MONTHLY MULLING 💡
Financial Independence, Ideas Shaping Life, and My Expense Audit
Hi👋,
Tapan here.
Monthly Mulling is a newsletter sending the best ideas from the web to your inbox for free. High signal. Low noise.
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Happy Sunday y’all!
Some good news! We finally launched the website for our podcast, Cold Brew Money. I enjoy web-designing and this has been a fun project. So go check it out, especially the Rabbit Hole. It’s my favorite page ever! It is a repository of articles, podcasts, tweets, and so on that we have collected over the years.
I also re-designed my website and changed the colors around a bit. I have moved away from the bright red after some feedback. 😂
If you have friends who need help with their websites or general branding, let me know.
Moving on🚀
ðŸ’MULLING
💰 How to live frugally and achieve financial independence by Graham Stephan (Video - 20 mins)
Graham has quickly become one of my favorite YouTubers. He is brutally honest in his videos and explains his thought process well. In this video, he explains, step-by-step, how to be financially independent.
Now, not all steps will apply to everyone. You have to experiment and figure out a lot of things for yourself. But he does a pretty good job of explaining the basics. Here are some of my takeaways.
Saving - if you save 50% of your income you will be independent in 17 years
Cut your biggest expenses - you don’t have to cut it completely but find cheaper means. Travel but try to travel cheap. Have coffee but find beans and make it at home.
Avoid high-interest debt - no brainer. Cut down on your highest interest debt first.
Invest - take advantage of tax accounts, invest consistently, use low fee index for low risk, consistent returns.
You’re independent if you have 25x invested of what you spend annually. A study shows that if you have this much amount and withdraw 4% of it year-after-year, you will still be able to live a good life.
We did an episode on something similar in Cold Brew Money, do check it out.
😂 Glitterbomb Trap Catches Phone Scammers by Mark Rober (Video - 21 mins)
Every time I see a Mark Rober video release, it’s always the first link I click. They are incredibly well made, researched, and so much fun!
In this video, Mark plays PI and finds scammers in the US who scam call people and ask them to send money. He uses glitter bomb to catch them which is incredible!
He explains in detail how these phone scams work and traces it back all the way to, you guessed it right, India.
90% of the victims in the US are people over the age of 65. So if you have someone in your life, share the above video with them to spread awareness.
💡 Ten Ideas That Have Shaped My Life by Scott Young (Article - 8 mins)
Scott shares his favorite ideas from his life experiences. Here are my notes if you don’t want to read the full article.
Most actions are automatic - we do most things in life without giving much thought.
Ambitious goals increase the effort.
harder goals produce better results, provided they're committed to
specific targets work better than vague suggestions
some show slow progress, others accelerate
Efforts tend to show two trends.
Diminishing returns - you are energetic in the first hour, the 15th hour is a drag
Compound growth - occurs when each past improvement helps further growth
Our lives are dominated by positive-sum activities — we improve our lots largely by making life better for others.
Fear is overcome through exposure.
James Carse made the distinction between finite and infinite games
A finite game, like chess, is one which you play for a while, and then you either win or lose.
An infinite game, in contrast, never ends. To win means to keep playing.
Happiness is in the pursuit, not the possession - enjoy the journey, destination doesn't matter.
🧠23 lessons I learned on my path from $0 to $2M in 8 years by Danny Baldus-Strauss (Twitter Thread - 6 mins)
Danny talks about the most important lessons learned in his financial journey. It’s a thread with some great thoughts. My favorites are -
Anything that provides instant gratification is probably bad for you and your wealth. Anything that provides delayed gratification is likely good for you.
Spend time focusing on the big decisions like asset allocation & building good credit rather than the $5 Starbucks decisions.
You can get rich at your job, but you only get wealthy at home. 9-5s build necessary cash flow to consistently invest. But your employer isn’t responsible for your wealth-building, you are.
Learn to avoid lifestyle inflation.
People who are right a lot of the time are people who often change their minds.
📚TREAT YO’ SHELVES
I was recently reminded of an article by my friend that I wrote a few months back on how to read more books. Check out the post here if you’re still planning on picking reading as a hobby.
READING CHALLENGE 2021
Check out my 2021 Reading Challenge page (read 30-pages per day). You can join us on Goodreads, we have a group for the challenge!
Still procrastinating on my reading. I somehow always find something ‘more important’ to do than reading.
📚 I am currently reading
Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama
The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
🎙PODCASTS
💰COLD BREW MONEY
😲 #36 - Tapan’s Expense Audit & WandaVision - I went over my expenses during the start of the month to audit how much I was spending in a week. The results are not so good | Episode Page
📊 #37 - $DIS & Asset Allocation (how do you create your portfolio?) - We discuss various portfolio styles and why you need to diversify | Episode Page
🎧 WEBSITE | APPLE | SPOTIFY | GOOGLE PODCAST | ANCHOR | CASTBOX | JIOSAAVN
Later.
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