Blog

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

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.

Gamble to rumble

One of my frequent YouTube channels is Tyrrell's Classic Workshop. The latest video shows the proprietor going over to Paris, France for a car auction. In that very car auction is a Ferrari 250 LM that sold for 28 million euros. An unfathomably large sum - to spend on a single car - for a broke person with meager means like myself.

A tremendous amount of money for a thing that will largely sit in an air-conditioned garage for many years. Until the next supremely rich car guy pays even more for it. Heck, the buyer might not even have to pay taxes if the car is stored in a free port. Vintage Ferrari race cars: the only time a car is an “investment”. Your paint-to-sample Porsche 911, sadly, is not. That money is better thrown into an S&P 500 fund.

The pain from being a broke car guy is that I don’t have the means to sample the variety of cars out there. I can only do so in the virtual world of Gran Turismo (the only way I can “own” and “drive” a Ferrari). A large garage full of automobiles is not in the cards for me, in this life time. I’d have to first afford a garage.

Then there are cars that’s wholly out of my income range. As a former owner of a 2015 Porsche 911 GT3, I currently cannot afford a 2025 Porsche 911 GT3. The starting MSRP has ballooned from $125,000 to $200,000. My incomes has not kept up with that inflation. And that’s before ticking a single option box, and paying extortion money to the selling dealership.

I can see why people gamble their whole money into specific stock options and/or crypto. There are so many nice things out there (it’s not only cars) that if we can just get a huge sum of money very quickly, we’d be able to buy and enjoy them all. They don’t want to wait the many decades in working hard and accumulating wealth slowly. Because a 911 GT3 won’t be brand new on sale for that much longer.

In lieu of getting extremely lucky in a gamble - not that I would in the first place, I hugely temper my expectations.

Strategic egg reserve

In this current battle royale climate for eggs, the trick is to get to Costco (or your grocer of choice) soon as it opens in the morning. You will then be among the lucky few to snag from the limited stock for the day. At least Costco now limits three items of eggs per customer. Hoarders and re-sellers can go die a furiously fiery death.

I honestly don’t think there is a need to hoard an egg supply. I eat two eggs a day for the protein gains (some would say that’s not nearly enough per day), and I’ve yet to run out of my supply. That’s with resupplying only every few weeks (when I go to Costco). These pictures of customers filling up entire carts with eggs: how big of a fridge have they got? Unless there comes an avian flu strain that kills off chickens into extinction, I think we’ll be alright.

It reminds me of the toilet paper panic back at the beginning of the pandemic. Do people expect to wipe their ass more often when they are stuck indoors? The only thing hoarding toilet paper saves you from is having to make a trip when you run out. And even then, there’s always the shower…

What’s hilarious about the egg shortage is that it is coinciding with a new President that ran on a platform of lowering grocery prices (was never going to happen, obviously). January 2025 inflation numbers are unexpectedly high, too. Maybe what America needs is a strategic egg reserve, like the strategic oil reserve. President Trump can increase the egg supply to level out the price shocks.

Forget breakthrough medical research - the Trump administration certainly has by freezing NIH funding; what we need is to research a new method for storing eggs for years on end whilst preserving initial quality. I personally think that’s a great idea.

Don't blame the system

This video popped up on my Youtube feed talking about how credit card companies are criminals for charging such high interest rates. But that’s a bit disingenuous. People aren’t forced to deal with credit card issuers. You absolutely do not need a credit card! Cold hard cash will always be king. There’s also the debit card too, if convenience is what you are after.

I’ve had and still have many credit cards, and never have I paid a penny of interest. (Good move by President Trump in directing the Treasury to stop minting pennies.) Credit cards are a fantastic financial tool, so long as the monthly balance gets paid in full. The issuers can charge the most usurious interest rate, and it wouldn’t affect me one iota. That’s how everyone should be using the cards. Visa and MasterCard more than make enough money on swipe fees.

It’s wrong to call something predatory when both parties came to an agreement. The customer borrows money from the credit card companies, with the promise to pay it back. Interest will be charged if payments are late. It’s not the issuer’s fault if the customer did not read the APR fine print. The issuer is not evil because the customer cannot fully pay the balance in a timely manner. It’s hugely infantilizing to obviate responsibility from fully grown adults.

Again, credit cards are not necessary to living. People did just fine before their invention. Whatever life emergency that people use the cards to cover should instead be covered by an emergency cash fund. Don’t have one? Eat only rice/beans/chicken/lentils (a completely nutritious meal for very cheap) until you’ve saved enough. Sorry, DoorDash is no longer in your vocabulary.

If you’re in credit card debt, it’s time to reevaluate your expectations of what is truly necessary in life. The Amazon habit is too difficult to quit? Better increase your income, then.

I know. Right to privilege jail. Right away.