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The payments wars in Japan are heating up and one of the battlegrounds is convenience store coffee.

“Coffee? What does that have to do with payments?” I’m glad you asked.

Convenience stores are low net margin businesses, which sell some high gross margin goods/services but a lot of low ones, and have high fixed costs and a low ticket size. The typical transaction is under 500 yen ($5) and many are about $1.

They need repeat custom.

A few years ago, all of the chains had a good idea for increasing frequency of use: make a minor capital investment in automatic coffee machines. Sell access to them for the price of a cup / ice; customers self-serve with the machine.

The price point is $1 to about $2.

Coffee quickly became one of the most frequently repurchased items at convenience stores, in no small part because it’s the one thing they can sell which is phameceutically habit forming but totally unregulated. (Just telling it like it is.)

But the coffee is not very defensible

The problem, such that it is, is that competing chains are everywhere and *all* of them serve Thoroughly Adequate Coffee at similar prices, so you’re back into the brutal economics of “Who is 3 meters closer to 40 customers at 1 office?”

Enter payment apps.

A potential problem is looming, and the media are pursuing a new story that builds on the following chain of reasoning: 1) higher inflation is coming;2) if CBs increase interest rates debts will explode and recession may ensue; 3) CBs are caught in an impossible dilemma 1/12

It´s perhaps too complex for some tweets, but.. Registered inflation this year is bound to be higher than present forecasts, resulting from one-off price spikes and base effects That will not start a sustained high inflation process, but temporary higher inflation is possible 2/

For example, Euro Area inflation increased suddenly from several months at -0.3% to +0.9% in Jan. This jump resulted mostly from several base effects, especially the change to German VAT. Inflation expectations increasing but higher in the US than in the EA 3/

The major one-off base effect will come from oil prices that decreased abysmally in March 2020 and have recovered. Some estimates put US inflation in April reaching 4%! After vaccinations, later in the year, pent-up consumer demand will also increase prices.4/

Despite the increased spending of accumulated savings, the savings rate will remain higher than before Covid for precautionary reasons (Fig 1). No permanent spending spree will materialise. Wages will remain subdued for a while (Fig2). Higher but not high inflation is coming.5/

I reached financial independence and quit my 9-5 job this week at 33 years old to work with my own projects.

A thread with lessons about:

-freedom
-time
-money

One day in 2018 when I was in my 9-5 cubicle, I thought to myself while I stared out of the window:

How could I continue waking up every morning and be totally unexcited about everything I was going to do day after day?

This led me to Google:

“How to quit my job forever”.

You know the rest of the story.

Early Retirement Extreme and Mr. Money Mustache are the first pages popping up.

I read everything in a couple of days.

There was really no way back.

WTF, could I quit my job in a couple of years by investing?

I have always been pretty good at handling money, but earlier on I'd just pay down my mortgage faster.

Now I was going all-in on investing.

I started saving and earning more money by changing my 9-5 job.

Starting out I had a savings rate of 40%.

Last 5 months SR: over 90%

I got addicted to investing.

It was like a game.

My salary was increasing every month and on top of that, I started earning more online than I did in my 9-5.

I started dreaming about $100M.

But, then I reflected:

"What will I sacrifice if I continue like this for 30+ years?