He owes his trading success to these strategies.” Who knew it was so easy?! The first one is my favorite (and by favorite, I mean the one that makes my blood boil): “With no prior experience, Kyle Dennis decided to invest in stocks. These perfectly encapsulate what is being taught to the masses about investing. Here are three screenshots I took Thursday morning from Yahoo! Finance: But too much debt, committing too much of our future earnings to things we buy today, can be ruinous. It was either that or a whole new set of pants), or Christmas gifts. But with debt? Of course! It could be a car, a house, a Peloton (No judgement I just bought one. Can I afford this purchase outright? Nope. The most prominent false cheat code is debt. Here are a few examples of false cheat codes that can get us in trouble. It’s just that we most often hear about the wrong ones. I believe there are cheat codes when it comes to personal finance. Yet, the pursuit of an easier path can lead us astray. But we could definitely beat it with 30 lives. Could Jon and I have beat Contra with three lives each? Maybe. It’s why I have a leaf blower instead of a rake. Look, we’re wired to pursue an easier way to do things and, in general, that’s good! It’s why there’s such great and constant innovation.

The other night as I was walking into Trader Joe’s, the gentleman minding the door shouted out “The Contra Code!” We exchanged a knowing look and a thumbs up.īut I digress. When you see it, you either know what it is or you don’t. (This is the only “buy” recommendation I’ll ever make in the Brief!) Wearing this shirt makes me feel part of a small community. I hadn’t thought of Contra or the cheat code in years, maybe decades, until last week when I stumbled across this shirt and, of course, immediately bought it. It was the ultimate cheat code and it allowed me and Jon to beat Contra every time. While the game was loading, if you pressed the following combination of buttons on your controller you would be rewarded with 30 lives: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start. It wasn’t an easy game to beat: There were eight stages, each with their own boss, and you only had three lives. Nowadays, we’d call Contra an “RPG” style game but back then I just thought of it as a couple of soldiers running through the jungle blasting bad guys.

We played Duck Hunt, all the Super Mario Bros., and Paperboy, but our favorite game by far was Contra. Prior to that, the only way for me to get my fill was to head over to Jon Jackson’s house to play the original Nintendo. My parents didn’t allow video games in the house until I was a teenager.

Cheat codes for way of life game