An Unfrugal Year

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Debt Free Again – One Year Later

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

“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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

5 And 10

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Tom Trimbath

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

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
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment