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Hey Future Funders family,

Before we get going this week we would like to pause and acknowledge the horrific events that have taken place since October 7th.

As parents, our hearts are broken. And we are praying for the preservation of innocent lives and an end to Hamas’s terrorism once and for all.

With this heaviness in our hearts, we feel it’s important to show our kids— that in the midst of chaos and hopelessness— how to have gratitude and a state of appreciation for the gift of simply being alive. We do this by waking up with a hopeful spirit, and by doing what we love to help others. And we do this by connecting with our readers every week.

As the Israel/Hamas war continues, we will be sure to keep you informed on anything that could specifically effect your finances. We understand if you cannot fathom consuming anymore news today, but we wrote this week’s newsletter anyways because it brings us joy…

We hope you can find something today that will bring you joy.

Okay let’s get to it…

💬 Quote Of The Week

🥗 The Appetizers

News Headlines That Matter

📝 Inflation is not going away soon. The September Producer Price Index (PPI) came in at 2.2% and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in at 3.7%…both hotter than expected.

**The PPI measures the prices producers are paying for stuff to make your goods and the CPI measures what you pay for goods.

Our take: Food, gasoline, and shelter (rent / homes) continue to stay stubbornly high. We are more focused on the lack of improvement in the PPI right now because what producers pay to make your stuff tends to flow through eventually to what you will pay. These numbers are worth watching each month: if we are still stuck around this +3% inflation number by early next year, the stock market is likely to go lower. The reason is most experts right now are factoring in more inflation improvement causing the Fed to start lowering interest rates next year (which will not happen if we stay here or worse, move higher again).

👩‍⚕️ Walgreens pharmacists walk out. Walgreens is the latest company dealing with striking employees. Pharmacists are going on strike causing locations to fall behind on prescriptions and servicing patients. One pharmacist noted the company was prioritizing vaccinations over prescriptions as it was better for gross profit.

Our take: We truthfully weren’t aware that it was more lucrative for pharmacies to push vaccinations over prescriptions (note: where Walgreens goes, CVS and others may not be far behind). Worth noting too that Pfizer just unexpectedly slashed their earnings forecasts for the year on lower Covid products demand, so we would think they would continue to lean on pharmacies for a big vaccine push in order to meet their new forecasts.

🍽️ The Main Course

Your Big Money Story

The Dark Side of Crypto

🚀 What’s happening: Cryptocurrency and other alternative forms of money are unquestionably going to play a larger and larger role in our future.

But today, given the lack of regulation and standardization, there is dark side to this emerging industry that deserves some attention.

What’s going on?

Reports indicate that Hamas has used crypto to raise tens of millions in funding. They are not alone. Terror organizations and other bad actors around the world used Crypto to conduct over $20 billion worth of illicit activity in 2022 according to recent data (and this is a low ball estimate). Such illicit activity includes: money laundering, fraud, drug trafficing, human trafficking, child exploitation, terror funding, and cybercrime.

Why do they use crypto?

There are several reasons anyone looking to conduct shady business would use crypto.

• Easy to be anonymous. Identities of every crypto transaction are very hard to uncover. Transactions are made from one crypto address to another with an address being no more than a random string of characters.  

• No verification. Cryptocurrency can be transferred between peers with no former relationship or any third party serving as a mediator.

• Speed. All you need to conduct a transaction is an internet connection and a wallet application. That’s it.

• All digital. Crypto doesn’t need any physical storage so it’s very hard to steal. In addition, each wallet is unlocked by one private key. If you don’t know the private key, you’re out of luck. Conversely, if you know someone else’s private key, you will gain access to their full crypto wallet.

• Borderless. There is no distinction or clearing on where crypto is being transferred. They can be transferred anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat (all you need is the address).

Where is this all going?

More regulation is coming to the industry but it is slow. In the U.S., the current administration has turned over regulation responsibility to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) who is in the process of looking at it. The regulation in other countries is changing at varying speeds and until we get a better worldwide framework this kind of shady activity may only increase.  

👪 Closer to home: We don’t want to sound too negative on cryptocurrency because we do believe that alternative forms of currency to our fiat money system may well be the future.

Also, investing in cyrpto is a personal decision, and while we currently don’t, it doesn’t mean that we may be missing out (we are the first to admit we may be wrong!). We just want our readers to be informed and aware of some potential risks.

A few things you can do to stay on high alert are whether you are currently invested or not:

• Protect your keys. If you invest in crypto, this one goes without saying. Protect your wallet keys from everyone.

• Don’t click on links. If you get a email that looks off or are contacted by someone you don’t know about crypto, don’t click on any links. If people get access to your bank or financial information they can use it to buy crypto and move funds quickly.

• Talk to your kids. If your kids are investing in crypto or curious about the subject, make sure they know about some of these scams and are on high alert. It’s worth mentioning that dating apps are quickly becoming a popular way that fraudsters try to steal information and use it to buy or steal crypto.

Some further reading:  

• Crypto Simplified: A Parent's Guide

• Navigating Crypto Investments And Explaining Stablecoins

• Investing Like The Best: Safe vs. Aggressive Options

Dinner Discussion ❓

No peeking! Answer is below.

 Dining With Ryse

The Next Smart Home Staple

Where were you when Amazon acquired Ring for $1B? Or when Google bought Nest for a cool $3.2B?

Hopefully, you were invested in those promising startups. But for those that missed out, the next groundbreaking Smart Home innovation has arrived 一 RYSE.

Their automated window shade tech is now launching in Best Buy stores, and is poised to dominate the fast-growing Smart Shades market. They’ve also just launched a new investment round and their share price has already grown 25% from their last round!

The Smart Shades race is on, and RYSE is in pole position due to their:

Unmatched Features: RYSE has the only retrofit design to motorize existing window shades, and can be seamlessly controlled by voice, smartphone, or schedule.

Smart Price: Priced at $169 vs. competitors’ pricing of up to $1,000 per window, RYSE is uniquely positioned to bring luxury window shades to every home and business.

The exclusive public offering closes this month - learn more here.

🥘 The Side Dishes

Your Money And Your Kids

💳 This bill has flown under the radar but Congress may be in the process of trying to eliminate your credit card points.  

💊 A big investing theme right now is which companies will be affected by weight loss drugs. With company earnings reports kicking off this past week, so far Walmart has noted seeing an effect on their business, Pepsi has not.

💰 Make sure you ask any financial advisor these 15 questions before you consider hiring them (or to decide to continue working with them).

💵 The Social Security checks that support 71m+ Americans will see a 3.2% increase in 2024, the smallest gain since 2021 (the cost-of-living adjustment is calculated from the consumer price index).

📱 The state of Utah joined Indiana and Arkansas in suing TikTok alleging that the app lures our kids into destructive social media habits.

🍔 In a rush with the kids and want to know what the fastest fast food drive through is? If you guessed McDonald’s you would be wrong (we guessed Chick-Fil-A, and were also wrong).

👵 Seniors in the U.S. are keeping the consumer afloat and powering U.S. spending today like never before, according to recent reports.

🏈 We loved this technology story about a unique new football helmet that allowed deaf and hearing impaired kids to play football. Now if they could only make the sport safer.

🍨 Dessert

This Week’s Deals And Reads

🪙 Crypto Nutshell is a 5 minute daily read that helps you get smarter about crypto. Subscribe here!

🎃 Want to give trick or treaters some halloween candy from when you were growing up? The Old Time Candy Company is having several promotions right now on candy you ate when you were a kid.

🤖 The AI Tool Report will teach you how to save time and earn more with AI. Join their 300,000+ free daily readers for AI tools, tips, and news. One click sign up here.

*our goal is to always keep this newsletter free. If you buy or subscribe to something through our newsletter we may earn a small commission, at no added charge to you, in order to help us keep the lights on

Dinner Discussion ❓

Answer: The current market size for cryptocurrency is about $2 trillion. This is bigger than the market for Silver (about $1 trillion) but still well below other markets like the global stock market (about $120 trillion).

❤️ Invite Your Family

If like us, you believe in the power of financial freedom, we welcome you to share this newsletter with your family. Have them sign up here!

We are happy to announce our winner of $250 survey pool is Annie from South Dakota! Thank you to all who participated and we will be doing this again in the future so stay tuned.