Phone Upgrades, Lottery Stats, & Your Happiness Piggy Bank 🐷

August 2, 2022

Happy Tuesday, money nerds! 🙌

Imagine this:  Today, every time you smile, help someone, offer support, listen to others or do a kind deed… this will make a small “+1 deposit” into your happiness piggy bank.

Conversely, every time you turn your back on someone, get angry, be lazy or selfish today… this will make a “-1 withdrawal” from your happiness piggy bank.

Just like finances, if you make more withdrawals than deposits, you’ll become empty and broke inside 🙁. But if you’re focusing on good things and giving more than you get, you’ll feel full and rich inside!

Just something to think about this week… Your happiness piggy bank is just as important as your monetary one (or maybe even more) 🐷


TO DO

Review/update your account beneficiaries! 🪦

Roses Funeral GIF by Un si grand soleil - Find & Share on GIPHY

Sorry for the morbid thought so early in the morning ☠️🪦… But, we all die at some point! And if it happens unexpectedly, you’ll want to leave the least amount of money-mess possible for your loved ones!

Today, take 10 minutes and review/update your account beneficiaries:

✅ Bank accounts: By listing a beneficiary, your cash account could be immediately accessed by beneficiaries vs. locked up in the loooong and expensive probate process!!

✅ Retirement accounts: Again, you can usually *avoid probate* and easily change 401ks, 403bs, IRAs, etc. into survivor names if they are recorded as beneficiaries on your retirement accounts.

✅ Insurance policies: If you have life insurance (check because sometimes it’s included as an employee benefit!), make sure you’ve got the correct and *current* people listed as beneficiaries!

Apparently 68% of American’s don’t have a will! Account beneficiaries are a great way to make sure your assets are given to the correct hands quickly and quietly should you accidentally get eaten by sharks. 🦈


TECHNOLOGY

Phone upgrades: Aren’t what they used to be…

Do you know the difference between an iPhone 11 and iPhone 13?…  Me neither. 🤣

Back in the day, Steve Jobs used to take the stage at Apple product launch events and blow everyone’s mind! He’d announce crazy new tech features, sleek and sexy designs, and huge software advancements for Apple devices.

It was so exciting!!

But these days, the thrill has kinda disappeared. Apple now updates my software without me even knowing, while I sleep at night. And most of (sometimes all) the software “enhancements” aren’t even noticeable afterwards.

And if you do upgrade your phone device, almost all your settings and stuff transfers over for a seamless change. Your new device looks, feels and acts mostly like the old one. If there are any new convenient features, they’re matched by an equal amount of inconvenient and annoying new changes.

Anyway, this got me thinking… it’s easier now more than ever to *not* buy the latest and greatest phone. Why pay a premium when most new-ish phones all do the same stuff?

Cool resources:

  • 📲 SellCellSwappa and Gazelle are all cool marketplaces to buy/sell used tech. You might be able to snag a cheaper second hand phone vs. buying new.
  • 🙋‍♀️ Got any friends or family members that upgrade their phones when they don’t even need to? Many times they’ll sell you (or GIVE you) their old device which works just fine.
  • 🪫 Battery life is a common reason people upgrade… But you can typically just get a battery replacement in an old phone for $50-70.

I̶N̶V̶E̶S̶T̶I̶N̶G̶ GAMBLING

State-by-State Annual Lottery Spend…

Courtesy of Lendedu, here’s what the average person across the country spends playing the lottery each year…

  • Highest state, Massechusetts: Average resident spends $737 on lottery tickets.
  • Lowest state, North Dakota: Average of $35 per year per person.
  • National Average: $223 across all people, all states.

Truth be told, I bought a lottery ticket last week. 😬 And it was actually a lot of fun! Holding a ticket sparked really fun conversations with friends and family about winning a billion dollars. What we’d buy, who we’d share winnings with, causes we’d donate to, world problems we’d solve, etc…

Then sadly, after the drawing happened, reality set in. We didn’t win and life quickly went back to normal.

As much as I enjoyed the cheap fun last week (cost me $10 for many hours of entertainment/excitement), it’s not something I’d do every week. The “dreaming of winning” part is actually free — it can be done without buying tickets!

A few lottery reminders:

  • Your chance of winning the Mega Millions lottery are 1 in 302,575,350. That’s a 99.9999996% chance of losing 😥
  • If you do actually win, research shows you’re likely to file for bankruptcy few years later! 🤦‍♀️
  • Winning can deteriorate your relationships with friends/family (and even Tom Brady says being rich is “the hardest thing” about being a parent!) 👪
  • Happiness is FREE in life, you just need a positive mindset 🙌
  • You can become a millionaire without the lottery! It’s just saving + investing 🤑

Any of you play the lottery regularly? And have any of you actually WON big money?


ICYMI

In other news…

Baseball ⚾️
America’s favorite family outings are starting to get really expensive! The Hustle reports the average baseball game for a family of 4 now costs $204! 😬 (Of course you could forgo the hot dogs and beers to save money, but that’s half the fun of attending a ball game!)

Housing 🏡
If you’re looking for “cheaper” housing and you’re open to moving states… here are 5 cool cities in the US where you can still pick up houses for around $200,000. (I’ve been to some of these cities, and they are actually pretty cool 😉)

Groceries 🛒
It seems consumers are starting to ditch brand loyalty as food prices continue to rise. People are buying more generic, store-brand groceries — which saves them an average of 40% on food (and the quality is just as good, most have found)!

Interest Rates 📈
Last week the Fed bumped interest rates (again) by .75%… Pay down your high interest loans and variable rate debt, peeps!

Jobs 👩‍💻
Bank of America “hopes” our employment situation will worsen, so says a recently leaked company memo. Apparently having multiple job opportunities and rising wages gives too much power to the average people 🤷‍♂️


COMMUNITY

Thank you for your service! 💸

From Christine, shared last week in the HTM facebook group

Woot woot! Congrats, Christine. 🥳

Any of y’all work in public service and have outstanding student loans? Check out the PSLF site with Q&A here. There’s also a cool employer look-up tool to check if your current (or past) employer is eligible!


Have a great week, and stay happy my friends!!

Best friends out 🍻

*****

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