Dear Plenty Community,

More than recent years, this January seems bring big changes. In these moments of change, a saying has been ringing in my mind:

The weekend brought a political chess match to the forefront for 170M Americans. TikTok shut down product access for 14 hours in response to the highest-impact regulation on a consumer product in American history. Trump has since promised an executive order to “delay” the deadline once in office (today’s inauguration day), and Tik Tok immediately restored access.

The last few weeks have brought a fire on track for damages to be 3x higher than the worst wildfire on record, and the costliest natural disaster in 45 years (worse, than even Hurricane Katrina). But as containment is beginning, now people are left wondering: who’s going to pay up?

This week, we’ll go deeper into:

• In the news: 

  • The price of a Tik Tok ban

  • Who’s paying for the LA fires?

• For your relationship: 4 practical tips for a happier marriage

• New to Plenty: See and vote for our roadmap here; and see more ships below. 

As always, if you have ideas or questions you’d like us to answer, write in to [email protected] - I’d love to hear from you.

Cheers,

Emily

PS. Get on track this year, for free. Try Plenty today

The price of a Tik Tok ban

The first time I used TikTok, my "I-have-five-spare-minutes" download turned into an hour of watch-swipe-watch. Turns out, I wasn’t alone. Last year, 170 million TikTok users spent an average of 95 minutes a day on the app and 6 hours weekly. But on Sunday, that’s all set to go away.

A Friday supreme court decision just upheld the ultimatum for ByteDance: sell TikTok or be banned. 

And this ban has teeth. Apple and Google could be fined for allowing additional downloads, while companies like Amazon’s AWS, Google’s GCP, and Microsoft’s Azure could face penalties for continuing to provide services to TikTok.

But wait, how did we get here? TikTok’s proprietary algorithm—the engine behind the endless watch-swipe-watch—is trained on trillions of data points from every user and video to serve up the most engaging content, keeping users glued to the app. As a Chinese-owned company, ByteDance is subject to China’s national security laws, which could potentially allow user data to be shared with the Chinese government.

🧠 In a world where information is power, controlling what information is consumed could directly influence public opinion. That’s a lot of power for a foreign entity to potentially have over Americans. In a year marked by political division, a rare bipartisan effort last year saw lawmakers rally behind this issue.

What’s the price? Banning TikTok comes with a price. In 2023, TikTok contributed over $24 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 224,000 jobs through advertising, influencer partnerships, and the small businesses that depend on the platform. Creator revenue alone amounts to $1.3 billion per month. Additionally, taxes on advertisements brought $5.3 billion into government coffers.

Lemon8 (another ByteDance app) and Rednote (owned by another Chinese company), have both surged to the top of the app store, in a defiant response to legislators. Youtube Shorts, Instagram, and Snapchat are also set to benefit from the fallout.

With Trump’s inauguration happening today - the question now seems to be: What will Trump do? He previously stated that he would uphold the ban on TikTok, but also just promised an executive order to delay the ban. With billions of $’s on the line, we’ll wait and see.

Who’s paying for the LA fires?

For many families, the new year began peacefully. But in Los Angeles, that peace quickly turned to a dystopian terror as Santa Ana winds, with gusts over 70 mph, transformed a small wildfire into an uncontrollable inferno.

Nearly 41,000 acres have burned, forcing 205,000 residents to evacuate and destroying more than 12,400 buildings. With the fire only partially contained and high winds expected to return next week, this wildfire has already become the second most destructive in California’s history in terms of buildings destroyed.

In neighborhoods ravaged by the flames, median home values hover around $2 million, making the damage particularly costly. AccuWeather estimates total damage and economic losses will reach between $250 billion and $275 billion, partially driven by high property values and the extensive impact on infrastructure, businesses, and displaced residents.

In recent years, concerns around bigger natural disasters already caused insurers to ramp premiums up nearly 43% from 2018 to 2023 in California. Other insurers pulled out of high risk zipcodes completely, including areas now devastated by the fires, leaving homeowners with few options. 

A privately-run-with-government-oversight association of insurance companies provide last resort coverage through the pricey California FAIR Plan. The FAIR Plan now has $700M in cash for $7.2B in exposures in the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods, though there’s a built in fallback plan to rely on insurance companies to fund shortfalls.

So for those insured, the question’s now: what’s covered? And who’s paying?

What gets covered for renters? For renters, renters insurance will cover the destruction of personal property and living expenses if the rented residence is no longer inhabitable; though many renters will hit coverage limits before they’re fully covered. 

What gets covered for homeowners? For homeowners with insurance, the cost to rebuild the home and replace belongings are covered under active insurance policies, though some homeowners will hit policy limits quickly. 

How should I prepare? For those fortunate to be watching from the sidelines, it’s a good time to double check your renters or homeowners insurance. Just take those overly long insurance docs, drop them into chatgpt, and put in the prompt: “Summarize the most important details of my insurance documents and highlight what I am and am not protected against”.

4 practical tips for a happier marriage

4 psychotherapists with nearly a century of combined experience working with couples, recently shared their most important tips for a happier marriage:

1. Validate your partner’s feelings, before you try to “fix” or “solve” the problem. The busier we are, the easier it is to jump into problem-solving mode. 

2. Turn towards each other… literally. Renowned psychotherapist, John Gottman, recorded that happily married couples stay physically turned towards each other even during conflict. Next time you’re deep in it, try taking a deep breath, uncrossing those arms, and see the difference of facing your partner.

3. Accepting bids for connection: Remember when your partner asked “how was your day”? And you said “okay”. Or they made you a coffee, and you nodded thanks while you were working. Each of these moments are bids for connection, and happily married couples were more likely to acknowledge and create space around these bids.

4. Repairing after fights: every couple fights. But feeling more connected after the average fight often determines how strong a relationship is. Using a three part: A) I feel…, B) I’m sorry about…, and C) I learned…, can help make the repair easier (for both sides!).

🚢 Ship, ship, away! Over the past few weeks, we’ve released new product features across desktop + mobile:

• A live roadmap for members to vote & submit ideas

• Last viewed transaction indicator

• New ‘total’ in header for Transactions page on mobile

• Upgraded transaction details view on mobile

• Filter accounts, on desktop’s Accounts page

• Next up: Transaction refresh, Manual accounts, AI-based categorization

As always, we take feature requests & post our daily ships in our reddit: r/plenty

Plenty is a free money app helping modern couples budget, invest and plan for their future together. We bring the investment strategies and products of the wealthy to the everyday household. Plenty was started by a husband and wife team dedicated to growing together. For more information, visit withplenty.com. If you ever have any feedback or questions, please do reach out to us at [email protected].

At Plenty, no financial topic is off-limits for modern couples. We offer straight talk and judgment-free guidance to help modern couples navigate the tricky and important intersection of money and relationships. Join thousands of couples who’ve signed up for our free newsletter today.

Plenty was founded to democratize access to financial products and tools that accelerate wealth building.  Plenty Financial and affiliated entities. (“Plenty Financial”) provide a web, mobile, personal financial management, and educational platform to consumers; some of these tools are freely accessible to all consumers, others require a fee-based subscription. Advisory services are provided in the form of software-first financial planning and investment advisory services for fee-based Subscribers. Plenty Financial RIA, LLC is an SEC-registered investment Advisor. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. All investments made are legally owned by you. Investment accounts are not bank guaranteed or FDIC insured. Investments are held in accounts at BNY Mellon - Pershing, one of the world’s largest securities servicing companies and are SIPC insured. Please see Plenty’s full general disclosures here.