Enough Money To Pay Twice—Revisiting the Private School Myth

Posted on July 10, 2023 by Ron Byrnes

I bought a new bike. This will cause some, like DanDantheRetiredTranspoMan, to go apoplectic. Let me beat him to the punch.

“Another bike?! What was wrong with the one you just bought?! How many do you need? You’re a sad(sick) guy.”

If someone buys a new bike every 20 years, then yes, it may seem like I just bought Blanca. In actuality it was January 2020, so this is season four with her. I confess, that is a short upgrade cycle especially since nothing is wrong with Blanca. She’s still exceptional. The purchase is really some cycling friends’ fault for getting me thinking about a slightly lighter version of her. The whole idea is getting into a better rhythm on long climbs. What’s more important in life than that?

And as to number of bikes, I will be selling Blanca, keeping the quiver to a grand total of two or a fraction of the number most cycling enthusiasts have in their garages.*

You may be thinking maybe I should just train harder, lift more weights, cut back on the Costco Tuxedo cake, but all that requires more discipline and work than wiring Eric in Portland some scratch.

I met Eric at Starbucks in Woodland, WA. Recently, when he got his dream job at Specialized, as the head of their design team, he immediately put in an order for one of their nicest/lightest bikes. Shortly afterwards, he got whacked, which meant he could no longer afford the nice, light bike still in the box. Then he had to find a needle in a haystack. More specifically, someone 6’2″ with some spare change. I turned out to be his needle.

Eric revealed that a part of the problem of being laid off is they have their children in private schools. “How old are they?” I asked. “12 and 15.” When you send your kids to private schools, you’re paying twice—property taxes which fund the neighborhood schools you drive past, and of course, the private school’s tuition. That requires something Eric’s family is currently lacking, a lot of disposable income.

I thought about sending him this post,”The Private School Myth“, from way back in the day, but obviously I don’t know him well enough.

Because I didn’t need to purchase his bike, he may have taken a loss on it even factoring in his work discount. If somehow he finds that post, accepts my premise, and decides with his wife to send his kids to public schools, they’d be on their way to bouncing back. Here’s hoping.

*I really do need a hardtail mountain bike.

Liberals Are Being Crybabies

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Ron Byrnes

I’m a liberal so I can say that. Or maybe my extreme privilege disqualifies me from pontificating in that manner. Here goes anyways.

Among other recent devastating losses for liberals, the Supreme Court undid Roe, race cannot be factored into college admission decision-making anymore, Biden lost the loan forgiveness fight (for now), and businesses can discriminate against LGBTQ people.

Liberal discontent with the Supreme Court’s recent decisions and disillusionment with the conservative majority makes perfect sense especially given all their right wing nutter billionaire friends. And of course, the 2016 McConnell-Garland bullshit still lingers.

But come on. We’re still a democracy, meaning executive, legislative, and judicial power constantly shifts. The only constant is change, well as much change as two parties can muster. Sometimes majorities vote Republicans into office.* Fairly and squarely. Sometimes Republican Presidents pick conservative Supreme Court justices. Sometimes enough to create conservative majorities on the Court. Sometimes liberals lose.

What to do? Or more specifically, how to deal with it?

For example, what’s the left to do with a Court that says a web designer can refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples?** There are several problems with this decision, the most obvious being that it’s the first time the Court has made it okay to discriminate against a protected group. The primary concern is of course for LGBTQ Americans, but the less obvious concern is for the possible rollback of protections for other groups based upon race, national origin, or religion. The Court has cracked open the public discrimination door that was famously shut in 1955.

The lashing out is understandable, but what does it accomplish in the medium-long term? How do LGBTQ people and their millions of allies win the “hearts and minds” battle for equal dignity so that any business that discriminates against them has no chance to survive in our free market economy. I’m not gay, but if you won’t do business with LGBTQ people, I won’t do business with you. Times one hundred million. Or two hundred million. Or three.

It’s just like all the businesses over the last 30 years who got religion about the environment. The vast majority of corporations didn’t do it out of the goodness of the heart, they only went green because it was in their self interest. Consumers and shareholders demanded it.

Could a web design business exploit a niche as the “go to” place for soon-to-be married, anti-gay straight people looking to create gay-free wedding websites. Theoretically yes, but most people in the (dis)United States of America would join with me in not doing business with any entity that denied LGTBQ people equal dignity. How do we turn “most” into the vast majority?

By pivoting from complaining incessantly about a huge step backward in the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice and collectively acting in ways that make explicitly discriminatory businesses completely unviable. By voting, everyday, with our rainbow colored pocketbooks.

*cue the anti-Electoral College activists

**adding to the frustration, the case is based on a made-up hypothetical

Taylor Swift Incorporated

Image

Closing Curtain

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Ron Byrnes

Allegedly, Succession was inspired by the Murdoch family. It was the rare show that got better and better for four consecutive years and then pulled the plug at its heights.

The main characters’ greatest flaws all reached a crescendo in the final episodes. Tom admitted he loves money and thinks about it all the time. Tom and Shiv detailed what they most hated about one another. And Kendall intimated he might die if not put in charge of the family empire after the patriarch’s death.

Three of the patriarch’s children desperately tried, but failed miserably, to emulate his business success. Psychologically, the fourth, an eccentric who separated himself and dabbled in politics, fared better.

Viewers liked the depictions of extreme wealth. I found the second generation’s psychological maladies more interesting. How do you overcome largely absent, uninterested, uncaring parents? Childhood trauma. In Kendall’s, Rome’s, and Shiv’s case, you don’t.

Yesterday, I mowed the lawn with someone who is in the process of overcoming not just absent, uninterested, and uncaring parents, but abusive ones. Stephanie Foo, author of What My Bones Know.

Foo’s book in short.

“By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD–a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.”

Foo has severed all ties with her birth family and is fashioning a new one of choice consisting of close friends who love her, her partner, and her soon to be child.

The Roy’s probably would’ve been better off following Foo’s footsteps. But they couldn’t resist the lure of their family’s wealth, status, and power. And had they gone full Foo, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good television.

Minjee Lee Is For Sale

Posted on May 14, 2023 by Ron Byrnes

24 year-old Australian, Minjee Lee, is the 6th ranked women’s golfer in the world. At this week’s LPGA event, she starts the final round with a three stroke lead on the field. Great player, even better product endorser. In fact, I challenge you to find a better one.

The Largess of Billionaires

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Ron Byrnes

Portland Oregon’s historically black Albina District would be better off with a more Scandinavian or Western European social safety net. Which would, of course, require a more progressive tax system reflecting genuine concern for the common good.

Absent Europe’s political values, and stuck with the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” individualism so deeply engrained in the (dis)United States, Allbina’s residents are left with the generosity of Oregon’s favorite plutocrat, Phil Knight, Nike’s 85 year old founder.

After reading Shoe Dog, the story of Nike’s founding, I’m a Phil Knight fan. In fact, he would probably be my first pick in a draft of billionaires.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Señor Swoosh is investing $400m to revitalize education, housing, and the arts in Albina. That’s less than 1% of Knight’s $47.2 billion estimated net worth.

That’s not meant to be disparaging especially given this:

“The Knights’ donations to the University of Oregon have funded professorships, expanded the main library and built numerous lavish sports facilities. The Knights have given $1 billion in the past seven years alone to launch and expand the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact.

They have given $500 million to cancer research at Portland-based Oregon Health & Science University. Mr. Knight also has given hundreds of millions to Stanford University, where he earned an M.B.A. in 1962.”

It’s dumbfounding how much you and I have enriched Knight through our shoe and other sporting good purchases.

I’m glad he has a social conscience and is using some of the money we gave his company to improve the quality of life in a section of inner North and Northeast Portland.

Why I Cancelled My Rivian R1S Order

Posted on April 19, 2023 by Ron Byrnes

Like the sad (sick) superficial materialist I sometimes am, I fell pretty hard for the Rivian R1S when I first saw it on-line almost four years ago. The squared off looks harkened back to the 70-series Land Cruiser. And the performance numbers were hard to comprehend. And the interior, sumptuous. I watched videos, read about the founder, and coughed up $1k as a downpayment on a launch green with a limestone interior with wood accents.

One friend, who for some crazy reason thinks I’m too frugal for my own good said, “You’ll never follow through.” I immediately looked forward to proving him wrong one day in the not-to-distant future.

And then Rivian, almost as if they were conspiring with my friend, strung me along for three and a half years with false promises of delivery date after pushed delivery date. It felt like going to a restaurant and being told the wait will be five minutes, and then at fifty-five minutes, you seriously doubt whether you’ll ever be seated.

We interrupt these proceedings to state the obvious, this is a quintessential “first world” problem for which I seek no sympathy. It’s meant more as a free-market capitalism case study.

In hindsight, I fell for Rivian’s Apple-like marketing. The glossy profiles of the brilliant, hard-working CEO coupled with videos of the R1S tearing across South America covered in Andean dust. Unlike Rivian however, Apple is run by a keen operator whose genius is mastering supply chains.

During delay two or three or four, I lose track, right before RIVN went public, reports surfaced of a top female executive leaving amidst allegations of gender discrimination and a “toxic bro culture”. More recently, several other top executives jumped ship.

Sidenote. I wasn’t the only who was hoodwinked by Rivian’s mystique. Not even close. RIVN’s initial public offering price was $72/share and over the next few months it skyrocketed to $172. After thinking hard about investing in the initial offering, I wisely decided not to. Today, RIVN closed at $12.82.

Rivian’s communication with reservation holders was always poor. Of course, if in mid 2019 they had been completely honest and said, we’re confident you’ll take delivery by the close of 2023, very few people would’ve sent them $1k.

Fast forward to today. Seemingly every week some combination of new electric cars, trucks, and SUVs are announced. At present, I dig the Polestar 3. And recently, every couple of weeks, Tesla has been leveraging its market share to lower its prices, and thereby turning up the heat on every new entrant. Today, you can buy two Model Ys for the cost of one Rivian. And the Model Ys qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit while the Rivians do not.

Also, over the last two years, as people have taken delivery of their Rivians, I have perused on-line forums to get a feel for owners’ experiences. In short, the reviews are mixed. Of biggest concern to me was the large number of people who said the truck drove quite a bit better than the SUV. And the talk of wind noise, poor service, and “vampire” battery drain, all left me questioning whether I have it in me to be an early adaptor. Those concerns coupled with the fact that the nearest service center is a three-hour roundtrip lead me to prove my friend right.

I probably should’ve done what so many others are, taken delivery and then sold it since initial reservation holders like me are paying 15-20% less than the “price-adjusted” Rivians currently for sale. But I just wanted to wash my hands of the planned purchase and so I mailed the recently arrived charger back.

UPS confirms that Rivian received the charger two weeks ago, but Rivian can’t process the return, and therefore, hasn’t returned my deposit yet.

Here’s the most recent “explanation” from my “Rivian Guide”:

“Hi Ron,

Thanks for reaching out.

To be transparent, this is an ongoing issue that I have surfaced to upper leadership.

We’re working on a solution to get wall charger return labels out faster as well as return processing times expedited.

Many of my colleagues are running into the same bottleneck and we are working diligently to get this moving faster for all.

Thank you for your continued patience.

Have a nice evening and we will be in touch soon, hopefully with good news!”

Had I written back to Alicia, I would’ve written “Dear Alicia, Whatever patience I had nearly four years ago, I’ve lost.”

No matter how great the vehicle, if a company can’t deliver in three and half years and can’t process a returned charger in two weeks time, it’s going to get destroyed by equally hungry, but far more competent rivals.

Pressing Pause

Small steps toward thriving families, schools, and communities

Category Archives: Money Matters