Money Vs Emotions

Something very hard to separate, but should be.

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - $4,000 Vacation + $1,000 VISA eGift Card

The Ultra High End - $100 Walmart eGift Card

The Superpremium - Mother Coffee

The Premium Core - No Worries by Jared Dillian

The Accessible Core - Money Vs Emotions

The Affordable Luxury - Podcast with Guests?

The Everyday Luxury - Start Recording of Podcasts

The Bespoke

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $4,000 Vacation Voucher + $1,000 in VISA eGift Cards [ARV $5,012]

• Odds: For every 660 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) vacation bundle Prize

• Contest Period: April 3, 2024 at 10 AM CST to April 30, 2024 at 10 PM CST

See Issue 1 for more content about The Bespoke Prize.

The Ultra High End

Previous Contest Winner

The winner for Issue 20 is TAYLOR from Richardson, Texas! This is their submission for “a food photo you are proud of”:

Congratulations! You have won the $200 Candlelight Voucher. Thank you for submitting and please continue to feed me with your food photos. Anyone can send me food photos (to [email protected]) to give me inspiration on what to make next or try next?

This Week’s Contest

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $100 Walmart eGift Card [ARV $100]

• Odds: For every 70 Ducky Tran premium members by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) $100 eGC

• Contest Period: April 10, 2024 at 10 AM CST to April 16, 2024 at 10 PM CST

This week’s focus is financial wealth and many times we overlook the value of items we have in our possession due to its aesthetics. Things such as household essentials generally don’t cost a lot individually, but since we know we all need them we forget they can add up to quite a bit over time. Like toilet tissue or shampoo or groceries. This week I’m giving out a Walmart eGC so that for any household essential you may need, you can get it covered and have the extra $100 to put it somewhere to invest: like traveling, investment portfolio, school, food or more essentials.

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is a small, quaint place in Okinawa, Japan called Mother Coffee. In my travels in Japan, my group of friends were looking for coffee and happen to stumble onto this small place in Okinawa City. It looked rustic and run-down, but it had so much personality and felt like a hidden gem. We were the first ones there and thought it was closed, but when you go inside, the decor and atmosphere was inviting. After we ordered, locals start to come in and the place felt like we fell into an old, adventure story and are in the middle of their daily routine.

My friends were just looking for coffee, especially to see some latte art like the ones below.

But for me, I’m not much of a coffee-drinker so I found a different reason to love this place. They had an extensive menu of Dutch Pancakes. I had no idea what they were but I was ready to try them all, especially the savory ones like the one below. Dutch Pancakes normally served as desserts with sweet flavors, berries, and ice cream but they had savories one that intrigue me more.

I visited this place a few years back and didn’t know what happened after the pandemic, since many small businesses closed for good during that time. However, after looking them up, looks like the locals didn’t let them down and this hidden gem survived. But then again, I guess being a hidden gem made it so they didn’t rely on tourists to keep them alive. I can’t wait to visit this little coffee shop next time I’m in Okinawa.

The Premium Core

This week’s Premium Core topic is the book No Worries by Jared Dillian.

Everyone has many stressors in their lives, and unfortunately, many of them revolve around money. In the United States, most children aren’t educated in financial literacy and have trouble with living beyond their means in adulthood. This brings upon a lot of stress throughout their adult life that tends to manifest into anxiety, depression, and many other mental conditions. Their conditions can further manifest into physical degradations like fatigue, over-eating, and many other physical conditions that didn’t have to occur.

The answer to this entire cycle is simple, education. Read about it, talk about it, and implement the financial skills taught by financial educators to live a life where you can be stress-free from financial decisions.

In the book No Worries, the author explains how instead of focusing on many small factors every day, which ends up keeping us stressed, we should focus on a few big things to make our finances less stressful. This is an over-simplified version of the book, but if you want to learn to be less stressed about your financial situation, or gift it to someone, or just learn a little more then check this week’s deal.

Deal #1: I’m a hardcover book kind of guy when it comes to reading. I am offering a $21 hardcover book (No Worries) for just $5. You can order yours by going to shop.duckytran.com. There will only be 5 available this week.

The Accessible Core

Money Vs Emotions

Let’s get right to the point! We need money to survive in our modern society. Many times, lack of money or the struggle in making it can cause emotional distress and anxiety. However, it is exactly that, our emotions, that get in the way of us enjoying our lives or making the money to enjoy our lives.

I’m not saying remove emotions completely, because that is not possible. However, we want to place our emotions in the right position so we can truly enjoy our lives.

Here’s something to ponder:

1. We know that money is just a way for us to trade what we want, let’s say food for this example.

2. What we want, food, is really the thing that brings us joy.

3. Living in the United States, we have so many options for food that different quality and quantity of food can brings us different levels of joy.

4. Different quality and quantity of food cost different amounts of money.

5. Therefore, different amounts of money make us feel different levels of joy.

Notice this line of thinking directly links money to your emotions. And to be frank, this looks like a normal way of thinking; however, it isn’t. This way of thinking has been slowly integrated into our daily lives as modern technology advances, things such as online stores, mobile apps, social media, and the latest tech and social trends.

Before the days of perfect food pictures, a farmer’s market could sell fruit and vegetables at varying prices directly to the locals based on how bruised or old they were, but now only the perfect apple and banana is sold. There are some places that reduce the pricing of their produce, but the majority of large supermarkets will only put out what is now socially acceptable produce, perfect or near perfect.

You may be thinking, what does fruits have to do with money and my emotions? Well, it’s because where we place our emotions play a key role in our finances.

Let’s use an apple to show placement of emotions:

1. There is a perfect apple for $1.00. A 10% bruised apple for $0.50.

2. Most people will buy the perfect apple for $1.00 because they don’t want a bruised apple. However, logically, you can buy 2 apples and remove the bruises and have nearly twice as much apple for the $1.00.

3. Notice our emotions placed on the aesthetics of the apple neglected the fact that we overpaid.

4. Instead, we should be happy that we got 2 apples to bring home to the family for just the price of 1 apple.

5. Notice the emotion was place after the goal was achieved rather than before. Placing it after a goal is achieve allows us to trying enjoy the achievement and also pushes us further in our financial wealth.

This is a hard concept to implement if you’re not actively looking for it. However, this way of thinking will help you foster a better relationship between money and emotions for you, and in turn allow you to enjoy your life much more. I’ll leave you with a few examples where you can implement this concept in your life:

1. For those that cannot be logically during risky scenarios like stock trading, stick to passive investments like 401K, REITs and company-backed portfolios, as there is little thought into it so you can really live without stress from financial risks.

2. Sometimes we pinch pennies in the wrong thing, like driving another 2 miles to pour gas for $0.03 less. Due to fluctuations in gas prices and travel, over a year an average driver will spend approximately the same amount of money regardless where they pour gas. So just pour gas where it’s convenient rather than to save a few pennies. The different in a year is between $20-$50 difference only. So, it’s better to not go out to eat once, than to drive a few minutes every time you pour gas for $0.03 less.

3. Everyone loves a good deal, but everyone knows too much of one thing is usually bad. That includes buying too many “good deals”. Sometimes my wife comes home with bags full of stuff and I ask what’s with the bags? The only answer is “I got it because it was a good deal”. If that’s your answer, go return it. The answers you want to hear are: “we’ll use it in the next month”, “we need it to survive”, and “it’s for an event that can really use these items”. Yes, these examples are a bit dramatic, but the point is, don’t buy things because they’re a good deal, but because you actually need them. If all the good deals my wife have purchased were saved up, I’m sure we could add an additional vacation to each year.

I hope this gave you something to ponder, don’t let your emotions ruin your finances and don’t let your finances ruin you emotionally.

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 20 Community Poll Results

Here are the results:

1. It is 50/50 split between those that passively invests (through company or self) and those that don’t invest in the markets at all. In future financial wealth issues, I will discuss more about investing as to educate those that are curious about it.

2. There’s an even split between renters and home-owners, with a few exceptions that still live with parents. This topic will be in a future issue to show the financial benefits and burdens among home-owners, renters and those staying in their parents’ home.

3. Looks like many of you would like to have a Ducky Tran podcast so you can listen to it during your spare time, so I pose another question in this week’s poll to get some more specifics.

This Week’s Community Poll

Here are this week’s poll questions:

The Everyday Luxury

(The referral program is only viewable on the email version of the newsletter.)

I will start scripting and start recording previously discussed topics so I can introduce a podcast to you. I will likely post it on the Ducky Tran YouTube channel for ease of access.

Visit shop.duckytran.com with the weekly password: books