformation across platforms. And we’ve recently seen, in a pandemic, that roughly 20% of the most infectious individuals are responsible for 80% of the transmission.
Knowing 80% of your success and results come from only 20% of your efforts; you can apply the 80/20 rule to your financial lives. Here are the five financial rituals you can focus on that will impact results the most.
Read MoreA Black Friday Survival Guide /
The shopping season is here, and it’s coming for your wallet. Not only do we have Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, but this American tradition has also spun off into a string of frenzied buying days. There’s now Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday. Of course, I’m not a monster. I do love a good deal. But it’s hard not to be cynical and critical of our hyper-consumerist society. So for anyone looking to mindfully shop this holiday season, here are some things to consider before venturing out into the wild.
Read MoreCollecting Dots: Some Recent Reflections About Money and Life /
Here are a bunch of different things I’ve been thinking about. Lately, my work has felt like collecting dots in the hope that a constellation of meaning will soon reveal itself.
Read MoreFive Financial Things: Meditations on Money /
Here are some things I’ve been thinking about lately.
Disclaimer: I’m probably not the first person to think of these things. I’m sure I picked these up from a fellow human expressing themselves through conversations, words in a book, dialogue in a movie, lyrics in a song, or eavesdropping on folks arguing over dinner (one of my favorite things to do). Sometimes it’s hard to remember where every insight originated. Sometimes they are slowly internalized through repeated exposure, like learning every lyric to a pop song you had no intention of loving. We’re all pulling from the same weird, swirling pool of ideas
Read MoreWhat Is a Buy List and How It Can Help You Build a Conscious Spending Habit /
I went to hang out with a friend and outside of her apartment, I found an Amazon package that I picked up and brought in with me. She said she didn’t remember what she bought. That’s part of the horror of online shopping; the ability to purchase so cheaply and frequently that you lose track of your purchases. But that’s also the beauty of it - it’s a two-for-one when it comes to pleasure and dopamine. You get the first dose doing the shopping and the next when the package arrives and you anticipate what’s inside.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for transmitting signals between the nerve cells of the brain. It directly impacts our central nervous system and plays a significant role in the body. While many of us have come to believe that dopamine is involved in rewards, it’s important to understand that it’s also involved in the pursuit of rewards. Some researchers argue that dopamine when acting within what has become known as the brain’s reward system, signals desire.
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