Very rich.

Rich enough to be able to do anything or get anything that I want.

Am I rich?

On paper, no, not really.

If you were to look at my current financial situation, you’d probably tell me I’m not rich at all.

Judging myself by my own standards, I wouldn’t consider myself rich.

Nowhere close to being rich.

The difference in my net worth from a few months ago to now is very small.

In fact, I haven’t even had any stable income for the past few months.

So why do I feel rich?

I feel rich because I have things under control.

No, that’s incorrect. I feel like I have things under control.

I’ve realized that I can macro- and micro-manage my life and shape it into what I want.

I know what’s going on in the small frame of today, and I’m beginning to see the bigger picture of what can happen tomorrow.

Whatever I choose to do, it’s a choice and I have complete control over it.

It’s my responsibility whether positive or negative things happen.

If I have regrets because I didn’t do something, that’s still my problem, as I chose to not do it.

What I can’t control, I don’t worry about.

Or at least I try not to – I still do sometimes.

There is nothing that I can think of that is out of reach.

Buy another car? Sure.

Buy a house? No problem.

Start a business? Definitely.

There is absolutely nothing that cannot be done in this life, and I have just started to realize this.

That is why I feel rich.

How did this happen?

I wouldn’t really know where to begin with this question – life is complex and every one thing leads to the next.

If I had to pinpoint where a leaf started turning over, it would be late 2015 just after I had just been promoted at work.

It was quite a change for me at the time. I was nervous, but super excited to have moved up a rung in the corporate ladder for the first time in my life.

New title, new team, new responsibilities – I was starting over in having to prove myself again.

My new team didn’t yet need (read: trust) me to get on calls so I also had free time on my hands.

A whole lot of free time.

So I read – a lot.

I also did a lot of time wasting things like browsing aimlessly through Facebook and other social media.

The benefit of working at a corporation sitting in a cubicle means you can do non-work related stuff without letting on that you’re not actually working.

What eventually got me hooked was an article series a buddy recommended me to read – Jim Collin’s Stock Series.

Collins introduced me to a new concept called Financial Independence.

I read it through once.

Then again.

Then once more for good measure.

Of course, the content was fantastic and super informative (he has since published a book encompassing the Stock Series which I highly recommend) – but what stood out to me most was the zero bullshit tonality that came through the lines of the post.

I’d never seen anyone write like that before.

(That’s a huge lie)

There were other blogs too – Mad Fientist, Mr. Money Mustache, 1500days, RootOfGood, Financial Samurai – that had the same no-bullshit content.

(Want to know what bullshit content is? Check out any article on CNN Money)

How did they do it?

How were they able to write that way?

Weren’t they scared that the readers wouldn’t like what they said and leave hateful comments?

What if their employers saw what they said about them and about working?

Weren’t they worried about hurting people’s feelings?

Collectively, all of the above have happened, but they had no problem with it.

Why?

Because they had what Jim Collins calls FU Money which – as I would soon come to learn – is incredibly powerful.

What is FU money?

I want you to think about something that’s bothering you right now.

I mean something that’s really bothering you.

It could be a job, a living situation, a relationship with someone – anything.

Something that stresses you out, something that keeps you up at night when you have to get up early the next morning.

Something that you feel is really getting in the way of you living your life.

Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Throw money at the problem to make it go away?’

Most people will say that you can’t do that – it doesn’t work, it’s wasteful, it’s irresponsible.

I’m sure CNN Money has a post about it.

Well, fuck those guys.

They don’t believe in you, and they don’t want you to believe in yourself.

You can do it, because I say you can.

If you say you can’t then you don’t believe in yourself, which is sad.

FU Money is what you throw at your problem to make it go away.

Not literally, of course. You don’t even need to do any throwing.

In fact, FU money is most effective if you don’t throw it. It’s the fact that you can throw it at your problem, if you wanted to, that makes it powerful.

Having FU Money gives you the ability to make all that bullshit go away – the ability to craft your life into something that you can enjoy, rather than dreading over having to get up the next morning and pressing snooze on your alarm a bunch of times because sleeping is so much better than what’s ahead.

Of course, if that’s your idea of a great morning, then maybe FU money is not for you.

Let me give a specific personal example.

A few months into 2016, I decided that I wanted to leave my job and do something else.

But – I didn’t want to follow the herd:

1. Find a job while still working at my current job
2. Give my two weeks notice
3. Leave two weeks later

That made no sense to me.

I  still don’t understand how you can find the best next job you can while still working at your old job.

Might be because I sucked at it.

But I’d think I’d be so eager to get out of my current job that I’d be more willing to accept less-than-ideal offers.

I had also seen it happen many, many times so I already knew how it was supposed to go and feel.

You start interviewing in secret at work

You call in sick one day to go to your onsite interview

You come in every day telling yourself how “over this” you are and hope you get the next offer

You start telling people “don’t tell anyone this, but I’m gonna  get out of here soon”

You get your offer, you rejoice, then walk into your manager’s office with a sense of well-deserved pride

It all seems sleazy and dishonest, too.

Sure, you may say the company you work for is sleazy, dishonest, and treats employees poorly all the time, but think about who is going to be immediately affected by your departure. In other words, who is going to have to do more work when you give your notice?

I didn’t even want to begin a new job right away – I wanted at least three months of free time.

So, I figured out what my monthly expenses were – easy because I started budgeting at the beginning of the year – and multiplied by 3.*

Simple! All I had to do was to put money aside each paycheck, and whenever I reached the desired number, I’d be free to go.

If I did, I could leave my job AND not need income for three months.

Wonderful.

By July, I had maxed out my 401k, IRA, and HSA accounts for the year to keep my taxes as low as possible.

By September, I realized that I would be ready to go at the end of October.

I let my manager know.

And now, for something completely different:

“Hold on, think about this, don’t make any rash decisions,” he said, and laid out three options:

1. If you feel like you need a break, take a leave of absence for a few months. Come back when you’re ready and your job will still be here.
2. If you’re tired of the role itself, I’ll put you in touch with some other managers to help you get promoted.
3. If you’re completely set on leaving, finish out the quarter so I can make sure you get your bonus.

WOW. FU money is powerful.

The crazy thing was that I had no idea these options were even available to me.

If I never got my FU money, I never would have known.

Leave of absence? I could have my free time with complete job security!

Promotion? Who knew I was already eligible? I could take another step up that corporate ladder within a year!

Stay another month? I hadn’t made any promises to other employers, so no problem!

After thinking it through a bit, I went with the third option.

I didn’t truly want to stay – I already had my heart set on what I wanted, so the other options, although tempting, did not sway me.**

Who wouldn’t stick around for a short month for another paycheck and a bonus payout  on top of it?

People who just give their two weeks notice and leave, that’s who.***

The only thing I had in place was the arbitrary timeline I was following.

I could change it just like that because I created it.

To top it all off, staying another month meant another month’s worth of income and a bonus check, enough to buy me another two months of free time.

This FU money was really something else.

Why you need to get it

FU money allows you to live without needing to work for some period of time.

The ultimate form of FU Money will allow you to live for the rest of your life without needing to trade your time for money.

Once you get there, you have reached Financial Independence.

Obviously, I haven’t reached financial independence yet.

Heck, the FU Money I built during 2016 would allow me only five months of independence.*

But that’s the beauty of it – you only need to get as much FU money as you need to go do what you want in a given time period.

It could be a month, two months, a year, five years – whatever.

Want to take three months and backpack around Europe?

Want to relax for a bit and figure out what you want to do in your only life?

Want to try your hand at starting up a business for a year?

You need time and money to do all these things. FU Money gets you the time and money you need.

Seriously, time is expensive. Why do you think you get paid so much to spend time at work, especially when you don’t spend all of it actually working? (Don’t worry, your employer knows)

And it’s not just the time you spend at work, it’s also the time and money you spend enabling you to work.

Eating lunch. Commuting. Dry cleaning. Maintaining your car. Feeling tired and lazy when you get home. Thinking about how to be better at your job. Dreaming about the things you want to do when you have the time.

It all adds up.

FU Money lets you be in control. 

You control what you do with your own time.

You control what you do with your own money.

You “pay” yourself to work on your own mission.

Figure out how much you need

Do it now.

You already know what you don’t want to do, how you would feel if you didn’t have to do it, and what you would do instead.

If you don’t do it now, you’ll never do it.

If you bookmark this page for later, you’ll never do it.

I’ve been there many times – there are so many projects I’ve started and thought about starting but never even got past step 1.

Step 1: Start.

Part of the problem is that I never did any planning, and that’s the hardest part.

Once I put my plan in place to leave my job, executing became so much more easy. I just had to follow my own instructions.

My own instructions. Not my manager’s, not my family’s, not my company’s – my own. And boy, did it feel good.

So what I want you to do is PRESS START.

After all, life is really just a game.

A note on taking advice

When I talked about my plan to leave my job, conversations would typically go like this:

“Oh, congrats! Where are you going?”

Nowhere, really.

“Huh? You’re not going to work?”

Nope. I’m going to take time off, then look for another job after three months.

“Wait, what if you don’t get another job? What will you do?”

Not worried about that. I think there are a lot of great opportunities out there. Besides, some of my friends have gotten great jobs after getting fired!

“You’re so lucky! I wish I could do that. You should travel!”

There are a few things that are funny about the way people would react to my plan:

1. Huh? You’re not going to work?

My answer didn’t fit within most people’s narrow view of how things are supposed to work. People expected the small talk to be the usual: I tell them a company name; they give congratulations and ask what they do; I tell them what they do; they tell me good luck and to have fun. The expected my answer to be just like everyone else’s.

You can only truly know something once you experience it, and experiencing something new typically requires taking a step outside of your safe and secure**** bubble.

2. Wait, what if you don’t get another job?

This was a huge concern to a lot of people, including half of my family. They had this concept ingrained in their heads that if you have any gaps in your resume you’d be automatically denied from any job that you’d apply for in the future. Plus, if you don’t do anything productive while you’re taking a break, no employer is going to take you seriously.

My dad would say, “You’re basically ruining your chances of ever getting another job, and you’re gonna end up working at McDonald’s. Do you want to end up working at McDonalds for the rest of your life?“

Gee, where have I heard that one before?

It baffles me that people think this way. You’re not allowed to take time off unless you go to a 3rd world country to take profile pics with poor children (and maybe a house you kinda helped build) you’re not being productive, wasting your life, and ruining future employment opportunities.

3. You’re so lucky! I wish I could do that.

You can. What’s stopping you?

On my last day as I was saying bye to a coworker, he said that I was lucky to be able to take time off, that most people can’t just decide to take time off work like I’m doing.

I explained that this wasn’t something I decided to do yesterday, that I planned it out and worked towards it all year.

He said that he, like most people, have families, mortgages, car loans, college expenses and other obligations to worry about, so it can’t be done, even with that sort of planning because there’s not much left after all that.

True, so I explained that my situation was unique, just as his would be if he decided to do something. It would also not be easy, of course.

Then he said “Yes, but…”

Oh, I see now. Your sense of helplessness is stopping you.

But don’t worry, I’ve talked to enough old people to know that the feeling of helplessness goes away at some point, usually when you realize you have a limited amount of time before you are really, truly helpless.

It’s not lost on me that for some people doing what I did would require much more work, effort, and time. It may take my coworker a longer time to get his own FU money. Or it might take him less time (he does make a lot more than me). I don’t know his situation so I can only guess.

Yes, he may have a mortgage. he may have a car loan, kids to put through college, and many other obligations.

But did anyone force him to agree to those things? Is there only one way of dealing with them? Any obligations that he currently has are things that he said yes to himself. He got into them, so he can get out of them or alter their terms.

Unless he thinks he’s so special that it’s just not possible for him. Then it’s definitely impossible.

4. You should travel!

Thank you for your suggestion. I’ll take that into consideration.

Most people were supportive of my decisions, but some were not.

For example, I caused my family a lot of anxiety around the part where I didn’t have another job lined up.

They had a million reasons why I shouldn’t do it, why it was a horrible idea.

But when I pressed them for why it was a bad idea, they didn’t have any good evidence or experience to back up their advice.

You’ll have a gap on your resume.

So what?

Employers won’t take you seriously if you have gaps.

Why not?

Well, that’s what I’ve heard.

You don’t have a plan of what you’re going to do the next three months.

So what?

Employers will think you’re lazy and not motivated.

Why would they think that?

Well, that’s what I’ve heard.

So here’s my advice to you about how to handle advice from someone:

When you get advice, don’t take it at face value. Try to figure out why that person is giving you this advice.

If the why makes sense and it’s not some edge case that you know isn’t going to be a problem for you, then consider it.

If the why translates to some form of “Well, that’s what I’ve heard” then you can assume it’s bogus and move forward with your life.

Taking advice from someone with a narrow view of how things are supposed to work will only cloud your judgement.

Notes

* In my calculations, total expenses included work-related expenses – commuting, lunches, car – but these went away when I stopped working. I could last nearly six months on the FU money I would save to cover three months with work expenses excluded, plus the additional bonus payout I got for staying another month.

Do you know how much it costs you to work?

** In hindsight, the best option would have been a combination of the first and third. Taking a leave instead of quitting has immense benefits – keep your healthcare, employment status, 401k vesting, negotiating power (never give up negotiating power so easily) – but I didn’t know that at the time. Had I combined the two options, I would have still been able to move forward exactly as planned with added benefits.

*** Think about this from the perspective of your manager:

If you have already accepted a job offer when you give your notice, you’re saying that you’ve made up your mind about leaving. Nothing can stop you from leaving. If you’re going to a competitor company, your manager may not even legally be allowed to try to retain you. The first thing on your manager’s mind will be how to find someone VERY quickly that can replace you. In your employer’s mind, you’re already done.

If you go to your manager and say that you want out, but don’t have any pending event requiring you to leave, your employer would – given you’re doing your job – have every incentive to get you to stay. You could get a raise, less work, more favorable terms, even more stock – It’s much cheaper to retain an existing employee than hire a new one.

Giving two weeks notice typically limits your negotiating power.

**** Most bubbles are not actually safe or secure, they only seem that way.

Back in college I did a little experiment on myself: Every few days, I would assign a score for how I felt on a scale from -1 to 1.

A score of -1 being “I feel like life cannot get any worse right now,”

1 meant I felt on top of the world and everything was possible.

My hypothesis was that I would oscillate between -1 and 1 in a sinusoidal fashion, and I did. The frequency was non-constant, being as short as half a day to longer than a month, but it happened as I had expected.

The time spent in positive territory was rarely equal to time spent in negative territory. Sometimes the scores would oscillate without crossing zero.

Life is full of ups and downs

Every so often I feel like shit. I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, where I’m trying to get, and why I’m trying to get there – everything feels incredibly meaningless (-1).

It’s during those times when I notice that my attitude changes as well. When I’m at or near -1,

I get annoyed very easily,

I’m less social with friends,

I will treat people badly and get mad at them for no reason,

I’m more pessimistic and talking to me is probably not super enjoyable, and

I’m more likely to give up and quit what I’m doing.

I don’t like being in the negative, but invariably I always seem to fall back there.

I feel like I’ve been there for the past two weeks.

But then there are nights like tonight where events occur that remind me that I really don’t like being in negative territory.

Two things happened this evening that reminded me that positive territory is a  much, much better place to be:

1. I had dinner and played chess with one of my best friends I hadn’t seen in much too long.

I thought, this is what life is about: spending time with people I love doing enjoying things. It’s not all about work, stuff, money, or any of the other millions things that are advertised as a way of being happy. It’s about what I’m going to remember as the good times when I start dying. I’m going to remember the little things like this.

Ah, I remember now, this is why.

2. I bonded with an Uber driver about how Uber sucks, but you just have to keep grinding until you get there, no matter how unfair it is.

Other people are trying to get there, too! It’s like we’re all playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, but it’s life and you only get one. And everybody’s starting equipment is vastly different. I forget it sometimes because I get too caught up in my own mind-bubble, but people are not too different from each other. Our contexts vary, but we all must go through similar grinds before reaching the destination.

Of course, that makes total sense. How could I have forgotten?

It didn’t take much to cause the inflection. Mostly it’s a reaffirmation of principles and/or a reminder to keep chugging forward on the roadmap I have set out for myself, even if it’s not the same one I’ll look back at when I’m dying.

There is always a choice to be made

The Uber that came to pick me up didn’t come to the front of the building – he went to the other side of the street and stopped at the light. By the time the light turned green, a car had come up behind him and he felt inclined to make a right turn, increasing the distance I had to walk in the rain with water leaking into my shoes. Later, he told me that he was about to cancel the ride and take off because I was taking too long.

The fuck?

I had had such a great night up until this point and I was annoyed that my feet were wet because of this guy’s incompetence. He probably can’t navigate without his app and won’t dare to make a U-turn to pick me up.

I’m definitely going to give this guy a 1 star rating.

I got into the car and said good evening.

I was over there, you know.

Where?

At that building, over there. You stopped pretty far away.

Oh, what do you want me to do?

Well, you could turn around and go in front of the building. You got the address.

I was coming on this side already. I’m not going to risk getting a $300 ticket for your $5 ride. The app told me come here, so I came here. It’s not my fault.

Now I had a choice to make. I could (1) leave it at that, and we would sit in silence for the ride’s duration, or (2) try to make the ride more bearable for both of us by changing the subject and talking about something else.

We are obviously in an argument here – a tension has already built up. The second choice is harder than the first because it requires me to deflate the argument. Staying silent or inflating is easy – come up with the next jab and spit it back at him. Deflating, on the other hand, is harder because it requires me to accept what he’s saying as valid and return his hard response with a soft response. I’d be saying, “I understand your position, and I approve of it. You were OK to be far away and make me walk in the rain. I now don’t mind at all that I had to do that, so your viewpoint has the advantage over mine and I will lose the argument.”

I’d have to break the tension.

But it’s more natural to inflate. I want to win the argument. He is clearly in the wrong because <all the evidence, reasoning I could muster>, and I won’t give up until he trips up or gives up. If it gets so heated that I get kicked out of the car, then that would be a great pity story to tell!

Hahaha, being argumentative is great. Especially when it’s someone you’ll never see again. It makes me feel like a real tech bro that SF natives love to hate.

Ok it’s fine,  no problem. Is this your music or radio? I like this song.

No, no… it’s my album. They’re good. If you know these guys, Dire Staits, uh

Yea, I know them. Good song. So how do you like driving for Uber and picking up shithead tech bros?

Sultans of Swing was the only song I heard during that ride – couldn’t tell you what any of the other ones were.

It doesn’t take much to cause an inflection, but there is always a choice.

My state of mind right now would have been a lot different had I had gone with the silent option. The ride would have been long, quiet, with a tension of dislike between us.

It would not have been an enjoyable ride. It would have been a ride I wished wouldn’t have happened. It would have been an “If only…” ride. The driver would have resented me as a rider and wished he’d never gotten that ride request.

I wouldn’t have inflected and I would surely not be writing this post right now, because the ability for me to write these words was delivered during that ride.

If I hadn’t made the choice to deflate, you would not be able to read this post.

You’re welcome.

The Silent option

If I had gone with the silent option, there is another way that I still would have written this post.

That is if the driver chose to deflate in response to one of my inflations.

But, as you know, the more natural thing to do in an argument in response to an inflation is another inflation.

Deflation doesn’t come naturally – it requires you to think of another thing to say instead of the fighting words that pop into your head – and it can be difficult to do for a big ego.

But when you do deflate, the other person is left holding all of this tension and wondering why they ever held on to it in the first place – it seems just so dumb now.

And most of the time, the other person is relieved that you did the deflation – they didn’t have to do the deflation themselves!

I don’t know if the driver would have chosen to deflate if I did not. I’d like to think that he would have, but this is because we had a good chat and I think he’s a good guy.

But why wait? Why wait for someone else to deflate? Why wait for anyone’s approval?

It’s also likely that they would appreciate the deflation, but are not willing or unable to do it themselves.

It’s certainly not an alternative fact that the deflation would have absolutely occurred if I chose to do it.

Waiting for it to happen? Might never happen.

A certainty versus a possibility.

Might as well make it a certainty.

It’s a sine

Up at the top of the post, I said that every so often I feel like shit. I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, where I’m trying to get, and why I’m trying to get there – everything about it feels incredibly meaningless (-1).

And then there are nights like tonight where events occur that inevitably and easily move me back into the positive.

It’s like I’ve been holding onto all of this tension and now I wonder why because it all just seems so stupid.

But realize: there are two ways in which inflection towards positive or negative territory can be caused:

1. Conscious choice. Capability to control: 100%
2. Someone else’s conscious choice. In my control: less than 100%.

Given these odds, I think it’s an absolute certainty that you can make sure that you spend most – if not all – of your time in positive territory.

I wanted dark grey.

They didn’t have it.

The sales manager said that there was ONLY ONE 2015 manual TDI S left in California.

It was in LA and it was silver.

Not what I wanted.

He told me that if I commit and pay for the car now, they would have it shipped up overnight for pickup tomorrow.

You know the saying “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”?

There’s another saying that goes “If it sounds too complicated, it probably is.” 

I went along with it, but I didn’t believe it.

I excused myself, went outside and dialed my other local Volkswagen dealership and asked if they had the car I wanted in stock.

“You mean the super dark grey one? Yup.”

“If I come down right now and get it, could I drive off with it today?”

“Yup, no problem. I’ll bring it out so it’s ready when you get here.”

The sales manager came out to get me to sign the paperwork.

I told him that his dishonest tactics cost him a sale (what? a salesperson might lie to get you to buy? No way!) and made my way down to the other dealership just in time for closing and bought the car for $21,212 plus plus.

I drove out of the dealership that night with a feeling in my stomach – part ecstatic about my new toy (read: commuting machine) and part uncertain about the trigger I had just pulled. Why the hell did I just do that? I don’t need a new car, I already have one and it drives perfectly fine.

I was also thinking, “Haha, I showed that other dealership to be not honest.” Little did I know…

Two months later, Volkswagen got hit with the DieselGate scandal and everybody who had a TDI engine went crazy and called for blood, restitution, and lawsuits.

My dad advised that I sell the car ASAP.

“Go back to the dealer and demand that they take the car back! They lied to you about the car! You should go ask for your money back!”

I didn’t. It didn’t make sense to me to rush anything.

I had a feeling that today’s headlines would fall off the radar for everybody except TDI owners.

It did – by the new year, nobody was talking about it anymore, except the EPA and TDI owners.

If I could see the future, I would have gone and bought up as many TDIs as I could from people who now lamented their cars because a company was dishonest to make sales.

Why? Because in October 2016, the courts ruled that Volkswagen would be required to offer buybacks to all customers with affected cars, and these buyback offers were incredibly generous.

I got a buyback quote for $22,729 – more than the sticker price I paid – a deal too good to let go.

Now you might be saying –

“WOW, you had a car for a year and you’re getting MORE money back than what you paid for it? You made a profit!

You’ve basically been driving the car for free this whole time.

That’s incredibly lucky.

I should have bought a TDI last year.”

If I had a penny every time someone said that, I would have approximately $0.46.

Have I been driving this car around for free?

No. Not at all.

While I’m getting $22k back for the car that cost me $21k, the part people forget is that cars cost a lot more to own than the purchase price.

And no, it’s not just fuel.

Insurance, maintenance, commuting time – everything needs to be included if you want to truly see what you’re paying, or else you just trick yourself into thinking that you spend less than you actually do.

I wish I could live in the fantasy land where I made $1,517 on the whole ordeal, but this is reality land and things are different here.

In this post I will detail the real cost of my car to provide an answer to the retrospective question:

• Would I have been better off keeping my old – but perfectly functioning – car?

I’ll do this by  sharing exactly how much I have spent on my car, from pickup to dropoff.

I will say, I do agree that I was lucky to nab a VW TDI just before the scandal broke.

It’s an incredibly fun, powerful, spacious, and efficient car that can torque your socks off.

Yes, you should have bought a TDI last year.

At least for now – we’ll see what the approved emissions fixes do.

Initial Purchase

This is what I paid at my local VW dealership when I picked it up:

And that’s it! Let’s keep track of the stats in a neat table:

That first mile the purchase cost a whooping $536. No wonder cars lose so much value the moment you drive off the lot.

If you have an upcoming car purchase coming up, here are some wise nuggets:

Negotiating the purchase price of your new car

If you don’t know exactly what car (trim and features included) and a max price you’ll pay before you start talking price at the dealership, you’ve lost the battle.

You’re going to pay much, much more than what you would with a bit of preparation.

If you don’t do this basic preparation, you’re basically telling the salesperson “Hi, I have no idea. I’m an emotional buyer because I don’t do research and you’re welcome to take advantage of it. How much should I write on the check?”

Don’t tell him that. Instead, prepare.

It’s easy to prepare.

Take the amount of time you think it’ll take and divide by 50.

1. Know how much you want to spend. This is easy. How much money do you have? As a guide, take your liquid net worth and divide by 10. That’s the maximum amount the FS says you should spend on a car and I wholeheartedly agree. You can increase this number if you’re going to finance it and you want to keep yourself poor. I know you won’t follow this rule (I didn’t) but if you do, you’ll be much better off (I know). Don’t let financing screw with your mind. I think it’s reasonably OK to finance it if you can pay cash for it and your interest rate is below the yield of a 10-year treasury bond, otherwise known as the risk-free rate. Otherwise, you can’t afford it.
2. Know exactly what car you want to buy. This includes trim level and all options. This step is the most time consuming because it requires the most research. You’ll probably have to make a couple trips to the dealership, do some test drives, and some online research. It’s important to do step 1 first as that lets you eliminate cars that you can’t afford.
3. Find how much the car can be bought for. This part takes 10 minutes tops. Use a search tool like cars.com or autotrader.com to search all of America for the car you’ve decided to buy. Use the advanced search function. Set distance to ‘any.’ Sort by lowest to highest price. Tack 10% off the lowest price you find and use that as the starting point for your negotiations. Don’t only use sites like KBB or TrueCar for this – these sites are in bed with the dealers, not you. (TrueCar makes it easy and fast – because dealers loves easy and fast money.)

Ok, since you’ve followed these three steps, you know can be certain that the price you pay will be within this range:

Price you found in step 3 (floor) < Price you will pay < How much you want to spend (ceiling)

During negotiation, be hard. Don’t let any details change about the car, don’t let the salesperson say “This other model falls into your price range.” If you haven’t done step 3 for that other model, you’re moving into unfamiliar (read: losing) territory.

Remember, car salespeople are great at what they do. You can’t beat them at their own game. But as long as you follow these steps to prepare, you’ll pay a price that you are happy and comfortable with.

If you hit your ceiling, thank the sales people for their time and start leaving. If the salespeople don’t stop you, shake hands and thank them for their time – they can’t sell you the car at that price.

What do you do then??

Two options:

1. Repeat steps 1-3 above. Adjust your expectations and find a car that you can actually afford.
2. Go back and offer more until they accept your offer.  If you are OK with going against your own strategy.

Auto Butler

I’m calling this one out specifically because I feel so incompetent to have thrown money away so easily. I’m sure none of you are going to be as dumb as I was and buy this from the dealership. It’s specifically designed to make the dealership more money by getting you to come back to the dealership every 6 months for five years for them to do a basic wash and wax job.

But wait, there’s more! While you’re there, your car will receive a complimentary 715-point inspection. The service person will be trained to tell you that your car needs some stuff replaced without it actually needing that stuff replaced. You’ll probably accept because, hey, they know these cars! So they charge you to ‘re-place’ the part – take it out, put the same part back in.

But it’ll keep my car protected because their wax machine is magic and applies wax in the most efficient and deep fashion.

No, it doesn’t. Go to your local car wash place and pay $100 for a wash and wax every so often. It’s the same thing, if not better. Or, buy what you need to wash and wax your car yourself. Why would you spend so much on a depreciating liability?

But I want the comfort and security of taking my car to the dealership. They know what they’re doing and it’ll protect my car for the long run.

The dealership loves you for thinking like this.

That gross profit is just the beginning.

Go poke around on their site if you’re curious: autobutler.com; click the button on the right to log in to the dealer portal; enter ‘000000’ as the dealer ID. They don’t even try to hide their business model from you.

Other upsells – Extended maintenance contracts, ding protection, wheel protection, etc

These are basically the same as Auto Butler.

They’re designed to make the dealership more money.

They’re not designed to help you save money.

When you’re sitting in the finance manager’s office, you’ll be told this is the only chance you’ll have to get these great offers. That’s not true. You don’t have to decide right away. You can buy them at a later time.

These upsells – just like the car – are negotiable. The list price is too damn high. Just take a look at the Auto Butler program I bought. It’s MSRP is $695 and I got suckered into flushing $1295! I didn’t even think to think that I could negotiate these upsells. It’s a bit harder to do research beforehand on these though, so you should:

Ask for the contracts for anything that you’re interested in. The text on them is really tiny and faint so take your time reading through them. Read everything first before you make a decision. If you decide you want to purchase one, make sure you understand how, and if, you can cancel when you come back to your senses.

Shop around. You don’t have to purchase the contract from the same dealer either. There are many companies offering the same service and they will compete for your business.

Finally, remember that you’re buying additional protection for a depreciating liability. If you decide to purchase an upsell, seriously think about what value it’ll add to your car.

You might think that you’re protecting the resale value in case you decide to sell the car later. But it’s more likely that you’ll be able to pay someone a one-time fee to bring your car up to your resale standard that’s much, much lower than the upfront price you’d pay for these contracts.

Initial Purchase → 10k Oil Change

Here’s what the my car cost up till the first oil change:

There’s nothing too interesting here, but the costs are adding up quickly.

The first thing I did after purchasing the $2,702 extended maintenance contract was to cancel the $2,702 extended maintenance contract.

I also paid down a large chunk of my loan. I’m not sure why I did this. I had cash sitting aroundcash sitting around and I hadn’t a better idea of what to do with it.

At this point, I had barely driven 10k miles, my TCO is just about to top $25k. If I had not paid such a large chunk of my loan, this period’s cost would have been closer to $1000. But at least I’m not paying interest on that amount anymore!

Adding the data to the table:

Blackstone Oil Analysis

I’m not affiliated with BlackStone. They’re not paying me to talk about them. They don’t even know I’m writing this. I think they have a good service to offer if you want to keep track of how your car is doing.

Sending your oil to BlackStone for analysis is like getting a blood test done for your car. They check for all kinds of metals, contaminants, additives and other things that collect in your car’s engine oil – it could be a useful tool for detecting problems early if some values are way off. They compare your numbers against the numbers of others who have the same car.

If you’re interested in extending the maintenance window like I was, they’ll provide you guidance there as well.

This is my first report.

Their website: http://www.blatofckstone-labs.com/

10k service → 20k service

Hold on, this one is going to be a bit longer:

At this point I have had my car for a little over a year. It’s fully paid off with no major problems or repairs. And it’s cost me $33k.

Hey, at least my cost per mile is pretty low. Now it only costs $36 to drive to work!

Get your city to pay you for their negligence and corruption

Driving home one night, I drove my car over an unmarked pothole in the middle of the road and heard the unsettling CLUNK that was the wheel making contact with the road. I got out and observed:

Not a pretty sight.

I now had to get this tire replaced because I care about my safety.

I shopped around at a few tire change shops and got a few quotes (lucky me). I ended up getting the new tire at Costco since they were the cheapest option that
I found.

When I was paying, the mechanic told me I should file a claim with the city to get reimbursed for the damage. A buddy of his had hit a pothole just like me and filed a claim – the city sent him a check for the amount of the damage.

I thanked him, told him I’d look into it.

I was really thinking that this is another thing that San Francisco, a big city with millions of potholes that never get fixed, would make so time consuming and tedious that anyone who started the process would give up before they got their money. Why would they make it easy? SFMTA gives out bogus tickets all the time and people just pay them because they don’t want to deal with the hassle of taking time off of work to go fight their case.

Turns out it was way easier than I thought.

Here’s what you do to file a claim in San Francisco:

1. Go to this website to download the claim form: sfcityattorney.org/claims/
2. Read and follow the instructions on the claim form. For property damage, you’ll need to include two repair estimates in addition to the actual invoice. You should inlude pictures and any other documentation that supports your claim. Keep in mind that the city is going to try to find a technicality or an error you made to get out of paying, so make sure you follow all the instructions exactly. If your case is super compelling but you forget to include a required, but seemingly irrelevant detail, your claim will be denied.
3. Send your paperwork in to the address on the claim form.
4. Don’t feel bad. Think of it as a tax on your city’s negligence and corruption.

If your claim is accepted, you’ll get your reimbursement. My check came within a month.

Here’s what you do to file a claim in your city:

1. Go to this website.
2. Figure it out.

20k service → Selling car to VW

The last time I drove this car – the drive to the dealership to accept the buyback offer – it was pretty easy. Completely different from the feeling I had when I first drove the car out of the dealer parking lot. I thought I would feel quite sad about saying goodbye, but I didn’t. I had already come to terms with never seeing it again.

The Golf had served it’s purpose in my life. Lots of good times, hard times, joy, frustration, near-death experiences, scared passengers, carsick passengers, awe-filled passengers, and dashcam footage had made the experience something that I would miss.

But there wasn’t anything compelling me to keep the Golf. I had left my job so I didn’t have a commute anymore. My next job would not require a driving commute. Thinking about maintaining it, moving it to avoid parking tickets, and the $4600 I spent in OpEx alone in 2016 didn’t help the Golf’s cause at all.

Golfen had been a great car that served me well.

When I signed the paperwork that sold him to VW, I took a final look at him, gave him a thumbs up, then walked away without looking back.

The sidewalk I went down was a dead end. I ran across the street to the other sidewalk before oncoming on-ramp traffic because I didn’t want to walk back to where he was parked and look foolish.

In a few years I’ll pull a CarFax report on the VIN to see what he’s been up to.

Not bad! This pushed my TCO down to $8,278

Well, I cheated. I included the buyback amount, and the money I made driving for Uber, and the rental income from Turo, and the $1000 credit I got because of VW’s goodwill package.

Had I not included income figures and kept the car, the table would look like this –

– making OpEx for this period align more closely with the other periods (keep in mind that the first and second service intervals included large loan payments) and gives a better understanding of how much the car would have cost if I still had it.

I bought this car for $21k plus taxes, fees, and a bunch of unnecessary upsells.

$21k was the number that stuck in my head of how much the car cost.
The OpEx that I had accounted for was fuel. But this car easily gets 40 MPG so it’s not going to be much.

I basically ‘forgot’ about everything else (insurance, maintenance, general upkeep, tickets, etc) because I ultimately made an emotional decision. I WANTED this car, so the money fell out of my wallet.

Had I kept my old car that got 18 MPG, I would have happily been driving around at less than 22¢/mile today.

Compare that to the 28¢/mile I finished at with my new car even after buyback, Uber income, Turo income, and the Goodwill package.

I would have spent about $6,600 to this day on my old car, as opposed to $8,278 with the new car. $2,000 in savings doesn’t seem like much to trade for a wonderful driving experience, but there’s a huge opportunity cost in tying up $33,000 in a car.

An opportunity cost I figure to be at least $6,000. That’s a lot for me at this point in my life.

Yup, I would have been quite a bit ahead.

But here’s the funniest part: had I known that a $21k car would end up causing over $15k in ‘other costs’ within two years, I still would have bought the car.

Why?

Because I wanted it.

My old car was running great. I spoke to the person I sold it to just last week – it’s still going strong with over 302,000 miles and counting.

Why did I buy a new car?

Because I wanted something new.

I wanted to feel like a good American and throw away my disposable income.

I wanted to drive into the parking lot at work with a shiny new toy and impress people with the fantastic torque.

Ah, there’s Captain Hindsight flying overhead again.

Estimating the TCO for your new car

So, then the question is, if you’re going to buy a car, how do you know in advance how much it’ll cost you.

You don’t.

Just kidding. Turns out you can get estimates from all over the place.

I went and pulled the 5-year cost breakdown of my car from Edmunds.com for comparison. Their estimates seem to be pretty on par with what I just detailed.

Take a look:

Some differences:

I did not include depreciation in my calculations.

Edmunds does. It’s the biggest cost in year 1 for a new car.

I fully paid off the loan on my car early in year 2.

Edmunds assumes that you finance $18k with $0 down because you want to pay an extra $2,084 for your car.

Being a 23 year old male living in San Francisco, I’m statistically more likely to get into an accident than anyone else, so my insurance costs more.

Edmunds assumes you’re an average person whose insurance is subsidized by 23 year olds.

Accounting for the differences, their estimates come surprisingly close.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that you can trust these numbers.

It’s almost like people have figured this out already, and you can learn from them. What a concept! If only I had known…

My next commuter

TCO coming soon.

The gf I were talking about hindsight the other day.

How if we knew what we now know at the beginning of college and had the same goals back then, we would be much closer to achieving them.

For example, had I consulted Captain Foresight at the beginning of college, my net worth would probably be 20-100% greater than what it is currently.

Two things:

1. Hindsight is 20/20.
2. Nothing is gained from kicking yourself for a past mistake more than once. Something is gained in learning from them.

The best time to start saving money and investing wisely was 7 years ago.

The second best time is now.

The third best time is tomorrow (but when does tomorrow ever come?)

I remember is getting a stack of prepaid gift cards for my 18th birthday, opening up Amazon multiple times a day in the next few weeks and spending all of it – and more when I ran out – on things to “prepare for college.”

I bought all kinds of things – speakers, a fan…

That’s all I can remember right now. I must have blown something like $500 in gift cards and that’s all I can remember.

Hmm.

There must be an negative correlation with buying things and long-term happiness.

If I can’t remember what all I bought seven short years later, those purchases must be incredibly meaningless.

So, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down Amazon-purchase-history lane.

I’m curious to see if I can recall why I purchased the things that I did.

But the most important question: where the hell are these things today?

Take a look at the scroll bar on your browser. See how tiny that rectangle is?

This is going to be a long post. We’re about to go through every single item I’ve ever purchased on Amazon.

Every.

Single.

Item.

If you’re hesitant to read through it all, maybe Captain Hindsight will help you out.

Preparing for College: 2009-2010

The first time I set foot in the Amazon was late 2009.

I was still in high school, doing homework and finishing up college apps in between playing a whole lot of Runescape, MapleStory, and CS1.6.

I wasn’t so sure about the whole college thing.

Not like that though – I was sure that I was going to college – that was a given. The only other option was to somehow get on Forbes 30-under-30 list by some miracle.

I was nervous.

I was afraid of what people would think of me. I was afraid I’d not find any friends.

I was afraid that people would see that I was afraid – and that would make me look weak.

But it was something that was going to happen anyway.

So what did I have to worry about at the time?

I just kept playing games, writing apps, doing homework – waiting for time to force me to make moves.

In the meantime, I had heard of this internet place where you can buy things and they show up at your door a few days later.

I also had pieces of plastic which made the act of purchasing things online incredible easy.

Might as well start buying some cool items. Maybe if I had cool things, people would like me more in college…

Why did I buy it?

I had borrowed this book from my mom earlier and I wanted my own copy of it.

It was the first book I read that got me started in trap investigation. DDBS exists because of this book.

Where is it now?

Couldn’t say exactly. I probably gave it to someone I thought would want to know about the trap.

Why did I buy it?

I must have wanted headphones for my iPod. Two of them.

Where is it now?

They probably broke. Or got lost.

These things are magical devices!

They let you play your digital music on your car’s older-technology stereo system.

What 17 year old driving his dad’s car around wouldn’t want to bump the coolest tunes?

More books because I wanted to learn more about the health trap.

I bought the same book again, so I probably did give the other book away.

Not sure where these all are now.

I bought this for my sister so she could play emulated N64 games when I went to college and brought the N64 with me.

Where is it now?

Recently used it to play emulated N64 games with the gf.

I don’t remember ever playing this.

I remember Mario Kart DS though. That game was fun. It made my poops last hours at a time.

I knew I would need to have rubber bands to pack things for college.

The bag is still with me – I’ve used less than half of the rubber bands.

But now I call them wallets.

The amount is $0.00 because I used birthday gift card balance to pay for it.

Had to make sure that I could get a wired internet connection in my dorm room.

Wireless is for casuals.

Where is it? No idea.

A place to store my files!

I gave this to a friend when I was giving her some files in 2013.

Much needed for college packing.

I didn’t use all of the tape on the roll, but I have since purchased other rolls of duct tape.

Ah, yes.

These items were much needed for college.

You could call them the

College Essentials:

Splitter – in case your roommate also wants a wired connection and there is only one Ethernet port in the room. Check with your university to see what’s included in room and board!

Don’t remember if I used it.

Alarm clock – to wake up early for those 8AM classes and the gym.

I don’t know if I used it, but I did carry it around for three moves before coming to my senses.

Superglue – in case something breaks.

I think I used it once.

Rubber bands – you never know where you’ll need to use a rubber band to pack your things for college.

The ones I bought earlier were the thick ones. I wanted regular-sizes ones. Still have these on the same shelf as the other ones.

Fan – I heard it got hot where I was going.

Used it for the first year then I don’t know where it went.

Speakers – To blast cool tunes!

Still have these under my desk. These were actually pretty good speakers. A lot of Hardstyle came through them.

I needed this to store all the files I would have in college. You know – word documents, PDFs, those things.

I took it out of it’s casing and kept the hard drive. Still have it.

Had to get it to protect my laptop from being stolen.

Didn’t use it after a few months – too cumbersome.

It’s gone. Don’t know where.

I got this to go to the gym.

It’s not with me any more – it got pretty worn out from going to the gym with me so often.

To sharpen my knives.

I still have this – use it to sharpen my kitchen knives which I’ll show you shortly.

I wanted to protect my investment Got this sleek, sexy laptop sleeve for the best protection.

The other one sucked. This one much better.

Kept it throughout the life of my college laptop, then gave it to my mom.

UPDATE: Mom and I were tidying and we put it in the donation bag.

I needed something to sharpen, hence this purchase.

Gone now. Tossed it in a tidying session.

I had become a fan of POV videos and wanted to make my own.

I liked to bike really fast and pass everybody so I got this to record my speed runs.

I tried it out a couple times, was unsatisfied with the video quality that I got, and returned it.

Bought on a friend’s recommendation.

Amazing bike lock. Lasted 4 years easily.

I still have this somewhere, but I’m not quite sure where it is.

Thought this might make it easier to film my biking POV videos. Video quality was worse.

Returned.

Our floor had a masquerade ball. I bought this for that.

I kept it around a few years time for Halloweens and other occasions. It’s gone now.

There you have it. The first two years of Amazon was pretty light.

Stats for this period:

Introduction to Consumerism: The college years

Over the next four years I would go on to buy one shit ton of things on Amazon.

Shit ton
/SHit tən/
noun
A unit of 184 items typically valued at $4362.

Why did I buy it?

Portable bike pump for my bike, in case I ever needed to pump it while out and about. It did come in handy a handful of times.

The jeans? I was planning to attend Sensation White soon. You’re only allowed to wear white, so I had to get these white jeans.

Where are they now?

The bike pump? No idea. The jeans were donated a few years later.

I was really into the Ass Creed series. I played them all through till the end. Never tried for 100% completion though, except the first game, which was the most tedious one.

Who said all professors made you buy expensive books?

I started learning the Dvorak keyboard to increase typing efficiency and reduce finger strain.

It worked!

I bought these to put on my laptop keys in the Dvorak layout.

I scraped them off as I learned the keyboard.

Portal 2 PS3 came with a Steam CD Key. I played it on Steam.

Great game.

I kept it around until 2016 then sold it on Craigslist for $5.

Magnets! How do they work?

They were for a school project, I swear.

I still have the above magnets, they stuck around all these years.

So that I could have something to sharpen on the stone I bought earlier.

I bought another.

Felt like I should keep this on the down-low.

Thought it might throw up some red flags if people knew I was buying up all these shitty knives.

Phew, nobody called me out.

All these knives are now gone.

I was going to New York for a summer internship, so I purchased this bag to carry my things.

The straps fell apart eventually so I threw it out.

So cheap! This was a Slickdeals find.

Gift for somebody at the Company I interned with.

She was a vegetarian thinking about going vegan, so I gave her this book.

Today she is a pescatarian – must have found out that you can’t last as a vegan.

The book? She probably didn’t read it.

Another gift for someone at the Company.

He liked to each chicken wings and legs for lunch while working, but his fingers would get all greasy prohibiting him from using the keyboard at the same time.

Uffe Ravnskov, who wrote the first book I purchased on Amazon, wrote another.

So cheap!

I bought a bunch more. I would use one until it broke then take a new one out of the shipping bag.

I still have the bag, there are 6 left.

I thought it would be a good idea to have a second laptop charger.

This one I would forget in a hotel room in two years.

Bathroom art!

Bought to carry laundry. Incredibly useful. Just about the size of one standard load.

I still have and use these.

Another school book. Learning doesn’t have to be expensive.

Dang, learning is expensive.

I sold this book back to Amazon after graduating for less than $100.

Communal living area art!

I still have this. It’s rolled up in the cardboard tube it came in.

Another gift for someone at the Company. We had talked about Ikea and I said I would send him this book.

I’m going to Sensation soon, remember?

This is gone. Donated.

Never did go to Sensation.

Don’t remember the exact reason for this, but somebody had a tiny desk calculator for quick calculations.

I had to have one.

I got rid of it in 2016 when I tidied miscellaneous items.

This was the first rebate I ever sent in.

It was a $10 rebate for a $7 Item. $3 MM!

Just before Thanksgiving.

Methinks I couldn’t find the one I had. Didn’t want to be without music on the long drive home.

To talk to my roommates in other rooms.

They were cheap.

Don’t think I had immediate need for them.

Black Friday Lightning deal!

$0! Great deal!

Hmm…

I think I got similar ones before.

The sharpener was useful. Kept it until I lost it.

The cable? Don’t know. Don’t think I ever used it.

It was cool to drive around 1970s San Francisco..

The highest-quality knife I bought on Amazon to date.

No idea where it is.

Hmm…

Hmmmmm…

Two wasn’t enough. Needed more.

Secret santa gag gifts. Didn’t end up being able to go so these went into my storage bin until I threw them out.

Oof.

Another one.

Great text on E&M that we used for class.

My knife-buying phase came back.

Also I got threadlocker – must have been screwing around.

These knives are now my kitchen knives.

For Top Ramen.

This item looked cool. I got into them because they were cool and old-fashioned.

I ended up taking it apart for a design class, rendering it unusable.

I did buy a rivet gun later to try to put it back together.

For going to the gym.

It’s old fashioned!

At one point someone told me I might be lactose intolerant.

I wasn’t.

I figured out the story behind pasteurized milk, why we drink it, the problems it causes, and why we are afraid of raw milk.

I wanted to learn more.

I’ll have to write a post about this trap.

???

Affordable textbooks!

Old fashioned, remember?

I never needed to refill a wick or a flint.

The rivets that came with it ended up being too big to fit in the Zippo.

The Zippo remained unfixed – still kept it in my drawer though.

Bought the Chinese 1 textbook before I went to China for the summer to try to preemptively learn some.

We had projects to build stuff out of foam board.

Materials for this project and a sketch pad.

It would have been simpler to just buy this instead of the rivet gun.

Book for class.

In 2016, Salvation Army got them.

You got me.

No clue.

Can’t remember the purpose.

It’s gone too.

For the apartment.

For the apartment.

For the apartment.

The Leatherman looked cool and was really tiny. So tiny that I would end up losing this one and the others I would eventually buy.

Cat got fleas. Still have the comb. It was tidied into the ‘cat items’ section when I tidied miscellaneous items.

I bought a fixed-gear bike for $300.

I did a whole bunch of research online and decided to put front brakes on it for safety.

So I bought a rear brake.

Then got some other accessories.

Ah, yes, this one is a front brake.

The rear brake is gone. I tried to sell it – didn’t get any bites. I discarded it after about two years of “I’m keeping it because I’m going to sell it soon.”

The other one sucked.

This one was much better – it had a bandwidth-limiting feature.

For when I got a flat.

Did you know that bike tires don’t actually hold air? Tubes do.

If you get a flat, you can replace the tube and keep the tire!

More.

This one didn’t fit on my handlebars.

Kept it around thinking I’d sell it eventually.

I didn’t.

Very useful.

Now gone.

Because of the shiny new-to-me bike, I got back the idea that I should produce POV biking videos.

In line with the others, I returned this one.

Kept the memory card though.

This was a gift. The person I got it for wanted to make cat videos.

She had an iPhone though, would have been better to just use that.

These things really are quite useless.

These liners are great. There are so many that you won’t finish a box before you move.

Cat must food.

Have to clean the fur from my clothes.

These things were tiny. Was surprised when I got them, thought they were going to be normal-sized.

Hey, you can never have too many of these right?

Another attempt at the POV biking videos.

Didn’t return this one though – wasn’t expensive enough in my mind.

Hey, you can never have too many of these right?

Winter is rainy season in California.

The umbrella was really solid. Had it until just last month when we tidied the garage, then oil spilled on it.

I was about to make the long car trip back to college after winter break, had to have music.

Did I buy one before? I can’t remember, or find it…

Roommate built a computer. He used the 2-day free shipping Amazon Prime feature my account had.

After my internship with the Company, I wanted to become a master options trader.

I made a bit of money and lost a whole lot more. I quit doing that.

Good book though.

I wanted to protect my investment.

Here we go again.

I’m getting a bit bored writing this post.

Aren’t you?

There’s no fun in writing about something we’ve already seen.

The fun in this must be figuring out what long car ride I needed it for this time.

Something new!

A gift!

I took Chinese 2.

I spent an absurd amount of time deciding on a desk lamp.

I chose this one.

I returned this after I got it because it wasn’t that great.

And I found a cheaper one that does the same thing.

It’s still sitting on my desk. Great lamp!

Chemical warfare against the fleas.

Textbook and notebooks.

I specifically got those notebooks because they were blank – I hated taking notes on lined paper.

Their build quality was horrible. I wouldn’t recommend them.

For the apartment. We had to get organizized.

What drove this purchase was the drug test kit.

Amazon had introduced the concept of ‘Add-on Items’ which would ship only if your order was above $25.

Seems like a great business idea because if you only needed to buy the Add-on item, you have to fill up your cart with other items until you reach at least $25.

Diamond infused leads were supposed to break less often because they were stronger.

I think they did.

An item for the cat. I still have it in the cat items shelf.

Self explanatory.

The copper rusted and turned green.

Ick.

For hosting club-like house parties.

Why? I’m not sure.

Where? I’m not sure.

Oh, I remember. It was to lock the U-Haul that I would soon get to haul my bunch of stuff back home.

Wanted to learn about Burgundy before I went there.

I got to page 10 I think.

This is now sitting under a coffee table.

New place, new trash.

Replacement for the one I lost after peeling a fruit with it.

Also got a mattress frame, but I only used it for a few months, then stored it away under my roommate’s bed.

I was building my desktop at this point. Still have the wire ties!

Wire cubes to be creative with shelving.

Because lined ones suck.

Still have it,  write some things in it every once in a while.

I think I actually had a need for it this time.

Can’t be certain, though.

Good build quality.

Now also part of the kitchen knife set.

Textbook.

Wait, is this the one I have now?

Great pencil. I still have it.

More shelving required.

From Slickdeals.

Pretty useful kit. Small bits. Still use it every once in a while.

Forgot my charger in a hotel room.

This one stopped working after a few hours of use. That’s what you get for a cheap charger, right?

For the apartment. We had to get organizized.

A gift for my sister.

I thought it was cool – you could take the ball out of the socket and it would keep giving off light.

It was funny to put this in the bathroom, haha.

A gift. The flask is huge. Too big to hide.

We put up Christmas lights. Wanted to save electricity.

Actually, I was just lazy. Electricity costs to keep a few Christmas lights on wouldn’t exceed $10.82.

Don’t know where these are now. Quite useful machines.

Built a computer for my mom. This was her keyboard.

I wonder what I did during winter break without a laptop.

This one broke too. I still hadn’t learned my lesson.

Not bad.

The analog ones were complicated to read. Got me a digital machine.

Still have it. Bought a pack of batteries for it that will last a lifetime.

Big one!

Decided on a CAD graphics card rather than one for gaming.

Figured I wouldn’t have much time for gaming for the next 6 months so I went with the CAD card.

It sped up CAD dramatically.

Must have not been the right one.

This must have been a gift, because I had read it already.

Brass is expensive.

The day I discovered these was the best day in the lives of my teeth.

For shaving my… hair.

And measuring tiny objects.

Still have the clipper. I now use it to trim beard instead of shaving with a blade. It’s way better efficient.

Brass IS expensive.

Great book. Funny book.

My rear tire was worn out from me doing so many cool sliding tricks on my fixie.

Upgraded foot straps.

Never put these on my bike.

Used these once.

You can remove a tire without this tool.

I took a wine class.

We had to bring a glass to class.

So I bought four…

If it doesn’t warm, I’ll send it back.

It warmed.

Phew.

If I had spent a lot less money in college this post would have taken much less time.

So it seems like my purchases consist of:

• Things I bought, used, still have, and currently provide value to me.
• Things I thought I would use but never did, or used once.
• Things I believe I will use in the future.
• Things I don’t remember why I bought them.
• A whole lot of non-essentials.

The vast majority of the purchases fall under the last four bullets.

Adding stats for this period:

Sticking around?

Up next we have the after-college purchases to review.

It’s going to be interesting because I would have a bunch of W2 income that I’m not quite sure what to do with.

Economics 101: disposable income

After graduating and moving back to my home city for a job, I now had a stable income stream.

Money was filling up in my checking account faster than I could spend it.

I had disposable income.

I didn’t start learning about money until late 2015, so the concept of ‘spend less than you earn’ wasn’t a thing to me.

Aside from the $50-100 I would put into my savings account every month, I would spend all the money that came in.

Money in ≤ money out.

Rent, food, car, bars, clubs, and buying stuff helped keep the inequality true.

In fact, some months I would actually transfer money from my savings into my checking because I didn’t have enough there.

In the course of the next 18 months I would blow my college record out of the water.

Let’s take a look at all the super-important shit I bought.

These devices let you put the internet in your home’s AC power supply.

You’d plug one in connected to the router, plug another one in connected to your computer and you’d get internet.

I got this because my room was far from the router and – of course – I wanted a wired connection to my desktop.

One is lost, one I have.

Not very useful to just have one.

I’d have to get another pair to get value from the one I have leftover.

Cat drugs!

Third time buying the same tiny Leatherman. I lost this one too.

My room didn’t have blinds.

Uncertain what this was for.

Certain I don’t have it anymore.

My commute from my apartment to work was a 20-mile drive that took 40 minutes to an hour.

I bought this for the few times I would be able to drive fast enough around the heavy traffic to get ticketed.

Great investment though. If it saves you from one ticket, you’ve more than made your money back.

Starting to get bored again?

Wedding gift.

A mouse that was a really slick deal.

A mouse that was a really slick deal.

Wait a minute…

One was given away and the other is now with my dad’s desktop.

I had gotten a pair of nice leather shoes during my trip to Sweden.

I wanted to take good care of them.

So of course, I went all out.

These items would ensure the longevity of my shoes.

I polished them once.

Then the shoes started leaking water because the sole wore down too much.

I have yet to wear them since then. Or take them to get repaired.

These were all the rage at work. I wanted to have some for myself to drink at home.

Tragic story – the delivery company returned them because the package started to leak.

I was heartbroken.

Bought these during my phase of buying many SSDs from Slickdeals.

I used one of them for a long time. The other three got lost.

Same phase.

Used all of them to emptiness.

Roommate ordered through my Prime for the new phone he had bought.

I would later purchase this cover (phone included) from him.

We thought we had bed bugs.

I had read that if you spread this around all over the floors of your place, the creep would walk over it and get decapitated.

Seems like it worked because we stopped getting bitten.

Or the spiders took them all out.

These need no explanation.

Sand for the cat to shit.

Roommate using my prime. He added water cooling.

When I was helping my roommate install his water cooling, I noticed that he had one of these cool hard drive swap trays.

I just had to have one.

Actually, this is the one that he had. I accidentally got the wrong one at first.

I still have both of them.

But – since my desktop is decommissioned, they are sitting on a shelf not providing much value to anybody.

Currently trying to sell them. (Where have you heard that before?)

Jesus.

What was this for? Camping?

I don’t have it anymore.

Joined Reddit’s secret santa this year.

My guy said he had always wanted to learn wood carving.

Well, here you go guy.

Surge protector. The other one I had was being used in a different physical location in my room.

I plugged one thing into this one.

Still have it – still the one same thing plugged in.

I wanted to read in bed – lighting was a challenge.

I thought these lights might solve that problem.

I did read in bed. Did not use these to read in bed.

A very slick deal, indeed.

I threw up on my carpet one very early morning.

Even after many rounds of deep cleaning, the stench persisted.

Got those incense sticks to cover the smell.

They’re now all gone.

Still have the wood oil – I use it to care for my cutting board.

Gift for my sales team.

They needed pipe.

Tried to train the cat to use the toilet. Stopped using this when it became too messy.

Still have one of the inserts.

Keeping it because I intend to retry the training.

Bought for work because we were to do a book report.

Read a few chapters in it.

Was headed to Brazil for Carnaval.

Heard it rained there.

Gone with the wind.

A gift.

Never got used. It’s sitting in my drawer now.

The self-cleaning part sold me.

Brought the gym to me.

So I could open the garage door without getting out of my car.

It’s proven pretty useful, most of the garage doors I need to open are Liftmasters.

Good buy! Still have!

I wanted to become better at my sales job.

I carried on from my POV biking videos to making dashcam videos.

This one broke within a week.

Got the non-capacitor version.

Produces great quality and sits still very discreetly in my car.

It’s a great thing to have for insurance purposes – and for all the stupid things people with cars do.

This is starting to piss me off.

Why did I need so many mice?

After my SSD-buying craze and HDD-gathering phase this seemed like a good tool to have.

The envelopes did not fit 8.5×11 papers unless folded smaller.

Didn’t use many of them.

The memory cards now had a clear purpose – saving dashcam videos.

What about all the other memory cards I had bought? 

Oh, that’s right, technology changes pretty quickly. Dang.

For better cable management for hardwiring the dashcam into the car.

Controller for the console to play games.

Gifts.

To hardwire the dashcam.

For every pack of these I bought, I only would use one fuse.

It would have been much cheaper to go to O’Reilley’s and buy the single fuse that I actually needed.

The day I discovered these was the best day ever for my teeth.

Gift.

I bought a new car!

The 2015 model had this dumb MEDIA interface. My car came with the iPhone adapter, I had to get the USB one.

I never used it – too glitchy. But I didn’t return it. It’s still with me on my shelf.

I wanted to protect my investment.

Fastly charging my phone was important.

Dashcam-reassignment parts.

If you have these on your mirror, you’re a failure.

Same.

Fastly charging my phone in my car was important.

Plus, it was a slick deal.

Food on demand.

Signed up to drive for Lyft, I thought I’d get better ratings if I could offer my riders a charging cable.

I didn’t have iPhone cables, thus these.

Also a slick deal.

Decided to tint my windows, needed a heat gun.

Soldering Iron was used for hardwiring the dashcam.

Another gift. I installed dashcams in a couple of my friend’s cars.

Again with the shitty chargers.

Was tired of the plastic and wooden hangers that were all over the place and took up so much space in my closet.

Protect the investment.

My cat had started to get black spots on his gums, thought it might have to do with his dental hygiene.

The vet later told me it was freckles and it was nothing to worry about.

Another dashcam as a gift.

I had lost my previous pair of sunglasses, so I got another.

My car had a scratch on it when I bought it.

The dealership had promised that they would fix it but never did.

I got this while being mad at the dealership.

It’s sitting on a shelf unused.

Wait, these are the cable ties I still have.

Great read.

If you want to get into investing in your day-to-day, read this book first.

I had been learning about money and financial independence for some time at this point.

Downgrading my phone was a step towards the goal I would write for myself for 2016.

Low engine oil light came on.

Topped up to protect the investment.

More to protect the investment.

Yes, this was for a dashcam (probably).

You’re still here?

This is barely fun anymore.

Looking at all the unnecessary shit I’ve bought is seriously depressing.

Adding stats for this period:

Holy crap, I bought more than one item a week for two years.

The Amazon loses its allure

In 2016, things changed.

My monthly Amazon purchase rate would decline roughly 70% from the past 18 months.

But why?

I decided to do a couple things in 2016 that would free me from a financial trap I was heading into.

One of those was to set a spending forecast.

I did this because I was planning on leaving my job at the end of the year, and I needed to build FU Money.

Also, I felt the need to prove to myself that I can set and achieve a realistic goal.

I was tired of making vague new year’s resolutions that I’d never accomplish.

Get in shape.

Eat better.

Lose weight.

Travel more.

Yea, sure I would.

I decided to set one solid goal for the year.

Only one.

If I could do it, I would prove to myself that I could follow through on what I wanted to do if I really wanted to do it.

I had read a lot of blogs of people who had achieved financial independence and I knew that I wanted to live that life.

I didn’t want to go the standard route – work work work, retire at 60, 70, or 80, then die wishing I had done more with my life.

I didn’t want to be a corporate slave.

After all, going the standard route isn’t challenging.

Work for financial independence at 60, 70, or 80?

That’s easy.

Early? early?

That’s going to be a super challenging 10 years.

Before this, I was using handheld brushes, mostly those I got from airplane care packages.

One of the principles I adopted was to spend heavily in areas that mattered – in this case it was my dental health.

I haven’t yet used any of the replacement brush heads.

Took part in helping a friend fix a car.

The deal was that my time spent on the repair would be free, but all tools and parts would be on him.

I don’t remember ever using these – they may have been a purchase for my roommate through my prime.

I rotated the tires on my car myself.

The first time took roughly two hours – the same amount of time it would have taken to go to a shop AND go to the gym to get the same amount of exercise.

Additional plus – I acquired a tool for less than the cost of paying the shop to do it.

A storage container for games.

Haven’t given the cat a bath yet.

My toolset didn’t have this size bit.

I wonder how I managed to order this Add-on Item by itself.

Gift.

For the gift.

Gift.

Gift.

Ordered this when I caught one little flea roaming around my cat’s head.

Applied promptly.

I was getting serious eye strain from looking at screens all day.

Who knew the solution would be as simple as blue-light blocking glasses?

Gift, and a book that I saw at the book store that I wanted.

Gift.

That was quick.

Super quick.

The nature of my orders changed greatly in 2016.

I bought a mere $431 worth of stuff in 20 items, of which $207 were gift purchases.

I spent only $224 on myself – including the torque wrench which was expensed and the tire gauge that saved me a trip to the tire rotation shop.

Although my spending decreased pretty dramatically, the craziest things happened:

• 2016 was a great year, the best year of my life – so far.
• I found other things that made me happy that didn’t involve checking out.

You don’t need to buy things to be happy.

But spending feels really good.

It feels good to be able to say “I can buy this. I’m buying it because I have the money to do so. I want this item. I’ll be fine anyway.”

I got that feeling almost every time I bought something on Amazon.

Make no mistake about it, spending feels really good. 

Our society encourages spending – big new TVs, brand new cars with great new features, the latest and greatest smartphone, shiny watches – almost to the point where we think of it as a necessity.

“Go on! Spend a bit! Splurge maybe! Enjoy life!”

Just do a quick Google search on ‘spend on yourself’ and you’ll find countless articles that will tell you why you should spend, what you should buy, when you should do it, and how to justify your spending.

You’re under 30, have no dependents, your financial obligations are minimal, you have my whole life ahead of you, you’re only young once. You should be spending. So enjoy! Go buy the new iPhone. And this 4k IPS 60″ TV. And this fancy luxury car for your long commute. And this gold-plated watch. And another pair of shoes and shirts and sweaters and this and that and this…”

To me, following that advice is throwing your time away.

Not your money. Your time – the time that you spend making the money you use to buy things.

You can recover money – you can never recover time.

None of the stuff I bought to prepare for college made people like me more.

None of the stuff I bought in college gave me happiness.

None of the stuff I bought with my disposable income made me feel better about my life.

In fact, most of those items have become a burden because I’ve been hauling them around and storing them every time I move. Every once in a while I find one of those items I bought long ago in a box way back in the closet, still in the original packaging. I never even used the thing!

Strangely, I feel as if I would have been happier if I hadn’t made so many purchases because I didn’t really want them.

My motivation to buy the item usually had nothing to do with the item itself.

It wasn’t that the item was good quality, had practical value, would improve my quality of life – No.

I bought for emotional reasons.

Funny how hindsight works, no?

I still have a lot of junk lying around that’s hard for me to get rid of.

Because it’s sentimental.

Because I think I’ll use it in the future.

Because I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I remember the circumstances around which I obtained it.

But now, I have a compelling urge inside of me to simplify my life, and I know that there are lasting sources of happiness aside from buying material goods, so I’ll find the strength to let go of the stuff that’s literally hanging onto me.

Now I need to be very clear: I’m not saying that you shouldn’t buy anything.

YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY BUY THINGS.

I’m also not saying that you should  turn into some weird frugal freak who’ll buy scratchy toilet paper over the way better feeling soft ones.

YOU SHOULD SPLURGE ON THE THINGS THAT YOU WANT.

Why?

Because when you figure out that your happiness has nothing to do with the act of purchasing something, you’ll find that the things you buy actually will increase your happiness.

It’s funny how that works.

You’ll be able to see clearly and make decisions to buy things that will improve your life, not just make you feel good for a few minutes.

You’ll buy things that make you feel good as long as you have the item. Weeks, months, years – however long it lasts.

The best part is – you won’t feel bad about spending money anymore.

No more buyer’s remorse.

For  me, I’m sure 2017 is going to be an even easier year to write about than this year – and I think I’ll remember clearly why I bought what I did.

Adding stats for this period:

I’ve added columns for time spent to fund my purchases.

I used the on-paper hourly rate of my first job.

Looking at it this way provides more perspective – it’s also way more scary.

During the height of my habitual spending period, I would spend nearly an entire work day each month to fund just my Amazon activity.

Take note, these hour figures are not yet accurate. They don’t account for taxes and other work-related overhead. They should be much higher in practice. I will updated once I figure out how much I actually made at my job.

2017: AMZN is overvalued

Update coming Jan 2018.

What your company is best known for is providing a much needed service to the public

Almost everybody has used this service at least once in their lives

Some use it many times a year

Some would say their lives depend on it

Your continued success is essentially guaranteed because nobody has been able to provide the same service

It’s a complicated, R&D-intensive, and highly accurate service

Only you have been able to perfect it

You’re always at the cutting-edge due to the work of the research universities that provide supporting research

You have patented the hell out of everything

But recently, you’ve heard word of a startup that claims to be able to provide the same service at a fraction of the price

Their marketing attributes the high price of the service your company provides to a lack of competition and complacency – that is, you’re not making an effort to simplify and reduce prices because you don’t have to

Their mission is to make the service accessible and affordable to everyone through improved technology, simplified processes, and cutting edge research

Their customer base is growing, they have made strategic partnerships to grow, they have a great deal of support from the community

Investors have taken note of the tremendous market opportunity. The company now doesn’t even have to pitch VCs – they came knocking

Their media presence is picking up and more and more people are jumping on their service because of it

Wall Street is constantly asking when the company will IPO so investors can get in on the action

Experts are estimating that this company will truly transform the industry, saving hundreds of billions of dollars over ten years

Here’s the problem:

Your company is being disrupted

Those savings are coming out of your pocket

Your customers are going to save hundreds of billions of dollars over ten years

Shit. You need to do something about this

You could try to compete on price until they go out of business. You would only have to price-match in the areas they currently have market share

No – too obvious that you’re trying to bankrupt them, just like how the Robber Barons would undercut prices when competition appeared and severely overcharge when they had a monopoly. There are rules against that

You could purchase the company and redefine their business plan

Not a bad idea. A few billion dollars today to keep status quo of several hundreds coming in for ten years is well worth it

You draft a letter to the company’s owner and shoot it off, hoping for an excited response

Negative. The company does not want to sacrifice autonomy. A buyout from the disrupted company would create serious conflicts of interest

Plus, it must be built without rushing so it does not scale incorrectly and fall apart

The technology still has a long, long way to go

To them, slow and steady wins the race

Dang, you can’t buy it. Throwing money at this problem isn’t going to make it go away

What should you do? If this gets as big as expected, it will mean the end for you

Your finance advisors have informed you that cutting expenses and optimizing processes in order to compete on price will take years, but it may not be enough at the end of the day

What about developing the same technology?

Engineering says “it can be done, but we have to start from scratch. It’s fundamentally different from our service. Their service was designed with cost savings and efficiency as a top priority

“They are also 7-10 R&D years ahead of us. We could probably accomplish the same in three or four as we can allocate more resources to it, depending on if we can replicate their IP”

Three years is too long. At the rate their service is growing, you’re done no matter what you try to do

You rack your brain every day and call upon your brain trust often, trying to come up with a viable plan

Everybody is covering them and people are starting to take notice

The question on Wall Street’s mind: how are the current industry giants going to react? Could this be the end for them? Time to sell?

Could this be the end for you?

What would you do?

One early morning after a night of no sleep, you get a phone call from one of your board members

Good fucking morning Ron

“We’ve found a solution. Don’t worry about anything”

What do you mean?

“They’re not for real. I’ll explain everything later. Turn on the TV”

You flip to the national news station

A big article was just published calling into question the accuracy of your competitor’s service

It’s blowing up on every channel

Industry experts are speaking up and voicing their concerns that the startup has been publishing fraudulent statistics to sell their service and have made false, baseless claims

Apparently, they have been cheating, not going through the proper channels, telling lies

Expert opinion is that it’s really just too good to be true – it’s impossible to do what they’re doing the way they’re doing it at such a low cost

As the months go by, they keep getting slammed. Hundreds of articles are published that outline their wrongdoings

Negative sentiment soars

Eventually, nobody takes them seriously

They are forced by regulation to change the service in a way that removes their competitive advantage

They’ve become a huge laughing stock

Of course, the company doesn’t give up just like that. It responds to all the negative sentiment that it’s getting, welcoming the comparison of competing services

But nothing helps. For every rebuttal, a new expert comes forward explaining why there’s nothing there

Finally, their strategic alliances is cut short, and they cannot make sales because of it

Holy hell!

All this time you thought that you were done for, but they were just a ticking time bomb all along! It’s like that shitty movie with Tom Cruise where the aliens all die from bacterial infection after some time

All you had to do was wait!

But you knew all along in your mind that it couldn’t be done so inexpensively and quickly

You’ve been in this business too long – you know better

You knew it must have been a hoax all along

It seems that your problem has been solved, and you didn’t even have to do anything

After the whole thing settles down, you have a board celebration

You chat with Ron again about the morning he called

I couldn’t believe it myself. All this time we thought we were done for, when all along they were just a busted unicorn

Haha, yea buddy it feels great

Too bad for them though. If what they claimed was true, it would have really saved people a lot of money

Yea, the wrong people though. I’d probably join their board instead

Lol, fuck you Ron

Hahaha, I did the calculation. This board is better. Makes more. It made more sense to shut them down instead

You bastard. Wait, what?

Hm?

What do you mean?

What?

What do you mean shut down? They fucked up

…

Do you seriously think they brought themselves down just like that? 

Yes? The news was all over it

You think all that messaging happened on its own? You give them too much credit

What are you talking about? Nothing we came up with had a chance, it would have taken years. It was just a matter of time before we would have been fucked

Jesus, I thought you knew. I thought someone would have told you by now, or you would have put the pieces together…

Anyway, you’re welcome

Thanks…

You got it buddy. Catch you later.

• Eliminating the competition solves many business problems

Continue to the next story.

It is help you identify the invisible scripts in your life and deviate from them for the better.

So, if this had been a story it would have been about an organization launching a massive undertaking to align views.

Their success would result in Unbreakable Groupthink.

And, as we will see, this is disastrous.

But why?

Why would anyone want to create a way of thinking? What’s the incentive?

Just remember the stories you have heard here.

Remember especially the story of the little salesman that could, whose panels were always the best in the world.

• Subscribe to DDBS.

Continue to the next story.

Let’s call it Product Q.

It’s a staple that has become an absolute necessity and is generally accepted to be a very beneficial product.

You use Q every day without much thought – it’s become part of your daily routine.

It may even be important that you use Q.

Going without Q for too long can have consequences.

(Q can be any everyday-use staple. Examples of Q could be toothpaste, cooking oil, shampoo, moisturizer, medicine, diet soda, socks.)

Company XYX, the makers of Q, recently noticed that a few people have been posting on social media that Q may be responsible for some negative effects.

To get ahead of this news, XYX has decided to talk to the press – as they routinely do – about Q with a statement addressing these negative effects.

What XYX wants to accomplish with this statement is the following:

1. Dissolve any association customers may have or acquire with Q and the so-called “negative effects.”
2. Let customers know that XYX has already extensively tested Q in relation to the so-called “negative effects.”
3. Emphasize the importance of using Q regularly using the standard emotional component.
4. Assure customers that they are important to XYX, and XYX’s mission to provide products that improve lives.

XYX writes two statements that contain different words but convey the same meaning, because variety adds color to life.

Each statement contains a line stating that Q does not cause negative effects:

From statement 1:

We have not found any evidence to suggest that use of Q has any negative effects.

From statement 2:

In the studies we have done, we have not been able to link use of Q to any negative effects.

What can we conclude from these statements?

We can discover a lot about Q’s association to negative effects by carefully analyzing the statements.

Let’s pick them apart:

In statement 1, XYX tells us that there is no evidence to suggest any negative effects.

• If you don’t do any studies, you will have no evidence, and you can say with honesty that you have none. XYX does not need to do any studies for this statement to hold true.
• If there is evidence out there, XYX may not have found it. Or, XYX knows that evidence exists, but has not found it because it decided not to look
• XYX may have defined negative effects in a way that precludes Q from having any.

In statement 2, XYX tells us that they have done studies, but have not been able to link Q with any negative effects

• XYX says they have done studies, but we don’t know what type of studies. They might have studied something regarding Q that doesn’t have to do with negative effects. For example, XYX may have studied the heat capacity of Q – it’s still a study.
• XYX may never have looked for negative effects of Q. Why would you purposefully go looking for something that would hurt sales if true?
• If XYX did a study that showed Q had negative effects, the study could be nullified in a number of ways: it was done incorrectly; it was done by a fraudulent research team; it was scrapped just before completion; inconsistent data was removed so that the analysis came out clean; a revised study was done with a different control group…
• XYX may not have been looking for relevant negative effects. For example, XYX may have studied if using Toothpaste Q increased hair loss.

So, does use of Q have any negative effects?

We can’t really tell.

Why can’t we tell?

Because these statements don’t really tell us anything.

Because you already use Q on a daily basis, you don’t need much convincing to continue using Q.

You don’t even think about using it anymore, remember?

Every so often when you’re standing in the aisle of the supermarket, you choose similar product P or R from a different company, but Q is what you mainly use.

You might even be afraid to stop using Q because it keeps that bad thing from happening.

What would make you stop using Q?

If XYX told you that Q has negative effects.

But then again, you can simply switch to P or R because that study only had to do with Q by XYX.

What would make you completely stop using P, Q, R, and all similar products?

If you realized that all of the products don’t work as advertised while causing some negative effects.

But then again, you’ve been using Q all your life, so you may encounter cognitive dissonance.

Would XYX ever want you to stop using Q?

No, That would be bad for business.

XYX employs a small army dedicated to increasing sales of Q. If Q performs poorly, it’ll be cut or re-branded.

If XYX knew that Q was something that you didn’t need, and nothing bad would happen if you stopped using it, would they tell you?

• Don’t release incriminating information.

What product(s) Q do you use every day out of habit? Tell us in the comments below.

Continue to the next story.

But recall the story about the person who was replaced by Melvyn. This person, although having worked at the company for nearly 40 years, did not have enough power to influence those that controlled the direction of the company.

The person worked for somebody higher up in the company.

We need to limit our discussion to those that directly and measurably benefit from the company’s success.

We need to limit our discussion to the leadership.

Keep in mind everything we’ve learned already – it still applies.

It’s raining outside.

You’re feeling gloomy.

The ice has watered down your brew.

It’s one of those bad luck days – your last bet on Traveller to win third the race at Lincoln Park went horribly. She had just overtaken first about to cross the line, slipped ever so slightly, lost steam, and placed behind Secretariat.

Darn it!

Traveller should have been a safe bet! Short odds but you would have been positive for the night had she won.

Your wife is going to kill you – it’s never fun coming home having lost money.

You could try again on the next race but you’re ready to give up. Your spree can only continue.

The bookmaker gives you an empathetic look as you head towards the door.

You take cover from the rain in the phone box just outside – you can still see the people celebrating their winnings and lamenting their losses through the window.

You put some coins into the payphone and dial your friend, an old school buddy who’s probably also out betting today as usual.

Of course, cell phones hadn’t been invented yet – much less the internet – so you call Lola’s Betting House and ask for William.

They know you well from the many times you’ve come in with William.

Good times when you visit Will. Good times.

Will! How did I know you’d be out today? How’s your luck? I’ve had none myself, thought maybe you’d be able to cheer me up with some of yours.

Pretty standard – won some, lost some – doesn’t look like I’m coming out on top today either. But depends on the next race here. Gotta get to the bookmaker soon by the way.

Jeez. Why do we even keep up this habit? I make some one day and lose it the next.

Haha, that’s life buddy. Sometimes it’s a rotter. Good time when you win though.

Sure is, pouring rain today. Lost my umbrella too.

Cheer up buddy. It’s not all about the money. Good company down there, no? See Ted today?

No, he didn’t come today. But you’re right, it’s not about the money.

Gotta run – need to go place a bet. I think I’m going to play it safe on my last one and put on Traveller to win.

She running again? Wouldn’t count on her anymore tonight. She slipped last minute in the last race. Didn’t you see? Might still be a bit injured. Secretariat overtook in the last 20 meters.

Must’ve missed it… Secretary you say? I’ll go for it if you think she’ll win. 

High odds though. You really think so?

Go for it. If she wins again we’re getting steak. Your treat.

Haha, ok. You got it. Hope you’re right. Gotta run.

You hope William makes good on the night.

The rain has let up a bit.

You don’t really want to go back inside so you hail a taxi to head home.

Oh well, these things happen. Nothing to do about it.

William’s right though, the company is what matters, not how much you win or lose.

But of course, it’s the allure of winning big that keeps you coming back. Same reason you buy scratchers at the liquor store.

The taxi lets you off a block from your street.

You slip into the store and buy your wife’s favorite chocolate and your favorite ice cream.

Later in the evening while watching television, you’re falling asleep on the couch when the phone rings.

Good news buddy, you’re getting steak!

Hmm, great work, Will. Great work.

How did you know that would happen to Traveller?

Dunno man… Lucky guess I suppose. What odds you get?

No I mean that Traveller would slip and Secretary would overtake in the last 20?

You perk up.

Secretariat? Traveller slipped again?

Not sure about again but she did slip, just like you said.

Traveller placed?

Yea she placed.

In the last 20 meters? What was the spread?

No more than a few seconds.

Who came third? Do you remember?

Bluenote. Then Wrecking Crew I think. Why?

Impossible.

Will, what race did you bet on?

Lincoln Park, third race.

Holy shit.

Will, you bet on a past race.

What?

Earlier when I called you, the third race at Lincoln had just finished. I had bet on Traveller and lost.

After we hung up, you went and bet on Secretariat. She won. Traveller slipped at the very end.

I knew she would slip because that race had already been run.

You’re shittin’ me.

I’m not psychic, buddy.

Listen… if what you’re saying is true…

We’re gonna be rich!

What? No, no, don’t –

We just have to figure out which races they delay…

Then you can call me right after the race to pass the tip! I’ll place the winning bet.

We split the steak.

We can’t do that! If you start cleaning up at Lola’s someone is bound to wise up. Besides, that’s illegal. Who knows what’s going on here?

We’ll bet carefully and choose short odds. We’ll even throw one here and there to make it look authentic.

Will, something illegal is probably already going on here. How can Lola delay the wire so much? Something fishy is going on. They might be laundering for all we know.

I don’t want to get mixed up in it.

But I don’t see why we can’t get in on a bit of the action! It’s just arbitrage, people do it all the time.

Let’s try it. What do we have to lose?

I don’t know Will. Someone is bound to catch us. It’s risky.

Come on buddy, it’ll be just like our old time mischief. We’ll update our codespeak.

We’ll be really careful and stop as soon as we’re uneasy.

We could enjoy life more.

Maybe you can get that car you’ve been looking at.

Come on. You could use the money, right?

He’s right – you could really, really use the money.

What would you do?

You have stumbled upon a situation where you can make bets that you know you will win.

It is risky, but if you play it carefully, it could just work.

• If you know the outcome, winning a bet is easy.

Go back and read the next section.

The company is going to release earnings before market open tomorrow, and people are all expecting a negative surprise. Many research analysts have a SELL or HOLD rating on the stock.

Similar companies had not done too well in the last quarter. Stocks down. Current market conditions likely to affect this company the same way.

Five minutes left till market close.

You have to make a decision. 

It’s a risky buy because of all the news, but the last few earnings have all been good. There have been concerns about the overall economy lately though. Experts expect the bubble to pop anytime.

Eh, something tells you it’s going to be good. You can’t really put your finger on it, but you are certain it’ll go up tomorrow.

But, then again, it might not.

All these news articles are not very optimistic. Reading through them is making you uneasy about the purchase.

Two minutes left.

You enter in your order to buy $1000 worth of shares. Not too much, and if it goes down more than 20%, you’ll sell and use the losses to offset your gains.

The price is fluctuating all over the place.

Speculators are making their bets.

Order type: market buy. There’s no time to do a limit at this point.

Sixty seconds.

You glance at the headlines one last time. A new one has just popped up. You open it up

Forty five seconds.

Summary: Doesn’t look good. Sentiment is negative. Advising to sell.

Fifteen seconds.

Go back to your order. Whoa, the stock just ticked down 1%.

You thumb hovers over the confirmation button.

Market closed.

Phew. Stock dropped another fifty basis points just before closing.

Good thing you didn’t buy, seems like the last second sellers may know something.

The next day, the company releases earnings.

Positive surprise with increased guidance for next quarter.

The stock opens 17% higher than yesterday’s close.

DANG IT!!

Should have placed the order.

• We’re all experts in the stock market of yesterday.

Continue to the next story.