Found Money

A month or so ago, I was walking into a restaurant to pick up some takeout, and I saw a dime on the ground. It was early in the morning, and the sun made the dime shine brightly, like some precious stone. I paused, to confirm: yes, 10 cents, right there on the ground. I hurried into the restaurant, leaving the dime where I found it.

The dime didn't leave my thoughts however. I remember as a kid how precious spare change was. A dime could get you a piece of Bazooka gum. If you added up those dimes, you could convert them to quarters, and a quarter was good for one game at the stand-up arcade machine at the grocery.

It's perhaps some measure of time or maturity that a dime is fairly meaningless to me now. I remember a conversation with someone fretting about some purchase. He wanted to get it right because he could afford a $100 mistake, but not a $1000 mistake. I remembered that conversational snippet, thinking that I could safely afford to leave ten cents on the ground.

And yet the dime stayed on my mind when I got home. It would have been found money if I had picked it up, and put it into our coin jar, the one that we empty into the Coinstar every few months. A penny saved is a penny earned. Spending is quick, savings is slow. Save for a rainy day. It takes money to make money. You know the sayings.

My mother told me recently about how banks in the 1970s used to offer Christmas Clubs. These were short-term savings accounts to which you could direct some money on a weekly basis. This account would earn a little interest. When the holidays arrived, you had extra spending money. Seeing how she saved helped shape my attitude.

Later, after college, I was fortunate to attend a financial planning presentation conducted by the father of a co-worker. It was eye-opening, and it led me to fully appreciate mutual funds, stocks, 401(k) plans, and dollar-cost averaging. My money attitude became more refined. On top of "own, save, avoid debt", I added "make money work."

Some time around seeing that dime on the ground, my wife and I were cleaning out a drawer and found a gift card. We had bought something a while back, and received a $100 gift card reward. We got excited, thinking about some free takeout. However, when we checked online, the gift card had expired! "Oh well," we said. A $100 mistake. Maybe I should have picked up that dime.

 

Photo Credit: Paul Albertella

Directions II

A few weeks ago, I was at a stop light, take out food on the passenger seat. A pickup truck pulled up to my right, and the driver honked his horn. I pressed the button to lower the passenger side window. The driver, an older looking man wearing a cap, leaned out his window. "Do you know how to get to Route 495?"

Route 495 is an outer ring beltway surrounding Greater Boston. From where we were, the most direct route to Route 495 is North. But, since Route 495 is a half-circle around outer Boston, once you reach it you could either go North (Chelmsford, Lowell, Andover, Lawrence) or South (Marlborough, Hopkinton, Franklin).

"Yeah, 495," I began. "Just get on Route 3, which is straight ahead. Take it North, and you'll get to 495 in 10-15 minutes." He squinted at me, and said "Route 3?" I pointed straight ahead, and said "It's after the next light, straight." He nodded. "OK. Thanks!" As if on cue, the light changed. I turned left, and he went straight.

I drove home down Middlesex Turnpike, pondering our exchange. I thought to myself: "Who drives around without a GPS these days?" But then I remembered my own GPS-free drives. On those drives, if time is short and I can't work out where I am, I'll open the phone and have it rescue me. "Navigate home," I'll tell it, and soon I'm told where to turn.

(The last time I wrote about giving directions was December 2001!)

COVID-19: One Year Later

It feels like forever-ago that we all first heard of COVID-19. As I posted back in March 2020, I was a skeptic in the beginning. I reread some of my diary entries from that time, and I laugh about musings like this (from March 10 2020): "So help me, if we're still talking about the [beep] Corona Virus [in November], I'll STICK MY [redacted]." You get the picture.

Now the vaccine is imminent for my age group in my state, so the end feels close. However, what awaits on the other side is the new normal that this virus has forged. Here's what the new normal means for me:

• Crowds. I am less social than when I was younger, but with mandates to stay at home, and avoid large gatherings, I realize how easily I used to be in a crowd. Now, being in a small group when I'm picking up take-out food feels fraught, never mind being in a restaurant or an airplane. It'll take some time to make crowds familiar again.

• Keeping in touch. I reached out to more people via phone, FaceTime, TXTs and email than I had before. Nothing major, just a simple greeting and hello. Everyone's lives were upended in one way, shape, or form, and touching base to hear different stories and perspectives helped. I'll be in touch more I think!

• Wearing masks. I have become accustomed to wearing my mask, of late even double-masking. I have not had a cold or a runny nose since March of last year, which is remarkable, though avoiding people is probably the reason for that. Once things open up, I probably will still bring one to wear if I want to cut down risks from airborne droplets.

• Sports Television. I experienced many evenings when I didn't even turn on the TV, mostly because my usual television consumption was sports. When sports shut down last year, I switched to video games. When sports came back, it looked strange. Things have gotten better since the World Series, through the Super Bowl. More sports TV is in the future for me.

• The Library. What have I been doing instead of watching TV? I've been diving into the local library. Our library has plenty of online resources that I explored including streaming music, online books and magazines. I also attended a handful of talks hosted on Zoom. I'll continue maximizing the library after discovering all it has to offer.

• Work. Throughout my career I've met many co-workers who worked out of satellite offices (aka a home office). They were usually salespeople or consultants. How did they get things done, I wondered. I've always worked at a company's main office. Now I know how remote workers work. For office workers like me, work has experienced a seismic shift. I anxiously await the new normal in this front.

The past year has been suffused with a vague sense of loss, even among the fortunate, or the nay-sayers. The past year was off in some way. We've all had to adjust. I can only hope I'm not talking or thinking about COVID one year from now!

Picture Credit: Chad Davis

A Business Anniversary

Over the weekend, I received a Thank You card from my bank. It was one of those form letters to say 'thank you for your business', but at the bottom was this in handwriting: "Thank you for trusting us for the past thirty years." Thirty years? Really?

When I first moved to Boston in January 1991, I knew one of the very first things I needed to do was get a bank account. Some of my co-workers at the time recommended Cambridge Trust, because it was near the office. Back then it was next to the train station (Kendall Square, inbound) that I used to go home. If I close my eyes, I think I can remember the tellers there, back when everyone used to regularly step foot inside banks to make deposits.

I opened a safe deposit box with Cambridge Trust a few years later, in their Harvard Square location. I stuffed the box with my "important papers". Mostly I liked the ritual of visiting the box inside that large musty safe. The attendant would usher you into a little room so you could examine the box contents. When I was done, I'd stroll around Harvard for a bit, feeling grown-up.

Thirty years is a long time. I've worked for seven companies and I've given all of them the same bank account and routing number. (Three of those companies have since dissolved.) I've stuck with the same design for my checkbook even though practically every financial transaction is electronic now. A lot has changed in thirty years, so it's nice to be reminded when things stay the same.

My 2020 Books and Movies

In 2020, I watched 48 movies (Letterboxd) and 18 books (Goodreads).

My favorite book last year was Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel (2014). It's about the world after a deadly virus wipes out nearly all of the population. How does a society survive? How does a society rebuild? A fitting fiction for 2020. Also check out: The Three-Body Problem.

My favorite movie last year was American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood (2014). This is a modern war movie with high patriotism on display, but Cooper's powerful and poignant depiction of Chris Kyle sends it to the top for me. Also check out: Safety Not Guaranteed.

COVID-19: Working from Home

When the company I work for closed its office for COVID, it was meant to be temporary. In March, we were told that the stay-at-home order would be for only a few weeks. A few weeks became a few months. Then it became the new normal. As of now, our current return-to-office date is July 2021.

It took a while to get used to working at home full time. In the beginning, I worked off of my laptop, at the dining room table. Then I moved to a side table/bookshelf, on which we displayed potted plants. Around July, I made arrangements to retrieve the full-size monitor from my desk at the office. That made a big difference.

When my company extended our stay-at-home policy in the Summer, I bought a little desk. This helped greatly, because although the bookshelf was a flat surface, I had to sit on the floor to use it. The little desk was foldable, so I could move it around. We experimented with a few locations. I first worked out of an unused hallway. When my daughter went to college, I moved it into her room. Today I work out of the master bedroom.

All throughout these changes I had regular meetings and calls which took place over Zoom and Slack. I first took these calls in my closet, valuing sound and reception. Then I became mildly obsessed with my video calls' background and lighting. My tips: 1) sit next to window, 2) stare at the camera, not your thumbnail, and 3) instead of playing with the 'mute' button, just leave it on.

Other high-tech companies have begun to embrace an all-remote model, though I'm not sure I'm ready. One reason: my wife already works from home for an all-remote company. Her normal is me being in an office all day. Another reason: I like my office campus amenities, which include free bicycles, a table-top multi-game arcade machine, and a half basketball court.

It'll be interesting to see where I'm working 365 days from now, but one thing was proven this year: my office is truly wherever my work laptop is open and plugged in.

With the Beatles

A few years ago, I requested and received The Beatles Anthology, a DVD set containing a television documentary about The Beatles that was broadcast in the US in 1995.

Only recently have I started watching this documentary. So far, it is fantastic. I'm through the first three parts, taking me up to 1964 of their history. The Beatles have returned from conquering America, and released their movie, A Hard Day's Night. The documentary contains footage from television appearances, concerts, and old interviews. From their early days in Germany, to their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, it's a marvel seeing the young John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. In the documentary they're playful, sardonic and seemingly well grounded. There is no interviewer or host or voice-over narration, which somehow makes the footage more immersive.

Growing up, we had the red and blue Beatles compilation albums on vinyl. It would have been something my parents bought as I don't remember clamoring for it. And while I no longer remember the exact moment I heard about The Beatles, I can say with good certainty that the radio brought them to my attention. Radio was still king when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s.

My appreciation of them has only grown over the years. I have a box set of their music, and I made it a project to listen to every album. Their songs, progressively complex as they grew, are still catchy, potent and accessible. It's effortless to dip into their music. My favorite album of theirs (and a Top Five album of all time) is "Revolver", released in 1966 and featuring "Eleanor Rigby", "Yellow Submarine", and "Taxman".

I'm fond of saying that The Beatles are firmly in humanity's subconsciousness. Their music will be played for centuries, passed on from generation to generation, and constantly interpreted and performed by musicians. Paul McCartney was recently interviewed and when asked about The Beatles he said (in a massive understatement) "It was a great group." Indeed!