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Despite growing up with a financial planner for a father, the idea of investing intimidated me well into my adulthood. From my point of view, investing seemed like a mysterious process. Not only was this magical money-making exercise conducted in an arcane language (what exactly is a NASDAQ, and why does it sound like something you treat with a special cream?), but it also required my dad to keep the TV in his office tuned to the worlds most mind-numbing broadcast, even though cartoons were just a channel away. Its no wonder I grew up thinking that investing was boring and impossible to understand. And investment ambivalence is pretty common. A recent NerdWallet financial angst report found that 79% of Americans feel intimidated by at least one financial topic, and 30% of those surveyed named investing as the most daunting one of all. But investing is a crucial part of money management. If you dont invest your money, youre committing yourself to working for every dollar, rather than letting your money do the heavy lifting. The good news is that investing isnt as incomprehensible or boring as you might believe. Heres what you need to know to make investing part of your financial life. Why investing is important If you type the words compound interest into Google, youre likely to come across the following quote, falsely attributed to Albert Einstein: Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it . . . he who doesnt, pays it. Incorrect attribution aside, whoever put these words in Einsteins mouth was onto something. Compound interest is an incredible economic force that you can use to build wealth. Heres how it works: When you invest, the money you have invested earns interest. But that interest compounds periodically, meaning that the interest you have earned is added to your principal, and you then start to earn interest on both your original investment and on the interest youve earned, until it compounds again. This process is the reason why youll see those calculations that say $10,000 invested today in a mutual fund earning an average of 8% per year could be worth more than $100,000 in 30 years, even if you dont add another penny to it. The process of compounding interest can create exponential growth. The power of compound interest is why we all should be investing. Investing your money lets the money grow without you having to work for it. (The flip side of compound interest is what happens when borrowers dont pay enough each month to cover accrued interest on high interest loans and credit cards. You do not want to be on that side of the compounding equation.) Getting started with investing Back when I was still a cartoon-loving kid whose eyes glazed over upon hearing the words Dow Jones, I learned about the potential growth available to anyone who got themselves some compound interest. As a budding money nerd, I wanted in on that action. As someone who did not think of mutual fund prospectuses as riveting beach reads, I had zero idea how I was supposed to get in on that action. Not only were the sheer number of potential investments dizzying, but I also felt like I had no clue how to evaluate whether an investment was a good idea. The intimidation and dread I felt is why I carried my invest-i-phobia into my 30suntil I learned two valuable investing strategies that everyone should know. Timeline your goals Joe Saul-Sehy, host of The Stacking Benjamins Show podcast (and my coauthor), taught me how timing can help you narrow down your investing options. Specifically, Saul-Sehy suggests that every investor should place financial goals on a timeline, including the age at which youd like to meet those goals. For instance, lets say a 25-year-old wants to buy a house by age 35. They have been putting $150 per month into a savings account and already have $3,000 saved. Theyd like to have at least $40,000 for a down payment. If they keep setting aside $150 per month, it would take nearly 20 years to reach their goal. But investing that money would allow the money to earn compounding interest, making the 10-year time frame more possible. To figure out the interest rate needed to reach $40,000 in 10 years, use this compound interest calculator from Investor.gov. You already have the initial investment ($3,000), the monthly contribution ($150), and the length of time in years (10 years). With those numbers plugged in, you can play around with potential interest rates (also known as rates of return) to find the rate you need to reach your goal. In this case, the 25-year-old would need an investment with at least a 10.5% rate of return to make their $40,000 goal within ten years. Unfortunately, that is not a realistic rate of return. The stock market as a whole has historically seen an 8.5% annual return over time (adjusted for inflation). A stable investmentmeaning one that wont suddenly lose value overnightshouldnt expect a higher return than 8%. The future homeowner can either extend their timeline, increase their monthly contribution, or reduce their goal number. Shifting the goal back to 12 years instead of 10, increasing the monthly contribution to $200 instead of $150, or aiming for a $32,000 down payment instead of $40,000 would all allow this investor to reach their goal with a rate of return of 8% or lower. Choose the investment to fit your timelined goal Having a reasonable rate of return in mind for your investment makes it much easier to choose where to put your money. Instead of trying to find The Best Investment, you only need to find an investment that will meet your specific goals and needs. Typically, a newbie investor may want to check out mutual funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), index funds, or target date funds. These funds invest roadly, spreading out your risk. There are a number of sites that aggregate best of investment lists and allow you to look up information about various investment options, including important information about fees (described as a percentage called expense ratio), minimum investment requirements, and historical performance. (Just remember that theres a reason why all financial professionals have historical performance is no guarantee of future returns tattooed on their foreheads. Looking at how an investment has done in the past doesnt give anyone a crystal ball about its future performance.) One other important criteria to consider is the investments potential volatility. Yahoo! Finance allows investors to look at a Mountain Chart that shows the historical movement of the investment over time. A more volatile investment may look like your money is riding Space Mountain, while a more stable investment may look more like its chilling through the alpine section of Its a Small World. Typically, higher levels of volatility correlate with higher potential for growth, but investors need to have the stomach for it. If just the idea of a major investment drop has you reaching for the Mylanta, you might want to stick to the tamer rideseven though it may mean smaller returns. Once youve chosen your investment, you can open a brokerage account and start letting your money do some of the work. Jump in! The investment waters fine Ambivalence over investing keeps many of us from putting our money to work. But leveraging the power of compound interest is much easier than having to work for every single dollar you earn. To get started with investing, figure out what financial goals you have and give yourself a timeline for achieving them, as well as a monthly contribution you can afford to put toward it. With those numbers in mind, you can use Investor.govs compound interest calculator to figure out what rate of return you will need to reach your goal. From there, you can find an investment that fits your goal, looking at the historical rate of return (which is no guarantee of future performance), the fees, minimum contribution, and volatility, to narrow down your options. Doing this kind of investment planning will only take a couple of hours of your time and it isnt nearly as scary or difficult as you might believe. Best of all, you can even watch cartoons while youre doing it.
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You know what I miss? Listening to the radio. Ive always loved background music, which helps me focus. But modern music-streaming services can be distracting. Yes, I enjoy having instant access to millions of songs with services like Spotify. But I find myself constantly fiddlingsearching for the next song, hitting the forward button, and choosing new playlists. Radio stations are a great alternative. You just hit the play button, and someone else makes the decisions. Now, of course, Spotify and other such services offer radio-station-like options of their own. But theres always that next track button tempting you to skip around. Plus, these options still dont have that human touch. That’s why I was so excited to find this classic-seeming radio gemwith a decidedly modern twist. Unearth all sorts of incredible tech treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. An eye-opening new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday! So long, Spotifyhello, Radio Garden Meet Radio Garden, a free website with apps available for Android and iPhone. It marries a Google-Earth-style globe interface with streaming-radio audio. With that one-two punch, Radio Garden helps you find and listen to radio stations from all over the world. A few quick clicks is all it takes to zoom into any city and start listening to its local stations. You can also browse and search for individual stations if there’s something specific you’re looking to find. Its a powerful Spotify alternative, and the exact experience you have will depend in large part on the specific station or stations you pick. For instance, many stations are terrestrial radio stations, which means they’ll have ads. But you can find quite a few curated radio stations that are ad-free, too. Popping down to Miami, I found Chilltraxa popular online-only channel that’s ad-free, independently owned and operated, and staffed by actual humans who are passionate about the music they’re playing. Moving from there to San Francisco, I discovered SomaFMs classic Groove Salad stationalso free from any and all commercials. I was listening to that ambient station 20 years ago, so it was a nice surprise to see that it’s still up and running and available now here. Those are great for focused work, but theres so much you can explore within Radio Garden’s virtual walls. You could: Find a random city far away from you and listen to its regular radio stations for a bit of local flavor. Browse stations by genre and find something that fits your taste or current mood to play in the background. Create a list of your favorite stations to come back to. Or just listen to your own city’s local radio stations right on the Radio Garden website or app.
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When a city burns, people often zoom in on houses, the individual cells that make up the fabric of a community. After the tragic fires in Los Angeles earlier this month, many publications, this one included, published essays, case studies, and guides shedding light on how to fire-proof a house. These guides are crucial tools for people who’ve lost their homes and for those who will be responsible for rebuilding them. But many experts are arguing that fire-proofing individual houses is not enough. They say we need to fire-proof entire communities. You can almost think of it as a domino effect, says Michael Gollner, an associate professor at UC Berkeleys Fire Research Lab. All it takes is for one house to burst into flames for those flamesor the embers they will produceto set the neighbor’s house on fire, and the neighbor’s neighbor’s houseuntil one by one, the houses end up falling like dominoes. This is what happened in L.A., where the fires recently burned more than 40,000 acres, destroyed 15,700 structures (including homes, schools, churches, synagogues, and various architectural gems), and displaced nearly 200,000 people who found themselves under evacuation orders. L.A. is not the first city to be ravaged by a wildfire, and tragic as it is, it will not be the last. Over the course of 2024, average global temperatures rose above 1.5 Celsius. This means that extreme weather events that are exacerbated by climate changelike wildfires, flash floods, and hurricanesare likely to occur more frequently, and with more intensity. If officials seize the opportunity, however, Los Angeles could become a model of resilience and provide a blueprint for a wildfire-adapted city of the future. An aerial image taken on January 25, 2025 shows homes damaged and destroyed by the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles. [Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images] The anatomy of a fire-adapted community There is no silver bullet for a fire-adapted city. Every city faces unique challenges that stem from its geographical location, topographical features, or economic constraints, and building a fire-adapted community requires a multifaceted, ever-evolving approach. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture notes on its website: A community doesnt achieve fire adapted community status or certification because the work to reduce wildfire risk never ends. But a few facts remain universal. First: There is no fire without fuel, and cities are practically mines of combustible materials. There are the obvious contendersgasoline-powered cars, wooden bungalows, dry vegetation. There are also the less obvious: palm trees (their dead fronds near the top are highly flammable) and juniper trees (they contain volatile oils). And perhaps the least obvious: highly flammable couches made of polyester fabric and polyurethane foam, aka plastic. The second point is a logical extension of the first: When fire is starved of fuel, it is easier to extinguish. In practical terms, a fire-adapted community is one that understands the value of buffers. These include hardscapes, nonflammable barriers like tall stucco walls, and landscapes that can be heavily irrigated in anticipation of a wildfire. The solution isn’t to rip out all the trees, or to stop planting new ones. Trees play a crucial role in reducing the urban heat island effect that often chokes urban environments. They also provide shade and oxygen. A better option, according to Gollner, would be for city planners and landscape designers to follow a hopscotch pattern when rebuilding. You can have islands of trees and vegetation, but they need to be isolated, Gollner explains. When vegetation is isolated, fires can still start, but firefighters will have a better chance at containing isolated fires. Architect Michael Kovac points to his house, which survived the Palisades Fire due to fire-resilient features used in its construction. [Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images] The sprawl problem The problem is that L.A. wasn’t built with buffers in mind. While the city has a vast footprint, its buildable land is ultimately finite. Urban infilldeveloping vacant or underutilized land within the citycould be a solution to accommodate growth without expanding outward. But almost 80% of Los Angeles today is zoned exclusively for single-family homes, preventing the construction of multiunit housing in these areas. As a result, when demand for housingrises, new development ends up being pushed farther out to the edges of the cityand closer to what is known as the wildland urban interface zone. This zone (which encompasses both Altadena and the Pacific Palisades) is more vulnerable to wildfires. Over the years, many experts have argued that L.A. should rezone and built up, not out. But Gollnera self-described realistis reticent of such a radical approach. We’re not going to cancel the sprawl. I don’t see any shift in public sentiment that’s going to change it, he says, adding, Instead, I want to focus on rebuilding it in a more resilient way so that this isn’t going to happen again. One answer might be to create what Justin Hollander, a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, has called new townsa kind of “zoning overlay” that stipulates a number of requirements for the developer of a new neighborhood. Unlike single-family zoning, which dictates how individual lots are to be used on a large parcel of land, an overlay would establish comprehensive requirements for the development of an entire community, including reliable public transit, safe pedestrian and bike paths, well-planned roadways, essential utilities, and community-wide fire-resistant features like buffers, appropriate landscapes, and so on. Hollander explains this zoning overlay would exist simultaneously with the underlying zoning while introducing new opportunities or restrictions. An approach like Hollanders might also encourage broader, interconnected thinking, discouraging planners and developers from addressing one disaster while inadvertently exacerbating another (like building wider evacuation roads, which improve fire access but can increase erosion and runoff, making mudslides more likely). When you work too hard to solve a single problem, that myopic viewpoint ends up detracting from holistic problem-solving, Hollander says. Today, Altadena operates under its own set of zoning and development rules, outlined in Title 22Planning and Zoning of the Los Angeles County Code. Hollander explains that Altadena would have to amend the rules to allow for new towns to be built by right, meaning developers wouldnt have to go through lengthy approval processes or seek special permits. Then the county would have to approve the modifications. As Hollander envisions it, overlay zoning would provide the community with a tool to guide the reconstruction of Altadena that isn’t based on a lot-by-lot model of zoning, but on a larger area that would consider fire risks at a neighborhood level. Each individual property owner can not realistically account for all of these considerations, but a master planner could, he says. The process may seem administratively arduous, but it would pave the way for an intentionally designed community that is more connected, more walkable, and more resilient than it was before. The Malibu home of Nancy and Jim Evans (photographed on January 14, 2025) survived the Palisades Fire even though many neighboring homes didn’t. After the previous house on the same lot burned down in a 1993 wildfire, Evans built a fire-resilient structure with a metal roof, steel-reinforced walls with cinderblock at the bottom, double-paned windows, and 6 feet of stone encircling the house, clear of vegetation. The rest of the yard is landscaped with fire-resilient succulents and oak trees. [Photo: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images] The seeds of a resilient community Already, Los Angeles has set up special parking restrictions banning street parking on narrow roads, sharp curves, and key intersections when high winds signal fire danger. Local governments in the L.A. region have also adopted defensible space rules that require property owners to clear away flammable vegetation and materials from their property to reduce fire risk. However, the ordinance applies only to houses in a so-called Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. In 2020, state lawmakers passed a more aggressive, more restrictive fireproofing measure that specifically targets the first 5 feet around a home and bars things like brush and mulch, but also wooden fencing, furniture, and sheds. The bill’s aim is to create an ember-resistant zone within 5 feet of a house, which is known as Zone 0, but it has faced pushback and still hasn’t been implemented. No one wants to cut down their petunias or juniper gasoline can next to their window, says Gollner, though such changes can make a real difference. What you do affects your neighbor, and your neighbor’s neighbor. California also has one of the country’s most stringent building codes. Chapter 7A of the building code passed in 2008 mandates fire-resistant siding, tempered glass, vegetation management, and vents for attics and crawl spaces that are specially designed to prevent embers from flying in. According to a 2021 study, the new building code has proven to reduce average structure loss risk during a wildfire by 40%. But the building code applies only to new homes. And in both Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, where the biggest fires occurred, the majority of the housing stock was built before Chapter 7A went into effect. Now vast swaths of these neighborhoods have been reduced to ashes, and anything that gets rebuilt will have to adhere to Chapter 7A. It is a painfully, unthinkably overwhelming situation. But as Gollner points out, it is also an opportunity to make a change for the future.
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