Lazy Man and Money

Our Extremely Bizarre Early Withdrawal Drawdown Strategy

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I had great plans for today’s article… and then I read Our Unusual Early Retirement Withdrawal Strategy. Record scratch! I’ll get back to that article later this week.

It seems that a lot of FIRE (financial independent/retire early) bloggers are writing about how they are going to withdraw money from the nest egg they accumulated when they retire. That sounds simple, but it gets complicated fairly quickly. I’ll be linking to articles later on.

If Retire By 40’s withdrawal strategy is “unusual” (I think it is), then our’s is extremely bizarre. In a nutshell that strategy is: Don’t Do It. I lean much more towards Frankie Goes to Hollywood than Nike.

This bizarre strategy is brought about by a unique circumstance… my wife’s military pension is worth an estimated $50,000 and it’s adjusted to inflation.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Hey that’s cheating!” You’re not wrong to be thinking that. Pensions are very rare nowadays. In a lot of ways we are blessed. In other ways, we pay a price. My wife (a pharmacist) could have earned a lot more for years if she worked in retail. She wouldn’t have to think about being deployed for Ebola or Zika outbreaks. If she takes a day off on Friday and the following Monday, she loses 4 days of leave. We work around military restrictions and we receive some benefits for that. In my opinion there are more pluses than minuses.

Let’s put that $50,000 pension aside and pretend it doesn’t exist. After all, for perhaps 99% of you, it doesn’t exist. The idea of that pension kicked me in the butt! I’m not going to be the chump that worked to 65 when my wife retires at 44. Hells no! That’s why I started this blog more than 10 years ago. I wanted to explore how people become financially independent.

Like any money journey there’s been twists and turns. If you want to read 10 years of that history, my archive of articles is here.

A strange thing happened and advertisers started to email me about ad placement on my blog. I didn’t understand it, but if someone wanted to pay my landline bill (people had landlines back then), I was all for it. In fact, I feel it would have been hypocritical NOT to take the ads.

I presume that my blog can earn a revenue of $30,000. I could be crazy as blog income is not reliable at all. However, I have talked to bloggers who stopped blogging more than 5 years ago and it still brings in an income. I also do dog sitting, because… well dogs are awesome and there’s no explanation necessary. I’ve only been doing for the last 20 months, but it seems like an income of $15,000 is possible in my area.

Let’s suppose you say that the military pension and my blog is cheating. I’d argue that we could have earned more money and saved up a bigger nest egg to draw down. I don’t want to get tied up in those hypothetical situations.

Instead, let’s focus our real estate situation. We have a small real estate “empire”. I expect that it will generate around $30,000 of income (after maintenance) when the 15-year mortgages are paid off in 2027.

Also around 2027, we’ll own our home as well. Without mortgage payments, electricity payments (thanks solar panels), limited transportation costs, and military health care, our expenses should be very, very low. I expect that the real estate income would cover 90% or more of those costs.

There’s going to be time when Social Security kicks in. I believe that taking Social Security early and investing it is the best plan. I covered that here. For the purposes of the discussion here, we’d get around $50,000 if we took it at 66.

So, let’s pretend that military pensions don’t exist. Let’s pretend my online income goes to zero. Let’s pretend that I suddenly get an extreme allergic reaction to dogs (let’s not pretend that… I don’t want to live in that world). Let’s pretend that our real estate assets somehow ceased to exist. Let’s pretend that Social Security is not solvent (not too hard), but also that people aren’t paying in at all (which would prevent us from withdrawing money from the system).

Let’s also pretend that I couldn’t find a way to earn an income. Honestly, I’d love to revisit my teenager years in fast food. I wouldn’t want to do it full time, but there’s something greatly satisfying about being able to completing a task by rote. Let’s also pretend that my wife can’t find a job as a pharmacist.

In that contrived scenario, we’d have to look into drawing down from our retirement brokerage accounts. I don’t know how to begin calculating that. Since it is “plan G”, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Our strategy is to never draw down from the retirement accounts (until the RMDs kick in). As I wrote in the title, it is bizarre. Is that rational? Let me know in the comments.

If you are looking to more conventional drawdown ideas, please see the following:

Link 1: The Retirement Manifesto – Our Retirement Investment Drawdown Strategy

Link 2: OthalaFehu – Retirement Master Plan

Link 3: Plan Invest Escape – Drawdown vs. Wealth Preservation in Early Retirement

Link 4: Freedom is Groovy – The Groovy Drawdown Strategy

Link 5: The Green Swan – The Nastiest, Hardest Problem in Finance: Decumulation

Link 6: My Curiosity Lab – Show Me The Money: My Retirement Drawdown Plan

Link 7: Cracking Retirement – Our Drawdown Strategy

Link 8: The Financial Journeyman – Early Retirement Portfolio & Plan

Are Americans Saving for Retirement the Wrong Way?

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I often have strong feelings about the right and wrong way things should be done. I’m not proud of it. I have to remind myself that there’s a lot of in-between. Also, many people may believe that my “right” is wrong and “wrong” is right.

Whenever I feel this way, I think, “Let’s go… to the numbers!” Even that might be misguided. I may be better thinking, “Let’s go… to the psychology!”

I was recently alerted (via this Motley Fool article) of a NerdWallet survey done at the end of last year. The survey had the title of “Americans Worried About Retirement, Unlikely to Save More Next Year”. Motley Fool took that survey and decided that “Survey Reveals the Majority of Americans Are Saving for Retirement All Wrong.”

On Friday, I explained why another article’s title didn’t match the data or even the article text. I didn’t want to go there again today and it isn’t the point I’m trying to make. However, Motley Fool painted me into a corner by extracting a 2000 person study of people ages 18+ into something that speaks to “the Majority of Americans.”

I certainly wouldn’t want to trust a survey that thinks it’s worthwhile to ask an 18 year old about “retirement readiness.” I imagine that 18-year old might respond, “If you buy me and my friends a case of beer, we’ll talk about retirement with you for a bit.”

The other parts of the survey about top financial concerns and savings priorities are a little more relevant. I’d like to see the “retirement readiness” question moved to a different survey reserved for those 25+, maybe even 30+. For example, Nerdwallet lists a “key finding” of: 43% of millennials ages 18 to 34 are currently not saving for retirement at all.

What I wanted to write about today was this key finding:

“Missed tax advantages”

“Of those who are saving for retirement, 55% report doing so in a regular savings account, compared with 50% who report using a workplace retirement plan like a 401(k) and 39% who are using an individual retirement account like a traditional or Roth IRA.”

That shocked me. Why would such a high percentage of people use regular savings accounts for retirement? (This is what Motley Fool picked up on.)

Aside from very young adults who skew the numbers I came up with 3 reason why this could be the case:

  1. I immediately jumped to a lack of consumer education. Maybe people don’t know about Roth IRAs and 401ks? Maybe they are too confusing.
  2. Next, I jumped to laziness. Maybe people perceive it to be too difficult to sign up for a Roth IRA or a 401k? Maybe they just didn’t get around it due to everything else going on in their life.
  3. Finally, I wondered if the survey itself was giving me the answer. It mentioned that people are concerned about medical bills, lack of an emergency fund, and credit card debt. It’s hard to prioritize putting money in a retirement account when you have those concerns, right?

It’s got to be a combination of those 3 and perhaps a few other things that I haven’t thought of. It would have been good if the survey went a little deeper into the “Why are you saving for retirement in a savings account?” rather than to seemingly stop and point the finger at them.

On the topic of pointing fingers, I started this article coming from the perspective of the Motley Fool analysis of “People are saving for retirement all wrong!” I was going to explain that compound interest is a river and you want it to flow with you. When you factor inflation, a savings account makes you work against the current.

My mind went into “math rage.” (If that’s not a thing it is now!). It might not be that people are saving for retirement all wrong. It might be that they are using the savings account for a few different things. It might also be due to the psychology of not wanting to risk retirement savings in the market. That’s were the psychology argument at the top of the article came into play.

In the end, despite my “math rage”, I have a problem with saying that people are saving for retirement the wrong way without knowing the details. Their “why” is important.

Taking a Loan From Our Retirement Accounts?

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Happy Patriots’ Day! Yes, it’s mostly a Boston holiday, but everyone in the United States could find a reason to celebrate it. I love 11AM baseball (but not as much as I loved 8AM baseball when I lived on the West Coast).

I was very excited to get this blog post out this morning, but I had a disappointing experience at my son’s school. It turns out that I had unknowingly been breaking a school rule for about 6 months. They explained the rule to me this morning. I explained how we were in compliance with the rule. They then clarified an unwritten, not-communicated point about the rule. That point makes a lot of sense for the whole existence of the rule know that it is clarified. However, I defend my wife and myself taking it literally.

The end result is that we felt terrible that we were taking advantage for 6 months. They probably felt terrible that both me and my 4-year old were confused. Hurt feelings all around. The lesson as always: Communication is important.

You aren’t here for communication lessons, so let’s move from personal to personal finance, shall we?

In the past 10 years I’ve read a lot of personal finance articles. There are almost no absolutes in personal finance. However, this comes close: “Never borrow from your retirement plan.”

Case in point. From Here’s what happens when you take out a loan on your 401(k):

“While 401k borrowers are borrowing from themselves, this isn’t a harmless transfer of money from one pocket to another, experts say. ‘The best spin you could put on it is it’s the lesser of several evils,’ said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com.”
…
Borrowing from a 401k plan exacts a big opportunity cost. Borrowers miss out on any compound growth that their investments would otherwise have earned in the market.
…
Unless the money is repaid quickly, the loan represents a permanent setback to retirement planning, McBride said.
…
Those who borrow from their 401ks lose out on tax efficiency, too. Loans are repaid with after-tax dollars. In other words, someone in the 25% tax bracket would need to earn $125 to repay $100 of the loan. Savers’ 401k money is taxed again when withdrawn in retirement, so those who take out a loan are subjecting themselves to double taxation.
…
Employees who leave their jobs, are laid off or fired typically have to repay their loan within 60 days. If they don’t, the loan amount is considered a distribution, subjected to income tax and a 10% penalty if the borrower is under 59 and a half.
…
[CFP Andy] Smith’s list of acceptable reasons to take a 401k loan is short: to pay back taxes or other money owed to the IRS, to pay a tax lien, or to try to avoid bankruptcy.
…
But to the extent possible, experts say it’s best to avoid getting into a situation where we need fast cash in the first place. That means setting aside a liquid emergency fund of six months’ expenses.

[I bolded the point about double taxation, because I’ll cover that later.]

Whew! That was a lot of digest. I’m not going to into each point. Instead, I’ll use that as a “flavor” of the issues… and then drill into a few points that I consider significant in our situation.

Today, I want to challenge the thinking about borrowing from a retirement account. Or at least, I want to make a case that like almost everything in personal finance… it is personal.

Regular readers know my wife is an officer with military benefits. As a government employee, her retirement program isn’t a 401k, but a TSP. As best I can tell there aren’t any significant differences between them… other than TSPs tend to have investment choices with extremely low expenses. As best I can tell a TSP loan is almost the same as a 401k loan. TSP loans aren’t written about very often because they aren’t as common.

If you aren’t familiar with TSPs, it might be best that you think “401k” when you read “TSP.” As always, please consult your professional financial and tax advisor about any and all of this stuff.

What are TSP Loan Terms?

Because TSPs are a government plan, taking a loan out is straight-forward. There’s no need to talk to a loan officer and justify your need. The theory seems to be, “It’s your money, you can get it easily… under these conditions.”

There’s one set of conditions for buying a primary residence, but that’s not us. The other set of conditions are the ones we are interested in. I’ll focus on those.

It seems you can currently take a loan of up to $50,000 at 2.375% for up to 5 years. It’s a fixed rate. Procedurally, it is as simple as sending in the application. You pay it back with the interest into your own account. Yes, instead of paying interest to the bank, you are the bank. You are lending it to yourself.

There’s a fee involved… a one-time, $50 processing fee.

You might think there’s some kind of breakage issue involved. There might be with 401Ks, but TSP loans can be set up to come out of your paycheck. You set it up once and forget it.

Defending a TSP Loan

My wife has been maxing out her TSP contributions for around 15 years. That’s roughly $16,000 (some years were less and now it’s more) a year or around $240,000. The stock market has been doing well, so there are investment gains as well. It’s not a small account.

Let’s address a few points:

  • Undermining Our Retirement Plan

    While the TSP account isn’t small it also ISN’T the major focus of our retirement plan. I don’t think taking a TSP loan undermines our retirement planning at all. I understand how it would most people, but we aren’t most people.

  • Opportunity Cost

    This may be considered one-in-the-same as the above point. However, I wanted to make a special point that the stock market has had an extreme run over around 8 years now. In the short term, I think the opportunities aren’t that great. That’s because I know where the stock market will go now (I write half-jokingly.)

    If the stock market stays relatively flat for a few years as I think it might, the loss of opportunity is minimal. I don’t want to discount it completely, but I no longer assume that we’ll get 7% over the next 3-4 years.

    I might falling into the same trap that Punch Debt in the Face did in 2013. I hope not.

  • Loss of Job

    This is the bogeyman that keeps financial planners up at night. It’s a trifecta of financial pain. You need to come up with a pile of cash in a short time. You have no job. You presumably have no emergency fund (or you wouldn’t be borrowing in the first place.) You are going to have pay income tax on the money and a 10% penalty. Penalties and fees always make me feel ouchies (to borrow a phrase from our kids).

    With my wife’s career, the likelihood of job loss is minimal. High ranking officers aren’t typically fired. Also a pharmacist can usually get work relatively quickly (even if it is an hourly wage.) We have some other coverage even in this extreme case… such as these hidden emergency funds.

Why Should We Get a TSP Loan?

Maybe I should have addressed this above. I wanted to dispel the general reasons why experts are against retirement loans before getting into “Our Why.”

Last week, I wrote about our surprise condo assessments. They are around $20,000 for each condo unit… and we have two in the property. The terms of the loan are 5.2% for 11.5 years and then they adjust to some higher rate.

We could try to sell the properties, but that seems to be a terrible idea. When you considering these expenses would be passed onto a prospective buyer they will offer $20K less than the value of the properties a few months ago. After seller fees, it would amount to a fire sale… a big loss to us. However, the rents are good and the financing would lead us to lose an extra $100 or so a month. That’s not a huge amount. We still have a tremendous price-to-rent ratio (it was around 6.5, but now it’s probably closer to 8).

While the one-time $20K seems like a lot (and it is), each of these properties should earn us $10K a year when they are paid off. Perhaps they will earn even more as the property is greatly upgraded.

The terms of the loan that the condo association got really caught my attention. As I was I writing the article, I realized how terrible the terms are for people with great credit like us. It isn’t competitive with current fixed loan rates now and it feels like an exploding loan as it will adjust in some unspecified way in 11.5 years. I defer to Clubber Lang for a prediction on how these loan terms will turn out for most owners:

I’d rather have a loan at a fixed 2.375% rate vs. an exploding 5.2% rate. Wouldn’t you?

There are a couple of other reasons why we might take this loan.

  1. Paying Off Our Solar Panels

    We financed solar panels a couple of years ago with a HELOC. It had a good teaser rate at around 2.5%, but it is 4.5% now. If I had it to do over, I would have locked in a TSP loan at around 1.5% back then and use that. I simply didn’t realize we had access to better rates.

    I don’t miss paying for electricity. And I think I’ll enjoy each and every year of the next 25 years of not paying for it (or paying pennies for it).

  2. A Master’s Degree for My (Pharmacist) Wife

    I never would have thought of looking at a TSP loan unless my wife mentioned that her friend is doing it to finance a master’s degree. It seems that is the next step in the corporate/military ladder. Borrowing for an advanced degree might make sense for most people, but for a doctor (of pharmacy) it seems like a step back to me.

    I shrug my shoulders and justify it as complimentary. It might make her a Captain. It might not. It can only help, right? And if it doesn’t carry weight with the government, it will carry weight in the private sector.

Retirement Loans and Double Taxation

Remember the bolded text above about double taxation? Clearly Marketwatch couldn’t be wrong about double taxation of 401K loans, right?

Well, Vanguard seems to have a different view.

Vanguard makes the great point that “First, it’s easy to see you aren’t ‘taxed twice’ on the principal balance of a ‘k’ loan. If you borrow $10,000 from your retirement plan, you receive $10,000 to use as you want — you don’t have to pay taxes on it.”

This makes sense to me. You weren’t taxed in withdrawing the funds the first time, right? You simply have to put in what you took out.

The analysis on the interest is more complicated. I defer the Vanguard article. Worst case scenario we’d be taxed twice on that interest. However, the amount of interest we’d be charged is fairly minimal. One calculator projected it at around $200. If the government wants to tax me twice on $200 interest, I say Bravo Zulu.

Conclusion

It seems to me that there are legitimate reasons to take a loan from a retirement account… and I don’t think they need to be “last resort” reasons.

There is at least one important question that I didn’t answer above. Why not have an emergency fund to cover this?

We have layers of emergency funds as I hope I explained. The extreme expenses from the condos are somewhat planned for. We could finance them, but I think we’ll decide that we have better options.

The alternative is to not invest a sizable amount of money… and I’m not sure that is a great idea. In all the retirement articles I’ve read, I didn’t find something like “put the money under your mattress.”

What’s Your Encore Career Going to Be?

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I read so many articles on the Internet each week. I don’t share many of them. I assume that everyone is drowning in information overload like I am.

However, once a month or so, I find a unique article. It hits me hard and I have to share it. Such was the case in reading What They Don’t Tell You About Retiring Early by Jim Wang of Wallet Hacks. Jim has a very unique story to tell:

“Jim retired at age 30 after selling his first massively successful first blog.”

It sounds like a dream come true right? There’s almost no way for anything negative to come from it, right? Well not quite…

“I had just been come into more money than I’d ever seen in my life but I felt a little empty. The thing that occupied my mind was no longer there… When people talk about how depression isn’t sadness but emptiness, I now understand. I was a little depressed in those weeks and months afterwards because I no longer had a drive. No reason to get up in the morning!”

You should read Jim’s story to get the full context.

One of the solutions for Jim was having an encore career. Never heard of an encore career? I’m not 100% sure I have either. I’ve heard things called a second act and I’ve talked about the “what happens next” when she retires from the military in a few years.

Wikipedia defines an encore career as:

“An encore career is work in the second half of life that combines continued income, greater personal meaning, and social impact. These jobs are paid positions often in public interest fields, such as education, the environment, health, the government sector, social services, and other nonprofits.”

A Blast from the Past: What is Your Definition of Retirement?

(This is rough transition, but work with me on this.)

In December of 2007, I asked the question What’s Your Definition of Retirement? (At the time I hadn’t separated the concept of financial independence and retirement.)

One of the great things about having a journal is that you can go back review what you thought way back then. I typically cringe at how bad writing was in the past, but I don’t mind this:

When I imagine my retirement, I don’t envision that I’ll stop working. I think I would be missing a higher purpose of making my life mean something – leaving a legacy behind if you will. I took a little time and thought about what my ideal retirement job would include. It would surely have the following:

  • Ability to work on projects that I enjoy
  • Flexibility to working as much (or as little) as I want to
  • Flexibility to when I want to
  • Flexibility to work from wherever I want to
  • Freedom from having to take orders (which I might disagree with) from others

Take a step back and look at that list. Doesn’t blogging seems to fit as a good retirement job?
…
I do imagine there will always be money for those willing to share quality ideas and spread their knowledge. Perhaps that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.

Welcome to My Encore Career

No, I didn’t sell a blog for millions of dollars. I didn’t win the lottery. I didn’t have the day Jim did where everything disappeared. Well, I did, but it was because I resigned as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. The company and the job wasn’t a good fit. In any case, it was the opposite day of Jim’s, they certainly didn’t give me a bottle of bubbly.

What I have is a blog that makes a reasonable amount of money. It has the freedoms above that allow me to pursue other opportunities like my dog sitting business. I am able to take care of the dog, kids, rental properties, housework, and financial management stuff. (In fairness, my wife does a lot of those things as well.)

In the last 8+ years, I’ve focused some of my energy on Consumer Protection. I’ve written about my recent lawsuits for simply trying to “share quality ideas and spread knowledge.”

When a lawsuit comes up, I often talk with many, many lawyers. When I explain how much I make on the blog, they seemed to be surprised it is so low. They ask, “Why would you work at something that makes so little money?”

Thanks to Jim’s illuminating article, I can simply point them to the Wikipedia page with the definition of an encore career.

How Do Like The New Uber gPod?

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I’m doing something a little different with this article. If you like it, please leave a comment and/or share this article with a friend.

It’s 2030 and my little man, Giles*, is now a big man. He’s a month away from his 18th birthday. He’s studied extremely hard and he’s got a shot at Stanford next year (finger’s crossed).

I’m continually amazed at all the things he’s been able to fit in his head. However, this is about the one thing that isn’t in there.

Giles doesn’t know how to drive a car. Neither do any of his friends.

Since the government passed the new Manual Driver Requirements in 2028, none of them have even taken a driver’s test. Why would they?

I couldn’t be happier about how things have developed in the last 15 years. When I started this blog nearly 25 years ago in 2006, I had planned to spend thousands on transportation in retirement. Who would have thought that transportation has become a small income stream for me?

Did I lose You? Let me take a step back.

In late 2015, I realized that several technologies were converging to change the world.

My solar panels hadn’t celebrated their first birthday, but they already had me thinking: “If only there were reasonably-priced electric SUVs, I could eliminate most of my gas bill. (I’d need something for longer trips.)”

Several months before that, Uber came my town. I’ve only used it a couple of times, but the idea of on-demand transportation is changing the way millions of people travel.

And the year before that, I was on “the 101” in Silicon Valley and next to me was a Google car without a driver.

A funny thing happens when you put autonomous cars, on-demand transportation, and “free”** solar power together. The cost of car transportation becomes very small.


Uber's future gPod

Currently, the average American family spends 19% of their money on transportation. (I’ll make the assumption that the number is typical, or more, for car owners and those who commute via public transit save money.) However, the average car is in use only 4% of the time according to Morgan Stanley.

So, roughly, 1/5 of the money goes to something that is used 1/25th of the time. That’s terribly inefficient.

In a world of autonomous, on-demand cars, people pay for what they use. I choose to save money by riding at off-peak hours to run errands.

What about the cost of human drivers? In 2016, Uber had to pay hundreds of thousands of drivers. Autonomous cars is a huge, huge cost savings for them.

I don’t mind one bit, because autonomous cars are great for riders like me as well. We can use our commuting time productively. The average commute to work appears to be about 24.5 minutes. We’ll estimate that to be 50 minutes a day (round-trip). It appears that the average hourly wage is $20.43, meaning that the 50 minutes saves people around $17 a day on just their work commute. (This makes the dangerous and possibly false assumption that people would be as productive while in the car. If they aren’t being productive, I humbly suggest that they have a higher quality of life.)

In the spirit of the late, great, Steve Jobs, there’s One More Thing.

The autonomous cars drive much more efficiently. They merge perfectly because computer sensors direct everything. The same sensors help ensure that there are extremely few accidents. Commuting times are reduced which is allows people to have more time to do the things they want to do.

What about solar? How do I make money from Uber’s gPods?

A few years ago, the last of the gas-powered auto companies announced they’d be switching to electric, just like everyone else. At the time of the announcement, I couldn’t help but think of the last companies to make typewriters and VCRs.

Our family has always tried to be a little ahead of the curve. In 2015, We were the first house in the neighborhood to get solar power. So when Alphabet’s Uber subsidiary announced their latest innovation a couple of years ago, we were quick to sign up.

We make a little money each day renting out a parking space in our driveway (and electricity) to Uber. Uber realized early on that by distributing cars throughout a neighborhood, people would always have fast access to a car. Location, location, location. It was much more efficient than having them in a central parking area. By tapping into the solar power that’s already in most people’s homes, Uber eliminated the need to “refuel” cars.

I imagine that Uber swaps out cars for maintenance, but it’s hard for me to be sure. The cars look mostly the same. The come in any color you want as long as it is black. All I know is that we have size 1, 2, or 3 in our driveway at any given time.

Back in 2016, I was estimating that we’d pay more than $800 a month for our two cars in retirement. That’s around $10,000 a year. This system is much, much cheaper. In fact, our car expenses are essentially zero when you factor in Uber’s payment to us for the parking space.

We finished paying off our 15 year mortgage 3 years ago in 2027. With our electricity and transportation costs zero we are left few other expenses. I haven’t figured out how to eliminate the cost of health care, food, taxes, insurance, and other utilities. For most people health care is one of their biggest expenses. We’re very fortunate to have my wife’s military coverage. Though it is much more expensive than in was in 2016, it’s still a great deal compared to the other options out there.

Thank heavens that we’ve been able to reduce and/or eliminate all these expenses. This year Stanford is $150,000 a year. Giles’ younger brother, Xander, is looking into MIT. That’s not any cheaper.

Is it silly to reflect about saving $10,000 a year on transportation when you are spending $300,000 a year between two colleges?

* In traditional Lazy Man fashion, I have substituted real names with a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

** Solar power isn’t free, but the panels are very cheap and efficient in 2030. There’s no incremental cost to power cars like there is with gasoline.

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