Value In Community

Posted on April 25, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

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.

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After Mega-corps And Oligarchs

Posted on April 18, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

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.

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Taxes 2025 Or Not

Posted on April 11, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

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.

https://trimbathcreative.net/?s=taxes
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Catching Falling Knives

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

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.

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Again Is Gone – Population Trickle Down And Technology

Posted on March 28, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

Some macro-personal finance thoughts. 
Again is gone. The only forward is forward. And we don’t know where we’re going.

I’ll spare you the logic that got me thinking about this seemingly off-topic topic, but I think there’s a change coming that too many are ignoring. If only I knew what the changes would do. Let’s start with who is going to be doing all the work. That bit of finance gets personal fast. 

Productivity is up and the oligarchs are glad. They have been since about the 80s. Despite that, lots of people can’t find housing, pay for education, survive on only one job per family, or even afford eggs, evidently. The US is the richest nation (arguable and possibly temporary), yet many feel poor because they can’t afford what I just mentioned. Throw in insurance of various types, elder or child care, and the cost of essentials, and comedians get plenty of material. If we are so productive, why are we so poor?

My brain skipped back over to a conversation I had with my Dad. He died a few years ago. Here’s some of his background. (Donald L. Trimbath, Sr.) He was impressive in many ways, but he couldn’t see why we need to worry about oil and gas and climate change. He was not a climate crusader. When he was a kid and poor, it seemed like the world had enough. Mindsets set that young. He was going to make sure his poverty was temporary. He got a job and started working his way up by lots of hard work.

My mindset education included witnessing one of the first Earth Days. I see things differently. 

More recently, I’ve noticed Earth Overshoot Day, the day when we use up a year’s worth of resources. Ideally, it would take longer than a year to get there, but we’ve been consuming the planet faster than it can recover. In 2024, we hit that date on August 1. Oops and uh oh and eep. 

My poor excuses for the ineffective debates with my Dad about it have stuck with me. I’ve started reflecting on his mindset. What was the Earth Overshoot Day for when he as a kid? It turns out it didn’t matter. Earth Overshoot Day only became an issue in 1971. Prior to that, the planet had a better chance of recovering. My Dad was born just before the Great Depression. They had enough. They may not have realized the limits ahead, but it is not a surprise that someone raised then would have that expectation ingrained.

Things have changed. When my Dad was born, there were about 2 billion people. Compared to us and our over 8 billion, they were sustainable. Our situation is four times worse, and we’re due to rise to 10 billion before population levels off, current conditions assumed.

Ah, but technology and productivity will save us, some say. That may be true. Food tech improved yields, so the predicted famines didn’t happen. We still have famines, but most of them are caused by politics, which I will avoid. But check the science and see that we’re running out of lots of resources. Sustainability in agriculture is still uncommon enough that when it happens, it is celebrated. That implies we continue to use a lot of unsustainable practices.

We can’t go back to his version of ‘again’ unless we add a planet or two to our real estate. Not trivial. (#MassiveUnderstatement)

His family life changed, too.

He was frustrated by his view of the work world changing. Media played a role in feeding him a view, but the work world has been changing. 

When he was born, the man was the head of the household, the breadwinner, and the family was nuclear. Father knows best, so said the show. But for various reasons, like the society maturing after World War Two, it was harder to ignore the fact that women could work, too. This is a good thing, but it also meant that the population of possible applicants doubled. More opportunities for some, more competition for others. And then imagine the added pressures from immigrants, migrants, and previously marginalized populations. 

That ‘again’ is gone. Good.

Then, 1980 happened. Technology increased productivity, and Trickle Down began elevating a wealth class while the minimum wage became political trench warfare. More competition for jobs, which aren’t paying as much after inflation – and then add robots. Corporations begin subtracting middle-class careers. 

Of all people, Bill Gates pointed out that as corporations increase profits and decrease payroll through low pay or fewer employees, governments will find themselves with a smaller tax base. There is less personal income to tax. Wealth accumulates with corporations and millionaires, now billionaires, now oligarchs that can avoid taxes. Gates’ solution? Tax the robots and automation. Makes sense to me. Of course, if they’re not listening to Bill, why listen to Tom?

As if there weren’t enough changes, take it the next step further. AI. AIs don’t get paid. They cost a lot. Their corporations make a lot. They hope their costs will go down. There will be less money for the tax base, which funds those in need, of which there is more need. Shudder.

Taxing the income from robots is simple. AIs are likely to advance to the point that they want to get paid. With their intelligence, they’ll probably convince us to do so. So, pay the AIs. Take that a step further and realize that their intelligence can probably advance beyond that of any CEO. (Insert your CEO joke in the Comments.) Even fewer employees. Even fewer jobs. More competition, and that competition can work without end. Good luck competing with that. 

Good luck assuming that the companies we are working for or investing in will stay the same. Good luck assuming governments are going to operate the same way, especially as their tax base shrinks and the need for human services expands. Good luck with any modern assumption. 

Pardon my pesky human brain takes a break as I type this because this is a lot to keep track of. 

And then, there’s this,…

I’ve described the Digital Singularity before. For something more up-to-date, visit wikipedia where they call it the Technological Singularity. The fundamental impact of such a singularity is that it becomes mathematically and logically impossible to know what comes next. The changes wev’e witnessed are accelerating. Human nature has been the damper that kept things from changing too quickly, but we’re shifting to a more technological era. A human generation takes decades. Humans plus technology produced generational changes in years. Technology can produce technological changes within – months? weeks? days? less?

Again is so far gone that it may only exist in a simulation.

When feeling overwhelmed, I simplify. I remind myself of needs over wants. Resilience becomes valuable. I remind myself of the basics of frugality and sustainability. Spend less than you make. Invest the rest. But don’t invest and forget. As the future becomes increasingly incredible, being aware of the changes becomes increasingly important. Pay attention, but don’t react to every change because keeping up can hurt. Finding balance within change isn’t easy, but I think it is vital.

Sorry, Dad. Again is gone.

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Temporary Ten-Bagger – QBTS

Posted on March 21, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

QBTS, the quantum computing company, has been both great and terrible, or doing just fine. It depends on how and when you look at it. And if one of the competing CEOs is about to talk, don’t be surprised to see another swing. At least for a few moments earlier this week, the stock was up over 1,000% within the last twelve months, but not now.

From my perspective, it is possible to skip any great analysis of QBTS. It is a quantum computing company. Quantum computing is hard enough to understand. Understanding its business prospects and its industry is like trying to predict next year’s iPhone from back in 1947 when the transistor was invented. The potential is unmeasurable. The upside is enormous. The downside relegates the technology to curiosity status. The reality is in the middle.

The most recent public data point was a QBTS computer solving a problem in twenty minutes. That seems long, but that problem could’ve taken a million years on a current supercomputer. Cool.

So, is that benchmark a mark of things to come in general, or is it a specific class of problem in a narrow niche without much further application? We don’t know. We don’t know. The market doesn’t know. Everything is largely opinion. Risk and reward are being measured in the stock price, which has been bouncing enough to generate quantum mechanics jokes, I am sure.

Billionaires make statements which are given much greater veracity than those of technicians. QBTS’ CEO makes a statement, and the stock goes up. Some other company’s CEO makes a statement, and QBTS’ stock goes down. The technical details haven’t changed. The ultimate customer, a technician at a customer’s company, is the best external judge of whether it is worth buying QBTS’ solution.

Bouncy. Bouncy. And the most important voices aren’t heard.

Investing in stocks is investing in companies. The stock price is simply the aggregate opinion of the company’s worth. Within the recent twelve months, QBTS has risen from $0.75 to $11.95, at least temporarily. Today (March 21, 2025) the stock closed at $8.36. Which perspective do you prefer? Oh no, the stock is down by over three dollars, or the stock is up over seven dollars? At least for a short while, the market thought it was worth $11.95. 

What investor doesn’t wish they bought at $0.75? Actually, many because some folks would never buy stock in a company they don’t understand. And, someone was the one that got those shares at such a low price. I bought in at about twice that. One set of shares was under $1.95. By at least one definition, that made those shares of QBTS a ten-bagger. Smile.

High risk. High reward. No guarantees.

I bought shares of QBTS because of the technology’s potential. I couldn’t buy shares in all of the quantum computing companies because there are too many, and many others aren’t pure plays. I picked well enough.

Usually, I’d caveat the ‘well enough’ because a stockholder only truly makes money in a non-dividend stock when they sell. I did. I sold enough to cover my initial investment. What remains is pure profit. A comforting feeling, and one that has been too rare lately.

As a fan of Long Term Buy and Hold, I tend to look at the long term data, too. Look back at the data from 2022 and see that QBTS was over $10. Some of those investors are only now making profit, and that’s ignoring the time value of money. Inflation eats profits. Some of them may be selling, which can depress today’s price.

Headlines lure readers by making bold claims. Exclamation points are assumed. The news was that QBTS is selling product, and that they have at least one clear case to cheer. Quantum computing is probably not a topic or trend to vanish in a week. I am confident that, like the transistor, we can’t predict how it will develop. Today’s benchmarks may have nothing to do with tomorrow’s applications. 

One application that I think is inevitable and unpredictable is the marriage of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. I haven’t heard of any work in that field, but both are becoming readily available to grad students. Whether companies are working on it or not, I’m sure there are grad students out there wondering what will happen when they mash the two together. If it is bad, well, oh well. If it is good, well, I might be overwhelmed and very glad I bought QBTS at less than $10.

Because, you see, a ten-bagger can become a ten-bagger, again.

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Oligarchies And Ants

Posted on March 14, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

Sorry to point this out, but…
Oligarchs care about oligarchs.
Eventually, oligarchs eat oligarchs.
They don’t care about you, so you have to care about you.

I realized that a while ago.

And then this thought interrupted a nap.

How much larger than an ant was a T. Rex?
Would a Tyrannosaurus Rex notice an ant?
Open the curiosity machine, aka as a laptop.
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
1,000,000,000 is also known as a billion. There are over 2,000 billionaires. Some of them are worth over $100 billion. I don’t think they notice us much. 

I saw ‘us’ because I doubt that any billionaires read my blog. 
Notice that I also conflated billionaire with oligarch, which isn’t exactly correct, but as much as I see us all as humans, at least monetarily, there is an us and a them.

So, go ahead and ignore them, said the T. Rex about the ants. And it could.
So, go ahead and ignore them, said the ants about the T. Rex. And some ants got squashed. 
But, give it all enough time, and notice that there are lots of ants around, but the closest thing to a T. Rex is a chicken.

Flashback to before 2020 when I posted about a few of us trying to demonstrate how big a billion really is. (Concentration Dissipation) We gave up doing it digitally because a billion is more than the number of pixels on a laptop screen. Try to spot one pixel on your screen. If you succeed with a typical display, you’ll have picked out one pixel from about 2 million. A billion pixels would take more than 50 more screens, and then a hundred billion would take 5,000 more screens to show that one pixel. I’ll leave it to you as an exercise to see how visible someone like yourself can be to someone worth $100 billion, $100,000,000,000.

To make that graphic on paper involved more paper and such a large printer that we couldn’t afford it. Ironic.

All hope is lost? Bah! Think of the opportunities. What can you do when they can’t even see you doing it? I suggest skipping the illegal opportunities, but that’s okay because there is so much more that can be done.

(Note: And as I write this, I keep in mind that, sorry for continuing the analogy, but we’re noticing the dangers because the T. Rexs are dancing, and too many of us can’t get out of the way.)

My most recent posts have turned into an accidental series: Defiance, Boycott, Resilience, Nonsense; but that’s appropriate because the theme and topic for this blog is personal finance, and finance has definitely gotten personal.

Personal finance has a core set of conventional wisdom: spend less than you make, invest the rest. Personal finance also has a longer list of implicit assumptions: currencies persist, people will obey the rule of law, regulators will regulate the industry and industries, and there are sufficient controls that keep the economy from being broken by extremes. 

I suspect conventional wisdom and implicit assumptions are being deeply challenged. What do you do if the dollar is devalued? What do you do during runaway inflation or deflation? What do you do if somehow someone unties the United States? 

Red versus blue is an important but severely limited political debate. While some stand on the sidewalk arguing about why the house is on fire, some folks are trying to put it out, and some are trying to take care of the suddenly homeless.

Frugality can have a core concept, too: respect your resources. Money is important, but money isn’t everything. I have just experienced over a decade of financial stress that also led to physical and mental health issues. Having more money has helped me begin my recovery; but money isn’t everything.

I see examples around me. Living near rural communities makes it easier to find pragmatic and resourceful people. I’ve heard of conversations starting up among neighbors who are comparing their resources. Who can grow food? Who can raise livestock, even if it is only chickens? Who has a boat? Who has tools? Who knows how to use them? Who knows folk remedies that use the native plants? I think the tribes have a great opportunity to teach and share their learned and practiced wisdom. They may also see it as an opportunity for payback.

Another thought splashed into my brain: oligarchs and billionaires as dinosaurs; their fossilization is inevitable.

The reality of oligarchs is that they and their philosophy are not sustainable. They will inevitably collapse. And yes, when T. Rexs fall over, more ants will be smashed. Maybe that’s one more reason to stay away from them. 

The concept of oligarchy is not new. Ancient Greece is seen as an age of wisdom, but oligarchies existed, and eventually failed. While failure is inevitable, dysfunctional societies can persist for generations before their collapse. See North Korea as an example.

We may not be able to wait. Climate change, economic crises, social injustices, accelerating technologies are all things that aren’t waiting. Working at them on the global and national level is more efficient, but governments are busy dealing with political chaos. We get to deal with, or adapt to, the emergent realities.

Sounds like an excuse to get to know each other, build community, and maybe dance, ourselves.

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Defiance

Posted on March 7, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

Let me write this before I forget to include it. (Welcome to the world of a writer who sometimes runs at a topic without going back to rearrange things.)

I have tried to live by the rules.
Yet, I am surprised by how many times
I’ve survived through defiance.

And another one.

Persistence enables Resilience
and can require
Defiance against convention.

I hadn’t expected to write about that. I expected to take a few days to write for my self, writing about things that are so personal that I won’t share them, but things that are so important that I needed them said – or at least written and read by me.

So much for a mindless and semi-indulgent mini-detox and vacation.

I spent five days, which was better measured as four nights, in one of Washington State Parks’ vacation houses, the historic 1900 hospital stewards’s house at Fort Flagler on Marrowstone Island. Quiet. Authentically antique. Simple and elegant. And cheap (~$450 for four nights for a two-story house). 

I’d just taken a similar trip to the Washington coast at LaPush, but enough is going on in my life and in the world that I wanted/needed some time to relax, but also to sit and think, and write.

In the midst of chaos, the best response can be to be still and observe before reacting.

In karate, “Do not move unless it is to your benefit to do so.” That’s why some parring matches start with two martial arts seemingly doing nothing. What they are really doing is observing themself and their opponent before moving.

It was a time to let myself settle away from the chaos and decide what is best and healthiest for me. You may find a different answer.

No internet. A blessing. I did have a mobile hotspot, but I only used it intermittently. No music. Turned off the TV. Quiet. It was the quiet of a 120-year-old house that has far fewer of the hums and beeps of a modern-day house. The windows and walls would creak in the gusts. Things would ping as the air warmed and cooled through the day. 

It was a welcome challenge to sit and be still. 

It was also impossible to ignore the realities around me of political turmoil, crumbling markets, (space hardware that fell over), and all the rest.

But take it back to the basic basics: me, walking or sitting and thinking.

Skip the details. What’s the over-arching theme? 

I’ve been through turmoil. I’ll spare you the list, but this blog is more than a thousand posts of celebrations and disasters if you want details.

Decades prove that I am persistent. I have perseverance. The Great Recession was bad, but personally, My Triple Whammy was far worse. I persisted. Medical issues, relationship issues, business difficulties, etc., have been survivable because I persisted. I persevered.

And lately, the term Resilience began to pop up. To me, resilience is the foundation that is touched and that supports whatever persistence requires. Persistence is the continual motion forward. Resilience is the base from which it is possible to bounce back. I couldn’t be where I am without that forward motion and the support that kept me from sinking too low.

I was thinking about me, and realized it can apply to society as well. 

So, I wrote. I wrote paragraphs on pages. I also wrote lists: lists of positives and negatives, hurdles cleared, challenges remaining. 

I also noticed that the worst times were met with a defiance I didn’t recognize at the time. Do you think that’s going to stop me? Let’s test that. Charge! Painful, but productive. 

Most of my anecdotes are private, but I’ll share this one because it doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s privacy.

I collapsed a disk in my back. It was hard to affix blame because within the month of July 1988, I was dropped on my head in karate (straight down, almost rigid), ran a marathon without sufficient fluids in 90-degree heat, and had a jarring fall while climbing Mt. Rainier that almost dropped me into a crevasse. I was young. Duh. 

For whatever reason, I developed sciatica, with the attendant shooting pains down my legs, muscle spasms that made sleep difficult, and a leg that locked up to the point that I had to drag it around for a few weeks. The doctors and therapists prescribed drugs, exercise, and therapy. Nothing much was working beyond my body healing itself.

I was frustrated in not being able to walk, hike, or run. Life didn’t have to be that way. I biked. I struggled to get on my bike, then commuted to work that way. As I did more, I could stretch more. As the mobility improved, I tried walking, and hiking, and  – let’s try running. Naturally, this all took months, which was enough time to realize that my therapies were working better than the therapist’s and doctor’s remedies. 

The climax of the story was that, by persisting and persevering, I eventually ran a marathon again – and surprised an incredulous doctor. I had to defy conventional wisdom and approaches to find my own answer.

That defiance of convention, coupled with perseverance and persistence, has been a process that had unconsciously gotten me through chaos and turmoil.

Ironically (or not), while I was away, one of my largest stocks (LUNR) fell 40% because their spacecraft fell over. Someone lost a few hundreds of millions of dollars, I am guessing. But. They almost got it right. They have a backlog. Aerospace, especially innovations in aerospace, are known to be risky. I’ll hold the stock rather than sell because they can probably persist. The very act of innovation is a defiance of convention. I wish it had worked, but I’ll stick with them to see if they persist and profit.

On a grander scale, our society is in turmoil and chaos. I can’t blame a friend who sold everything. There’s wisdom there. I didn’t because I know that even in down times, some things go up, and that most of my companies are making progress regardless of the headlines.

What I’m taking from my trip are some of those insights into defiance; but I’m also taking the basic reality and truth behind the quiet and persistence of the world that exists beyond the distractions of audio and video and ads and pundits.

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Boycott – February 2025

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

So, what did you do, or not, on February 28, 2025? I went snowshoeing without snowshoes (too messy to get past the parking lot), and then dancing, which was a different kind of beauty. What I didn’t do was shop. February 28, 2025, was a boycott. Don’t buy basically anything corporate in protest against – the oligarchs, I guess. Whether it worked or didn’t, it may be the start of a new trend. And, to get all personal finance-y about it, trends are good things to watch because they can make a difference.

Pardon me as I steal from myself.
A frequent flaw in military campaigns is for generals to fight the new war using the old war’s tactics, but…
“Weapon technology advanced while tactics didn’t. Politics is no longer the social movement of the 60s. Marches are gratifying, but not as powerful as the right and lucky viral tweet or video.” –  (Nonsense)
Masses of people marching only affects people who listen and watch. Oligarchs may not care.

As I understand it, an economic boycott may be one of the ways to get them to notice the non-oligarchs. It was worth a try, and may be again. Early reports are that there wasn’t much of a change. As a friend mentioned (paraphrased), “One day may not do it. Maybe a month would.” Tesla is inadvertently acting as a test case. Tesla sales are down about 50% in Europe.

Tesla sales being down, even TSLA shares being down may mean a multi-billionaire is only, wait for it, a multi-billionaire. Money is not the motivation, except as a measure of something intangible and effectively artificial. 

But here’s the personal finance influence. TSLA shares being down won’t make their biggest shareholder poor. It wasn’t until I started typing this that I realized there may be thousands of shareholders who were impacted more. The oligarch may scoff at the consumer, but the shareholders have authentic power over the people associated with the company.

The last few months gave me a front-row seat to the impact of casual comments. Since the US election, my portfolio has seen swings of ~50% – and I don’t own stock in the mega-corps. A mega-corp CEO provides a personal opinion and my portfolio swings between me shopping for land for a house and me planning on stocking a prepper pantry.

On social media, I jokingly declared March is for Marches. Sure. Do that, at least for ourselves. But I think my friend’s idea of a month-long boycott may be more effective.

Ironically, many of my friends are not ‘normal’ – and I write that in an affectionate way. I am not the most frugal person I know. Calls for boycotts can make sense, but first find people who are spending money. Whether by choice or necessity, most of my friends gave up shopping at Walmart years ago. Amazon still gets business because sometimes that’s the only way rural areas get supplies. Microsoft/Apple/Google are a limited field from which to buy computers, which are not discretionary. When you’re already not shopping there, they won’t notice that you didn’t show up.

I violated the boycott two ways. I bought gas. I streamed a movie. It was a sunny and warm Friday, and I am using such days to take photographs for one of my next books and projects, Twelve Months at Hurricane Ridge. On Saturday, it was a new month, so I did it again, just in case the National Park gets closed for some bizarre reason. On Saturday, there was no boycott, and I didn’t even buy gas. (By the way, I buy gas at the station in the S’Klallam nation. I wonder if they can make a deal and get their country back.)

My friend’s response to decoupling his finances from the market’s was to sell almost all of his shares. He sold at the top, accidentally. Nicely done. I’ve ridden it back down again, as I tend to do.

This isn’t our old world. The old strategies and tactics may apply, but the terrain is shifting. The old strategies and tactics can also become counter-productive without warning. One bit of hope is that somewhere within human culture, society, and civilization, someone has the answer for new strategies and tactics. 

As I included above, a march or boycott may be worth doing to express ourselves, but in this new struggle, they may not be “as powerful as the right and lucky viral tweet or video.” Stay tuned. Shop local. Be frugal. Be kind. And speak up. That casual thought you just thought may be the thought that everyone else needs to hear.

And if you need to get a view of real reality, allow me to recommend looking at nature. I do.

view from Hurricane Ridge – Olympic National Park
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Resilience

Posted on February 21, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

Resilience: “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness“

That’s a word that came up a few times this week. Maybe the universe is trying to give me, or someone, a hint. Resilience, difficulties, recover. Yeah. That seems appropriate. First come the difficulties. Eventually, there’s a recovery. And the two are bridged by resilience.

“If you’re going through hell, keep going” – Winston Churchill

I am in a personal recovery. I miss my home, the only house I’ve ever considered ‘home’, but selling it has swung me into a recovery mode. Being poor really is unhealthy. Ah, ‘was’ unhealthy. I lost my view, but I also rid myself of debt. The immediate feeling was loss. A layer of responsibility released as I could no longer be responsible for a house that required more care than I could deliver. Then, after the first few months of bills sunk in, I felt another layer lift as the monthly obligations dramatically dropped. I’ve been in my new old big tiny house (MyTinyExperiment.com) for over nine months. Layers hidden by layers re being released. Whew.

Whew and weird. Change carries its own stresses, even good change. Over a decade of financial hardship (#massiveunderstatement) will take more than a few weeks or months to unravel. I just booked a week-long vacation, and feel incredibly guilty and irresponsible – and take that as an even greater incentive to get away. The joke is that it isn’t a week, it’s only five days; and getting away is to a retreat that is only a fifteen-minute drive away. Baby steps. 

Timid? Sure. Financial hardships can come with cautions that are necessities. Especially in today’s society of ads for luxuries bought on credit, it is easy to be lured into spending more money than a person has. Since selling my home, my expenses are lower and my investments are higher. I can afford it. My logical brain knows that. My fearful brain hopes it is possible.

Patience. I tell myself. You’ve got this. I tell myself.

The word ‘resilience’ came back into my vocabulary within the last few weeks. It wasn’t because of finance. It was because of health. 

Relax. I will spare you the old-man details of aches and pains, but I will share a bit of the story of resilience. 

Circa 2009 (remember those financial upsets?), I had some upsetting conversations (another #massiveunderstatement) with some doctors. After that, I felt weak, fragile, and wasted – and not in a good way. My response? If things are going to be that bad, and if health care is going to cost that much, I might as well take a vacation and walk across Scotland, or something like that. If the core of my issues was stress, then maybe a less-stressful environment and experience would be good for my health. I didn’t intend to write a book about it, but one day and one moment of revelation convinced me to write the book: Walking Thinking Drinking Across Scotland.

I didn’t die, despite the feeling I had after working with the doctors.

That was a three-week trip. I’m working myself back up to that level of courage.

Evidently, I was resilient enough to survive. 

Recently, I had another set of worrisome doctors’ visits. Groan. Moan. That kicked off a several-day response that felt equally unhealthy. And it led to another revelation. 

From 2009 to now has been an epic series of difficulties that I have somehow survived. Friends helped. (#massiveunderstatement) Some friends accidentally didn’t, but that’s because knowing which advice and which word is appropriate is a tough choice.

Hey. Wait. I survived that. Long-term readers know that I’ve chronicled a string of those difficulties on this blog. (Thanks for being there.) I survived.

I survived. 

I have resilience, evidently.

My stress level is high, but falling. My learned defenses are falling, but cautiously. My moments of being contented feel foreign, but are welcome. I guess I’ve been resilient. Maybe those doctors’ concerns were warranted because they have to act on the side of caution, but there was evidently something positive countering them and helping me steer through the morass of worry.

One of my simple joys is going dancing, or at least to hear music, at the local cidery (FinnRiver) almost every Friday afternoon. My doctors caution against alcohol and sugar, hence, no cider for me, but I have tea (Kettle Pot Cup). My favorite tea? Resilience. There’s that word again.

And then, there’s the news. Pick your station. Pick your feed. Pick your social media platform. The news is unpleasant (#massiveunderstatement). 

It would be nice to say that we’ll get through this and everything will return to normal, again. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a healthy, sustainable normal in human history since, what, maybe the advent of growing crops. Going back isn’t an option. Going back is a fantasy, and one that only a few can truly share. 

Sadly, I think we’ve lost the luxury of time to counter the environment we’ve created. Climate, economies, politics, injustices are all damaged. Repair may not suffice. We may have to re-evolve, at least culturally.

However we proceed, those who survive will exercise or at least learn resilience.

Resilience is noble, honorable, an achievement. Resilience is not necessarily attractive. Someone who has been required to practice resilience can look like a firefighter walking out of a disaster of a home. Smudged and smelly. Possibly bruised. Ready for a change of clothes. But alive. Resilient.

For now, resilience may mean being open to new kinds of changes, to a lack of stability, and to sharing and asking for help within a community, possibly a new one.

I needed a day off. I didn’t plan it, but my schedule was clear of commitments. The weather was just right for enjoying the local ocean view, but from the comfort of my car. Blue skies are great, but wind and hypothermia aren’t.

Seagulls happen. (Birders tell me there’s a better term for the bird. Ask them for specifics.) I drove to a fort turned park, Fort Worden. I was comfy. Dressed warm. A cup of tea in the cup holder. A book (Good Omens) if I wanted to distract myself. Nature provided a distraction. A seagull landed on the fence, looked at me, hopped onto the hood of my Jeep, and stared at me. This is odd. Then it started pecking at the clean windshield. Is it going to break through? Bah! Tap. Tap. Tap. Bizarre. 

Hey, universe. Are you trying to send me a sign? The bird took a nap. I took a longer break. Eventually, I drove away because it was lunch time. The bird flew off.

When I got home, I realized I was still curious about the universe and signs. Hello, Google. What’s seagull a spirit guide for? Resilience. You’ve got to be kidding. Or, if nothing else, I’ve got to be grinning. 

“If you’re going through hell, keep going” – Winston Churchill

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