takeo.blog

Hey all! I'm officially 1 week into my 6 week sabbatical, and so far doing absolutely nothing is everything I thought it could be. Over the last week, the little dude went to skateboarding camp and absolutely loved it, the teen went to cheerleading hell week and did great, Jen did a bunch of dancing and sewing... which left me to figure out what I should be doing. What should my Nothing consist of? So, I'll mostly be recounting the stuff I came up with in this issue.

If you want to talk about anything in here, please reply to this email (or email me at toby@takeo.email if you're reading this on RSS)! I'd love to talk shop.

Shit I'm...

Reading

Budget Culture and the Dave Ramseyfication of Money

This one hit pretty hard. I spent almost 5 years helping build Simple, one of the first Fintech™ Neobanks™ back from 2010-2015. The general premise was to build a checking account that had amazing customer service, a beautiful UI, and built-in Personal Finance Management tools, which basically amounts to... budgeting.

We spent a lot of time building tools to let folks virtually divide their money up into chunks that were dedicated to specific types of spending. Initially, these were savings "goals" since the underlying premise was enabling folks to save up for a specific amount of money over time by moving a small amount every day without them really noticing. That worked pretty well for the cliche purchases like "save for a new computer over the next year" but we quickly learned that people wanted to divide their money up for regularly occurring everyday things like bills and food. AKA budgets.

There has been a big focus on "zero based budgeting" over the years that I think was popularized by Dave Ramsey where you take every dollar of income and allocate it for a specific type of spending when you receive it. Then, as you spend, you decrement that bucket of money and when that bucket runs out, you don't spend any more in that category. Or, if you must, you transfer some money fro a different bucket. It makes a lot of sense and works really well. If anything, it makes you pay attention to your money and put some thought into where you're planning to spend it, even if it doesn't always go to plan.

We made a lot of iterations to the product and made it possible to do this kind of budgeting all in one place if you used our debit card. Lots of people loved it, and some even reported it changing their lives, getting out of debt, saving for homes and weddings, and just having a better relationship with their money overall. It was pretty great.

Naturally, I went all in. Being one of the people designing and building it gave me an immense sense of pride, and even more of a desire to use the shit out of it. I gave talks all over the world about the thinking that went into designing it, and I was a designated instructor for new hires at work, demoing the ins and outs of the product and system by demoing my own personal account.

After I stopped working there, I still used it, but not too long after the company went through another migration of a major system, this time swapping the underlying bank for the one run by the company who acquired us. My account, being one of the earliest and most gnarly, didn't survive the transition. My account wasn't working right and they weren't able to figure out what was wrong. I was about to head out on a family trip and decided I needed a working checking account, so I hastily opened up a an account with Schwab, the place where my stock from work got deposited. I'd heard they had good checking, and it was free if you had a brokerage account. Signing up was fine, I got my account, and I transferred money over in time.

Thus begun the slow losing of my religion.

It wasn't long until I signed up for a credit card with a huge points bonus for signing up. Of course that meant moving most of our spending over to the credit cards to meet the requirement to get the bonus. And once we saw the points add up, it was pretty hard to turn back. Besides, we were responsible enough to pay the card off every month so we wouldn't pay any interest.

And therein lies the rub. Like everything else in this shithole country, the true answer to money problems is... having money.

🇺🇸

From the article:

The budget culture blueprint has been copied over and over by financial experts who think they’ve pinpointed the problem keeping us all poor, from lattes to avocado toast to mindset mistakes. But they all really have just one secret to getting rich quickly: aggressive investing. And you can invest as aggressively as you want with $1 or $5 at a time — tons of apps will help you do it! — but you won’t quit your day job that way. The only sure way to make money is to have money, but no personal finance expert wants to admit their wealth is built on anything other than a solid foundation of hard work and self-control — not their degrees in finance, Ivy League educations, middle class upbringings… or their ability to sell you a fantasy.

The whole sticking to your budget instead of buying avocado trope is pretty much just that – a trope. Something for boomers to say to get around the fact that they sucked the host dry and left their kids with nothing. All the budgeting and investing apps in the world can help folks get a little bit ahead, know where their money is, maybe even get out of crushing debt. But it's all a bunch of band aids on top of a gushing wound.

After I stopped using Simple with the baked in budgeting I tried out YNAB. They're kind of the gold standard in the zero-based budgeting space, and they've basically formed a cult. People are fans, not customers. And the system is pretty good. I stuck to it for a while, but as I made and accumulated more money... I just kind of stopped using it. Why? I guess because I stopped being poor. I worked for a few companies that got acquired and gave me a bit of a cushion. Then I took a job with a company that was public and had a big rise in stock price over the years. Sure I worked hard etc, but a lot of it was just luck and timing and, of course, privilege.

As the author states:

But I’ve stopped giving financial literacy the credit, because I know the real reason my finances are “healthier” now: I have more money. I took a job with a salary that quadrupled my income, and voila — I became a lot more “responsible” with money.

Having money makes the problem much less of a problem. Sure, you still have to be responsible, save, keep track, blah blah... but all that is made a lot easier when you don't have to worry about it.

The game is pretty much rigged. A recent twitter thread came up about people who used to work and/or used Simple trying to find a bank that could provide the same set of features and budgeting. My contribution to the conversation? Give up and just get a regular ass checking account with Schwab like I did. Why? Because it's a really good checking account, much better than what we could have ever done with Simple. Sure, there's no budgeting features, the UI is dogshit... but it does everything you need from checking – super high limits and spending ability, free ATM rebates, reliable. And boring. Which is fine when it comes to a checking account. All the Fintech Startup Banks have really cool features, but the underlying banks are just... bad. They can't feature their way out of you not being able to transfer enough money to make a down payment to make a big purchase like a down payment on a house.

The only problem? Well, Schwab gives you this great checking account for free... if you have a brokerage account. Who has brokerage accounts? People with money. Who gets the shitty checking accounts with cool features for budgeting so you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps? People without money.

Fighting budget culture means remaking the world in a way that lets everyone experience the ease of being “rich,” regardless of the numbers in their bank account.

If people who didn't have a lot of money could get checking accounts that Just Work and also provided the tools for helping them make sure they've allocated for all their upcoming bills and spending, it would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the incentive structure is pretty much upside down. The people with the money get the good checking as a loss leader with the assumption that they'll pay a bunch of fees pretending they're Gordon Gekko trading stocks. Meanwhile folks who don't have stocks (yet) get super low limits, long waits on deposits, a bunch of hoops to jump through when they finally save up for a small down payment... all because the companies providing the services can't make much money off of interchange, and have to deal with a bunch of fraudulent bad apples who take advantage of the massive growth targets these startup banks have in order to pay off their VC loansharks.

I don't really know what the answer is.

Listening

Ted posted a Youtube video to the group text that was titled "Doomer Jazz." The cover image was a meme drawing of a guy driving a NYC taxi with a thick 5 o'clock shadow, sunglasses, and a fedora smoking a cigarette. I was intrigued.

As soon as I hit play I instantly got it. Dark, moody, noir jazz that you expect from movies or video games. It's super cliché and I'm sure The Kids started putting these playlists together as a new meme to make fun of Olds, but I don't care, it rules.

Laughing

This kid rules

Petting

Around 7 years ago we got a cat. She was our first family pet. Due to allergies, we've never gotten any animals besides some fish and frogs.

In our old neighborhood there were a couple cats that would cruise around that looked like little leopards with tons of cool spots in their fur. I looked up what kind of cats they were and saw that they were bengals. When I was looking them up I found out that bengal cats were one of the more hypoallergenic cat breeds due to their fur being more like a pelt, which I didn't even know was a thing. We decided to get one.

I found one on craigslist or ebay classifieds. We went to go check it out and as soon as we saw her we knew we were going to get her. Her owners were a small family with two little girls who said they were being relocated to Hawaii and they couldn't take her along. I went back later that night to pick her up.

We named her Pigwidgeon and we love her to death. Sure, she's destroyed something like 2 couches and 3 chairs by peeing on them over the years, but she's so dang cute she gets away with it:

This year for her birthday Jen wanted another cat. Since the allergies worked out pretty well with Pig it had to be another bengal. This time, though, we wanted a kitten.

I know, I know, you're not supposed to get kittens, let alone a Designer kitten since there are so many cats out there looking for adoption. But, while we love Piggy to death, she's a bit... quirky. Getting a second hand, thrifted cat was great and we were glad to give her a loving home when her original family couldn't any longer, but we wanted to try our hand at raising a kitten. So, here's Churro:

He's ridiculous. I wasn't prepared for how soft he is or his tiny little meows. We're still trying to get through the phase of Pig hissing at him every time she sees him, but she's getting better. So far he's a great little dude.

Doing

All right, so I've been needing a hobby. Since our first kiddo was born 15 years ago my hobby has pretty much just been ... work. Since we moved to Portland in 2011 Jen has had synchronized swimming, and lately she's also been doing a ton of dance workout stuff. As in, every day for hours at a time. Sure, I've been drawing, but I wanted to get out and do something, and sabbatical was a perfect time to find that thing.

Playing Music

I've made a few half-hearted attempts at being in a band again, but that of course depends on other people, and we all know how that goes. A few years ago I found a bass player on craigslist and we clicked pretty well, but for the life of us couldn't write any actual songs. Lots and lots of weird/fun riffs, but no real songs. Our search for a guitar player went on and on and we finally found a guy. We still had trouble putting songs together, though.

And, then, Covid. Playing music in person was of course off the table. I recorded a song remotely with my friend Justin, which was super fun, but it isn't the same. The bass player guy disappeared, and I jammed with the guitar player a couple times after the vaccine, but it didn't go anywhere.

So, back to craigslist. I found a couple guys who wanted to play some metal, and we hit it off. We played together for a few months but the bass player was always traveling and was in another "real" band, and then the guitar player decided to move to San Diego. Welp.

Craigslist. Again.

This time I responded to two ads. One was for a band called Beast Mountain that is a stoner metal type band. Definitely right up my alley. The other was for one called Rival Sharpe that is more of a singer-songwriter type of thing. Not necessarily the metal I was looking for, but something I'd enjoy playing. Beast Mountain got back to me and asked if I wanted to meet up for some beers. When I got there I recognized the guy... from the other band. I wondered if I mixed up the replies or something? Turns out he's the main guy behind both bands. We talked shop and it also turned out he recognized me because he was one of the guitar players who tried out for the bass player guy and I back in the day who was unceremoniously rejected (by the bass player, in my defense). They were also meeting with a potential keyboard player, so we all set out to get together to play soon to see how things go between us. That practice went great and we were in.

The next day the guy texted me saying the drummer they had lined up to try out for the other band before me bailed on meeting up because it was "too hot to load his drums into his car" and asked if I wanted to try out for them too.

Sure, why not.

Played with them and it went great as well. So, now I'm in two bands.

Getting Outside, As Nerdily As Possible

Being in a couple bands is great, but that's pretty much limited to a couple hours of practice two nights a week. And, as mentioned, it relies on a whole bunch of other people to be successful. I needed something else that was entirely in my control that I could do whenever I wanted.

Matt, the bass player in the more mellow band posted a video he made in the group text that was about something called the NW Electric Fest. I figured it was something about music, but it turned out to be about ... electric skateboards. You know those skateboards with one fat tire in the middle you sometimes see people riding around on? Those things.

That sparked some memories I had of some of my friends getting onewheels. I was always intrigued by them because it was like skateboarding, which I spent most of my youth doing every day, except ... nerdy. Basically a skateboard version of a Segway. It also seemed challenging. It got the wheels (wheel?) turning in my head: this could be what I've been looking for.

I texted the band dude a bunch of questions about it and he told me I should just go for the top of the line model if I was going to get one at all, and by the way, they also have a weekly ride every Friday night where up to 200 people riding electric things take over a bunch of Portland streets, like a Critical Mass of dorks. I was in.

The next day I went to Gorge Performance and picked a onewheel GT up. I spent the next day trying to learn how to ride it. Appropriately, I had just dropped the little dude off at skate camp and the closest area that looked good was... the Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery. It took a while but after a few attempts and a bunch of scratches in my brand new board I was able to ride around the paths for a couple hours, unsuccessfully looking for the grave of the original owner of our house.

While I was able to ride, I wasn't sure about going on an 11 mile ride through the streets of Portland with 100 other riders though. I rode as much as possible on wednesday and thursday and decided to give it a try. I showed up to OMSI and parked next to a dude who was there for the ride as well. Turns out he is OG and had like 6000 miles on his boards. He gave me a beer and rode in to the meeting spot. It was an early indication of how friendly the scene was. As we got to the meeting area I started to get a feel for the magnitude of the squad. Tons of people tooling around on nerdy devices. Lots of stereotypical outcast types of folks. Lots of music. I found the guy from my band and he immediately started introducing me to a whole bunch of folks. I'm normally a bit of an introvert when it comes to these types of situations, so it was nice having someone there to break the ice for me.

We set off and I was definitely nervous. These folks had been doing this every Friday for a year or two now, and I was on my third day of riding. Asking how many miles you had on your board was a pretty common question and I was like "... 32". Thankfully, though, I was able to hang. There was a wide variety of paces that folks were going and I was riding along just fine. We went all throughout the waterfront area, crossed some bridges and stopped at a fountain at the end of the first leg:

We continued on to the Lucky Labrador brewery for food and drinks. Matt introduced me to his girlfriend, who he had mentioned was also into a bunch of weirdo metal. We hit it off immediately and talked shop the whole time we were there. By the time we set off for the final leg of the trip it was dark. We rolled out and took over some more streets:

That night pretty much cemented things. A thriving scene, a regular ride, and a bunch of nice people excited to have another person into the sport on top of it being something I can do on my own whenever I want is a perfect combo.

Now that I had the bug, what I really wanted to try was some trail riding. As a skater I was pretty much 100% street, focusing on tricks and technicality. But now, as an Old, I'm much more interested in just getting outside and riding. We've lived in Portland for almost 12 years now and I've just never been really interested in all the outdoorsy stuff. The whole cliché of everyone being obsessed with hiking has totally escaped me.

But, now, though...

Now, I want to go out and explore every park within driving distance with mountain biking trails. I headed out to Hood River yesterday to check out a place with a ton of biking trails for the first time in my life and it was amazing. Beautiful surroundings, a huge variety of trails for varying skill levels, and not a ton of people crowding things. It ruled.

Naturally, the trails were way above my pay grade. But, I managed to make it through the loop a couple times with only one crash and a badly bruised foot that has given me a limp and will likely keep me out of commission for the next couple days. I'm counting the minutes until I can get back out there.