Friends of Dave #418: 🥳 goodbye 2024 🎉
See you later...don't let the door hit you...
We are coming down the home stretch on 2024. How did it go for you?
For me, to be honest, it was a mixed bag. On both personal and professional fronts, it was one of my busiest years in a long time. I’m grateful for the good stuff that happened for me and my family. But it wasn’t all perfect.
And on a number of levels, something tells me 2025 is gearing up to be an even more eventful year…take that for what it is worth….
No matter what gets thrown at me whether it be good, bad or ugly, I am resolving to simply make the most of my opportunities in 2025.
How about you? What is going to be your theme?
As usual, this week we’ll recap of articles and links based on the most clicks by the FoDs over the course of the past year. It seems like most of you are clicking less overall, so there is bound to be something interesting here.
And if you really need a preamble fix, re-read the rants in the first one from 2024 >>HERE<<.
Appreciate each and every one of you Friends. Wishing all of you a safe, happy and healthy 2025.
Buckle up.
XOXO
Dave
Your Most Clicked Links from 2024
In 1881, Otto von Bismarck proposed a radical idea for retirement: people above the age of 70 would be given a state pension, encouraging them to stop working.
Wealth management company Natixis analyzed 44 nations on four main categories affecting the ability for their residents to retire well in the 2023 Global Retirement Index. Each category has subindices, from which they averaged scores out of 100 to create this ranking.
Here are a few ways restaurants use their menus to influence what you’re having for dinner.
At some point, all of us must face the difficult decision to let go of something that formerly offered us purpose. But big decisions, like a career change, should be approached thoughtfully.
Everyone’s life is different — yet most people still utter one of four common phrases on their deathbeds. Each of the phrases offers an important lesson for leading a fulfilling and successful life.
It never feels like there's enough time in the year to take all the vacations you want — especially if you only get a few precious days off a year. But what if there was a way to turn 11 days of paid time off into 44 days of vacation in 2025? Because there is. And it's an easier than you think.
Leadership comes down to two things: Do you care about your teammates and their role on the team? And do you care about winning, which is what you’re ultimately trying to do together?
When our society talks about leaders, we focus on formal roles, such as the CEO. This view undervalues the role of informal leaders—team members who influence outcomes by the tone they set, how they conduct themselves, and how they interact with their peers. Their job title doesn’t include the word “manager,” but they play an outsize role in how teams perform.
Promoted as “the most insane athletic showdown on Earth,” the Florida Man Games poke fun at the state’s reputation for bizarre stories that involve brawling, drinking, gunfire, reptile wrangling and other antics carrying a risk of time in jail or intensive care.
It’s been a long, stressful, idle-hands summer full of sloth, poor choices, nervousness, petty arguments, and tearful goodbyes. Now it’s time to drop your greatest earthly treasure off at college. How will you survive it?
Whether you have dropped off a kid a school or you were that kid, guaranteed you will share this one with at least one friend.
We’re heading into the winter months here in the Northern Hemisphere. Undoubtedly you will be looking for things to stream while you hunker down — here is a great list for you to check out.
Over the past two decades, 24 states plus the District of Columbia and Guam have legalized marijuana for recreational use. That means marijuana smokers can smoke more openly than ever before on 4/20—a date that both marijuana smokers and non-smokers recognize as a national holiday for cannabis culture. Yet few actually know how the date got chosen.
Sure, Endless Shrimp turned out to be a horrible idea, but the problems at Red Lobster are much deeper than one bad promotion.
Here is a map showing how much income single adults need to live comfortably in each U.S. state. SmartAsset calculated the income needed using the cost of necessities sourced from the MIT Living Wage Calculator, last updated on Feb. 14, 2024.
In this case, “comfortable” was defined as the annual income required to cover a 50/30/20 budget, allocating 50% of earnings to necessities such as housing and utility costs, 30% to discretionary spending, and 20% to savings or investments.
Teenagers are idiots…My job as their dad is to be their prefrontal cortex until it shows up. I told my son on a Thursday it was Thursday, and he disagreed.
Professor Dave Galloway does a great job outlining the case against free reign of social media. Similar to automobiles, alcohol, and AK-47s, it has a mixed impact on our lives. It presents dangers. And one of the things a healthy society does is limit the availability of dangerous products to children, who lack the capacity to use them safely.
The global board games market size was valued at USD 13.06 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow from USD 14.37 billion in 2024 to USD 32.00 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 10.52% during the forecast period. You’ll be surprised by what is going to be driving it.
Overall, home prices rose 6.6% annually as of the first quarter of 2024, the highest increase since 2022. A combination of low inventory and homeowners’ reluctance to sell is driving up home values as interest rates remain persistently high.
The above graphic shows the growth in house prices by US state in 2024, based on data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
The best thing about sunsets is that you're never going to see two that are completely alike. To celebrate those differences, aim to spend as many evenings as possible in the world's greatest places to catch a sunset. Here are 12 places to add to your bucket list.
Here are 55 movies that didn’t connect with audience in theaters earning less in ticket sales than they cost to make and market. But while they were initially viewed as disappointments, many are now considered cult classics; too off-kilter or challenging to initially connect with mainstream audiences, they found their fans on video or streaming.