Good day. In case you missed the last couple of decades, cash is no longer king, and consumers are becoming more and more reliant on plastic for their transacting. Can you guess what portion of Americans say none of their weekly purchases come from cash? a. 20% b. 35% c. 40%. Here are the topics for today: - Home Buying as an Unmarried Couple — What to Know
- 2021's Nostalgie — What Happened to NFTs?
- How Many Cards Should You Carry?
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HOUSING Home buying as an Unmarried Couple — What to Know | | | | About 46% of Americans consider themselves single, and delaying marriage until later in life is becoming increasingly common — the median age is up to 30.4 for men and 28.6 for women. As a result, more and more first-time homebuyers end up being unmarried couples. The most recent data point on the matter indicates that roughly 18% of first-time homebuyers were unmarried couples, more than 4x the 4% rate seen in 1985. While this might seem innocuous on the surface, buying a home with an unmarried partner can come with some convoluted caveats that may come back to bite down the road if you're not prepared. Here are some things to do - Get with a lawyer: Almost all home purchases will involve a lawyer at some stage or another, and buying a home as an unmarried couple is a situation that will likely benefit from a lawyer's presence even more.
- Be open and honest: The first step in the process of owning a home together is having an open and honest conversation about each person's financial state. This includes income, expenses, savings, credit history, and essentially any information that will be pertinent to the purchasing of a home or a mortgage application.
- The mortgage application: If only one partner applies for the mortgage, whether it's because they have better credit or any other reason, this places the entirety of the legal burden of loan repayment on them. This is one of the first steps in the homeownership process, and it's not a decision that can be made lightly. Although applying jointly might result in a higher interest rate, it could save you thousands down the road in legal fees.
- Title the home properly: A common problem that occurs here is when the house is titled in only one person's name. If the non-owner walks away from the partnership, the financial burden is legally still all on the title holder, and if the owner walks away the other partner is left to deal with the mess. Some solutions? Joint tenancy, which gives each person 50% ownership, or tenancy in common, which grants each person an agreed upon portion of ownership.
- Create a cohabitation agreement: A cohabitation agreement is a legally binding, written agreement that delineates the exact details of your living arrangement — who pays what, and what happens in the event of a split. Sure, this isn't exactly romantic, but it's a necessary evil of the situation to protect all parties involved.
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CRYPTO & NFTs 2021's Nostalgia — What Happened to NFTs? | | | | For the most part, trends come and go in cycles, and investing has been no stranger to this reality. Between outsized returns, crypto, meme stocks, and NFTs, we've seen our fair share of fads and hype cycles by now, but what remains when the dust settles? NFTs are likely the most questionable in the group. To say the niche asset class they created forms a nascent, intriguing market would be an understatement. But they're so weird that even crypto connoisseurs act circumspectly towards them at times. So, does that mean they were a bubble? The recap - NFT mania hit its peak during the last week of August back in 2021 when over $3.2B worth of transaction volumes came through all chains combined. Since then, the crypto market as a whole has been thrown for a loop, and the popularity of NFTs has dwindled dramatically.
- Weekly transaction volumes for 2023 have consistently maintained between $100M to $200M and less, and new NFT mints on the Ethereum chain have dissipated to less than a few thousand a day, down from their 2022 peak in the hundreds of thousands.
What happened? - When meme stocks became a thing, most investors knew that it was just a trend and assumed the inevitability of its eventual dismantling. NFTs are kind of in that same boat, and unless you're entrenched in crypto, this has probably been your view all along.
- Now, hundreds of millions in volume every week is still enough to keep some businesses and interests alive for sure, but outside of the deep crypto trenches, most investors likely view NFTs as gone for good.
- Ultimately, NFTs have fallen prey to the same market forces that all entrants must combat — seasonality, headwinds, demand, and macroeconomic factors out of their control.
A sobering takeaway No one can say with certainty that NFTs are a thing of the past, but we can caution you that their odds are long, and their iffy use-case and value add make them one of the dodgiest investments out there right now. | | | |
MONEY TIP How Many Cards Should You Carry? | | | | 20 years ago, life was simpler. You'd just open a savings and checking account with your local bank of choice, maybe set up direct deposit, perhaps a credit card, and move on with your life. Now though, the offerings available to financial consumers are endless, and it's easy to end up with a wallet full of cards — especially when 40% of them never use cash. Nowadays, different cards come with different perks, cashback offerings, spending limits, fees, functionalities, etc. But how many cards do you really even need? Let's try to answer that - The basics: Harken back to our bankfolio idea, and you'll notice a pattern — cover all the bases without going overboard. On a base level, you can aim to have a primary debit card, credit card, a backup card for one of the two, and a reasonable safety net of cash.
- Special forces: If you're a credit card connoisseur, you'll understand the struggle of carrying around multiple cards, each with a different purpose. That's a bit extra, though. Pro tip — store all your extra, special use cards in a separate wallet or other safe location, and only allocate to your wallet what you'll actually need for where you're going.
- Those eccentric cards: Financial accounts of all kinds have become more flexible recently, and some brokerages even offer clients a "cash card" of sorts that allows access to your dry powder. This kind of stuff is cool, but let's be honest, how often do we actually use those unique cards? For most, not much. It's worth asking yourself before opening these accounts — do I really need this? And if you find yourself with a pile of cards like this, now might be a good time to do some spring cleaning. Keep in mind though, closing a credit card could negatively impact your score by way of reducing your utilization ratio and your average age of account.
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🌊 BY THE WAY | - 💳 Answer: 40%. Up drastically from 25% just 8 years ago, we're quickly beginning to phase out paper currency (WSJ)
- 🤱🏻 Mothers in the workforce hit an all-time high (Axios)
- 👀 ICYMI. 4 things investors learned from 2023 so far (Finny)
- 🛍️ "Going shopping" isn't much of a thing anymore (Vox)
- 📚 Finny lesson of the day. In the spirit of revisiting NFTs today, it's prime time to reiterate the value of alternative investments:
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| Advisory services are offered through Origin Financial, a Registered Investment Adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The status of registration as an Investment Adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information contained herein should in no way be construed or interpreted as a solicitation to sell or offer to sell advisory services. All content is for information purposes only. It is not intended to provide any tax or legal advice or provide the basis for any financial decisions. Nor, is it intended to be a projection of current or future performance or indication of future results. | | | | | | | |
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