It’s that time of week where I share a few financial independence articles along with some personal tidbits. (Actually, I try to do it over the weekend, but I’ve been trying to limit my screen time of late.)
It’s good to get back to having a normal week. We even got holiday decorations put up. By “we”, I mean mostly my wife. While on the topic of my wife being wonderful, she introduced me to what has become our favorite new show, Adam Ruins Everything. It’s a show on TruTV, which appears to be a cable network that apparently reaches around 77% of America.
If you like John Oliver, you’ll also like Adam Ruins Everything. Adam Conover uses humor to explain why things are simply wrong. For example, the Wild West was a Hollywood creation (cowboys tended to cows which was less glamorous), football playoffs are essentially coin flips and not about the better team, and how legal drugs are just as dangerous as illegal ones (sometimes even more so). All the information is meticulous cited in pop-up fashion.
When he “ruins” something, the person he’s talking to eventually gets so discouraged that they lose all hope. However, he always ends the show on a happy note, often by citing the great progress we’ve made over time.
The only downside to the show is with some episodes I already knew most of the points (I spend way too much time researching stuff) and mentioned it to my wife. (For example the Adam Ruins Nutrition episode is mostly covered here and here. Her response was, “You should start a TV show, ‘Lazy Man Ruins Adam Ruins Everything.'” (Maybe they’ll call me when Adam Ruins ‘Direct Marketing.’)
Let’s get to the personal finance articles:
- 8 things to do in your 30s to become a millionaire by 40The best personal finance articles this week actually starts with one from weeks of yore. I found this article sitting on my phone for months. It’s full of solid tips to become a millionaire in 10 around years. I humbly prefer my own article which piggybacks on another article, but you can’t have too many articles on financial freedom.
- Are you FI-curious? Polyworkarous?Mr. 1500 has a problem that I’ve encountered quite often… the dreaded, “What do you do question?” He’s got some great funny answers. I think I’m going to use: “I’m practicing an Alternative Workstyle. Don’t judge.”
He also brings up two things that I’ve been writing about for years, the silly Lexus commercials and MLMs.
- Breaking Free from Social ProgrammingI seem to be the only person on earth who has not watched WestWorld, but this article uses the show as a springboard for getting people to question the assumptions they’ve made in life. I generally feel immune to social programming, but if you read the comments, you’ll see that I’ve realized I’m more susceptible then I thought.
And in today’s polarizing rant, I’d like to share the best article of the week (maybe month or year). It seems odd to thank Christopher Suprun for simply doing his job… a job that I imagine is little more than filling out a simple form. He’s not picking political sides (and I’m not either), he’s simply shining a light on an unqualified candidate… exactly what he’s supposed to do.
Love that show and it would amazing if you got to be one of the guest specialists in an MLM or network marketing episode!
While on the topic, I have a lot of people hounding me about Enagic recently and claim that it’s not a bad product etc. I want to make a point across to them that if it’s such a good product why don’t they sell it through normal retail and choose network marketing to that they answer “because they want to share the wit everyone instead of hording the money like other corporations”. What can I say to rebuttal that? I’m not as educated on the topic to fight back as hard as I would like to.
I don’t believe that Enagic is a publicly traded company, which means that we don’t know how much money it’s hoarding. By the price of the products, I would think it is a lot. Companies share money all the times. Let’s say that GE makes a water filter and sells it at Home Depot. GE makes money which employs people. Home Depot makes money and they employ people. These people are given jobs which has benefits (health care, minimum wage, paid time off, etc.). MLM companies don’t give these benefits to their sales force.
If a company wants to directly share a commission to “give back”, they can simply give sales people a flat commission of [X]% and avoid any kind of recruiting/pyramiding scheme. It’s best for all parties, the company and the sellers to avoid getting shut down by the FTC for being a pyramid scheme.