Net Worth Update: End of May, 2019 (and End Of Blog)

At the end of each month, I post an update of my net worth, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of May, 2019
Net Worth: $1,027,079
Change from last Month: +$29,192 (!!)

Events Of Note Last Month:

My SQL courses on Udemy generated $56.20 of income. This is my last payment from Udemy and it takes my total lifetime income from my courses to $11,368.76. Not too shabby.

My courses on SkillShare, meanwhile, earned $30.03.

Net Worth Update

We've been flirting with it for months, but now, we finally reached the next achievement:

Our net worth increased by $29,192! We are now officially millionaires!

Sadly, I can't say it was anything specific we did this month to push us over the edge. Turns out, we probably crossed over the one million dollar mark a couple months ago but I never noticed.

About two weeks ago, I received an email telling me the quarterly statement for my wife's retirement plan was available. As I was downloading the statement, I realized I didn't recall seeing this account in Mint.com. I checked and, yup.. I had never added it to Mint, so it was not being included in my net worth calculations. Well, I fixed that mistake!

The value of the account at the time was a tad over $59,000. The stock market has dropped quite a bit since that day, but we were already close enough the last couple months that this "new found" money was enough to get us into the double comma club, even with the decline.

April 2019

May 2019

And That's A Wrap!

With this milestone, I've decided I'm going to stop writing for this blog. My goal has been accomplished - I've got a Tesla (two, even!). My "stretch goal," if you will, was to get a net worth of over a million dollars, which has also been achieved.

I say this is a "stretch goal" because I never really explicitly stated it was something I was striving for, but it's always been in the back of my mind.

Our net worth has increased from the $600,218 it was when I started tracking this figure in February, 2016 to our current value. That's a pretty good-sized increase for three years! I haven't been consciously trying to grow it. Rather, it's happened simply as a natural outgrowth of managing our money better. Creating and sticking to a budget does wonders.

As I looked forward to what I might write about in the future, honestly, there wasn't much that excited me. The next major milestones for me are getting our two car loans paid off. The first should be gone in about one year, then the second two years after that. One of my initial reasons for starting this blog was to provide incentive for me to keep saving for my Tesla. I don't need any such motivation for paying off those loans. I am highly motivated to pay them off ASAP!

Other Topics

A lot of personal finance blogs focus on ways to stay motivated or be frugal. I've never really had a problem doing that, so it's not something I feel I have a lot of experience with.

My wife and I are also fortunate enough to have relatively high-paying jobs. We don't live paycheck to paycheck and don't have to scrape together enough money to make it to the end of the month. Through luck or hard work or (at least in some part) all the societal privileges that come with being college-educated Caucasians, we've never been in that situation. As a result, I don't feel like I can authoritatively tell others in that situation how to live. It's easy to say "save at least 10% of your income," but doing that while you are barely making ends meet has to be real hard and it would be hypocritical of me to tell others how to do it.

I written about many of the financial topics I wanted to - credit cards, stocks and stock options, paying down debt, things to look for to get as much value as you can. Anything else I have to say on those subjects would just be repeating myself. (What else can be said about mutual fund expense ratios besides "they suck" and "get them as low as possible?")

I've even shared some of my darkest secrets here.

The reality is there is nothing difficult or complicated about personal finance. It's easy to make it as complicated as you want. For example, you can dive into annuities or other esoteric instruments. But the reality is no one needs those to get rich. Once you have learned a handful of basic concepts, you'll have more than enough knowledge to increase your wealth.

Tomorrow There'll Be Sunshine...

Rather than start repeating myself, I'm going to close the door here and move on to something else. I'm not sure what yet.

Thanks for reading. I hope this blog has been useful, educational, and at least somewhat entertaining. I've enjoyed sharing my experiences and had fun writing the blog. I hope you had fun reading it. I hope you find success in your financial journey and I hope that you will eventually find your way to the land of hope and dreams.




Grab your ticket and your suitcase
Thunder's rolling down this track
You don't know where you're goin' now
But you know you won't be back
Darlin' if you're weary
Lay your head upon my chest
We'll take what we can carry
And we'll leave the rest
Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

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Work - Now With More 401(k)!

Last year, I wrote about how I willingly went to work for a company that did not offer a 401(k) plan. At my previous company, I was contributing 19% to a 401(k), so when I took my new job and lost that option, I just started putting 19% of my pay into a regular brokerage account for saving.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), my salary was high enough to disqualify me from contributing to any kind of IRA, so I just put it into a regular, taxable account.

A year later, my company now offers a 401(k) plan! In the competitive, tech-centric job market of the Seattle area, if a company wants to attract and retain good talent, it needs to offer such a basic benefit and the lack of a retirement plan was a serious drawback when it came to hiring.

To my surprise, they plan they came up with is surprisingly good.

• They offer a Roth 401(k) option, which I took. (But keep in mind, the company match portion still goes into a regular non-Roth 401(k) account.) 
• Employee contributions are matched 20% up to the first 5% of your salary.
• The plan investment options are pretty good. There are several low cost mutual funds available, including some Admiralty share options from Vanguard funds. There are also retirement date target funds.
• Employees are automatically enrolled at 3% of their salary unless they opt to change that.

This is actually a double win for me. As I mentioned in the above linked post, when I accepted this job, I was able to get an additional $5,000 salary because of the company's lack of a 401(k). Now that they offer one, I get both benefits!

I enrolled and am contributing 5% - just enough to get the full company match - and I'm continuing to save 14% to the brokerage account I was contributing to before. This was simply to let me retain some flexibility.

While my company's 401(k) plan offers good choices, I like having access to that additional 14% of my pay at any time. I can also adjust that amount more easily as my budget needs change. I have a wider range of investment options outside of the 401(k) plan. Yes, I may be paying a bit more in taxes, but that is the price I have to pay for the increased flexibility.

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Video Recording Issues

My Tesla software was upgraded a month or two ago and one of the new features I got was Sentry Mode. When this mode is activated, the car will monitor its surroundings while parked. If a threat is detected, such as someone leaning on the car, attempting to break in, keying it, pulling a hit-and-run in a parking lot, etc., the car will start recording video using its cameras, as well as display a warning on the large screen. If that doesn't deter the offender, the car will eventually start blasting classical music. It's sort of a car alarm on steroids.

I've been turning Sentry Mode on pretty much whenever I park my car outside my house now and, occasionally, when I get back in, I will see an alert telling me some sentry events have been recorded. When I get home, I plug the USB drive into my computer to see what happened.

This is how I noticed that my cameras seem to be malfunctioning. The recorded video is often glitchy and corrupted.

Here's an example from my front camera:

This doesn't only happen to the front camera. I've also seen it happen from the left camera.

And here is another issue I've seen with the left camera. The picture degrades over the course of the 1 minute recording:

Sometimes, the recording from the left camera is simply an empty file.

At this point, I'm not sure if the issue is with the camera or something related to the video recording process. Autopilot, which uses the cameras, seems unaffected. I've tried two different USB drives for the recording media and the problems do not go away.

A discussion at Tesla Motors Club seems to point to the problem being related to the USB drive the files are stored on. One person said he got rid of the problems by using a drive with a metal housing and he thought it might be related to better heat dissipation. I can't say I've noticed if my drive is hot when I take it out, but it's possible.

It's also possible the quality of the USB drive is an issue. Drives that have a faster write response time might not have problems. I've been using cheap USB drives I received for free as promotions from somewhere or another, so who knows what their quality is. I ordered one that the poster at TMC said worked, a device from SanDisk, which is a reputable company. We'll see how that works.

In the meantime, I've scheduled a service appointment for June 1, so if the new USB drive doesn't fix the problem, we'll see what Tesla says.

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Net Worth Update: End of April, 2019

At the end of each month, I post an update of my net worth, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of April, 2019
Net Worth: $997,888
Change from last Month: +$47,360 (!!)

Events Of Note Last Month:

My SQL courses on Udemy generated $68.65 of income. My courses on SkillShare, meanwhile, earned $31.28. This income will be dropping over the next month or two. I wrote about why here.

We've made good progress on paying down our two car loans. I obtained one loan last September and the other two months ago in February, so neither loan is more than 7 months old. The outstanding balances have been reduced by over $10,000 each - for the smaller loan, that amounts to about 25% of the original loan amount. While we are paying more than the minimum each month, these big reductions were due to a work bonus and a nice tax refund this year, so I don't expect any more big drops any time soon, just a slow and steady reduction.

Also - Happy May Day!

Net Worth Update

Our net worth had a crazy big increase: $47,360! Holy smokes!

March 2019

April 2019

This took me quite by surprise. In digging in to the details, I can see the gain came from three sources:

• A roughly $5,000 increase in our home value. I have no control over this. 
• A $10,000 decrease in our outstanding loans (combined car loans and mortgage). This I do have control over. When you look at our all our loans, we're paying down about $3,000 in principal each month. Any reduction in our outstanding loan principal translates directly into an equal increase in our net worth.
• A roughly $35,000 increase in our stock portfolio. Another item I have no control over. I've mentioned before that we've crossed an inflection point in our stock portfolio - that point where market fluctuations have more of an effect on the total value of our portfolio than our contributions - but this is probably the most extreme example of it yet. Fortunately, this was a swing to the upside! But Mr. Market giveth and Mr. Market can take away. We'll see if the gains stick around to next month.

Credit card debt saw a big increase this month, but that is because we took a vacation to Washington D.C. I put all our expenses on our Chase Freedom credit card to earn cash back awards, but I've got money saved in the bank to cover them. That payment goes out next week.

So, so close to that seven figure milestone! I was hoping we'd get there this month, but no such luck. This is the closest we've ever been....

If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please drop me a line in the comments section!

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Think You're Good At Spotting Scams? I Bet I Can Fool You.

Photo by Ahmed Syed  

Not A Real Prince

Scams are usually easy to spot. You know that Nigerian prince did not randomly pick you to help get his $10 million dollars out of his bank or to avoid government taxes. They're easy to spot, in part, because they ask you to pay a small amount of money in exchange for a larger amount of money. You’re probably good at ignoring these scams. You may even pride yourself in being too smart to fall for them.

Beware. People who think they are too smart to fall for scams are often some of the easiest people to fool.

Can You Spot This Scam?

Let’s play a little game and see if you can spot the scam.

You get an email from someone, let’s call him Sammy The Amazing Stock Picker, claiming to write a stock trading newsletter that has a 100% success rate in picking stocks. He’s analyzed the market and has come up with a secret proprietary formula that can correctly predict when a stock is going to go either up or down. There’s lots of mumbo jumbo about technical analysis, trading patterns, candlestick charts, trend lines, etc. It all sounds very impressive and scientific. For just $1,000, you can subscribe to this newsletter and get stock picks that are guaranteed to make you money!

But he doesn’t expect you to believe him. To prove his formula works, he’s going to give you a stock tip today. He predicts that the stock of Company ABC will go up in three weeks. You are intrigued. You’re not going to buy the stock, but you decide to watch it and see what happens.

Three weeks later, you are surprised to discover that the stock of Company ABC did, in fact, go up. Huh. You could have made some money if you listened to that guy’s tip. Still, you reason, he could have just gotten lucky.

The next day, you get another email from Sammy. He points out that his prediction was correct. He’s asking you again for $1,000 to subscribe to his newsletter, but he understands you may still be reluctant. To convince you, he’s going to give you another tip. His proprietary formula predicts that stock XYZ is going to go up in 2 weeks. Once again, you decide not to invest, but you’ll track the stock for 2 weeks.

Wow.. Two weeks later, you are surprised to find that stock XYZ did go up. In fact, it went up quite a bit. You could have made a couple thousand dollars had you bought some shares. You start to think Sammy might be on to something.

Sammy sends you another email, again reminding you that he has now correctly predicted an increase in two stocks. His formula surely works. He really wants to share this information with people so he can help others get rich and stick it to those greedy Wall Street traders and again asks you to subscribe to his newsletter for $1,000. In case you still doubt him, he passes along another tip. This time, his formula says stock LMN is going to drop in 18 days. He recommends you short the stock. (Shorting is a way to make money when the price of a stock goes down.)

You are really intrigued now. Sammy is 2 for 2. Maybe he is on to something. Still, shorting a stock can be dangerous, so you decide to hold off and again just monitor the price. Eighteen days seems pretty specific. His formula must be really accurate.

Sure enough, exactly 18 days later, stock LMN has dropped. This is amazing! Sammy has correctly picked not 1, not 2, but 3 winning stock trades in a row! You are slowly starting to believe there might be something to Sammy’s secret formula after all. Still, $1,000 is a lot to cough up. On the other hand, you could easily recoup that cost plus more with just one trade...

You are a smart guy. You think this still might be a scam, but how? Sammy is correctly predicting stock prices in the future!

You get two more emails from Sammy, each time he recommends a stock and each time, the stock does exactly what he predicts. OK, you think, he’s for real. No one can correctly predict five stock trades in a row!

You start to think of all the money you can make following Sammy’s recommendations. In just a couple of months, you can quit your job. You can retire early. You decide Sammy is somehow legit and you send him $1,000 to subscribe to his newsletter. After all, you’ll make that money back and more just following his first tip!

Congratulations! You’ve just been scammed.

You never get his newsletter. Or even worse, you get a newsletter with a hot tip and you invest a couple thousand. Somehow, the trade loses money. You’re stuck with a 75% loss. Sammy doesn’t return any of your emails. The newsletters stop coming. You feel sick.

What happened? You had proof that Sammy had a magic formula! The odds of successfully picking five stock trades in a row are tiny. How did you get scammed?

Hubris

You got scammed because you thought you couldn’t be scammed.

You thought you had proof that Sammy was a genius. Did you stop to ask yourself why Sammy would be selling a newsletter to people if he could correctly predict the stock market? Why wouldn’t he just keep his secret formula to himself and make millions? If someone could really do this, why would he share that information?

No, you saw what you thought was proof and you started to get greedy. You started to imagine all the money you could, against all odds, make just by following someone’s advice and without any thought or work on your part.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia!” But only slightly less well-known is this: “If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”

So how did Sammy do it? How did he know those five stocks were going to move in the direction he said they would?

He didn’t. It was pure luck.

How Sammy Did It

When you got Sammy’s first email, you were one of 10,000 people Sammy sent it to. What you didn’t know is that 5,000 of those people got an email saying the stock would go up. The other 5,000 got one saying it would go down.

Sammy purposely picked a volatile stock, so he could be pretty sure there would be some serious price movement one way or the other. Whichever way the stock moved, some people would believe Sammy correctly predicted it.

After three weeks, Sammy emailed the 5,000 who got the email that correctly predicted the price of stock ABC. Of those, he now told 2,500 people that stock XYZ would go up in 2 weeks and he told the other 2,500 it would go down. Sneaky Sammy can’t lose!

After two weeks, 2,500 people now believe Sammy can predict the future. Some people have decided to send him $1,000 at this point and Sammy starts raking in the dough.

He now does the same thing with his next mailing to the 1,250 people who got the email that correctly predicted stock XYZ and he recommends the LMN stock trade. Then he does it once more to 625 people. With each mailing, he gets several more people to send him $1,000. By now, ol’ Sammy has made tens of thousands of dollars and he eventually disappears from the internet.

Well, probably not. He probably just made some new email accounts and started the process over with a new batch of suckers.

Stay Skeptical

Things are not always what they seem. No one can predict the future, even if you have what you think is incontestable proof. Don’t be so sure of your ability to spot scams that you willfully see only what you want to see.

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After Six Years, Time To End My Online Courses

Photo by Matt Botsford

Back in 2014, when I started this blog, my goal was to get enough passive income to pay for a Tesla. That goal, of course, changed, but passive income is still a great thing to have and to strive for.

One of my passive income streams has been from teaching online courses. These are courses I created and recorded, uploaded to a couple instructional sites, and then collect money from each month from students who enroll. It's a pretty sweet deal.

Sadly, I think it's time to end those courses. The courses are getting a bit long in the tooth. I made four of them, all about a database product from Microsoft called SQL Server. That's what I've built my career on and what I know, so it made sense to teach others about it.

Why I'm Taking Them Down

Like all technology products, SQL Server is evolving and changing. My courses were made with the latest version of SQL Server at the time - SQL Server 2012. Since then, versions 2014, 2016, and 2017 have been released. SQL 2019 is due to be released soon. While the information in my courses is still applicable, the graphical interface has changed and new features have been added. In short, someone watching my courses today would think the videos are old. And they are. The first one was made 6 years ago.

I've seen my sales start to drop off. The last couple of months have only seen 10 - 15 new students per month. New reviews are rare - maybe 1 or 2 per month. I've come to the conclusion that I need to either make new courses with updated content and using the latest software version or take the old courses down before people start leaving bad reviews because the software shown is old.

Making the courses was a lot of work. Hours and hours writing the scripts, creating demos, then a couple of weekends recording it all. I'm not really looking forward to doing that again and, truthfully, I don't have the burning desire to any more. I already have my Tesla. My wife and I are in a much better place financially than we were six years ago. My passive income stream is now mainly from stock dividends.

Another (small) factor that contributed to my decision to take the courses down was paperwork. Neither of the sites that sell my courses provide tax forms at the end of the year. This means I have to manually track all the payments they make to report them on my taxes. Further, the IRS considers this self-employment income, meaning I also have to pay the employer share of Social Security and Medicare taxes as well as my own share. For a while, I was also making quarterly estimated tax payments. When I was making $200 to $400 per month, I was fine with this. Now however, the amounts are so small, it's more trouble than it's worth. I've got too many other demands for my time.

My courses were available on two platforms: Udemy.com and Skillshare.com. Udemy provides lifetime access for students who have purchased courses, so I can't actually delete my courses there. Instead, I'm setting my courses to private. This means they will no longer show up in any search results. The only way new students can enroll is if I give them a link.

Udemy Almost Final Results

So how much money did these courses make for me? Was it worth it?  Without a doubt, yes.

As I have pointed out before, my total initial investment was a $149 high quality microphone (which is even cheaper now). All the other tools I used, video editing software, graphics programs, etc. were free. I either used freeware products or program such as PowerPoint, which I already owned.

From that initial $149 investment, on Udemy, I have earned over $11,000!

My total figure should go up another $120 or so because there are still two months Udemy has not paid me for yet. (They pay one month behind because they offer students a 30 day money back guarantee.) So all in all, I'll have made about $11,500. Not too shabby.

As the above graphic shows, I had almost two thousand students and my average rating was 4.4 out of 5 stars. I've helped students in 81 different countries:

That's something I'm proud of.

SkillShare Almost Final Results

I earn money differently on SkillShare. Whereas a student on Udemy pays for each course and a portion of each student's purchase price goes to me, a SkillShare student pays a monthly subscription fee and I am paid for each minute of my courses a student views. So on Udemy, earning money is all about recruiting new students. On SkillShare, it's all about getting students to actually watch your courses.

Based on this income model, I'm going to leave my courses up on SkillShare since I don't have to rely on attracting new students to earn money. Because students pay a monthly fee for all content on the site, I don't think any students would leave a bad review if my courses seem out of date. After all, it's more or less free to them with their monthly subscription. In fact, user reviews seems unimportant on SkillShare. As you can see below, I've only had one review out of almost 300 students.

I've talked with SkillShare's tech support and it is unclear to me that they will actually pay out minutes viewed once I deactivate my account. So I don't really see a downside to just letting the courses stay up.

My courses have not been on SkillShare as long as they have on Udemy. I think I first posted them in November 2017 and I've made $633 so far.

SkillShare was never meant to replace or outperform Udemy. It was simply a new platform I heard about and, since I already had all the courses created, I just thought I'd put them up there as well and try to get some more money from them. More money for zero extra work.

The End Of An Era

I'm somewhat sad to be taking these courses down. It was crazy fun getting money each month for doing basically nothing. I remember sitting on a beach in Hawaii four years ago and getting email notifications of money coming in. It's a great feeling :-)

I'm still not sure if I'll make new courses. If I do, they most likely won't be about computer-related topics. I've pondered making some financial-related ones, but can't seem to come up with any good ideas. Does anyone have any suggestions?

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On Vacation!

Taking some time off this week as we head to Washington D.C. for spring break! We're taking a train across the country, spending a couple of days in D.C., then flying back home. See you next week!

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Net Worth Update: End of March 2019

At the end of each month, I post an update of my net worth, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of March, 2019
Net Worth: $950,528
Change from last Month: +$15,683

Events Of Note Last Month:

My SQL courses on Udemy generated $59.91 of income. My courses on SkillShare, meanwhile, earned $47.10. I've decided to scale back on my courses. More details on that next week.

Taxes

Well, this year was better than last year. For the last three or four years, I've had to pay thousands of dollars in taxes come April, despite dramatically increasing the amount withheld from our paychecks each year. For 2018, we're actually getting a $6,199 refund! Yay!

If we didn't have the Tesla $7,500 tax credit, we would have owed about $1,300. My accountant attributes this to the fact that the IRS changed the tax withholding rates last year. Less money is being withheld each paycheck due to the decrease in tax brackets, but when they set the withholding rates, the IRS did not account for the loss of many deductions - such as the $10,000 deduction cap on state and local taxes, mortgage interest, etc. You may have heard about this last year. There were a ton of stories advising people to adjust their tax withholding.

Given that we are having an extra $7,200 in taxes withheld during the year, I didn't bother adjusting our withholding. Between that extra and the $7,500 Tesla tax credit, I figured we'd be OK.

And we were. We're still getting money back. I'm not going to bother adjusting my withholdings for 2019 either because the purchase of my wife's Tesla qualifies us for a $3,750 tax credit for 2019. If things stay the same for 2019, we should get a refund next year as well.

Net Worth Update

We had a big increase in our net worth this month: over $15,000!

February 2019

March 2019

Our Property category increased due to the new car we bought at the beginning of the month. Our loan amount also went up, as we took a loan for the vehicle. The rest of the gains came from increases in our stock portfolio and our home value.

Oh, and hey... Look there... We're sneaking up on a net worth milestone....

If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please drop me a line in the comments section!

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Here's To Well Defined Goals!

Photo by Vek Labs on Unsplash

Over the past 7 months, we have purchased two new Teslas – a Model S P100DL and a Model 3 Dual Motor Long Range. Doing so meant we took out a total of $148,100 in loans. Our combined minimum monthly car payments are $2,209. That’s a lot. It’s more than our house payment was a couple years ago when we were living in Arizona.

We are actually paying $2,625 a month towards the loans. That’s what we have budgeted and we can, thankfully, afford that much while still putting aside enough in other savings accounts for other things such as emergencies, etc.

You might think that taking on such a huge monthly payment would worry me a bit, and you would be right. The future is uncertain and this is one of the reasons we have an emergency fund built up.

Yay For Debt?

But, now that the loans have actually been taken out, in a strange sort of way, I welcome them. You see, back before we got the cars, we were saving $2,625 each month towards their purchase. So having that monthly loan payment hasn’t really changed anything from the perspective of our budget. The only difference is I’m sending the money to the loan company instead of to a savings account. (I’ve already explained that the EV tax credits we received more than cover the interest costs of the loans, so we’re not losing money by taking out loans and paying interest.)

When I was saving up our funds, the money was going into an account and accumulating. Saving seemed like something that was just going to go on forever. Now that the money is paying down a loan balance, the end is in sight.  By having a loan, I’ve got a very well-defined end point.

It's All About That Bass Motivation

It turns out, I get more excited spending money to pay down the loans than saving the same amount of money for the cars in the first place. I know this is because the finish line is so specific. While I was saving up money over a period of years, my target was always changing. As time went on, the cost of the Model S kept rising, making it seem like I was not making progress. Likewise, I never fully defined what kind of car we planned on getting for my wife. I just threw money into an account each month and figured we’d decide on something when we got a decent sized amount saved up. I never defined what a "decent sized" amount was.

Both of those goals were very fuzzy. It’s hard to get excited about progress towards a goal when the goal isn’t clearly defined.

Well, we’ve now got a clearly-defined goal – two paid off loans!

My wife’s loan has the smallest balance ($44,100) as well as the highest interest rate, so that’s the one I will concentrate on paying off first. This is really exciting to me because I have been saving for a car for her in some form or another for at least 3 or 4 years. Paying that loan off means freeing up money in our budget that had been allocated for years! Once her loan is paid off, the money we sent towards that will get redirected to my car loan, increasing that payment by over 66% and enabling that loan to be paid down even faster!

And when those two loans are paid off – jackpot! We will have freed up a crapload of additional money each month. No more car payments. No more saving towards a car. Instead, we’ll have an additional $2,625 each month that can be used to save and invest. That is truly exciting to me! That is a goal I can really get motivated to work towards!

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Audew 12V Portable Air Compressor Pump Review

This week, I’m posting a review of a new portable air pump I recently received. Although it was provided to me by the manufacturer, the comments and opinions here are my own. Please see my disclosure page for full details.

Back when I was 16 years old, I got my first car – a small, used pickup truck. It cost $4,000 and I paid for half with money saved from working summers and my parents paid the other half. It was great to finally be able to drive myself places and just head out on my own without my parents. When I was 16, we were still in the Dark Ages – there were no cell phones and the Internet wasn’t around. Us computer nerds dialed up to local bulletin board systems to post messages on forums. Those were dark days, indeed.

The lack of cell phones meant if your car broke down somewhere, you had to walk to find a pay phone – another long gone relic – to call someone to come help you. To avoid that, I had some basic repair tools that I kept in my car. A spare tire and jack, of course, but also a small air pump that I could plug in to the cigarette lighter in case I needed to add air to my tires. That thing was bright red and had a short 1 foot long hose to connect to the tire. The hose was so short that if your car was stopped with the valve stem at the top of the wheel, the pump could barely touch the ground when the hose was connected. It was tiny and loud as jack hammer and took forever to pump up a tire. I also used it inflate beach balls, basketballs, air mattresses, and anything else that was too big for me to blow up manually. Using it was somewhat scary because if you ran it for more than 10 minutes, it got really hot and started to smell like something was burning. You had to let it cool before you could pick it up to put away.

I transferred that pump from one car to another as the years passed and other cars came and went. Believe it or not, it was only a few months ago, when I was transferring items from my old Prius to my new Tesla, that I threw it out. After hauling that thing around for almost 35 years, it was time to say goodbye.

Finally, An Upgrade

But I am pleased to say I now have a replacement. The Audew Portable Air Compressor is a portable 12V pump that is perfect for stowing away in your car for emergencies. Unlike my old compressor, this one features a digital readout of the pressure. You can also set it to your desired pressure and it will automatically shut off once that pressure is reached. Easy-peasy.

The unit comes with a 2 foot long hose that can connect directly to a tire valve stem and three other adapters – two for inflating things like rafts and mattresses and a needle for basketballs, volleyballs, and the like, as well as a spare fuse.

As you can see from the pictures, the unit is fairly compact. It’s also lightweight and easy to carry. The air hose is stored on one side of the unit and the 12V power cord on the other. The air hose is sufficiently long enough to connect to a tire without any issues. There are two lights on the top of the unit that can be set to either flash or remain on continuously.

I let a bit of air out of one of my tires and used the pump to bring it back up to 45 PSI. Here’s a video of it in action. The pump bounces around a bit as it runs, but that might be due to the sloped and pebbled driveway I was using it on.


The lights point straight up, which may be good as a warning sign to other drivers at night when they are set to flashing. If you need to shine them on something, the pump is light enough to pick and point the lights wherever you need, even while it is in operation.

My sole complaint is the storage mechanism for the power cord. As shipped, the cord fits nicely in the side of the pump. But I know there is no way in the world I’m going to get it to fit that nicely ever again. As you can see below, the connector end slides nicely into an interior pocket, but the cord just ends up something of a mess that you have to jam into the slot. I would like to see a couple of posts that you can wrap the cord around.

The connector stores away nicely.

The power cord, not so much.

All in all, I think the Audew 12V Air Compressor is a good deal for the price. I plan on keeping one in my frunk for emergencies.

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Model 3 Delivered!

Deliverance

Wow... The process of buying my wife's Model 3 was so much smoother and faster than what I went through buying my Model S! We pulled the trigger and ordered the car on February 19. We drove it home on March 2 - just 11 days later. And we could have actually had it as early as February 26, only seven days after ordering it, but we weren't ready that soon. (Because both of our names will be on the title, we both had to be present to pick it up and we just couldn't find a time we were both available.) Compare this with the 6 weeks it took to get my Model S!

I suspect the increased speed is because the options for the Model 3 are severely limited. Our only options were the paint color (5 choices), interior color (2 choices), wheel size (2 choices), and the enhanced autopilot feature. All cars have the enhanced AP hardware installed, so it's just a software configuration to turn it on. There is no difference in the build process. This means there are very few changes between each Model 3 produced, so they can roll off the assembly line faster.

The trade-in process was much easier as well. No photos of the trade-in were required, contrasting with my trade-in experience. As I mentioned last time, it seems how thoroughly they inspect your trade-in is dependent on how expensive your new car is.

As was the case with my Model S, the timing worked out such that we didn't need to waste money on licensing the old car for another year. My wife's registration on her Prius was set to expire 17 days after we traded it in. Unlike some states, Washington does not give you a refund if you sell or trade your vehicle before the registration expires, so this saved us $156.

I did run into one hitch. We were scheduled to pick up our car on Saturday, March 2. On March 1, we got an email asking us to log into our account and verify our pickup location and that we were trading in a car. This was the day after Elon Musk announced the $35,000 Model 3 was now on sale.

Friday morning, the Tesla website was getting hammered. I couldn't log in to verify our purchase info! After trying to about 30 minutes, I finally got logged in, only to discover my order was not listed! Considering I had just wired my deposit over the night before, that was a smidge disconcerting, to say the least.

I called Tesla and they said the site was swamped and they were having the same issues on their end accessing it. The person I spoke with said links weren't going to the correct pages and other weird behavior was happening. He confirmed he still saw my order and that they had people working to get the website fixed. He suggested I try again that evening.

After about 2 hours, I tried again and was able to get in and confirm my order.

The pick up went just as smooth as when I picked up my Model S. We signed some paperwork, handed over our old car keys and got our new Model 3 keycards. This time, the car was parked outside, instead of in the showroom like mine was. There were several other people there picking up cars, so space was limited. Since we already knew how most of the stuff worked, there was no need for anyone to give us an overview, so we got in and drove away!

Shiny!

Accessories

Once again, I ordered the all weather interior floor mats. We also bought a second high power wall charger. This will be wired in a load balanced configuration with my existing wall charger so they can share the same 100 amp circuit.

Due to the trade-in, we actually have an extra $5,000 or so we could have applied to our down payment. I didn't want to do this for fear of messing up the loan. I was afraid if the loan amount changed, even if it went down, the approval process would have to start over again. Granted, it went super fast and was completely transparent to me, but I didn't want to do anything that might delay the purchase.

The extra money will be used for the second high powered wall connector and its installation. There should be a couple thousand left over, which will go towards paying down the car loan and I'll send it in as soon as I get the electronic payment process set up.

My wife has been enjoying the last couple of days with the car. We're still configuring some of the options like the HomeLink garage door opener and connecting her phone, but it should be all set up the way she likes it in a few days!

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New Worth Update: End of February 2019

At the end of each month, I post an update of my net worth, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of February, 2019
Net Worth: $934,845
Change from last Month: +$26,297

Events Of Note Last Month:

Ava hit 10,000 miles! I still love the car!

Heading home to charge

I can't believe I've put 10,000 miles on the car in just over 5 months of ownership, but 3,200 of those miles were from our holiday road trip to Arizona.

My SQL courses on Udemy generated $62.69 of income. My courses on SkillShare, meanwhile, earned $23.59. I also received a year-end bonus from my work. After taxes, I netted $6,300.

We had some big expenses this month. Foremost, obviously, was the cost of buying a new car. The bonus really helped on that.

We also replaced both my and my wife's cell phones. We each had an old Galaxy 6S Edge that we've dropped several times and each of our phones had cracks in the screens. My wife already had her screen replaced once. Verizon has stopped issuing security and OS updates for the phones, so I felt it was time to get new ones. We went with Google Pixel 3 XLs purchased directly from Google. This ensures we will continue to receive OS upgrades in a timely manner. Of course, the week after we bought them, Google dropped the price $200. *sigh*

I did manage to find a used phone buyback company that paid us $20 for our old phones. It pays to shop around. Several companies I found either wouldn't give us anything at all or only offered $5 or so. iReTron gave us the highest price for our really old phones. Even if you only get a couple bucks, please send your old phones to a recycler rather than throwing them in the trash! They will properly dispose of the materials that do not belong in a landfill.

We also took a trip to Las Vegas. We have a gambling budget and I plan on losing half of it each trip. This time we did slightly worse than planned, losing about two-thirds of our budget. We had a good time though. Lots of good restaurant eating and we got free tickets to see the String Cheese Incident, which was... interesting. Good music and lots of good people watching!

Net Worth Update

Huge increase in our net worth this month! Most of it came from investment (stock market) growth.

January 2019

February 2019

Although it looks like our cash position took a big jump, in reality mostly it's because I moved our Tesla down payment from a brokerage account ("Investments") to our checking account ("Cash"). Given that our investment total went up $12,000 even taking into account our moving about $18,000 out of it, we had some really awesome stock market gains!

My work bonus also helped drive up our cash position.

Credit card debt looks high, but it's under control. I put the $2,500 Tesla deposit on a credit card plus we paid about $2,000 for new cell phones. (Holy crap, when did cell phones get so expensive?) We've got the money to pay those off, and I actually entered the payment in my credit union's bill pay website already, but I scheduled it 3 weeks after the charges were incurred to take maximum advantage of the float.

Next week - photos of the new Tesla!!

If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please drop me a line in the comments section!

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The One In Which I Buy A Second Tesla

In August of last year, I gave up on my dream of buying a Tesla using passive income and just bought one using a loan. I explained all the reasons why in this post, but to sum up, there were just too many negatives in waiting to get enough passive income.

Now it's time to replace my wife's car and we opted to get her a Model 3. With this purchase, I'm likely not going to post daily details of the buying process like I did the first time around. I expect the process will be fairly similar, so I'll only post when things are different than they were before.

We've decided on getting a red Model 3 with the dual motor long range battery option. That gives us the same range as the Performance version (310 miles), albeit with a slower 0 - 60 time. But my wife isn't going to be drag racing any time soon (I hope), so we're fine saving the $11,000 extra the Performance version costs. I did want the dual motor version. I've got dual motors in my Model S and it made a big difference in the recent snowy weather we had. I also think it makes sense to buy the biggest battery you can. You never know when that extra capacity will come in handy. Look at it this way: if a gas car came with a 5 gallon gas tank or a 12 gallon tank, would you ever opt for the smaller one?

We did get the Enhanced Autopilot, which is a $5,000 option. After using it during my daily commute and during our cross-country road trip, I can't imagine owning a Tesla without this.

My wife also opted for the black interior, which is standard, and the red paint, a $2,500 option.

Funny story about the color. The Model 3 comes in five colors: black, silver, blue, white, and red. Black is standard and no additional charge. Silver and blue are an extra $1,500. White is $2,000 and red is $2,500. My wife doesn't like white or blue, so those were out. (Sadly. I really like the blue and wanted my car to be that color. Alas, she liked the silver and she won on that decision, but it was ultimately the catalyst for buying the car at the time, so I can't complain.) She didn't want silver for her car because that would be the same color as mine. That left black or red.

Black tends to show dirt really bad. My mom had a black car when I was growing up and I remember having to wash it all the time. On the other hand, we were worried about red attracting police and generating more tickets. That, it turns out, is an urban myth.

My wife couldn't decide between the two colors, so on our recent trip to Las Vegas she decided to let random chance determine her choice. She played roulette. If black came up, she'd get black. If red, she'd get red. Well, she played two spins and black came up both times. However, she ended up not sticking to her rules and decided to get red after all.

Things Are Different From Last Time

Right off the bat, there are two things that are different in the buying process this time around: The federal income tax credit has been cut in half to $3,750 and the loan interest rate has gone up to 3.75%.

When I purchased my Model S, the income tax credit was more than the total interest I would pay over the life of my loan, meaning I was borrowing money for free. Things aren't quite so rosy this time around. I'm putting down about 25%, so my loan amount will be roughly $44,100. On a 72 month loan at 3.75%, I'll pay $5,216 in interest charges over the life of the loan. Subtracting the $3,750 tax credit means the true cost to me of borrowing money is $1,466.

The good news is I can still get my total interest cost down to under the tax credit amount. The monthly payment for the above loan is $685. I am currently saving $967 each month towards this car. If I apply that entire amount to my loan, which I will, my total interest paid drops to $3,552 and my loan will be paid off in four years instead of six. If I do this, the federal tax credit will more than cover my interest costs, just like it did with my car.

So, just like with my Model S, even though I am taking out a loan, the cost of borrowing money for me will be zero.

I may be able to eke some more savings out of this. I am currently paying extra on my Model S loan. That loan has a current balance of $95,365 and I'm paying 1.74% interest. The loan for the Model 3 will be $44,100 at 3.75%. I'll need to run the numbers to determine where I save the most money by making extra payments - the higher balance, lower interest loan or the lower balance, higher interest one. I'll wait until we've actually taken possession of the car and everything is finalized before making that calculation.

I did notice what appeared to be a price discrepancy on the website. The price was shown in two different locations and they were not the same:

I downloaded the actual purchase agreement and it turns out the difference is due to destination and documentation fees.

I Didn't Forget The Tax This Time

This time around, I also remembered to reserve enough cash to pay sales tax on the purchase. When I bought the Model S, I assumed the tax would be included in the loan, but it was not. This left me scrambling for some extra funds.

Another change in the buying process is you can now enter a dollar amount for your down payment. Back when I bought the Model S, you could only enter a percentage of the purchase price. This is a welcome change.

Home Prep

I will be purchasing a second high powered wall charger. I could probably get by with the one I have, as I got the longer cord and it will easily reach both cars in the garage. However, that will make charging a pain in the ass because we'd have to remember to move the plug from one car to the other. I suppose we could charge one car one day and the other the next, which might not be too bad, but still.

I already had the major electrical work of getting a new electrical panel and 100 amp circuit installed done, so I won't need to pay those costs again. I will need to spend about $500 on a second wall charger plus whatever the electrician charges to hook it up. This nice thing about the wall chargers is they can be connected together in a load balancing configuration. This allows two chargers to share the same 100 amp circuit.

One thing I am completely ignoring in these calculations is the trade-in value of my wife's car. She has a 2010 Prius with 138,000 miles on it. Honestly, it has several scratches in the paint and it's not in the best of condition. I'm planning on getting about $1,000 for it, but I'm doing my calculations assuming I get nothing. I checked the Kelly Blue Book value and, even for a car in fair condition (their lowest rating), they say it's still worth between $3,500 and $5,300. Whatever I get for it will just be icing on the cake.

Wow! While in the process of writing this post, Tesla came back with a trade-in offer of $4,750! That's kinda crazy (but I'll take it). When I traded in my old car for the Model S, I had to take at least 10 photos of the outside and inside of the car, tire treads, etc. before they valued it. I had to do none of that this time around.

I called Tesla and asked about this. I was told if the value of the purchased car is under $60,000, they don't make you do all the photos on the trade in. When you pick up your car, they just do a cursory check to make sure the car functions. Either way, I think their offers on trade-ins are really fair.

One thing I am really surprised at: we placed our order on February 19 and Tesla said we could expect the car to be delivered in February! That's only 9 days max! We'll see if that holds true.

My wife has yet to decide on a name for her car... Any suggestions?

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Tesla Winter Performance And Wheel Repair Photos

Snow Days!

On the first weekend in February, the Seattle area got hit with the biggest snowstorm they've had since I moved here last year - 8 to 10 inches. Granted, that's not much compared to what the East coast gets, but it's pretty rare for this area. School was cancelled for three days and I worked from home all week instead of just two days,

The snow itself wasn't bad. It was the icy roads that caused the problems. It was particularly bad around our house. We live near the top of a mountain with curvy roads leading down into town. Evergreen trees overhang much of the road, meaning sunlight doesn't reach the pavement to melt the ice. Driving is quite treacherous in some spots.

On the third day of staying at home, the snow appeared to be lessening and I attempted to go in to the office. I only made it about 3 miles, before deciding to not risk it and head back home. I posted a couple of the dashcam videos to my YouTube channel.

Spoiler alert: These are the most boring YouTube videos you will ever see.

This video shows just one of the hills I have to go down (and up) to leave my house. There is another way I can get into town, but that has more downhill curves, so I figured this was the safer route. In this clip, you can see one car (a Jeep Wrangler) stopped on the side of the road. I'm not sure if he tried to make it up the hill and couldn't or what. The car in front of me was a Jeep Cherokee and I waited to make sure he could get up the other side. I figured if he could, I could too.



The second clip gives you an idea of the conditions I was driving in. It was at this point, I decided to turn around and head back home. Towards the end of the clip, you can see the snow being blown along the ground, which gives you an idea of the wind.




This last clip is me going back down the dip I just went through. It's only about 4 minutes after the first video and you can see in that short time, a van has spun out and gotten stuck. I'm not sure if the car in front of the van also got stuck or had stopped to help the driver of the van.




All in all, I actually felt pretty safe. The Model S is heavy and only slipped slightly once, as I passed the van in the last video. I had my foot lightly on the brakes. As soon as I felt my tires slipping, I took my foot off the brake and let the regenerative braking do all the slowing for me.

Ice Tests

Because I grew up in Southern California and lived many years in Arizona, I'm pretty inexperienced with driving in the snow, so I was going very slow and being extra cautious. The next day, the street in front of my house had a solid ice patch about 100 feet long. There was no one around and it was a straight stretch of road, so I decided to see how the computerized car handled on ice.

I drove slowly onto the ice patch and then stomped on the accelerator for about a half a second. I felt the wheels start to slip, then the computer kicked in and limited power, causing the slipping to stop. The car felt under control at all times.

I then did the opposite test - I drove onto the ice and braked hard. The ABS engaged and I felt the pedal pulse under my foot as the car came to a smooth stop without sliding. This experience wasn't that new to me, as I have experienced ABS in action on other cars.

The car handled really well on ice. Now, I was going in a straight line, so the chances of me spinning out of control were pretty slim. Still, it was good to get a little bit of experience of the car's traction control systems in action.

Cold Weather Battery Life

I typically charge my car every day or two, so I don't worry too much about battery drain due to really cold weather. However, last weekend, we took a weekend trip to Las Vegas and I was a little concerned about how much energy the car would lose while it was parked outside in freezing weather at the airport. The Seattle area had just had 2 weeks of unusually heavy snow and sub-freezing temperatures and I was worried there might be more snow and freezing rain while we were gone.

I did some Googling to see what other owners have experienced while parking in cold weather and found this article on Teslarati. The owner parked his Model S at the airport for two and a half days at an average temperature of 16 degrees Fahrenheit. He lost about 2.3% of rated range per day - roughly 14 miles total.

Based on that, I figured I would be OK leaving my car at the airport for 4 days. Using his recommendation of 3% loss per day, as opposed to Tesla's 1% per day recommendation, I figured I would lose 12% of my charge while out of town. To be safe, before I left for the airport, I charged to 100%.

When I arrived at the airport, my battery was at 79% and the temperature was 38 degrees F. The article linked to above mentioned putting the car into energy saving mode to help conserve power. I looked for this option on my car, but couldn't find it. A quick check of the owner's manual told me that, while this used to be an option on early versions of the Model S, the functionality has now been automated, so there was no longer an option for users to enable or disable it. (On a side note, I love that the owner's manual is electronic and can be searched from the display screen.)

We left Thursday afternoon and returned Monday afternoon. Here are the high and low temperatures while we were away:

Day	High (°F)	Low (°F)
Thursday		37
Friday	46	35
Saturday	44	33
Sunday	44	32
Monday	44

When I returned, my battery was at 74%. That 5% loss represents roughly 15 miles of rated range lost over almost exactly 4 days. That is more in line with Tesla's 1% per day guideline than the 2.3% the Teslarati article author experienced. Granted, the temperatures for my test were about 15 degrees warmer than he experienced, but all in all, I was happy the loss was less than I expected.

Just like my cross-country road trip eliminated any last vestiges of range anxiety, this test eliminated my fear of losing charge while parked out in the cold.

Wheel Repair

As I mentioned before, I had some curb rash on one of my tires repaired. I'm really pleased with the results. I can't even tell where the work was done!

Before 1

Before 2

After 1

After 2

I spoke with the person who made the repairs and he said they first grind down and buff out any damage to the metal of the wheel. He said not enough metal is removed to affect the wheel's balance and my particular mark was so slight, barely any metal was removed. Then they mix matching paint, apply it and feather it in with the rest of the wheel, then dry it. They actually get the exact color from Tesla, so the match is perfect.

Now I just have to keep from hitting another curb!

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