Blog

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

Exploiters adjacent

On Shark Tank last evening, there was a woman peddling premium hiking socks for $24 a pair. I cannot wrap my mind around such extravagance. My modus operandi for socks is to buy in bulk at Costco (brand doesn’t matter). They get thrown away when holes inevitably develops. For a heavy wear item such as socks, I don’t see the utility of spending heavily. This isn’t a winter jacket that will last a lifetime kind of thing.

I’m sure premium wool socks feel fantastic. But who can afford them but millionaires or sock enthusiasts. It’s a luxury item for sure, not a must-have. At least with an expensive mattress one can make the argument the improvement on sleep is worth the money.

Maybe I’m just being a miserable miser. Half the stuff I see on Shark Tank, I can’t believe there are actually people who would spend money on them. In the same episode from yesterday, another entrepreneur was selling a metal trunk for people to store their keepsakes - for hundreds of dollars. A Sterilite plastic container from Target for magnitudes less money would have sufficed the same. I wonder: are we in so much consumer debt because of such frivolity?

Then again, the American economy would grind to a halt if a majority of the populace spend only on what’s truly necessary. DoorDash would not be worth billions because people understand it’s stupid to overpay menu prices plus fees and tip to have someone chauffeur a burrito to your home.

But please, by all means, spend. Debt spending is singlehandedly sustaining the r/churning subreddit. There aren’t thousands of dollars in bonus travel points to earn if on the slip side there aren’t customers to siphon heavy interest payments from. Those of us on the positive side are directly adjacent to the exploitation of people in severe credit card debt. That is, if your level of empathy causes you to regard credit card companies as exploiters.

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.

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.

With what money?

I go the mall sometimes during the weekday lunch hours, and I would see the local high school kids buying lunch at the food court. How on earth do they have the money for it? The allowances they get from parents must be hefty. I make above the American median household income, and I only feel comfortable enough to get Chipotle once in a while. Kids, with no income - how are they doing it?

Especially these days when $10 can’t even buy you a meal at McDonalds. At least back when I was in high school, there was the dollar menu. That’s a lot of McChicken for the $20 my father would give me once in a while. A dollar now can literally buy nothing at the Golden Arches. I understand inflation, but people aren’t making that much more money? A suitable food allowance for a higher schooler of today must be in the hundreds per month.

I guess there’s a lot of rich parents out there in San Francisco.

No wonder it’s said that child rearing is so expensive. With the recent inflation it’s got to be more than the quarter million to raise a child from baby to 18 years of age.

My parents most certainly did not spend a quarter million dollars to raise me. They didn’t have to money to. Not even close. I think it’s people’s expectations of what entails child-rearing that drives up the costs. Childcare, birthday parties, toys, trips to Disneyland (allowance when they reach teenage years); a lot of it is more wants than needs.

I read an article about parents getting into debt to bring their kids to Disneyland. News flash: if you cannot cash flow a Disneyland trip, you cannot afford it. There’s no rule that a child must experience Disneyland. For sure they will be sad when they hear from their school friends who went, but I didn’t have Nike shoes growing up, and I turned out just fine (allegedly). No emotional damage at all.

Buy nothing to save 100%

It is Amazon Prime Day, a sort of Black Friday for those of us with an Amazon Prime membership. A not so elaborate ruse to separate you from your hard-earned money.

Because the item you actually want to buy would never go one sale during Prime Day. That’s not how it works. What do go on sale are things you didn’t even realize you wanted to buy. Take for example the AirPods Pro 2 going for a never before seen low price of $170. This utterly fantastic price creates intense FOMO to hook in customers. Because, what if we never see this price ever again?

Then again, who doesn’t already have a pair? My set of AirPods Pro 2 gets plenty usage on the daily.

In previous economies (as in: not in this economy), I would have bought the AirPods Pro 2 at that rock-bottom price. (True ballers have backup earphones in case their main unit gets lost or craps out.) See how that works? Amazon would have tempted me out of $170 that I had zero plans to spend. People see an item with a tremendous percentage discount, and their minds immediately switch to justifying. I can really use a new Dyson vacuum! Look at how much money I am saving!

Spending money to save money. That’s the essence of Prime Day and Black Friday. Guess what? I saved 100% by not buying anything.

Well, that’s not true. This Prime Day I was able to snag a 50-pound kettlebell for $50. When it comes to gym weights, you want to aim for paying one dollar per pound. I’ve long since progressed from my current 40-pound kettlebell, and have been eyeing a 50-pounder for a few months now. I was not expecting it to be discounted for Prime Day, but I was pleasantly surprised. Well played, Amazon.

Be a player

In the capitalist economic system such as ours, it is very important to have capital (duh). That’s how it works. You literally cannot survive without it. We trade our labor, working a job for money in return, just so we don’t starve and sleep on the streets. Equally important then is to avoid squandering all of the capital we toiled so hard for. Having adequate savings is how we thrive.

It’s incredibly calming to know that you’ve got enough money in the bank to cover any surprises. I cannot imagine the stress of living paycheck to paycheck. A sudden, unplanned cash event can turn into a downward debt spiral. A Sisyphean hole that you keep shoveling stuff in, but never fills completely.

If anyone were to accuse me of being privileged to not have to live paycheck to paycheck: get the French out of here. My parents of a combined $2,000 income - for a household of four - managed to save enough to buy me a brand new car when I graduated from high school. I’ve read enough Reddit posts to know that lots of people out there - of all income levels - have a spending problem. No matter how much you make, you should spend less than that. It’s not a value judgement, it’s math.

Because our surplus money can then be used to participate in the capitalist system: by investing it. That money becomes capital for others to turn a profit - by serving the needs of the customer. The return on our investment gets continuously reinvested towards other ventures, thereby compounding the growth. That is how we thrive in this economic system.

Don’t hate the game; be a player.

Just keep buying?

What if we simply stopped spending? Let’s vote with our wallets.

With all the price inflation going on, the one thing consumers have control over on the supply-and-demand seesaw is our spending. Prices too high - I don’t like it - therefore I am not buying (looking at you, McDonald’s). If enough of us do that, then the proprietors will have no choice but to lower prices. At least that’s what I was taught in economics 200.

Of course, people are still happily(?) buying. That’s why we have not seen a reduction in prices. The entrepreneur wouldn’t lower them if current pricing is sustainable in terms of customer count. Any savings in production cost should be pocketed as increased profit margin. It’s not greed, it’s math. People aren’t running charities. When high prices actively hurt the bottom line, only then will they go down.

Nearly half of Americans cannot cover a $1,000 emergency, and consumer credit card debt is at record highs. That tells me that lots of people are recklessly spending money well into the red, seemingly undeterred by inflation. Please don’t give me the bullshit about folks being poor and unable to afford necessities - thereby going into debt: my parents made less than $2,000 a month for a household of four for the longest time, and yet they still managed to save money over the years.

Overspending is the problem. During the pandemic, when supply chains were impacted, new vehicle inventories were low. A classic supply and demand problem: low inventory, high transaction prices. Because the American appetite for cars is insatiable. I never got mad at dealer markups, because they exist precisely because someone out there is willing to pay. If absolutely nobody was willing to pay, then the markups wouldn’t exist.

It only takes one. And it only takes consumers continually spending for the current high prices to remain. That’s not going to be me, though. I am hugely price elastic. Printed books have increased in price, so now I begrudgingly buy the digital Kindle version.