Together With

Happy Monday Future Funders Family!

We made it guys. The first day of school is so close we can almost taste it.

So before we begin a new season of Halloween costume making, Thanksgiving menu planning, and holiday card sending… let’s just collectively give ourselves a pat on the back for making it across that sweet ‘end of summer’ finish line.

Okay, let’s get to it!

💬 Quote Of The Week

🍽️ The Main Course

Headlines That Matter

Economy

Calling All Price Detectives

🚀 The quick version: We are entering a strange economic time right now where inflation and price levels are showing wildly different trends across various sectors of products and services.

Let’s explain:

China reported deflation for July. We don’t typically highlight global financial news, but this one is important. For the first time in two years China reported a 0.3% drop in consumer prices and a 4.4% drop in producer prices in July compared to last year.

The drop in producer prices really caught our eye (this is what companies pay for stuff) given about 20% of all U.S. imports come from China. If the companies that are making our stuff are seeing prices coming down, chances are the U.S. consumer should start to benefit and see lower prices in the months ahead for categories that we heavily import.

Here is a list of China’s top 10 most imported products which includes smartphones ($50b), toys ($16.3b), pharmaceuticals ($6.9b), and plastics ($4.6b).

U.S. inflation sticking around 3%. The U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July came in at 3.2% vs. estimates of 3.3% and slightly up from 3.0% in June.

But the devil was in the details as categories showing actual price declines (meaning prices are coming down) included airline fares, used cars, medical care, and meat/poultry/eggs. While some categories like education and shelter (i.e. rent) continued to rise and stubbornly offset this (although there are signs the latter is starting to cool).

We aren’t holding out much hope for those education costs to come down though as we didn’t see any improvement in the latest tuition statement…

👪 How it affects your family:  Lower pricing trends in China make us hopeful that inflation will continue to come down here at home in categories that families deal with every day.

That said, with some stalled progress around the CPI report (we seem to be stuck around 3% inflation), we aren’t totally convinced by experts that think we will get back to that pre-pandemic, 2% level or lower.

What really matters though is the wildly different pricing trends by category (ex. airfare vs. rent) as we can’t remember a time with this much variation.

What it means is that every family has the opportunity to save money and find deals just by paying attention to some of the categories above that are seeing pricing pressure (we also continue to highlight good ones every week).

Here are some tips to help you today:

• Set an airfare price tracker. The CPI data above coupled with recent company earnings reports indicates that airline price cuts are coming. It may not hurt to think about your family’s upcoming trips and look to lock in airfare over the next few months. We created a short guide on how to set price alerts on airfare to help.

• Monitor car prices (also EVs). Used car prices continue to cool but we are still well above pre-pandemic price levels (the latest Manheim used car price data was also released this past week confirming this trend). What is becoming clearer though is that we are likely to see the most dramatic price decreases in the electric vehicle sector. EVs are not for everyone, but if you are curious if an EV makes sense for your family, you can check out this handy calculator.

• Watching everyday product prices online. With the cost to make things like furniture, toys, outdoor equipment, and plastics falling in China, we are likely going to see this flow through to an online storefront near you. Make sure you monitor product prices online and set alerts on deals (here is our guide for 10 easy ways to score the best deals online).  

Together with Masterworks

Microsoft Co-Founder’s $1.5B+ Sale Highlights “Safe Haven” Asset

Last November, Paul Allen’s historic art collection shattered the record for largest-ever sale in auction history.

The fact that the blue-chip art market is still setting records amid major drawdowns in financial markets, and macroeconomic turmoil, highlights why it can be such a strong alternative diversifier. In fact, the high-end art market also remained resilient through downturns like the dot-com bubble and Great Financial Crisis in 2008.

But this time around, it’s not just billionaires benefitting.

Thanks to Masterworks. This award-winning investment platform allows people to invest in shares of multi-million dollar art by names like Banksy and Picasso. So far, all 11 of Masterworks’ sales have been profitable, the last 3 realizing 10.4%, 35%, and 13.9% net returns respectively.

Due to high demand, offerings can sell out in just minutes, but Dinner Table Discussions readers can now skip the waitlist with the referral link below.

Cryptocurrency

PayPal Gets Into Crypto

🚀 The quick version: Cryptocurrency’s push to become a mainstream source of payment has made some small inroads recently.

Here’s what happened:

Stablecoin market growth taking off. The basic idea of cryptocurrency was born out of the 2008 financial crisis. The goal was to create a form of money not reliant on any government (especially ones like ours that…ahem…can’t keep a budget) or any bank (that might go under or need a bailout).

This idea sounds reasonable in theory, but in practice is very difficult.

One of the reasons is that the price of crypto fluctuates too much to use for everyday transactions (you don’t want to be the person who paid 10,000 Bitcoin for a pizza… ok, two pizzas technically).

Some people think stablecoins might be the answer to this problem (aside: stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency, but instead of just having a free floating value, a stablecoin’s value is pegged to something concrete like the U.S. Dollar).

PayPal creates a stablecoin. Enter PayPal, who recently announced they were creating a stablecoin of their own, called PayPal USD (backed by, you guessed it, the U.S. Dollar).

The advantages for Paypal customers are that they can use this stablecoin to transfer, pay, or send money instantly. If they want they can also convert their stablecoins to and from actual U.S. Dollars whenever they want.

Regulation heating up. So we have some potential here, right? Yes…well… maybe.

You also have to worry about the regulation.

A day after PayPal made its announcement, the U.S. Fed announced that all banks transacting in stablecoins need to obtain a written supervisory non-objection from the Fed before issuing, holding or transacting in them.

In english, this means the Fed needs to approve any bank or entity using stablecoins.

Potential new regulation will always be an issue in this sector; you never know what kind of curve ball is coming next.

👪 How it affects your family: These are the two main questions that everyone needs to answer for themselves before they get involved in cryptocurrency:

• Do you believe that cryptocurrency will eventually replace currency we use today (like the U.S. Dollar)?

• Do you think that cryptocurrency is a good investment for your money vs. other potential investment options out there?

On the first question, our opinion is that we do ultimately believe some type of digital currency will likely replace cash, but we aren’t convinced the replacement is out there yet or that it will even happen in our lifetime.

We kind of think about cryptocurrency right now similar to the internet in the mid 1990s (oh have we come a long way since AOL dial up in the living room).

Also, there are also so many entrenched governmental and corporate interests invested in the current financial system it gets hard for us to see a replacement that is truly decentralized without their involvement (on queue it’s worth noting the Fed recently started looking at creating a stablecoin run by the government).

As to the second question, because we don’t see crypto as having a path (yet) to be a true currency, we tend to question the investment merits in owning something (like Bitcoin) with no underlying value besides how much the next person is will pay for it.

With a stock, for example, you can do research and have a view on the companies prospects in the future and what owning a piece of those profits is worth. With crypto, right now to us it’s really just more about what you think the next person will pay tomorrow.

That said, we would also be the first to say this doesn’t mean investing in crypto is a bad idea (just because we aren’t invested doesn’t mean we are always right!).

If you are thinking about investing in crypto, we would suggest you start by answering the above two questions for yourself (maybe you come to a different conclusion).

Here are some resources to help you dig in more should you choose to:  

• Simplifying cryptocurrency. The world of cryptocurrency can get confusing. That’s why we created a short guide to help break it down and even learn how to explain it to the kids.

• Investing in cryptocurrency. Taking it a step further for anyone interested in investing in crypto, we created a quick breakdown of how to actually do it.

• Safe vs aggressive investments. There are many other investments available outside the world of crypto. The problem for many though is that it’s not easy thinking about where investments fall on the safe vs. aggressive scale. Hopefully some visualization can help.

Dinner Discussion ❓

Answer below (no peeking!)

🥘 The Side Dishes

A few things to know…

🔋 Bankruptcy and student loans.  Did you know the myth that student loans cannot be discharged with a bankruptcy filing is actually wrong? We didn’t.

📱 Parents beware! If your school uses the Saturn app, be aware that parents are sounding the alarm over the apps privacy features, where seemingly anyone can sign on and see your kids’ calendar.

💊 A cure for postpartum depression? For all our amazing moms out there, we were hopeful to see the FDA approve the first pill for postpartum depression.

🩺 What do they make?  If you were ever curious what your doctor makes or were thinking about the ROI of your kids going into medicine, the Washington Post just did an elaborate breakdown of pay based on specialty.

📣 Become the smartest marketer in the room. Marketingletter is a free 5 minute newsletter keeping 25k+ marketers in the loop. It’s read by marketers at Disney, Linkedin, and many other global corporations to help them stay ahead. Subscribe for free here!*  

💵 Earning more on the cheap. We came up with 11 ideas for businesses any parent can set up for under $1,000 to try to earn some extra income.

🗠 No one left to be negative. Articles like this reporting that hedge funds are taking down their short bets on the market to levels not seen in a few years are what worry us that we are due for a correction. A “short bet” is when some one bets that the price will go down, and it’s usually when everyone turns positive (as is happening now) that an unforeseen shock happens.

🎮 Parents fighting back. Bravo to these parents who have banded together to try to fight back against tech companies and violent gaming targeted at kids.

🚸 Know what’s impacting your kids. The Culture Translator keeps parents informed about the cultural trends impacting your teenager's world. Their team helps you stay up to date on the music, movies, TV shows, and social media trends that your kids are interacting with each and every day. One click opt in here!*

*this is a sponsored post

🗓️ The Week Ahead

Week of the 14th

We are over 90% done with second quarter company earnings reports but this week will bring some final ones worth paying attention to. Target, Walmart, and Home Depot will report and give us their latest thoughts on how the consumer is doing.

August 15th

Today we will get the latest government data on U.S. Retail Sales for July. This report will give signs of whether consumer spending held up last month, declined, or sped up.

August 17th

Today is Baby Boomers recognition day for all the amazing Baby Boomers out there. If you want to go into stories about how much harder it was when you were a kid, today is your day to do it.

🍨 Dessert

This Week’s Deals For Families

Help your family save and spend smarter*

🧥 A brand that rarely goes on sale, Patagonia is slashing 30% off adventure-ready clothing and gear through August 22nd. Time to plan that fall hiking trip!

🛋️ IKEA’s 80th Anniversary Sale is happening now through September 9th. If you are a college student or a teacher they are offering an additional 15% off (in addition to the sale).

👞 Kohl’s is hosting a 70% off Biggest Clearance of the season sale through August 23rd.   

*we won’t earn on any of the deals above this week - just thought they were the best ones we found and wanted to share them anyway!

Dinner Discussion ❓

Answer: Social Security’s COLA is based on the Consumer Price Index. Each year Social Security checks are adjusted based on the average CPI for July through September of the previous year. Since we know the July CPI already (talked about above), we will see what happens in the final two months but as of now the 2024 COLA is tracking at just over a 3% increase.