If you’re not interested in my story, maybe check out my writing under the Blog link.
My Story in 30 Seconds
Born, raised, and live in Eastern Washington State with occasional deviations to other locales. Career accountant and research administrator. Monogamously married to my Filipina-American wife who I met during my stay in California’s San Francisco Bay Area. My interests include personal independence, investing, capital allocation, lifelong learning, self development, recovery, behavior change, relationships, alt schooling, et. al.
Intellectual Sketch
After writing my story below, I realize I didn’t capture my intellectual journey which this site is largely about.
Though I’m sure it started long before I remember, my intellectual journey began in earnest when I started reading financial books from the library. I think it was my junior or senior year of high school. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. That particular book was very useful for me to begin thinking about allocating money.
Later on I read one of Jim Cramer’s books. His Mad Money show was something I enjoyed watching after returning home each day from high school. I couldn’t comprehend his methodologies so I continued reading other books. Eventually I stumbled upon The Snowball by Alice Schroeder. Alice’s book was fascinating to me. It was also a treasure trove of other books. It’s fair to say this jump started my habit of reading.
Part of my desire for money was practical. I needed to support myself. Part of it is deeply rooted in how I grew up. My dad had to make tradeoffs between his career and his family life. As a salaried executive, it was either do well and get promoted and raises or don’t do well and be stuck at a wage that didn’t support all of his family’s desires and needs. I noticed that. We also talked about how his job wasn’t all that different from an entrepreneur who risks their own capital in running their business. His capital wasn’t at risk so he had little control of how much upside he enjoyed as a result of his efforts on behalf of his employer.
I also noticed a pattern in my own behavior. I was given a modest allowance as a kid and was able to decide what I wanted to do with it. Early on I spent it. Over the years, I saved for larger and larger purchases. Maybe some sort of die cast toy car, then maybe a complex lego set, then a top of the line nerf gun, then an RC car. Eventually it was four wheelers and motorcycles and my first truck for driving myself around when I was 15. What I noticed is that the saving and planning was fun. I liked looking forward to what my money was going to buy me. However, by the time I was about 20 I made my last kind of outsized “splurge” purchase. By then I had figured out from many years of experience that the fun factor of making these purchases was fleeting. It was fun the first few weeks, but then I lost interest in whatever I bought. And sometimes the item became a responsibility as in the case of four wheelers. What if I wrecked it? What would happen as it got older and needed maintenance? How much less would it be worth when I was ready to sell it?
Through these observations and experiences money became a tool. And how I used money could either improve my life or make it worse. Using it for fun things wasn’t very rewarding. In fact, it was a mostly empty experience. Money was becoming a resource I increasingly relied on to solve the observations I made about my family’s finances as I was growing up. If I didn’t want to choose between my family and career maybe I didn’t have to. Maybe I could forego buying a flashy new vehicle from a dealership and buy the cheapest mode of reliable transportation instead. Maybe doing things like that would free me to not have to make undesirable tradeoffs.
After reading The Snowball I’ve continued to learn more about Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I continue to strive for the sort of independence they were striving for by becoming investors. There are many entries into this genre today. Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week comes to mind. As does all the folks involved in the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement. What I’ve learned is it’s very difficult to achieve these things. It takes a lot of discipline and persistence. There is no recipe because each person is unique and has their own set of tradeoffs. But by striving for our independence, by creating our own lives uniquely, we learn that we don’t have to follow the scripts our culture gives us.
My Story in 10 Minutes
I grew up and still live in the Tri-Cities, WA (Kennewick, Richland, Pasco). I didn’t know it, but the Tri-Cities is this weird sort of place. Over time I’ve started to describe it as a company town. A place where one industry and employer dominates all the others. In this case, it was the Hanford Site, part of the Manhattan Project. It’s diversified in recent years so it now has a mix of blue collar, farmer, service workers, engineers, and scientists.
My parents married young and had my one brother and I young. It was a nice upbringing. We were fed, clothed, secure, loved, did fun stuff (street hockey, BMX bikes, four wheelers & motorcycles, camping, hiking), and generally cared for. Even so, life is hard and being married and having kids young makes it harder and so there was low- grade dysfunction. Maybe even mid-grade dysfunction, I don’t know. We looked decent from the outside, but the inside didn’t match that perception. When I think of an ideal I think of Bill Gates Sr. and Mary Gates; my parents weren’t that (and my wife and I probably won’t be either, but I’m aiming for it). They did their best though and I have healthy relationships with them. I bring it up because it’s had a huge impact on my adult life, an impact I will continue to work through.
I sort of relate to JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. Not to all the details, but in this sense. In retrospect our family goal was to get the kids through school without too much trouble and get a good job. My dad was on the cusp of not going to college. My mom didn’t go. Early in my dad’s career he didn’t make a lot. He worked his way up through several director jobs of non-profit organizations so things were tight well into our middle school years. There wasn’t much consideration about charting our own path as entrepreneurs. Nor was there the thought we might go to some Ivy League somewhere and punch our ticket that way.
I did well in school because I excelled at that model. Grades motivated me. External validation propped me up. I didn’t last on sports teams. I always had problems with the competitiveness and interpersonal dynamics. I didn’t like joining groups in general. So I worked and went to school. I had my first job at 13 so I could buy my first car by 16.
By the time I was a senior in high school I was thinking a lot about career options. We do a horrible job helping kids develop their vocational interests. I had no idea what I wanted to do or what different jobs actually did. I considered architecture or engineering briefly, but after some internships realized that many architects aren’t really the boss…the developer is the boss. Small town architects don’t get to work on many projects that fire the imagination and big city architects are often junior architects designing hand rails on large projects or doing lighting studies. Engineers, well there are many engineering jobs that don’t fire the imagination either. But who am I to say, I became an accountant!
I decided on accounting in my second year of college. I read The Snowball by Alice Schroeder fall semester and did well in my first accounting class. The Snowball was my first detailed understanding of Warren Buffett. He called accounting the language of business and I thought the whole point of college and a job was to make money so why not go straight to the source. If I became an accountant I might be able to understand financial statements better and if I could do that better maybe I could invest for my own account.
Once accounting was in the bag there was no more need to be attending University of Idaho that had the architecture school. I moved back in with my parents and transferred to Washing State University Tri-Cities. I got some jobs and eventually internships at the Hanford Site. One of those lead to a full time job in Asset Control a year before I graduated. So I finished college part time.
I was already ready to leave by the time I graduated so I applied for a property management job at Stanford University that summer. To my surprise and delight I got it. So I rented out the house I bought six months earlier, becoming a landlord at 23 and moved south to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Things went well. I couldn’t believe I was working at Stanford and the beauty of working on the campus. Especially in a job where I got to go meet others around campus, not just be stuffed up in the office. The staff were all very experienced and knowledgable, some so much so that there were many retirements in my first year. By then, I was promoted to be the financial compliance manager. Basically a supervisor of a small team that accounted for moveable capital equipment.
That was great, but the joys of moving and being promoted were short lived as all worldly accomplishment and material achievement is. (I didn’t quite know it at the time, though I had inklings of it earlier in life.) My personal life wasn’t great. My only friends in the area were work friends. I was working a lot. I didn’t do much outside of work. At least not after the first six months when I realized I wasn’t a tourist and couldn’t be going on expensive excursions every weekend. All this to say my drinking progressed to where I was consuming alcohol almost around the clock except on the job.
Despite my career success, I was depressed and increasingly stupefied by both my inability to drink less and to feel better on a sustainable basis. I had a dramatic fall and entry into the mental health treatment system. I convalesced, became sober, and got into recovery. I learned a lot about what I was doing wrong and how to live better.
One of those things was learning how to do things I was afraid to do, acknowledging the fear, not getting rid of it, and doing the thing anyway. And so began my dating life. I met another date on October 10, 2016. Four and a half years later that date became my wife. We had ups and downs as all relationships do, but somehow this one stuck and now we’re both living in that house I bought in Richland, WA six months before I moved to the Bay Area.
My job has changed. Some damage was done before I got into recovery and my boss and I mutually decided it was best if I no longer was a supervisor and rotated out of the team. I’ve been in accounts receivable since. It’s amazing how different accounting jobs really can be. Not to mention, I’m now a permanently remote worker. Remote work is great in many ways, but I also miss the campus and the culture of my first job at Stanford.
Today
That brings us current. For regular updates on what I’m up to now, see my Now page.