Mappy August!
In this letter:
New on MappyEverAfter: Our New Zealand South Island road trip; and a new archive of the Mappy Monday newsletter
Experiment: Not talking about health
Travel: Airbnb added categories and insurance for guests
Money: Wealthfront now 2% APY on savings
Eat: Recipe for the best Low-carb/keto granola I’ve found
Mental Hack: Good news - You are living the dream life
Just because: 33 unique world maps that will make you see the world differently
Note: I will always tell you if I’m getting any referral bonuses and how much they are. There aren’t any in this newsletter (update in July 2023: I inserted a referral link for Wealthfront. If you use it to open a Cash Account, you and I both receive a 0.5% boost on our savings interest rate for 3 months, currently at 5.05%)
New on MappyEverAfter.com
You can now see past issues of Mappy Monday Monthly in the archive on the MappyEverAfter website. They’ll appear there a month after subscribers get it in their inboxes (i.e. I’ll add this one at the end of September).
.New post - Have a peek at our road trip through the South Island of New Zealand. We traveled on a very tight budget (sleeping in a car, making our own food) but splurged when it truly mattered (wine tasting, bungy jumping, fjord cruise…)
No Health-talk experiment
Too many times a day we found ourselves saying things like “My knee is swollen. Can you tell?” or “My thumb hurts, I wonder what I did.” or “I just read that if you don’t get enough choline in your diet, you can get fatty liver disease!”
I love learning about health (or, more likely, don’t trust doctors so I feel like I need to figure it all out myself) but it also stresses me out. I spend an inordinate amount of time on PubMed and CleavelandClinic. One day Mark said: “You know, if you went for a walk or a bike ride each time you get an urge to read another health article, I bet you’d feel much better.” I hate when he’s right.
So we decided to stop talking and reading about health altogether for a month. No complaints, no questions, no advice, unless it’s an actual emergency, a life or death kind of situation. Coupled with the “no pickles” from last month (no negativity, if you missed Mappy July), it made for a lovely August.
Except I cheated. I talked to my sister about health (because it surely doesn’t count if it’s spoken in Slovak, haha), I texted with friends and I still secretly read internet articles, because, you know, what if my headache IS a sign of a deathly affliction? I do need to check, don’t I?
So we’re having Nothing-Medical-September. Now for reals.
And before we again put the kibosh on health talk, listen to this podcast about choline and liver with Peter Attia M.D. and Chris Masterjohn Ph.D.. Ok. Now I’m done.
Airbnb categories and Aircover
Airbnb search got even better. Tiny houses, castles, houseboats, shipping containers, windmills, and even actual B&Bs (where the second B means breakfast). Take your pick from 55 categories. My favorite one is “OMG”, have a look at these.
They also added free insurance, always included with your stay. It’s called AirCover and it guarantees a replacement or refund if anything goes wrong with your booking.
When booking, remember that the majority of listings have weekly and monthly discounts, and some cost the same for 1 guest as for 4 so if you travel in a group, you can spread out the cost. I was also able to negotiate the price by contacting the owner through the Airbnb message center, especially for longer stays.
Wealthfront raised APY on savings to 2% (July 2023 update - the interest rate climbed to 5.05% if you use a referral link)
Last month I told you I use Wealthfront Cash as a savings account with a 1.4% APY. This month they raised it to 2%, they’re good at keeping way ahead of average rates. No fees, unlimited transfers, and up to 1M FDIC insurance. So if you’re an American citizen or resident and your savings are making you less than that, you might want to reconsider. And if you have found better rates elsewhere, please let me know in the comments!
Keto Granola recipe
I didn’t grow up eating cold cereal with milk. We had hot cereal like oatmeal and kaša (kind of like cream of wheat smothered with cinnamon or cocoa, powdered sugar, and melted butter on top, yum!) My sister and I, when we were teenagers, got on a health kick and made our own granola.
I’m not on keto but I do try to limit carbs and I rarely eat sugar, so this granola is perfect. Not only is it keto, but it’s tastier than any regular granola I’ve had. It’s crunchy, nutty, and slightly sweet. I got the recipe from Maya at WholesomeYum.com. Below are the ingredients. If you like what you see, go to her website to either read the recipe or follow along with her video. I used Erythritol instead of her Besti sweetener and it worked great
Mental Hack - You’re living your dream life
I found this lesson by William B. Irvine on Sam Harris’ WakingUp meditation app:
Good news - You are living the dream life.
Bad news - The dream in question is probably not had by you. It is had by a total stranger.
No matter your level of wealth, education, or health, there are millions, if not billions of people on Earth that would consider their prayers answered if they only could swap their life with you.
The leading cause of unhappiness is the awareness of the gap between what you have and what you want. You can close it by working hard to get everything you want or learning to embrace the life you’re already living.
If you want to give the WakingUp app a try, they offer a 7-day free trial, but if you use Tim Feriss’ link (of “The 4-hour Work Week” fame), you get a 30-day free trial, no credit card required. That’s how I first tried it.
Just because
The true size of Africa. Coffee vs tea. Maternity leave. NY to London superhighway. Marijuana legalization map. If you have a few minutes, here are 33 fascinating world maps to peruse:
So there you have it. Hope you’re having a fun August and that you’re shamelessly playful.
And if you read all the way to here, for heaven’s sake, tell me what you think. What do you like, and what not so much? Leave a comment below or reply to this email. How else am I gonna learn?
Be Mappy,
Mags