Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Eat the rich

Someone on Bring a Trailer just paid a hair over $200,000 for an Acura Integra Type R with 4,800 miles. Plus buyer’s premium to BaT, and the relevant taxes and registration. Though surely someone with this much coin to drop on essentially a toy would no doubt have a Montana LLC to register it under. No taxes, baby!

Needless to say, that is a metric ton of money for that car. Even the most shortest of wheel-base early model Porsche 911s do not transact for this much. Caveats, of course: this looks to be the most pristine sample of the Integra Type R outside of the one tucked away in the Honda museum. The high price is also due to a bidding war between two rich guys desperate to own this legendary piece of Japanese automotive history.

Bottom line, an item is worth whatever someone is willing to pay. The only way to measure whether or not $200K for an Integra Type R is “worth it” is to have another auction with an almost exact copy of this car. Except you can’t. Honda did not make that many Integra Type Rs to begin with. I bet there isn’t another one of these with this immaculate of provenance.

So we will never know. Us peasants can only dream of dropping $200,000 on a static toy like it’s nothing. You can cut three zeros to that figure and I’d still agonize over whether or not $200 for a pair shoes is worth it. Heck, I’m still teeter-tottering on spending $40,000+ on a second car. $200,000 on something with only artistic value! The new owner won’t ever put miles on this Type R: each additional mile is a hatchet to the car’s value.

(Tongue firmly in cheek) I can understand why a subset of folks want to “eat the rich.” When you see such figures spent on cars like it’s nothing, or paying $100,000 markup on a 992 GT3 that already starts at $250,000, you realize there’s a whole entire separate world of car enthusiasm that you have no access to. Let envy get the best of you, and yeah, you’d want to “eat the rich”, too.

Staying ahead

I was disappointed to see the Greek yogurt - my go-to breakfast food of choice - increasing in price at my local Whole Foods. The staples are getting pricier again! At least my staples are. I’m still smarting over the price of coffee jumping 20% thanks to President Trump’s tariffs. Priced out of a coffee? That would take a whole lot.

I don’t expect rich people to have scars from the high inflation of the post-COVID period. Which is why we shouldn’t expect the Trump administration to back down from import tariffs. These people understand fully well that it’s the American customers paying the tax. They’re just all wealthy enough to absorb it without care.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are simply, hopelessly, trying to stay ahead of inflation. Especially during this time of uncertain labor markets (unless you are a genius A.I. engineer). My place of employment is going through a budget contraction. I’m lucky to have a job, never mind any hope of yearly salary increases to keep up with inflation.

That means the purchasing power of my current salary will continue to decrease. To combat it means having to let go of some other spending. The aforementioned pricier Greek Yogurt? Well, I typically buy a can of something to drink whenever I enter Whole Foods. I gave that up soon as I saw the 50 cent increase. I have water at home, thank you.

Similar choices who have to made in the future, so long as inflation continues, and my income remains static. Perhaps Progressive will raise the insurance on my car again. To compensate, the Disney Plus subscription will have to go.

Not an emergency

I think the holy grail of personal finance is having an emergency fund. Obviously that comes after spending less than you make, and paying off whatever debts existing. But the emergency fund, at least for me, has always been a difficult nut to crack. Six months’ (or one year) worth of spending saved in a savings account. That’s a tall order, because it’s a lot of money, even for a miserly person like myself.

It’s easy on paper: I already spend less than I make, so it’s just a matter of slow accumulation. But something always interrupts the process. An errant rock flung into the windshield of the car means a thousand dollar replacement. It’s not always something unfortunate! Earlier this April, I unloaded my entire emergency fund into the stock market because it experienced a 20% correction. The perfect time to buy more. That also means I had to start from scratch vis a vis the emergency fund.

Maybe we’re being too strict about it? In some ways my investments can be an emergency fund. (Some would argue I shouldn’t have investments - that aren’t tax advantaged - before an emergency fund?) It’s not as liquid as a savings account, sure, but there are other monetary vehicles to use in an actual emergency. The first thing to come out of the wallet is the credit card anyways. That gives at least a few weeks lead time to then liquidate the necessary investment to pay for that spend.

It’s not ideal for sure, because any time you sell securities, you have to pay capital gains tax.

The safety and stress-reduction in having a proper emergency fund is undeniable. In fact, it can feel eerie because it leaves you with nothing to worry about financially. No debts, investments are automatic, and there’s enough in savings to sustain me for half a year, should I lose my job. Peace of mind can be surprisingly disconcerting when you first shut off the noise completely.

Subsidized lifestyle

Word on the street is the Chase Sapphire Reserve card - the preeminent travel rewards credit card - is increasing its annual fee. What started at an already hefty $450 per year is now a whopping $795 per annum. COVID-era inflation comes for everything eventually.

Of course, Chase has all sorts of new card benefits to potentially offset the price jump. But it’s all predicated on one thing: cardholder spending. This is a classic case of spending money to save money, which only works if that money is what you would have spent regardless. If you wouldn’t have in the first place, then you really shouldn’t have.

I did sign up for the Sapphire Reserve when it was first introduced many moons ago. The signup bonus was super generous: 100,000 points on a $4,000 initial spend (worth a thousand dollars in cash value.) Coupled with the $300 travel credit per year, the true annual fee was only $150 at the time. As an annually traveler, it was not difficult to for me to “break even”, so to speak.

That 100,000 bonus point allowed me to fly first class to Korea in 2017. Truly living the champagne life on a beer budget. But that was during a time when lots of capital was going toward subsidizing a rich person’s lifestyle for the mundane middle class earner. Surely you remember: UBER rides used to be cheap, thanks to the company continuously burning through VC cash to hide the real cost.

Did we honestly think we can afford to have our burritos hand delivered from the taqueria for only a few bucks? DoorDash fees used to be not so exorbitant, too.

Well, those sweet subsidized days are over. The premium travel reward credit cards are now only for those who can comfortably spend the high amount necessary to reap the rewards. Good news for me, I cancelled my Sapphire Reserve soon as COVID prevented any sorts of traveling.

What's the deal with ballpark food?

Honestly, why is it so expensive?

I mean, it’s always been expensive. But with the inflation of the past few years, it has gotten utterly insane.

For the first time this baseball season, I attended a Giants game in person. While game tickets have largely remained the same price due to the team sucking for the past years, the food prices at Oracle Park have gone straight up the scale. I can’t believe I paid nearly 10 dollars for a small hot dog - way smaller than what you can get at Costco for $1.50.

And my ballpark favorite - the chicken tenders and fries - is nearly $19! People seem happy to pay the high prices, too. The lines for food were long and plentiful. Maybe I’m the only poor amongst a sea of high-income earners. Probably true! The median individual income for San Francisco (2023 data) is estimated to be around $90,000 (Thanks, ChatGPT). I make less than that, so that means more than 50% percent of the population makes more than me. (I paid attention in math class.)

Anyways, because I seldom go to the ballparks these days (back in the early 2010s, I’d go to dozens every season), splurging that amount on food is no big deal. It’s all psychological, you know? Because I’ve experienced the food price being almost half of its current levels, it’s very painful to pay for that. My anchor point is way different than someone who’s never been to the ballpark and seeing the price list for the first time.

As I’ve many times before, I don’t adjust for inflation.

Worthless to anyone but me

An email got through the spam filters to offer me an opportunity to sell this very web domain. That is silly, because I’m pretty sure I am the only Healy Chen on this planet. Healychen.com is absolutely worthless to anyone but me. Not even a nice try. Just stop it.

For the record: I am wiling to let this domain for a few thousand bucks. No sane person should want to buy it for that money, however. But I’ll take it if offered!

You guys remember back in early April when the stock market retreated about 20% from all time highs thanks to President Trump’s tariff plans? Man have we recovered quickly. The markets are hovering near all time highs again.

What does that mean? I hope you bought during the dip, because I certainly did. And that chunk of cash is absolutely hard-carrying my portfolio performance for 2025. If anything, I now have regrets that I didn’t buy more.

Of course, we should not time the market, because most of us will fail. The reason I bought during this recent dip is my investment time horizon is long. It’s not a get rich quick scheme, it’s a get rich long scheme. I plan to hold stocks until well into retirement, so when the market offers a 20% discount to buy more, heck yeah I am taking that advantage.

In the (very) long run, markets will always go up. Let’s say for the sake of argument the American stock market doesn’t grow any (or even declines) over the next few decades. If that were to be true, there would be way greater things to worry about than simply our investments. See: Argentina.

I am priced out

I was walking through my local Target store when I noticed a 20 ounce bottle of Coke now costs $3.19? And that is before tax! I am old enough to remember when 20 ounce bottles were 99 cent. A dollar bill at the vending machine was enough to obey your thirst.

Talk about things I am priced out of. Buying soda drinks at a store is one of them. Filtered water is just fine, thank you very much.

But then people would argue that saving that three dollar on a daily soda (or four dollars on a daily coffee) is not going to get me to buying a house. The math on that in the San Francisco Bay Area is indeed tragic. Those people are right: keeping that $3 in my pocket is merely pissing in the wind of houses that start at a million dollars.

A better use for that $3 is to buy the lottery. At least there’s a infinitesimal chance!

In the grand scheme of things, buying a soda bottle here and there is not going to monetarily affect me one bit. But it’s the mindset that counts here. We can all agree that spending money is easy. The American credit system is fantastic in that regard. Therefore I think we have to train our resistance muscles (not to be confused with resisting a certain presidency). The calculus has to be more than: can I afford it, if yes, then buy!

Saying no to the $4 coffee helps me say no to a new iPad Air I’ve been eyeing, or a newer laptop to replace this “aging” M1 MacBook Pro. Those are the money decisions that really slice chunks: the hundreds and thousands of dollars at a time. Money that can otherwise grow significantly if put to proper investing.

If I really want to drink soda, I’d go buy in bulk from Costco.