Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

We're getting pretty close to the halfway point of the year.

Usually, that falls around July 2.

How are your 2021 goals doing?

Next week is June 30th, right at that mid-year point, so I will be reviewing my own goals next week.

This is your last week to make some progress on your goals before the halfway mark! (I realize this doesn't mean much, but do not give up on your goals!)

This week I talk about:

• Maintaining our bullshit detectors
• Avoiding liquid calories
• Fighting inflation with Crypto

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here.

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🧠 Wisdom Tip(s) of The Week: Bad or Wrong Ideas can help train your mind

A few weeks ago I wrote about building and sustaining a mental immune system.

This has led me to be more aware of good, bad, and mediocre ideas and how they play a role in how I think.

Censorship, or the call for censorship, is becoming a scary and common reality.

If you think about censorship in the same vein as you do a mental immune system, censorship plays the part of a "sterile" existence. If you deprive your body of germs, viruses, etc. your body loses the ability to fight off those parasites.

The same thing happens to your mind if you completely avoid ideas, thoughts, or conversations that conflict or converge from your own worldview.

If you sterilize your social media feeds and news sources, you create an echo chamber of only ideas or thoughts you already agree with.

How are you supposed to grow if you are never challenged?

This quote from Lex Fridman resonated with this thought process so well that I had to share it.

There is something truly terrifying to me about losing the ability to think objectively, to compare facts, and dig up sources. To find the truth amidst a sea of incomplete information.

When you let your own bullshit detector break down, you become reliant on whatever your information sources are to do the bullshit detecting for you.

That's not a good thing in my opinion.

With this newsletter, we are learning to think for ourselves, strengthen our minds and bodies, and become self-reliant.

Even Crypto is a means of becoming our own banks so that we are not reliant on a commercial bank to have our best interests in mind.

So, think a little harder next time you want to censor something because it is annoying to see or read because you don't want to lose the ability to find bullshit annoying.

🥑 Health Thought of The Week: Liquid Calories

This is more of a public service announcement than a hack or hint.

Liquid calories are a thing, and they can really add up.

I learned this lesson at some point between 2012-2015, but once I realized just how many calories I was drinking I completely quit drinking the following:

• sugary sodas
• fruit juice
• fruity smoothies
• adding sugar to my coffee
• using sugary creamers in my coffee
• Beer and other high-calorie alcohol

I don't think I've ever dropped a bad habit like this so easily. For some reason, the knowledge that the drinks I was consuming were adding around 500 calories a day to my total consumption freaked me out deep enough to cause an immediate repulsion.

This also applies to a lot of sauces like Ketchup, BBQ sauce, Ranch dressing, etc.

So if you're struggling to lose weight and you think that you're creating a caloric deficit, just remember that you might be consuming a bunch of sneaky calories you didn't realize.

Are you drinking or saucing more calories than you realize? If you are, take this little wake-up call and stop it!

Drink more water.

🤑 Wealth Thought of The Week: Inflation sucks

Do you know what inflation is? Beyond the definition.

Inflation by definition is - the persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money.

Since 2019, the US Dollar has inflated in value by around 3.68%

This means that $100 back in 2019 is worth $103.68 in 2021. To put it another way, an amazon item that cost $100 back in 2019 will cost an additional $3.68 now.

This means, that if you have a savings account that is less than 3.68% APY, your money is losing value.

This also means that if your salary or hourly wage has not increased by at least 3.68% in the last two years, you are getting paid less now than you were two years ago.

Inflation sucks.

One of my favorite things about Crypto is that it is a huge hedge against the inflation of the US Dollar.

ETH price exactly 2 years ago was ~$300

BTC price exactly 2 years ago was ~$10,000

Both of these currencies have more than tripled in that time, and this calculation does not take into account the amount of ETH and BTC earned from staking liquidity providing, or a high-interest crypto account with a company like BlockFi.

I mean, BlockFi still offers 8.6% APY on stablecoins, or coins that are pegged to fiat currency like the US. Dollar.

You can't find an 8.6% interest rate anywhere in traditional finance, but you can easily find that in crypto.

There is a metaphor in my mind, and I can't remember where I heard it, but it really makes me think about things like this.

The metaphor is - "Cash is like oxygen. If you run out of cash, you're gasping for breath. Go long enough without any money and you die. Figure out how to always have money and you'll never suffocate financially."

I paraphrased quite a bit, but I hope you get the point.

While inflation is a part of life it is also a financial disease for your money.

It sucks, but there are ways to fight against it.

Quote/Meme of the week:

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 5% interest on BTC, 4.5% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.6% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.