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.
This shouldn’t need to be said, but considering how long the human race has been saying things, repetition is popular and maybe even profitable. There’s value in community. Dull. Yes, we know that. Tell us something we don’t. Yes. No. The things we need to repeat change because our world and society changes. Particularly now, in the turmoil of 2025, the value of community is rising.
A hundred years ago, the messages to repeat were still mostly about crops, livestock, and surviving the winter. It was about the time that messages shifted to emphasizing factories, education, and, in many cases, migration. Community was implicit because entertainment and news were local and communal.
Globalization means local includes the entire planet. News comes from everywhere. The number of people involved is limited to billions instead of hundreds. News is unlimited and surpasses a human’s ability to absorb it. The Saturday night dance and Sunday services are no longer the limits to the world, a weekly distraction from the other days which were filled with everyday chores.
“Hey. This blog is about personal finance. Why’s he going on about this?”
Friends and news have always been valuable, but we’re still adjusting to this new era when the old definitions are gone and replaced with people and sources that don’t necessarily (there’s that word again) apply to our lives. It has become easy to feel for, care for, and maybe even help someone on a different continent who is in the midst of an otherwise unimaginable trauma. Our compassion can be overwhelmed.
Overwhelm has become the norm. Just ask the stock market, or at least take a glance at it. Great economic forces continue to influence it as ever, but now it swings on tweets. Conventional wisdom is great for the long-term, smoothing over daily interruptions, but convention is also being challenged and changed.
Concentrating on what matters to you can sound self-centered, but with shifting politics, social awareness, and the continually changing technological realm, it has become easy to become disconnected from the trends – or, more importantly, for the trends to become disconnected from you. Feeling left out and overlooked? That may be what we have in common, in a variety of ways.
I had a conversation earlier in the week (over tea, of course) which brought this to mind. It was with a person who is courageously challenging their lifestyle. Instead of talking about it, they’re doing something about it. Instead of guessing at an answer, they’re exploring and researching possibilities – and are willing to travel to do so.
This is a person who watches trends, dives into personal values rather than blindly accepting what some gatekeeper (or advertiser) tells them to think, and is articulate about the lot.
Over a few hours of conversation, we sifted through the similarities in our situations, their uniqueness, and the fact that we’re not alone. I’ve had other such conversations, and am glad to have friends who can play with such issues. (Listen to IntriguingCreativity.com for a monthly podcast with Steve Smolinksy for one example.) Very few of the people I know who watch and follow trends agree on where this world is going. Confused or contracting trendwatchers may be a clue that there’s less agreement than usual about what comes next.
One person sold everything in the market and is hunkering down to build a local resiliency. One person is traveling the world in spurts to find better solutions and cultures. More than one person is struggling with the consequences of long Covid and realizing they can’t rely on central authorities for answers.
In every case, they’re relying on community to learn about possibilities, and to share what they know.
In every case, their conversations have shifted to rarely including talking about stocks, and are more likely to be considering cash so they can concentrate on more immediate changes. None have agreed on the validity or security of US currency. They all have opinions and have taken actions, but they are all different, logical, and valid.
(And the one stock they’re all familiar with is MVIS. Go figure. Really. Go and figure out that one.)
Community has been the key. Community has been the most valuable resource. Politicians and news outlets are dealing with the macro issues. There’s wailing and lamenting and protesting. But the most practical benefits have been from talking to others. Yes, the news is important. Yes, the news affects us. Yes, politics has become more influential than ever. But the things that seem to have the greatest improvements in their lives have been finding or building new communities that address their needs. Regardless of the turmoil, or maybe because of it, community has become more valuable than stock swings.
I am an eventual optimist. (As my near-term internal pessimist coughs to get its vote in.) We will find a way through. We’ll probably find many ways through. Humans and human society have developed into a civilization because that is what we do, intentional or not. In the meantime, as the world has its cathartic episode, I see value in each other, not to be us versus them, but to redefine who us is. We may find that the various communities blend and reinforce each other based on current realities and not old anachronistic ideologies.
And another innovative startup grows phenomenally, disconnects from its foundations, and leaves loyal users behind. If it wasn’t for their protection as a monopoly, their next step could be an apologetic revelation, or a fall from grace. Ah, but this is the era of monopolies and oligarchs. I doubt anti-trust will bring back customer service. Conventional wisdom assuming conventional choices has become a bad assumption, in my estimation. We’ve entered a louder echo of the previous Roaring Twenties, with tones of the French and Russian Revolutions. As if there wasn’t enough turbulence swirling the world…
I’m a fan of innovations, possibly because I am enough of an innovator that my aerospace engineering career was hampered by “being too comfortable with new ideas.” An interesting commentary while working in research and development at Boeing. I buy stock in innovative companies because I feel that I understand them better than some other investors. I even buy innovator’s products.
Imagine a couple of folks with an idea who pursue it and massively succeed. I haven’t mentioned any company specifically because I’ve seen so many: Gates and Allen for Microsoft, Jobs and Wozniak for Apple, Page and Brin for Google. Microsoft claimed the innovator title when compared to IBM. Apple claimed the innovator title when compared to Micrsoft. Google claimed the title when compared to Yahoo (Yang and Filo, and I had to look that one up.)
Microsoft only impressed me until the Macintosh was released.
Apple impressed me enough that I bought shares early, and bought a Mac 512K, and continued to upgrade. I continued to upgrade until they went from innovator to asserted so much control that I couldn’t control how my work was handled. They even orphaned the first 200 posts to this blog (2007?). I was glad to switch to Google’s Chromebooks because they were more affordable, said they wouldn’t be evil, and were practical while doing almost everything I needed. Now, it is time to begin looking for a new innovator. Is there a two-person team working who love their idea, and will positively be surprised by it, and so will we?
Almost everything I’ve produced in the most recent two decades have been at least partly built on and in Google’s ecosystem: blogs, books, and videos (YouTube).
Google, which is now Alphabet (does anyone call them that?), recently announced that they won’t update my older laptops. (“This browser version is no longer supported.”) The laptops use their software, which means that they have unilaterally abandoned the product I bought from them. I think it may be coincidence, but I now get a warning message that “…If you run out of space, you can’t save to Drive or use Gmail”, because I’ve used >71% of my storage space. Of course, managing my storage space on Macs was easy until it wasn’t. Managing my storage space on a Windows machine had great tools, powerful tools, but not very user-friendly tools.
OK. OK. I’ll use Chrome’s tools to manage my storage; and I found out that Chrome had been duplicating hundreds of large files. Each one had to be found, compared, marked for deletion, and then persist with the above warning because deletion takes time in the Chrome universe. So, they caused the problem, provide bad tools to resolve it, then continue to display the warning message for possibly weeks – maybe.
Google’s suggested solution to the hardware and the software issues? Buy a new Chromebook. Buy a new Chromebook? My newest one is less than a year old. I have about six in various stages of abandonment – just like my Mac.
Imagine car companies deciding to obsolete your car without warning. Why buy when someone else controls the power?
Someone else controls the power.
Someone else controlling the power to vital systems seems to be the current trend. The customer is no longer king or queen. The company is royalty that we are subservient to. Lately, it seems that the company is also likely to be subservient to oligarchs who are reverting to being treated like monarchs.
Sigh. And I haven’t even explicitly made any allusions to politics.
Oligarchs eat oligarchs, but first, oligarchs reinforce oligarchs as they accumulate power. In the meantime, I, we, have work to do. Evidently, I also have shopping to do.
But what to do?
Being frugal and obstinate, I’ll make these machines work as well as they can for as long as they can. If necessary, I’ll trust libraries to keep technically current for the more important work. I’ll also watch and listen for innovators who slide in beneath the notice of the mega-corps. I’ll also begin learning and maybe buying something like a Linux machine, Linux, the perpetual geek’s innovative solution, kind of like Esperanto, an idea that will catch on anytime now – for the previous few decades.
While I work on personal solutions, I’m also watching oligarchs begin to turn on each other. Crowds mass against them, but I doubt that they notice or care.
The ancient Greeks fought against oligarchy, so the idea isn’t new. The Magna Carta was a response to over-reach by a monarchy, and that wasn’t bloodless. The American Revolution abolished a monarch (temporarily?). The French Revolution was fought against oligarchs, succeeded, then devolved into authoritarianism. Ironically, the Russian Revolution was considered to be a fight against both a monarchy and an oligarchy, and succeeded in creating communism, which has devolved into oligarchy. Will we have a Second American Revolution, or will our checks and balances check the monopolies and oligarchs, or will we innovate to some hopefully bloodless and peaceful solution?
Large movements start from simple events. Estranged customers and voters may finally find common enough ground that a solution will be found.
In the meantime, I don’t think I’ll invest in any of the monopolies because they have far to fall and can’t grow forever. In the meantime, I’ll find ways to become less reliant on their products and services. In the meantime, I’ll play along as practical. And, in the meantime, I wonder and worry about whether we’ll witness truly mean times.
Whew. That’s done, and done in time. Welcome the annual celebration of relief at having the taxes done. Done? Paid. Paid? Not this year! My taxes totaled to zero. Whew! I couldn’t have done it myself. Thanks.
Thanks to my tax preparer, Tamera Lewis in Freeland, WA, an excuse to visit Whidbey Island. People complain about the weather forecasts as if they could do better, but they’d only be guessing compared to people who studied for years and practiced for real for years more. For me, taxes are the same. I can kid myself that an ex-rocket scientist (with apologies to real rocket scientists) could calculate my US Federal Income Tax annual payment. My guess, or at least my worry, was to be ready to pay out a few thousand. The professional’s opinion, er, factual calculation, was zero. I like that answer better.
In 2024, I turned 65, had changes in health insurance, sold a house, sold some stock, bought a tiny house, bought some stock, and… I’m sure there was more. Moving from Whidbey Island to the Quimper Peninsula involved much more than changing my address. The trend is improving my mood and health, including my financial health, but it has also been months of personal turmoil during a period of national turmoil. Following the nuances of tax laws and worksheets would be just too much. So, my house is in Port Townsend, but I’m glad to ride the ferry back to Whidbey to let Tamera expertly manage my official and very non-negotiable obligation to the Department of the Treasury.
All that work and all that expense to get to a tax bill of zero. It’s enough to make me feel like an oligarch; nah. Seeing the numbers convinced me yet again that, despite my friends who gain acclaim for their famous frugality, I ain’t exactly spendy.
I am not spendy, and yet I’m planning on writing about my recent year of being my version of spendy. Selling my house and replacing it with a tiny house, has been a trade-off between a mortgage with a yard and a lot less floor space and a lease on some land. Stay tuned for that one.
Taxes are a confusion. They’re also a frustration with how the taxes are spent. Pardon me as I quote author and web-famous John Green.
“Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order. … So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don’t personally have a kid in school: It’s because I don’t like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.” ― John Green
I am glad we have a country where we can decide to contribute to being kind, intelligent, healthy, wise, and generally happier. That seems to be out of style, but if you want the country to blow something up, or attack people, or make rich people richer, well, that seems to be the fashion. I’ve never been fashionable, except by accident. Fashions fade; come on, fashion, fade. In the meantime, it remains a privilege and a duty to be a citizen of a country with such an impressive Constitution. (Which is only a document, and as a writer, I think the recent draft is due for an edit and an update.)
So, what am I going to do with the money I mentally set aside for the government’s check? Not much. It is going to sit there as it was. Of the money I got from selling my house, I have hung onto about two years of living expenses because, even back in May 2024, I suspected 2025 could be bizarre. The possibility of our current turmoil was also part of the impetus to sell my house, my home. I’m glad I did. I’m also impressed with a friend who, in response to the dramatic shifts in policies, sold almost every stock. By luck, they sold at the peak. Maybe it was more than luck.
Taxes done. What’s next? Modern society rarely provides a break. We have to take them. As I type this, I’m ignoring some social obligations, avoiding some health care forms, and realizing that I forgot to put out the garbage. In other words, life.
And life is meant to be lived; so maybe I’ll take a slice of that tax savings, and take a short vacation soon. In Western Washington in April, that can be somewhat soggy, but even in a storm, we deserve some time to recover from stress, and more radically, maybe even have some fun.
Good luck with your taxes. I guess something called a Standard Deduction benefited me. Maybe someday we’ll have a simpler tax code, and even more importantly, we’ll get oligarchs, billionaires, organizations, and corporations to pay theirs. I suspect that if they did that, we wouldn’t have to do nearly as much. We might even end up with a country with a smarter bunch of people.
For those with a deeper curiosity, here’s a link to more of my posts that mention taxes. I’ve seen some big swings on little income while having shifting assets.
Advice for catching falling knives: don’t. If all it’s going to hit is the ground, let it fall, then pick it up. That’s the overly dramatic version.
The personal finance version is narrower and deals with stocks. If a stock’s price is dropping, don’t buy on the way down. Buy after it bounces back up, and even then (and pardon the expression) make sure it isn’t a dead cat bounce.
Trust me. I’ve been cut by grabbing after stocks that I was sure would bounce back from irrational pessimism. They’d dropped 20%, 50%, 80%, 90% from their highs, which in reflection were irrationally optimistic. At the time, though, enough investors thought MVIS was worth whatever price it had because someone was willing to buy it at that price. From over $500, it dropped to $0.15, and I’ve bought several times along the way. Today, it closed at $1.17.
Today, the NASDAQ closed at 15,587, down ~5.8% for the day, down ~8% for the week, down ~14.7% for the month, and down ~29% from its late 2024 peak. Remember 2024? Seems like a world away.
Google Finance
There are enough pundits pondering where it, the economy, our finances, the nation, and the world go from here. I’ve got guesses, but they are based on logic and from what I can see, the use of logic is no longer authorized, evidently. Hopefully, that’s temporary.
Correction is such a vague euphemism that it covers up lost jobs, people in distress, and the possible demise of the explicit and the implicit world order.
I say all of that to say this. Such a steep drop in the stock markets is a falling knife. I’m not sure anyone can stop it, and if they try, they might get badly hurt. In this case, ‘they’ could easily be a country. Letting the knife fall as far as possible will also involve a lot of hurt, er, disaster. It is painful to watch, but without being able to stop it, sometimes the next best choice is to watch it and do what is necessary to get out of its way. It is sad to say, but the closest analogy that comes to mind is watching an asteroid heading towards us. A march is not going to stop it. At best, some mega-organization can nudge it enough to miss or ‘only’ graze us, in which case, then we can actively begin to recover.
The steeper the drop, the worse the hurt. The steeper the drop, the more likely more than just marchers will be impacted. Oligarchs eat oligarchs. It is a foreign concept, but some governments act logically, compassionately, and responsibly. Hey, I said it was a foreign concept. It is time for it to come back into style.
My applause goes out to some friends who sold before the fall. They’re not happy about it, but they dodged the falling knife. They’re in a good position to weather this storm. (Ugh, a storm of knives? Shudder.) They have cash to take care of bills, and if the bounce happens soon enough, they can buy back into those stocks at prices below what they sold at. Sell high. Buy low – or not. This has become a crazy game, and I believe that some of the powers at play are acting as if it is a game, a really big game that they can’t truly lose. Got a billion and lost $990,000,000? Few folks will feel sorry for you.
Personally, I maintain my Long Term Buy and Hold (LTBH) strategy. Timing markets is tricky. Did you accurately predict this rise and fall? I still have about a third of my house sale as cash, so I am buffered at least that much. If Social Security and Medicare survive, then it is easier for me to survive. They both have knives falling their way.
I can only control what I can control. I can’t control the markets, but I can control what I invest in. My current investments are in companies that may not be as affected as mega-corp retailers. Tariffs will affect almost everyone, but companies that sell custom equipment, or low-volume high-priced products, or haven’t released their designs yet will probably be less impacted than Wal-mart.
And, I caught myself reaching to catch a knife or two. Irrational pessimism can be followed by irrational optimism. I’m an optimist. I suspect the USA has thrown away its place in the global hierarchy, but I think the companies I am invested in have a reasonable chance of eventually thriving. Eventually.
I also won’t be surprised if some center of power, whether an individual or organization or government, might act swiftly, decisively, and dramatically unilaterally. They’re hurting, too, and they may see a chance to shift the power to someplace more responsible and in their favor. If so, anything can happen, and that’s a guessing game of infinite proportions.
Trimbathcreative's Blog (Tom Trimbath) 