Blog

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

Where it all went

As a person who doesn’t typically do New Year’s Resolutions, I have but one in 2025: no buying new books until I’ve read all the ones I already bought. Tolstoy’s War and Peace will finally be devoured before I can clear off additional books on my Amazon cart. It’s the right thing to do. The least a book can do before becoming a gatherer of dusts on the shelf is to entertain me with its infilled information.

As 2025 gets underway, a good exercise to do is to take a look at your money in 2024. Credit cards make it super easy to gather and export all your purchases in an Excel file. The Chase cards that I predominantly use even categorizes the spending for me, and lets the user compare year to year. That’s how I was easily able to know that I successfully spent thousands less money (2024 compared to 2023) on Amazon.

I think it’s valuable to know the big picture of where my money went, so that I can intuitively plan for the new year. Performing the audit (if you will) was how I found out I only filled up my BMW M2 a total of twelve times. For a car that goes 200 miles before the gas light comes on (which is to say: pathetic), that means I did very little driving in 2024. I endeavor to accumulate a lot more miles in 2025. To pay for that extra gas, the amount of money not spent on books should cover a good chunk of it!

A surprise spend of last year was food delivery. How it can add up to so many hundreds of dollars, even though I’ve only ordered seven times. Those fees and tips really add up to already inflated food prices. This year there will be zero food delivery orders, unless I am so unfortunate to become incapacitated.

Spend wisely, my friends.

The Christmas ideal

As a first-generation Chinese immigrant of poverty (I think the incoming administration wants to ban people like our family from coming here), Christmas was never a thing. Firstly, it was not in our culture back then. Of course the corporations have managed to commercialized it in China now, so even my relatives over there wishes each other Merry Christmas on WeChat. I’m happy for the children, who get presents.

Secondly, our family was too poor to afford Christmas. Presents? Just be happy father is able to make enough per month to put food on the table. Contrarily, I don’t remember being jealous of fellow kids talking about presents and trips over the Christmas holidays. Granted, social media was not yet invented. I wasn’t able to see on TikTok how millions of other kids live so luckily and lavishly. Envy only materializes when you have something to compare to.

Because of this upbringing, Christmas is merely another day off for me. Which is just fine: I don’t have the financial burden that other people experience during the holidays. All the presents and wrapping materials cost money! Imagine going into credit card debt to fund a holiday deemed necessary by the cultural milieu. Imagine if your kids were never taught the expectations of Christmas presents.

It’s all rather wasteful, too. As we grow older, we come to truly know what we like and don’t like. That makes gift giving difficult because it’s rather easy to buy a thing that others accept out of politeness, but in truth it’s yet another piece of trash clogging up precious space at home. So you either have to toss it or donate it, and that takes time out of your days off. Never mind the decorations and packaging and go straight to (hopefully) recycling.

My ideal of a Christmas: hang out and eat. No presents, no over-the-top presentations.

Never in this economy

The well regarded aftermarket wheel company Apex Wheels is having a winter sale. Nothing like clearing out some inventory at year end to make the numbers look good. Today is Boxing Day, so go out there and buy buy buy, folks! It’s not like you didn’t just spent a small fortune on Christmas gifts. And then people complain about the cost of living being so high. Have you perhaps ever considered not buying anything?

I get it: the temptations are everywhere. 25 percent off for a set of wheels I’ve been eyeing is trebly enticing. It also coincides nicely with the fact the BMW M2 absolutely needs a new set of tires (this rainy season is going to be interesting if I delay). The timing is perfect. At least I’m not throwing away a perfectly good set of tires for the sake of making my car look different than factory. 10 years ago me would have done so, but thankfully I did not have much money back then.

What’s stopping me from hitting the checkout button on those Apex wheels is the lack of space. Where the heck am I going to store the original set of wheels? If I knew for sure I will be keeping the M2 forever, I would sell them. But because I am not prepared to do so, I must keep the stock wheels around just in case. Living in high-rent, low space San Francisco, I barely have enough room for my everyday. There’s simply no space for frivolities such as two sets of wheels for one car.

I can see now how public storage places are so numerous and popular. Customers are essentially paying rent for more space. It just so happens that space is detached from their main abode. I of course do not want to end up like that. Rent for the main abode is high enough as is!

Sad to say then I am not buying a second set of wheels.

Holiday parties

A friend of mine told me about her company’s holiday party. My reaction was that it’s kind of disgusting to have a holiday party the same year the employer laid off workers. It’s not quite to the level of “Let them eat cake”, but it’s close. Perhaps it’s my poverty upbringing talking: if you proclaim austerity, then all extravagance should be curtailed. It’s like the guy saying he is broke, yet orders foods on DoorDash everyday.

Are you though?

My employer also held a university-wide Christmas party, of which I did not attend. The optics of it is not great when just a month ago the university President declared a financial emergency. For sure the thousands of dollars to throw a party is pissing against the wind of labor costs. But that money is enough to save one course for the Spring semester. Wouldn’t that be more worth it?

Don’t bring up the argument of boosting morale. A holiday party is but a distraction if the employer cannot guarantee the employee’s future. You know how to best boost morale? Promise the workers there will be no further layoffs. What employees want most is security, not some trinkets gifted at a party. If the company really wants to spend the money, make it a lottery to give to one lucky employee.

It's housing, stupid

It seems my place of employment is not the only education system in dire financial straits. The San Francisco United School District (SFSUD) is facing a budget cliff as well. There’s been talks of school closures this year, but election season sort of put a kibosh on that. Now that the election is over, and the math remains terrible, I don’t see how they can avoid contracting the number of campuses.

SFUSD has the same problem as SFSU: a massive decline in enrollment. Funding from California is tied to pupil count, so less students, less operating budget. Hard decisions will have to be made. San Francisco State will be laying off lecturers and cutting courses come the Spring semester. I can tell you the atmosphere on campus is rather bleak these days.

I think this issue ties back to housing, or the lack thereof. How can you expect a thriving K-12 student population when the working-class cannot afford to live in San Francisco? It’s financially difficult to start a family here if you’re not of the upper crust working in tech or finance. People of those means are more likely to send their children to private school, exacerbating the enrollment problem. Public education needs a robust working-class to support it. San Francisco must build way more housing, driving down home and rental prices, to sustain said working-class.

Until that happens, SFSU must build way more student housing so students can actually afford to attend. The university isn’t renowned for anything in particular, so San Francisco becomes the de-facto draw. Tuition is expensive enough as is; it’s a tough ask to then add on one of the highest cost of living in the country. Never mind the retail crime, homelessness, and fentanyl crisis that gets shown on television.

I believe solving the cost of putting a roof over your head is the main lever to pull here.

Don't be greedy

This article about a fintech savings account app - Yotta - locking users out of their deposits led me down into a Coffeezilla YouTube rabbit hole. It’s super entertaining to watch him expose Logon Paul’s cryptocurrency scam, and this one about taking down a $500,000,000 Ponzi scheme. Coffeezilla had previously pointed out that Yotta looks like a scam because it encourages deposits by offering a lottery that users “cannot lose” in.

As the saying goes: a sucker and his money will soon be parted.

I think it’s immensely admirable for Coffeezilla to expose fraud in the goal to return the money to victims. The cynic in me is having a difficult time not laying some of the blame on the customers. How on earth did these people miss the clear red flags? My friend sent me the article about Yotta, and before I even read the article, I remarked: “I bet the victims were enticed by the promise of abnormally high returns.” Sure enough, that was the case, as it were with many of the scams uncovered by Coffeezilla. Would it be unkind otherwise to label it greed?

It seems a non-insignificant amount of people cannot stand the slow progress of compound growth. Social media platforms make it look like everybody has more money than them. This feeling of inadequacy leads to the inquisitive: how can they get to that level, but very quickly? Everybody wants Warren Buffet’s wealth, but not that amount of time (read: decades) to get there. So of course when someone comes along to offer a shortcut, there’s no shortage of fools willing to take the bait.

I think a lot people simply wish to grow their money so that they can feel safe from the vagaries of capitalistic society. I certainly count myself in that cohort. Compounding is magical, but it takes a long time. That’s just the game. By the time you read about a hot investment on Reddit, it’s already too late for you. And if you see an offer of outsized returns, it’s absolutely fraud.

Stock up, stock down

San Francisco is seeing the first big rain storm of the season. I am somewhat regretting not replacing the tires on my BMW M2 before this. The stock Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires are on the final few thousand miles of usable life. (Current mileage of the M2 is 20,214.) These high performance summer tires are not the best in the rain when new, so it’s downright sketchy when the grooves are worn down. I’m definitely not turning on the performance modes in these wet conditions.

The reason I haven’t yet replace the tires is because I am cheap. I want to delay the inevitable $1,500 charge to replace all four for as long as possible. That doesn’t mean I’m avoiding driving; like a good Chinese immigrant I simply wish to maximize the usage out of a product. I paid for the tires, did I not, in the original purchase price of the BMW? This is the equivalent of adding water to a near empty shampoo bottle in order to use every last bit of it.

The reason I’m being so unreasonably stingy (I don’t make bad money) is because our workplace is facing a fiscal crisis. While I am confident in my abilities and what I contribute to the job, I simply do not have the seniority years to feel completely secure. In the event layoffs do happen, and I am affected, I want to be fully financially prepared. That means stashing away money and squeezing out the utility of things I already have. Black Friday shopping for the dopamine hit will not be in my vocabulary.

Just because a university is a non-profit doesn’t mean no profits. Students pay tuition, staff and faculty have to earn a living. You can’t idealize your way out of hard numbers, especially when cuts have to be made. Under-utilized classes should be the first to go.

In turn, Universities should lean on majors that are popular. For as long as I’ve been at San Francisco State (since 2007), nursing is an impacted program. Meaning: demand outstrips supply. Why does this remain so? The nursing major should have expanded to accommodate the demand long ago. Leverage the popularity and competence to make SF State a known destination for nursing (and whichever other in-demand programs). Give the students what they want!

Capitalism is not without faults. So long as that’s the system we are in, that’s the system we have to work around.