Paraphrasing Book of Genesis 3:17–19:

“…Cursed is the ground for thy sake… Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee… In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Whether I’m pulling weeds, trimming plants, growing things, or building something, these verses stick with me the entire time. Like most difficult tasks, I usually dread starting. But about five or ten minutes in, acceptance sets in—and then something strange happens: I begin to enjoy it. Unlike sitting in front of a screen, I feel like I’m accomplishing something of primal importance. I notice the sky, the clouds, the sunset, the mountains, the birds. My thoughts seem deeper. I feel gratitude and humility. All of this exclusively happens when I’m working hard outside.

At first, I focus on the curse and the sweat. But without fail, I’m reminded of the phrase “for thy sake.”

Many of us work hard when we’re young so life will be “easy” when we’re older—meaning we won’t have to sweat or deal with proverbial thistles anymore. Some of us probably reach that stage. If I weren’t so cheap, I could easily hire landscapers, construction workers, and other laborers to do the sweating for me. In a way, I’m glad I don’t. Then, only they would get the true blessings of the labor. Experience has taught me that hard physical work is for my sake—even though I still dread it almost without fail.

People today spend more than ever on shrinks. Looking at the modern industrialized world, I sometimes wonder whether rising levels of bat-shiz crazy are at least in part due to our ability to avoid hard physical labor. It seems plausible that a life spent entirely removed from the land can leave something essential underdeveloped. I’m not suggesting that physical work would solve every mental health challenge, but I would bet the bank it would solve a whole lot.

We are part of the land, and the land is part of us. When we separate ourselves too far from our origins, the outcomes don’t always seem healthy. Personally, I’ll take thorns and thistles over endless concrete, asphalt, and screens any day.

A few weeks ago, my 12-year-old (McKay) was all signed up for a basketball league with about nine other kids and was set to play—but there was a big problem… no one would step up to be the coach. Increasingly desperate emails had been going out for weeks to all the parents, asking for volunteers. It got to the point that the coaches’ meeting was missed because we were about a week away from starting and still had no coach.

My wife had bugged me about it repeatedly, but I had never played outside of church and playground ball growing up, so I refused to volunteer, saying, “Surely someone else will do it.” After all, when I was young and team captains were picking players, I was usually picked somewhere in the middle—but I was always just glad not to be dead last (because that did happen a few times). Despite my best efforts and a strong desire, I’m not good at basketball—which is even worse when you’re kind of tall. I don’t even know all the little rules. I never played competitively and wasn’t very good… definitely not coach material.

At some point, it became clear that it was me or nobody. I assumed all the kids knew that too, so maybe they’d cut me some slack. I volunteered at the very last second and, by some miracle, my wife talked her brother (Trent) into helping us out too. He had the same reservations as I did because, even though he had played in high school, he had never coached anything.

We were supposed to have access to indoor gyms through an online signup, but the city got my email wrong. To this day, I still haven’t received a gym reservation email from them—even though they were supposed to have corrected it. Because of that, and the fact that we had missed the coaches’ meeting, we held our first practice in Trent’s driveway. I figured it would at least make it easy on him since he was kind enough to help.

I knew I couldn’t teach all the finer points of basketball because I didn’t know them myself, but I could at least teach some obvious fundamentals I’ve noticed throughout my kids’ leagues: fast, accurate passing; staying in front on defense; not being afraid to shoot open shots; aggressive defense; strong rebounding; good sportsmanship; and friendly teamwork.

Because we were practicing outdoors on an unlit driveway in the evening, I bought some construction lights and brought an extension cord… a real ghetto setup. My son was mortified that I would be the coach. When I explained my rudimentary plans, he gave me all sorts of grief, telling me none of it would work and that I should just stand there while they did whatever they wanted. I told him to grab some extra basketballs to bring, and he told me that was stupid. In short, he gave me a hard time over every little thing—to the point that I may or may not have lightly smacked him upside the head after he exhausted my patience on the drive over. He was crying, I was running late, and I wondered why the heck I had ever agreed to this.

Before we got out of the truck, I told McKay that this wasn’t what either of us ideally wanted, but it was happening because I had committed to it. I told him it could be a good experience or a bad one—but it was happening either way—so we should start fresh when we got out and both try our best to succeed. He seemed to think that was a better idea than crying in front of his new teammates, so we got out and put on our best smiley faces.
As the kids showed up, I figured the first thing we’d do was make sure everyone was friends and knew each other’s names. I noticed we definitely had a couple of shorter kids, a couple who had never played before, a really shy kid, a kid who would be out for the season because he had broken his foot the day before, and a kid who couldn’t make practices because of other commitments.
On top of that, as an obviously severely disabled kid walked up to the court, I heard some mumbling among the other kids: “Oh my gosh, that kid’s on our team?” I tried to shut that down immediately by asking his name, patting him on the back, telling him I was glad he could make it, and lining him up like he was just as much a teammate as anyone else. More than anything, I didn’t want things to ever get ugly.

Admittedly, none of this seemed like a great omen.
Trent and I had them do some shooting drills, including free throws and layups. What I witnessed made me think maybe I was qualified after all—meaning these kids could barely make a layup. I quickly transitioned from my ambition of winning at least half our games to, “Let’s just make sure everyone is a good sport, makes friends, and has fun.”

I had ordered pizza for everyone after that first practice. We repeated each other’s names and answered “get-to-know-you” questions to foster a friendly atmosphere. I’ve noticed that just one mean kid can poison an entire team, and I absolutely didn’t want anyone being ostracized or treated poorly. I made it clear that none of that would be tolerated.

Our first game was the very next day. I warned the kids that I was a yeller—I’d be calling out each of their names as encouragement and directing traffic on the court. I was hoping for the best, but after that first practice, I thought to myself: We have a bunch of kids who can barely make a shot and at least one pretty questionable coach. I prayed the game wouldn’t be too embarrassing—like, that we would at least make a single basket.

FIRST GAME NIGHT:
I don’t know how to explain it, but this ragtag team completely transformed on game night. They ALL came out strong. The kid who couldn’t make it to practices turned out to be really good! When we coaches barked instructions, they actually listened.
They weren’t just okay—they got better as the game went on. They made shots, grabbed rebounds, and played aggressive, solid defense. They had learned each other’s names. They had embraced the disabled kid.

And we WON!

Granted, we’re talking about 12- and 13-year-olds playing city league basketball—but it felt really good to be part of that.
We’re heading into our last game next week, and it’s been amazing to see what these kids have done. We’ve only lost one game—and I think it was by just two points if I recall.

The shy kid now calls for the ball and plays aggressively. The kids who aren’t great dribblers set screens, get open, pass well, and play very good defense. The shortest kid—who had never played before—is a great ball handler and shooter and plays extremely aggressively. One of the other shorter kids has gotten hurt several times in games (pretty badly once) but has just played through the pain and been a huge contributor as well. We didn’t realize how bad his ankle was until after the game—and we made sure he knew he doesn’t have to do that! Some of the better kids only seem to have improved and grown in confidence. The disabled kid is actually amazing on defense with a little helpful reminders. Whenever we ask who’s tired and wants to sub out, NO ONE ever volunteers. They’re there to fight hard and play as much as possible.

Everyone has found their place and makes a valuable contribution in their own way. The disabled kid has practically become our mascot—the one we all rally around and try to get a chance to score whenever we can. They root for each other by name—and extra hard for him.

I can honestly say that whether we win or lose our last game, this has been one of the most rewarding little experiences of my life. These kids showed up, listened, were kind to each other, showed great sportsmanship and tried their best. That would all be true whether we won all our games or none of them, but let’s be honest—it feels a lot better to win and I’m glad they get to experience that, because they earned it.

A huge thanks to Trent Snow for being our competent coach—even though he’s a young guy with no kids anywhere near that age, already busy with his young family and working hard to grow a new orthodontic practice, along with all the time-consuming business responsibilities that come with it. There’s no doubt that without Trent and all the kids bringing their A-Game, we wouldn’t have had the success we did. It sure wasn’t me.

If you ever get a chance to coach kind of thrust upon you, don’t wait as long as I did. Just step up and take it even if you’re not qualified. Just like it doesn’t take a great actor to know a bad one, it doesn’t take an expert player to notice obvious issues and help correct them…. and my two cents: Be a (encouraging) yeller. I’ve noticed that when coaches don’t have any enthusiasm, players rarely do either.

Also, make sure you show all your kids various volunteer coaches some appreciation. I have a lot more appreciation for them after doing it. It is a bit of a commitment… not huge, but surely not nothing either.

Finally, if you or your kids need orthodontic work, help a good brother (in-law) out and go to Snow Snow Family Orthodontics —just like McKay does and my younger son surely will as well 🙂

Did you know the name “Sooner” as in the “Oklahoma Sooners” was actually another name for a cheater? 🙂

I was watching basketball the other day and the Oklahoma Sooners came up during a break and it renewed my curiosity about that weird name. In April of 1889, the US government executed the poorly conceived idea of having a “land run”, kind of like getting your seat on a Southwest flight, but with way more people, way more stuff, guns and the promise of FREE LAND and lots of it. Apparently people were supposed to wait at some sort of start line and then literally RUN and pick out land at a designated time. Well, some people snuck across the border “SOONER” than they were legally allowed, claiming the best land before the official start. They hid in the grass or wherever they could overnight and then acted like they had run there from the start line. Of course lawsuits and fights broke out and they used the term “Sooner” as an insult for cheaters. The U.S. government later rethought the process just like Southwest finally has, but I’m sure that anyone who has experienced a land rush or seat rush will remember it forever 🙂 Oklahomans later reclaimed the name, turning Sooner into a symbol of boldness, initiative, and state pride—most famously as the nickname of the University of Oklahoma. So there you go.

Like many in the gilded age, they felt the need to show that wealth in the most visible way possible: enormous homes.

The most famous is the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Built in the 1890s, it is still the largest private home ever constructed in the United States. The house alone is about 179,000 square feet and has 250 rooms. It was originally surrounded by roughly 125,000 acres of land. Biltmore They built many others. The Breakers and Marble House in Newport. Multiple massive mansions on Fifth Avenue in New York City. At one point, ten Vanderbilt mansions stood on that single street. Today, some of them don’t even exist and only one is still owned by the family, but not lived in. Biltmore was opened to the public in 1930 to bring in some money, but it didn’t even turn a profit until 1968. While it now generates a lot of money, its upkeep is extreme and the income is tiny compared to the historic Vanderbilt empire. Furthermore, profits must be split between A LOT of people.

Those palaces weren’t built to produce income. They were built to be a massive show of consumption… and consume, they did.

The Vanderbilt fortune didn’t collapse overnight. It faded. The original fortune was split among many children. Then split again among grandchildren. Then again. Each generation received less, but spent as if the money were unlimited. Maintenance, staff, taxes, parties, renovations. The costs never stopped. At the same time, the family stopped building businesses. The first couple generations focused on creating value. Later generations focused on lifestyle and status. Railroads declined. Taxes rose. The economy changed and the money couldn’t keep up.

By the fourth generation, most of the fortune was gone and by the 1970s, the Vanderbilt name was still famous, but the wealth was simply not there. At a large family reunion in 1973, it was reported that none of the descendants present were millionaires. One of the richest families in history had essentially run out of money. Today, Vanderbilt descendants live normal professional lives. Anderson Cooper, a direct descendant, has said publicly that he inherited little and built his wealth through his career. His mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, created her own success in fashion and art. When she died, her net worth was estimated between 1.5-10 million dollars. That’s a lot of money, but a pittance compared to what could have been if early funds were invested instead of consumed. In fact, if it could have been done, $200 million invested in 1880… just spread among all stocks in the market at the time and rebalanced among new companies as they emerged and then, just in the S&P companies (list started in 1923), a conservative estimate of that wealth today would be 3-6 TRILLION DOLLARS… $3,000,000,000,000! If you put that much in a bank account and only made 1%, that would throw off 30 BILLION per year. If you left it in an S&P500 fund, it would continue to generate $315 BILLION per year. The Biltmore generates some money for descendants, but it is breadcrumbs compared to these figures.

The Vanderbilts show that wealth creation and preservation are different skills. Spending money is much easier than growing it. Big palaces are meant to feel permanent. They’re not. Famous names feel permanent, but they’re often not…unless kept alive as a cautionary tale. Money without structure and discipline doesn’t last. The Vanderbilt fortune didn’t disappear because of bad luck. It disappeared because succeeding generations were not taught the importance of wealth management.

One could take all this in several ways. My take is this: Children should be taught that entitlement is among the worst of vices. Children should be taught to live by the basic (once) common-sense principles of faith, loyalty, gratitude, personal responsibility, hard work, fairness, humility, discipline and integrity. They should be taught to intelligently invest AND give in a sustainable way. If they aren’t going to be taught that or aren’t going to listen, it’s just as well they disburse all their wealth and power back into the greater economy as a whole. One of the worst possible outcomes is for stupid, irresponsible, selfish, lazy, dishonest, entitled people to wield enormous power.

A while ago I picked a woman up at the airport who said she was meeting her husband at the hotel we were going to as he was here in town on business. I asked what he did for work and she said, well, he owns the hotel.,. or more accurately the hospitality holding company which owns that hotel, the one just being finished next door (which he was there to open up) and others in Utah and surrounding states like Colorado, Arizona and Idaho. As usual, we traded the abbreviated life-history and discovered we had kids that were about the same ages and did some of the same things and figured we were about the same age too. She was really nice, down-to-earth and normal looking. Honestly, she looked like she could have gotten her clothes at Costco just like us and it sounds like they enjoy a pretty normal, albeit comfortable life like many people I know. We had similar upbringings and early backgrounds, but one person was going to their 50-70 million dollar double hotel property (educated valuation guess from A.I.) and the other person was driving an Uber 🙂 Life is funny that way.

It strikes me that most of the extremely successful people I’ve encountered usually look really……boring. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Some of them drive unique cars they are interested in or have nice houses or jets, but more often they have pretty average homes and cars, fly coach and they almost never wear designer clothes or fancy jewelry/watches. It seems like that showy stuff is reserved for wannabes or TV/social media grifters trying to sell you something or trying to sell themselves for one reason or another. Really well-off people just don’t seem into the whole flashy lifestyle package.

You really do meet the most interesting people when doing rideshare. Anyone willing to talk at all usually has a good story to tell and 80-90% of people are down to chat. Depending on which way the conversation goes, all sorts of different things come out. The other night I was talking to a guy named Sergio from San Diego that I picked up really late at the airport and he was super-appreciative since there weren’t many drivers out. We had a good conversation about our families, travel, work etc. As often happens with business travelers at the airport, he deduced pretty quick that uber-driving must not be my primary source of income and that we actually had quite a bit in common. It’s amazing how quick you can become friends with a complete stranger when they’re trapped in a car with you for 20-30 minutes 🙂 It sounded like he was pretty high up in Yum! Brands, specifically with “Habit Burger & Grill” and was in town to check up on the local locations. We traded a summarized life history and advice on raising teenagers until we got to his hotel.

Once there, he confirmed how many people were in my family and then gave me a business card with a handwritten note and we shook hands knowing we were unlikely ever to meet again. The card said to present it at the register of any Habit restaurant and they would give us whatever we wanted for 5 people! The Uber fare was already pretty decent, but he also gave a VERY generous tip which isn’t at all uncommon either. Today we used the business card he gave us and the manager asked how I knew Sergio. I told her that I was his Uber driver and the employees looked incredulous as they rang up nearly $80 for the whole family and said they wished THEY were his Uber driver 🙂 It almost always pays to listen to people if they’re in the mood to talk, but sometimes it actually pays too 🙂 I don’t know how high up the food chain he was, but the manager seemed to know. Either way, like so many others, he was a cool dude. Thanks Sergio!

I just drove a guy who is in town from Oregon on a delivery/install job for garage cabinets. I asked him as politely as I could why would anyone hire somebody from Oregon instead of somebody local? He explained that it’s pretty high-end stuff and he goes all over the country. The garage cabinets were $250 grand and the install is $18 grand. That’s wild that somebody would pay more for garage cabinets than some homes cost elsewhere in the country, but once again I don’t have a problem with it. Someone else being able to waste that much money doesn’t hurt me at all and in fact it helps me because I drove the guy that’s getting the contract to do the cabinets who paid for the delivery truck and the freight and all the materials and all the employees and subcontractors and everyone in the supply chain. All those workers involved in producing, marketing and transporting ridiculous garage cabinets mean that many people who I don’t have to pay for their SNAP benefits because they have an actual job that pays well. As far as I’m concerned that’s capitalism for the win again. 👍

I’ve often wondered if having the entire world’s knowledge in my pocket might have some drawbacks. I no longer know more than a couple phone numbers even though when I was younger I committed a bunch to memory. I know hundreds of people, but find myself using technology as a crutch to recall names occasionally. I feel like the knowledge that everything is on my phone has made my already bad memory even worse. I tell myself that because of our interconnected world I probably know more people and have been introduced to more facts than most people in human history and so I probably have my brain packed with more in totality, but in the form of fragments and key words to search instead of entire volumes of information. That excuse does little to make me feel better about a flagging memory, but it’s better than nothing I suppose. If you’ve ever felt the same way, you’re not alone. In fact, long ago, before phones and the internet there were those that surmised that even writing….books/texts themselves could be a net negative for humanity.
According to Plato, Socrates warned that writing is not a friend of human memory. The story goes that the god who invented letters, Theuth, praises writing as a gift, a tool that will boost memory, make people wiser, and help them recall their thoughts. But the king Thamus objects. He predicts that writing will cause forgetfulness, because once people can rely on texts, they stop exercising their internal memory. What Theuth calls an elixir of memory, Thamus calls a reminder.

Beyond memory, Socrates argues that writing is lifeless. A written text is like a painting. It may appear alive, but if you ask it something, it cannot answer. Written words cannot respond or adapt to the reader, and cannot defend themselves if they are misunderstood. Live speech, real conversation, allows for questioning, clarification, and the shaping of ideas. For Socrates, philosophy truly exists only in speech.

Plato expresses the same concerns, yet here is the striking irony: The only reason we know that Socrates believed writing was harmful is because those thoughts were written down by Plato. Without Plato we would likely have no record of the story of Theuth and Thamus, no record of Socrates warnings, and no record of this suspicion that writing could be a net negative. Writing, the very medium they feared might weaken memory and deaden thought, becomes the medium by which their wisdom is passed down. Despite all its potential faults including declining memory, it also grants a kind of survival. I wonder if the danger may not lie in writing itself, but in forgetting to question and to discuss in person along with reading and writing.

Still, I wish I could remember like ancient Greeks apparently did. In the time of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, memory was not a party trick. It was essential to their culture and part of their traditional education or “paideia”. Greek Paideia is the education of the ideal citizen, including intellectual, moral, and physical development, to form a well-rounded citizen through subjects like rhetoric, math, music, poetry, gymnastics, and philosophy. Educated Greeks trained their memories with a discipline not often found in modern times. A young Athenian could not rely on books to store knowledge. He had to store it within himself.

The scale of what they memorized is incredible. The Homeric orations of The Iliad and the Odyssey were just two that Greeks memorized. The Iliad contains about 15,000 lines. The Odyssey is composed of about 12,000 lines. In modern printed form, each poem runs to about 4-5 hundred pages, depending on formatting. In total they amount to around two hundred seventy thousand words in translation and these were not the only works stored in memory. Performers memorized even more. Students memorized long passages of lyric poetry, moral precepts, legal codes, and stories from various traditions. This was not unusual or extraordinary. It was apparently pretty typical. Ordinary citizens also developed powerful memories. A student might spend his youth memorizing hundreds of lines at a time, revisiting them frequently, and embedding them so deeply that their minds served as the libraries of their world.

Compared with this, the modern mind, surrounded by written and digital storage, rarely needs to remember anything of great length. We outsource memory to devices, screens, and books. The Greeks, by contrast, lived in an environment that forged memory through constant use. Their world was built on the assumption that the human mind is capable of holding immense amounts of material if it is trained to do so.

This is how stories as old as Homer reached Plato’s age intact. For centuries, a chain of living memories kept them alive. The poems survived because people memorized and recited them. Although writing later preserved these works in a more permanent way, it is the power of human memory that bridged the long centuries between Homer and the philosophers who would eventually debate the value of writing itself.

In 1906, Francis Galton watched a crowd at a county fair guess the weight of an ox. The average of 800 guesses was 1,197 pounds. The true weight? 1,198 pounds. The crowd beat almost every individual, including the experts. Under the right conditions, large groups of ordinary people can collectively outperform even the smartest individuals. James Surowiecki wrote a popular book about this effect called “The Wisdom of Crowds”.

In typical fashion, people will often be tempted to use these findings to support their own viewpoints. For example, if a large population votes for communism, that must be the wisdom of crowds at work. That’s a false conclusion, though, because according to Surowiecki, there are several crucial ingredients for the wisdom of crowds to be made manifest:

1. Diversity of opinion
2. Independence (people aren’t just copying each other)
3. Decentralization (local, specialized knowledge)
4. A good way to aggregate (usually simple averaging)

Get those right and crowds can estimate many types of things remarkably well. Mess them up—through groupthink, herding, social media echo chambers, or manipulation—and the crowd turns into a dumb, stampeding mob.

Below are some other interesting examples besides the ox:

-Jellybeans in the Jar (many replications)
From university experiments to office contests, averaging hundreds of guesses routinely lands within 2–3% of the true number—far better than the typical single guess (which can be off by 50% or more).

– Prediction Markets
Platforms like PredictIt and Polymarket consistently outperform polls and pundits on elections, Oscar winners, and economic indicators. During the 2016 U.S. election, prediction-market odds tracked the actual outcome far more closely than most expert forecasts.

-The Hollywood Stock Exchange
A play-money market let users “invest” in upcoming movies. Its prices predicted opening-weekend box-office revenue more cheaply and accurately than industry professionals.

-Google’s Internal Prediction Markets
For years Google ran internal markets on everything from launch dates to cafeteria menu popularity. The crowd’s aggregated bets routinely beat official forecasts and expert teams.

-Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
When contestants poll the studio audience, the crowd is right about 91% of the time. “Phone a friend” (supposed expert) is right only about 65% of the time.

The conclusion shouldn’t be that crowds are always wise. It’s that, when properly structured, collective judgment can be astonishingly sharp—often sharper than any single expert sitting alone in a room. The many, under the right rules, really can know more than the one.

Another takeaway is the importance of diversity of opinion. When groupthink or herd mentality becomes too strong due to stifling of divergent opinions, bad predictions are made, bad policy is enacted, and bad outcomes result.

When a child, friend or family member makes certain decisions, the most common reaction I see from parents these days is them affirming and even celebrating whatever decisions the child makes because they want to be compassionate and loving. It seems to me that the numbers are telling us that when society abandons all pre-held standards, does a 180 and celebrates/affirms certain choices of their children it may seem like the “nice” thing to do, but actually has disastrous consequences as it perpetuates the apparent underlying problem.

When my kids were young, they probably would have opted to have a bowl of frosted flakes with Sprite on it for every meal if given the choice. If asked why they would eat something like that, they may tell me they were just born that way…and I would believe them. I would submit that people are ALL born with a proclivity to do various things that are not for our long-term good. Some of us have a harder time with certain things than others and if we live long enough, some of us eventually figure out that excessive levels of sugar, money, power, gambling, liquor, lust, sleep, gaming, food, scrolling or any number of other things are not good for the body or soul. I don’t believe any amount of societal acceptance or celebration will change that fact. Sometimes the best love is tough love: Tell kids the truth. Eating frosted flakes with Sprite is not a great idea. If a child, friend or a family member is an adult, we have to accept that they can make whatever choices they please, but we don’t have to affirm and celebrate every choice to be a true friend….just the opposite. For example, encouraging an alcoholic or drug addict is not loving. I don’t think one need be mean, cruel, judgmental or confrontational, but I do think it’s wise to continue to lead by positive example instead of abandoning correct principles in a misguided attempt to please everyone. You can’t please everyone. Furthermore, if you are appeasing the wrong, you are offending the right. That’s just the nature of some things.

“Going to the Big House”

A family going from nearly 30,000 sqft house, will likely go to an even bigger one….

I came across this again on Realtor.com of all places. I have a couple recurring thoughts when these type of things pop up…and they pop up a lot in Utah especially it seems. Given the number of conversations I’ve had with people who wonder aloud “How does so-and-so afford that?, maybe I’ll do a few showcases from memory. I believe that a lot of people who have an ostentatious life style simply worked hard, earned it and can afford it. Some may be financing that lifestyle by living well beyond their means with no savings and loads of debt. Others may have been lucky or had it handed to them. Others (like those mentioned in this article) appear to simply have cheated and/or stole, and contrary to what you were taught as a kid, cheaters do prosper (financially at least) all the time, but there’s always a tradeoff. They trade their soul for ill-gotten gains and sometimes, they actually go to prison. Until they do get caught, they may look like pillars of the community…..BYU grad, philanthropic, religious, conservative, family businessman is how these guys were likely described up until the day their house was raided by law enforcement.

Regardless of all of that, comparison is the thief of joy. If you can eliminate/reduce comparison from your life you will be WAY ahead in the parts of life that matter, because in my opinion a mansion (and many other things) don’t matter at all and in fact consume your limited time and mental resources which could be spent on building relationships and other things that do matter.

When you inevitably make a comparison because you’re human, just remember that not all that glitters is gold. I’ve met thousands of people… more since I started doing rideshare and I’ve learned that EVERYONE has their problems. A rare few do APPEAR to have that balance of peace, prosperity, great family and relationships and time to enjoy it. It’s not so much that they state it like that, it’s that you can hear it in their voice. People who really seem to have their life together just sound a certain relaxed, contented way. In my experience, that person is usually well over 50 and they nearly always attribute their success to hard work both in their business and relationships and a healthy dose of luck when they were younger. Still, many of those have said they lost everything or nearly did at least once but they were willing and able to put the work in to rebuild and/or reinvent their life.

That being said, there are about eight billion people on earth. I think it’s important to remember just how rare it is for a person to even appear to have “everything” let alone the few that may actually have it for a fleeting period of time. Far more often, people are just trying to survive whether they are students, employed, white collar, blue collar, homeowners, renters, homeless, married, single, rich looking or less rich looking. If all you have reasonably good health, a roof over your head, food to eat, clean water and even a single real friend, you’re as rich as you need to be today. Whether you have that much or not today, it’s likely that you can build on it tomorrow until you do. Truly, having things to work for appears to be a blessing unto itself, Many who were born into riches and/or fame or acquire it suddenly appear to manage it very poorly.

This is not a new observation. Recently I was re-reading Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (written in 1719). In the following passage, Crusoe was talking about what his father had taught him:

” He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day’s experience to know it more sensibly.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but I think Defoe’s observation is accurate. Certainly the “middle station” could be viewed as it’s own trap, but I’d choose it a thousand times over the other two options. 🙂

After plenty of thought and input, we did help Dakota buy his first car. I have to admit I had a strong urge to live vicariously through him and get him the Corvette, Lexus or full size truck he was REALLY pushing for. I even called on a couple, but I never felt at all good about it. After some debate between my wife and I, we did pay for half of his car and let him pay the other half. Even after taxes, registration and all the parts and supplies we put into it I think we’re into it around $2,500 total. It’s what I feel a kids first car should be: slow, old, and cheap to buy and maintain. He won’t be burdened with the massive extra cost of collision/comprehensive or the debt he would owe us for a much more expensive car. He has already paid everything that he owes on it and in a very real way, he now has one of the greatest luxuries one can have in a car and one that 40% of American adults don’t have…. no car payment.

Instead, he opted to invest a fair amount of money in an S&P 500 fund for his retirement instead of wasting it. I know he still wants something better badly so we’ll see if he sticks to the plan, but if he keeps investing this high a percentage of his income, he’ll have millions by the time he’s my age and could retire at the ripe old age of 40-45. That’s true luxury.

Besides all that, buying a car that needed some work had a nice side benefit. For years, McKay and Dakota have fought pretty regularly but I’ve noticed a HUGE and lasting change since we bought the car. McKay loves doing projects and he couldn’t wait to help sand, paint and remove old window tint. He was at least twice as excited about it as Dakota. I kind of like that stuff too, so we all spent many hours on it together. McKay did a lot of sanding and scraping. I installed a hood release where the vice grips were, put a new mirror switch in, installed a new EGR valve and sewed a hole in the drivers seat (which turned out amazingly well if I do say so myself). Dakota did most of the painting but McKay and I helped with that too. I feel like we really bonded over this little project, but especially Dakota and McKay.

Now, at best this is a “if you squint it’s mint” sort of car…and you really, really have to squint from a great distance, but my kids like it and I kind of do too in a nostalgic sort of way. It’s a 98 Honda Civic coupe that Dakota wanted to change from badly oxidized silver to badly painted white. I had a white 95 Acura Integra coupe when I was younger that I took on a cross country trip with my brother and we made many great memories with it and Dakota’s car is basically the same as it was. It even smells the same : ) Old Hondas have a very unique smell to them somehow. I also had a 93 Integra and a 93 Civic and they were all pretty good cars that served me well in my youth and I hope this one serves him well too.

In summary, consider buying a junker and fixing it up with your kids. Maybe they’ll appreciate it more and each other too and it could even help set them up with good habits for the future.

Today’s story is very short. I went to pick up a guy at Lowe’s in a Tesla Model 3 (very small car) and a bozo named Todd wanted me to back up to the garden area so he could put a TREE in the trunk. I laughed and said that there’s no way. I actually thought he was kidding, but he said, “We can make it work, just back up here some. We can leave it hanging out”. As he went back toward the tree, I rolled the window up, cancelled the ride and drove away. At one point, Lowe’s slogan was “Home to Any Possibility”. Well, Todd found the limits of those possibilities today. THE END 🙂

The greatest non-flex is enjoying time with your family. Today I went for a bike ride with my kids and a couple of their friends and we played in the river and tag at the new park on a beautiful Friday afternoon. It was free, and it was the best.

If I had a ridiculously large home, overpriced clothing/watches and fancy cars etc., I don’t think I could possibly have been happier than playing tag with my kids or going for a bike ride with my family.

If I had a giant mansion, I could only enjoy the space that I could reach while extending my arms outward at one time… that’s it. As a general rule, I prefer the splendor of the outdoors to anything people can build anyway. My cheap phone tells the time BETTER than a million dollar watch. A shirt from Costco functions just as well or better than one from Neiman Marcus. When it comes to cars, in my opinion a boring Toyota has some of the best luxury features of any vehicles out there: Reliability, durability, cheap maintenance and great resale value. They let me live my life with minimal worry. While we’re on the subject of luxury, I’ve come to the conclusion that my favorite luxury (besides freedom and time with family) is a hot shower with clean water. Practically everyone in this country enjoys that pinnacle of luxury which is clean, reliable indoor plumbing.

We’re lucky enough to have a really cheap little property in the mountains and it has what I call a “shebin” on it (shed/cabin). It’s only like 10’x12′. The entire shebin and its contents are probably only worth a few thousand bucks, but we enjoy all the important luxuries of our real home even if it’s all extremely cheap and compact. Often I think I like the shebin better than my real house because it has the huge luxuries of peace and quiet, beautiful views and easy access to the lake, mountains and streams. Plus, it’s liberatingly easy to maintain and its small size forces us outside where my boys and I love to be anyway. It’s said that it’s the little things in life that make us happy, but I think it’s the big things too… big as all outdoors. I believe that fishing, shooting, hiking, stargazing and bonfires are things billionaires and rednecks can pretty much enjoy equally if they choose to.

In summary, it really doesn’t take much to have a great day or a great life. Most everyone around here enjoys a standard of living better than kings of just a couple hundred years ago and living is really easy if you don’t worry about “flexing”. Just get outside play tag with your kids once in a while.

Did you know that humans share about 84% of the same DNA as dogs and 98.8% with chimpanzees? Well, according to those who make such pronouncements, it’s true and I’m inclined to believe it. After all, I’ve seen chimps and dogs fight their own over scraps they don’t even really need and I’ve now witnessed a rideshare driver threaten me (a fellow driver) with a gun at the airport (also over scraps). While one may expect this sort of thing in some cities, I never would have expected it in my safe little town.

I’m a night owl and used to watch TV or work on various things on the computer long after the wife and kids were asleep. When I discovered rideshare driving, I quickly realized I could do the same thing with a laptop or the built-in screen in my car while waiting for rides at the airport (as I am doing while writing this very story as a matter of fact). I found the darkest corner away from all the lights so I could avoid glares on my screens and even enjoy the stars and the occasional meteor shower. Pretty quickly I realized that this made some of the other drivers uneasy somehow. One or more of them would roll up on me and just stare at me for a while… sometimes only ten feet away. Sometimes I would just wave at them and eventually they would leave and go back to their normal cluster of drivers. One day, out of sheer curiosity I joined the cluster and got to meet a few of them. Some of these guys have been doing this a loooooooong time and some of them take great pride in their knowledge of the “game”. Apparently some drivers work the airport exclusively and basically live there most of the day and night. I didn’t get the impression that a lot of them had much else going on in their life. This seemed to be their everything and they lived for it. As a plane came In and the time came for ride requests to be expected, one guy actually just chanted over and over “where’s the rides, WHERE’S THE RIDES!” with increasing exasperation as they weren’t forthcoming. I’ve never really witnessed someone with a crack addiction, but I imagine they would sound something like this guy as they were looking for their next score. At the time I didn’t think much of a darker side to this because these guys bragged with great pride that they had 5 star ratings over thousands of rides and even showed me. You don’t get that sort of record without being decently professional on some level.

I am one who tries not to look down on any kind of ethical work. In fact, one of my favorite quotes is the following: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” – Martin Luther King. If you feel called to be an Uber driver and can fulfill your responsibilities and are happy and satisfied, then good on you. That being said, I feel called to do a few other things and like making a little more than I ever could doing rideshare exclusively. To me this is a hobby where I can meet new people and make a few bucks in my spare time and nothing more. I stated as much after some of the other drivers were gleefully sharing with me some of their tips and tricks but told me they would of course hold back their best secrets. My intention in telling them I didn’t take this too serious wasn’t to denigrate their chosen profession. In fact I was trying to let them know that I wasn’t their serious competitor. I could tell they were almost disappointed that I wasn’t fully committed to the cause. Shortly after this interaction, I decided it was probably best to just go back to my normal spot since I didn’t feel like I would probably be well accepted by this group. I would still get the occasional stare-down by a few of the drivers which I hadn’t met that day, but I had gotten pretty used to it.

One night a couple weeks ago, I got a particularly long and aggressive stare-down and I decided to entertain myself by following the guy back to his spot and doing the exact same thing he did to me. Well, he wasn’t amused. Within seconds of me rolling up on him (in a far less aggressive manner than he always did to me) he hopped out of his car with a gun, put it in his waistband and then pulled his shirt up so I could see it. He then fluffed his shirt and waved his hands saying “What’s up homie? Wassup!!” My car was recording the whole thing and to be honest I was trying not to laugh because the whole situation was so comical. I rolled my window down and asked him what WAS up, because I didn’t know. He informed me that shady things go down at the airport with rideshare drivers and that they need to watch out. He asked how long I’ve been driving and I said about a year. He said I needed to watch out and not do anything shady or I would find out what’s up. I was really trying hard to keep a straight face and tried to turn my laughing smile into a friendly smile. I told him that I was just rolling up to see if I could talk to him and see what the situation is. He told me that he and some of the other drivers take it upon themselves to make sure nothing shady is going on. It struck me that carrying a gun and threatening a stranger with it seemed pretty shady, but I digress…. Anyway, I ended up making friends with the guy (I think) and we shook hands and he showed me all his perfect 5 star ratings and driving history on his apps and I showed him my (smaller) history and we parted as something like respected colleagues if not actual friends. As soon as he left I made sure to go back to my footage to replay it and discovered the damn car only saves the last ten minutes after I hit the save button. It was then that I was really ticked off because I really wanted to have that peacock show on video for my own amusement if nothing else. Instead all I have is the last ten minutes of us talking. I learned a couple things: Some people take rideshare driving DEAD serious and it pays to know how your car’s recording system works. I may not have had a gun actually pointed at me and nothing was stolen, but I felt robbed…. by the car’s dashcam.

1. One of the biggest expenses is housing. The government decided everyone was going to own a home and guaranteed mortgages. They now directly or indirectly guarantee about 70% of all mortgages. This did indeed increase home ownership as it allowed for much lower down payment requirements and interest as there was less risk to private mortgage origination entities. When millions of buyers enter the market for a product and the supply can’t always keep up with demand, prices skyrocket. In addition, a myriad of laws and regulations prevent building in a lot of areas of the country and increase the time and expense of building, further decreasing supply while demand increases. I think that if the government didn’t effectively throw money at unqualified homebuyers who weren’t willing to put down a significant amount and instead allowed the market to adjust for true risk by requiring significant down payments and higher interest rates, it would have limited demand and prevented wild price swings and minimized boom/bust cycles in real estate.

2. Another of the largest expenses is health care. At some point, dedication to physical fitness in schools was replaced with a fanatical devotion to self esteem, inclusiveness etc. instead of actual fitness. Pharmaceutical and health insurance companies were allowed to control the government through lobbyists and media is dominated by drug companies and commercials. Health care has been switched from local doctors and cash payments to mega-corporations with armies of lawyers and lobbyists. As with most large entities this causes ever-increasing bloat. It is estimated that 40% of hospital expenses are “administrative”, 10% is fraud and 25% is sheer waste. On top of that, the health insurance industry has likewise been consolidated and suffered similar bloat in the form of administrative costs, fraud and waste. Cash prices for drugs and care are often half the price or less than when insurance is involved. Deductibles are designed to be so high that you never get any benefit out of your insurance and premiums are as high as mortgages used to be. Meanwhile a large percentage of the country gets “free” healthcare from the government which just means all the rest of us have to pay for that. While they use hospitals as free hotels and get better care than many middle class families costs rise exponentially for the rest of us. Once again government intervention and , “free money” or cheap money and perverse incentives creates demand that shouldn’t be there with predictable economic results.

3. Another large expense is transportation. In other countries such as India, you can actually buy a brand new car for $6,000 right now. While emissions standards were good in the US (catalytic converters), the government couldn’t stop there. They require an ever expanding list of expensive, heavy, safety equipment while forcing manufacturers to comply with impossibly difficult efficiency standards which results in sky-high auto prices and extremely heavy cars “for our safety”. It also results in manufacturers creating less reliable motors to try to comply with efficiency standards or to outright cheat on tests to appear to comply. We have a narrower range of motors and models than other countries and get less reliable vehicles which have to be replaced and repaired more often (which actually causes more emissions) because the government mandates it “for our good”.

4. Another large expense is child care. At some point the government and media decided that all households should be dual-income. The government, education system and media diminished the role of motherhood and families and promoted dual-incomes at all costs. This had the short-term effect of adding to the labor force and creating more tax revenue and GDP but created generations of latchkey kids who felt they were valued less than the material items their parents traded for time with them. A large number of them apparently learned that material things were more valuable than family and decided not to form a family or get married at all. If they did partner at all, many decided to become DINK partners (Dual Income No Kids) Those who do have children often pay $2-3K per month for strangers to raise their children. A lot of the “extra” income from the dual income family is absorbed by child care costs, professional clothing, eating out at the office, commute/vehicle costs, and the inflation caused by increased demand for goods and services from all of the above including that caused by the increase from all the second incomes themselves. This shift in values has led to falling birthrates in many developed countries to such a degree that it is considered a national security risk. The US birthrate has been slowing as well and is projected to peak and then fall within several decades. Social Security, medicaid/medicare and the like are basically insolvent now but can be propped up by simply generating more money out of thin air which leads to ever greater inflation of course. Without enough young blood to support an ever-growing aging population, ugly choices will likely be made by a younger generation which, in fairness, was taught not to value human life and relationships over material possessions and convenience.

5. Education is another huge expense. Like housing, the government decided EVERYONE needed an advanced degree and that Americans should all be above blue-collar work. The policy was to give away as much cheap or free money to any kid with zero income or experience who asked as long as it was for “higher education”. Universities soon got wise to this and often made tuition and expenses as high as the government would guarantee. As soon as universities demanded more, the government would allow more debt which resulted in ever-escalating costs that we see today. While the government throws money at a lot of unqualified students and belittles those who don’t attend, it seems to say nothing of the fact that only 62.2% of those students actually graduate despite severely diminished educational standards. There is now $1.74 trillion in student debt for a high number of dropouts and worthless degrees. Meanwhile, a great deal of manufacturing capacity has been outsourced to unfriendly nations who now possess hundreds of millions more willing workers and ever increasing heavy manufacturing and technology production infrastructure. Now many Americans are too good to do “dirty” work. A lack of willing blue-collar workers (which are the true backbone of any society) has actually become a national security threat of such magnitude that there is now a costly national campaign being run just to recruit workers for naval shipyards.

It seems to me that less government intervention in EVERYTHING could help minimize a lot of problems.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help. – Ronald Reagan

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while and it’s going to be long. It will also wax philosophical and even biblical because like it or not, many of our social mores in this country are rooted in the bible. This is in regard to quite a number of conversations I’ve had with people recently but also many in the past.

It is commonly accepted that it is far more virtuous to “give in secret” than to have any credit drawn to you unintentionally or otherwise. I think a lot of the reason for that in our society can be traced back to verses like Matthew 6:1-4 “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

In principle, I agree with most of it but in practice I do not. First, the last part basically implies you will do it for a greater reward later than the one you might receive now. To me, this is still a selfish motivation, especially when it is often likely in nobody’s best interest to “give in secret” as I posit below.

As is so often the case in the Bible, there is a verse in the very same book which could be interpreted to directly conflict with the one above: Matthew 5:15 states “ Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel (basket), but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” I believe most other classic religions have similarly conflicting doctrines/scripture which most cultures have based their moral foundations on when it comes to charity.

Now I ask anyone, which one does experience, common sense and logic dictate will yield the greater good? On the one hand, you may go to great lengths to “give in secret” like some kind of charity ninja in some attempt to get “extra” rewards later by delaying your gratification now. No one sees it. Not even the recipient knows who to thank or who loves them enough to help. You get no credit, but you DO get the satisfaction of knowing God (or the powers that be) is metaphorically patting you on the head all the rest of your days and you have a super-duper reward coming in the afterlife. On the other hand, what if you let your light shine before all? I’m not talking about drawing undue attention necessarily, but simply NOT hiding your good works or even promoting good works in general?

Promotion/advertising/influencing is an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. If it doesn’t work, then millions of companies sure are wasting a lot of money. Clearly it does work. Often marketing budgets are a HUGE percentage of the total cost of bringing a product to market whether it is a movie or widget. This may be looked at as a waste of money by some, but cold, hard statistics have proven time and again that even though it adds no value whatsoever to the product itself, it adds tremendous value in bringing the product to a much broader market and increasing the overall impact many-fold.

Like it or not, it is the same with charities. Drawing attention to charities and charitable acts amplifies the impact tremendously. Humans have a basic desire to do good, but they also have a basic desire to belong, to compete and yes, even to be recognized. Any charity which ignores this fact does so at tremendous cost to its stated mission. There’s not too many wings at Ivy League universities named “the anonymous wing”, and it’s really not that inspiring either. Everyone likes a good, inspiring story. There’s no inspiring story about the anonymous person who did anonymous things to be able to anonymously contribute millions to a cause. Even when an individual is deeply flawed (as we all are), they can still be far more inspirational than the Mr/Ms anonymous. Consider Andrew Carnegie who was one of the richest people the world had ever seen. He is legendary for being a rags-to-riches business tycoon who was ruthless at times, but also is well known for his extreme philanthropy. Then consider a contemporary of his who was known to be extremely ruthless in business and by some accounts the richest man to ever live. John D. Rockefeller was inspired or maybe even guilted or compelled by competition into even greater philanthropy by the massive show of charity by Carnegie. These are just two examples of flawed humans not unlike any of us. One made the choice to make a public display of charity and spent the modern equivalent of many billions of dollars helping others. By one biblical verse, he has his reward now and will surely NOT be entitled to greater rewards later. On the other hand, he let his light shine and motivated a man of even greater means to outdo him in charitable giving. Both men created foundations which were so richly endowed that they exist to this day and will exist in perpetuity under good governance. I believe this same competitive spirit or inspirational example drives the philanthropy of those of means great and small to this very day. Motives may be completely pure or they may be competitive and self-aggrandizing. I would submit the following: 1. It is not our job to judge the motivations of others. 2. It probably doesn’t matter to the recipient of the charity what the motivations are so much as it does that the charity was rendered.

Anyone performing charitable acts in public will fall into at least one of the following two categories
1. They want the credit and glory and wouldn’t contribute without it.
2. They have the intelligence to realize that their good works promoted will inspire others to contribute as well and thereby amplify the impact.
Admittedly, there may be some overlap. Again,we’re all only human.

This same general line of logic can be applied elsewhere in the same realm. Many religions are castigated for their perceived wealth. Why would religions have expensive churches, temples, mosques, synagogues or savings and investments when they could be using all that money right now to feed the poor? Well, again, we’re dealing with flawed humans. Perhaps in a perfect world we would all live as equals in a communal environment which would only be as nice as could be afforded for ALL. Maybe everything would be utilitarian and purely functional. No time or resources would be “wasted” on things with no intrinsic, functional value. Maybe there would be no art, decoration, entertainment or luxury so long as even one person would be left wanting for anything. Of course, human nature being what it is at our current state of emotional evolution, this would never work. We are naturally competitive and desirous of elevation and luxury. There have been religions and even governments based on communal living and they have all failed spectacularly because they fail to account for basic, primal human nature.

I believe in a pragmatic God. I believe those truly striving to follow God must also be pragmatic. Humans aren’t ready for communal living and may never be. For the greatest good to be done, people in general at their present state of development, just like children, need to be indulged a lot in order to extract the greatest good from them. People want to meet together. They need a building to meet in. Naturally they will want the buildings to be comfortable and if possible, things of beauty. God doesn’t need this. It doesn’t really directly help those in need, but I do believe it is in these unnecessarily nice buildings that people come together to inspire each other to do the work that really does need to be done. It is there that funds are generated and righteous labors are planned. In regard to those charitable funds generated and saved, this only makes sense. Just like in philanthropic foundations with perpetual endowments, there must first be a critical mass of funds generated and saved in order for an endowment to be perpetual. That is just basic economics. Without a wisely invested principal there can be no interest and without interest the funds will eventually be completely depleted and will require constant replenishment especially at the times of tragedy when funds are most needed yet least available.

All of this is to say, please consider less your “greater reward” or any overhead/transaction costs and more your greatest impact. Also, considering only the greatest efficiency on paper without factoring in human nature will lead to diminished returns and can even to lead to bad judgments and feelings about people and institutions which really are having a huge, positive impact in the world.

I say let your inspirational light shine 🌟✨

Over the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of people make big announcements about massive life changes and I’ve heard about others even very recently. I thought I’d make my own announcement: It is not with a heavy heart that I take a moment to let everyone know about some huge changes that I’ve decided not to make in my life. I’m sticking with my faith. I’m still a straight male and remain unconfused about it. While I’m as attracted to all the beautiful women as I’ve ever been, I’m sticking with my wife and kids. My plan is the same as it always was: To try and live a life of commitment to family, friends and faith.

I don’t believe in, agree with or understand every single thing my church, country, wife, parents, kids, siblings, friends or other family members have done but I’m sure I’m better off with all of them than without. While some people quit a commitment over something in the past, others quit over some one(s) in the present. It’s true that there’s some turds in every organization and sometimes they even float to the top. Sometimes, YOU are a turd in the organization and can only hope that people can patiently give you some grace while you work through it as you try to do for them. It’s said that a turd can’t be polished, but like people, they can be transformed given enough time. If you don’t know what coprolite is, check it out. Some of that is worth a ton of money!😂

I know a lot of people (probably most that I know) live their lives out in quiet commitment to the important people and principles in their life with little dramatic changes. There’s no parades for them. There’s no hundreds of comments telling them they’re brave, special or amazing. They don’t seek much attention and they don’t get it. Often all they may have is a few strong friendships, family bonds and the silent respect and admiration that they’ve earned from years of dependable service to those in their sphere.

To those making those huge life changes, good luck with that. I took a little different path for a while too when I was much younger. It wasn’t for me, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work for others I guess. I truly wish you the best and I hope we can still be friends. To all those stable, boring, predictable, basic older folks that have built a great life brick by brick, I hope to follow in your footsteps. To all those still slogging away at it, I hope to keep on keeping on alongside you. An undramatic life may not be the most exciting, but it can be pretty darn good.

Why do cruises (and other things) look so much more expensive than they did just a month or two ago?

Well, contrary to popular belief, good ideas actually do come out of California once in a while. On July 1 2024, California’s “Honest Pricing Law” went into effect. It makes it illegal for most businesses to advertise something that doesn’t include all required fees or charges.

Because California is such a large market, most companies just change to suit their largest consumer block and that is what has happened for the cruise industry and others on many occasions including this one. Cruises didn’t suddenly become twice as expensive, they simply were forced to advertise a lot of the fees they used to spring on you later in the purchase process.

Personally, I would LOVE to see a national law that goes even further. I think ALL prices nationwide should include everything right down to the local tax with a simple disclaimer that your sales tax rate could vary based on you tax-exempt status or place of residence, but for everyone else, that would be the 100% all-inclusive price with no hidden fees.

Why?

Maybe I just wanted to have an old-fashioned mortgage burning party. That used to be a thing (like when “All in the Family” was still on TV), and it seemed like a good thing.

If money isn’t the root of evil, debt might be. It is the opposite of freedom and seems to be the cause of much “unpleasantness” in life. Still, our rate was only 4% on a $217,000 balance when we decided to really start paying it off. Most financial experts don’t recommend paying off a mortgage with a rate that low. Some of their reasons are listed below along with some counterpoints:

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #1: Sound investments will pay more than the mortgage rate, so don’t give up the potential gains just to make an emotional decision.

Counterpoints:

a. I’m not “lucky”. I have an uncanny ability to lose an even-odds bet five times in a row. I was never going to risk an entire $217,000 anywhere, so that was a moot point. I was only willing to risk what I felt we could afford to lose. Anything beyond that amount was being kept in absolutely secure, FDIC insured accounts paying only 1% on average.

b. I have a low degree of confidence in corporate America where “sound investments” are made. I’ve witnessed many “large and trusted” corporations fail completely. I even worked for one of them for about eight years. At one time my old company ranked 122 on the Fortune 500 and employed tens of thousands of people. It doesn’t even exist anymore. If you want to know why, just look up “Countrywide Home Loans” or “Countrywide Financial Corporation”. Many blame the whole financial collapse on them. The “Enrons” of the corporate world are often highly respected right up until they collapse completely.

c. Numbers don’t lie, but they sure are misleading. Look at a closing disclosure for any mortgage. Our rate of 4% on $217,000 showed $155,957 being paid in interest. That’s actually 72% interest, but the math works out when amortized over 30 years. That sounds a WHOLE lot worse than 4%. To be fair, putting $217,000 to work in stocks or bonds paying 5% or more would return much more than that already large figure… if all went well.

d. Remember that $155,957 figure? Well, it was always going to be much more than that. How can that be? Well, that figure only applies if we actually keep our home and same mortgage for thirty years without refinancing. You see, the earlier part of any loan is loaded with interest. My first payment of $1,035.99 had $723.33 going to interest and only $312.66 actually paying the home off. 70% of my payment was going to interest. Again, the math all makes sense over 30 years. The problem is that practically NO ONE stays in the same home for 30 years without refinancing. People often refinance every few years and reset the clock with another 30 year mortgage. Sometimes they even add closing costs on and increase the principal.

e. Investments don’t even guarantee the principal let alone their current rates of return, but paying off my mortgage was practically guaranteeing a place to live PLUS $155,957 in saved interest.

f. During the last major crash, even a lot of “safe” investments lost 28-30% or more of their value and millions lost their homes as well. Investments don’t pay more just because they’re being charitable. They promise a higher return in direct correlation to perceived risk. Just as on a roulette table, the riskier the bet the greater the risk premium. One might argue that a person is a fool for not betting on a single number and making 35-1 instead of “ONLY” doubling your money on an outside bet. If you’re lucky and know when to leave the table, riskier bets are great, if not, hopefully you learn not to rely on luck.

S&P500 – “Safest Investments”:

g. If you can pay your mortgage off but choose not to, you’re essentially paying interest on borrowed money for speculation. If you already owned your home outright, no reputable investment adviser in the world would suggest mortgaging that home to play the market, but this is essentially what is happening when you voluntarily retain a mortgage to invest. Risking both home and savings for the difference between 4% and 6% (or more on really risky investments) just doesn’t make sense to me long term.

h. Investment/financial planners and the like are inherently biased. They don’t make money when you pay off your mortgage. They make money when they manage your investments with money freed up by a mortgage. Take what they say with a grain of salt.

i. Emotions are naturally underrated by financial experts because they can’t be quantified. The feelings of independence, self-control, freedom, peace, security and accomplishment don’t have a line on any balance sheet. The same is true of vacations, friends, family or relationships of any kind. The value of these intangibles may be nothing on a balance sheet, but everything to a human being.

j. Finally, how many people are really going to leave a huge pile of money alone invested somewhere? If it’s there and accessible, a “need” will surely arise to absorb some or all of it.

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #2: Don’t lose your mortgage tax deduction!

Counterpoints:

a. It’s simply not worth much even under the best of circumstances. Unless you itemize and have enough deductions to overcome the standard deduction, there will be no benefit at all. Statistically, about half of American homeowners with a mortgage derive no benefit from the deduction whatsoever.

b. Even those who benefit from the mortgage interest deduction are still losing… big time. If I’m in the 33% tax bracket and pay $10,000 in mortgage interest, I’m NOT able to deduct $10,000 off my taxes. I simply don’t pay the 33% tax on that $10,000. Assuming we’ve already maxed out the standard $12,600 deduction through itemizing we might save $3,300 in taxes but we’d have burned an extra $6,700 in interest to “save” that $3,300. I think I’d rather just give $10,000 to the charity of my choice and “save” the $3,300 that way.

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #3: You should pay off higher rate debt like credit cards, student loans and auto loans first.

Counterpoints: NONE

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #4: You should fully fund your retirement before worrying about paying off your mortgage

Counterpoint: This only makes sense if you have a tolerance for risk and are fairly certain to average more on your retirement than you’re paying in mortgage interest. Of course, it also helps if you don’t happen to retire during a market downturn.

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #5: You shouldn’t pay off your mortgage unless you have savings for a rainy day

Counterpoints: NONE. Six months to a year of accessible savings are recommended by most advisers and that makes perfect sense to me.

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #6: You shouldn’t pay off your mortgage unless you’ve maxed out your employers 401K match.

Counterpoints: NONE. If your employer is matching your retirement 1-1, 50% or anything over your mortgage rate, it wouldn’t be smart to throw away GUARANTEED extra money.

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #7: Don’t pay off your mortgage if you won’t have lots of liquid funds left over for an amazing opportunity or to help yourself or someone in need with an emergency.

Counterpoint: This one was a valid concern for us. It was overcome by simply opening a home equity line of credit. If we find that we need a large amount of money for some unforeseen reason, the line is instantly available. The difference is that we aren’t paying any interest on it until AFTER we actually need it (if we ever do) and then only to the exact amount deemed necessary. Also we would have a smaller payment that will match the amount borrowed instead of the same large fixed payment no matter what the balance remaining was.

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #8: If you’re going to inherit later in life anyway, don’t bother paying off your mortgage.

Counterpoint: First off, waiting for an inheritance always rubbed me the wrong way. You’re basically waiting for someone to die. I love the idea of an unearned windfall as much as the next guy, but banking on an inheritance seems both morbid and risky. Promised or implied inheritances don’t always come through. If you have your eye on Aunt Mildred’s millions, you can be assured someone else does too… for example, your new uncle Joe and his kids. Yeah, that happens a lot. Like, if I had a dollar for every time that happened I’d have been able to pay off my mortgage a long time ago. Even if someone doesn’t swoop in and steal “your” inheritance, sometimes people just change their will, end up using more than expected or take a look at you and decide they’d rather give it to charity.

STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #9: Putting your “eggs” in one basket by paying off your home exposes you to unnecessary risk if you lose your home in a disaster.

Counterpoint: As stated above, ALL your eggs shouldn’t be in one basket. You should have other savings and retirement. As to risk, your home should remain insured. Certainly you can still lose your home to some uninsured disaster. If your plan is to destroy your credit and walk away from your loan obligation at the first sign of trouble then this is a valid point, otherwise, as with any asset, it’s probably better to own than to lease or finance.

NON STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #1: Don’t pay off your mortgage because you won’t be able to have any kind of a life.

Counterpoint: Sacrifices must be made to accomplish anything worthwhile, but you shouldn’t be miserable. I felt like we still managed to have a good time while paying our mortgage off early. Vacations and entertainment can be scaled back but if elimination of all entertainment and working around the clock is required, I would just assume keep the mortgage longer and have some kind of a life. This is basically what we chose. I’m sure we could have paid of the mortgage long ago if more drastic cuts were made earlier.

NON STANDARD FINANCIAL ADVICE #1: Don’t pay off your mortgage if it means you won’t give anything to charity.

Counterpoint: NONE. This is very counter intuitive, but for us the more freely we gave to others the quicker we were able to pay off our mortgage. It was miraculous how quickly it happened actually. Life isn’t perfect and results may vary but I believe we are lifted up in many ways as we contribute to charity generously. Some may call it karma, luck, or coincidence, but I wouldn’t call it any of those. I believe that when you learn to give for the right reasons you receive exactly what you need…which may or may not be anything monetary. There are many ways to give back. In addition to my church, I donate to or am involved with the following organizations and would recommend them:

Special Operations Warrior Foundation – Education fund for surviving children of those heroes lost in the line of duty

Semper Fi Fund – Immediate financial assistance and lifetime support to post 9/11 wounded members of the military

Concerns of Police Survivors – Fund for surviving family members of fallen police officers

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America – Mentoring program for children in need in which you can actively participate, not just write a check.

We will never be out of “debt” to those who have sacrificed so much for us, but giving often of your extra time and resources will help you feel better than just about anything else. Find an efficient charity of you choice at the following link: https://www.charitynavigator.org/

Final Thoughts

According to reports, (as of writing) 29.3% of homes nationwide are owned outright so it is hardly uncommon, but it seems to be a big secret. Of the hundreds of people I know, I’m aware of less than a dozen who own their homes outright. Clearly there must be many more. Once upon a time it was considered a worthy goal to eliminate debt and to celebrate it. Now it appears to be considered gauche or even stupid. I think that’s a shame. Ostentatious wealth in the form of expensive toys, vehicles, homes and vacations are clearly socially acceptable, so why not the old-fashioned mortgage burning party? When I was younger I concluded that EVERYONE was in debt because I couldn’t conceive of paying cash for something as expensive as a car, boat or home. For a long time, this served as justification for my own significant debt. It wasn’t until I became aware of real people that I knew who did in fact escape debt entirely that it became a goal. It’s nice that through personalities like Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman and others, it is becoming more socially acceptable to celebrate a debt free life. I think our government is in enormous and unsustainable debt and according to reports, much of the population is too. It seems unlikely that a badly indebted population will demand change from their government. As Gandhi said “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”. I would love to hear about more people escaping or avoiding debt completely. I would hope it can lead to change on a national level. Just last year, interest alone on the national debt was 433 BILLION dollars. (https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm) It is one of the largest budget items! I can think of much better uses for that money… like returning it to the taxpayers who earned it and freeing our children from the shackles of crushing, freedom-sapping debt.

Have you paid off all your debt? Would you have done anything differently? Any other points to make? Please comment below:

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/671-Lincoln-Ave_Winnetka_IL_60093_M88320-53321?fbclid=IwY2xjawEv5BFleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHXQ6sOV5ZHnVcVf4jBnkoOWylcvLcxwwdHBPZc2NlulTAIKV7aUhy4DLDA_aem_suj318Dt2qypoH9w4PMmAw

On a somewhat related note, over the years I’ve had a lot of people ask about the process of putting in a pool and I’ve long wanted to do a thorough write-up on it so here it is: We put our pool in as an “owner-builder”. That means I was extremely cheap and pulled the permit, did the design, cobbled together the subcontractors myself, did a lot of work myself and bought all the equipment piece by piece and managed everything personally. In short, it was still extremely expensive and it was a MASSIVE nightmare that dragged on for nearly a year with a three month stall in the middle and many misadventures.

Longer version: We had MANY different contractors involved which I worked alongside in many cases. Many were very good and professional. One, I’m pretty sure was high as a kite most days. I preferred him on those days because he really got stuff done fast. Other days he dragged butt like you wouldn’t believe. It was a strange situation. Several contractors did shoddy work which I had to tear out myself, load in my trailer over several trips and hauled to the dump where I had to pay just to get rid of it (concrete) and then start over. Several contractors took the deposit and didn’t finish. If they got a more lucrative job than mine they just bailed out and were never seen again. Sometimes this benefitted us because they were almost done and didn’t collect the last half of the payment. Other times they left well before they were half-way done with the 50% deposit. Mostly, it was just a giant pain in the butt when contractors didn’t deliver even though financially it actually evened out.

Building a pool is easily in the top five worst experiences of my life. Yes, first world problems, but when your backyard is destroyed for nearly a year and you have young kids who want to play outside but can’t because of the dirty death pit and you’re spending money by the thousands and have only a disaster area to show for it and no end in sight, it’s a little traumatic when you’re in the middle of it. Originally we were hoping it would take about three months to complete the pool building process, and truth be told, if we were willing to pay a lot more to a professional pool builder, maybe it would have. Then again, maybe we would have put down a massive deposit for the whole project and gotten stiffed and then ended up chasing them down in court. We had heard multiple stories online of those who had ended up in that situation locally and it was truly frightening to trust a company with tens of thousands of dollars up-front. In the end I felt better about the lower cost and the fact that I was risking much less money at a time. There are many things which can make the process drag on. A lot of the steps are weather and/or sequence dependent, meaning that if one step isn’t done, it will hold everything up or if it rains hard it destroys work that was already done without special care and expertise. Likewise, extremely hot weather can be bad for concrete curing, particularly if it is stained a dark color. Obviously we wanted to enjoy our new pool during the summer, but the summer came and went and all we had in place of our once nice, grassy yard was a gigantic, sad, expensive mess.

INITIAL COST AND TIMELINE:

Beyond the mess and hassle, there is the price. It should be noted that when pool builders quote a price, it is always way lower than the “real” price. The price for a pool at the 35-65K quotes we were getting would usually only get you a pool. Now, I can hear you saying “of course it only covers a pool, what did you expect”. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that, but trust me, you don’t just want a pool. No one does. You want a lot more than that and probably just don’t realize it. Those pool quotes usually included limited or no deck, the most basic, ugly coping (edge), no landscaping, no heater, one pump (we have three), no hot tub, no lighting or basic lighting, basic white plaster, no modifications etc. You get a hole in the ground with water in it surrounded by dirt for the most basic quote. When you get what you actually envision, namely a whole backyard package which looks good, the price basically doubles or even triples with added features and stuff you’re going to want or need to do while everything is torn up anyway. When you look at an average pool there are so very many things that you never considered that are part of that package.
We started our pool in December of 2018 and I’ve detailed the prices of most of the things involved although I’m sure many hundreds or even thousands of dollars probably weren’t accounted for. There was lot going on and many things were paid for with cash on the spot. Spoiler alert: It was about 90K. Now, that was about six years ago (at time of writing on 7/12/24). I think we all know what prices have done since then. I expect that it would be at least 30-40% more expensive to do everything exactly the way I did… so at least 115-125K. Again, that includes a whole lot of things besides JUST the pool, but no one just throws a pool in the middle of dirt and calls it good. If you don’t mix hardscapes, do the cheapest coping, do a sea of plain concrete instead of cutouts for landscaping etc, you can save a lot of money, but even plain grey concrete everywhere isn’t free.

VALUE:

The first thing to consider when putting in a pool is the big question: How much do you (as parents who are paying for all this) really love swimming? If the answer isn’t a TON, you’re probably wasting a TON of money and accepting that it’s just a horribly expensive status symbol which requires a ton of maintenance and could actually turn off a lot of home buyers when you go to sell. I would say that if you aren’t willing to make the effort to go to a public pool (or some other pool or body of water) 2-3 times or more per week during the summer, then I would argue that you don’t love swimming enough to bother owning one. If you LOVE swimming and you love getting in with your kids and you have a lot of extra money, a pool could be a good investment in your quality of life. In no way is it a good financial investment in my opinion. Pools are like other things you may be familiar with. For example, when we first got a trampoline, the kids played with it every day. As the days and weeks went on, they played with it less and less and finally, only when we as parents would jump on it with them or when friends would come. A pool is pretty much the same way. It is a lot of fun at first and then only when others enjoy it with you or your kids. The big difference is a trampoline is just a little bit less expensive and can be discarded easily when people tire of it. The first couple years of pool ownership were exceptionally good. A lot of people in the neighborhood would come over. We had a ton of parties. Every kids’ birthday party was a pool party and they loved it. Then one year, I proposed another pool party for a kids birthday and we got pushback. Our oldest son said swimming just “wasn’t special” anymore. He wanted to do something else. It hurt to hear, but he was right. We went swimming every day with his friends and it wasn’t special anymore. It used to be great, exciting fun to go to a nice hotel pool or a vacation home with a pool. In fact, the pool is all we cared about. After owning a pool for a while, going to our pool (or any pool) without friends is about as exciting as a plain baked potato. In that way, pool ownership is somewhat of a metaphor for life. The first kiss is far more exciting than than the 100th kiss. Driving the dream car the first time is a little different than driving it the 100th time. There is a saying that “Familiarity breeds contempt.” I’m not sure that’s always true, but it usually seems to breed boredom or indifference at the very least. Another unintended consequence of having a pool is that all your neighbors come over and see how great it is on the surface at least and instead of continuing to come over and enjoy it with you, a lot of them will simply build their own pools or buy other houses that have them already installed. We had a couple pools in our neighborhood before us and for whatever reason, we weren’t invited often (or at all) to those pools which is totally fine. People are different and I don’t fault anyone for building a private pool and using it privately. However, as my pride diminishes by the year, I can honestly say that if we were regularly invited to someone else’s pool or otherwise had easy access to one, I certainly wouldn’t have bothered to build my own. Shortly after we built our pool, it seemed the level of pool-building only accelerated to the point that it now feels like a LOT of our neighbors all have their own pool just a few years later. Despite all the good memories and fun times we have had and continue to have, If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t build a pool for this one reason: After we built our pool, my in-laws and an aunt ended up each getting their own pools close-by in town that I’m sure we could use whenever we want if we didn’t already have one. I would totally have preferred driving to their house over all the expense of putting one in myself and constantly maintaining it. Is it a ton of fun to have a pool? Yes. Is it really worth the expense and ongoing hassle? Probably not considering all the alternatives for that kind of money and particularly if you have unfettered access to other pools close by. Of course, I would have needed a functioning crystal ball to know all that. I guess that could be the bottom line, but why stop there?
About five years on I think we use our pool more than most and we probably average a few days a week for a couple hours a day in May as it’s warming up. We probably use it 3-5 days a week in June and nearly every day in July and August before tapering down in September and then basically closing it sometime in October. So we’re talking two heavy use months and three light use months. Also, when I say “we” I mean the kids and I. My wife only actually gets into the pool or the hot tub once or twice per year, and yet she claims she would build a pool again. I don’t get it, but that’s the way it is. The rest of the colder months, we maybe use the hot tub once a week or so and it will take about 40 minutes to heat up to 98 degrees or so from 40ish degrees each time I use it. That amount of gas would probably cost about five to ten bucks a pop. That may be considered decent usage, but it still amounts to using it only a fraction of a percent of the available time per year. If you did the math and divided total expenses by the time used, your per-hour cost to swim would be so awful I truly don’t even want to calculate it. It isn’t an endeavor for the financial faint of heart or those lacking commitment.

ONGOING EXPENSES AND CHOICES THAT AFFECT THEM:

Speaking of expenses, remember when I listed the rather large initial expense? That was just the start. Pools require a significant amount of maintenance. Also, it is incredibly expensive to heat a pool. We calculated that if we heated our pool to 85ish where we like it, in the winter months it would easily cost $1,000 per month or more. Some of that cost is mitigated by using an ugly cover of some sort, but it still would be expensive… and covers are expensive. We have gone through three bubble-wrap type covers at nearly $200 a pop. They just disintegrate over time. They do give you about 5-7 degrees of “free” heat in the shoulder seasons and help retain that heat through the night though which makes them a good value. The shape of your pool determines what cover options you have though.

On the subject of shape, we went with a free-form pool (not square or rectangle) because I wanted a lagoon look instead of a boring (in my opinion) rectangle. Rectangles have a lot of advantages though. They are easier to build. They provide a lot more usable area for people for a similar amount of money and they accommodate an automatic cover, which at the time we were looking into it cost between $7-12K alone depending on options/size etc. A lot of the pool builders we talked to said they absolutely hate them, hate to build them in and don’t have them on their own personal pools. They said they quote outlandish prices to dissuade customers and to try to eliminate the inevitable call-backs to fix the complicated mechanisms. Pool covers are great for security…mostly. Kids can walk on them and they can prevent drownings. They keep the pool VERY much warmer in the cold seasons and they keep crap from blowing directly into the pool. They theoretically eliminate the need for pool fencing as well, but that’s not really always true (more on that later). However, pool covers are prone to failure according to the builders we talked to. They can jam up in the tracks if they aren’t cared for or are abused by stupid kids. Kids can screw around and actually trap other kids under them by closing it while they’re in there. They can apparently have crap and water collect on top of them when it rains. Then, when the cover is rolled back, all the garbage on the cover goes into the cover enclosure at the end which usually has a pump to pump that nasty water out. That pump can clog up and need replacing too. A cover should ideally have the junk cleaned off of it before being rolled back. When it does rain, you usually need to throw yet another ugly pump and line on top of the cover in the very middle to pump the water off of it because it can actually overflow and cause problems related to that. Additionally, the same thing that helps you in the colder months hurts you in the summer. A covered pool can easily get in excess of 95 degrees if the cover is left on too long and has an extreme exposure in a hot climate. That’s not what you want on a 110 degree day. This can be mitigated with a pool chiller. I’m sure there are different varieties, but one that I saw actually looked like a little nuclear cooling tower. BEAUTIFUL! It also looked like it cost a fortune. Another way to mitigate a boiling pool with an automatic cover is to (drumroll)……. LEAVE THE COVER OFF all day and night to let it cool. There goes all your security during the months you need it the most! Finally, covers need to be replaced more often than anyone would like, and as stated above, they aren’t cheap. Builders were saying we would be lucky to get 5-7 years out of them if we used one frequently. Maybe they were just trying to scare us, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t want a rectangle pool anyway. I could probably go on about automatic covers, but these are a few of the reasons we opted NOT to get one. Beyond covers, other wear items are practically everything. Heaters cost about $5,000 plus installation. We were told to expect to replace them every 5-8 years or so. With or without a cover, the pool will have to be manually scrubbed and skimmed occasionally as stuff will inevitably cling to certain areas of the pool walls and steps. Ideally you will probably want to do this every couple days or so and it takes about 5-15 minutes depending on how dirty it is.

Speaking of sanitation, if you opt for a saltwater pool (highly recommended) you will have to buy an expensive little item called a salt cell/chlorinator. These aren’t very big, but they cost about $1,300 these days and wear out really fast for how expensive they are. They typically only last a few years and need regular maintenance. They have to be removed and cleaned with acid and maybe a little chisel at least a few times a year in my experience. You will want to remove them entirely and replace them with a custom pipe in the off season when it’s cold and they cease to function. While saltwater pools may make you think of the ocean, the truth is that a salt water pool is not even close to the salinity of the ocean. The ocean has about 35,000 parts per million of salt and a pool will have about 3,200 ppm. The chlorinator will control how much chlorine is generated by using electrolysis to split salt (sodium chloride) into its components with the goal of extracting chlorine from it. The result VS a pool with a bunch of chlorine tablets in it is that the chlorine is added only when the chlorinator is running which you can tune to be basically the exact right amount. With tablets, the tablets are all present, all the time. In my experience, this results in a HIGHLY chlorinated pool at all times. This can burn your eyes badly, fade your swimwear, irritate your skin and bleach your hair. In short, it is very, very harsh. I can barely open my eyes in a traditionally chlorinated pool whereas I can open my eyes in my pool for as long as I dare without any consequence. A salt water pool is very much more gentle on practically everything but your wallet. Occasionally you will have to supplement a salt water pool with a tablet here and there or a bag of “shock” after extremely heavy usage but it is very rare. We almost never use tablets during the regular season but when the water gets very cold, we have to use them as the chlorinator only works above about 60 degrees F. While a chlorinator is expensive, chlorine tablets d stabilizer is also very expensive, so it may not really save all that much to opt for a straight chlorine system.

Another critical part of any pool is the filtration system. Two systems I’m aware of are sand filters and cartridge filters. Sand filters usually look like a big oval container and they are filled with, you guessed it…. sand. They apparently do an OK job of filtering and require a regular backflow of water through them to blow all the nasties out of the sand and into your street which wastes a considerable amount of water on a pretty regular schedule. The filtration isn’t as good and they waste a lot of water, but they’re probably cheaper than the cartridge filter to operate. We opted for a cartridge filter because we wanted the cleanest, clearest water possible and didn’t want to waste any extra water in a desert environment which we live in. Filtration systems come in many different sizes and the bigger they are, the more expensive and effective they are and the greater the interval between cleanings. We went with a pretty good sized filter for our smallish sized pool and it consists of four large tubular filters contained in a rather large cylindrical enclosure held together with a metal band. Depending on how much junk and dust blows into the pool, the filters can use a cleaning pretty often. I’ve found that they could use a cleaning every 3 months for optimal water flow in our area. Water flow is particularly important when you have a raised spa which circulates water through the spa to the pool through a spillway waterfall. If the flow isn’t right, the water won’t “sheet” over the spillway and instead will dribble over and look and sound ugly while causing excess calcium buildup on your stone or tile work. Some people may choose to extend time between filter cleanings or replacements, but that requires the pump to work harder and may lead to a dirtier pool and a more expensive electric bill. Cleaning the filters takes about an hour or so and requires turning off the pool pumps, disassembling the filter enclosure and pulling all the large, heavy waterlogged filters out and hosing them off. I learned NOT to use a pressure washer pretty quick as it destroys the filters and they aren’t cheap. After I destroyed our first set in the first two years, I was a lot more gentle with the rest and they are still lasting over three years later. A new off-brand set cost several hundred dollars and eventually we’ll need more of course. Pumps should last many, many years as long as there isn’t a mishap. Unfortunately, mishaps aren’t hard to have. In any pool there are often 2-3 ports from which water is pumped from the pool through the filtration system. The first is the “main drain” which are the two drain looking things at the lowest point of the deep end. These are usually not real “drains” they are just a point at which water is plumbed to the pumps and filtration system. Another spot is the skimmer. This is the little rectangle tunnel at the waterline which has a basket in it and collects debris from the surface. Under the skimmer basket is a pipe which also leads to the pump and filtration system. The skimmer basket is the first line of defense for larger garbage. Any debris which makes it past that basket or down the main drain will be caught in the basket of the pump itself which has to be taken apart periodically and emptied. Sometimes the skimmer port is used for a vacuum as well. The basket can be removed and a vacuum tube placed into the plumbing at the bottom so that suction is created at the other end of the tube/vacuum head. A lot of pools will also have a dedicated vacuum port in the side of the pool somewhere. This port will usually have a little door which springs closed when no vacuum hose is present. Anytime that the pool is not in use, the vacuum will usually be plugged in and actively cleaning the walls and floor of the pool. There are many types of vacuums but one thing they all have in common is they are way, way more expensive than they look like they should be. A decent “cheap” vacuum will be about $500 or more and fancier ones will be well over $1,000. Another thing vacuums have in common is that things will wear out. Ours has “tires” which wear down to the point they get stuck on the drains and need to be replaced every 9 months or so but the vacuum itself still works as well as ever. Some pools have in-ground cleaning systems which can consist of little sprinkler heads that pop out of the ground and spray debris into the main drain. The problem with that is that not everything fits into the drain and it can clog. Also, the heads don’t ever seem to reach every corner, they can break and they stick up and you can stub your toes on them if they’re running. Vacuums seem more reliable and less complicated. If you want to save yourself trouble you can put an in-line basket in the vacuum hose to catch a lot of leaves and debris before it gets into the pump basket which is more difficult to access. I would highly recommend this accessory even though it is also more expensive than it looks like it should be. Usually you will have at least three valves controlling suction from the main drain, vacuum port and skimmer with most of the suction going to the vacuum port and a little to the skimmer and little to nothing from the drain. When you have the majority of the suction going to one port and that port gets clogged by something it can cause severe damage to the pump. I’ve seen pumps get so hot that they melt and twist the pump basket when they are blocked. Helping hands closing all the valves or otherwise having ports get blocked can cause premature failure of a pump for sure and a decent pump will now cost around $800-$1500 or more. I would recommend going with a variable speed pump for ALL your pumps because they are WAY more quiet and efficient on the electricity even though they cost a lot more up-front. The quiet factor is the critical one with the pumps and is worth the extra money. Just because a pump is called “whisper” or something like that doesn’t mean anything. Basically, the more you spend, the quieter they are. Cheap pumps are so loud that you can have trouble talking over them even if they are some distance away or in an enclosure.

On the subject of pumps, depending on your setup, you will need several of them. One pump is the main pump which circulates water through the filter and heater (if present). If you have a spa/hot-tub you will likely want another pump to operate your spa jets. If you have waterfalls/shear-descents, fountains, or a waterslide you will want yet another pump to handle all those water features. We opted for an expensive, ultra-quiet pump for our main pump and spent about half as much for each of our other two pumps. As stated above, if I had it to do over again, I’d go with three quiet pumps as the cheaper “whisperflo” pumps should have been named screamyflo. Each of the pumps will need to be checked on periodically and have the baskets cleaned out. Most pools will also usually have what is called an autofill near the skimmer. This enclosure will hold something that looks like a toilet bowl float valve with an active water source plumbed to it which allows it to keep the water level from getting low as it slowly replenishes water that escapes the pool in splashing, waves and swimsuits etc. This valve has to be checked on and occasionally replaced. If it fails it can overflow the pool and waste thousands of gallons of water or cease to keep the pool filled which can damage the plaster. Speaking of plaster, that doesn’t last forever either. A pool will eventually have to be re-plastered at a cost of $10,000+ for tear-out and redo. We were told to expect 8-15 years. There are other items which simply break or wear down over time. I’ve had to replace quite a few waterline tiles which cracked due to expansion and contraction and I’ve had to repair the coping in multiple places where it cracked and pieces fell off into the pool. I’ve also had to re-coat the coping around the spa multiple times as it wears off. Stonework has also needed attention here and there as grout/thinset/polymeric sand has worn out. Miscellaneous items like landscape lighting, flappers in the skimmer, nets, brushes, fittings, valves etc. have all added up over the years as well. I think this covers most of the functional parts of the pool. There can be different flavors of these systems, but most of them are pretty necessary. The rest of the choices are more aesthetic.

AESTHETIC CHOICES :

Regarding design choices and regrets, I’ll go into that in no particular order. As stated above, we went with a free-form pool design and custom fencing and gates that we thought looked reasonably attractive. According to builders, our pool is medium to small size at about 35x22ft at the wider spots. A decently large backyard pool would be 20×40 or larger. Any pool over 6ft deep requires special engineering, more robust rebar and other things which drive up the cost and complexity. We opted for 6ft because of cost and safety. We’re about 6ft tall and if anyone is in trouble we figured we can stand on the bottom of the deep end and hold a person out of the water over our heads. For a time, I wished I had gone at least 7-8ft in the deep end, but now I’m glad we didn’t. 6ft is sufficient. The deeper you go, the more water volume you are dealing with, but we already have the biggest typical residential heater you can buy. Our pool holds about 13,000 gallons and larger pools can easily hold double that. While having the same size pumps and heater to treat the water. More water means more heating, more time to heat, more pump run time to circulate it all through the filter, more wear on everything etc. Our pool heats much faster, for less money than a larger, deeper pool and I’m okay with that tradeoff especially considering the safety factor of a smaller, more shallow pool. Everyone will have their own opinions though. There are pools more conducive to sports like volleyball, some have much larger shallow ends than deep ends to accommodate more people standing. Some favor extreme depths for diving. Some people are fans of a large “Shamu Shelf” for babies to play on or for setting pool chairs in. If I was going to keep the pool and do it over again, I would do more of a bench than a shelf. We never put chairs on our shelf in practice so making it big enough to accommodate chairs was a waste of space. It was handy for having infants and sitting with them, but kids grow up too fast and a wide bench the width of the pool would have been far better and more practical in my opinion now. We opted for benches/steps in three spots in the deep end for safety and egress. The thought was that if a child did fall in, they might be able to reach a spot within a close distance where they could stand. We also opted for fire features in the form of two fire pillars on each side of a raised spa with an overflow waterfall into the pool. We also opted for a water slide and a raised wall along the back of the pool. Between the pillars, raised wall, raised spa, and normal coping edge there are four options in height for jumping into the pool, not including the back wall that stands about 9ft off the pool surface that MAY have been jumped off of several times as well. For coping we opted for a very specific, special order form we had to track down and order in from out of state. I love the way it looks, but it has a sharp, delicate edge which needs maintenance and special care not to hurt yourself on. I’d probably skip it if I were to do it again just based on the sharpness of it. Speaking of things I wish I’d done a little differently, I wish we’d gone a little wider all around the pool. We only could have gone about 2ft wider, but it really doesn’t add much expense. You are spending money on shotcrete to widen the pool or regular concrete for decking and we could have used a little wider deep end because of congestion around the waterslide and jumping areas. We opted for a lot of landscape cutouts in the deck area because we wanted a lush tropical paradise feeling instead of a sea of concrete. It added a fair amount of cost and complexity with drainage, irrigation, electric for landscape lighting etc. but I have zero regrets on that. In addition to plumbing gas to the fire features by the spa, we also added one for a built in fire-pit in the middle of a seating/entertainment area. Truthfully, we don’t use these fire features more than a few times a year. They weren’t “worth” it but I don’t regret it, because it was my vision and I still love that I brought it to life. It doesn’t have to make sense I guess. The kids do love to roast marshmallows out there in the colder months and it is fun. I don’t enjoy being begged every day, but at least they haven’t tired of treats and spending time outside on a cold night. We added a couple outdoor TVs after putting in the pool. We only really use the one by the pool but it had the unintended consequence of children begging to watch TV while swimming. I now only really use it in the winter in the hot tub at night or for music in the summer. When I turn it on the kids just watch Youtube as close as they can get in the pool until their eyes glaze over. They’re not on the couch technically, but it’s really the same difference. We added a basketball hoop after the TV and that has been the cheapest, best investment. We’ve had many hours of fun with it and are on our second one. We put in several Mediterranean Palms and I love them, but dang those things are sharp! They’ll pop nearly any ball so we have to use tougher soccer balls and such instead of the softer pool balls. I wouldn’t change the palms, but I wish they weren’t so spiny and it is something to be aware of. We added a chilled water fountain in the pool area and it has been very useful on a hot day. Endless cold water to drink has saved us a lot of cups for sure and I’d recommend that. We also added Alumawood shades. For what they are, they seem ridiculously expensive, but they do provide good shade, are maintenance free and look good so no regrets there either. As to pool equipment itself, we opted for all Pentair. When it comes to pools, your choices are basically Pentair or Hayward and Pentair seemed more popular and widely available in our region so we went with that. We went with the best wifi/automation system available at the time that allows us to control everything from temperature, water features, lighting, and even colors and pump motor speeds from anywhere in the world. It’s been nice to have when people use our pool when we’re not there. They just text us and we can turn things on or off for them. I’ve turned the waterslide on for my kids at home all the way from Europe several times. For your final pool surface there are many options like plain plaster, colored plaster, sparkle quartz and pebble tec or equivalent. Plain plaster is cheapest and lasts the least well, then quartz, then pebble tec. Unfortunately, pebble tec is not only extremely expensive, it is usually extremely rough. It can snag swimsuits and wreck your feet. Sparkle quartz looks good, lasts better than regular plaster and costs significantly less than pebble-tec so we went with that. For raised wall tile, we went with natural, earth toned stone, because we wanted a more natural aesthetic. We picked a neutral waterline tile for the same reason and colored the concrete coping (edge) to match. We opted for a plastic slide which I still think is ugly because concrete slides were being quoted out to us at $25-30K at the time. Besides that, we’d experienced several of them before. They need constant care and refinishing or else they are prone to becoming slow, leaking, cracking all over and snagging swim suits. Considering the cost, care and the sheer size of custom concrete slides/platforms we went with the reliable, easy, and relatively cheap, maintenance free plastic slide in a color that matched our scheme.

– OTHER CONCERNS –

Other concerns in building a pool are your homeowners insurance, liability and the ever-present possibility of someone getting hurt or killed in your pool. Everyone has heard the horror stories and indeed, there was a tragic death of a child in a backyard pool just a few streets away from us several years ago. The responsibility is no joke. Our pool only added about a hundred bucks a year to our homeowners insurance so I wouldn’t say that should be much of a factor in anyone’s decision making process.

Another concern might be what you’re giving up for a pool. If your yard is big enough, you can have it all, but we have about a quarter-acre so sacrifices had to be made. We used to have a playground, sandbox, trampoline and lawn where our pool now is. We were able to build a new sandbox on the other side of the yard and move our trampoline over there as well, but our remaining lawn is very small. We also used to be able to park a larger enclosed trailer on the side of our home by the garage but that is where our pool equipment is and where we added a permanent shade to protect it and everything else over there. It limits the height of what we can put there now and excludes any RVs or tall trailers. As we have a corner lot, we did bust a hole in our wall on the other side of our yard and added a gate to allow trailer parking over there, but it is less than ideal even if it does get the job done barely. Of course, moving sandboxes, cutting walls and adding more gates etc. all adds substantial cost while decreasing certain functionality. Another initial concern is the cost of water to keep the pool filled. I actually think we use LESS water than when there was a larger lawn in the backyard though. Evaporation from the pool is very little compared to the task of keeping a lawn green.

There are other things which are pretty much beyond your control to consider as well. A pool is a rather large body of water and with that comes animals. Insects may frequent your pool at the same time you do and this is particularly a problem when your neighbors keep bees. The bees will sometimes swarm near the pool and sting you and your guests. As long as your neighbors aren’t breaking any laws, there’s really not much you can do about that and, after all, bees are good for the plant life. It isn’t terribly uncommon to find other dead animals or insects in the pool and those have to be dealt with. We’ve found mice, snakes, lizards, bugs of all types etc. It’s pretty rare to find anything too nasty, but it does happen.

– SUMMARY –

Overall, for our unique circumstance where we now have access to multiple other pools, if I could go back in time I would invest the tens of thousands of dollars I have spent on the pool on an income producing casita where the pool now is or invested the money in and S&P fund. Either one of those choices could have netted me an extra $1,000 per month or more every single month instead of costing me hundreds per month when averaged out on a thing that is only really used a fraction of the year. The memories with a pool are priceless, but so are our memories with a boat, recreational property, cruises, and every vacation we’ve ever had. There are many ways to create priceless memories that don’t involve putting in a massively expensive, permanent fixture in your backyard. I love our pool and the times we have with it and I’ll continue to do so without any real regrets but I can’t honestly say I’d do it again with the benefit of hindsight. As stated earlier, my wife feels differently. She says that she would build one again if we ended up building another home. Again, this is strange to me because she practically NEVER gets in the pool or spa. She says she likes the sound of the waterfalls and thinks the pool is beautiful. I guess value is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. Whether you love swimming, like the look or sound, love hosting, want to entertain kids or grandkids, or simply want to keep up with the Joneses or flex on your neighbors, there is no doubt that if someone is committed to building a pool, they will regardless of the cost, commitment or inconvenience. In the end, it’s not the dumbest financial decision you could make. Owning a pool is almost certainly a better investment than a yacht, auto racing, owning race horses, Polo, owning a private plane or helicopter, gambling or any number of addictions. My goal in writing this is not to convince anyone or judge them, it is simply to state facts and opinions as they pertain to my specific situation and back them up with some real, true figures even if they are old figures at this point. Whatever your choice may be after reading this, I wish you well!

When I first started rideshare I wondered just how far I might be called to drive. I figured I might have to go about an hour away to Cedar City occasionally (which I have), but I figured I’d never have to cross two state lines and take a two hour drive to Vegas. Furthermore, I figured even if that were possible, surely it would only happen once ever. Well, a couple weeks ago I did get a large, expensive drive to Vegas and took one young woman down there from a local gas station. It came in the afternoon, paid well and allowed me to listen to several hours of interesting books and podcasts and since the car pretty much drives itself, I laid back and enjoyed the ride.

Last night was a little different. I got a request from the local airport around midnight and immediately accepted but then saw the fare was HUGE. I knew it had to be to somewhere far, but didn’t see what the final destination was until I picked them up at the airport. With this Crowdstrike bug screwing up flights for days on end it has been interesting. When I showed up, it was FOUR people in two unrelated parties all going to Las Vegas with luggage in a tiny Model 3…. And one of the guys was HUGE. I asked them if they wanted to swap into a bigger vehicle but they said they just wanted to get to Vegas ASAP, so we played Tetris with their luggage, shoe-horned them in and left. I’ve never seen three more miserable people in the back seat ever… and for such a distance, but they had their choice to swap vehicles and didn’t take it so my conscience was clear. One guy was from southern Italy, another Italian who lived in Winnipeg Canada and the other two were from Iowa. They had been stranded for a long time at different airports and I guess St George was the closest they were going to get to Vegas. Upon entering the car at the airport, the big guy handed me a huge wad of cash with the outer bill being a hundred dollar bill. It was dark and I didn’t count it. I mildly protested, but he said he really appreciated that I was willing to go to Vegas at midnight. I guess he REALLY did appreciate it because it ended up being a huge tip on top of the huge fare….and way more than the fare itself. The Italian guy from Winnipeg sat up front and we talked about Italy, travel and business for a couple hours. It wasn’t bad at all. I had to charge the car in Vegas for about 30 minutes and went to Bellagio to see if I could find my favorite machine that I can nearly guarantee I win at. I couldn’t, (no surprise) so I just walked around and marveled at how many people were at the tables at about 2:30am. There were a lot, and one thing they had in common was they didn’t look too happy.

Having gambled a bit over the years, I can say that walking away a winner is not the norm. I’ve had people next to me at tables tell me they’re gambling their utilities money, then their rent, then their grocery money. Often they’re smoking and drinking at the same time which I understand aren’t cheap habits either. I rarely gamble anymore, but even when I do I observe that outside of the occasionally hot blackjack or craps table, gambling seems to be a really depressing affair judging by the faces of most of those I pass in casinos. I know I’m not real happy unless I’m winning, and as stated above, that’s not the norm.

I had recently listened to a podcast where the heir of one of the biggest privately held hotel/casinos in Vegas talked about how, despite her father’s enormous wealth, she was forced by her dad to earn what she wanted while growing up. She told the story of how she had to save up for a cheap car over the course of a year working as a maid in her father’s hotel. Asked by the host what the worst thing she saw was (expecting a gross bathroom scene), she said it was the suicides. She said any maid in Vegas who had been doing the job for any decent amount of time would see them. She said she had seen four in her relative short time as a maid. It got me curious about how bad Las Vegas suicide rates might be relative to other places. People betting their last dollar, destroying their families, and giving into addictions of every kind in an environment that makes it all to easy seemed like fertile ground for suicidal tendencies. It took me two seconds to find an NPR article titled “Las Vegas: The Suicide Capital of America”. It’s an old article, but I expect that little has changed. It details how suicide rates are double anywhere else in America and attempts to explain why. I have my own theories.

Much is made of how restrictive some institutions are… marriage, religion etc. Las Vegas is a town built on the reputation of casting restrictions and inhibitions aside. I’m quite confident that one could find ANYTHING they were after in Vegas at nearly any time of the day or night. Prostitution, pornography, drugs, gambling, food, and entertainment of all kinds are available 24-7 and clearly people partake en-masse. With all those options and lack of restriction or judgment, the prevailing philosophy of the day would seem to predict that Las Vegas should be the happiest place on earth. I read that many blame “arbitrary” restrictions, rules, boundaries and judgment for depression and harm to the human psyche. Well, I don’t know what the cure is for depression or if there is any way to eliminate it 100%, but I am 100% sure that the cure is not an environment like Las Vegas.

I’ve been to Vegas many, many dozens of times over the course of several decades and have had good times and bad there. I have learned a couple lessons there. For a few of my riders, this would be their first time. I wished them the best and told them about some good free sights to see and some good shows as well. I think that regardless of your environment, some good judgment, a little self-control and some moderation go a long way toward making any experience more positive. If you want to tip me big, feel free to take a break from moderation like the big guy though. I’ll take extreme, unmoderated tipping any day. 🙂

There has long been a rumor of swingers in my neighborhood of Little Valley. I’ve heard of the “secret” signs of upside down pineapples, flamingos in the yard and the like, but never really noticed any of those supposed indicators around. Outside of joking about it, I never thought much of it, that is until I got a ride request late one Friday night to a home just a few streets south of my own. It was clearly a house party, but it wasn’t the usual 20-somethings. This was an older crowd of late 30’s to mid 40’s. I picked up a couple who were VERY friendly and appeared to be a bit intoxicated. They asked about every little thing and asked which bar I liked the best in town. I said that I liked them all equally. Before I could even explain my joke, they both took turns going off on a bar called “Spiritual” and told me how I should make sure never to go there. I assured them that I wouldn’t and they said I’d be taking them to a different bar where they treated people better apparently. They told me all about how they had regularly spent $1k or more a month at Spiritual and got treated like crap by the bartenders there in spite of tipping well. After telling me all about it, they began to talk among themselves about the party they had just left and how so-and-so had broken the rules and gone to a room with someone else’s wife without permission from their spouse which had apparently started a big fight which led to their early departure. They said they were glad to escape the drama there and said they had rules and such. While they didn’t come right out and say it, they did make it as obvious as any pineapple or Flamingo could have been.

Over the course of the next couple weeks I heard rumors about that bar being the “swinger bar”. Eventually I even drove a couple bartenders that worked there. I asked them about the rumor and they said that they hated it. They acknowledged that there were in fact swingers who frequented the bar and tried to recruit there. They told me how a lot of the swingers were “past their prime” and just scared away other younger customers. I told them about the interaction with the riders from before and they immediately knew exactly who I was talking about even though I didn’t provide names. They said that yes, they did treat them like crap and didn’t want them prowling around there anymore. I guess they read the room pretty well, and I guess there really are swingers around little ole’ St George after all. I have kept my promise not to visit Spiritual… or any other bar for that matter. The more I see of these lifestyles, the more grateful I am that I “can’t” do a lot of the things others do. Maybe it works for them and maybe not, but either way, just don’t feel like I’m missing out on much.