Blog - Lazy Man and Money

Stay-at-Home-Dad, Wifeless-Style

April 6, 2021 by Lazy Man 7 Comments

On Tuesday of last week, I celebrated my birthday, very happy with a fully vaccinated wife, a single shot of my own, and two healthy kids. The kids have been in school since September. I don’t want to pretend it is all a picture-perfect family. I don’t think anyone’s is, but, in general, we had the river current of luck/awesomeness flowing in the right direction.

There are a lot of families whose lives have gone in the opposite direction since the pandemic started. My wife and I were mostly stay-at-home workers before, and we continued to be over the last year. It didn’t change much, except that I had to teach a 6-year-old how to read and 7-year-old multiplication, but I was fortunate that I could keep a little part of my career going on the side. That was only a couple of months nearly a year ago though.

My birthday celebration went south fast.

I’m usually not a fan of promoting the obvious things that everyone knows. (What’s the fun in that?) I’ll make an exception this time. Though it’s been quoted hundreds of times, this is the best quote for how I feel right now (well at least part of it):

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Sometimes you don’t have time to look around. My wife got some vague notice that she could be deployed in a few days. In less than 24 hours, we were waking up the kids at 5 AM and bringing them to the airport in their pajamas. “Mom’s” cattle-plane wasn’t going to wait. (There were no Ubers or taxis running in our area of the suburbs, it simply doesn’t make sense at that time in the morning. In fact, all our local taxis are closed due to COVID. We could have stuck the gov’t with the parking for more than a month (it’s fair to expense it), but maybe $1000? That is crazy! With the last-minute information coming down, there was little time to think.)

I wrote a hasty note to the kids’ school that they may be grumpy. The kids seemed to rise up to the situation though, because they were extraordinarily well-behaved according to the school.

That school day wasn’t just a flash in the pan, they have become almost completely different people. They (mostly) have gotten along. I’m at 12% confidence that the government has some kind of behavior ray that they use on families when a parent deploys. Maybe they use it more when there are young kids going without their mothers? I’m also at 100% confidence that I’ve jinxed myself with this. They will likely harm each other greatly later today.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t say why my wife is away. I respect the secrecy of our government operations. However, in this case, I think we all know the deal. If it was a secret it would be the worst-kept government secret of all time. Our President has made it clear that his top goal is getting vaccines in people’s arms. My military pharmacy wife obviously can play a role in that.

My wife has been “virtually deployed” a few times before this year. There was a need for policy and planning a lot of COVID-19 stuff. This time is different. EVERY ACTIVE DUTY personnel needs to move to get the shots in arms. I put that last part in bold/caps to emphasize again that we all to work together to get this done. Also, it’s not just a few military people… everyone is getting called in on this. In 20+ years of military service, my wife has never seen anything like this. That’s fair because we have never seen anything like COVID-19.

My kids won’t see their mother for the next 5 weeks. Five years ago, my wife was deployed for two weeks. That was tough. At 2 and 3 they weren’t able to “wiping their own butts” (our terminology for being able to take care of oneself). They are older now (7 and 8-year-olds for the math-lazy). We have some systems in place. They can feed themselves a bit (cereal) and make their own drinks. They can dress themselves. For those of you with younger kids, life gets a lot easier when they can dress themselves.

Kids (maybe just boys?) at this age have their own set of challenges. There is a constant need to escalate wrestling moves until one kid cries of unbearable pain. I try to mitigate this, but I’m fighting thousands of years of evolution. Fill in your favorite cliche here. Two suggestions: “Boys will be boys” or “It is what it is.” In the end, they are each other’s best friend. However, they are their own worst enemies.

As you can tell by now, my brain isn’t working on its typical levels. I’m better than Buffy’s “fire bad, tree pretty”, but definitely 100%. Sometimes it seems to super-charge itself into some kind of survival mode of “Do everything now!” That’s great for getting stuff done around the house, but it’s not conducive to writing a blog post.

I’ve rambled so very much, but it is time to put a bow on this. Here are my main thoughts to pass on:

Money – Money is the least of my worries right now. Part of having good money systems in place above means that I don’t have to think about it much. Err… except for the fact that I need to write about money most days. At least I don’t have to think our money for awhile.
Hawaii – When I wrote about our Hawaii trip during COVID, I was expecting so much hate. I didn’t get it, so maybe readers simmered a bit inside? If any of this sounds like you (or not), my wife opened up and said that she felt this was coming. She said this was a big part of the reason why she made the judgment call of traveling to the safer state for time away to enjoy family. (She’s at least 10x smarter than I am.)
Career Opportunities – I need to put pause on two exceptional career opportunities – the best two I’ve seen in 10+ years. The job descriptions seemed to be tailor-written to me. I haven’t seen anything more perfect since my old engineering days of running a search engine and applying to be the boss of myself. (I got the job!)
It’s very weird that both of these jobs came in at the same time. Unfortunately, that was over the last couple of weeks. I had to tell one of the jobs that I simply wasn’t going to be reliable for the next month and a half. I got a sense that their ship was already moving a certain direction, but I had a strong chance of changing it. Sometimes you just have to own up to the bad timing.
As for the second job, I don’t know them as well. They don’t know me either. We were doing the get-to-know-you dance like some mating rituals. Things were really going great, but then Hawaii happened fast, and now this. I don’t know much about life, but I do this… when you use the moniker of “Lazy” for your brand, you lose any benefit of the doubt.
I won’t hide it, I extremely miss being part of a team doing great things. Also, my social skills have devolved to saying stuff about Pokemon, Gumball, and Teen Titans Go!. Maybe I’m evolving from talking about how Henry getting bricked up is so wrong in Thomas the Tank Engine.
Military Service – I appreciate all the “thank-you-for-your-wife’s-service” comments that I’ve gotten in person. I really do. I’m very fortunate she’s a military pharmacist who doesn’t have to go typically go into war zones.
That said, there are places in the United States where military service members are not particularly welcome. My wife is going to one of these places. Some friends and family have asked me whether I’m concerned about her safety. I trust the system and I hope that Americans will respect other Americans trying to provide them with life-saving medication. On a national level, Americans helping Americans is an easy win. On an international level, people helping people is also an easy win.
This is the first time in my lifetime (and probably anyone’s alive today) where everyone SHOULD BE UNITED to fight a common foe. (The alien invasion is 7 years away so we have time to prepare after this.) We can get this done.
If you can, please support support the USO. In a world of partisan politics, I think that’s one thing that I hope we can universally agree to.

On that last note, a lot of people have asked how I feel about my wife going away. One of them said something like, “Why would they take a mother from their kids? Why 5 weeks?” I’m not particularly excited about the situation or how the deployment was managed. However, I can’t be too upset. We receive a lot of military benefits. Our health care is very good and very cheap… and we can keep it after my wife retires. There’s a very good pension. I can shop for cheap groceries on the military base. We receive a generous discount on the kids’ private school. We can use my wife’s GI Bill to pay a substantial part of their college. The kids have been to Disney so many times. I’m probably missing a lot, but you get the idea. There are so many positives that would be a real jerk to hold it against the military when there is a time of need. (I can be a jerk about a lot of things, but this is a hard one.)

As the saying goes, you take the good. You take the bad. You take them both and there you have the facts of life.

I Sold a Fungible Token for Millions!

April 1, 2021 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

You may have seen the news about non-fungible tokens or NFTs. These seem to be everywhere today. There was a Saturday Night Live skit on them this weekend.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t understand why you’d want to deal in non-fungible tokens when you can get fungible tokens. As my friend says, “What’s not to like about 100% more funge!”

The great part about fungible tokens is that it is a completely untapped market. I think I can own it all to myself.

It took me some time to figure out what was the best thing to sell. Some famous people like Jack Dorsey sold his first Tweet. It seems like firsts go for a lot. So maybe I should sell my first post on Lazy Man and Money? It’s nearly 15 years old now and starts off with a sentence that might make me the first FIRE blogger:

“This blog is about a man, a lazy man, and his quest to not only retire early, but to retire rich enough to live a comfortable lifestyle.”

That’s too easy though. I think I may sell that second. No, my best post for selling fungible tokens would definitely be my bitcoin article from 2011. It’s almost 10 years old now. I could have bought a bitcoin for $13, but of course, I never did. I missed my chance for millions and millions of dollars…

… at least until recently. I’m a big fan of recycling, and fungible tokens (along with non-fungible tokens) gave me that chance. I was able to sell the bitcoin article for $2,021,040.10. I can’t believe that I was able to get so much from just a little work back then. I guess some people really like the idea of using the blockchain to buy an old article about the blockchain.

The good news is that this extra $2M puts us firmly into the early retired territory. It has always been close, especially if we continue to send the kids to private school. This changes the math considerably. It gives us some money for now, and should completely fund their college.

They’ve still got a decade before the college expenses come rolling in. This should give me more time to reinvest the funds into more fungible tokens from others and make 10x more money!

What’s in My Lazy Portfolio?

March 24, 2021 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

Usually a “lazy portfolio” refers to investing in two or three well-diversified index funds. You can be very diversified if you invested in VTI (Vanguard Total Market), VEU (Vanguard Ex-US), and BND (Vanguard Total Bond Market). You could divide it up 30-30-40 and never touch it again (though you should continue to try to add new money to the investment). Historically, that’s been a very safe and profitable strategy.

However, since I’m Lazy Man, my “Lazy Portfolio” is a little different. It’s actually not so lazy at all. I enjoying picking satellite stocks. So while I may recommend people go with the traditional lazy portfolio because it’s easy, I don’t take my own advice.

I think it’s always interesting when a personal finance writer says one thing, and then does something different. In my case, I do something different for three reasons:

1. I’m doing well with my satellite stocks. Here’s what my actively managed portfolio performance looks like:

2. I don’t have many hobbies, but one of them is following the markets and seeing if I can make a percentage extra or two.

3. I have significant protection with my core holdings. I’m only managing retirement money, so I don’t have to worry about tax consequences. My wife has more retirement money in her government TSP which has a lazy portfolio allocation. She has a government pension providing long-term income security. We have investment properties that can provide us with income in the future. The satellite stocks in general make up a small amount of our overall portfolio.

Today, I thought I’d pull back the curtain and explain what my investments are and how they got that way. I think you’ll find that it is far from a perfect portfolio.

What’s in My Lazy Portfolio?

This mess of stocks and ETF doesn’t make much sense at the first glance. I have a lot of explaining to do. So here goes:

Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO)

The only reason why I have more in emerging markets than VEU (see below) is that it has performed worse and I feel there’s more opportunity for growth in those markets in the long-term. This is a long-term position, so I’m not too worried about COVID hitting those countries hard, right now.

Vanguard FTSE All World ex US ETF (VEU)

This holding makes up another large chunk of my international stock holdings. These first two holdings are 24% of my portfolio. With some of the stocks below, my international holdings are around 30% overall.

Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND)

Whenever market indicators point towards a stock market crash, I increase the amount of money I have in bonds. I usually keep less than 5% of my portfolio in this, because I’ve got time and other safety nets. However, I’ve been selling off the indexes as they reach new highs and adding more bonds.

I did this strategy in early 2020 and when the markets crashed with COVID, I was able to sell bonds (which didn’t drop as much) and buy stocks at nearly half the price they are today. I know that I can’t call the bottom, so every time the stock market dropped about 10%, I would sell another 2% of bonds and buy-in.

Twitter (TWTR)

I invested in Twitter a long time ago, with most of the shares around $15. I sold some at $40, $45, $50, $60, and $75. Even though I keep selling shares, the overall value has grown, so it’s still a large percentage of my portfolio. Perhaps I should have sold off more, but I think it’s still undervalued.

iShares Core High Dividend ETF (HDV)

This forms part of my core United States index holdings. I like high dividend ETFs for three reasons:

1. They produce solid income. HDV has about a 3% yield right now.
2. They are typically more boring companies that earn good cash and profits which I feel protects me in most market crashes.
3. They help me remove tech risk from my portfolio. As you’ll see with this list of stocks, I’ve got a lot of technology and the market indexes have plenty of tech at the top as well.

Invesco Solar ETF (TAN)

I bought this years ago when I got solar panels on my house. The last year has seen solar stocks skyrocket. I could have sold some off and redistributed the money across broader indexes, but I don’t mind holding solar stocks for another 20, 30, or 40 years (if I’m still around that long).

Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund ETF (VB)

Most of the big indexes (VTI, I’m looking at you) strongly favor big companies. However, over the long haul, smaller companies tend to perform better. This is a way to give me a little more diversity and better performance than if I had just bought VTI alone. My overall US stocks are still mostly large-cap, so an argument could be made that I should increase this allocation.

Alphabet Class C (GOOG) and Alphabet Class A (GOOGL)

I bought Google a long time ago and it split into two voter classes. These never differ by much and it’s about 9.5% of my portfolio which would bump it up the list towards the top.

I decided not to touch it and it has performed well. Investing in Google is almost like investing in the entire internet and smartphone markets. It almost feels like its own index fund.

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF (VTI)

Finally, the staple of most lazy portfolios shows up. I used to have a lot more in this, but I sold a lot and put in HDV (see above). If you were to combine my VTI, HDV, and VB holdings, that’s 17% of my portfolio in US indexes.

Snap Inc (SNAP)

I bought at lot SNAP at under $10. Much like Twitter, even though sold off more than half, it is still a significant holding. Whenever SNAP and Twitter reach new highs, I sell off about 5% or 10%. At this point, I’m playing with the house’s money.

United States Oil Fund LP (USO)

I had been buying this oil ETF for far too long. I lost a ton of money when COVID hit and the price of oil went negative. However, I continued to dollar cost average into it. About a month ago, I sold off half since it I was finally solidly in the profitable area. I am holding to the rest with the idea that vaccines will spur a lot of pent-up demand for travel.

Over the long-term, I’d rather not invest in the oil industry.

Apple Inc (AAPL)

I bought some of these several years ago and sold off enough to just play with the house’s money. It’s split once or twice as the company became the first in the US to hit 1T and 2T in market cap.

There’s really no need for me to keep this since it’s well represented in the indexes. It feels like a safe holding though.

IBM (IBM)

I bought this because I thought that Watson would revolutionize the world. It didn’t happen, but IBM has paid out 5% dividends (or more) for years that I’ve held it. In theory, if I put my entirely portfolio in this stock, I could live off the dividends as it would be higher than the 4% rule

General Electric (GE)

I bought this years ago because I thought it was cheap after it had followed it a lot. Then it fell more and more. I bought more and more, dollar cost averaging in, and I’m up about 30% at this point. I have sold some since I’m up. I would sell more, but the pandemic hit their businesses harder than many companies. I’m hopeful that when things fully open up, this stock will out-perform.

Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund ETF (VNQ)

I like to diversify with some real estate holdings. This pays a decent dividend of 3.88% as well.

iShares MSCI Frontier and Select EM ETF (FM)

Yes, 1.5% of my money is in frontier markets. These are countries like Kuwait, Vietnam, Morocco, Kenya, Romania, and Nigeria.

It has not performed well. I’m down about 5.71%. This is a very, very long-term growth investment. It also diversifies my holdings so that I’m invested in probably 100 countries.

Alibaba (BABA)

There was one day (around 2015 or so) when the stock market dropped a bunch for just about 10 minutes. I had a little liquid money and saw that Alibaba dropped more than most. I don’t mind having 1% of my money in “the Amazon of China.”

Lyft Inc (LYFT)

When Lyft dropped to being worth about $8 billion dollars I thought that Google (or another company work on self-driving technology) might acquire it. That didn’t happen, but Lyft’s stock has jumped a lot. I’m not sure how ride-sharing will be profitable as it is now, so I’ve been selling off shares to protect myself if it should drop to $0.

Altria Group (MO)

I was in a forum a couple of months ago and nearly everyone said this was the best dividend investment paying around 8.5%. They had some good news in the last earnings and I’m up 25%. It’s better to be lucky than good sometimes I guess.

I’m very morally conflicted about investing in cigarettes and will probably sell this off soon.

Pinterest Inc (PINS)

This was another case of being lucky. I saw it get down to about $18 a share and thought that it was much less than the IPO, so let’s invest a little. It has been up nearly 500%, so I sold off some to play with the house’s money. (If you hadn’t noticed, this is something I do a lot.)

Kraft Heinz Co (KHC)

Warren Buffett gave up on the company, so I jumped in at a share price lower than him. It has a dividend yield of 4% and my cost basis is about $22 a share (it’s trading at $39). I have been happy with the returns for a couple of years.

Ford Motor Company (F)

I bought Ford because it was paying a 12% dividend due to the COVID-19 impact on its stock price. Ford needed to keep the money to run operations and decided to eliminate the dividend. What could have been a disaster has turned into a blessing, the stock is up 80% from where I bought it.

AT&T Inc. (T)

I bought this about a year ago for its 7.5% dividend yield. I felt like people would still need their cell phones and cable service in a pandemic. It also looks like HBO Max is a good streaming service. The stock itself is up 7%, so with the yield, it is looking good.

Under Armour Inc Class C (UA)

I bought a few shares at around $6.50 when it was looking like a disaster. It’s around $19 now. I sold a little to play with the house’s money once again. It used to be a $20 billion-dollar company, so maybe there’s still room for it to grow.

Carnival Corp (CCL), Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NCLH), Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (RCL)

I bought a little of each of the three major cruise lines when they tank due to COVID. At the time it was less than half of a percent of my portfolio. I just wasn’t sure the entire industry would go away forever. Now they are a little over 1% of my portfolio. I’ve been selling some of them off at highs and it’s close to playing with the house’s money.

Boeing Co (BA)

Similar to the cruise lines, I bought in at $109 as it was a bargain from its $300+ highs. I was counting on COVID getting solved at some point and them being able to figure out their plane troubles. I sold some to play with the house’s money or this would be a bigger percentage.

Uber Technologies Inc (UBER)

Uber seems to lose billions of dollars a year. Still, I thought that at a $50 billion market cap, it had significant assets and would be acquired if nothing else. Guess what? Sold some for house’s money sake again.

Cash – Cash – Cash! (Cash)

I don’t like to keep a lot of cash around. I’ve been putting most of it into BND, so I can at least earn some income on the dividends.

Lazy Man’s Portfolio Recap

So that’s the rundown of how I invested my money. As you can tell, things got a little messy in some places and I got lucky in other places. The overall trend right now is to try to sell some of the individual holdings at highs and invest them in index funds.

I would also be willing to invest in new satellite stocks, but I haven’t found anything that’s a good value recently. Most of the companies that seem cheap to me (AT&T for example) aren’t likely to grow much. That’s another reason why I am content to keep the money invested in a place in bonds or dividend stocks while I wait to find a new opportunity.

My Hawaii Vacation During COVID

March 22, 2021 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

I usually don’t aim to get hate clicks. Life is too short to make other people angry for no reason. I’m certainly not aiming for hate clicks now, but I wanted the title to be honest. I understand how “My Hawaii Vacation During COVID” looks. It’s probably an 8 of 10 on the Ted-(Can)Cruz-trip to escape the dangerous deep freeze and power outages of Texas last month.

I was hesitant to write about it at all, but in the end, I decided that it is best to be honest. This website is (partly) about my financial journey and a Hawaii vacation is a big part of that. However, before we cover the finances let’s get to the decision to travel during COVID. By now you probably know the drill. The three most important things during COVID (in no particular order) are:

1. Wear a Mask
2. No gather in groups
3. Don’t travel

One of my favorite quotes from Tom Brady is, “I didn’t come this far to only come this far.” I barely left the house for the first few months. Like most everyone else, I haven’t seen (non-immediate) family or friends in more than a year. While I’m near the bottom of the list for vaccines, it seems that I could get my turn within 2-3 months. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not too long.

So why, despite all this, did I spend the last week in Hawaii on vacation? When assessing the risk, all of the following came into play:

My Wife’s Expert Opinion
My wife’s a pharmacist with the US Public Health Service (USPHS). USPHS does a lot of good work, but this their thing. She’s led a team that authored a COVID report that went to the Vice President. I try to follow all the news and details about everything, but she knows many times more than me.
She was the one who came up with the idea to travel to Hawaii.
Hawaii is One of Two “Safe” States
My wife said that there were only two states where we could go. Rhode Island had blocked just about every state. However, Hawaii has done extremely well limiting COVID. They have 10% of the case of Rhode Island, and a similar amount of people (~1,000,000). They have great testing, quarantine, and natural benefits like isolation (Pacific Ocean) and warm weather year-round.
We had originally planned to go to Lake Placid, but it would have required driving through several quarantine states. We took that off the table because then the kids couldn’t go back to school when the vacation was over.
Planes are Cleaner than a Drug Lab
My wife explained that it is a better environment for making IVs than many IV labs. Having made those IVs as a pharmacy technician 20-25 years ago, I know that this is a big deal. It turns out that planes are circulating all the air through HEPA filters every 3 minutes. Not only are planes well equipped, but everyone had to have a negative test 72 hours before boarding. Everyone was required to wear to mask (except for eating).
Our plane was only about half full. My wife and one kid had the center four seats of one row. I and the other kid had the center four seats of another row. That happened both there and back. With the exception of the row in front of us and behind us, we had a good amount of distance.

The safest thing would obviously be to stay at home and never leave the house. With the kids having two weeks of no school, I don’t think that was likely to happen. As an alternative option, spending time in a state with 10% of the COVID cases seems like a defensible position.

Benefits of the Hawaii Vacation

It’s Hawaii. It’s vacation. Those benefits are a given in any year, but more so after the last year. I know that everyone has had to cancel travel. We canceled our March vacation last year as things were getting bad. (We’re also unlikely to be able to recoup our timeshare annual expenses, which we couldn’t use.)

Our kids have been fortunate to be in school this year. Private school has been a great value, especially this year. (It’s so much better than the end of last school year, paying thousands of dollars a month so I could run around a teach a 6 and 7-year-old different curriculums at the same time.)

However, the kids are also on a two week break. That’s a long time to be sitting at home watching TV and playing video games. Yes, I can try a version of my own COVID-19 homeschool, but the kids needed a break of some kind. I didn’t realize it until I was wearing a mask for 12 hours on the plane (plus all the time to and from the airport), but I’ve essentially only worn a mask for about an hour at a time to run a small errand like getting groceries. The rest of the time I’m at home. My kids have worn them for about 8 hours a day, almost every day. Maybe wearing a mask for long periods is something you get used to, but I now have a new respect for what they’ve been through.

My wife has been “virtually” deployed, which means she works from home, every day, even weekends. There’s been a little time off, but she’s running other pharmacist committees and other professional groups. Personally, I could have done without the vacation. I was stressed with deadlines and blogging before and after the break. (I’m stressed writing this now on Monday morning hoping to publish in a few hours.) Traveling always makes me stressed. I always say that flying is designed to make it as uncomfortable as possible so that you’ll pay for the comfort upgrades. For example, the cost to upgrade to first class was almost twice as much as the actual ticket itself.

This was also a unique opportunity. We had tossed around the idea of going to Hawaii again someday, but flying from Rhode Island with two kids is a whole different ball game than when my wife and I flew from San Francisco 13 years ago. I can’t remember what the price was, but it wasn’t very much. Now, the flight is twice is as long and we have twice as many people. I can’t seem to find what the non-COVID pricing would be, but I would guess that it would be between $800 and $1000 per person. At $3200-$4000 in flights, our vacation dollar goes a lot further elsewhere.

Hawaii became an opportunity because we got great pricing due to COVID-19… and it was one of the few places we could go and not have to quarantine either way.

Finally, we don’t live in an area of great diversity in Newport, RI. In fact, that is a big understatement, there is almost no diversity here. Hawaii is one of the few places in the United States with its own distinct culture. The kids can read about different cultures in a book or watch a YouTube video, but experiencing it “hands-on” is so much more valuable. There’s a big difference in the educational value of a week of Hawaii culture vs. watching reruns of Gumball on Cartoon Network.

The Costs of Our Trip

I don’t have all the numbers available unfortunately. My wife made most of the travel arrangements, and I’m writing this jet-lagged and close to when I usually publish my articles. However, I do know the following costs:

Flight: $580/pp
Hotel: $180/night
Car Rental: $700
Hotel Stay Before Flight: $120
Meals: One billion dollars.

I’m exaggerating the billion dollars for meals. We could have done it a lot cheaper, but we went out a lot. The kids wanted to experience malasadas. (They didn’t want to experience Hawaiian plates for some reason.) We couldn’t cook much because of the hotel room. However, we were able to eat leftovers with access to a microwave. We also had cereal as the kids prefer that to almost anything.

The flight was $580 per person or around $2400. We were able to cash in some credit card points for one ticket. I don’t like to count that because it’s like cashing in a gift card – we’re making an exchange of someting that has value for a flight.

My wife was able to get us the military hotel on Waikiki in Honolulu. The Hale Koa Hotel is right next to the Hilton that costs $500 a night or more. We stayed for 5 nights – $900 with all taxes included. I suspect most people would pay $2000 or choose to stay in a cheaper area of Oahu.

The car rental was the big killer. My wife planned a lot of this trip at the last minute and just got a car because she knew ~~I wanted to stalk Jack Johnson~~ we would want to see sea turtles on the North Shore. If we had to do it all again, we’d probably use a lot more ride-sharing. However, then again, that would increase the COVID risk. As it turned out my wife and kids took ride-share once in Hawaii. They woke up at 3 AM (due to the time zone difference) and went for a long, long walk to get coffee. The driver said he wasn’t going to get vaccinated, but my 8-year-old convinced him that his mother works with the experts and it is really safe and effective. I missed the whole thing, but I hear it was a convincing speech.

Finally, we paid $120 for a hotel the night before. There’s a hotel near the airport that includes parking (they shuttle you to the airport), so it’s actually cheaper to get to the hotel with free parking than it is to park at the airport.

Overall, I’d say we got about a $6,000 vacation for $4,000 (less if you count the points we used for one flight) not counting the meals. Yikes, even though it seemed like we were getting deals along the way, it still wasn’t cheap. That said, we had a lot of money in our travel budget after not traveling over the last year. We don’t have any plans to travel in the future either. If everything works out, we might take a road trip this summer.

What Did We Do in Hawaii?

We actually weren’t in Hawaii too long if you count the traveling. My wife had to be back for work the kids had to be back in case the school decided that quarantine was necessary anyway. We left on Sunday and came back on Friday.

Sunday – Due to the long flight and time change, it felt like nighttime to us. However, it was still early afternoon. We walked around the hotel and beach and then went to sleep around 6 PM local time (midnight our time). This is why my wife and kids became streetwalkers at 3 AM. (I had woken up at 11, worked a little, and went back to sleep.)

Monday – After my wife and kids’ journey to get coffee early, we went to an early breakfast and then drove to the Dole Pineapple Plantation soon after it opened. It was a bit of a drive as we had to go around the island to get to the north side. The place was packed, much more than it was 13 years ago when we were there. They have a big pineapple maze (like a corn maze), a train, and a garden. The train was a 90-minute wait in line, so we skipped that. Our whole family found the garden fairly boring. I think if gardens are your thing you’d like it? The 7-year-old and I did the maze while my wife and the 8-year-old opted to sample some pineapple and go through the gift shop. The maze took about an hour to get through and it got a little hot towards the end. My son wanted to do it all over again, but that wasn’t going to happen.

We went through the gift shop and I told my son that he couldn’t get the blue turtle at the pineapple store. There would be other places to get turtles, but this is about the pineapple. We all got Dole Whips. At age 7 and 8 my kids completed their quest to have Dole Whips at the only two places (to the best of my knowledge) that you can get them – Disney and Hawaii. They really have no idea how lucky they are.

Random side thought: Rhode Island recently changed its name from Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations to have sympathy with the negative connotations of “plantation.” The “Providence Plantations” were named in the 17th century to refer to being a “new settlement” and not related to any slavery activity. Somehow the Dole Pineapple Plantation is fine and no one has come after the company to change that name. It seems a little inconsistent to me.

After the Pineapple Plantation, we went to musician Jack Johnson’s town of Haleiwa to see some sea turtles and have a local lunch. The tide was high and there were no turtles. The lunch was good until a local chicken spooked my 8-year-old and jumped up and ate his lunch. Fortunately, he had chosen the nachos instead of his usual chicken tenders. That would have been awkward.

We got caught in a flash flood on the way back and everyone had a long day (having been up since 3 AM). We settled for a quick dinner at the hotel and everyone went to be early again.

Tuesday – We had a pool reservation for 11, but we once again woke up early. We went to Leonard’s for malasadas, which was a highlight of the trip for the kids. After watching Pokemon Sun and Moon, the kids have wanted to try the malasadas from Jessie and James’ food truck in the Alola region.

We decided to hike Diamond Head, a famous trail. My 8-year-old had a really bad attitude to start because he thought he would die. (He thinks everything will kill him.) Somehow he was able to turn it around during the hike as I held his hand and he talked about the souvenir he wanted after he completed it. Before long he was the most enthusiastic hiker of the whole group. He got very excited near the end when he saw the yellow steps that he recognized from the Pokemon anime.

I've been (mostly) offline for a several days – getting some time with nature.
Kids were proud to hike Diamond Head. The pot of gold at the end of the ? is Honolulu. pic.twitter.com/U3mJjckbMR
— LazyManAndMoney (@LazyManAndMoney) March 17, 2021

After Diamond Head, we went to see the Halona Blow Hole, but it wasn’t doing too much. Maybe the tide was too low. We went back for our pool reservation, which was great fun. The lifeguards were very strict, but not for any particular COVID-19 reason, just regular procedure like making sure that everyone is in an exact line for the water slide. My 7-year-old is a decent swimmer and can stand anywhere in the pool. I was with him and they still made him put on a life jacket for the 10-foot swimming distance from the water slide to get back in line. I guess that’s what you get at the military hotel.

We went to the Rainbow Drive-In for a traditional Hawaiian plate lunch which was fabulous. The kids wanted to go a local cat cafe because they had never seen one. I’m allergic so I got to watch them play with cats from outside. Most of the cats were their typical cat-selves and wanted to sleep with no interaction with people. While the kids had a lot of fun, my 8-year-old wants to open up a therapy dog cafe with older dogs. I think that’s a much better business idea than a cat cafe, but I’m biased.

We had dinner back at the hotel at a place called the Pool Bar. It has a great sunset view of the ocean. However, it only has three hot food options, chicken tenders, a pulled pork sandwich, and nachos. The kids didn’t like virgin lava flows, but my wife and I did.

Wednesday – We had another 90 minutes of pool reservation, this time in the morning. The water was colder and we ended up not using the whole 90 minutes. (In case you were wondering, they limit the number of people to around 50 or 75 for the big pool area during this time. It isn’t like one family at a local hotel.)

We went to the mall and its amazing food court for lunch. They had food from everywhere – but specifically over a dozen Asian restaurants. I couldn’t decide so I went with the Mokoloco. My son got tricked by an Americanized restaurant called Holy Cow. It’s really Korean street food (we had no idea) where he had a mozzarella stick on a stick wrapped in a sugar dough outside. It was the highlight of the day. We’re going to try to make them at home with the help of this YouTube video:

The kids also had shave ice (for some reason Hawaii doesn’t believe in the “d” in “shaved ice”) and that went over well too. The food was the big highlight for the 8-year-old.

After lunch, we went out to the beaches. We tried Makapu?u Beach, but the waves were too crazy and it was far too dangerous for our swimming level. We went a little further down the coastline and found a beach with plenty of people. The waves were still big and crashed on the kids quite a bit. I got them far enough out (they had life vests on) so that the waves wouldn’t break on them. We didn’t stay out too long though, because I realized that it would be a bad situation if I got tired and had to fight the current to bring them in. I got back and rested and my wife took them out, but the lifeguard quickly warned them that they should come back in. They were fine at the time, but we were a little out of place compared to the locals who had older kids who grew up with these waves.

Before dinner, we tried to make reservations for Hard Rock Cafe, but it was closed until Thursday. We tried another place, but it turned out to be more of a club/adult place rather than a family place. We walked around and found the Yard House, but it was a two-hour wait. Ruth’s Chris was available right away, but there was literally nothing on the menu my 7-year-old would eat and I didn’t want to spend $200 to hear complaining. We left. Literally, every place was a bust and we had walked two miles, so the kids were in a very bad mood at this point. So we went back to the hotel restaurant. We figured it would be easy since you have to be military to go there. It was still an hour wait and the host chewed us out for not getting reservations.

Finally, we ended up at the same Pool Bar as we did the night before.

Thursday – We went to the beach in the morning. For having a hotel on the beach we didn’t spend that much time at the beach because we were always out and about. It was rainy though, so we ended up back inside.

We went to go snorkeling with the turtles (one of my kid’s favorite animals). It was windy and rainy and the captain decided the ocean current was too strong to let the kids snorkel. We ended up seeing one turtle up close to the boat and another a bit in the distance. The youngest kid loved it anyway. We were able to get the price changed to the observer rate since we didn’t actually get to go snorkeling.

At dinner time we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Yes, it is a tourist trap that we would typically avoid, but the kids had never been. Also, this was my last chance to find anything related to Jack Johnson. I struck gold as they had his autographed Sleep Through the Static CD and a full-size promotional surfboard. This CD had been in my car’s CD player for the last month or more. I wrote about the first track, All at Once, last year for Earth Day.

The kids loved Hard Rock Cafe and the gift shop had everything deeply discounted. I got a T-shirt for $10. My son got a $50 sweatshirt that was marked down to $15. We didn’t need new clothes

Friday – Everyone was adjusted to the time, so I was the first one to wake up for a change. We started packing in the morning and then went out to the beach for about an hour. That’s all we had until it was time to check out and get to the airport. At the airport, I wandered off on my own and bought my 7-year-old the blue stuffed turtle that he wanted at the Pineapple Plantation, it turned out that we hadn’t seen another one. I surprised him with it when we got home.

In the end, we ended up packing a lot into a few days. I would have liked to do a little more slow travel and relaxed a bit more. Like many vacations, some things didn’t cooperate, but we’re fortunate to have any kind of vacation at all.

This is a long article and I think it covers most of everything. Let me know if you have any questions about Oahu or traveling during COVID. And if you’ve read the 3500+ words this far and still want to leave a hate comment, you’ve earned it.

Oprah’s Viral Stanford Graduation Speech

March 16, 2021 by Lazy Man 15 Comments

(I’m taking some time off this week, but prepared this (mostly) a little ahead of time.)

Oprah has been in the news recently. I seem to be the only person who missed the big event. I’m just not into royalty stuff. I had a friend who used to say that he has no time for rich, inbred people. I wouldn’t have put it so bluntly, but he had a point.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong about royalty. After all, there was a time that I wasn’t a fan of Oprah… until this event in 2008.

My wife and I were invited to watch our friend get her Ph.D. from Stanford. While I should have been more focused on her accomplishment, Oprah stole the show. I suppose that’s what commencement speakers do – they are the show.

In 2008, these observations about her speech went viral. I’m not sure that viral was “a thing” back then… and given the situation with COVID, I’m not it should be now. Either way, you get the point. This article is so old that YouTube deprecated the format to include the video. I can’t blame it too much, YouTube was still a toddler of 2 or 3 at the time.

It doesn’t make sense to reminisce with myself. You can join me on the journey by either watching the video or reading the full text. (I expect that you’ll do neither, so just continue to scroll, it’ll still make sense.)

Here’s the full text full text.

I thought it would be interesting to review how I thought of it back then and add 2021 thoughts.

16 Things I Think from Oprah’s Graduation Speech

2008: I think I laughed a little each time Oprah said Stanford, because she used a baritone voice to convey the exclusivity of the school.
2021: School exclusivity is still a big deal in 2021. It is always going to be timeless humor when it involves the very best (and most exclusive) schools in the nation.
2008: I think that I would be like Kirby Bumpus, a Stanford student, and not mention that Oprah is literally my fairy godmother.
2021: Kirby Bumpus was married at Oprah’s home around a month ago. It seems that she still makes the news.
2008: I think that no one needed a Wusthof knife to cut the tension when Oprah closed the ceremony with, “You know, I’ve always believed that everything is better when you share it, so before I go, I wanted to share a graduation gift with you. Underneath your seats, you’ll find…”
2021: We didn’t find anything underneath our seats. As far I know there’s nothing under your seat right now.
2008: I think that Oprah’s story of not being one credit shy from graduating college for 12 years was great. She tied it into a great message when she went back to get the degree despite having more than enough success without it, quoting B.B. King, “The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take that away from you.”
2021: I will always advocate for more education. However, I think we can talk about the celebrity narrative of “being a credit short” to graduate and going back to school to get it. In almost every situation you hear or read about, that credit didn’t matter – they were already celebrities. If there are a lot of common, “uncelebrity” folk out there who lack a credit after a few years, there should be a process to have it made up with experience in the industry or other accommodation. It doesn’t help anyone to have people 1/100th away from a degree that is useful to them.
2008: I think that while I often write about money, this is a beautiful excerpt, “I believe that there’s a lesson in almost everything that you do and every experience, and getting the lesson is how you move forward… I know that inner wisdom is more precious than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain.”
2021: This is still beautiful today, but it strikes me as some kind of mamsy-pamsy non-actionable advice? Too harsh?
2008: I think I learned that you should do what feels right. Oprah went into a story about her first job where everyone tried to make her into something that she wasn’t. Even her father encouraged her to play along, “Just do your job”, he’d say. This spoke to me recently with a contract job that I took.
2021: Now when I read, “Do Your Job”, I can’t think of it without the fame that the New England Patriots put behind it. I even have the t-shirt and it motivates me to this day.
2008: I think that story led into the one thing that’s been driven home time and time again from this website, “When you’re doing the work you’re meant to do, it feels right and every day is a bonus, regardless of what you’re getting paid… If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.”
2021: I’m much more of a pragmatic, “do the job to pay the bills” kind of person nowadays. Some years of tough blogging incomes and now having dependent kids has changed my view.
2008: I think this would be a horrible article if I didn’t mention this nugget from the speech… “Let me tell you, money’s pretty nice. I’m not going to stand up here and tell you that it’s not about money, ’cause money is very nice. I like money. It’s good for buying things.”
2021: Yes, money is important, don’t just always do what feels right.
2008: I think it would be an even worse article if I didn’t provide the full context, “What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful. Because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. What you really want is to be surrounded by people you trust and treasure and by people who cherish you. That’s when you’re really rich.”
2021: This is a good mix. It’s really has has pushed so many people into the FIRE movement. If you don’t need as much money, you can focus more on the meaning.
2008: I think having the trust of many readers and being surrounded by other great bloggers has brought meaning and real richness to my life.
2021: Still true today. (However, I wish I didn’t have to beg for a comment every couple of weeks ;). I know many of you are reading this, I can see the stats._
2008: I think this is a great piece of advice, “There are many times when you don’t know what to do. When you don’t know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.”
2021: When I don’t know what to do, I don’t think, “Let’s open up Oprah’s 2008 graduation speech.” I have never actually tried this, but I’d like to some time.
2008: I think Oprah gave this piece of common advice, “Ask every failure” ‘this is what I do with every failure, every crisis, every difficult time’ “I say, what is this here to teach me?”
2021: During a crisis or difficult time, I think the best idea is to focus on “How do I get out of this place, situation?” Do a post-mortem later to get your life lesson.
2008: I think she tied that piece into her own experiences well, using the story of the sexual abuse at her school in Africa. She realized that her failure was in focusing on all the physical details of the school, and missing the overall picture that the people are what matter.
2021: I had forgotten about this over the years.
2008: I think that Oprah reiterated what Bobby Petrino said about dealing with adversity. In case you missed it, here’s a recap. Greive properly, attend to the situation at hand, and get back to what was important before the crisis.
2021: I should update that old article about Michael Vick and the dog fighting ring. The lessons are universal and there are more recent examples.
2008: I think Oprah’s third lesson is one that many of my personal finance blogging colleagues will nod and agree with… “Don’t live for yourself alone. This is what I know for sure: In order to be truly happy, you must live along with and you have to stand for something larger than yourself. Because life is a reciprocal exchange. To move forward you have to give back. And to me, that is the greatest lesson of life. To be happy, you have to give something back.”
2021: This hits me much harder today than it did back then. I think as you get older, what you have given to others becomes “The Most Important Thing.”
2008: I think I now appreciate the amazing woman that Oprah is. If you think about it she’s had every “strike” against her… discriminated against race, gender, even weight. On top of it all she had a funny name… It’s even more amazing when I realize that she became a public figure with all those “strikes” against her. It’s not like she got rich by inventing dental floss.
2021: This still rings true in 2021. I remember several years back thinking that she could run for President of the United States and get it because few people have a better reputation that would connect with all the voters. In hindsight, I was a little too optimistic about America.
I’m not sure what the dental floss line was about, but I think it was more that she had to continuously work to build her reputation and brand and that made her famous. It wasn’t a strike-it-rich moment.

I’m going to leave it there for today. It’s a lot to read and longer if you watcher or read the whole speech.

Originally published on: June 16, 2008