Cardboard Money
The Best Credit Cards for 2023, Retirement is cancelled, and a $45 million home in LA
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A businessman’s embarrassment forever changed the nature of money. Frank McNamara was hosting clients at the Majors Cabin Grill Restaurant in New York in 1949. When the check turned up, Frank realized something – He had changed his suit in between, and his wallet was no longer with him. Luckily, Frank’s wife saved the day by paying the bill. But that night, Frank had an idea. Why did people have to carry their wallets around in a city where everyone knew each other? Would it not be more convenient to carry around a card and merely sign your name, clearing your debts as they piled up? Frank discussed the idea with his lawyer Ralph Schneider.
In February 1950, Frank walked into the same restaurant with Ralph and had a meal. This time, he showed the counter a small cardboard card and signed for the purchase. The first credit card was born. Frank McNamara and Ralph Schneider founded Diners Club International on February 8, 1950, with $1.5 Million in capital. The global credit card market is now worth $103.72 billion. There are 25.2 billion cards in circulation as of 2022 – to think it all started with a forgotten wallet!
But the history of credit might be older than that – so much older that our earliest monetary systems might really have been ledgers and account records showing how much people owed each other. We usually think of the barter system and shell money when the origins of money are discussed, but that’s a myth, according to David Graeber who wrote the book “Debt: The first 5,000 years”. Credit might be one of our earliest inventions, right up there with language!
If credit is so old, the question is, are you making the most of it? There are so many credit cards in the market flaunting great schemes and rewards, but there are a few that really knock it out of the park. This week, I covered the 5 best credit cards in 2023 so that you can make money (and even get free flight tickets) doing nothing!
Now that you know how to make the most of the credit card opportunities in the market, let’s look at something more serious: Retirement is a relatively recent invention, but it might be going away already. In my other video this week, I give you an exclusive tour of a gorgeous property in Los Angeles. Let’s get started!
Retirement is over
For most of human history, retirement was a foreign concept. People had to work till they died, and they were lucky if they got to live long enough to go broke. But once the industrial age brought in the concept of a regular job, the idea of retirement for all citizens caught on slowly. There was still a lot of confusion about it though: What was the best age to stop working? How much did people have to save for retirement? Could investing change their fortunes?
Bill Bengen simplified planning for an entire community when he came up with the 4% rule. It was very simple: If you saved the right amount of money, you could withdraw 4% of your savings every year and even in the worst case, the money would last 33 years! But now it looks like times are changing. The assumptions that Bill used to come up with the rule are no longer holding good, markets are more turbulent, and people are retiring earlier than ever… Watch this video to make sure that you don’t get caught by surprise, and hear my simple strategy to secure your retirement.
A work of labor and love
I really love real estate – I never get tired of saying that. One of the perks of this sector is that I get to meet fantastic people who become great friends. I met Enes Yilmazer years back when I was a fledgling YouTuber, and he was still starting out. Enes was on a mission to tour the world, visiting the most beautiful houses in America, and communicating to his viewers the amount of work that had gone into making these residences a delight to live in. Now he has a crew of 16 and he recently made a video on Michael Jordan’s home!
In this video, Enes gives me a tour of a $43,000,000 home in Los Angeles built on top of a promontory with a splendid view. He gave me a full tour, showing me the wall of living moss, the Batcave garage, and the infinity pool – while also explaining every bit of work that went into this beauty. Enes’s passion is infectious, and I’m sure you’ll have as much fun watching this one as we had making it!
Let me know in the comments what your favorite part of the video was.
So that’s it for my Sunday round-up. For the new folks here, in this newsletter, I give a quick recap of whatever you may have missed over the week on Sunday, and on Wednesday, I will be doing my deep-dive article on one of these topics.
See you next week with another bunch of exciting videos!
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Thanks for the history lesson! Backstories of taken-for-granted, everyday things fascinate us.
The concept of 'retirement' by choice is a result of the economic surplus gained during the 20th century, primarily due to the availability of cheap energy.