Can frugality insulate you from entitlement's "moral rot"?

In keeping with last week’s theme, today’s issue comes to you from a creaky, blonde oak desk at the Vail Public Library, the only civic third place I’ve ever been that’s outfitted with Eames chairs. 🎰 So far, the most consequential outcome of a weakened Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appears to be an inability to force two of the three major credit reporting agencies (TransUnion, Experian) to fix errors on your credit report. A Colorado accountant profiled in this piece describes being unable to get approved for a loan because $240,000 in student debt (that does not belong to her) caused her credit score to drop by 85 points. The number of complaints filed with TransUnion and Experian that resulted in “relief” has plunged since last summer. Equifax, which is still under the legal thumb of a previous CFPB enforcement action that forced it to fix its dispute process, is the only agency whose relief rates have remained somewhat consistent. (Propublica) 📉 For the first time (to my knowledge), a viral Substack post about an imaginary AI doomsday scenario moved markets. A reader sent me a link to the Citrini Research article in question a couple weeks ago, and when I realized it was basically economic fan fiction, I skimmed and moved on. Turns out the narrative was so compelling—and unnerving—that it meaningfully impacted share prices for some of the namechecked companies, like Uber, American Express, Mastercard, and Doordash. Imagine trying to explain this to shareholders. One major takeaway: A troubling portion of our modern economy is little more than “monetized friction”—that is, products or services designed to lubricate irritating or time-consuming tasks. (The Guardian) 📱 Wanna-be influencers have a new route to monetization that doesn’t rely on brand deals: life insurance MLMs. Stay frosty. Where these direct sellers might once have worked door-to-door or over the phone, firms like Primerica and World Financial Group are now recruiting aspiring influencers to help sell their wares, and recreate their own pyramid where most Americans’ eyeballs are glued for hours a day: social media feeds. In posts on these companies’ accounts, potential recruits are instructed in the tricks of the trade: sign up, buy leads, sell policies, market your success online—and then enlist others to do the same. (The Baffler) Roughly half (!) of American men ages 18–49 have “an active account with an online sportsbook.” It turns out betting on NFL games is the best way to lose money (“the lines are too sharp, the teams too evenly matched”). 21% of gamblers admit to harassing an athlete online after losing money. The most unique element of this report, though, is that the experimenter became the experiment himself, increasingly addicted, isolated, and distracted by money lines and parlays and conspiracies about referees. Holiday scenes in which he hid out in his minivan refreshing FanDuel while his wife and children ice-skated or practiced for a Christmas choir were particularly grim. After a trip to Vegas, he concludes: Las Vegas struck me as a monument to a truth that America once knew and had somehow chosen to forget: If gambling had to be legal, it should be contained to remote cities in the desert that make you feel a little bad about yourself. (The Atlantic) 🤖 As online activity increasingly begins not with search engines but with AI chatbots, companies are now constructing marketing strategies around appealing to robots, not people. The result, Rachyl Jones writes, is an internet seeded with a deluge of positive product placements propagated by brands themselves, hoping to fool ChatGPT into a recommendation. For the time being, it appears to be working. (Semafor) 🥛 “How does ordinary entitlement curdle into moral rot?” Gradually, then all at once, as the saying goes. Extreme wealth changes different people in different ways: “[Y]ou see some who are just epicurean hedonists. You see some who try to pretend that they don’t have it and feel quite guilty about it. Then you find some who either find a balance or keep working because they want more.” And yet, he said, just as studies have shown that poverty creates a scarcity mind-set—shaping how people think about things like risk and time—there must be something like an inverse effect. The “thrifty” rich person trope, reified in an interview with Mark Cuban in which he describes balking at a $4.80 gallon of milk, is presented here as a noble bulwark against wealth’s tendency to make you soft. As a general rule, I find this defense wanting. Not spending like you have billions of dollars is a different thing altogether than not having billions of dollars at all; what you retain in the former situation and not the latter is the option, at any time, to spend differently. (Intelligencer) 🌳 If I didn’t know a prominent, ultra-frugal FI/RE personality who swears by the $6,200/week Hoffman Process, it’d be easy to write off this “personal growth retreat” as a particularly sinister way of parting rich and desperate seekers from their money. The “Process,” which is administered at the Hoffman Institute in Petaluma, California, forbids recreational reading, exercise, and anything else that could be construed as expending energy “outwardly” rather than “internally.” Instead, participants spend 7 AM–9:30 PM daily “completing group and solo activities such as directed journaling, visualization and meditation.” Many leave feeling genuinely transformed by the experience, even if the method is more aligned with 1960s-era psychotherapy than modern consensus. By the end of this feature, $6,200 seemed like a steal. (GQ) Calling all freelancers, self-starters, and sole proprietors: If you thought you couldn’t invest in a 401(k) because you don’t have a full-time employer, I have some good news for you. Self-employed people have a distinct advantage when it comes to tax-advantaged retirement investing. While the gold-standard mainstream retirement account is an employer 401(k) (or similar) which offers the ability to contribute up to $24,500 for 2026, self‑employed people have additional ways to contribute to tax‑advantaged retirement accounts, depending on their situation. Meet the Solo 401(k). Unlike the $24,500 (2026) limit with a workplace plan, a Solo 401(k) allows self-employed folks to contribute up to $72,000 (!) for 2026. (If you, like me, are panicking about how to lower your 2025 tax bill, don’t miss my full explainer on this subject. My Solo 401(k) may not literally “save the day,” but it’s certainly doing some heavy lifting for me.) I’ll give you my big-picture takeaways upfront: If you’re truly self-employed (no income from W-2 jobs or access to employer-sponsored plans), you might be better off with a Solo 401(k). If you’re self-employed AND have a “regular” full-time job with a 401(k) (in other words, a side hustler), another option like the SEP IRA could be the simpler route. If your eyes are crossing right now, fear not: I dedicated this entire blog post to helping you make this decision—and just updated all the numbers and strategy for the 2026 tax season. Happy investing. But in the meantime, the good news: As of 2025, you can now seamlessly open your Solo 401(k) with Betterment. After deciding recently I wanted to prioritize Backdoor Roth IRAs again (which SEP IRAs make trickier), I opened my Solo 401(k) with Betterment. The process was easy—you’ll answer a few questions about your business or side hustle in a quick signup flow, then schedule a setup call with a representative. I was able to verify everything over email; there’s also an option to schedule a call with their team if you’d prefer that someone talk you through it. Get started investing for your retirement today with a Betterment Solo 401(k). 🗽 A New York City resident who earns more than $1 million/year says a $20,000 tax increase would “mean absolutely nothing” to him, underscoring the absurdity of most tax pushback at this income level and higher. Gla…