First off, a huge thank you to all my new YouTube followers! You made my dream for the year come true. I now have 9 followers. That puts me ahead of the chick that wanted me to turn my channel over to her, she had 3.
I announced to my family that I’m now a YouTube star, and they weren’t impressed. Lol. But seriously, thanks! Let me know in the comments what kind of tutorials you want me to make for you.
I know we talk a lot about fashion and sewing (and the occasional recipe) but as you know, I also get excited about sharing business tips with you. As a business management major, I want to help you get the most out of your endeavors, whatever they may be.
(Psst, I have a few more months left of school so thanks for bearing with me while I’ve been focusing on finals and term papers.) A few years ago, I went back to school for a degree in Business Management, to complement my degree in Fashion Design and Production. I’m done soon. XOXO.
So these are the trends and latest happenings that I’ve been paying attention to. Grab a cuppa and sit down and learn something new. These are the current trends I’m noticing.
First off, 3D printing.
I’ve mentioned it in the past, but it’s only going to get bigger in the future. Today I was reading an article about 3D printed cars (you can 3D print with metal) and I was trying to wrap my head around it. It would work for the frame and a lot of the components, but it seems to me a lot of cars have reinforced fiberglass siding, bumpers, etc.
So it will be interesting to see how they incorporate this into a sustainable business model. I’m going to watch this play out.
Remember how everyone said you couldn’t make electric cars catch on, and Tesla proved them wrong. This is going to be like that.
Did you know they have machines that can 3D print food?
It’s true. Check it out here and the chocolate printer here. Not going to lie, I would use one of those machines to print myself a chocolate cake like all the time. But that’s just me.
They’ve also successfully 3D printed houses with concrete. This is great for lesser developed countries that need stable housing that can be made fast and efficiently. I love that! They’re going to seismic test the houses to see how they stand up to natural disasters, but I hope to see more of these being used for rural housing options.
I’ve mentioned before, you can 3D print fabric and make jewelry too.
Next up, Disney & Microinvesting.
We’re totally going to gloss over the new Star Wars land in Disneyland. It’s pretty freaking amazing, as long as they can handle the growing pains that come with such a massive project. It’ll be all hands on deck for the next few months while they roll that out.
Did you know, Disney recently acquired Hulu.
We were talking about it, how I thought Hulu was basically Disney anyways since they have all their channels on Hulu. Nope, turns out a lot of other tv companies are keeping their channels on Hulu for a few more years (probably until they can figure out how to make their own streaming apps).
Of course, Disney is already ahead of them, so jump on Disney stock if you can. They’ll outpace the other companies since they bought a streaming app in a box, essentially.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they copy and paste the Hulu platform for their “brand new” movie streaming app with all the Disney movies from the vault. They were talking about coming out with one, and if they’ve had any problems with designing it, this Hulu acquisition would solve that… they don’t even have to reverse engineer the tech since they now own it.
Boom, genius.
Why make something from nothing when you can build on something that already works (and has a built-in fan base). It’s called an “acquisition”.
However, if you can’t buy a share of Disney (It was $132.04 when I drafted this post and it’s up to $142.45 as of this article), you can start investing with micro-investing!
Acorns is a micro-investing app.
It rounds up your purchases and invests the extra into stocks, bonds, money market accounts, that kind of thing. You don’t have to buy a whole share of regular stocks to micro-invest. And it diversifies your portfolio into many stocks so all your eggs aren’t in one basket.
Acorns has several different types of portfolios for you to pick from to grow your portfolio. If you have the stomach to watch your investment go up and down with the flow of the market, you can go for a more aggressive portfolio. Conservative portfolios are for more long term goals that stay more consistent with fewer fluctuations, like if you start young and want to build for retirement down the road.
Aggressive portfolios will go up and down, but have a higher return faster, IF you can stomach it. Those are more for if you have a big purchase planned in the next few years and want to aggressively save and work towards it. I have a moderately aggressive portfolio. The first morning after I added to my account, my portfolio had grown!
And now I get to say snooty things like “my diversified portfolio is seeing capital gains and growing”. I can cross that off my bucket list. Lol.
The nice thing about Acorns, is it’s running in the background while you do your normal shopping.
They also have a “found money” aspect, where your favorite shops will put money in your account (a certain percentage back on your purchases), when you shop through the link in the app. That’s pretty cool. Remember to use that when you start doing your Christmas shopping and you’ll see your portfolio grow!
It’s also not just rounding up your purchases (you pick the amount it rounds up), and getting cash back into your account… you can do one-off investments whenever you have a little extra you don’t mind putting aside.
Acorns doesn’t replace a savings account.
I will say, I have a bank account with a checking and savings account and this doesn’t replace my savings account. I’m using Acorns more like, all those times I would have bought something stupid, I’m adding it to my portfolio instead.
So instead of making dumb purchases that wouldn’t have any return value anyways, I’m investing in companies.
I don’t see it as a loss or gain. It’s the extra I could have pittered away on dumb things. And this will pay for my pink hair when I’m an old lady. I plan on getting regular touch-ups to keep my hair nice and pink.
They also have a new Retirement Savings Account option. I’m going to be all over that in a few months after I’ve done some more research on it. Self-employed people have to find options when they don’t have more “traditional” ones.
Go check out Acorns! If you’re a student, they’ll waive the fees for a while. Just use your .edu email address when signing up! 🙂
Use this invite link and get $5 free to start investing right now.
I started investing a few months ago to test it out. I did a lot of my own research and trolled around the comments sections seeing other’s experiences with it. I forgot I had that app, and I wish I hadn’t waited. It’s fun.
I will add, right now the market is volatile.
I’ve saw a decline and then growth since my initial investment. The political climate is affecting that, we have certain political leaders to thank for that.. cough cough, Mr. President. One mention of tariffs on Mexican goods made the stocks drop. Which is good news if you wanted to invest… buy low, right?
But yeah, look at the long-term and don’t freak out if everything is volatile with that news. That was kind of to be expected.
Don’t check it every day, check it like once a month at the most. Quarterly is even better.
I’m watching a few more trends, but this post is topping over 1500 words, so we’ll visit them later.
If you’re wondering how the political climate has anything to do with fashion, let me break it down real quick. Mexico is in the top 15% of countries that produce domestic cotton. If there were tariffs on all those goods, it could affect your future fabric suppliers and it could negatively affect fabric prices and quality if we had to outsource to lesser capable factories in other countries. That equates to longer shipping times to the US too.
Let’s bring it back down.
Our last posts were the swimsuit sew-along!
Now you have some fun topics to talk about this weekend. Go sound smart and impress someone with your knowledge on current events. Go have a healthy debate.