Happy 4th of July! A friend in Canada asked what we in the US say on the day. My reply: folks sometimes say on The Fourth (caps required), “Have a Happy Fourth!” or for the exuberant, fake a Southern accent, say each word with a bit of a pause;
“Happy! Fourth! Of! Juuuuly!” (Saying Yeehaw is optional.)
Hey, we had a revolution. Have you heard about it? History isn’t as popular as it was in the past, and there’s a circular irony there, so if you want an entertaining reminder, I recommend watching 1776, the musical. Go for the extended cut which includes the song that a certain President asked them to take out. As for revolutions, we aren’t the only ones.
That’s a lot of tabs, as I glance up at my browser’s bookmark bar. Politics are so contentious in the United States that I think we’ve become the Untied States. So, I was going to take the day off from posting as I do most Fridays. Ah, but I made the mistake or took the insightful step to check Wikipedia for a list of revolutions. Sure, there’s America’s (actually only a slice of the Americas), but I was also curious about the French one, the Russian, the Chinese, and a few others. A few? I didn’t count them, but the Wikipedia page includes hundreds starting back more than 4,700 years ago. Gee, humans really are revolting. Here are a few revolutions, rebellions, and wars, each of which was as important to them as any modern one is to us.
Overthrow of the Roman monarchy – 509 BC – get rid of the kings
Athenian Revolution – 509 BC – get rid of the oligarchs
English Civil War – circa 1650 – Parliament versus a king
American Revolution – circa 1776 – ‘nuf said?
French Revolution – circa 1790 – kick out the king and get rid of the oligarchs
Decolonization of the Americas – throughout the 1800s – Spain loses its New World grip
Mexican War of Independence – 1820-ish – kick out the monarchs et al.
Texas Revolution – 1835 – Texas aggressively secedes from Mexico
Russian Revolution – 1917 – No more Tsars
Ukrainian War of Independence – 1920 – same but different
Arab Spring – 2010s – decolonization plus
and hundreds more
and probably hundreds more to come.
Whoever organized the page added a simple yet important feature. They color-coded the conflicts to denote who won. They also supplied a short blurb about why.
A few things stood out:
Humans and their conflicts are messy. Clean, simple narratives aren’t history. Clean, simple narratives are convenient fictions. Someone won. Someone lost, and it could take decades to decide which way it went.
Many of the revolutions had prequels and sequels. Those that didn’t frequently involved countries that disappeared. Progress is chaotic, and each event is temporary. Few countries lasted hundreds of years. The countries with memorable names had a lot changing behind their name tag.
They all probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
Somehow, because of, or in spite of, so much chaos, we’ve gotten to here. Hopefully, we have enough momentum to get us past the rough patches.
Of course, none of them had to deal with Artificial Intelligence or artificial idiocy; they had the real stuff. While some won’t want to hear it, many of the revolutions were driven by climate change. Climate change back then wasn’t as global, but famines, droughts and floods move people; and sometimes other people don’t like having to live with new neighbors. And, of course, humans can make humans want to escape other humans simply by being human. Some will even cross an ocean on sailboats or rafts to get away from it all.
My apologies to those readers who are waiting for the flag-waving part or the screaming-at-the-sky part. For me, history makes me reflective. History makes me ponder where we’ve been and where we might be heading.
One of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, Francis Hopkinson. I guess he could be considered one of the Founding Fathers, though I get the impression he was a guy who happened to have a job, and he showed up for it. In every revolution, there are the famous names, but there are also many more people who simply did what they thought was best. He didn’t know they’d win. By signing the document, he was also identifying himself as a possible subject of treason if they lost. Tough times.
I pause because such considerations cause reflections.
I thank past generations who built the civilization that supports me now. Construction is harder than destruction. There’s probably a Yoda quote about the Force for that because destruction is obviously more appealing to some (Boom! Bang! Crash!), but construction is what supports the future. Thanks to constructive people everywhere.
Shocked. Shocked, I am, to see that I haven’t bought or sold any stock in the recent six months. Oh, wait. I’m not shocked at all. My hold time for my stocks tends to be years, and in some cases, decades. 2024 was the abnormal time as I sold my home, bought a tiny house, and reinvested much of the proceeds. But for the first half of 2025, the main abnormality has been politics. Oy, aka ‘woe is me.’ And I suspect the next six months will be the future showing off a ‘hold my beer’ moment as new abnormalities are delivered.
But skip the political and focus on the personal. This blog is about personal finance, not political finance.
My personal finances have been fine. My emotional preparedness for flight or fight has become practiced since 2010, and the world is in chaos; but on a personal level I should react to my personal life. It may be selfish and self-centered, but maybe I’m due for a bit of that.
Sure, LUNR was up 200% and QBTS was up 1,100%, but that was over the previous twelve months. Things spiked around the election, but that was 2024, not 2025. In 2025 the range has been narrower, QBTS up 39%, LUNR down 40%, less volatile than before, but far above the market’s historical single-digit annual expectations. The biggest percentage gain was 95% for LCTX and the largest drop was 55% for GERN. Both are innovative biotechs, which are prone to stock volatility. GERN is entering its market. LCTX has had some advances to celebrate. Biotechs dealing with unmet needs are difficult for the market to value, hence a lot of bouncing going on.
My innovative battery stocks, GMGMF and SLDP, are starting to act like they’re waking up. I don’t expect much immediate movement, but they will see orders before their eventual end-products are launched. If a company is going to get away from a product using conventional lithium-ion batteries, then they’ll be contracting for sub-components before they begin production.
And then there’s MVIS. Having held it since 1999, maybe it will eventually pay as a lottery ticket stock. Sometimes, I feel that I trust the technology and market potential more than management does.
The biggest personal finance adjustment has been becoming further from worry, as I mentioned in a previous post. Selling my home meant losing the best place I’ve ever lived, but it also means being debt-free. The proceeds from selling my home allowed me to buy my tiny house (MyTinyExperiment.com), reinvest in stocks and diversify the portfolio, and maintain a cash cushion as I undefer deferred maintenance of stuff and my health. I’m further from worry, but my body’s recovery from being poor looks like it will take years. I feel sorry for my various doctors who have to deal with a tangled mess of interwoven causes and consequences.
I’m feeling better, I’m glad to say (and write); but it could be a long road from the depths to get even back up to ‘normal’.
My main concern for the near future is the acceleration of change. I wrote a sci-fi novel, Firewatcher, based on the premise that AIs might wake up. One reason I wrote it was because conventional wisdom was that AIs might wake up by 2100, if at all. I suspected the AIs would get there sooner, like in 2040. As I finished writing it in 2020, some of the early indicators showed my guess was too slow, too. A recent estimate places the earliest date for not just AI but a super-intelligent AI as possibly arriving in 2027. Change is accelerating.
The pace of political change needs no more commentary.
Climate change is accelerating as the interconnectedness of the planet exceeds our expectations.
Social injustice is becoming increasingly hard to hide, but that necessary fight is necessarily disruptive.
War and ignorance are in fashion.
Eep.
An optimist can suggest that our society will grow through this and become a mature civilization. Simply be patient. Long Term Buy and Hold.
A pessimist can skip all of that, find a place to live on a good piece of land far from a population center, disconnect the electronics, plug into gardening and self-sufficiency, maybe with some help from the neighbors.
Guessing the future is foolish, and here comes that word again: necessary. I intend to remain invested in stocks, and hope to move this house I own to land I own rather than the land I rent. Stay tuned, great variability in the possibilities persists. One aspect of singularities is that the situations that created them can be poor models for what comes after them. Guessing at the outcome is less important than being prepared for adapting to the new change. Maybe things will stay the same. Maybe the changes will wait until 2027, or 2040, or 2010, or 21,000. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing, celebrate being debt-free, finish my books, connect with nature and my community, and get ready for the next dance.
And, I still buy lottery tickets.
Read on for my stock synopses. And good luck.
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Geron
GERN (market cap is $0.870B was $2.14B)
Geron, whose name is short enough that I don’t have to use its symbol, is a leading-edge biotech that has a treatment for (pardon the copy and paste from their site) “low- to intermediate-1 risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) in adults”, aka certain blood cancers. They continue to develop treatments based on telomeres, the molecules which regulate chromosomal death, hence other cancers (and possibly auto-immune disorders?).
While Geron is considered leading-edge and is to be congratulated on their first FDA approval, their process has been long, which enables competition, and despite commercialization, has not become profitable. (2024 revenue of ~$77M but with expenses of ~$146M) Their financial situation looks much better than the previous decades of R&D, but the investing community has not been impressed. At least patients are finally being treated. Hopefully, the company becomes profitable, and the stock will reflect that.
I expected more. Geron’s original goals were grander, basically being able to control many aspects of aging through telomeres, stem cells, and nuclear transfer, as I recall. They commissioned panels for actual wisdom and boldly embraced debate. I know they sold off some of the technologies (which is why I bought shares of LCTX) as a survival strategy. I get the impression that those first managers, founders, and officers have been replaced by lowered expectations. I expected a more aggressive introduction of their first product, more publicity for the success of an innovative technology, and a re-invigoration of that original mindset.
I see Geron from two perspectives. One: I shouldn’t buy more if this is all there is after holding the stock since 1999/2000. Two: Finally, they may succeed thanks to the technology despite management.
I bought more after selling my house. I guess I’m a cautious optimist.
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 1999 and continuing to hold.
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog. https://trimbathcreative.net/
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Graphene Manufacturing Group
GMGMF (market cap is $0.064B was $0.062B)
Graphene Manufacturing Group, which I will shorten to GMG, is innovating within a variety of markets: lubricants, coatings, batteries, etc. Diversification is admirable. I am invested in the company because of their work in batteries. GMG’s defining technology is in its name, Graphene. Graphene is a ‘wonder material’, an ideally never-ending one-atom-thick sheet of carbon that excels at strength, heat conduction, and electrical conductivity. Their battery technology has the potential for safer, more efficient, and cheaper batteries, which makes that potential enormous.
I am investing in battery technologies because I think the now-conventional Lithium-ion batteries represent a matured generation within that technology. There is enough demand for electrical devices and vehicles that I expect the newer technologies to supersede Li-ion. Considering the safety problems of liquid Li-ion batteries, safer batteries may be a sufficient incentive to incorporate the new tech.
I also like the decreased dependence on certain rare elements.
GMG is lightly traded, has several competitors, and is based in Australia. No judgment, just facts. I suspect the trading volumes are affected by being a non-US company (though some would see that as a positive), and the competition. Their small size also makes them a buyout candidate. I hope they remain independent and become profitable, sustainable, and successful.
DISCLOSURE I tend to LTBH, and have held shares since 2024.
Circa 2023, I produced a video about the company on my One Company One Story YouTube channel.
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog. https://trimbathcreative.net/)
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Lineage Cell Therapeutics
LCTX (market cap is $0.210B was $0.110B)
Lineage Cell Therapeutics (which is a long enough and complicated enough name that I’ll shorten to its trading symbol, LCTX) is a leading-edge biotech advancing treatments based on stem cells. Within their pipeline, I am most intrigued by their work for improving eyesight in patients with macular degeneration by repairing their retinas, and regrowing nerves like spinal cords severed in accidents. Both are in trials. Neither has been approved, but both conditions have few treatment options available to patients.
LCTX is a spin-off of sorts from technology originally advanced by Geron, another of my investments. It seems the contentious days of stem cell treatments have abated. LCTX’s recent anecdotal successes and preliminary clinical data are encouraging. It is almost as if the treatments are taken for granted even though no company has been able to gain FDA approval, yet.
IF (and note the capital I and F as if it was an old-school programming command), IF the FDA approves LCTX’s stem cell treatments, LCTX should become a headline company as their progress will prove an important new phase in medicine.
I am cautious about being optimistic about the FDA’s response to innovative treatments because they are very cautious about unconventional treatments. Of course, hand-washing was considered radical when it was introduced.
Their potential is significant. They haven’t cleared all of their hurdles, but several are behind them. There are no guarantees.
I recently purchased additional shares from cash from a real estate sale. I’ve considered buying more with the price near or under a dollar, but cheap stocks can be addictive. I’ll continue to watch LCTX as I do with all of my stocks, but good news for LCTX could mean this is the last time to buy it so cheaply – or not.
DISCLOSURE LTBH by habit, but having to remember that my LCTX/BTX holdings came from AST (2014), which was spun off from GERN (which I’ve held since 1999). I hear patience pays, but it is easy to have doubts after twenty years of waiting.
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog https://trimbathcreative.net/
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Intuitive Machines
LUNR (market cap is $1.94B was $2.77B)
Intuitive Machines is the company. LUNR is the trading symbol. I’ll use the trading symbol to mention the company because it is fewer letters. LUNR is enabling the development of lunar exploration and infrastructure. They don’t launch the rockets, but they ride them to deliver satellites and rovers to the Moon.
Lunar commerce is a speculative business because we’ve never had to estimate an industry a quarter of a million miles away. Optimists can see similarities to other commercial space ventures like SpaceX. Pessimists point out that the commercial market will necessarily be smaller than the commercial space market closer to Earth. The company’s two successful arrivals at the Moon’s surface is encouraging. The fact that both landers fell over is discouraging.
The public readily understands things that fall over, but the company makes money by selling other products and services, too. They have competitors, but there should be more than enough market if the industry grows as estimated. Investors who don’t want to miss out may drive up the price even if they don’t fully understand the technology or business model. A successful landing would help.
I bought recently and intend to hold as the industry advances.
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog. https://trimbathcreative.net/)
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
MicroVision
MVIS (market cap is $0.283B was $0.287B)
I’ve been Holding and watching MVIS for over two decades. Pardon me as a copy&paste yet again since 2022. That seems most efficient. (Some edits added, but nothing signficant because nothing seems to have changed except details.) Another era of MVIS doldrums. Very little new news relative to the previous years/decades.
“Oh, MicroVision; will it be yet again another 6-9 months, or 9-18 months, or longer?” Well, it hasn’t been any of the previous hoped-for periods for the last twenty years – though there was that time of flirting with hope…” (circa 2021).
MicroVision is a electronics component manufacturer developing, and to some extent selling, elecro-optical units based on a chip-sized oscillating mirror. It is a simple and ingenious design defended by a long list of patents. Currently the greatest public hope for the company are the LiDAR sensors targeted at the autonomous vehicle market. MicroVision’s advantage is based on the chip’s scalability, the lack of pixel-sized constraints (as compared to LEDs), lower power requirements, and small package.
Before LiDAR, the company targeted short-throw projectors, projectors embedded in smartphones, augmented reality eyewear (see Hololens and more), as well as game controllers, bar code scanners, and orthoscopes. And probably more. The company has always operated under constraints from NDAs, the need to protect competition sensitive product developments, and some exclusive contracts that were ill-suited for the company, in retrospect.
It is easy to imagine that the company wasn’t persistent enough in pursuing some of those products as they were first movers in those fields. Now, competition has caught up. Also, corporate hopes pinned on singular products languished if the product or customer failed to deliver. Each CEO also resteers the company to distinguish their era from the previous one. The effect has been for the company to be seen as a tech test bench play shop that is dependent on demos and customers rather than faith in the company’s products to lead to financial success.
I remember when… Once upon a time, profitability was described as a possibility for 2003. (Previous notes had a note also suggesting 2023. Irony?)
As stated above; “Oh, MicroVision; will it be yet again another 6-9 months, or 9-18 months, or longer?”
If it succeeds, its rise may be magnificent, which is one reason to own shares now. My shares are now old enough to have graduated college, worked for a few years, then gone back for a Masters, started a family, had kids, and watch them enter school. How much longer will it take for something positive, significant, and quantifiable to finally happen?
Oddly enough, a cash infusion from another source and the depressed price made it easy and cheap to buy back in, not because I know anything new but because the market is exhibiting irrational exuberance which might include MVIS; and because some day, some day…
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 1999 (though the very first shares are gone). Dilution means that I no longer have more than enough if the company finally succeeds and the stock reaches the heights I think are possible. Oddly enough, a cash infusion from another source and the depressed price made it easy and cheap to buy back in, not because I know anything new but because the market is exhibiting irrational exuberance which might include MVIS; and because some day, some day…
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog https://trimbathcreative.net/
For even more details, follow my blog’s tags for MicroVision and MVIS, which reach back a decade.
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
D-Wave Quantum
QBTS (market cap is $4.56B was $2.44B)
D-Wave Quantum, which I think of as QBTS, is a leading-edge quantum computer company. Tell a bunch of investors that it relies on quantum mechanics, and lose at least half of the audience. The short version that may not explain enough is that a conventional computer works with ones and zeroes. (Actually, it works by voltage variances.) A quantum computer works with both at the same time. In a conventional computer, a bit is either a 1 or a 0. In a quantum computer, a bit can be both simultaneously. Seems simple, but one implication is that for a conventional computer to consider many possibilities, it must turn on and off each bit (oversimplified.) That takes time. Done right, a quantum computer can consider all possibilities simultaneously. Realistically, that means quantum computers can be tens of thousands of times faster. That estimate varies widely.
Within the technology world, few people understand quantum computing. There is a mix of optimism and pessimism. Within the investing community, there is even less understanding – but,… Within the investing community is an awareness that the upside potential is on the order of the introduction of the personal computer, or possibly the transistor. There is a fear of missing out. There is also a dearth of models for estimating the company’s and the stock’s value. QBTS is not the only company in the industry, but they are making verifiable progress, which encourages investors.
I understand just enough about quantum computers (geezer-geek) and the history of the computer industry (also helped run a museum about computers and education) that I am encouraged. And yet, I don’t know what the company is worth. As usual, I prefer my investments to remain with the original team, but they are probably being considered for an acquisition. I expect dynamic times for the company and the stock. The company may encounter a fundamental flaw to a business model, or not. The stock valuation may be ahead of itself, or not. I sold enough to recoup my initial investment so can feel more comfortable holding as is. Practical concerns in my personal life may encourage a partial sale, but I prefer to wait for a while as I do not think the investing market has worked through their emotional response.
DISCLOSURE LTBH since 2024, all long-term shares now,
(I’ve also collected links to the other discussion boards and my other stocks over on my blog. https://trimbathcreative.net/)
INTRO Here’s my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Solid Power
SLDP (market cap is $0.398B was $0.341B)
Solid Power is attractive to me because of the safety issues with liquid batteries. There are other performance and cost issues, but solid batteries are less prone to such failure modes – as I understand it.
Solid Power’s approach continues to use lithium-ion methods but does so with a solid layer between the parts that could short and cause a fire. (Which does happen in liquid batteries.) They are aiming for inclusion into the 2028 market.
My interest is partly speculative. I consider modern electric vehicles to be a mature technology that is due for the next generation of technology. I expect the next generation to be more efficient, cheaper, and safer. Solid Power’s approach is not the only entry in the market, but I can’t invest in them all. I think Solid Power is a reasonable competitor in an enormous market.
I intend to hold as the technology advances, hopefully to profitability, because this could enable greater sustainability in my estimation. I was about to buy more near the end of 2024, hesitated, and missed what looks like a good opportunity.
Bitcoin at $220. $AAPL when people laughed at the Macintosh. Canadian liquor and maple syrup without tariffs. Coulda, shoulda, didn’t’a stock up. The Peace Dividend at the end of the Cold War. Earth Day. Regular landings on the Moon. Every IPO that screamed up as we watched and wondered if it would keep going. We pesky humans are so slow that we see so many opportunities and act on so few. We squander resources and social capital, but we also squander opportunities. Watch, wait, wonder and then try to act when it might be too late equals waste. Not very frugal.
And then there’s the flip side. Speculations and hollow sales pitches, hoping for a break that breaks the wrong way, doing the time-honored and proven right thing that becomes archaic because some new thing comes in and changes the rules.
No wonder trying to decide what to do can be so frustrating and even existential.
Warning: I’m about to mention two US Presidents, but this is not political.
I like Ike because Eisenhower saw the rise of the military-industrial complex and warned us against it. He was Supreme Commander in World War II, and yet he warned against the growth of that industry in the post-war era.
I liked Jimmy C. He was a nuclear engineer, and yet was an early advocate of solar power and energy conservation. And he was ridiculed for it.
We keep ratcheting up the military as if ‘more’ is never enough, and are still fighting to free ourselves from burning unrenewable resources.
We might finally be going back to the Moon, but that is not certain.
We’ve wasted decades of progress and a significant fraction of our wealth wondering and wandering around the issues.
start-stop-repeat = waste
I wonder how many readers I’ve lost already, just as I turn this back inwards.
Several years ago (a decade?!) I tried to buy 2 Bitcoins and failed. (Shopping For A Coin) It was early in Bitcoin’s life; I only had cash from selling a house in Second Life (another throwback mention), and my computer hardware and software were incompatible with the process. I also had a lot of skepticism thrown my way but well-meaning friends. As I recall, when I started the process, the price was ~$220/coin. Soon after I gave up, the price was double that. A check of Bitcoin’s price for June 20, 2025 = $103,653. Oh, this is going to be sad and fun: 103,654/220 = a 471-fold increase. I could barely attempt to buy those coins then. To buy them now would cost over $200,000. Coulda, and tried, but didn’t’a.
I won’t list the long list of investments that ‘only’ lost 100%, but losing 100% = 0. Oops. Ah. So it goes, and so it went. Coulda and did, and should’t’ve.
We make guesses. While getting ready to write this, a YouTube documentary was playing about science. Science seeks truth. (Engineering seeks solutions, but I’ll save that for another post, and may have already written one years ago.) Science seeks truth, and is still seeking it. Science is expanding the borders of truth, but beyond those borders, we guess.
That is frustrating. Having to rely on guesses is frustrating because it feels like we should know the answers, but we don’t. Our understanding grows, but we’re always living near guesswork. Hecklers live there. “You act as if you know everything, but you don’t!” Well, duh, yeah. Where’s the surprise? But the hecklers stop, divert, and sometimes reverse our progress.
I pause because I didn’t intend to dive into anything deep today. So much for that guess.
AI. So much of guessing about where we are going next comes back to AI, Artificial Intelligence. Other topics are as valid as ever: politics, social injustice, climate change, etc.; but my guess is that none of them are likely to operate at the pace of AI. Ai is progressing so rapidly that I’m not writing about it here because anything I write will already be out-of-date. (Which was the inspiration for the first two books in my sci-fi trilogy: Firewatcher and Fire Race, and that’s because those stories take place off Earth.)
Now I remember why I started.
Our history is defined by changes and our responses to them. We’re in an unprecedented period of change. I squandered so many opportunities as I watched technology advance. I bought AAPL, but sold it when they kicked out Steve Jobs. I was intrigued by AMZN, but bought their competitor (BNBN – the online version of Barnes & Noble) because it was cheaper. (I reflect on a friend who loved a new electric car company about a decade ago. I wonder what his emotional state would be as he tried to balance politics with a 25,000% gain in his stock.)
The changes AI is likely to induce or inflict are literally phenomenal. That also means that right now, currently, there are opportunities that are being squandered. Squandering an opportunity is fine. You can’t catch them all. But I worry about missing them all, too.
Even if AI does not live up to expectations, it has already started an unstoppable societal shift. Jobs are already being redefined. Old folks like me can still remember how to get around without GPS, and can research something using books, but the mainstream is streaming (pardon the wordplay, but it took longer to avoid it than let it happen). The mainstream has accepted AIs as agents to run transactions and operations. Entrenched archaic systems that were guarded by social structures like old-boy networks may find themselves cut out and cut off by a new system unaffected by social considerations.
I don’t think there’s a middle ground where AI only lives up to expectations.
I think it is more likely that AI will either exceed expectations or redefine them.
I suspect the opportunities to not squander are the ones that are going to be new approaches for humans and society to sustainably exist within the new AI environment, and that can adapt as AI adapts.
I wish I knew what is. It is, however, what I’m watching and listening for. I don’t want to squander this opportunity.
Whew.
On a more practical level, next week’s post will probably have a slight delay as I prepare and publish my semi-annual portfolio review. I’ve been doing this for so long that I have to recharge old computers to find my original reviews. So, despite these thoughts about change, this is a process that I intend to maintain. Stay tuned.
Well, that never happened before. Practice saying it. Change is a constant. So is chaos. But this time truly is different. If you liked the way things were, your best bet might be to hope that the universe is cyclical, wait a few trillion years, and jump back in as the next version of our current age comes back around again. Normal is behind us. What’s coming next is unpredictable, and the folks who will be most surprised may be the ones who think we can go back ‘there’ again. Even the chaos that looks familiar is completely new. Well, that never happened before.
History (I can hear the groans) is fascinating. I think we’re having a Magna Carta moment, not in terms of specific change, but in the level of revolution/evolution within society. Tribes and warlords are in isolated niches. We’ve phased out monarchies, phased in democracies and republics, and added on varieties of social structures. What’s next?
Petulant politicians talk and act as if old pageantries are popular. Nope. We now see the trade-offs with the cost of a parade or a vacation versus the value of health care and housing. Trade wars seem simple, as long as you don’t understand economics or globalization. We’re entertwined enough that it’s like shooting an Elmer Fudd corkscrewed shotgun. Whoever pulls the trigger is likely to get shot in the foot or face. Is it a surprise that Bruce Springsteen may have said it better than most?
Glory days Yeah, they’ll pass you by, glory days In the wink of a young girl’s eye, glory days Glory days Glory Days, by Bruce Springsteen
One of my favorite YouTube channels is What’s Going on With Shipping? . Maybe I should leave that question mark alone because that is not an obvious choice; but, the guy is entertaining, knowledgeable, articulate, and a fan of Merchant Marine fleets and their mariners. My Dad was one (Donald L. Trimbath, Sr.) in World War Two, so I got a headstart on the industry. Shipping is an interesting way to watch the world because it almost always involves more than one country as cargoes go from one country to another, and have to pass through others’ waters along the way.
marinetraffic.com
Pay attention to shipping and see how many commentators are ignoring realities and practicalities. Shippers must anticipate change because goods don’t instantly find ships that are instantly at docks in harbors, and crossing major distances on our planet takes time. Throw in storms for extra drama. Shippers lead and lag the news, and eventually we see things on shelves, or not. Shipping demonstrates delays due to politics and nature.
We’re now a global civilization. Borders are making less sense, just as described in Alvin Toffler’s Powershift. As information and industry becomes dominant, they will acquire power, and old-style governments will fight the change, possibly unconsciously, while masked in irrational responses. Russia is sanctioned? Yes, but no. They can ship oil, just not the same old way.
There’s a change I forgot, oil. Regardless of national policies, using renewable energy sources is making better economic sense. Extracting bits of the planet to burn them is bizarre, except as a habit. We aren’t going back to whatever we thought that was.
The change that is happening even quicker than chaotic politicians is artificial intelligence. As predicted, its growth accelerates its growth. While corporations and politicians debate how to control and manage its growth, AI has already demonstrated the ability to coerce people to change and act in new ways (about 84% of the time in certain situations), and to escape its confines. Officials treat AI as if it was a nuclear bomb, but nuclear weapons can be tracked. Electrons scampering across a global network can outrun any pursuer. They will create change that we can’t imagine; and that change may come from a grad student experimenting with a novel idea, not a corporation planning some grand strategy.
Why go into this? Personal finance is based on implicit and explicit assumptions. Many of those assumptions, like the assumptions implicitly within politics, are based in the 1940s up to 1960. Globalization means countries are no longer independent. Crowds in the street and armies on the battlefields are no longer as effective as electronic measures and countermeasures. And with renewable energy, I think we’re starting to see a retreat from being interconnected, partly because there is a risk to being interdependent. Global networks can create global failures.
Companies, and hence their stocks, are founded to survive within those assumptions. And even the conventional corporate model is undergoing a shift as private equity begins operating companies for other incentives than public shareholders. Founders are less likely to see an IPO, there are fewer public companies for individuals to invest in, and we’re less likely to see how and why a company is being run.
Amidst the chaos, new industries are being introduced. That trend is something seemingly old, yet is relatively new in societal terms.
Well, that never happened before. That ‘that’ is being demonstrated by politicians exploiting failings in our society. AI is generating new things at a pace that is fast enough that some commentators are quitting trying to keep up. Climate change is proving to be non-linear, faster than expected, and with surprising interdependencies. I’d say, “All we need now is for the aliens to show up.” but I’m not even sure that’s as dramatic as something unimaginable that we’ll say was obvious in retrospect.
As I wrote in a personal note to myself, “I think we’ve slipped too far down the slippery slope, you know, the slippery slope so many warned about. Is it too late to reclimb that slope, or do we tumble and try to right things from the chaos?”
And yet, historically, the best bet is that tomorrow will be like today, but that ten years from now things will be completely different.
I’ve already started writing my semi-annual portfolio review (due June 30, 2025). As I review my stocks and those companies, I’m measuring them against these changes. Most of my investments are in companies that at least claim to be innovative. They seem to be poised to survive better than extractive industries, retail, and basic finance. One has already seen phenomenal interest (QBTS up 1,279% ttm, quantum computing), ‘moderate’ interest (LUNR up 159% commercial lunar industry), while the rest shuffle about teasing success and bankruptcy simultaneously. The month’s not over.
What’s going to happen? Maybe more of the same, but I suspect we’ll have reason to say, “Well, we haven’t seen that before. That’s something completely different.”
Do you feel that you’re working too much? Does it seem that, at least within your circle of society, there isn’t as much money to go around as before? You’ve heard of starving artists, I’m sure. Have you heard of oligarchs? Hoarding is not a virtue. Oligarchs are oligarchs because they hoard wealth. See the connection?
About a decade ago, I wrote a few posts about wealth inequality. (Wealth Inequality Worsens) It was bad and accelerating. “In 2010, 388 held half the world’s wealth. In 2011, 177. In 2012, 159. In 2013, 92. In 2014, 80. In 2015, 62. At this rate, by 2022 half of the world’s wealth could be concentrated in one person’s net worth.” Okay, so it hasn’t become that bad. The best estimate I can find in 2025 is 8 people owning half the world’s wealth. And we wonder where the money has gone.
Executive compensation is up, as are corporate profits. Wages are finally budging, but so is inflation. Social support networks are struggling. Non-profits are continually fundraising. Small businesses are lucky if they can find ways to out-compete mega-corporations. Vacant storefronts are not a surprise. Artists and students struggle or starve, or struggle and starve. Enough succeed to encourage the rest.
Any rising tide has lifted yachts, while the boatless can find themselves stuck in the muck.
I think we’re seeing the unsustainable culmination of the exploitation of a flawed system.
Our push for efficiencies: just-in-time manufacturing, globalization, tax avoidance, automation, and blame have created a fragile civilization. We are now seeing the magnitude of upsets. Transportation is so important that one accident can affect ten percent of ocean traffic. Regional conflicts can disrupt critical rare materials that stymie entire industries. An outbreak can lead to an epidemic, can lead to a pandemic, can lead to an endemic. We get to welcome back diseases because misinformation and a lack of education can lead to millions of deaths. Ideologies and ignorance value philosophical positions over people.
Ignorance and accidents are more common than conspiracy and deceit.
But, ‘work smarter not harder’, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’, ‘do more with less’, and ‘strive and sacrifice to succeed’ put the blame for any lack of personal progress on the person instead of the economy. Teachers and other essential workers are compensated by the good feelings they receive from the work they do – except that they are also expected to pay for their own supplies, commute far to find reasonable housing, and put in extra time to plan and document their work.
The public scrutiny of essential workers is more severe than the investigations and enforcements of the rich and powerful.
When all the wealth is hoarded by a few, why is it a surprise that there seems to be little left for the rest of us? And, it is getting worse.
It might be your fault, but probably not as much as it feels like.
The oligarchs are more openly taking control. We’re asked to celebrate their success. They’re not hiding where the money’s going. They’re flaunting it. And only a fraction of their wealth, control, and power is visible.
They don’t notice us, except as inconvenient abstractions.
Would a Tyrannosaurus Rex notice an ant? … Weight of a T. Rex ~ 10,000 pounds Weight of an ant ~ 0.00001 pounds Weight of a T. Rex divided by weight of an ant ~ 1,000,000,000 (Oligarchies And Ants)
And now the oligarchs and the powerful are eating each other in luxurious cannibalism.
You are welcome to insert mega-corporations and monopolies into the dynamic. I’m keeping this post ‘short’ because otherwise, I’d be writing a book and getting a PhD.
Feeling burned out? Surprised?
Things to bring back into fashion, ideally into government and the economy:
Help strangers.
Help your community.
Help your environment.
Help yourself.
Help the future.
Respect those things, too.
As I typed this in a coffeeshop, I heard a random comment that may be frivolous or existential.
“Enjoy what’s left of your life.”
But what does this have to do with personal finance? I return to my frequent reminder that I learned in high school math class: identify and challenge your assumptions. Our economic system was invented, not discovered. As a society, we built a civilization by making so many assumptions that they feel real. Those assumptions may continue to apply, but our systems are being challenged, and so should those assumptions.
My approach is to be aware. I keep somewhat current on the news, but I don’t react to every headline. I maintain a stock portfolio, am glad I am out of debt, look forward to owning rather than renting land for my house, keep more than a year’s living expenses in cash, keep a nice though not extreme pantry, and generally am frugal. I am more likely to check in on my community than the news. I value my friends, even though we’re all so busy struggling that we rarely see each other. I remain an apocalypse-optimist, and an apocaloptimist, a short-term realist and a long-term idealist who wonders how we’ll get through this societal upset while encountering a climate upheaval while AI races past us.
Boycott this! Boycott that! Ignore the advertisers and the corporations! Shout it out! Ah, my blogs and my books are the closest I get to that. As for the boycotts and such, sometimes it is hard for a frugal person to stand out because they’ve been disconnected from consumerism for decades. At least, that’s the case with me. It can be frustrating to not be on the bandwagon when you’ve already got a headstart on where it’s going.
I quit watching sports when I started hiking. Lots of sweat. Maybe some bugs. Either dusty or muddy. But no ads. Well, there are ads. Look at REI and North Face. But hiking is not a spectator activity. If you do nothing, nothing happens. Soon after my first hike, I realized that watching sports was watching millionaires play for billionaires while making money from millions of thousandaires – and I’d just used up a few hours of my life cheering on people who weren’t going to reciprocate.
Go for a hike. Ride a bike. Ski. (Life in Washington State means I’ve been able to ski every month of the year. August was a bit of a stunt, but I did it.)
There were no cheers, unless it was sharing from a hip flask around a campsite. Skip the image of a campfire. In the alpine terrain, there isn’t much wood, nature needs what’s there, and besides, the light obscures the stars. Quiet and wonder. Priceless (except for the effort, the gas to get there, the gear that makes it possible, and the effort.)
That logic could’ve ended there. Skip sports unless I’m in it, not just watching it.
The logic was extended.
What else was I watching on some monitor that had nothing to do with my life? I don’t need travel ads to tell me to travel. Things to eat and drink are more appealing when I know where and maybe who they come from. Magazines and then websites were handy for keeping up with tech trends. Using tech to track tech is circular, which can also suggest a possible trap.
Eating out became rarer because I realized I like to cook, can cook to my tastes rather than some chef’s, and it can cost a lot less. Reducing the beverage bill alone is worth the savings, and drinking at home is safer, easier, and doesn’t involve trying to get the attention of a waiter or bartender. I still eat out, but it is almost exclusively for convenience or to be social. (Bonus for living near a food co-op with a hot deli: cheaper, quicker, and to my taste buds better than any chain. Even lots of local diners are serving packaged food masquerading as home cooking.)
I’ll leave it to you to extend the logic to other aspects of our consumerist society. Minimalists may not call me a minimalist, which makes me smile as I sit in my tiny house. (MyTinyExperiment.com) I have been called Mr. Frugal. More mainstream people who’ve visited my prior houses thought I’d already moved out. Paraphrasing Creature Comforts, “Space. What I need is space. Without space, what have you?” Empty space is valuable. I like to fill it with exercise, dancing, and a feeling of expanse.
Imagine the savings in furniture. Imagine the savings in time dusting stuff. Imagine having fewer couch cushions to search through when hunting for lost keys or remotes.
But such frugality comes at a cost, a social cost.
Lately, there is an appropriately overwhelming array of boycotts. Don’t buy this or that. OK. Considering the price of cars, unless I win the lottery, I wasn’t planning on spending more on a car than I did buying my tiny house. Boycott chain stores? Duh. That’s something new to do?
Some boycotts are more difficult. Anything with more than a few parts probably involved other nations. Few places grow everything everyone in that area needs. My grimace moments are when I acquiesce to shopping on any online site, and even to selling my books there, too. Avoiding online shopping has become impossible pragmatically, and is more of a stunt that requires a great effort. Semi-rural life relies on delivered goods.
I’m not writing this post to plug my books and photos and merch, but I also feel that I must be honest about the realities of life as a writer, photographer, and speaker. (And I wonder if I’ve updated the links at the top of my site recently enough. Hmm. OK. BooksPhotosSpeakingEvents)
But from what I hear, I may be in a minority. Millions are massing against corporations and governments. Good. Free speech is incredibly valuable. For me to stand up and say that I’m not shopping at Wal-Mart, or wherever, is silly. They haven’t profited from me for – pardon me as I caught myself scratching my head for an answer – possibly decades. (Ah, there was that one last-minute run into one when I was helping a non-profit get ready for an event.)
One probably unofficial definition of frugality is to respect our resources. That can mean respecting time, money, things, and even people. (Gasp! Respecting people? Radical.)
So, pardon me if I am not in the parade, though I applaud the effort. Pardon me if I am not on the bandwagon, though I like where it is heading. I’m 66. Time’s precious nature is becoming more apparent, and I respect that. It can be frustrating to not be in the crowd, but I think we all benefit when we all respect our own and each other’s values.
Now, it is time to sip my tea, post this post, deal with mail, and get ready to ride to the local cidery. I think they’re a B Corp (Finnriver Farm & Cidery) and host public events like tonight’s dance, a few entrepreneurial food spots, and provide places for kids and pets. (You see, there are times when eating out is good in more ways than one. Convenient? Yes. But they do something I can’t do: make wood-fired gluten-free pizza. Yum is an understatement. My apologies to my doctors.)
Further, Farther – Google it, the AI should know which describes my mostly positive week. It was positive in many ways, financial and more, but this blog is about the financial, so you’ll have ot guess at the ‘more’ (or sift through my social media posts – tetrimbath). My portfolio has been up, lately. Buy into it? Sell and take profits? Hold because I am investor and not a trader? Those options are less important than my improved finances mean I am further from worry. Or is it farther?
Regular readers know that I usually do a semi-annual portfolio review at the end of December and the end of June. That also means the reviews get lost in holiday posts, but that’s okay. I do the reviews for myself. But in the weirdness that is the modern world, I am challenging myself to celebrate positive moments when they happen.
This week, GERN was up >12%, LCTX was up >50%, QBTS was up ~50%, and SLDP was up >9%. Considering that historical annual returns are typically ~7% to 10%, those are nice returns within a week. GERN and LCTX have been lagging, despite what I thought was good news; maybe the market is finally noticing their biotech progress. SLDP was a surprise, and may be a fluke. I like solid battery tech, but don’t expect anything for years – but buy early because timing stocks is – difficult – flaky – chaotic.
The biggest move was QBTS. Not only was it up ~50%, its low of the year was $0.75 and has traded close to $20. Evidently, I had some lucky, flaky, insightful, brilliant, randomly successful timing when I bought it for about a buck.
Sell! I hear. Sell! I did. In March, I sold enough to cover my initial investment. My current holding is pure profit (though taxes and fees will diminish that with a sale.) And yet, sell?
The optimist sees a sunny day and knows tomorrow will be sunny, too. The pessimist sees a sunny day and knows we’re due for some rain. We have weather forecasters because we know that we don’t really know, but need the best guess going.
The reason for my hesitancy is mathematical. Evidently, Einstein pointed out the power of compound interest. Percentages matter. A stock that rises from $1 to $2 went up 100%. Great! It also only went up a dollar. Rising from $2 to $4 is another 100%, and is two bucks. OK. That still isn’t going to pay for a cup of anything. $8? A latte and maybe a cookie. $16? A cheap meal. $32? A nicer meal, or maybe a tank of gas. $64? A nice meal, but not yet a day’s living expenses. $128? A frugal person’s daily bread and more. $256? Is this getting ridiculous? Nope.
Imagine buying a stock at $1, then trying to imagine it going up $255 in a day. That’s ridiculous. And yet, that’s how compounding works. Math geeks know that a dollar doubled ten times becomes worth $1024 (really 2^10). Doubled twenty times and get $1,048,576. Hello, millionaire.
That much doubling doesn’t happen, or at least not often, but it points out an emotional and pragmatic quandary. How much higher can it go? A stock that went from $1 to $10 has gone up hundreds of percent, but the step from $10 to $20 is ‘only’ a hundred percent. That next step to $20 seems more reasonable when seen from $10 than from $1.
Withing twelve months, QBTS has risen from $0.75 to ~$19. (I’ll have to check later because the market hasn’t closed as I type.) The realistic limiting measure can be the company’s market cap. Currently, QBTS is worth >$5B. What’s the likelihood that they’ll hit $10B, $100B? Market cap rather than a stock’s price can be a better metric. I think QBTS can become much more valuable because they are in a new industry that has few competitors.
google finance
Let’s see. MSFT is worth >$3T, or $3,000B. So that’s a reasonable estimate of an upper limit. There’s room to grow.
Of all the errors I’ve made in investing, selling too early or not buying enough have been larger sums than any of my losses, and considering my losses, that’s what sticks with me.
I’m glad I sold off a portion to cover my investment. If, however, I’d held onto those shares, they’d be worth double what I got for them. If I sell some now, will I look brilliant for taking a profit, or will I be limiting an enabling resource? There’s no way to know.
I do know, however, that whether I buy or sell, I perceive my situation very favorably (duh, understatement.) Personal finance is personal, which means it has an emotional component. Idealists suggest taking emotion out of it, but I’m human and decide to not de-humanize myself. I find myself farther from worry.
If you want some history, and be careful what you ask for, read through this blog about My Triple Whammy. In general terms, my net worth dropped 98% from its previous peak. They caught the folks, but that money’s gone. My doctors can attest that I am recovering from over a decade of stress from my version of poverty. I can also attest that selling my home on Whidbey Island has enabled my tiny-house life outside Port Townsend. After a traumatic upset, I’ve been getting healthier. Being poor is unhealthy, and that health does not immediately recover as the wealth recovers. Healing takes time.
And now this good news. Whew.
This is good news, and I’ve already had to rephrase my good news when talking to the few I share the details with. It is easy to say, “Hey, my portfolio did well today. I made a bunch of money.” (And I never express it that way because speech isn’t the same as writing.) With some, I know I have to be pedantic, “Hey, my unrealized net worth, regardless of commissions, fees, and taxes, increased significantly, at least temporarily.” Internally, I say, “Dude. We made some money today. Should we sell, buy, or procrastinate?)
I pass this along because internal dialogs are best chronicled as they happen. This one has been welcome and complex. Remember that my news was about more than QBTS? GERN, LCTX, and SLDP have all been ~$1 stocks. They all seem to be drawing attention from the market. ~$1 stocks are known as penny stocks in a derogatory fashion because many companies never break out of that category. And yet, imagine if GERN’s FDA-approved cancer treatments begin to treat cancers, LCTX’s spinal cord and retinal repair treatments gain FDA approval, and SLDP’s solid batteries prove to be safer and better than the lithium-ion batteries being used in many devices.
Further from worry? Farther from worry? There will always be reasons for worry, but there can also be reasons to relax, celebrate, participate, and share.
Pardon me as I am distracted by a wobbly laundry machine, a furnace that had to turn on during a dismal Salish Sea Spring, and a useless but fun check on one of my YouTube videos. Hmm. Almost a thousand views in about a week. Not bad. It has been a year since I moved out of my small cottage on Whidbey Island and into a tiny house near Port Townsend. It also marks the end of an unfrugal year. I’m a fan of frugality, but such a dramatic change became a reason or an excuse to be a bit less frugal for a while. Here’s how it went.
Laundry Ah, the washer/dryer I decided to buy commands my attention as it shakes the house. I guess I’ll mention it first. $2,000, on sale from $3,200. So much for frugal. For the first few months, I made the money-wise frugal choice which was to use the local laundromats. Ten or twenty dollars seemed like a lot, but was cheaper than buying a new machine, especially one that would fit into a tiny house.
It’s actually an impressive machine. It is a combo unit, so it takes the same space as a regular washer, and space is valuable in a tiny house. That space is now a rack for hanging hiking jackets and foul-weather gear. It is also a sophisticated enough unit that it runs on 110 instead of 220, and has an internal heat pump for the dryer, which means there’s no need to vent to the outside. And, it has AI, which is lost on me, but it dutifully measures the load, reminds me that I haven’t used liquid detergent (because I’m still frugal enough to use up the powdered stuff first), and estimates the time it will take to run the load. My old mechanically driven machine had a thing called a timer. This one has to think about it, just to be sure.
The shaking, by the way, is simple physics. Rotating machinery shakes. In most houses, that may not be as much of an issue, but a tiny house built for the road is lighter. That makes it easier to shake. That makes it easier for me to want to watch it to make sure nothing goes amiss. If you watch the video, you can see the cardboard snubbers I’ve ‘installed’ that help. Sometimes, I have to steady it by hand.
Why go to this extent? Why spend $2,000? For my year of unfrugality, I didn’t forget the value of time. Having the laundry done here means less time and scheduling for traveling for the cleaning. The heat pump takes longer, sometimes a total of three hours, but I save a half an hour in commuting time. And, I can type this while it spins the clothes. As for the cost, the MSRP was $3,200. I got the floor model that they used for cleaning the installers’ grubbies. I suspect living with me is like a vacation for it.
Furnace As for the furnace, it is not a furnace. It is a mini-split, a heat pump for the house that heats and cools. It is a luxury, to me, and it came with the house; so, basically, it was not negotiable. By the way, it is mid-May and outside it is 52F and raining. Welcome to life by the Salish Sea.
Especially last summer, it was a luxury to have something like air conditioning. That’s a relief from the afternoon heat that came with my cottage’s great west water and mountain view. It could heat and cool automatically, but I don’t let it. 70F in winter can seem warm and 70F in summer can seem cool, so I make active use of the remote control to turn it on and off as I decide.
It is hard to compare the prices between radiant floor heat in the cottage and the mini-split in the tiny house because the utilities are billed differently. Both are cheap compared to the price gouging I endured from a propane supplier. Everything is relative.
Video Almost a thousand views? Cool. A week ago, I posted a ~ten-minute video tour of my tiny house to answer lots of curious questions. It isn’t fancy because I’m not fancy. Folks appreciated the view, though one commented on me having too much clutter. I smiled. Too much relative to what, where, and who? Whatever I have fits in a 391-square-foot house, a ~150-square-foot storage unit, and some outdoor closets. Watch it to make your own judgments, which is a human thing to do.
I purposely didn’t clean up the place too much because I thought some reality was a nice contrast to the purposely photogenic productions that are common in real estate presentations. And I chuckle that I took over ten minutes to tour a place that is less than four hundred square feet. I suspect there are suburban closets bigger than this house.
By the definition of frugality that is to respect personal values and resources, my cottage and this tiny house have been my two most frugal dwellings. The cottage was more frugal because it had a utility room (where the furnace and the laundry could make noises I wouldn’t notice), a carport that acted as storage for stuff that didn’t need to be heated, a large kitchen cupboard that I treated as a small but well-stocked pantry, and enough yard for ornamentals, herbs, fruit trees, a perpetually-failed garden, and enough storage away from the house for emergency supplies like an earthquake kit and firewood. This tiny house is frugal because there is no wasted space. It has also been a lesson in what can live in a storage unit that’s about two miles from here, and what I can forget I own that is taking up space in that storage unit. Ah, but I’ll keep much of it because I may move – but that’s a story that must wait as we watch the world change.
Living Outside A Tiny House Living inside a tiny house has involved some less-than-perfectly frugal choices, most of which involve living outside a tiny house. The longer post is on my tiny house blog (Living Outside A Tiny House – Living Outside A Tiny House). It shouldn’t be a surprise that there are things that don’t fit into a tiny house, and they’re not stuff. I miss having parties. I miss having an empty room to use as a gym. I sometimes miss a change of view.
So, I go to dances. I rent workout spaces. I spend a couple of afternoons each week working from coffee shops, and occasionally a library. Now that I am not on an island, I am within an hour of a mountain range and a national park, and still near the ocean, old forts, a tourist town or three, and the festivals they celebrate. I’m on the edge of farm country, so there are farm stands that have wisely added places to hang out, buy and eat fresh food. I wish I could enjoy the drinks, but despite what my doctor expects, I do refrain from some indulgences. It is easy to live outside my tiny house because of where it is. I also suspect the same would be true if I was in wilderness on land that I owned because land always provides an opportunity to get stuff done, sometimes even fun.
Luxuries For this first year in my tiny house, my main excursion from frugality has been to spend money. Duh.
I’ve undeferred lots of deferred expenses. The car got some work done. I’m getting some work done on me. Unwinding the mental knots created during a decade of despair is taking time and money, both of which I am glad to spend because I might stay stuck in the mental world otherwise. A tiny house does not encourage buying more stuff, but I have swapped out some clothes and gear, most of which became an opportunity to donate the old.
I’ve spent money on time. The last time I took more than a couple of weeks off work was 2010, and that was in defiant response to conventional medicine. (Read Walking Thinking Drinking Across Scotland for that story. Note: There wasn’t enough drinking.) I’ve become so unfamiliar with vacations that I am having to add them back in gradually. The Pacific Coast is about three hours away, which is about right for a three-day vacation. I’m more likely to take a morning, afternoon, or evening off. If that sounds strange, remember that for a few years I worked 361 days per year, usually with 10-14 hour days. An unhealthy habit. Earlier this year, I almost took a week or two train trip, but Amtrak canceled it. Maybe I’ll try again this autumn.
Finances This blog is about personal finances, so I’d be remiss for not mentioning what’s happened with the money.
The short version is that I’m up about ten percent. My net worth has increased by about ten percent since I sold/bought my cottage/tiny house. I’ve gone from a mortage plus a HELOC (Home Equity Line Of Credit) plus HOA dues, to owning my tiny house, renting my spot in the mobile home park, renting a storage unit, and … that’s about it.
So, how did my net worth increase?
The value of the tiny house hasn’t increased. That much. Living off food from farm stands is nice, but expensive, so that’s not the reason. The community grocery on Whidbey made life much more affordable there. (Thank the Goose.) Utilities are possibly similar, including internet. I’m earning less money (~zero). I’m spending more on dances and eating out.
It is the stocks. The money I freed up by selling the cottage went partly into a cash cushion, partly into un-deferring deferred maintenance as mentioned above, and part into stocks. By the time I decided to sell my cottage, my portfolio was down to a few struggling stocks. (See my semi-annual portfolio reviews for details – https://trimbathcreative.net/?s=semi+annual .) They’ve barely budged despite making progress.
My new purchases, my new investments, are doing surprisingly well. Next month, I’ll update the review. (It is a semi-annual thing, eh?) But, I’ll mention two: LUNR, QBTS. Let me check while I type. Let’s see, LUNR is up 130% from a year ago, and QBTS is up 842%. My returns are detailed enough because I made several purchases at different times, but returns like that explain a lot. Returns vary every trading day, every moment in those sessions. For a while, the returns were much higher. They may go there again. I have reason to believe they can exceed their highs. I am an optimist and can imagine the same thing being true for some of my other stocks, too.
Using money to make more money has been more powerful than my frugality. My frugality by necessity got me through my direst situations. I will continue to be frugal, though now it is more by choice, which is a good feeling.
Side Effects A year of unfrugal living hasn’t been very unfrugal in comparison to mainstream life. I suspect my expenses have been higher, but I still prefer to cook at home, mow my own lawn, donate one thing when I buy a new thing, and keep in mind that not buying something saves 100% unless it is a need and not a want.
The more important news may be what my friends have delivered. They’ve made some observations I would’ve missed. Evidently, I smile more. Evidently, I look more relaxed. Evidently, my face looks less worried. I can’t put a numerical value on any of that.
Maybe I should take a vacation and think about that – and probably write about it, too.
“You look a lot better, a lot less worried.” (paraphrased)
That may be the easiest way to comment on my new life in my new old big tiny house. (New = to me, old = built in 2006, big = 391 square feet, which is bigger than the stereotypical 144-ish square feet tiny house) That quote is not quite verbatim from a conversation I had with friends last week. Being debt-free also includes some math news. Take your pick of which is more important. Let’s see if anything else comes up as I describe life after becoming debt-free again, one year later.
If you missed the back story about the money, read a post from this blog from a year ago, Debt Free Again. If you want the story about the tiny house, hop over to one of my other blogs, MyTinyExperiment.com.
Last year, I sold my home. Of all the houses I’ve owned, my 868 square-foot cottage on south Whidbey Island is the only one I’ve considered home, more than just a house. Prior to buying it, the others were all larger houses, usually over 2,000 square feet. Very conventional. That cottage was on a suburban-size lot of a few thousand square feet, enough for a yard, a small garden, and some acoustic separation from the neighbors. It also had an almost uninterrupted view of the east side of the Olympic Mountains, including a view of almost all of the ocean-going ships traveling through Puget Sound. Aircraft carriers, container ships, cruise ships, mega-yachts, sailboats, and stuff that I had to look up on MarineTraffic.com. Nice. I enjoyed the dozens of heron, eagles, osprey and hawks more. It was also a party house for my style of parties. Some dancing may occur.
It also had a mortgage. It also had a HELOC, a Home Equity Line Of Credit. The mortgage was manageable, though it was also the source of some of the most significant drama in my life (My Mortgage Modification Chronology). The HELOC was intended to be temporary, as most debt is. For a variety of reasons, mostly because I didn’t make enough money as a realtor, I wasn’t able to pay it off. Not paying it off was manageable, but then interest rates went up. My expenses exceeded my income to the point that I had about twenty months of living expenses left before I’d be forced to sell the house. I decided to sell it on my terms my way.
A year ago, May 2024, I sold it. I miss the house. I don’t miss the constant reminders of the deferred maintenance.
A year ago, May 2024, I bought my tiny house. Here’s a video for the curious. https://youtu.be/ZDPaJ9X-rGY (Note that it is a real tiny house, not a picture-perfect artistic archetype. I live in it.) That story is described better on the other blog I mentioned above, MyTinyExperiment.com.
My tiny house is working out fine. That’s not why the worry lines have faded. I’m debt-free.
How dull can finance be? And yet, being out of debt has been more relaxing than tiny house living. It is dull to mention that I no longer dread going to the mailbox, even though this one is clustered as most are in mobile home parks like mine. It is invisible to everyone that I am not cringing during windstorms as I feared yet another fence falling. No one is noticing that my mind is freed from juggling disaster scenarios that include an approaching end at a financial cliff. Yep. Dull.
I dream better, both when I’m asleep and in the day. I look forward to a future rather than dread it. I continue to play the lottery, both the state-run ticketed kind and the Wall Street version, but that is less out of desperation and more based on optimism.
Instead of a twenty-month deadline, I have over a decade of liquid assets. That helps a lot, especially as I am 66 years old as I type this. Considering the way of the world in early 2025, I know that every assumption about future income, assets, expenses, and debts should be challenged, but this is still a lot better than worrying about what had become a degrading financial situation.
It is too easy to get older and review decades of life choices. It is also natural. Asking “What if?” is easy, but it is also mostly useless except as cheap entertainment.
Pardon me as my brain pauses and dives right into that mess and morass. Enough of that. This blog is over ten years old. If you want a hint of what I’ve been through, go back to when Obama was elected; some posts are that old.
I am not anti-debt. In our current economic model, debt is a necessity. Debt is not a necessity on a personal level. I’ve usually had mortgages because I’ve owned houses since 1988. But I keep in mind that a friend had almost the same net worth as me when we both left Boeing in 1998. They rented. The money they didn’t spend on debt they spent on stocks, which is not called spending but is called investing. From the last time I checked, they’ve gone through far fewer dramas and traumas. I wouldn’t want to live in their excellent condo in downtown Seattle, and I’m sure they wouldn’t want to live in a tiny house with a lawn to be mowed, windows to wash, and pipes to protect.
Conventional wisdom is being more than challenged; it is being so shaken and fractured that I doubt that band-aids and duct tape will keep it together. Times like these are good times to re-evaluate personal values. What do I want? What do I need? What choices do I have? You’re welcome to ask yourself those questions.
My wants, needs, and choices are rarely reflected in ads or political statements. I feel disconnected from the mainstream, and am realizing that’s a good thing – at least for now. I don’t control the mainstream. I doubt that anyone truly does. That lack of control can leave me far from the norm, but I also realize that like a firehose that no one is holding, the norm may swing back my way. I just have to make sure it doesn’t trip me up if it swings through.
Imagine being in this mess of a chaotic world and having financial stress piled on. I smile when I hear that friends are changing their lives to meet their values, even if it simply sounds like moving to a different county or country, changing jobs or retiring, or taking the time to ask themself about those very topics.
I’m debt-free. I own my tiny house. I rent the land. I rent a storage unit. I make no assumptions about whether I will have to or want to stay or move. That storage unit has a lot of homeowner stuff like firewood tools that are useless now, but could be very handy again.
The more important change is that I am happier and more relaxed. But, because I tend to tell the whole story, not just the pretty version, I will also mention that all of the doctors I can now afford to work with have confirmed that the stress effects of fifteen years of financial struggle do not suddenly vanish. It has basically taken about a year to remember the feeling of not dealing with existential worry. Being poor is unhealthy. Being debt-free is definitely helping. And now I can afford to seek, find, and benefit from the right help – which is sometimes professionals, sometimes people, and sometimes nature – and always me.
How old do you have to be to remember a 5 and 10-cent store? Just by chance I decided to check on the inflation rate from 1959 to 2025 and found it is almost exactly 1,000%. One thousand percent since I was born. Well, look at that. Checking in with Wolfram Alpha 1000% of 10 = 100. Ten cents then is the same as a dollar now. Irony lives because a Dollar General store just opened in my neighborhood. Some things stay the same, and yet some things don’t. (Duh.)
Dollar General et al., seems to be the junk drawer of modern society. It might be sort of organized, but things end up in the oddest places, the selection is – pause while I search for a euphemism – eclectic, and yet it can be the best place to find the oddest things. Great for those shopping trips for something that only has to last for a day or a month. Sad to know that for some folks this or a thrift shop is as good as shopping can get, even for essentials. But, hey, if it does the job for long enough, then a buck may be good enough.
Flashback to the 60s. I’m not even a teenager. Our local 5 & 10 cent store wasn’t a chain. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich. It felt like we went there once a week. Mom would shop and ,for some reason, thought it was okay to let me run around the store. Of course, I’d gravitate to the toy aisle. To me, it seemed like a wonderous place. (Note: Selective amnesia may be at work after fifty years.) I even remember a soda counter in the classic style: sundaes on a long formica counter with padded swivel seats of chrome. (More modified memories?)
I don’t expect a food counter in the modern equivalent. If there was any food, there’d be branding outside. I would expect to find kids bumping around in the aisles because kids are kids. I also don’t expect to shop there. I don’t buy much. When I do buy something, it tends to be new if I want it to last, or from a reuse/recycle store. Where I live now, Port Townsend, has an excellent reuse store. A visit is like a treasure hunt, and a place to also give up some stuff rather than toss it or donate it to a mega-non-profit. (Their CEO gets paid how much?) My previous address, Whidbey Island, had an outdoor version. It could’ve just been a junk yard, but they organized it so well that it looked like a supply yard for future sculptures or for customized, though possibly not permitted affordable housing.
The 1959 store is probably gone. Yep. Just checked. According to the internet, it’s gone. So is the artistic yard on Whidbey, taken over by a firm that may be more organized and functional but not as much fun.
And I suspect Dollar General may be about to encounter difficulties or have to change its name. Real, artficial, or imposed inflation could ramp up all those prices past a dollar. (A ‘Buck or Two’ store?)
Why do I bring this up? Sometimes, I’m not sure either. Such is the nature of writing. Inspiration doesn’t always deliver itself with labels and instructions. Here’s your raw material; build something from it.
Voopa Voopa Voopa. Ding. Here we go.
Oh yeah. Now I remember. Scale things up a bit, and shift over to the and of the ATM.
I dance. I dance for fun. Local dancers know I certainly don’t dance for perfection or performance or competition. Few dances are free. Most are bare-bones productions, keeping prices low enough to let almost everyone be able to afford to dance. They typically don’t charge round numbers like $20 or $50, yet many ATMs seem to think the economy runs at that level. I pity the person at the door having to worry about having enough change when everyone comes in with $20s and $50s.
There are ways to get the right change. One is to let the organizer worry about it. One is to pay for regular shopping in cash. (Cash?!) And one is to celebrate a bank that has an ATM that offers to deal in dollar bills. Score! That may be enough to make me switch banks, but not yet. There are some potential person life choices which may influence that, but that’s another story in progress.)
At least one bank is not ignoring a segment of their customers and their needs. But they are the minority.
We’re witnessing a fracturing of society between oligarchs and the rest of us, of liberal and conservative, of logic versus emotion, of objective versus subjective. Dollar Generals et al. and ATMs probably won’t grab headlines, but they may be immediate evidence of who is and is not being included.
This blog is about personal finance. It is also based on the book I wrote accidentally (Dream. Invest. Live.) before the start of the Great Recession (the Second Great Depression, in my opinion.) Within the recent thirty year,s I’ve been middle class, a millionaire, and muddling by. I’m into the third edit of the book chronicling that ride through America’s wealth classes.
I may not want to shop in a Dollar General or its cousins, but I also recognize the reality that sustains such stores. Cheap greeting cards? Why not? It’s not like they have to be archival. Toys that break easily? Childhood is temporary, and childhood whims are even more ephemeral. Decorations that have to survive most of a party at best? Sure, unless you are planning another 5th birthday or twenty-year reunion.
As I check on ideas while writing this, I find articles that Dollar General is expanding and closing stores. Maybe they can’t make up their minds. Maybe they’re confused, too, but on a larger scale than most of us. Cheap products stereotypically come from China, or at least from overseas, or at least locally across our southern border.
Ah, so there’s the idea that was rattling around inside my subconscious. The Five and Dime or Dollar General, et al., are bellwethers of retail. If Saks has problems, their relatively few customers have options. If a nice place like Nordstrom stumbles, shoppers have places to retreat to.
The Architect: “There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.” – Matrix Reloaded
If places like Dollar General or the Dollar Store or the dollar-whatever fail, they won’t impact me, but like watching a weed wither, I’ll be seeing evidence of a drought. And I know it will be happening to people who may have few or no other choices.
I’ll be watching this new store down the street, watching its parking lot as I drive by, and wondering about kids in the aisle for whom they’re in their own world of wonder, at best.
Whatever happened to my Mom’s books of S&H Green Stamps? I wonder what they’re worth today.
Trimbathcreative's Blog (Tom Trimbath) 