Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Money cushion

Word on the street is a five dozen carton of eggs at Costco is now a whopping $22 dollars. (Thanks, President Trump!) Those of us reliant on a high protein supply are in shambles. At the two eggs per day rate that I eat (which is kind of low, relatively), I might have to declare bankruptcy.

Elon Musk is taking a figurative chainsaw to the federal payroll. The city of San Francisco is in a massive budget hole. San Francisco State University (my employer) has declared a financial emergency. Seemingly every day another private sector company is shedding jobs. It’s not a great time, is it? We can’t be certain of our job security. And if we are unlucky to be fired, the job hunting market will surely be ultra competitive.

What helps soothe the stress in these uncertain times is to have a cash reserve. (I know, right to privilege jail. Right away!) Those of us with a proper emergency fund, one that can last us an entire year without employment, are sitting comfortable. Of course it would still suck to be out of a job, but not having to worry about covering rent for at least awhile takes away the dread. I will be fine either which way.

The dream is to stop working, right? Short of a lucky windfall, the best way to achieve that is to slowly stockpile the money. Keep it in a savings account for emergencies. Throw the rest into the market (not investment advice, do your own research) so that it can compound. I have a much better relationship with my job when I am not actively looking forward to the next paycheck to cover some debt hole I dug myself into.

Peace of mind in a capitalist system is to have capital. We work so hard in exchange for money. Mustn’t spend it all on TikTok shop!

And it's gone

It was only a matter of time.

President Trump ordered federal workers back to office full-time shortly after inauguration. Last week, San Francisco mayor Lurie ordered city workers back to office full-time. And just yesterday, California governor Newsom ordered state employees back to office full-time. The trifecta is complete. If your salary is paid for by tax-payers, work-home-home is no longer in your vocabulary.

There’s always the private sector, am I right?

As an employee of the State of California, Governor Newsom’s executive order applies to me. Good news for me, I’ve been in-office on a full-time basis since the beginning of 2021. Nothing is changing for me, except seeing more of my colleagues more often on campus.

I can already see HR scrambling to field the many calls from workers asking for an exemption. You need to telecommute because you’re taking care of a sick family member? Well, my mother has been officially disabled for over a decade. Perhaps I should move back home and garner some work-home-home days…

That would be absurd, right? It’s not up to the workplace to acquiesce to choices workers make outside of it. If special dispensation are made - in regards to telecommuting - for children or living far away from campus, then I can definitely make both of those things happen.

Those of us who are already full-time on campus five days a week may or may not be enjoying some schadenfreude at this new development. As far as I know, working-from-home is not written in our contract whatsoever. Therefore, if we really want to talk about fairness…

Welcome back to campus, colleagues!

The peak-end rule

The book Thinking, Fast and Slow by the great Daniel Kahneman details the concept of the peak-end rule. Basically, how an experience comes to end - negatively or positively - biases our feelings towards the entire experience. A television show can have an excellent run of seasons, but the entire series can be tainted if the final season is utterly crap.

Looking at you, How I Met Your Mother.

The tragedy here is in ignoring the majority that came before the end. You still suffered through six hours of hiking, even though reaching the summit gave you tremendous euphoria. The first two years of child-rearing was still full of suck, even though the five-year-old now gives you more joy than you can ever ask for. How I Met Your Mother provided nine solid seasons of laughs; a spoiled 10th season shouldn’t obviate all of that.

The peak-end rule explains why I am unable to look back fondly at my (all too brief) ownership of a Porsche 911 GT3. Because the ending is so crap. Making the decision to sell the car due to life circumstances has tainted the entire year and a half run. It didn’t feel like a good experience because of the action that ended it: I essentially sold my already attained dream car.

It would serve me well to remember that I did have 18 months of absolute fun with the GT3. And cumulatively, that amount of joy is exponentially greater than the pain of that week at the end when I made the decision to sell and sold it. This life of ours is full of chapters, with distinct beginnings and ends. We should try not let the disappointment of something coming to a close wrongly color the entire chapter.

And vice versa.

Get back to work

San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie has ordered city workers to return-to-office for four days per week. (Why not the full five?) The rationale is that more face-to-face interaction will increase productivity (not advocating, just writing what is stated in the article). More days in-office will boost spending in the downtown core.

This thread in the San Francisco subreddit is breathing in a huge amount of cope. Lots of advocation for the positives of working from home. Lots of admonition for the impending congestion and traffic increase. This one post hilariously says they are being forced to buy $20 lunches downtown when reporting for work in person. Who the French can afford to eat-out for lunch every single workday (non lawyer and tech-bro edition)? Pack your own lunch from home like an adult.

Anyways, this return-to-office order isn’t a referendum on the merits of working from home. (The are positives and negatives.) It’s a referendum on optics. San Francisco can’t plead with the private sector to refill the suffering downtown core - to boost the surrounding economy - when its own workers aren’t being asked to do the same. Employees paid for by the taxpayers should be first in line in helping whatever revitalization plan the city has.

There’s jealousy involved, too. Those who cannot work-from-home are envious of those who can. The problem that public service workers have is that they are beholden to voters. If enough people are angry at your privilege, someone like President Trump will win an election, then demand all Federal workers to return-to-office.

Heck, unionized public workers who’s already in-office full-time ought to make a complaint in the name of fairness. Why do others members of the union get to work-from-home, and you cannot? Shouldn’t all worker’s contract terms be the same?

Don't miss it

I was surprised and saddened to learn a recently retired colleague has pass away. Not even a year into retirement, after over 40 years of service at our university. There were no visible signs of frailty, last I saw the guy. He spent four decades working for a single employer, and didn’t even get to enjoy the fruits of that labor.

It’s truly the stuff of nightmares. The diligent among us, armed with long-term thinking, save and prepare for retirement. We make certain sacrifices now so that our golden years would have the means to be plentiful. And for those sacrifices to all be for naught - that is a scary prospect. We’ve all heard anecdotes about folks waiting until retirement to pursue their hobbies, only for fatal illness to rob them of that opportunity.

Obviously there’s some availability bias going on. The percentage of people keeling over soon after they retire is probably very small. The prudent thing is still for us to monetarily plan for an actual retirement period.

But it’s a mental struggle - for me at least - to balance the distant future and the now. The goal is to minimize regret. Certain opportunities are better taken advantage of at certain periods of life. For example: mortgaging some parts of retirement (by not saving as much) in order to travel in our 20s and 30s can be a logical move. That’s the period when you have the most energy, and the willpower to stomach a crammed hostel stay with a dozen other people.

I’ve no regrets using a large part of my retirement savings to buy a car. The opportunity - my age at the time, money saved, that model’s availability - was only ever going to happen that one time. Protecting my retirement would have meant not experiencing that at all. Ever. That is also the stuff of nightmares.

Obviously, I am not advocating for complete debt-spending anarchy. Spending less than you make, and saving some for a rainy day is evergreen financial advice.

A million dollars now

This video of how to become a millionaire on a low income came up on my YouTube algorithm. The obvious too long didn’t watch is to spend less than you make, and consistently invest that difference into the stock market. After a few decades of that, a person will generally have a million dollars in net worth.

That’s all well and good. I’ve been doing a version of that since I’ve started working. However, I don’t think being a millionaire at retirement is what people are looking for. What we all want is to be a millionaire now. It cannot be argued that it’s better to have a million dollars in our thirties than in our seventies. The opportunities to use that million dollars is vastly more in our youth than in golden age.

Take traveling, for example. A younger person will have more energy to tackle a European grand tour, with many hikes and arduous transit days, than a retiree. What about home ownership? A millionaire retiree likely already has a home. An early working adult could really use that million dollars to secure a roof over his or her head.

A restaurant recently opened near me that operates until 2:00 AM. I remarked to my friends that this would have come in handy during our college years. Then I realized we wouldn’t have the money for it then. We have the money for it now, but none of us are staying up late into the morning hours voluntarily anymore.

It seems the timing of money and when we can best use it has an inverse relationship. Warren Buffet would surely trade in all of his billions to reverse his age (hypothetical, of course). Parents who are able to give money to their children should not wait until they themselves die to leave an inheritance. The children need money the most when they are starting out in their careers.

Marketing on Youtube

A pain point for us car guys is finding a trustworthy shop. Now obviously the dealership is the prime option. And if they screw up, you can always complain to the manufacturer. But for those of us not made of money, we’d like something a little less costly. After the initial warranty period is over, of course.

I think a good way for auto shops to advertise their quality is to start a Youtube channel. Putting it on video will show potential customers what to expect. Are the mechanics knowledgeable? Are jobs done in a timely manner? Is there excellent attention to detail? Think of it as marketing cost. Pay an intern minimum wage to produce videos. The cinematography doesn’t matter as much as being able to show what the shop is capable of.

For example: after watching a few videos of Tyrrell’s Classic Workshop, I can judge the quality of their work to be the highest. If in another multiverse I was endowed with the monetary ability to buy expensive classic cars, I would readily commission Iain Tyrrell Classic Cars to perform maintenance work.

With my BMW M2 nearing its end of dealership service plans (first three years were free, then I bought two more years), I will be looking for an independent shop to continue the car’s maintenance sometime next year. In lieu of running into a local BMW shop’s Youtube videos on the algorithm, I will have to troll the BMW forums on where the local owners prefer to take their cars to.

Ideally, I would have the space and do the maintenance myself. However, as we know, none of us live in the ideal world.