Link Roundup #28: 10 Things to Know This Week

Accelerate your personal finance knowledge with this regular feature on Ringgit Oh Ringgit – the Link Roundup! I promise you’ll find these 10 links informational 🙂

1. The Real Reason Why You’re Bad With Money – VICE

…could be that you’re too, well, nice. According to the article,

“Those with ‘a higher degree of the personality trait known as agreeableness, meaning they are more likely to be altruistic, kind, and trustworthy than the rest of us make great friends, but they’re also more likely to be bad with money.”

If a good friend of yours has this personality trait, please look out for them. Their personality literally makes it hard for them to avoid helping others, even if it causes their financial ruin. These are the ones who co-signs a bad loan, lends people money (and never asks or gets it back), and quick to offer to pay for lunches and drinks.

If that describes who you are, don’t change. The world needs kind souls like you. But do learn how to say no, and practice it regularly. If saying ‘no’ is hard, repeat the phrase “Let me think about it” over and over to the requester.

2. This is how to survive in a toxic workplace: 3 secrets from research – The Ladders

Most people don’t quit jobs, they quit people who make their workplace topic.

But sometimes you can’t just quit a job. Maybe you can’t afford to. Maybe you’re serving a scholarship bond. Maybe it’s a family business.

So here are the 3 ways to survive a toxic workplace, according to the article:

•  Avoid them. As much as possible
• Use reappraisal. Reframe it as a challenge
• Fight back – carefully. Use tools that you have at your disposal strategically

Read the article for a full explanation for each of the methods.  Hang in there and all the best.

3. This Young Investor’s Lucrative Passion: Collecting Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses – Forbes

What an interesting business model, I’ve never heard anything like it.

Here’s how it works:

• He buys high-potential one-person online businesses
• He builds a team that supports the operations of these businesses, like marketing, so it can scale much bigger
• He collects management fee from the businesses

My brain is… thinking. I like this idea a lot.

4. The 86 Best Days of the Year to Get a Fresh Start, According to 700 Scientific Papers – Inc

Oh wow, ‘reset’ opportunities are more abundant than I thought. That’s almost 1 every 4 days.

“Pink identifies 86 days in the year when we can make a fresh start. The most effective include: Mondays (52), the first day of the month (12), and the first day of each season (4).

The list also includes national celebrations, religious holidays, your birthday, the first day of school, the first day of a new job, anniversaries, and the day you finish a big project.”

Daniel H. Pink is a best-selling author and a very popular TED speaker. The video below is well worth 18 mins of your time.

5. Women are happier without children or a spouse, says happiness expert – The Guardian

You might have seen this article around. It certainly made its rounds in social media. They compared happiness and misery levels among unmarried, married, divorced, separated and widowed individuals, and the healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children.

To be completely honest, the results gave me mixed feelings. On one hand, I feel like gloating to traditionalists – no, don’t pressure me to get married and have kids! Don’t make me miserable like you!

On the other hand, this study is a generalisation, and extremely happy and fulfilled married women with children DO exist, it’s just they’re not as common. They’re anomalies, outliers, the exception to the rule.

I think at the heart of this study is asking why married women with children are not happy and fulfilled?

Is it because they work too much? Sacrifice too much? Face too much discrimination? Didn’t get enough support?

Maybe we can, as a society, work on those issues so one day they’ll be as happy as their single counterparts.

6. There Is Too Much Stuff – The Atlantic

The article talks about the sheer amount of products offered in Amazon, Target and Walmart, but I think we can all relate and agree that yes, there *is* too much stuff.

Ethics and environmental issues aside, the article rightly pointed out that the culture of ‘too much stuff to choose from’ gave us choice anxiety and analysis paralysis, and has led to the rise of

• Overstocking solutions – There are businesses where its main objective is to resell excess stuff
• Algorithm – Products are recommended to you based on your past internet history
• Influencers – Following the recommendations of people and brands you follow
• A new type of business model focusing on simplicity – They intentionally limit their choice of products

What a world we live in.

7. MacKenzie Bezos signed the philanthropic commitment her ex-husband spurned – Vox

All you need to know is (1) Jeff Bezos refused to sign the Giving Pledge for years, and (2) MacKenzie immediately did, just months after their divorce.

An additional $17 billion (BILLION) to make the world a better place. $500 billion (BILLION) pledged from billionaires so far via the Giving Pledge. I hope it goes far. I hope it’ll make a difference. The world needs it.

8. Top 10 Most Valuable Types of Collectibles in the World – MoneyCrashers

The 10 are:

• Fine Art
• Rare coins
• Thoroughbred horses (oh!)
• Jewelry and gems
• Stamps
• Fabergé Eggs (I’ve never heard of this!)
• Classic and exotic cars
• Fine wines
• Chinese porcelain
• Timepieces

Read the full article to see how valuable each of them can get, why they are sought after and notable collectors. It’s a well-researched article, really enjoyed reading it.

9. The Best and Worst Time of Day to Ask for a Raise or to Close a Sale – Inc

TL;DR – Do the big ones in the early morning, small ones on the late afternoon.

10. Let Us Pitch Bitcoin Better than Tom Lee Ever Could – Pelham Blue Asset Management

I don’t know who’s behind Pelham Blue Asset Management, a group of self-described Malaysian traders, and frankly I don’t care. I just really enjoy their blogposts and tweets, detailing their adventures (and misadventures) in warrants trading.

We hate to use gambling terminology… but we hit the jackpot today.

TM call warrants.

60% return on investment (you heard that right).

RM9,000 gross profits.

All in 79 minutes.#trade #saham #bursa #finance pic.twitter.com/UKT9mBz7RM

— Pelham Blue Asset Management (@pelhambluefund) May 30, 2019

This particular post is highly entertaining for me, because it makes fun of people who preach bitcoin for the sake of preaching bitcoin.

Long-time readers know that I have crypto. Some may even know that I was the founding member of ACCESS Blockchain Association Malaysia, before stepping down as Vice President in 2018.

And let me tell you, we as an association freaking hate it when some dude (and it’s always dudes) suddenly appear in the limelight telling others ‘crypto is an investment in a lifetime and if you don’t buy in you’re missing out’.

Eff the right off. How irresponsible.

Fact: No one knows how crypto is going to perform in the future. It’s highly speculative.

Fact: Whoever tells you that ‘CRYPTO PRICES *WILL* SKYROCKET, SECURE YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE’ is an overconfident bullshitter whose only interest is their own.

Especially if they promote some random crypto project and tell you how it’ll replace money in the future. Hey did you know making a cryptocurrency is easier than you think? Go and read how I made SurayaCoin.

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That’s it for this round, catch you next time! Want to submit a link you thought was great? Reach out to me on FB or Twitter.

To read past link roundups, please click here.