Lazy Man and Money

When 92% Isn’t Enough

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Every few days, I get a test back from my kids’ school. Either I’m really spoiled or the tests are too easy. It may be a combination of both. They do well at school, so they probably get 96% on average. I figure that because they are in the first and second grade the school is building confidence in them.

Over the long term, they won’t always get A’s. They probably won’t even get A minuses. Competition gets greater and the pressure to be the best all the time is probably not the healthiest lifestyle.

I’ve found in most cases in life, 92% is great. Of course, there are a few exceptions – I expect more out of pilots and surgeons.

Last week, something happened that made me wonder if 92% isn’t good enough.

The 92% Wealthiest People

Our net worth is probably somewhere between the top 90% and top 95% in the United States for our age. Every now and again, I find a tool online and it fits somewhere in that range. For lack of a better figure, let’s call it in the 92% range.

In many ways, I feel that being in the 92 percentile makes it difficult to relate to some of the challenges of my younger readers. We’re on different parts of our money journeys and the changing world makes today’s challenges different than the ones I had. We had the benefit of having invested early and a long, long bull market. We also are high income – my wife much more than me as I focus more on kids and household stuff.

In any case, being in the top 92 percentile of net worth is a good place to be in. We don’t have many day-to-day money troubles. At the same time, we do have a small-ish house (by today’s standards), a mortgage, and I drive a 2012 Subaru Forester. I don’t have a pair of jeans that isn’t ripped. To outsiders, we probably look like “The Millionaire Next Door”, except without the millionaire part.

Our greatest splurge is that our kids go to a very good private school. Even with a generous military discount, it is a lot of money. We love the education that the kids are getting, but the families are extremely wealthy.

Last week, I found out that Millionaires Next Door and the One-Percenters don’t mix well. I’m sure this isn’t surprising, but it also isn’t the kind of thing that most people have the privilege of even thinking about.

My son and I were invited to one of his friends’ birthday parties. It was just a few families and the kids were all from the same school. There’s not a lot of COVID in our area and through one means or another (age, health care worker, connections maybe?) the vaccinated percentage was high.

I Zillowed the house beforehand and saw that it was a 3M mansion. The family was new to the school, escaping COVID of NYC for their summer house where the kids could be in school full-time. Their Maplethorpe-like original art was very much my kind of humor, but not something I’d consider appropriate for kids. The host casually mentioned that it was probably worth more than the house… and I’m not sure that’s a stretch. (People can pay a lot of money for art.

They had complaints about their refrigerator, but I couldn’t get past that it was bigger than my closet. It was a historic house and parts of it always seemed to need fixing… at crazy prices to keep up with the neighborhood code. Our house, at a fraction of the cost, is cheaper to maintain – a great feature of being constructed around 1990. Our yard is just as big or bigger, but the location is a little farther from the center of town.

(Funny side story about the fridge, my son got thirsty so he went to the kitchen sink and poured himself some water. When he saw another kid get water from the refrigerator door, it completely blew his mind. I know the feature isn’t limited to the one-percenters, but our fridge was brand new when we bought the house, and it didn’t have the feature – my kids had never seen it.)

They were really great people. However, we are just from different worlds. Every so often something came out like, “Johnny doesn’t own a shirt without a collar”, I would blurt out that my kids barely own any shirts WITH a collar. (It’s not true that my kids don’t own shirts with collars, the school has a dress code, but they would never choose to wear them.) My son wore his Minecraft T-shirt on the outside of a Pokemon long-sleeve T-shirt because those were the characters that the birthday boy liked. Like every day, his socks didn’t match. (I dressed up for the occasion in my best Newport pastels with the tiny whale logo, so I at least looked like I fit in.)

I kept trying to find a way to bridge my 92% life experience and their 99% life experience. Our kids seem to be great friends. (It has been hard to tell because COVID has prevented us from meeting all school year.) Maybe we’ll be spending a lot of time together as things start to open up. I just couldn’t find that common ground.

Overall the kids had tremendous fun. Truth be told, I did too. It was much more fun than I expected, but maybe it’s because this was my first socialization in over a year.

When I got home that night, I couldn’t help but think what they thought about us. I wonder if they were thinking that we were great comic relief as such commoners. I know that being in the 92% is enough for us and that’s all that matters. However, it’s strange to live in two different financial worlds and not fit into either.

Just before I drifted off to sleep, I laughed to myself as I imagined the other family writing in their bedside journal. The entry was “When 99% Isn’t Enough.” You see, there are a couple of families in my kids’ class who are semi-famous with (what I would estimate as) 9-figure wealth.

Oprah’s Viral Stanford Graduation Speech

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(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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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?

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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._

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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.”

  16. 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

I Can (Still) Ride My Bike With No Handlebars

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Today, I’m refreshing a weekend post that turned 12-years old this week.

We need it.

I thought it was relevant in 2008, but it is even more so in 2020.

If you can relate to this, I’d appreciate it if you could also turn back the clock to 2008 and leave a comment. (Blogger love comments – it makes their day.) Also, consider spreading the video (and this article if you choose) on social media.

no handlebars
I Can Ride My Bike With No Handlebars

Like almost all of my weekend posts, I try to highlight something that’s not necessarily related to personal finance. Maybe it’s a small detail of something that’s going on in my life. Earlier this week, I was driving to the store to do some shopping and I heard an unusual song. It caught my attention because I would categorize it as rap, but I don’t listen to channels that typically play rap. Perhaps it’s a lot like one of my favorite bands, Cake, that mixes in spoken word within the song.

I went home and found the video on YouTube. I showed it to my wife and she agreed that it was even better than the song itself. What do you think:



The video is not loading on my phone, so here’s a link to YouTube

That’s a great story about the paths that you can choose… how power can corrupt… how you can choose to create, build and help people… there’s lots of great symbolism.

This is the reason why I miss MTV showing music videos.

A Look Around the World of Personal Finance

Continuing along with this historical look, I decided to preserve what used to be called “link round-ups”, which were highlights from partner blogs.

Only one of these blogs is still active – Million Dollar Journey. Interestingly, their article from June 25, 2008 is titled, “RBS Predicts a Global Market Crash.” It begins: “I read a report from RBS predicting that there will be a global market crash could come at the end of summer/beginning of fall 2008.”

I’ve removed the links that no longer link to the exact article, but a surprising number of blogs are still serving (even if they are dormant).

And now some links from The Money Writers:

Links from other great blogs:

  • The Zebra gives some great ideas on how to save during a crisis.
  • Flexo points out that the IRS now allows you to deduct miles at 58.5 cents each. This is helpful for my wife, who occasionally drives pretty far for her work. We expect they’ll update their reimbursement to match. Perhaps this should have a regional aspect to it as well.
  • No Credit Needed reports on StreetRead – an interesting new site for stock quotes and financial information .
  • Mighty Bargain Hunter has found a great site to share with all of us who love to eat out. You get $35 in Restaurant.com gift certificates for only $4. Perhaps the prices at the gas pump won’t hurt so much with this sweet deal.
  • More gas-saving tips are offered this week by Free Money Finance on top of Money Smart Life’s post. These pertain more to trip taking than every day.

This article was originally published on Jun 28, 2008 at 09:50

Three Dreams, Two Household Tips, and One Merry Christmas

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Money Gift

Last week, I wrote an article that was tough to publish because I was feeling very depressed. Tasks everywhere just caving in on me and I was getting buried… and I don’t even have a traditional career. Turns out that much of the cure for those feelings may have been just writing about them. Or maybe is was all the heartfelt comments I received. I’m sure the passing of time played a role as well.

Whatever it was has had a very interesting side effect. After years of only remember one or two dreams per year (at most), I now have a 3 day streak of very vivid dreams. It’s been years of since I had one vivid dream.

I wanted to share them, because they give a little peeks into myself, this blog, and have a little money mention in them. (I wouldn’t blame you if you just skipped down to the two household tips.)

  1. My MLM scam exposure stories haunt me (and Tom Brady)

    In this dream, one of the old MLMs that sued me into silence was upset about some kind of new story that was being done by a journalism student, Mary Higgs, on the Boston College campus. I guess she uncovered all my previous findings and wrote it into a story. No one would give me a clear story, but the lawyers were fighting and demanded I come in.

    Tom Brady happened to be taken a master’s course there for some reason. In fact, the Patriots had a whole satellite office there. All of it was connected, but no one would tell me how. When it finally came time watch the video of Higgs’ exposé, Tom Brady came in and asked if could talk to me for a few minutes. It was a clear distraction tactic. I don’t have many rules, but one is, “If Tom Brady wants to give you a few minutes of his time, you don’t say no.”

    Of course, I woke up before talking to Tom Brady or uncovering the mystery of the reporting and the connection to the Patriots. I could only assume it was like when the Red Sox players were caught in the MonaVie pyramid scheme.

  2. I sailed around New York City

    I’ve been sailing exactly once in about 10 years. However, I live in a sailing community, Newport RI, so that will change. On this day it changed really quickly as I hopped a quick flight to NYC (not sure how that’s quicker than driving) and rented a sailboat. I took it around the sea a few times and got a picture of the Statue of Liberty through some kind of arch.

    Since I was wet, I got a hotel room and showered. Then it was too dark to sail back to the rental place. A fine Japanese young man who happened to have a sail planned in my direction offered to guide me. I got the sailboat back safely. Then I rented a car and drove back home only with the fear of having to explain to my wife that I spent a few thousand dollars.

    In the morning, I checked my phone for that picture of Ms. Liberty, just to make sure that it didn’t happen.

  3. Barstool Sports makes my son famous

    I posted something on Lazy Man about my son’s scooter not being charged for school. Very mundane stuff. Barstool picks up the story and uses their traditional sarcasm to explain that he must have a howitzer to get girls with such a terrible ride. (Howitzer, is a reference to an old Barstool scandal.) I don’t know if they knew he was 5 years old, but the media jumped on them for that.

    All of this time, traffic to my Lazy Man story was going through the roof. The only thing is that I don’t check traffic very much and I had a full day of real world errands to run. I missed the whole media circus until everyone had moved onto the next interesting thing.

    Come to think of it, that very much sums up everything you need to know about blogging. (Also, I haven’t read Barstool in years.)

Hopefully those weren’t too long or boring. I promise not to give up personal finance writing for dream writing.

Two Household Tips

I realize that you don’t come here for the above stuff, but I didn’t think Christmas Eve was the right time for a deep analysis of the SECURE Act and stretch IRAs. As a compromise, I’ll leave you with two random household money saving tips that I’ve been saving up for years because they don’t fit anywhere else on the blog:

  • Fogless Shaving Mirrors Forever – I NEED a fogless shaving mirror in the shower. It’s the best thing ever invented. The only problem is that they lose their foglessness as you clean them. Sometime they give a 1/10 of an ounce cleaner and ask you to buy more. A better plan is to get RainX anti fog repellent for car windshields. I put a couple of drops on a piece of toilet paper and any old shower mirror is anti fog for a few days. A bottle will last you for years and years. It’s usually about $5, so Amazon’s pricing is very weird today.

    They seem to realize that people have discovered this trick and added that it works great on bathroom mirrors on the bottle. I’ve been on my same shaving mirror for 15 years now and before I had to churn through them every year or two.

  • Bullion Cubes – This is further proof that moms are the smartest people. My mom used bullion cubes fairly often, but I’m mostly self-taught cooker. I bought chicken broth in boxes. Then I’d throw half the box away because it was too much. Then I bought cans because I was less wasteful of broth – but probably more wasteful in creating trash.

    At Aldi’s I discovered bullion cubes on just a random glance on the aisle. It was about $2.00 for the equivalent of 25 cans of broth… in 1/25th of the space! It’s a perfect replacement. I don’t know if tastes the same, but fortunately my cooking is bad enough that no one will the notice the difference.

I hope you got something out of your time reading this today. If you have a favorite household tip, please share it below. Maybe we can compile a greatest hits and turn this into a valuable resource (minus my weird dream stuff).

Finally, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. The plan is to do a financial year in review before the New Year.

Holiday Sundries: Mesh Wifi, Best Investment Idea, and No Camp

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I hope all my United States’ readers enjoyed their Independence Day holiday. The July 4th holiday is a good market for half of the year being completed. I’ll be reviewing my goals for the beginning of the year soon. I know I’m behind where I wanted to be with decluttering, but still ahead of where we’ve ever been, so that’s win.

Pell Bridge Sunset
The sunset view before the fireworks in Newport, RI

I hope to publish a financial update through the end of June in a few days. I ran some preliminary numbers while we are still waiting to receive rent checks and the numbers are looking amazing.

It’s a good thing too, because the past week was a really difficult one for us. There are some things that I can’t get into, but one of them that I can was a dog I was sitting on Rover. This puppy was kind-hearted, but it just chewed up everything. I couldn’t leave it alone for more than 5 minutes. Most of the time the dog sitting gig is great. However, not every job is perfect and this was a reminder of that.

I have serveral longer articles almost finished, but I didn’t want to get anything too deep due to the holidays. Instead, I’ll go with a few little thought nuggets.

Installing a Mesh Wifi System

I used to laugh at the idea of mesh wifi systems. I figure it just made sense to use an old router as a repeater. Maybe we have too many devices now, or maybe it’s that my recycled repeater router is 10 years old, but we’ve run into a lot of wifi problems in the house. I decided that life is too short to go through it with bad wifi. (I’ve been thinking that a lot lately.)

I did some research and it seemed to say that one product was the best. So I ended up buying a renewed/refurbished version of this Netgear Orbi RBK50 for around $200. Some mesh systems are $400, so hitting the $200 number was important to me. There’s also a new standard coming out soon, so I’ll feel better replacing a $200 system in a few years than I would if I spend $400. For now, I’ll hopefully be able to sell my old routers for $50 combined.

Unfortunately, the process of installing the Orbi requires a reboot of the cable modem. I rebooted my cable modem a few weeks ago and it took a call to my cable company’s customer support to resolve it. It turned out to just be dumb luck that it decided to work. This time my cable modem didn’t come back. It’s 6 years old, and I stored it in a drawer where it was likely overheating. I went to Amazon and bought a new one. In the meantime, I’m renting a combo router/wifi from my cable company that is terrible, but it at least gets us online.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to review the Orbi soon.

My Best Individual Investment Idea

Pell Bridge Night
A view of the same bridge at night.

In reviewing two years of stock picks it seems like my hand-picked value stocks far out-performed the market. I’m still the person who held onto oil and Twitter for years just to see it do nothing, so I don’t claim to be a stock picking wizard. I’m very much an believer in buy and hold index investing.

However, if you were to look at those articles in the past and how the stocks did, you might ask me, “What are some example stocks that are going to break out in the future?” Unfortunately, I don’t see any from the group that I track that seem particularly good. The closest I have is Kraft-Heinz (Nasdaq: KHC). It fits the model because the stock has been badly beaten (for good reason). It still pay for a very healthy 5.24% dividend, but that dividend may get cut in the future.

I think the company will figure things out and turn it around. It could be months or it could be years. I don’t think anyone’s crystal ball is perfect when it comes to picking company stocks.

If stock picking isn’t your thing, I’m planning to write something in the next week or two that will be of more interest to you. Here’s a preview: Bonds look to be a much better investment over the long term than I thought.

Keeping Kids Home During the Summer?

Joe from Retire By 40 is having a whole summer with his son. This struck me as odd as I grew up in an environment where kids went to summer camp. It was just what is done and I never gave it a second thought. When my kids were younger, I appreciated any time off I could get, because taking care of a 2-year old is much more tedious than a 7-year old. With our kids being a year apart, it was “double trouble.”

However, now that they are older and largely take care of themselves (not that they always want to), we could use the summer to do more family stuff during the week. I have largely ignored the cost of camp and let my wife handle it. However, it’s nearly $50 a day per child, so $100 for the two. The easy math shows that it is $500 for the week or $2000 for the month.

That’s a lot of money especially because it’s only 6-hour days. As soon as I drop them off, I feel like I’m picking them up again. I feel it’s important for them to have a camp experience and play with kids their own age in a fun environment that’s less structured than school. I also feel it’s important to me to still have some time to focus on work during the summer.

Maybe next year, we’ll do a 50/50 camp/home split – one week on, and one week off. There are some specialty camps that I’ve been looking at, but they are a little more money. It’s much more affordable to do 5 weeks of specialty camp and home with dad than it is to 10 weeks at general camp.

I’m coming up with this idea on the spot. I’ll have to see what my wife thinks of it.

Have yourselves a great weekend. I highly recommend Toy Story 4 if you want to beat the heat. I’ve also started the new season of Stranger Things on Netflix, but I’m sure some of you already finished it.