👋 Hey there, welcome to the WalletBurst monthly newsletter for the month of July. Let’s dive in!
Around the web
🎮 Packy McCormick wrote an epic essay on his substack titled The Great Online Game, where he explores the idea that we are all constantly playing an infinite video game on the internet which he coins The Great Online Game. Unlike typical video games, however, this one plays out with real people across places like Twitter, Discord, YouTube, Substacks, and blogs, with very real rewards in the form of dream jobs, investments, mentors, and income streams. The cost of failure in The Great Online Game is close to zero and still falling, while the serendipity of bring a creator on the internet gives exponential upside. Packy draws an incredible metaphor making this one well worth the read.
⛰ Another month, another great article by Morgan Housel, this one titled The Highest Forms of Wealth. The article has a simple premise – the highest forms of wealth are not massive net worth numbers, but rather the freedom that your fortune affords you, no matter how small. This freedom comes in the form of having control of your own time, being intellectually honest in your career, and not having to think about money because of its relative abundance.
📈 To help visualize the impact of money printing on asset price inflation, Pieter Levels, a prolific maker on the internet, created this awesome website called inflationchart.com. It allows you to graph out a variety of asset prices like the S&P 500, US home prices, and commodities denominated in other things like the M3 money supply (all money in circulation) or gold. Its concerning to see that the S&P 500 is relatively flat over the last decade or so when measured in M3 money supply, meaning that the stock market isn’t really growing after you consider all of the new money that is being printed by the Federal Reserve.
💼 Nick Maggiulli over at ofdollarsanddata.com wrote an interesting analysis titled How Does a Raise Early in Your Career Affect Your Finances? The TL;DR is that the size and timing of getting a raise matter less for building wealth over your career than your ability to save and invest your raises, steadily increasing your savings rate over your career. This echoes back to a key theme of wealth-building which is the importance of avoiding lifestyle inflation, especially early in your life when the time value of your money is the highest.
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End Note
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Have a great day,
Andrew ✌️
