Blog

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

What's the deal with ballpark food?

Honestly, why is it so expensive?

I mean, it’s always been expensive. But with the inflation of the past few years, it has gotten utterly insane.

For the first time this baseball season, I attended a Giants game in person. While game tickets have largely remained the same price due to the team sucking for the past years, the food prices at Oracle Park have gone straight up the scale. I can’t believe I paid nearly 10 dollars for a small hot dog - way smaller than what you can get at Costco for $1.50.

And my ballpark favorite - the chicken tenders and fries - is nearly $19! People seem happy to pay the high prices, too. The lines for food were long and plentiful. Maybe I’m the only poor amongst a sea of high-income earners. Probably true! The median individual income for San Francisco (2023 data) is estimated to be around $90,000 (Thanks, ChatGPT). I make less than that, so that means more than 50% percent of the population makes more than me. (I paid attention in math class.)

Anyways, because I seldom go to the ballparks these days (back in the early 2010s, I’d go to dozens every season), splurging that amount on food is no big deal. It’s all psychological, you know? Because I’ve experienced the food price being almost half of its current levels, it’s very painful to pay for that. My anchor point is way different than someone who’s never been to the ballpark and seeing the price list for the first time.

As I’ve many times before, I don’t adjust for inflation.

Worthless to anyone but me

An email got through the spam filters to offer me an opportunity to sell this very web domain. That is silly, because I’m pretty sure I am the only Healy Chen on this planet. Healychen.com is absolutely worthless to anyone but me. Not even a nice try. Just stop it.

For the record: I am wiling to let this domain for a few thousand bucks. No sane person should want to buy it for that money, however. But I’ll take it if offered!

You guys remember back in early April when the stock market retreated about 20% from all time highs thanks to President Trump’s tariff plans? Man have we recovered quickly. The markets are hovering near all time highs again.

What does that mean? I hope you bought during the dip, because I certainly did. And that chunk of cash is absolutely hard-carrying my portfolio performance for 2025. If anything, I now have regrets that I didn’t buy more.

Of course, we should not time the market, because most of us will fail. The reason I bought during this recent dip is my investment time horizon is long. It’s not a get rich quick scheme, it’s a get rich long scheme. I plan to hold stocks until well into retirement, so when the market offers a 20% discount to buy more, heck yeah I am taking that advantage.

In the (very) long run, markets will always go up. Let’s say for the sake of argument the American stock market doesn’t grow any (or even declines) over the next few decades. If that were to be true, there would be way greater things to worry about than simply our investments. See: Argentina.

I am priced out

I was walking through my local Target store when I noticed a 20 ounce bottle of Coke now costs $3.19? And that is before tax! I am old enough to remember when 20 ounce bottles were 99 cent. A dollar bill at the vending machine was enough to obey your thirst.

Talk about things I am priced out of. Buying soda drinks at a store is one of them. Filtered water is just fine, thank you very much.

But then people would argue that saving that three dollar on a daily soda (or four dollars on a daily coffee) is not going to get me to buying a house. The math on that in the San Francisco Bay Area is indeed tragic. Those people are right: keeping that $3 in my pocket is merely pissing in the wind of houses that start at a million dollars.

A better use for that $3 is to buy the lottery. At least there’s a infinitesimal chance!

In the grand scheme of things, buying a soda bottle here and there is not going to monetarily affect me one bit. But it’s the mindset that counts here. We can all agree that spending money is easy. The American credit system is fantastic in that regard. Therefore I think we have to train our resistance muscles (not to be confused with resisting a certain presidency). The calculus has to be more than: can I afford it, if yes, then buy!

Saying no to the $4 coffee helps me say no to a new iPad Air I’ve been eyeing, or a newer laptop to replace this “aging” M1 MacBook Pro. Those are the money decisions that really slice chunks: the hundreds and thousands of dollars at a time. Money that can otherwise grow significantly if put to proper investing.

If I really want to drink soda, I’d go buy in bulk from Costco.

No magic pill

Personal finance is easy. Spend less than you make. Put that extra money into the market in a low-cost index fund. Rinse and repeat every single month for decades, until you are ready to retire. You can say it all fits on an index card.

But like losing weight - eat less than you expend in energy, what’s easy on paper is difficult for people to execute. That’s why American obesity rate is top 10 in the world. (GLP1 agonists to the rescue!) And consumer credit card debt is at an all time high.

From watching personal finance shows like Caleb Hammer, what I am seeing is that people do understand what needs to be done, but the salience of that action is buried under a pile of emotions hijacking the brain. That forthcoming vacation is way more exciting to think about. The DoorDash delivery person is coming soon with that burrito you deserve after a long day at work. Why yes you absolutely should spend a year’s salary on a brand new car.

The boring and unexciting slog of wealth accumulation never stood a chance against those positive emotions. Just like the cozy and comfortable couch beckons you to abandon your difficult and tiresome workout plans for the day.

It can’t be all down to willpower, right? To mentally fight against the easy and pick the hard. Because we all know that willpower is fleeting. Our marvelous minds can convince and rationalize us of (and out of) anything. Spend six-figures on a car? Of course! I am a card-carrying car enthusiast. Hashtag man maths.

Unfortunately, unlike weight loss, there’s no magic pill for debt.

Reward without the work

In conversations with my aunts and uncles back in my home country of China, I’ve come to understand the supposed ennui of Chinese millennials (and younger). The “lying flat” movement that’s been popular on social media (until it got taken away). Young adults of the country are dissatisfied with the high-pressure achievement culture, and therefore are instead opting out of contributing to society (and themselves) in any meaningful way. Let’s just work enough to sustain.

I now see where the dissatisfaction stems from. Retired folks like my aunts and uncle are really living the good life. Government pensions are relatively generous, and retirement age relatively low (60 for men, 50 for blue-collar women workers that my aunts belong to.) Back in the day, these people were also provided with government-sponsored housing, or were able to buy a flat when it was insanely cheap in comparison to the real estate bubble of this millennia.

Chinese retirees own there flats outright, and are drawing a healthy monthly income from the government. This legion of folks goes out to eat all the time, and travel domestically and abroad whenever they fancy. We’ve all heard of the “Chinese dama” phenomenon: middle-aged Chinese women going on a tours and wrecking havoc on the local citizenry.

The younger generation see this with great envy. Principally because the price of a home - as it is anywhere in the first world - is astronomically unaffordable in China. And honestly, who doesn’t want to eat out at restaurants all the time? Traveling is also best done when you still have some youth and vigor. (That’s why I don’t regret spending a ton of money on travel this past decade of my late 20s and early 30s.)

You can see the problem: Chinese millennials want to skip right to what their parents have - without putting in any of the (long) time and work. This is the same reason people gamble on the stock market by throwing it all in on GameStop. The slow and steady growth is too boring and not fast enough. Now is a good time, not tomorrow. Social media showing the highlight reels of everyone else certainly doesn’t help the situation.

But monetary physics doesn’t allow for instant, overnight wealth generation. So in the face of an immovable object, it’s the easy way out to instead hate what you want. Who needs to own a home? That’s stupid. Working long hours to climb a corporate ladder for wealth? That’s just some societal bullshit. Travel? The home is where it’s at. A smartphone with an unlimited cellular plan is all that’s needed.

That’s lying flat in a nutshell.

Sitting pretty

With the (supposedly) looming 25% tariffs on all automobiles assembled outside of the United States, the people in the best position is drivers like me: owning a fully paid off car that’s made in this decade. So long as my BMW M2 doesn’t get totaled in an accident (knocks on wood), I don’t have to worry about the price increases that are sure to come. That is, if President Trump actually goes through with the threat.

With so much economic uncertainty in the near horizon, a debt-free position, with multiple months of cash in reserves, is more crucial than ever. The only reason a recent auto insurance premium increase did not cripple me is because my car is paid off. Funds that would otherwise have gone to service a loan (the average new car payment currently is a whopping $742 a month) now acts as a buffer.

And it’s having a money buffer that keeps the stresses at bay. Friends have checked in on me recently, because my place of employment is facing a budget deficit. Layoffs are definitely on the table. Am I worried about my job? Not as much as I should be, as perceived from the outside. A emergency fund runway for many months of spending allows me to not stress about any job loss. The world is not going to end. I’ve got the time and resources to reset at my own pace.

Even outside of losing a job, life will keep throwing financial curveballs at you. That’s just part of the game. Unexpected expenses are unexpected. Living on thin margins month-to-month leaves you vulnerable. Having a buffer is just good preparation.

I know, I know: sob story about how everything is more expensive, and people aren’t as privilege as me. Okay, someone please square this hole: if many folks are so struggling, then explain the record-breaking 2024 holiday shopping season?

Price sensitivity

The goal of President Trump’s tariffs threat is to bring manufacturing back to America, right? The downside of course is that things will become more expensive. Manufacturing didn’t leave America because of some evil corporate plan. The simple reality is that labor is cheaper elsewhere. Lowering cost of goods sold is a big lever to increase profits. Or have profits in the first place.

Tariffs are merely tacking those labor savings back onto the purchase price. There’s one for sure loser, and it’s the consumer.

For sure there are plenty of cheap crap coming out of China. But in the year 2025 it’s beyond pass time to acknowledge that China can also produce things of the highest quality. Did we forget the iPhone has been made in China since inception? The Apple smartphone is as precise a device as it gets.

“Made in the U.S.A.” still denotes a higher quality in people’s minds. Whether or not it’s actually true is up for debate. What is definitely true is that it’ll cost more compared to foreign-sourced manufacturers. I recently bought a barbell, and the unit made with American steel is $85 dearer than the Chinese-made equivalent from another company. The decision was easy.

Coming out of the high inflationary period of the pandemic, I am always looking for the best deals on anything. And doesn’t everybody? Who has the money to boycott Amazon (because big bad Bezos)? If a particular item is the cheapest on Amazon, I am buying it there. I do not have the income to support an artisan soap business at a farmer’s market. If you do, please go ahead.

I will live life as cheaply as possible, because everything else has gone up in price. Tariffs - if they come to full fruition - is only going to make it worse.