Consumer Reports: Top 10 Most Reliable Car Brands 2021

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Consumer Reports has released updated results from their 2021 Car Owner Survey in the articles Who Makes the Most Reliable Cars?, 10 Most Reliable Cars, and 10 Least Reliable Cars. Most of it is now behind a paywall, but more info can be found in outside media coverage like USA Today. Here are highlights, including the Top 10 and Bottom 5:

  • Most reliable: Lexus is back at #1, but the top 3 are the same (Lexus, Mazda, Toyota)
  • Most improved ranking (into Top 10): Infiniti and Acura.
  • Biggest ranking drops (out of Top 10): Hyundai and Ram.

Consumer Reports Top 10 Most Reliable Car Brands, 2021 (2020 ranking)

  1. Lexus (3)
  2. Mazda (1)
  3. Toyota (2)
  4. Infiniti
  5. Buick (4)
  6. Honda (5)
  7. Subaru (8)
  8. Acura
  9. Nissan
  10. Mini

Consumer Reports Bottom 5 LEAST Reliable Car Brands, 2021

  • Volkswagen
  • Genesis
  • Jeep
  • Tesla
  • Lincoln

The following brands did not have enough survey responses to be ranked: Alfa Romeo, Dodge, Fiat, Jaguar, Land Rover, Maserati, Mitsubishi, and Polestar.

Here are the 2020 rankings for the curious. I don’t think these rankings are perfect, but I do believe they are unbiased and based on actual reader surveys.

Despite providing these brand rankings, Consumer Reports recommends that you shop by specific vehicle model and not just by brand make. Reliability problems often occur when a new model is released with a new engine and/or drivetrain system. In my opinion, this makes the best bet to buy a Toyota/Lexus/Mazda model that is a few years into the current generation, after any remaining kinks have been worked out. Not exciting, but neither is the hassle and expense of dealing with car repairs. Consumer Reports print subscribers can add digital access for $25 per year.

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Practical Time Management: The Won’t Do List vs. Must Do List

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80 years times 50 weeks a year is 4,000 weeks. If we’re lucky, that means we’ll have about 4,000 Mondays, 4,000 Saturdays, and that’s it. I’ve started reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, which suggests that all those productivity hacks look at this number the wrong way. “If only you did X, you could fit in Y more stuff into your day and then you’ll be happy!” But the more likely result is that even if you do X, and fit in Y more stuff, you’ll remain just as stressed and unsatisfied.

In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that his grandkids would work just 15 hours a week due to increases in productivity. Well, the productivity per worker did increase, but we still work close to the same number of hours per week. We can have food delivered to our door with an few taps, but how many of us feel an abundance of free time? Even worse, we are “busy” but not because we are working on the things we want to be working on. We have an ever-growing “some day” list, so that we won’t have to face the truth that it is actually the “never” list.

So what’s the solution? This FT article Endless to-do list? Here’s how not to waste your life is an excerpt from the book. Here’s a good quote:

A truly practical approach to making the best use of time demands that we stop trying to deny the undeniable, acknowledging not merely that we might not get around to everything but that we definitely never will. That we’re guaranteed to have to abandon certain ambitions, disappoint certain people and drop certain balls in order to make time for doing a few things that count.

In the words of the creativity coach Jessica Abel, borrowing an insight from the world of personal finance, that means “paying yourself first” when it comes to time. What she means is doing at least a little of what you care about now, as opposed to banking on finding time for it in the future, once the decks are clear and life’s duties are out of the way. Life’s duties will never be out of the way. And so if you really mean it when you say you’d like to write a novel or spend more of your time with your ageing parents or fighting climate change, at some point you’re just going to have to start doing it.

We need to remind ourselves to drop the relatively unimportant things in order to elevate the truly important ones.

Turning this into something little more concrete, here is my proposal:

  • Won’t Do List. Identify 2-3 lesser things that “would be nice” to do, but will simply end up a distraction from the really important things. Give them up. Leave them off your To Do list forever.
  • Must Do List. Identify one thing that you really want to do but have been putting off for too long. Do it for an hour early in the day, even if it pushes other things out of the way. You must work on it, even a little. It’ll probably be hard, which is why you put it off earlier. You may even discover that you really don’t want to do it after all, but at least now you know and can move on. (This is similar to the Charlie Munger “work for yourself an hour each day” advice.)

On a daily basis, I try to cut out the following things to add some time to my day. I haven’t solved my huge pile of e-mail, but I have given up on “Inbox Zero”, check it less often, and am more at peace that I will miss some things the first time around. This isn’t right for everyone, but I also limit myself to an average of 15 minutes a day on Twitter, 5 minutes on Instagram, and zero minutes on Facebook and TikTok. Social media just reminds me of junk food that tastes great in the moment but has little nutrition and I’m hungry again in 20 minutes. I believe Twitter has the most useful information, but filtering can be time-consuming. (I need Instagram to know where my favorite food trucks are at.) I finally decided cut cable TV and gave up following most live sports in 2020. I will miss watching it, but it does free up a lot of time.

Bottom line. You can’t have it all. Don’t fit more in. Cut things out, and lift a few key things up. The finance/time analogy is that you can afford nearly any one thing, but you can’t afford everything. Trying to do everything will keep you “busy” until you run out of weeks:

(image credit: Financial Times)

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Money and Happiness: Happiness Keeps Increasing Past $75,000 a Year

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Did you know there was an iPhone app called Track Your Happiness? The app basically does what the name suggests:

A few times a day, you’ll get a notification and be asked some questions about your experience at that moment. The idea is that by measuring your experience at many individual moments, you’ll get an accurate picture of your life and the determinants of your happiness.

After collecting over 1.7 million data points from 30,000+ app users, here is the research paper Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year by Matt Killingsworth, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Thanks to reader Al for the tip. Taken from the “Significance” section:

Past research has found that experienced well-being does not increase above incomes of $75,000/y. This finding has been the focus of substantial attention from researchers and the general public, yet is based on a dataset with a measure of experienced well-being that may or may not be indicative of actual emotional experience (retrospective, dichotomous reports). Here, over one million real-time reports of experienced well-being from a large US sample show evidence that experienced well-being rises linearly with log income, with an equally steep slope above $80,000 as below it. This suggests that higher incomes may still have potential to improve people’s day-to-day well-being, rather than having already reached a plateau for many people in wealthy countries.

Here is a chart from the paper that illustrates how “experienced well-being” keeps increasing with log(income).

Why do I keep making log in bold? Because even though it was a long time ago, I still remember something about logarithms! The only two charts in the paper emphasize the nice line before and after the $75,000 income marker. This might confuse a quick reader to think that happiness keeps increasing linearly with income. In reality, here is a graphic (source) that shows the difference between rising linearly with n vs log(n). The relationship between happiness as income increases looks like the red line below.

If you read the entire paper, this is addressed (emphasis mine):

When interpreting these results, it bears repeating that well-being rose approximately linearly with log(income), not raw income. This means that two households earning $20,000 and $60,000, respectively, would be expected to exhibit the same difference in well-being as two households earning $60,000 and $180,000, respectively. The logarithmic relationship implies that marginal dollars do matter less the more one earns, while proportional differences in income have a constant association with well-being regardless of income.

In order to match the amount of happiness increase from $20,000/yr to $60,000/yr income, you would have to go from $60,000 to $180,000 year, or then $180,000 to $540,000 a year, and so on. Here a quick sketch that I made of this (gives me a reason to use my new $34 knockoff Apple pencil).

That… sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? Happiness increases with money quickly at lower incomes, and as your income grows the incremental increases are smaller (but still goes up a bit). If you make $150,000 a year now, getting a $25,000 annual raise will still make you little happier, but nearly as much as someone earning $50,000 a year now.

If the past research said that you got zero additional happiness past $75,000 year, that would have been the surprising thing. If happiness forever increased directly in proportion with income, that also would have been surprising.

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Consumer Reports: Top 10 Most Reliable Car Brands and Models 2020

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Consumer Reports provided some updated results from their 2020 Car Owner Survey in the public articles Who Makes the Most Reliable Cars?, 10 Most Reliable Cars, and 10 Least Reliable Cars. There are a few minor surprises, including a new brand in the top spot. Here are some highlights and a partial excerpt of the Top 10 most reliable brands.

  • Most reliable: Mazda is the new #1, up from #2 last year.
  • Most improved ranking (in the Top 10): Honda and Buick.
  • Biggest ranking drops (overall): Mini and Lincoln.

A few quick thoughts:

  • Despite providing these brand rankings, Consumer Reports recommends that you shop by vehicle and not just by brand. Reliability problems often occur with a new model with a new engine and/or drivetrain system. This is why Toyota is very incremental with their changes – to maintain reliability.
  • The best new car for Uber/Lyft/DoorDash etc. drivers must be the Toyota Prius. Top reliability scores + top gas mileage + reasonable depreciation = lowest per-mile cost of ownership. (A used one might be even better, as the battery actually has a working life of 10+ years…) If you drive a lot and just want to get from A to B at the lowest per-mile cost, buy a Prius.
  • Everyone seems to love their Teslas, but the reliability scores are rather poor. Is it because most Tesla cars are still rather new and Tesla is fixing all these issues under warranty? I also wonder what parts exactly are breaking down since electric vehicles cost less to maintain overall partially due to having much fewer parts than internal-combustion vehicles. You would think the reliability would be higher by default.
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Organize Credit Cards Physically Using Business Card Holders

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A reader asked me how I keep track of so many credit cards, and I wasn’t sure what they meant. I track active credit card offers using online calendar reminders and a simple spreadsheet, but physically I keep them all in a business card organizer (if not in my wallet). I realized that I still had an old article published way back in 2007 about repurposing my old baseball card sleeves and a 3-ring binder. I’ve deleted that post since it’s very outdated and replaced it with this one, as I’ve actually used a business card holder for several years now. Mine looks almost identical to this 4.6 star item or this smaller 4.7 star version on Amazon (both around $7):

As a few readers back then noted, my baseball card sleeves were a little too big and the cards could fall out if the binder was tipped upside down. With these business card holders, the sleeves are smaller and the openings are on the sides for a much more secure fit. This also makes the overall package smaller, making it possible to keep nearly a hundred cards in a single, compact folder.

I have three of them altogether: one for credit and debit cards, one for gift cards and loyalty/membership cards, and one for business cards. Instead of a “sock drawer”, I have a subtle, black folder that blends in discretely on a bookshelf, and is also easy to quickly throw into a lockbox for added security. Of course, these days it’s also handy to keep all your credit card numbers in a password manager like Keeper or Dashlane.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

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Planned vs. Perceived Obsolescence

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The Story of Stuff (embedded below) is a short animated film about the lifecycle of material goods. Even though it was released over 10 years ago, the overall message of anti-consumerism and sustainability still applies to our current world. There are debates about specific statements from the movie which you can find on the film’s Wikipedia page, but I’m not here to defend the entire video. I believe that people should be able to watch something with a critical mind and not necessarily agree with every single point.

Here I am focusing on the discussion of planned vs. perceived obsolescence, which is approximately at 12:35 if you wanted to skip directly to that part.

Here are the definitions from the film glossary:

Planned obsolescence: designing and producing products in order for them to be used up (obsolete) within a specific time period. Products may be designed for obsolescence either through function, like a paper coffee cup or a machine with breakable parts, or through “desirability,” like a piece of clothing made for this year’s fashion and then replaced by something totally different next year. Planned obsolescence is also known as “design for the dump.”

Perceived obsolescence: the part of planned obsolescence that refers to “desirability”. In other words, an object may continue to be functional, but it is no longer perceived to be stylish or appropriate, so it is rendered obsolete by perception, rather than by function. Fashion is all about perceived obsolescence, and it could be said that perceived obsolescence is the number one “product” of the advertising industry.

Non-Consumer Alarm! In other words, companies have made easy it is to identify “non-consumers”, which usually comes with a negative connotation in our society. Let’s take cars. (Is it ever “cool” to drive an old car that isn’t a collectible?) Models change very often, even if just slightly, so it’s very easy to tell if you have an older car vs. a newer model. My wife and I have been half-jokingly told by our friends and co-workers that we need to buy nicer cars that better match our job titles and/or income levels. Yet even the newest cars pretty much do the same stuff. I could be driving a 15-year-old well-maintained Camry and add a smartphone for GPS/music/podcasts, and a blindfolded passenger probably couldn’t tell the difference.

The next time you are in public, look at the visible stuff that people own. Notice how easily you can figure out whether it was bought within the last few years.

Bottom line. I still buy stuff. You probably still buy stuff. However, we should at least acknowledge the pressure to own the most current version of everything, even if we are replacing something that still works. Cars. Cell phones. Water containers (Hydroflask). Headphones (Airpods). Kitchens that “need” remodeling because they are outdated. Shoes. Winter jackets. Purses. Clothing.

[Revised and updated from original post from many years ago. I’m cleaning up my archives and updating selected articles. Funnily enough, this post is getting increased attention because a lot of students have been assigned homework after watching this film as part of their “distance learning”.]

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20% of Gift Cards Are Left Unused After 1 Year. How About Yours?

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It’s now been a month since Christmas. Have you spent your gift cards yet? The odds are that you haven’t, as only 38% of all gift cards overall have been redeemed after a month. This is from a neat collection of gift card statistics from Zachary Crockett and The Hustle.

Here’s a chart of gift card redemption rates over time. Initially, it surprised me that less than 80% of gift card are used up after 12 months. That means 1 out of 5 are sitting there collecting dust after an entire year. Then I looked over at my own stack of unused gift cards, and realized that I am part of the problem!

This also explains why many gift cards can be discounted 10% to 20% in stores. In addition to the embedded profit margins of each specific business, around 6% of gift cards are never used. On top of their normal profits, Starbucks makes over $100 million a year from gift cards bought and never used! They literally get paid for doing nothing.

This means ~30% of gift cards that are unused after a year will never be used. Perhaps the best move is to give yourself a year and sell whatever hasn’t been used within a year. (I apply this same rule by throwing out clothes that aren’t worn after four seasons have passed.) Here are a bunch of sample quotes from card-buying site CardCash using nice round $100 numbers:

Look for extra value by exchanging for gift cards that you always use up. CardCash offered 3.5% extra over the cash offer if I exchanged into an Amazon gift card, 5% extra for Home Depot, and 7% extra for Lowe’s gift card. I have a 100% usage rate for Amazon gift cards, so that works well for my spending habits.

We all know that the solution is to give cash, but for whatever reason, giving cash in American culture is not standard practice. (Maybe some red envelopes would make it feel more classy?) In the end, I think gift cards are here to stay. I would still much rather have a gift card than a sweater that doesn’t fit. We just have to accept that there is going to be some waste in the process, like all that wrapping paper and ribbon.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

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Consumer Report Car Brand Reliability Rankings 2018

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Consumer Reports shared some results from their 2018 Car Reliability Survey in the public articles Who Makes the Most Reliable Cars?, 10 Most Reliable Cars and, 12 Models Lose CR Recommendation Over Car Reliability Issues.

Here’s a partial snapshot of the brand breakdown, which includes the relative change from last year. Highlights:

  • Most reliable: Lexus and Toyota. Again.
  • Most spots improved: Mazda and Acura.
  • Biggest ranking drop: Honda, Chrysler, Volvo, and Tesla.

A partial excerpt with the top rankings are below:

Despite providing these brand rankings, Consumer Reports recommends that you shop by vehicle and not just by brand. Some brands like Toyota and Lexus are reliable across the brand, but others like Honda and Kia have a wide range of rankings by model. In addition, new model redesigns often results in variable reliability. Of course, you’ll need full print or digital access to get those numbers.

My thoughts. In terms of trends, I was disappointed to see Honda slip a bit again in the reliability rankings all the way down to 15th. We’ve said goodbye to our trusty Honda Fit, but I don’t know if we’ll go back to Honda. I bought a Toyota not just due to lower total ownership cost (frugal living), but mostly about avoiding headaches and hassle (simple living).

In terms of methodology, I see a lot of mentions about infotainment issues. Honestly, I now have a car with a big LCD screen, and I never use it. I just stream music, podcasts, and audiobooks from my phone via Bluetooth. Any issue that keeps me from driving the car itself should count 50 times more than a slow or frozen screen.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

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The Quest of the Simple Life: Escaping The Work Grind in 1907 vs. Today

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The Quest of the Simple Life by William J. Dawson was published over 100 years ago; it’s so old that the copyright has expired, making the book public domain (and thus available as a free Kindle download). Yet, other than the old-fashioned writing style that required regular dictionary usage, much of the contents are perfectly applicable today! Here are some excerpts to help prove my point, and at the end I compare 1907 vs. 2018. (Any bolded parts are my doing.)

On the feeling that your family time is lacking:

Let us take the life of the average business man by way of example. Such a man will rise early, sleep late, and eat the bread of carefulness, if he means to succeed. His children scarcely know him; they are asleep when he goes off in the morning, and asleep when he returns at night; he is to them the strange man who sits at the head of the table once a week and carves the Sunday joint. It is well for them if they have a mother who possesses gifts of government, sympathy, and patient comprehension, for it is clear that they have no father. He gets a living, and perhaps in time an ample living; but does he live?

On the true cost of “Keeping up appearances”:

Money may be bought at too dear a rate. The average citizen, if he did but know it, is always buying money too dear. He earns, let us say, four hundred pounds a year; but the larger proportion of this sum goes in what is called ‘keeping up appearances.’ He must live in a house at a certain rental; by the time that his rates and taxes are paid he finds one-eighth of his income at least has gone to provide a shelter for his head. A cottage, at ten pounds a year, would have served him better, and would have been equally commodious. He must needs send his children to some private ‘academy’ for education, getting only bad education and high charges for his pains; a village board-school at twopence a week would have offered undeniable advantages. He must wear the black coat and top-hat sacred to the clerking tribe; a tweed suit and cap are more comfortable, and half the price. At all points he is the slave of convention, and he pays a price for his convention out of all proportion to its value. At a moderate estimate half the daily expenditure of London is a sacrifice to the convention or imposture of respectability.

On the cost of commuting and eating out:

In all but very fine weather I must needs use some means of public conveyance every day; there was a daily lunch to be provided; and when work kept me late at the office there was tea as well. One can lunch comfortably on a shilling or eighteenpence a day; and I knew places where I could have lunched for much less, but they were in parts of the town which I could not reach in the brief time at my disposal. Moreover, one must needs be the slave of etiquette even though he be a clerk, and if all the staff of an office frequent a certain restaurant, one must perforce fall into line with them under penalty of social ostracism. Thus, whether I liked it or not, for five days in the week I had to spend eighteenpence a day for lunch, and fourpence for teas; and if we add those small gratuities which the poorest men take it as a point of honour to observe, here was an annual expenditure of 25 pounds.

Various quotes about those who feel this certain type of “discontent”:

I saw that it was the artificial needs of life that made me a slave; the real needs of life were few. […]

The debate went on for years, and it was ended only when I applied to it one fixed and reasoned principle. That principle was that my first business as a rational creature was not to get a living but to live; and that I was a fool to sacrifice the power of living in securing the means of life. […]

My chief occupation through these years was to keep my discontent alive. Satisfaction is the death of progress, and I knew well that if I once acquiesced entirely in the conditions of my life, my fate was sealed. […]

To the man who detests the nature of his employment as I detested mine, I would say at once, either conquer your detestation or change your work. Work that is not genuinely loved cannot possibly be done well. […]

On looking back having lived his new simpler life successfully for four years:

After four years’ experiment in Quest of the Simple Life I am in a position to state certain conclusions, which are sufficiently authoritative with me to suggest that they may have some weight with my readers. These conclusions I will briefly recapitulate. The chief discovery which I have made is that man may lead a perfectly honourable, sufficing, and even joyous existence upon a very small income. Money plays a part in human existence much less important than we suppose. The best boon that money can bestow upon us is independence. How much money do we need to secure independence? That must depend on the nature of our wants.

Honestly, after finishing the book I was suspicious that it was written as some sort of strange parody, as some of the themes were so similar to what folks face today. But William James Dawson appears legit and wrote several other books during the same period. Here’s a comparison between Dawson in 1907 vs. a hypothetical person in 2018:

1907: The author worked full-time as a clerk in London, but finds himself dissatisfied with that lifestyle. He worked long hours, didn’t enjoy his desk job, and felt his health suffering in the sooty city air. He calculated that much of his expenses went to simply keeping up everyone else: higher rent, high commuting costs (time and money), paying extra to eat out with coworkers at lunch, maintaining a proper work wardrobe, and so on. He dreamed of a simple rural life. He found a small cottage in the countryside with very low rent. He fished, hunted, and farmed much of his food and paid for the rest with his earnings as a freelance writer for a local newspaper.

Today: A young woman works full-time in a large urban metro, but finds herself dissatisfied with that lifestyle. She worked long hours, didn’t enjoy her desk job, and felt her health suffering due to sitting in front of a computer all day. She calculates that much of her expenses went to simply keeping up everyone else: higher rent, high commuting costs (time and money), paying extra to eat out with coworkers at lunch, maintaining a proper work wardrobe, and so on. She dreamed of a simpler life. A small (tiny?) house or RV on a cheap piece of land. She gained income from her investments, including a rental property (Airbnb?) and stock dividends. The rest was covered with freelance work through Upwork or Elance.

Bottom line. In some ways, life hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years. Some folks will become unsatisfied enough with the commonly chosen path and take the risk of making huge changes. A simpler life with lower costs but more time with friends and family. This doesn’t necessarily mean they have the money for full “financial independence” yet, but perhaps a job more aligned with your true values where you aren’t solely maximizing income.

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Thanksgiving Reader: The Power of Gratitude

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thanksreaderIt’s kind of sad when you hear the term “Black Friday Week” more often than Thanksgiving. I would like to interrupt the flow of deals to briefly connect personal finance and Thanksgiving in a different way. Seth Godin has put together something called the Thanksgiving Reader, which is a collection of quotes and stories dealing with gratitude that is meant to lift everyone up with hope and possibility.

The idea is simple: At your Thanksgiving celebration (and yes, it’s okay to use it outside the US!), consider going around the table and having each person read a section aloud.

You could also enjoy the quotes on your own, or use it as good source material for a Thanksgiving grace or prayer.

There is so much to be thankful for each day.
Today we take the time to pause and acknowledge this special season of harvest and its traditions of sharing with those less fortunate.
We take time to notice the labor of others, from farm to table, that culminates in this feast.
Today we pause to recognize how fortunate we are and to be grateful for the bounty we share with friends, family and loved ones, be they with us or far away.
– Rebecca Hale

The pursuit of financial freedom is really part of the pursuit of happiness. Research has found that expressing gratitude improves both your mental and physical well-being. In other words, it makes you happier. Here’s another good quote (emphasis mine):

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.

It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.
It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
– Melody Beattie

Realizing that so much of what you have is enough (often more than enough) makes you content and happier. Store catalogs, TV commercials, and Instagram celebrities like to present you with visions of perfection, making you see flaws and gaps where are none. This makes you unhappy. Guess which one makes you want to buy stuff? Gratitude is an antidote to consumerism.

I always appreciate this annual reminder to truly appreciate all that the many blessings that I have. Happy Thanksgiving Week!

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Man Who Lived Alone on an Mediterranean Island For Nearly 30 Years

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budelli

Financial freedom means that you can do what you want. Now consider that if you earn like everyone else and spend like everyone, you’ll end up like everyone else. This is why unconventional people are the most likely to achieve early retirement. I sometimes envy those people who are satisfied with the idea of working 9-5 under a boss until you’re 65 years old. I just can’t do it.

This is why I like reading about unconventional people. Some readers couldn’t get past the fact that Christopher Knight lived alone in the Maine woods for 27 years stole things to eat. Well, here’s a NatGeo story about a person who lived alone on an island for 28 years completely legally. Via NextDraft.

78-year-old Mauro Morandi is the sole caretaker of an Mediterranean island that became closed to tourists after being designated a National Park. He feels very strongly about preserving the island’s natural beauty. He has a job and a purpose. He gets food delivered to him every two weeks and there are limited visitors, so he is not a complete hermit, but he is the island’s only permanent resident. Still, I observed a lot of common ground between these two people who both lived alone for nearly 30 years.

  • They enjoyed the silence. “What I love the most is the silence,” Morandi says. “The silence in winter when there isn’t a storm and no one is around, but also the summer silence of sunset.”
  • They never felt lonely. Morandi says he is always surrounded by life.
  • They made peace with the idea of dying alone. “I will never leave,” Morandi says. “I hope to die here and be cremated and have my ashes scattered in the wind.”
  • They were avid readers.
  • They never got sick. Morandi says he has never gotten sick and attributes this to his good genes. Knight never got sick either, but observed that germs come from other people. If you live alone, there is nobody to spread their foreign germs to you.
  • They view themselves as a small part of the world, not controllers of the world. “We think we are giants that can dominate the Earth, but we’re just mosquitos,” Morandi says.

Here’s another NatGeo story about an off-grid commune in North Carolina, but it didn’t interest me nearly as much. Is it really living off-grid when you live off of donated food and go back into town for WiFi? Is is really a commune when only one person stays year-round? It seems more like a place where people visit and play at being “off grid” for a few months before going back their traditional lives.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


More Experience = Less Complexity?

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When we had our first child, it seems like we were prepared for the apocalypse whenever we stepped out the door. Below is a visualization taken from Pinterest, while we actually had this $60 SkipHop diaper bag filled to the brim.

babybag1

Compare that with what I grabbed as my “diaper bag” for our youngest baby this morning:

babybag2

If I am going to be out for no more than a few hours, this is all I really need.

– 99 cent reusable grocery bag
butt everything wipes
– two diapers
– poop bags (also used for dogs)
– food/drink (if breast milk unavailable)

If you aren’t experienced, then you want to be prepared for every possible situation. Over time, you realize what you really need and leave everything else at home. Instead of more stuff, you are instead mentally prepared with the various improvisations you can perform in unexpected situations. (I also keep a bag in the car with an extra change of clothes for everyone.)

A similar example is packing luggage. What used to just be for “backpackers” is now for everyone. Websites about packing light abound. My first few trips, I packed myself a huge, cheap Wal-Mart suitcase at maximum-weight along with another maximum-size carry-on. Something like this:

packing1

After many flights (and an experience with delayed luggage), like many others I found myself with just a carry-on travel backpack for a month-long trip (or even longer).

packing2

I feel like this trend should apply to investing as well, but it seems like the ultra-wealthy tend to have a more complex mix of investments. Perhaps the very wealthy like to spread their money across various asset classes like real estate, private equity, and hedge funds because it reduces the chance of catastrophic loss. For example, sometimes I want to buy a rental property as it seems it would offer additional diversification to a stock and bond portfolio, but I really don’t want to deal with bad tenants or mediocre property managers.

I do like the idea of simply transferring over some of my bond interest payments and stock dividends to my checking account every month in retirement. However, a part of me is uncomfortable having so much of my net worth in investments where the only tangible evidence is paper and ink via monthly statements.

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My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.