Lazy Man and Money

Betting on Oil and Treasuries

Lazy Man — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 14:08:35 +0000

It’s been a busy time at the Lazy Man household with the kids back in school. With 20 years of personal finance under my belt and a blog that loses money, my interest in writing has been at an all-time low. I’m still doing the things that I’ve done before, following the financial news, and last week a couple of headlines caught my attention.

1. Oil, Oil, Oil

The first was that oil was spiking again. Headlines also had diesel fuel break through some record numbers. News came out, that a key pipeline was badly damaged. Satellite pictures backed it up. Some “experts” (who knows if these are experts or not) were quoted as saying that it might take weeks to repair. The U.S. Government said it would take only a couple of days to repair it, with little disruption.

I’m not a big believer in the U.S. Government statements nowadays. They use some weird Orwellian Doublespeak to label any bad news as “FAKE NEWS” (often in screaming capitals like that). With that in mind, and seeing the satellite pictures and experts’ predictions, I figured oil was on its way up. In fact, it had already gone up, because the market moves quickly. I thought it would keep going up over the next couple of months as supply was cut. I had also seen news that many countries (including the US and China) have their lowest oil reserves in many years.

So I decided to invest a little money and buy the United States Oil Fund LP (ticker: USO). I had bought it before and pretty much always lost money, even with dollar-cost averaging. I didn’t realize that it uses futures contracts and other complex things. Without getting into the weeds here, it seems like the kind of thing that you don’t want to hold too long. In fact, when I bought it, my broker made me check a box saying, “Are you sure you want to do something this stupid?” (Okay, it didn’t put it quite like that.)

I clicked the box and bought, and over the next three days the price of oil dropped, and I lost 8.5%. Now you know why I used the word “Betting” in the title. Fortunately, I knew better than to buy a lot, and the loss was less than $300 in a retirement account that I won’t use for at least 9 more years.

2. Treasury Bills Reach 19 Year High

You may have noticed that I never write treasury bills. Or maybe you didn’t notice because I haven’t written about them. I don’t write about them because I don’t really know that market well. I invest more in stocks and prefer the opportunity for big growth. That’s worked out very well over the years.

Fortunately, I have a friend who I like to call ChatGPT. This friend seems to have all the world’s knowledge and is only too happy to teach me just about anything. When I see something reaching 19-year highs, I think to myself, “What goes up must come down.” Of course, that’s not always true – look at the stock markets over any reasonable number of years. In this case, the Treasury yields were at these highs.

When I asked ChatGPT how to take advantage of these high yields, it put together a $100,000 portfolio with various things I could buy. I wasn’t about to invest $100,000, but one thing that caught my eye was the Vanguard Extended Duration Treasury ETF (ticker:EDV). I like investing in ETFs because I’m familiar with how to do that with my brokerage.

You’ll want to do your own research if you go down this route, because my friend ChatGPT isn’t perfect – and my explanation of it is even less so. In any case, when interest rates go up, EDV goes down. Interest rates are fairly high and seem to be going up, so EDV is down nearly 11% this year and 58% over the last five years. Interest rates were very low in the COVID recovery and got raised to reel in inflation. That’s what’s going on now, except rates are starting high, and Trump is pressuring them to stay low despite inflation issues.

EDV caught my attention because it’s paying around 5.4% interest, and the price itself has the potential to go up a lot IF (and this is a HUGE IF) interest rates go down. I don’t expect interest rates to go down any time soon, but in the next 3-5 years? I can see that. Of course, I would have said that a few years ago and have been wrong so far. In any case, this “bet” is up 2.5% (or about $100) since I bought it.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know if you caught my warnings above, but this isn’t for the typical investor. These could backfire spectacularly. That’s why I invested a relatively small amount of my portfolio. Nonetheless, if you want to learn something, there’s nothing like having some skin in the game.

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My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (August 2026)

Lazy Man — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 18:12:11 +0000

Every month since 2017, I have written an article about the slow and steady growth of our passive income. Several years ago, I added some of my annual goals (New Year’s Resolutions) in a separate article. In the last couple of years, I’ve combined them into one monthly post.

I often use this space to look back over the last month and highlight what’s been going on with the family. The big event for us was travel to Italy and, accidentally, Switzerland. I saved that for the travel section below.

Goals for 2026

I put all my goals in a spreadsheet that I ~~stole~~ borrowed from Retire By 40. Here’s what it looks like for this year:

(Click it, and it will open in a new tab.)

Steal this idea and make it yours. I always make a bunch of goals that I know I’ll never complete. It gives me the flexibility to fail on some things as long as I’m making progress on others. Most people would do the opposite, focus on fewer goals, and aim to get them all done. It’s much less overwhelming. I’m weird.

Passive Income

My Passive Income Pyramid\

Dog Boarding/Website Income

I used to have three side hustles with a passive component: a dog-sitting business, this blog, and a website I manage for a non-profit. They all required some active work. However, I could do them all even while working a full-time job. I considered those to be partially passive income. It’s impossible to make money with a blog nowadays, and the retainer from a non-profit website is minimal. It is best to consider this almost all dog-boarding income.

This section is the least passive of all incomes. I only count this as 50% passive. I can make money dog boarding while doing other jobs (or not working at all). It does require some work, though.

Dog business in August was very, very good – especially since I missed the last third of the month. That’s typical for summer in Newport, RI, which is a huge seasonal tourist town. September is still pretty busy with Labor Day, and then it drops off for the shoulder season and the off-season.

July’s Dog/Web Real Income was $5,217.96. August’s Dog/Web Real Income was $4,107.93. I’ll take that for only 20 days of the month, any time.

Rental Property Income

We have two rental properties. Both still have mortgages, and the rental income is around $1,100/mo. One mortgage is due in 2027. The other one is a small loan, but it has another 15 years remaining. If they were both mortgage-free, we’d make around $32,000 a year.

For the purpose of this report, I calculate the rental property income using the following formula:

(Rents After Estimated Expenses)\* (Equity Percentage Owned) = Income)

The idea is that we only own a percentage of the equity, so I only count that percentage of the rent after expenses. When we own everything, the equity percentage will be 100%, and it will be the entire rent after expenses.

Estimated expenses are insurance, property taxes, condo fees, and estimated condo maintenance. Equity Percentage Owned (EPO) is our total equity divided by the property value on Zillow. (Zillow is very accurate for our condos.) When the mortgages are paid off, we’ll have an EPO of 100% and be able to keep all the rent after estimated expenses.

In August, Zillow estimated our properties were $4,000 less than the month before. However, we paid off $1,000 in mortgage principal. That meant our EPO went from owning 85.47% of our properties to 85.52%. The rents after expenses are $2,980/month. Using the equation above, our estimated income from this area would be $2,548. That’s about $30 more than June. The gain came from a lease renewal with raised rents.

Managing rental properties requires some work – a few days a year. For this reason, I only count 80% of this number as passive income. Our newest tenant has had a lot of needs, but they are mostly legitimate. I’m hoping to sell a property next summer. It is way under market, and we know the tenant who has been there for years can’t afford market rates. Even at market rates, we can probably do better in some other assets.

Dividend Income

My wife and I have been nearly maxing out our retirement accounts for a couple of decades. The markets have done very well over that time. Overall, we have a nice retirement nest egg.

I don’t track dividends from all the accounts. I’m doing well to get my wife to log in to her TSP (the government’s version of a 401 (k)) account and give me the totals. I simply assume we could invest the money into an ETF that pays a 2.5% dividend. For example, HDV, a high-dividend ETF, currently yields 3.42%.

I also have profit-sharing income with a private company in which I own a small stake. I get a check each month that behaves like a dividend – it’s just taxed a little differently.

August’s estimated dividend income was $6,504. In July, it was $6498. That’s barely a nudge, but it’s fine because the markets have gone up forever. For a while, I had been putting more and more money into bonds and treasuries to try to protect these gains. Recently, I’ve started to redeploy those into more risky assets that have the potential to gain more. I’m only doing it in small amounts, though. I like risk, and it feels like there are opportunities for some stocks (such as quantum computing) to grow a lot.

Unlike the previous two sections, this income is 100% passive. For this reason, I don’t have to adjust the numbers.

Total Passive Income

Dog/Etc.: $4,108 – Adjusted to $2,054
Rentals: $2,548 – Adjusted to $2,038
Dividends: $6,504 – Remains at $6,504

Dogs/Etc – Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line

Total Adjusted Passive Income: $10,596

That’s the fourth-highest month of all time.

Here’s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track:

The blue line represents the monthly total adjusted passive income. The red line represents the 12-month average. This removes some of the seasonality of dog boarding. I focus on the red line more.

In August, the red line went up a tiny bit. Dog boarding has made a little less money, but investments continue to grow. Those most passive components (real estate and dividends) totaled $8,542.40. This is a new record… the fifth straight month of new records. It would be around $102,000 of annual income in real estate and dividends.

My wife continues to work as well, though she’s seriously considering retirement for the 34th time. I’m encouraging her, but it hasn’t worked. She has 27 years of high-level military service, which yields a vested pension that essentially doubles all this passive income. I also earn some income that falls outside of the areas listed above. It’s not passive, so I don’t mention it here.

I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth gained 0.51% over the last month. For the whole year, our net worth is up 10.21%.

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($80,000)

My income has been dropping over the last few years, going from $98K to 488K to $81K. Last year, I stayed mostly the same at $80,593.

Now that I’m 50 and we’ve got a good set of assets, I don’t feel the need to push this. Income feels more for self-worth than anything else, I guess.

In August, I made $6,107. For the year, I’m at $40,190. That pace would bring me to around $60K. I’m going to fall short of my goal, but it’s moving in the right direction.

Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations

In August, I continued to work on getting some shirts made to advertise. In addition, I also tried to get some notepads (for personalized thank-you messages) and some stickers (to go with take-home bags as a tiny gift).

Unfortunately, with the travel at the end of the month, it hasn’t advanced.

AI Everything

In August, I started working on my AI Computer.

Long story, but I hadn’t gotten to doing any AI with it yet. (Spoiler note for September, I’ve been doing every.

Health

I got old and turned 50 several months ago. For my health goals, I’m mostly using this separate article about health goals from last year.

Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat\*2) mass >60)

My goal this year is to add lean mass while losing fat mass. It took me a long time to figure out how to create a formula for that. I settled on the formula: lean mass minus 2×fat mass. This penalizes me if I add weight that’s a bunch of fat.

My weight for August averaged 179.8 lbs. My body fat averaged 25.2%, which is slowly not moving in the right direction. I didn’t get a lot of measurements in due to travel. That means my lean mass was 135 and my fat mass was 44.8 lbs. This is a score of 45.5 using my formula (higher is better). That’s very narrowly the lowest score of the year.

In 2025, I averaged 55.9 and started the year at 52.6. This isn’t going well. I’ve got another spoiler for September. I got a gym membership, and I’ve been regularly going (albeit for a small sample size of 4 times in 8 days).

My goal of getting this number to 60 could be achieved by losing 169 lbs and having a body fat of 21.5%. I’ve got a ways to go, and it’s not looking great.

Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)

I stopped tracking body and brain points a couple of months ago. I still think it’s a good idea, but I’ve got too much other stuff going on.

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

Last year, I found that I had high blood pressure. I was measuring it daily and putting it in a spreadsheet. Now I have this blood pressure monitor and it tracks it over time in an app, which is much better. (That link to the device is an affiliate link, by the way.)

Last month, I realized that I take my blood pressure first thing in the morning… and then take my blood pressure pill. My thinking was that my blood pressure should be lowest in the morning and not impacted by any kind of daily stress. However, I realized it’s also the longest possible amount of time since I’ve taken the medication. I’ve started to try to remember to take it around 2 PM or so.

That hasn’t gone so well. I took my blood pressure only four times last month. Part of that was due to 12 days of travel, but I still should have measured it more.

On the bright side, it was 126/79! That’s the best it’s been in over a year. I think I’m in a good place with this.

Doctor Appointments

I had an annual physical. I’ve been reading a lot about testosterone diminishing with age. Since I’m 50 now, I asked to have mine measured. When the bloodwork came back, it was very much in the middle of where it should be.

Longevity Research (40 hours)

I didn’t do anything with Longevity research in the last month.

Hobbies

Most of my hobbies are related to AI nowadays. I can come up with infinite ideas and go down the rabbit hole. I already wrote what I’m doing with AI, so I won’t repeat that here.

Here are a couple of others that I am working on.

3D Printing

The kids haven’t printed anything with the 3D printer all summer. Last month, I pointed it out, and they said that the thing they wanted to print wasn’t in the right library or something. They never asked me about it.

I told them that they should be making their own 3D designs from TinkerCAD anyway. They’ve used it before, but that did little more than create another barrier to printing.

Play a modern song on a ukulele

Same as last month, “I got out the book to learn the ukulele and put it in my view. Unfortunately, that hasn’t motivated me to start. The time that I would put into that is going to AI stuff.”

Family

Declutter and Organize House

We didn’t do too much to declutter or organize in August. However, we made progress on two major house renovations:

1\. Our central air compressor has died after 12 years. They really should last much, much longer for the huge amount of money we paid. I got a quote on a new one from a company whose owner I know well. However, now that it’s almost fall, I’m going to delay the work a little bit to match their quiet season.

2\. Our basement is getting some puddles leaking about half the time in the rain. We can mop it up with about a half dozen towels, then wash and dry them. However, that’s a temporary fix, so we got some basement experts, and they found a lot of issues. I guess sump pumps are another of the things that should be checked annually. It came with the house, and we never had it looked at.

We got quotes for each of them within 24 hours. We’re probably looking at $40,000. Ouch!

I’m going to have to create a master list of things that need to be checked and put it on the calendar. This seems like the kind of thing that AI can help me out with.

I’m going to count these as organizing the house, because it’s significant adulting.

Travel

We went on our Tuscany vacation!

We flew into Florence and had a couple of days. We did all the Ninja Turtle stuff. We saw Michelangelo’s David and a couple of other sculptures. We even saw one of his rare paintings. I learned that he HATED painting. He only did the Sistine Chapel because the Pope coerced him. We also saw paintings by Donatello, Rafael, and Leonardo. We paid for a private tour, which was great, because we learned a lot more than we would have if we had just done the Uffizi museum on our own. We also did Galileo’s museum, because I’m more of a science guy than an art guy.

Our timeshare was in Cortona, which is a walled city. The movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, was filmed there. We spent a day in Arezzo, where there was an incredible Cathedral. Every town had churches and cathedrals – so many that we got bored with them, but Arezzo’s was next level – maybe 2-3 times the size of the others. The movie Life Is Beautiful was largely filmed there. We also went to Montepulciano, where a few scenes of the Twilight movie New Moon were filmed. Finally, we went to Pienza, where parts of Gladiator were filmed. It’s better known for being designed as the “ideal city” by a Pope. It was one of the two UNESCO World Heritage Sites we saw. (The other was the surrounding cultural landscape of Val d’Orcia.)

One day we went on a truffle hunt. I was disappointed that they use dogs now instead of pigs. I wanted to walk around a pig. The dogs found more truffles than usual, and the place made them into a wonderful pasta lunch for us. My oldest son said it was the best meal he’s ever had. He said this at least five times on the trip, but this was near the end of the trip. Later that same day, we took an Italian cooking lesson and made pasta from scratch for our dinner. That beat out the day’s earlier best meal in his life.

On the way back, our connection in Zurich got canceled due to weather. The weather shut down many flights and caused delays for reportedly ten thousand people. They could only reschedule us 36 hours later. So we spent a day touring Zurich. We just caught a general tour because there was really no time to plan. I was most excited by Einstein’s college, but we just drove by it.

Zurich was extremely expensive if you don’t plan ahead. The cheeseburger at our hotel was $45 USD. My wife is very much a “Well, it is what it is,” but I thought that was just too crazy. We found some grocery stores and ate like kings for around $10 total.

Since we had no luggage, we needed some toiletries. My wife was going to buy 4 toothbrushes at $5 each to be used for one day. That was at a place called The Coop Beauty (or something similar). The Coop was the main supermarket, so it seemed like this was just like a drugstore version of that. On a hunch, I said, ” Let’s pause this and just go into the actual Coop right next to it. We found toothbrushes in packs of two for 75 cents. Instead of spending $20 on toothbrushes, we spent $1.50.

That kind of crazy pricing seemed to be the case with everything in Zurich. A $60 taxi ride was a $20 Uber. It reminded me of the difference between making your own popcorn at home and getting it at the movies – or buying a case of beer at a liquor store vs. buying 24 beers at a baseball game. (Not that you’d buy 24 beers, but you get the idea.) I can’t recall seeing anything like that anywhere else.

Kids

In August they finished up their camps. The oldest (13) was in a 3 Musketeers production and did a cooking camp that he’s done nearly every year. My youngest (12) continued the sailing camp that he has done every year for the last 5 years or so now.

The travel had its own educational component to it.

That was enough for August to close out the summer.

Final Thoughts

The Earth keeps spinning faster and faster. Even my kids are noticing it. They said that the Alaska trip at the start of summer went by really slowly, but that the whole summer went by fast. During this discussion, my youngest son said, “Time is an illusion that helps things make sense.”

The post My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (August 2026) appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

I Built My Own Quantum Computing Index. Do This Instead…

Lazy Man — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:37:39 +0000

Let me start with a confession that diminishes everything I’m about to write.

I’ve spent the better part of two decades telling you to buy boring low-cost index funds, ignore hot sectors, and stop trying to pick winners. I still believe that is the best plan and it’s where I put the vast majority of my money. However, I do like to take a small portion of my portfolio and invest in satellite stocks.

Yet a couple of weeks ago, I spent a few hours researching speculative quantum computing stocks. I’m a crazed individual who finds this stuff fun. I only use a small pile of my portfolio*. I presume you are not crazed (or at least in the same way I am), so I’m going to give you the shortcut… a sector ETF for everything I did already exists (mostly).

ChatGPT didn’t know about the ETF when I asked. It only decided to tell me about it after a couple hours… like, “Hey, I just realized that what you created basically exists. Here’s the ticker that you want to look at…” It seems that HI (Human Intelligence) may have a few more months of superiority left in it.

But the research turned up a few things I think are genuinely useful even if you never buy a share of any of this. It can be useful outside of quantum investing.

The Obvious Way to Invest in Quantum Doesn’t Work

Some of the best work in quantum computing is done by some companies you’ve probably heard of: Alphabet, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and Nvidia. All of them have serious quantum programs and enormous research budgets.

I didn’t want to invest in them for two reasons:

Quantum computing could become an enormous industry – and these stocks might not move at all. Alphabet does more than $400 billion in revenue. If its quantum division eventually turns into a multi-billion dollar business, that’s a rounding error on the stock price. You’d get almost none of the upside you were trying to buy.
If you already own broad index funds, you already own all of those companies. Most of those index funds are weighted to buy more of the big companies. Likely, these companies (outside of IBM) dominate your portfolio. I often argue this is the time not to diversify your portfolio away from all these companies. I believe it’s putting too much money in technology, when some valuations have passed the pre-2000 dot-com crash levels.

Don’t ask “which companies are working on quantum?” Instead ask “which companies would be worth dramatically more in 5-10 years when experts predict that quantum computing becomes the ‘Next Big Thing.'”

I Went ETF Shopping and Nothing Fit

I teased this above, but here are the ETFs that ChatGPT suggested.

Defiance Quantum (QTUM) This is the biggest and oldest ETF. It launched back in 2018, has about 90 holdings and over $5 billion in assets. It also has a reasonable 0.40% expense ratio. Looking at the 90 companies, it was very well diversified, with only one company with 2% of holdings. However, the big tech names above were all included and included many more than I hadn’t thought of. Some companies include Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, and Kia. Maybe those were different Airbus and Kia companies than I’m aware of. This felt more like a technology fund with quantum branding. It fails #1 above.
WisdomTree Quantum Computing Fund (WQTM) WisdomTree, with an 0.45% expense ratio, is better built and specifically designed around quantum. Its top holdings are exactly the companies I wanted. Unfortunately, it also holds IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Dell, and Fujitsu, with roughly 69% of the portfolio in large caps. Once again, it fails #1 above.
Global X AI Semiconductor & Quantum ETF (CHPX)Global X charges a 0.50% expense ratio and has “Quantum” in the name, but it’s really an AI semiconductor fund. I already have Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF (SOXQ), so I don’t need more of that.
There were also a couple of leveraged ETFs. Those are often about day trading. I can think of few things less intelligent than day trading a technology that is probably 5-10 years down the line.

So I Made My Own List

The thing that kept nagging me is that once you strip out the megacaps and the quantum-adjacent security software companies, the real list of investable pure quantum companies is tiny. I had about 10-12 names, and 3-5 of those were fairly easily eliminated or worth putting on the watchlist.

I landed on seven, deliberately spread across competing hardware architectures.

Here’s what I bought, including the architecture/focus and the amount of the portfolio that I assigned to it:
- Quantinuum (QNT) – Trapped ion – 22–30%
- IonQ (IONQ) – Trapped ion – 20–28%
- D-Wave (QBTS) – Annealing – 12–18%
- Infleqtion (INFQ) – Neutral atom – 9–15%
- Rigetti (RGTI) Superconducting – 7–12%
- Xanadu (XNDU) Photonic – 5–10%
- IQM (IQMX) Superconducting – 3–8%
I picked the ranges on purpose. I view it as putting them into tiers. This also allows me to buy a little more of stocks that seem cheaper or dollar cost average into them when they miss on an earnings report (but the fundamentals are still solid).

The architecture spread is the whole strategy. Their main technologies are trapped ion, annealing, neutral atom, superconducting, and photonic. I didn’t study what any of those are and couldn’t tell you which one wins. I graduated in the late 1990s with a computer science and linguistics degree with a focus on AI. I wouldn’t have predicted that a gaming hardware company like Nvidia would have been the beneficiary.

It is worth noting how newly investable many of these companies are. Quantinuum only became directly investable in June, when it IPO’d. Infleqtion, Xanadu, and IQM all went public in 2026 too. Two years ago this portfolio was mostly impossible to build.

The Two I Threw Out

I want to include the rejects, because the rejections taught me more than the picks.

Oxford Instruments looked great initially. It is a “picks and shovels” play supplying equipment to everybody, which is a strategy I generally love. Then I found out they completed the sale of NanoScience, their explicitly quantum-focused business, in January. They sold the exact thing that made them interesting. Out.

Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT) was the harder call. It has an enormous cash pile, evolving photonics strategy, and looks genuinely tempting. I used Claude to analyze all these potential picks and it found something interesting in their Q1 filing. It has about $3.7 million in revenue, but $3.5 million of it came from businesses they’d just acquired. And cost of revenue exceeded revenue — they lost money on the actual work. I already have Xanadu on photonics, and it seems like homerun or strikeout technology. It found a place on the watchlist.

About Using AI for This

I did most of this research by grinding through it with AI assistants, and I asked several of them independently so I could compare. Where they agreed, I gained confidence. Where they disagreed, I dug.

One thing worth reporting: one of them (Google Gemini) confidently told me the only way to own Quantinuum was through Honeywell. That was true until June, and then it wasn’t — the model’s information was stale, and it had no idea. It wasn’t hedging or uncertain. It was just wrong, fluently.

I want to call out Claude for its level of research, though. I don’t use Claude very much, so I let its Opus grind with maximum effort. It ate up a good deal of usage, but the reports on all the companies were amazing.

The Shortcut ETFs

After I finished all this work, ChatGPT said, “I noticed that this portfolio looks a lot like Defiance Pure Quantum ETF (QTUP), which launched in June.

Its July portfolio? Roughly 17% Quantinuum, 17% IonQ, 17% D-Wave, and about 6% each across Infleqtion, Rigetti, IQM, Xanadu, and QUBT.

That is… basically my list. Same companies, mostly. I reinvented an existing product.

There are a couple of differences between QTUP and what I ended up with. QTUP also holds Arqit, BTQ, Horizon Quantum, and QUBT — all of which I looked at and passed on. And it’s roughly equal-weighted, whereas I wanted conviction-weighted.

However, it is worth noting that QTUP’s expense ratio is 0.77%.

Even later, I found Corgi Quantum Computing ETF (CQTM) was similar. It has a 0.35% expense ratio, and it launched in May. It has 19 total holdings and fairly closely matches my seven. That would be my pick if I wanted a shortcut.

Are the ETFs’ expense ratios worth it?

Let’s do the math… Hypothetically, let’s say we’re investing $10,000 for twenty years. I’ll use a 10% annual return, because technology companies seem to do that on average. A lot of these companies are small, which can have even greater growth. Here’s what the results would be:
- 0% (my plan): about $67,300
- At 0.35% (CQTM): about $63,100
- At 0.77% (QTUP): about $58,400
So the 0.77% fee costs roughly $8,900 over twenty years, or about 13% of what you’d otherwise end up with. CQTM’s 0.35% costs about 6%. That’s the real price of convenience, and it seems like a big number. Of course, with inflation, that number may not appear so big.

But here’s where I have to be honest with myself.

Final Thoughts

I bought the seven stocks on August 4th and I’ve been tracking their performance in my Google Sheet. When I wrote this article (August 15th), four of them were up 11-14% and the other three were up an average of 2%. Overall, they were up 10.6%, which, for a 10-day period, amounts to an annualized gain of 2,781%. I knew that was too good to last. Now that I’m finally publishing the article, the portfolio is DOWN about 4.5% or 44% annually. These swings were expected with such speculative stocks over a short period.

There’s a real argument for just buying CQTM or QTUP and being done with it. The professionals will watch the industry a lot more carefully than I will.

Is anyone else looking at quantum, or does it all feel like science fiction? I’m a believer, because I would have told you that the level of AI that we are seeing was complete science fiction five years ago.

* These satellite stocks are currently about 1% of my retirement portfolio, which excludes my wife’s portfolio. It’s a small fraction of our money.

The post I Built My Own Quantum Computing Index. Do This Instead… appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (July 2026)

Lazy Man — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:23:13 +0000

Every month since 2017, I have written an article that shows the growth of our passive income. Over the last couple of years, I’ve added some of my annual goals (New Year’s Resolutions).

This is usually where I add some personal stuff. My wife was on work travel for two weeks, so my time was focused on being able to get the kids to camps, karate, etc. while managing the busiest month of dog boarding of the year.

Goals for 2026

I put all my goals in a spreadsheet that I ~~stole~~ borrowed from Retire By 40. Here’s what it looks like for this year:

(Click it, and it will open in a new tab.)

Passive Income

My Passive Income Pyramid

Dog Boarding/Website Income

I used to have three side hustles with a passive component: a dog-sitting business, this blog, and a website I manage for a non-profit. They all required some active work. However, I could do them all even while working a full-time job. I considered those partially passive income. This blog and the retainer for the non-profit website are minimal, so I consider it almost all dog boarding.

This section is the least passive of all incomes. I only count this as 50% passive (I’ll adjust it for the 50% later).

Dog business in July was the best of the year. It was almost double the other top months. That’s normal for the business, though. We typically don’t travel, and Newport, RI is a huge seasonal tourist town. I had to turn away potential customers at times because we had too much business.

July’s Dog/Web Real Income: $5,217.96.

Rental Property Income

We have two rental properties. Both still have mortgages, and the rental income is around $1,100/mo. One mortgage is due in 2027. The other one is a small loan, but it has another 15 years on it. If they were both mortgage-free, we’d make around $32,000 a year.

For the purpose of this report, I calculate the rental property income using the following formula:

(Rents After Estimated Expenses) * (Equity Percentage Owned) = Income)

In July, Zillow estimated our properties were worth nearly $6,000 less than the month before. However, we paid off $1,000 in mortgage principal. That meant our EPO went from owning 85.46% of our properties to 85.47%. Yay, 0.01% is the smallest gain ever. Weird stuff like that makes the journey interesting (yes, I’m weird). The rents after expenses are $2,900/month. Using the equation above, our estimated income from this area would be $2,519. That’s the same as June, as it was a round-off error.

I feel like real estate prices are near their highs. It’s no secret that there’s an affordability problem with housing. Owning real estate can grow a ton when leverage helps multiply gains. However, since we own 85% of the properties, we aren’t taking much advantage of leverage.

Managing rental properties requires some work – a few days a year. For this reason, I only count 80% of this number as passive income. One of our new tenants has had a lot of needs, but they are mostly legitimate. I’m thinking of getting out of the rental property business. We’re probably going to sell one property next spring.

Dividend Income

My wife and I have been nearly maxing out our retirement accounts for a couple of decades. The markets have done very well over that time. Overall, we have a nice retirement nest egg.

I also have profit-sharing income with a private company in which I own a small stake. I get a check each month that behaves like a dividend – it’s just taxed a little differently.

July’s estimated dividend income was $6,498. In June, it was $6401. The nearly $100 gain in the stock market makes me wonder why we even bother with real estate anymore. I have to tell myself that the stock market can be crazy, and it feels very overpriced right now. For a while, I had been putting more and more money into bonds and treasuries to try to protect these gains. Recently, I’ve started to redeploy those into more risky assets that have the potential to gain more. I’m only doing it in small amounts though. I like risk, and it feels like there are opportunities for some stocks to grow a lot. (More on this in my next article.)

Unlike the previous two sections, this income is 100% passive. For this reason, I don’t have to adjust the numbers.

Total Passive Income

Dog/Etc.: $5,054 – Adjusted to $2,527
Rentals: $2,476 – Adjusted to $1,982
Dividends: $6,498 – Remains at $6,498

Dogs/Etc – Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line

Total Adjusted Passive Income: $11,006.60

That’s a great number and the top since… last July. In fact, that’s the first time I’ve cleared $10,000 this whole year.

Here’s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track:

The blue line represents the monthly total adjusted passive income. The red line represents the 12-month average. This removes some of the seasonality of dog boarding. I focus on the red line more.

In July, the number dropped a tiny bit. For one of the first times in the last 18 months, the red line didn’t go up. While dog boarding and blogging have made less and less money, investments continue to grow. Those most passive components (real estate and dividends) totaled $8,479.60, a new record. This is almost $200 above last month’s new record. For the year, that’s a little more than $100,000 annual income.

I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth gained 0.38% over the last month. For the whole year, our net worth is up 9.42%. It keeps going up, and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($80,000)

My income has been dropping over the last few years, going from $98K to 488K to $81K. Last year, I stayed mostly the same at $80,593.

Now that I’m 50 and we’ve got a good set of assets, I don’t feel the need to push this. Income feels more for self-worth than anything else, I guess.

In July, I made 7,205.21. For the year, I’m at $34,079. That pace would bring me to around $58.4K. I’m going to fall short of my goal, but it’s an improvement from last month.

Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations

In July, I started to work on getting some shirts made advertising my dog boarding. In addition, I’m getting some notepads (for personalized thank you messages) and some stickers (to go with take-home bags as a tiny gift).

Unfortunately, it’s been slow going, and we’ve each dropped the ball a couple of times.

AI Everything

Last month, I noted that I was looking into getting my own desktop AI set up. I found and bought my AI Computer. The first wrinkle was that it didn’t come with a licensed Windows as it was supposed to. MSI (the company that makes it) says that the license is shipped in the BIOS, but I ran commands to show that, for some reason, they didn’t put it in the BIOS on this one. It’s probably because it was refurbished.

They fought me for days and days. They wanted me to send the machine back to them. It’s 40 pounds and not easy to box back up – and who knows when I would get it back again. All they needed was to give me the 25-character license key that is tied to my serial number. I got frustrated with them and just looked into buying my own. Turns out that Stack Social sells a Windows 11 Pro license for $10. With thousands and thousands of reviews and it being a company I heard of, I decided to take a chance. It worked perfectly.

My next project was to set it up so that I can use it from my laptop. My wife is often working in the office, and my hope was that I could just do the big projects in the background much of the time. I got Parsec set up on it, and my laptop mirrors it with almost no lag. It was easy to set up, and I’m quite impressed. Now, I can click an icon on my laptop, and it will wake up the office computer and log into it. This only works with the wifi I have at home, so there isn’t a remote option. I can work on that later.

Long story, but I haven’t gotten to doing any AI with it yet.

Health

I got old and turned 50 several months ago. For my health goals, I’m mostly using this separate article about health goals from last year.

Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat*2) mass >60)

My weight for July averaged 178.4 lbs. I still have 3 extra pounds from the Alaska cruise in June. My body fat averaged 24.5%, which was a small improvement. That means my lean mass was 134.7 and my fat mass was 43.7 lbs. This is a score of 47.3 using my formula. That’s an improvement from the even 46 last month.

Higher is better, and this is the first time I’ve gone in the right direction. I averaged 2025 at 55.9 and started the year at 52.6.

My goal of getting this number to 60 could be achieved by losing 169 lbs and having a body fat of 21.5%. I’ve got a ways to go, and it’s not looking great.

Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)

I haven’t been tracking body and brain points the last couple of months. I still think it’s a good idea, but I had to declare bankruptcy. I’ve got too much other stuff going on.

(Also, I’m feeling like my body is covered from the above. My brain is another topic. On one hand, I feel like AI is giving me a shortcut so I don’t have to think as much. On the other hand, I’m exploring and learning new things (often with AI) almost every day.)

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

Whenever my doctor takes my blood pressure, it’s normal. So from her perspective it’s fine. When I present the graphs, she seems to appease me by raising the medication a tiny amount. We’re on the third increase now, and I felt like I’ve pushed it as far as I can. I’ve deprioritized taking my blood pressure now, and with travel, I have fewer data points.

Over the last two months, it has been 130/80. That’s not great, so I’m going to try to measure it more often. I’ve been feeling very stressed lately with scheduling the kids to camps and such while the number of dogs checking in and out of boarding just seems to grow.

On this topic, the new Google Pixel Watch 5 is able to measure blood pressure. I don’t expect it to be incredibly accurate, but it’s a useful tool to have.

Doctor Appointments

No doctor or dentist appointment this month.

Longevity Research (40 hours)

I finished the CNN series Kara Swisher Wants To Live Forever, and it is clearly a misnomer – she spends the entire series advocating for death. It is entertaining though as she visits with lots of people trying to cheat death.

It’s not much of a spoiler, but at the end she does one of the projects that I had hoped to get to last year or this year. A company built an avatar of her using the many, many hours of video and writing she has done over her extensive career. I thought it looked like a poor implementation of the technology until I realized that it was doing it in REAL TIME to have a conversation with the real Kara Swisher. It’s one thing to have AI text be accurate, but generating a realistic face in video instantly is next level. I would have liked to see a version with a cartoon representation where it would have been smoother.

In the end, it impressed Ms. Swisher a lot, and she’s hard to impress. She said in ten years, it would be perfected. I’m giving it five, but it may only be for the one-percenters.

I also read this article on a professor who did a “study” (it IS peer-reviewed) where he was able to show a 15-year improvement in biological age. Unfortunately, he was the only subject, and it was extremely strict, involving fasting for 20 hours a day and sometimes 48-hour spans. I don’t know how believable it is, but it may be worth a read to learn about all the steps he took.

Hobbies

Most of my hobbies are related to AI nowadays. I can come up with infinite ideas and go down the rabbit hole. I already wrote what I’m doing with AI, so I won’t repeat that here.

Here are a couple of others that I am working on.

3D Printing

The kids haven’t printed anything with the 3D printer in a couple of months.

Play a modern song on a ukulele

I got out the book to learn the ukulele and put it in my view. Unfortunately, that hasn’t motivated me to start. The time that I would put into that is going to AI stuff.

Family

Declutter and Organize House

In July, my wife sold some items, and I cleaned up my computer desk for the new computer. That’s actually a very good month.

Travel

We used July to plan our upcoming trip to the Tuscany region in Italy in August. AI helped a lot. At first I just had it come up with stuff near our timeshare. Later, I layered on that I’d like to go to UNESCO and Atlas Obscura places if they make sense. It was able to modify the days slightly to put in the Atlas Obscura spots. For the UNESCO, it decided that one day visiting two was actually worth being a big highlight of a full day.

Kids

The kids are at the age now (12 and 13) where they either love each other or hate each other. They are either working well together or getting into big fights.

In July, they continued theater camps. My oldest does acting, and my youngest makes the sets. My oldest went to a Broadway show (yes, in NYC) for a LONG day-trip with the local theater company. He loved that.

Their karate dojo added a demo team, which is like a combination of gymnastics and karate. They did that and found that more fun than the regular karate classes. They are also doing those. So on some weeks the kids are at karate 5-6 days. It keeps them off phones.

Final Thoughts

I haven’t got a post out in a long time, so let’s just get this out and move on. I have another article already prepared for either the end of this week or early next week.

The post My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (July 2026) appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

I Bought an AI Computer (and it was Much Cheaper than you Might Think)

Lazy Man — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:35:38 +0000

[Sorry for the delay in posts, I’ve been really busy lately with my wife on travel, though you’d be excused if you thought I was doing a victory dance about about the SpaceX IPO.]

If you’ve read my monthly updates, you might have noticed that I have been writing more about AI as my main hobby. I use it to do all kinds of side projects. Some side projects don’t see the light of day. For example, I still have a book series that I’m working on (but haven’t touched it in two months). I have a life guide for my kids that is basically done. I could go back and adjust it infinitely, though.

I’ve become more interested in image and movie generation. For the most part, I just want to play around with it and see what’s possible outside of the big companies’ tools. The subscriptions for those add up very quickly when you are making video.

Most of all, I’ve become interested in AI agents. They are more than chat. You can give them things to do, and they go do it. OpenClaw and Hermes Agent are two popular examples. For these, I’d want a separate computer that’s more powerful than my laptop. There’s a reason why Nvidia has one of the largest market caps in the world, and it’s because their GPUs are perfect for this kind of AI work.

When I was looking into buying this desktop, I did what I always do before spending real money, which is research the thing to death. That trait annoys my wife to no end, but it has paid dividends time and time again. Of course, I did this research with an AI, which has a fun circular irony.

Here’s the part that made me laugh at myself. I’ve spent the better part of two decades writing about making money while I sleep. So I decided to look into whether this computer could do just that.

What I Actually Wanted It To Do

I didn’t want a gaming PC, but that’s what I ended up buying. I wanted something specific, and the software decided the hardware.

The big one is running image (and maybe video) generation locally. Flux is an open-weight model you can run yourself through ComfyUI. I’m not sure what I’d do on it that I couldn’t do with Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but it’s something I want to play with. My son is getting interested in learning Blender. Wikipedia describes it as “a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software suite used for 3D modeling, animation, and rendering.” A great graphics card makes it work much, much better.

I also wanted to run reasoning models on my own machine instead of paying API fees by the token. I have read about companies spending their annual AI budget on tokens in a couple of months. This makes my token cost just the cost of energy. And since we have solar power, electricity is very cheap.

Open-source models like gpt-oss-20b and Qwen 3 are typically in the 20 to 30 billion parameter range. To be able to run these, you need a graphics card with about 16GB of memory. The cheapest Nvidia one with that is an RTX 5070 Ti, which is typically about a thousand dollars.

I wanted to try OpenClaw, the open-source agent that blew up earlier this year — the one that lives on your machine, remembers things between sessions, and actually does stuff instead of just answering questions. Hermes Agent seems to be very similar, and I’m looking into that. Get Rich Slick shows a lot of what it can do, and it’s pretty amazing.

The Machine

I went with the MSI Aegis R2 AI (model B2NVV9-1411US), which is a pre-built. I figured I was paying a convenience premium for that, and I’d made peace with it. I thought about building a computer myself, but AI convinced me that it was not going to be a fun project to learn. In fact, it would have probably taken me many months to get the best deals on components.

The important parts:

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K with 24 hybrid cores – This is a much faster processor than I needed. In fact, it seems to be the fastest consumer processor that Intel makes. While a lot of AI work will be done in the GPU, the main brains will definitely be busy. On one popular speed test, my 2-year-old top-of-line laptop’s processor has a multithreaded CPU Mark of 13,870. This processor’s multithreaded CPU Mark is 67,260.
NVIDIA RTX 5080 with 16GB of VRAM – This is an upgrade over the 5070 Ti that I mentioned above. Like the processor above, I didn’t need the upgrade. However, it wasn’t a system that I could customize and save money, so I’ll take the upgrade.
64GB of DDR5-6000 RAM – Most of the systems came with 32GB of memory, which is fine for gaming. For AI work, the recommended minimum is 64GB. Due to RAMageddon, memory prices are through the roof. It was critical to find this included.
2TB NVMe Gen4 drive – I only need a 1TB drive because I set up a NAS. However, I wish I could have gotten a Gen5 drive.
Other stuff – An 850W power supply, a 360mm liquid cooler, Wi-Fi 7, and Windows 11. These are necessary for running all this powerful equipment. I don’t know anything about the liquid cooler, which is exactly why I didn’t want to build my own machine.

Their main compromise is the 16GB of VRAM with the card. The big 20-to-30 billion parameter models don’t fit in 16GB. They spill over into system RAM, which is why the 64GB matters. This makes it slower. The RTX 5090 has 32GB and could handle those models. The street price of the RTX 5080 card that I got alone is between $ 1,300 and $ 1,400. The RTX 5090 is around $4,500. The price of the final computer would probably be an extra $3,000 – no thank you.

Can I Make Money with this Machine?

As I was waiting for the machine to arrive, I had a thought. This machine is powerful. Powerful computing is in demand. It’s not a big moat, but not everyone has the equipment or the desire to do AI stuff.

I went to do some research with ChatGPT. I thought about being able to automate Fiverr. It turns out that most people on Fiverr want human work – booooo! AI suggested that I use it to make this blog better. That’s reasonable, except that AI rubbed out the last ember of money in blogging.

Finally, I saw what seemed to be ideal. When the machine is ideal, I could rent the GPU out on a distributed compute network like Salad or GamerHash and collect passive income. It’s a Lazy Man’s dream!

However, I’ve written about enough passive income claims to not get my hopes up too much.

Salad currently pays somewhere around $1.12 a day for an RTX 5080. The card pulls about 360 watts under load, which is roughly 8.6 kilowatt-hours over a full day. At 15 cents a kilowatt-hour, you’re spending about $1.30 in electricity to earn $1.12. While solar power almost makes our electricity free, if we use more than we produce, we have to pay the rates in RI. Last I checked, they were around $0.26 kWh, so even worse.

It said that Vast.ai and RunPod pay more, but the numbers assume your machine actually gets rented. New hosts also start at the bottom of the reputation ranking. It doesn’t seem like it would pay off, but I might give it a try.

No matter what I looked at, it seemed that starting a company was the way to go. I wanted to avoid that, because there’s always a lot of other work with starting a company. Often, there’s no payoff at all. (Kid Wealth, I’m look at you!)

The Cost per Component

I was curious how much the computer would cost if I did buy each component separately. Here’s what AI came up with for the lowest prices:

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K: ~$530 (it launched at $589 and I’ve seen it listed as high as $754)
RTX 5080: ~$1,246
Z890 motherboard: ~$200
64GB DDR5-6000: about ~$599
2TB Gen4 NVMe: ~$275** for a budget drive
850W 80+ Gold power supply: about ~$79
360mm liquid cooler: about ~$90
Windows 11 Home license: $139

Add up the absolute cheapest version of every line, and you land around $3,158. That’s before a case.

Originally I bought it for $2750 on Amazon. That’s an affiliate link, and they are currently out of stock. If you go there, you’ll see the catch: it is “Renewed.” That may be a deal-breaker, but I’ve bought a lot of renewed stuff on Amazon and never had a problem. It was sold by Woot, but the warranty checked out. Woot is an Amazon company, so there was significant overlap.

You’ll notice I said “originally” above. My final price was $2,375. Two days after I bought it, but before it shipped, Woot put the EXACT same machine on sale on its website. I was able to cancel the Amazon order and wait a week for the Woot one. When it arrived, the box wasn’t in perfect condition, but that’s the only flaw I can see.

Remember when I gave you the RTX 5080 and 5090 pricing above. Just a few days ago, Digital Trends reported that Nvidia is going to push the price for the 5080 to around $1,845. So the lowest price will be about $600 more than you can get it now. Hopefully, the street price won’t be too much more.

Nvidia realized that they can make more money due to the demand. Also, they make more money selling cards to AI data centers than to consumers. So these cards have quietly become the low-priority product coming out of the same constrained TSMC capacity. We’re not the customer anymore. We’re the leftovers.

At that $1845 price, the graphics card (ALONE!) would cost about 78% of what I spent on the whole computer.

I usually preach patience on big purchases. The rewards go to those who wait for the sale and let the new model depreciate. This is the bizarro world of AI that we are now in.

Get a Similar Deal Yourself

With the prices of components rising, I can’t promise that another deal like this will come around. However, there was one a couple of weeks before that still met my requirements, but had the minimum GPU and CPU that I was looking for. It was about the same $2375 price, but brand new. I didn’t find that deal until it expired, or I would have bought it. It was one of those days that I wasn’t around my computer.

How did I find the deal? I went to Slickdeals.net and added an email alert for “Nvidia.” I got about 3-4 emails a day that weren’t useful. Sometimes they were for a monitor or a laptop. I could have been more specific, such as “Nvidia Desktop,” but I didn’t want to risk the deal being posted without the word desktop in it. I went with the widest net, and it worked.

The post I Bought an AI Computer (and it was Much Cheaper than you Might Think) appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

Should You Open a Trump Account?

Lazy Man — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:00:36 +0000

Back in 2015, I wrote that Donald Trump wasn’t a political figure and I couldn’t understand why anyone treated him like one. That take aged… poorly. A decade later, he couldn’t be more political — and now there’s an investment account with his name on it. I’ve got thoughts about the politics, but I’ll save them for the end. First, let’s cover the practical ins and outs of Trump Accounts and how they might play a role in your child’s future.

Trump Accounts launched on July 4th (of course they did). If your child is a U.S. citizen born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028*, the government will put $1,000 into their account. You do have to actually open a Trump account with a form at tax time or a quick sign-up online. The money goes into low-cost index funds, and anyone — you, grandparents, friends — can add up to $5,000 a year in after-tax dollars. Employers can chip in $2,500 of that tax-free. It’s all locked up until 18, when the whole thing essentially becomes a traditional IRA. Kids born outside the window can open accounts too; they just don’t get the free $1,000.

(An aside: This BBC keeps calling these “schemes”) It gave me a laugh. Maybe that’s a British thing? Anyway, given what I’m about to write, the word doesn’t feel wrong.)

Now, the projections. The government’s own app shows $250 a year turning into $19,000 by age 18 and $878,000 by 55. Max it out at $5,000 a year and the app says $13 million. Fortune asked four financial planners to check the math], and their answer was basically: pump the brakes. Those projections assume the market’s historical 10%+ every year for 55 straight years; Morningstar thinks the next decade could average closer to 6.3%. At a more sober 7%, a maxed account is worth about $185,000 at 18 and $1 million by 45. Still great! But “maxed” means $5,000 a year for 18 years — roughly $91,000. Most families aren’t doing that in this account or any other.

Michelle Singletary at the Washington Post wrote my favorite breakdown of the fine print (gift article) — a half-dozen reasons to keep expectations in check. Her bottom line on the seed money alone: by 18 it looks “less like a fortune and more like a down payment on a new car.” Beyond that, contributions aren’t tax-deductible going in, and the growth is taxed as ordinary income coming out — a worse deal than the capital gains rate in a plain old brokerage account. The seed is a four-year pilot, so extending it — or fixing that clunky tax treatment — requires a future Congress to pass future tax legislation. A plan that depends on a future Congress doing something sensible isn’t a plan. (Exhibit A: this Social Security mess) And at 18, your kid gets full control of every penny. I like to think I was fairly responsible with money at age 18, but I probably wasn’t that responsible.

So, should you open one? If your child qualifies for the $1,000: Yes. It’s free money and one form. My kids missed the eligibility window by more than a decade. However, if they’d been born in it, my politics could survive some paperwork.

Also, if your company offers matching funds, it is definitely worth it. It’s almost always worth getting as much matching money from your company as possible. That’s been true with 401ks for decades.

For your own dollars, though, I think the 529 is still the better home. Friends and family can gift into a 529 too. It’s more flexible than its reputation — trade schools, apprenticeships, and some K-12 costs count, not just college. And if education isn’t in the cards, current law lets you roll up to $35,000 of a leftover 529 into a Roth IRA, where it effectively becomes a better retirement account than the Trump Account would have been. I think. (There’s fine print… the 529 has to be at least 15 years old and the rollover happens gradually.)

The Politics of Trump Accounts

Nicole Russell at USA Today wrote a column titled Trump Accounts are free money. Don’t let politics stop you.” Her argument is that parents who refuse to open one because they can’t stand Trump are putting party ahead of their own child’s future. On that narrow point, we agree. Get your free $1,000.

However, I have a few problems with the rosy version she’s selling. She leans on that same government projection — the $1,000 seed alone becoming $243,000 by age 55 — which assumes 10%+ returns forever and, as the fact-checkers at PolitiFact noted, skips inflation and taxes. As you might imagine, inflation over 55 years is… not trivial. More importantly, the life-changing version of this program touches a very small slice of kids: the ones whose parents, grandparents, and employers pour in thousands of dollars a year. Most of the benefit doesn’t come from the government at all. It comes from friends, family, and companies — every one of whom could already give money to a 529 or a custodial account, without the ordinary-income tax hit and without the strings. The $1,000 is real. The $13 million is a brochure.

And here’s the part that really gets me. The administration has been rounding up employers — Uber, Intel, Nvidia, IBM, dozens more — to contribute up to $2,500 a year for their workers’ kids. Good for them, sincerely. But the United States federal government is the largest employer in the country, with roughly two million civil servants plus 1.3 million active-duty military personnel. It hasn’t offered its own workforce the benefit it’s asking every other employer to provide. We’re a military family, and we get plenty of benefits due to that, but we don’t get to ask our employer to make the contribution. Instead, I’m a shareholder of all the above companies, giving up that value.

I’d also point out that Russell is a conservative political columnist — her USA Today newsletter is literally called The Right Track — not a financial planner. Nothing wrong with that (said in my Seinfeld voice). But “don’t let politics stop you” lands a little differently coming from someone whose beat is to promote that political side.

Which brings me to my bigger question: why intentionally make a savings vehicle political in the first place? Bill Clinton signed the law that created 529 plans in 1996, and somehow nobody has ever asked me to open a Clinton Account. And if we are keeping political score: Hillary Clinton floated $5,000 baby bonds for every newborn back in 2007. Run that through an S&P 500 calculator and a kid born that year would be leaving high school about now with roughly $35,000 — $21,868.13 after adjusting for inflation. The response from the political right at the time? The Republican National Committee dismissed the idea as a “budget busting baby fund,” and Rudy Giuliani said it was proof Clinton was running a campaign built on pandering.

Pandering. Let’s sit with that word. The $1,000 seed applies only to babies born during this Trump administration* — and they named the whole program after the President. An early version of the bill actually called it the MAGA Account before the upgrade to his actual name. The IRS form to claim your $1,000? Form 4547 — as in the 45th and 47th president. That takes pandering to a level neither Clinton ever dreamed of. If we must pander, I’d rather we pander in a way that helps the public — like a bigger seed for every child — than in a way that strokes one man’s ego.

Final Thoughts

So, should you open a Trump Account? If your kid was born in the window, take the free $1,000 and don’t feel bad about it. Beyond that, my money would go to the boring old 529 with nobody’s name on it. Are you opening a Trump Account, maxing one out, or sitting this out on principle? Let me know in the comments.

*Technically, kids born January 1, 2025 are eligible even though Trump wasn’t inaugurated until the traditional January 20 date. And eligibility ends December 31, 2028, so a baby born January 1, 2029 misses out even though it’s still the Trump administration. The whole window is shifted 20 days earlier on each end.

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My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (May & June 2026)

Lazy Man — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 15:22:54 +0000

Every month since 2017, I have written an article that shows the growth of our passive income. In the last few years, I’ve included a monthly update on the year’s goals. I had gotten later and later with these goals until the May one, when I just skipped it altogether. At the start of the month, I was finishing up taxes and preparing for travel. The travel was 11 days, and by the time I got back and caught up, it was already almost June.

Then I figured that I’d get this combination of an article out early at least. Unfortunately, my wife recently got deployed to the West Coast for a week. I had to take care of the kids at the same time that my dog boarding business does 50% more business than the next busiest time of the year.

Phew, the other thing of note is that this update covers the first half of 2026. It’s a good milestone to stop and see how your progress on goals has gone.

Goals for 2026

I put all my goals in a spreadsheet that I ~~stole~~ borrowed from Retire By 40. Here’s what it looks like for this year:

(Click it, and it will open in a new tab.)

Passive Income

My Passive Income Pyramid

Dog Boarding/Website Income

I used to have three side hustles with a passive component: a dog-sitting business, this blog, and a website I manage for a non-profit. They all required some active work. However, I could do them all even while working a full-time job. I considered those partially passive income. This blog and the retainer for the non-profit website are minimal, so consider it almost all dog boarding.

This section is the least passive of all incomes. I only count this as 50% passive. Dog business in May was about 40% lower than last year. June was even worse as we traveled for nearly two weeks.

May’s Dog/Web Real Income: $2,697.45
June’s Dog/Web Real Income: $2,054.84

Rental Property Income

We have two rental properties. Both still have mortgages, and the rental income is around $1,100/mo. One mortgage is due in 2027. The other one is a small loan, but it has another 15 years on it. If they were both mortgage-free, we’d make around $32,000 a year.

For the purpose of this report, I calculate the rental property income using the following formula:

(Rents After Estimated Expenses) * (Equity Percentage Owned) = Income)

In the last two months, Zillow estimated our properties were worth $12,000 more than the month before. We also paid off $1,000 in mortgage principal. That meant our EPO went from owning 84.91% of our properties to 85.46%. The rents after expenses are $2,900/month. Using the equation above, our estimated income from this area would be $2,476. That’s up from $2,460 in April.

That’s an average of $8 a month, which has been how it’s going lately. Real estate prices are near their highs, and I don’t see them rocketing up again for a while. Real estate works well when leverage can multiply gains. However, since we own 85% of the properties, we aren’t taking much advantage of leverage.

One of our properties is worth about $800/mo. than what we are charging the tenant. However, we know that they can’t afford it, and my wife likes that they never call about anything. Unfortunately, it’s not sustainable, because we are going to have to renovate it at some point, and it’s barely breaking even. I’m trying to convince my wife to sell it next year.

Dividend Income

My wife and I have been nearly maxing out our retirement accounts for a couple of decades. The markets have done very well over that time. Overall, we have a nice retirement nest egg.

I also have profit-sharing income with a private company in which I own a small stake. I get a check each month that behaves like a dividend – it’s just taxed a little differently.

May’s estimated dividend income was $6,314, and June’s number was virtually the same ($6,318). In April, it was $6,218. The $100 gain in the stock market makes me wonder why we even bother with real estate anymore. I have to tell myself that the stock market can be crazy and it feels very overpriced right now. I have been putting more and more money into bonds and treasuries to try to protect these gains.

Unlike the previous two sections, this income is 100% passive. For this reason, I don’t have to adjust the numbers.

Total Passive Income

Dog/Etc.: $2,054 – Adjusted to $1,027
Rentals: $2,476 – Adjusted to $1,981
Dividends: $6,318 – Remains at $6,318

Dogs/Etc – Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line

Total Adjusted Passive Income: $9,326

Here’s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track:

The blue line represents the monthly total adjusted passive income. The red line represents the 12-month average. This removes some of the seasonality of dog boarding. I focus on the red line more.

In May and June, the number continued to climb. That important red line mentioned above has hit another new high, as it has for 14 of the last 17 months. While dog boarding and blogging have made less and less money, investments continue to grow. Those most passive components (real estate and dividends) passed $8,200 for the first time and landed near $8,300 (two dollars short!). That’s a minor rounding away from an even $100,000 annual income.

My wife continues to work as well, though she’s seriously considering retirement for the 34th time. I’m trying to encourage her, but it hasn’t worked. She has 27 years of high-level military service, which yields a vested pension that essentially doubles all this passive income. I also earn some income that falls outside of the areas listed above. It’s not passive, so I don’t mention it here.

I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth gained 3.01% over the two months. That’s a great gain! For the whole year, our net worth is up 9.01%. I’m not sure if I can expect more gains this year, because it’s already gone so well.

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($80,000)

My income has been dropping over the last few years, going from $98K to 488K to $81K. Last year, I stayed mostly the same at $80,593.

Now that I’m 50 and we’ve got a good set of assets, I don’t feel the need to push this. Income feels more for self-worth than anything else, I guess.

In May, I made $4,697. In June, I made $4,055. For the year, I’m at $26,849. That pace would bring me to almost $54K. I’m very likely to fall short on this goal. That said, July looks like a top month for dog boarding, and I have a standing order for some contract work that pays a decent hourly wage. It won’t be enough, but it’s in the right direction.

Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations

With travel, I haven’t been able to get much of anything in this area. However, I have made progress in July that I’ll get to next month.

AI Everything

I got to the point where my guide for young men on how to live the best life is done. I sent it off to a couple of friends who either thought it was so bad that they decided to say nothing, or got so busy they missed it. It’s likely the latter, because it was a text message to a Google Drive file without a description besides, “This is something that I’ve been working on.”

I’ve been following Get Rich Slick, who has transformed his blog from personal finance to mostly AI. It’s great! He’s doing things with AI agents that are very cool and explaining how he does it. I’m trying to carve out the time to do some of the things he’s doing.

He’s noted that it can get expensive, possibly $100/month, but there are ways to save money by using cheaper AIs developed in China. Also, I’m looking into getting my own desktop AI set up. It took some time to figure out what specifications I want, but I’ve got it all down now. There was recently a deal, and I missed it. Since I have a number of other projects to do, I can wait for a killer deal. Unfortunately, there are few deals because the Nvidia GPUs and RAM necessary are limited.

Health

As I mentioned above, I got old, turning 50 a few months ago. For my health goals, I’m mostly using this separate article about health goals from last year.

Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat\\\*2) mass >60)

My weight this month was 175.9 lbs, and my body fat was 24.7%. That means my lean mass was 132.5, and my fat mass was 43.4 lbs. This is a score of 45.6 using my formula. Last month, my average weight was 173.3lbs, and my body fat was 23.6%. That was a score of 50.6. It turns out that I added 2.5 pounds of straight fat – almost no lean mass. That’s why my score dropped 5 points.

Higher is better, and I’ve been going in the wrong direction for a couple of months now. The vacation in March really set me back. I haven’t been able to get back to where I was. I’m making progress, but it takes time to lower the whole average.

My goal of getting this number to 60 could be achieved by losing 169 lbs and having a body fat of 21.5%. Wow, those numbers don’t seem likely at all right now.

Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)

I haven’t been tracking body and brain points the last couple of months. I still think it’s a good idea, but I just had to declare bankruptcy on it for now. I’ve got too much other stuff going on. Also, I’m feeling like my body is covered from the above. My brain is another topic. On one hand, I feel like AI is giving me a shortcut so I don’t have to think as much. On the other hand, I’m exploring and learning new things (often with AI) almost every day.

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

Last year, I found that I had high blood pressure. I was measuring it daily and putting it in a spreadsheet. However, now I have this blood pressure monitor and it tracks it over time in an app. (That link to the device is an affiliate link, by the way.)

Doctor Appointments

For the third month in a row, I didn’t have a doctor appointment. This is weird because before this, I had a doctor, dentist, or something else for the previous roughly year and a half.

Longevity Research (40 hours)

I can’t remember doing any longevity research.

Hobbies

Most of my hobbies are related to AI nowadays. I can come up with infinite ideas and go down the rabbit hole. I already wrote what I’m doing with AI, so I won’t repeat that here.

Here are a couple of others that I am working on.

3D Printing

The kids haven’t printed anything with the 3D printer in a couple of months.

Play a modern song on a ukulele

I got out the book to learn the ukulele and put it in my view. Unfortunately, that hasn’t motivated me to start.

Family

Declutter and Organize House

In June, just before our travel, my wife booked the organizer that we’ve used in the past. I didn’t know until the last minute, and I had some other plans for some of it. However, I realized this would be a good thing because I’m the packrat.

They were more productive without me than they would have been with me. They cleaned up 85% of the garage. That is one of the two major areas that needed the most work. The other is the basement.

Travel

We went to Alaska. My mother-in-law has been wanting to go for years. My wife decided that she isn’t getting any younger and now was the time. I don’t think Alaska would have been on our top ten locations, but we had a great time.

The big thing she wanted to do was see Denali National Park. Well, you can’t do that from a normal Alaskan cruise that she wanted to do. We found that Holland America and Princess had a combination tour that had a few days in central Alaska and Denali along with a cruise. Unfortunately, Holland America was the only one that would get the kids back in time for the music camp that they love. It’s not that they are a bad cruise line; it’s that they are geared to the 55+ crowd. Our family felt like the youngest people on the cruise.

On the Denali part, we got to see all the rare things. A bear practically came up to the bus to give everyone a high five and thank us for coming. I’m exaggerating, but he was maybe 10-15 feet away, eating berries. I got a 3-minute video that is pretty incredible. A lot of people don’t see bears or just see them off in the distance.

We also saw a couple of moose. They were walking along the road, perhaps looking to hitchhike to their next destination. I didn’t get as good video as they were at the front of the bus. By the time we were able to safely pass them, they had mostly ducked into the woods.

Finally, we got to see the top of Mount Denali. I didn’t know that was a rare thing, but it seems like only 30% of people get to see it because it can often be obscured by clouds. That wasn’t the case with us.

The rest of the Alaska cruise was fine. We saw some glaciers. I suppose it was good for the kids to see them before they are gone. The Mendenhall Glacier has a video that showed how far it has shrunk over the years.

Kids

The kids are at the age now (12 and 13) where they either love each other or hate each other. They are either working well together or getting into big fights.

In June, they finished up school. The last month of May and June had a lot of activities that I won’t get into. They also started summer camp, which starts with a musical production. My oldest does acting, and my youngest makes the sets. After four years and a couple of shows per year, they both can take on big roles now.

I also bought them their own MacBook Airs just in time. They were $680 each (refurbished) for the M4 chip. Now the cheapest 13-inch is $1099, but it has an M5 chip. I still like saving $800 total on the two chips. They’ve gotten a little use out of them, but not as much as I had hoped.

That’s enough with the travel. In fact, it might even keep them too busy over the summer “break.”

Final Thoughts

I’m finding myself making fewer and fewer updates and writing fewer and fewer posts for this website. I don’t think it’s time to quit, but it’s certainly not just a passing phase.

The post My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (May & June 2026) appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

Let’s Fix Social Security

Lazy Man — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 17:10:21 +0000

I know most of you are off enjoying the holiday weekend. I always note it as the halfway point for the year. I thought about keeping the topic light due to the holiday. However, I rejected it to go in the exact opposite direction. Maybe make this the center of your BBQ party debates – you’ll be the life of the party.

The 2026 Trustees Report came out last month, and the headline is the same one we’ve been ignoring for years: the retirement trust fund is projected to run dry in late 2032. That’s about six years away. If Congress does nothing — which is its specialty — everyone’s benefits get cut by roughly 22% automatically. Not means-tested, not phased in gently, just a flat haircut that lands on current retirees and future ones alike.

I’m not a fan of that outcome. We’ll be okay, as I’ve planned our finances to assume minimal Social Security. However, there may be more than a hundred million people who aren’t in a similar position.

Fair warning up front: I don’t run the numbers as the big think tanks do. I can’t promise you my plan closes the gap down to the last decimal. What I can give you is my philosophy, which is to be modest in a bunch of different places rather than dramatic in any single one. The reasoning is simple. A giant swing in one direction hands the other party something easy to campaign against, and then nothing happens. Spread the discomfort around, and maybe — just maybe — both sides can hold their nose and sign the thing.

Here’s where I’d start.

1. Leave the retirement age alone

This is the go-to move for a lot of reformers, and I understand the appeal. People live longer, so they should work longer, right? The trouble is that the longevity gains haven’t been shared evenly. Wealthier, desk-job Americans have picked up most of the extra years. The person who spent 40 years on their feet in a warehouse mostly hasn’t. Raising the retirement age asks the people with the shortest retirements to give up the biggest slice of theirs. That’s backward, and I’d take it off the table.

2. Raise the wage cap

Right now you only pay Social Security tax on the first $184,500 you earn. Make a million a year? You stopped paying into the system back in early March and coasted the rest of the year for free. Only about 6% of workers earn above the cap at all, so lifting it touches a pretty small slice of high earners. I’d reapply the payroll tax on wages above something like $400,000 — leaving a “donut hole” in the middle so two-income professional households don’t get clobbered, then having it kick back in at the top.

Is $400,000 the right line? Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe it’s $300,000 or $500,000. That’s a job for the people who love crunching those big numbers. I’ll happily defer to them on the exact figure. I just think a person pulling in seven figures can afford to chip in past March.

Add a small surtax on investment income for high earners

Social Security is funded almost entirely by taxes on wages. That means the wealthiest Americans — the ones living mostly off capital gains and dividends — barely fund it at all. I’d add a modest surtax on investment income: 1% for single filers over $250,000 or couples over $400,000. If you want a second tier, make it 2% on income above $500,000 single and $1 million joint. We’re talking a penny or two on the dollar, and only for people doing quite well. It won’t change their lives, and it widens who’s actually paying in.

Readers of this blog, and myself, are likely to have funded a lot of their retirement plans this way. This may catch some of the Fat FIRE people out there. It might impact us because my wife’s military pension is already significant and we’ve invested a lot. So be it. It’s reasonable that we do our fair share.

Nudge the payroll rate up, slowly

The total Social Security tax is 12.4%, split between you and your employer. I’d let it drift up to 13.0% over a long stretch of years — not a jolt, a glide. An abrupt tax hike is a political grenade. A slow, pre-announced climb of a tenth of a percent a year is something people and businesses can plan around and barely feel. Boring is the whole point here.

The Washington Post recently argued against something like this, which felt like a Bezos-directed piece. Their argument is that it would amount to taxing businesses more. I’m fine with it because businesses saved a TON of taxes with the 2018 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Build a real reserve — and keep the politicians out of it

Here’s my one semi-fun idea. Create a “Social Security Plus” reserve, professionally managed, invested in broad, boring index funds, with ironclad rules against any politician raiding it or steering it toward a pet project. Something run more like a decent pension fund or a university endowment than a government slush pile.

Now, I have to admit the obvious problem with this one: there isn’t a big pile of spare money sitting around to invest. The program is running a cash deficit as it is. So realistically this doesn’t move the needle much in the near term, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But I like the idea of building the machinery now — the governance, the guardrails, the discipline — so that if surpluses ever do show up, there’s a grown-up structure ready to put them to work instead of Congress inventing a new way to spend them.

There’s a suggestion that we should borrow over a trillion dollars and invest that, but that feels like investing on margin. I’m still willing to consider this if it buys some political progress in the other areas mentioned.

Protect the people at the bottom, and the people near the door

Whatever we end up doing, I don’t want to squeeze low-income retirees who are already living close to the bone. If anything, the minimum benefit for a lifetime of low-wage work should get a little more generous, not less. And nobody who’s five years from retirement should have the rug yanked out from under them. Changes should land on those of us with time to adjust, not on someone who already mailed in their paperwork.

Final Thoughts

So that’s my napkin plan. Leave the retirement age where it is, ask a bit more from high wages and investment income, let the payroll rate creep up gently, stand up a reserve for the future, and shield the folks who can least afford a hit. No single piece is dramatic. Added together, I’d like to think it gets us most of the way there. I should note that I’m just a guy with a blog – a real actuary might spot a hole in this in about four seconds. If it were easy, it would already have been done, right?

What would you change? If someone handed you the pen and told you it had to get 60 votes in the Senate, where would you give a little, and where would you hold the line?

The post Let’s Fix Social Security appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

Defeating Apple Pricing and RAMageddon at the Same Time

Lazy Man — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:27:47 +0000

I made my biggest mobile purchase last week – while on a whale-watching excursion. Why? Timing was (and I think still is) critical. Read on for more details…

(Yes, I know it’s Amazon Prime Day, but I haven’t found much there. Nothing as close to as good as this deal.)

I was on an Alaskan cruise – bald eagles are more common than strong wifi. I’m lying. The wifi was fine in most of Alaska; it’s just that I was so busy. I don’t anticipate coming back to Alaska anytime soon (if ever), so I figure I might as well get my money’s worth and see as much as I can.

An old Kano computer that I got my kids when they were very tiny. We barely used it. Let’s hope this works better.

About a month ago, I decided it was probably time for the kids to get their own computers. Their school gives them MacBooks for use during the school year. However, the surveillance is strict. They can’t download their own software, or even parent-approved software. My son was worried about writing an essay for a scholarship on the computer because it wasn’t school-approved in advance. I tried to install some free art software on my son’s computer and ran into a roadblock: no one at the school knew who had the admin privileges to do it.

There’s also the three summer months when they have no access to a computer. For a long time, this was a positive thing – it encouraged the kids to get out and enjoy the good weather. However, as they get older, the roadblocks to not having a computer seem to be multiplying. I had set them up with accounts on a computer at a desk that I rarely use. However, I can’t keep the area clean – it gathers stuff from many unfinished projects.

As much as I’d love for them to be Windows people, it makes sense for them to stay in the Apple world. Much of the world runs on Apple technology. They have Android devices, and we have a Google Pro family plan. They can pick a path or choose to combine the best of both ecosystems later on.

One of the reasons why I jumped on the Apple bandwagon is the pricing. They control the whole ecosystem including the hardware, operating system, and apps. To me, this feels like a company that expects to be better than Dell/HP/Asus (hardware), Intel (chips), Microsoft (OS), and Google (mobile OS and App store) in every area. They are doing a great job because everything works well together, but there’s a reason Apple’s margins have historically been ridiculously high. The other reason why I avoided Apple is that they refuse to implement very basic technology. I had removable batteries, storage (SD cards), and wireless charging back in my Palm Pre almost 20 years ago. At least they figured out wireless charging.

(Sorry for the rant. Let’s get back on track.)

Besides Apple’s pricing, computers have recently gotten a LOT more expensive. The companies building out AI data centers have been buying up all the memory and storage. This shortage has left consumer companies, such as laptop and smartphone makers, having to pay extra to secure the remaining supply of memory. That extra charge is passed on to the consumer. It’s at least three times as expensive as it used to be. The industry has dubbed the increase in memory prices “RAMageddon”.

I’ve wanted to get a new laptop for a little while now, but I can’t justify it. I bought one with 64GB of RAM a couple of years ago, and now I’m spoiled. Today, the cost of the memory alone would be almost as much as the entire laptop.

The RAMaggeddon problem is so bad that Apple CEO Tim Cook has said cost increases are “unavoidable”. In the past, Apple has had a lot of control with pricing because of its huge market share. That isn’t enough to help them against RAMaggeddon.

How to Beat Apple Pricing and RAMaggeddon

One of the best ways to get a good price on Apple products is to buy a refurbished product. Everything I’ve read says that they are practically the same as new. I feel like enough people have done this that, if it were a problem, there would be many people raising caution. I’ve always had great luck with renewed products.

Apple had 13-inch MacBook Airs for $759 a few weeks ago. They were M4 chips (released May 2025) with 16GB of RAM (good enough for them). I hemmed and hawed about it for a couple of days because they don’t really need a new laptop. When I was ready to buy, they disappeared from Apple’s website. I figured Apple probably wouldn’t keep them around because they released a less capable MacBook Neo for $599. The MacBook Neo uses a chip from their iPhones and cuts a couple of other corners. A new MacBook Air starts at $1099. Since I’m buying two, it’s a savings of around $700 when you factor in taxes.

I saw that they came back in stock while I was on the cruise. I figured that I’d let it go a couple of hours to enjoy the whales. However, they went out of stock again and were replaced by the same deal in different colors. I wasn’t picky, but I didn’t want to risk them running out again. Also, the whale watch got a little boring. They weren’t jumping over the boat, Free Willy style. That’s why I decided to buy right there on the boat.

The good news is that this deal is still available. I didn’t have to buy as quickly as I thought, I guess. I think this is the best deal in this price range that’s widely available.

However, some people might be able to do even better. I was able to use our military discount for another 10% off. I believe that teachers and students can get a similar deal. It seems like my middle school kids don’t count as “students” for some reason, so I was happy that the military discount applied. It was a little tricky to use, as I had to find Apple’s military store, log in that way, and then find the refurbished laptop. That brought the price to $683, plus tax.

Final Thoughts

I haven’t been as excited by a purchase in a long time. The stars aligned, and it’s the right time to buy. I think computers are likely to get even more expensive for the next year or two. The memory and storage companies can’t just ramp up production fast enough – it takes time to build chip fabrication plants.

The kids can use a computer that will get them through high school. Also, it’s what they are used to, which is a big win.

The post Defeating Apple Pricing and RAMageddon at the Same Time appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

Avoid the SpaceX IPO

Lazy Man — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 10:04:24 +0000

Every few years there’s an IPO that gets people who don’t normally think about stocks asking me if they should buy it. Back in the day it was Google. Then Facebook. Then a parade of names I’ve already forgotten. This year it’s SpaceX, which is expected to start trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX next Friday.

Elon Musk’s hype machine is in full effect. Instead of cars driving themselves, it’s about creating a colony of a million people on Mars*. It’s Starlink beaming internet down from space. And it’s reportedly going to be the largest IPO in history, targeting a $1.77 trillion valuation.

That number is exactly why I’m going to pass. Actually, it’s only part of the reason. Let me walk through the rest.

I’ll get my bias out of the way first. I’m not a fan of Musk, and I’ve been less of one since his DOGE adventure in government. You’re free to disagree, but I think even he’d admit that he failed miserably at delivering what he promised.

Here’s the bigger problem, though. To buy SpaceX, you kind of have to buy the whole Musk story, and that story has a habit of moving the goalposts.

Look at Tesla. Its valuation has always seemed out of control to me compared to other car companies. Tesla makes great cars, but it’s still a car company, and it’s priced like something else entirely. Meanwhile, Musk seems less interested in cars these days and more interested in humanoid robots. Ten years ago, he sold us on full self-driving being right around the corner. It wasn’t. Today, Tesla is playing catch-up to Google’s Waymo and a Chinese company or two who are actually putting driverless cars on the road. So, having not delivered on that promise, the pitch has shifted to robots that are probably another decade away.

Now, what exactly are you buying with SpaceX? It’s a bundle. It includes Twitter (sorry, “X”), which Musk bought for $44 billion and quickly lost about 80% of its value. It includes xAI, his artificial intelligence company. xAI isn’t nothing, but let’s be honest about where it sits. It’s behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, behind Anthropic’s Claude, and behind Google’s Gemini. I’d put it in fourth place at best, with Meta breathing down its neck. And every one of these AI companies is spending absolutely staggering amounts of money on data centers right now. That’s a scary business to be in, even if you’re winning. Being in fourth place and spending like you’re in first is scarier still.

Then there are the actual rockets, which are supposedly the whole point. The core launch business does real, impressive work. But the revenue is small for a $1.77 trillion price tag. SpaceX did somewhere around $19 billion in revenue last year and still lost nearly $5 billion.

Let me put that $1.77 trillion in context, because numbers this big stop meaning anything. Here’s what other trillion-dollar-ish companies actually bring in:

Alphabet (Google): over $400 billion in revenue last year
Microsoft: north of $245 billion
Meta: around $165 billion
Nvidia: $130 billion last fiscal year, and running far higher now

These are wildly profitable companies. In fairness, Alphabet (4.3B), Microsoft (3.2B), and Nvidia (5.2B) are still much bigger than SpaceX. However, Musk seems to think that SpaceX is equal to Meta without the revenue or profits. I’m not a Wall Street analyst, but I can do the revenue/market cap division, and it doesn’t add up for me.

I’m not the only skeptic. Morningstar just pegged SpaceX’s fair value at $780 billion, less than half the IPO target, and flatly said investors will get better prices after the IPO. The Motley Fool agreed, saying there’s no rush and a wait-and-see approach lowers your risk. When the pros are this lukewarm, why buy into the hype?

So would I ever buy? Sure, at the right price. IPOs have lock-up periods, and when early investors are finally free to sell, the price often drops. For me, I’d start to get interested after about a 70% drop from the IPO price. It’s the gap between the hype and what the business actually earns, factoring in the failures to deliver that I’ve watched for years. I can’t even begin to imagine what Warren Buffett thinks of this.

Am I being too cynical here? Are you planning to buy into the SpaceX IPO, or sitting it out like me? Let me know in the comments.

* Yes, Musk’s compensation package includes an incentive for creating a colony of a million people on Mars.

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Builders, Sellers, and Measurers

Lazy Man — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:00:21 +0000

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Price recently wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal. It took me quite a while, but I found a non-paywalled link.* It’s called “How I Choose Which Cloudflare Employees to Replace With AI.” As you might imagine, it’s gotten some attention.

I’m not going to pile on too much about the lack of humanity. I’d much rather cover some of his justifications. I’ll get to those in a bit, but these two sentences stood out right away:

We haven’t found another example in U.S. business history of a public company growing at more than 30% that laid off more than 20% of its workforce. Yet what we did is likely going to become the norm over the next year.

If he’s right, the economy will face very serious problems over the next 12 months.

He explains the layoffs using a book by Peter Drucker, published in 1954, called The Practice of Management. I’ve heard of Peter Drucker, but I’m not familiar with the book. It’s far from the equivalent of the Bible when it comes to business, but let’s presume it is very good. The concept that Price focuses on is that there are three main roles in business: builders, sellers, and measurers. Price describes them: “Builders create products. Sellers sell those products. Measurers do everything else: internal audit, revenue recognition, finance, legal, compliance, middle management, operations, and on and on.”

So, now we can get to some of his first very unusual statements:

“Contrary to what some analysts predict, builders aren’t going anywhere. If an engineer on my team can now be 10 times as productive, I’m going to hire as many as I can find.”

On the surface, that may make sense. However, it’s quite possible to overbuild. Let’s presume that the demand for product is X and you can meet that demand with 100 engineers. If the engineers become 10x more productive, it’s not useful to make 10x the product. The smart business would match the supply with the demand and save money by getting rid of 90 engineers.

This is essentially what the big tech companies in Silicon Valley are doing with the layoffs. It’s possible that the business could expand into other areas with the engineers, but keep in mind that other companies are doing the same thing. It doesn’t seem like every business could just expand into ten other businesses with their engineers. Eventually you have too many companies competing in the same businesses. Not only that, but it is unlikely that the demand supports all those businesses.

Next Price says:

“Sellers, too, are safe from extinction. Humans still control budgets, and they want to buy from people who take the time to understand their needs, build trust and fix whatever goes wrong.”

I think this depends on the business. How many sellers does Walmart or Amazon need? It feels to me like the shelf or computer system does the selling. You would need a seller to get your product on Walmart’s shelves, but that would be relatively few people and a one-time thing, since there are fewer retailers to sell to.

Price then moves on to measurers. It’s a long quote, so I will simplify it to say that’s important, but it’s what AI is replacing. Specifically, “Tireless, independent, efficient and available, AI systems can now measure an organization with a level of objective detail and precision that was previously impossible even for the best employees.”

So who did Cloudflare lay off? Price says he laid off middle managers, which I suppose could make sense. Still, I’d argue that they do communications that are thought to be one of the resistant jobs in a world of AI. He also says, “We significantly reduced our marketing team, which, like in most companies, was teeming with measurers.”

In what world is the marketing team a measurer instead of sales?!?! I guess you have to measure the sales, but marketing goes hand in hand with sales.

He pivots to an area of hiring and says, “We received almost a million applicants for 1,111 paid internships this summer. The interns we hired are extremely qualified and AI-native. They’re all builders or sellers, and we expect that the majority will get full-time offers.”

I know it’s a US-based business (he says it above), and there are probably international hires. I would expect most of the hires to be in the United States, though. I find it hard to believe that Cloudflare got almost a million real applicants. I suspect that they are counting something similar to the Common App, where people can apply en masse to a bunch of businesses. Can you imagine how many applications much, much bigger companies like Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon, Meta, etc. get?

Perhaps it’s time to turn off electric submissions and make job seekers prove their interest the old-fashioned way- they write a cover letter, attach a resume, and hope to get a call from a real person. If I were hiring, that’s the kind of applicant that would get my attention.

Final Thoughts

Despite my criticism above, there’s some real value to what Price was saying. If he can grow the company 30% while shrinking headcount 20%, he’s almost forced to make that move to, as they say, “increase shareholder value.”

We’re just at the beginning of AI. ChatGPT hasn’t been public for four years yet. It’s difficult to see where this is going, and it’s only going to get crazier with quantum computers coming in 8-12 years (I think). My kids are about 10 years away from entering the workforce. For the first time in forever, I don’t know what that’s going to look like.

* Why do CEOs write editorials in newspapers that are paywalled? And why do newspapers paywall articles that aren’t done by their journalists or writers? This drives me crazy. I get that there’s print distribution for the CEO’s message, but it’s awful for 95% of the population that will find the article online.

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529 Plans: 29 Thoughts for 5/29

Lazy Man — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:00:33 +0000

Happy 5/29 Day! Regular readers probably already know that a 529 is a college savings plan. For those new here, well, I guess you just found out!

I first started looking into college savings plans in 2007, when my nephew was born. I wanted to give him a little head start. I loved the idea my gift would be multiplied thanks to the power of compound interest. Now, he’s 18 years old! He’ll be off to college in the fall.

Unfortunately college savings plans can be a little difficult for a new parent to understand. This is why I wrote my guide for How to Choose a 529 back in 2007.

As new uncle, I put in a little money to seed the account and added more on birthdays and holidays. My nephew got himself an awesome little sister, so I opened up an account for her too. My mother (their grandmother) pitched in on holidays.

Today, he has more than $7,500 in his account. More than half of that is from stock market gains. College is expensive, but $7,500 is still something.

In 2012, we had kids of our own and we focused on saving in their own 529 Plans. We’ve got some work to do on that front, but we do have $50,000 saved. We have some saved in a Coverdell which is another educational savings plan. (In my opinion, 529s are better, but I did the Coverdell once because it was a little more flexible for some expenses). We also have my wife’s GI Bill. We’re investing in their education with the best private school in the area, so they better earn scholarships too, right? Finally, we want the kids to have some of their own money for their own education so they don’t skip classes.

In short, there are a lot of ways to save for college. Before we get started with my 29 thoughts on 529 Plans on 5/29, I have one update for 2025. I added my updates from 2024 with negative numbers, so I’ll continue with that system with this year’s update. (If I had more time, I’d consolidate a few of these thoughts to keep it at 29. Yes, you can laugh at my numbering system.)

-2. 2025 Update – While 529 plans are mostly the same for this year, keep an eye out for Trump/MAGA Accounts. They aren’t passed into law yet, but they’ve could be soon. If they do become a real financial product, it seems they won’t get the same tax benefit as 529 plans. So if you think you are going to use money for higher education, it’s likely going to be better to stick to the 529 plan. In any case, we’ll wait and see what those financial accounts look like when they are done baking… if they get done baking at all.

-1. 2024 Update – There was an update to one of the laws in 2024 that makes a 529 even more flexible. The law is the Secure Act 2.0 and you can read more about why a 529 plan is even better in 2024 from my friend Jim’s Wallet Hacks website.

0. 2024 Update – Here’s a brilliant hack to draw down from your 529k Plan if your kids don’t use all the 529 money you’ve saved. It comes from Justin at Root of Good:

Ultimate 529 draining methodology:

Enroll half time in a community college in fun interesting classes. Pay for 6 hours to be considered half time (cost ~$1k/yr)

Withdraw from 529 the $21,717 per year for Room and board plus the $1k tuition, all qualified educational expenses pic.twitter.com/nDd9fRoS5R

— Justin RootofGood, Worker Emeritus (@RootofGoodBlog) December 15, 2023

Jonathan at My Money Blog, explains it in more detail here. Essentially by enrolling part time in Community College you can use the amount of room and board as a qualified tuition expense. This means that you don’t have to pay the 10% withdrawal fee or taxes on the investment gains.

1. When money from a 529 plan is used for a qualified education expense, there are no taxes to pay on the investment gains.

2. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get great gains on a 529 plan since they are typically compounding for less than 20 years.

3. You might be able to reasonably double your money twice in that 20 years. Thus one dollar invested at a child’s birth may be worth four after high school graduation. This assumption uses the rule of 69 with 7-8% investment growth.

4. Thus, if you put one year of tuition in a 529 account at birth, it could fund their entire college education. (Unfortunately, very few people have tens of thousands to invest when a new child is born.)

5. 529 plans are run at the state level. As soon as you are done with this article, you’ll want to look at your own state’s specific plan.

6. Some states give you an extra incentive to open a 529 plan. My state, Rhode Island, gives a $100 grant if you sign up for a 529 plan when your baby is born.

7. I used this idea to help motivate a blogger friend to start a 529 plan. I offered $25 and a couple of other bloggers joined in.

8. Some states allow for a tax deduction or credit for saving in a 529 plan.

9. Some states have better investment options than others. When I lived in California there was no tax incentive for me to invest in the state plan. I decided it was best to invest in Ohio’s plan which had Vanguard funds with low expenses.

10. 529 plans can be rolled over to a new beneficiary such as a child. This can be done indefinitely, possibly creating a family legacy of education funding and compound interest.

11. 529 plan money can be used to buy computers. See this IRS page for more details.

12. 529 plan money can also be used to buy computer software subject to the same IRS rules mentioned previously.

13. 529 plan money can even be used for internet service.

14. 529 plan money can be used for tuition at private or religious elementary or secondary schools.

15. 529 Plans can be used for community and technical schools.

16. 529 Plans can be used for some nontraditional schools such as the Golf Academy of America, the commercial diving program CDA Technical Institute, and the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. Yes, golf, diving, and cooking can qualify.

17. 529 Plans can be used for online schools.

18. 529 Plans can be used for hundreds of international schools. Check with the government searchable database first.

19. 529 Plans can be used for online schools. Again, check with the government searchable database first.

20. There’s a limit of $10,000 per year for elementary and secondary use.

21. If your state has a tax deduction for 529 plan contributions, you may want to funnel money through the plan to save on your state tax.

22. If the beneficiary gets a scholarship an equivalent amount of the money in the 529 plan can be used penalty-free. However, taxes on the gains will apply.

23. Alabama and Illinois have a 529 Rewards Visa card where you can earn 1.529% rewards on your spending. A small annual fee may apply. As always, it’s best to pay off your credit cards every month to avoid the huge interest charges.

24. One of the best ways to grow a 529 is simply to create an automatic monthly transfer from your income. This “paying yourself first” creates forced savings.

25. A wealthy relative can use a 529 plan to circumvent the gift tax by “superfunding” 5 years of contributions ($70,000) in one year.

26. Almost 300 private colleges and universities belong to a Private College 529 Plan. It’s the only 529 plan not run by a state and it allows you to lock in tomorrow’s tuition at today’s rates. It’s not an investment.

27. However, if you plan to contribute to the Private College 529 Plan and go to a school that doesn’t participate, you may have done better investing in a regular 529 plan.

28. It’s possible to combine a Private College 529 for tuition and a regular 529 for other expenses such as room and board.

29. As 529 plans are intrinsically linked to taxes, please consult with your tax advisor before implementing anything mentioned here.

If you’ve made it through all 29 thoughts, I hope that you’ve been inspired to investigate at least a few of them further. Let me know in the comments if you have followed any of these down the rabbit and what your experience with 529 plans is.

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529 Plans: How Do you Choose?

Lazy Man — Fri, 29 May 2026 11:00:50 +0000

[Happy 5/29 day! While it’s not as popular as May 4th (Star Wars) or May 5th (Cinco de Mayo), it may be much more important to your life than either.

I originally wrote this article in 2007 after days of reading about to best gift money for my nephew’s college. Nearly 20 years later, the specifics of the plans may have changed, but the overall lessons and logic remain the same. My nephew and niece (who came later) have a combined $16,000 each in college savings in the plan. I’m keeping this in its original 2007 form even though a lot has changed since then. You may also be interested in This more recent article on 529 plans.]

I mentioned yesterday that I’m looking to give my newborn nephew a head start in his education savings. Having gone through a number of options, I decided that a 529 Plan was my best option. Unfortunately, a lot of research may be necessary to decide on the right state’s 529 Plan for you. Here are the steps I took to determine which state will receive my money. Remember that I’m looking to give $500 initially and $100 a year after that.

Check your own state first
My home state is California. I thought it would be very easy to see if there was a tax benefit for my state. However, states don’t often advertise that your invest is NOT tax-deductible. They are in the business of getting you to invest with them, so it doesn’t serve their cause to advertise a fact that could be construed as a negative. When the originating source isn’t helpful, I suggest looking for a third party. Kiplinger.com came to the rescue with a list of states that offer a 529 Plan tax deduction. It’s not the most recent list, but the best I could find. If your state is on that list, chances are your best option is to invest in your own state’s 529 Plan and take the tax deduction. The exception is if your own state has a significant reason to reject them, such as the ones below. If your state, like mine, isn’t on that list, there’s no particular advantage that I could find for going with that state. In fact, you may be better off looking at another state’s for a variety of reasons that we will cover now.

How is a state’s 529 Plan sold?
There are two basic ways to invest in a 529 Plan. The plans are sold directly or through an advisor. Some states may offer either one or both options. The direct sales is the do-it-yourself method and the advisor option is for people that wish to have a little more guidance. If you’ve been reading my writing for any length of time, you know that I’m a direct kind of guy. I hate paying fees when I can do the research myself, so I eliminated any plans that didn’t have a direct sales option.

How do I know if a state’s plan is any good?
Put simply, this is the biggest question for those that are looking outside their own state. With 50 states and some having multiple plans, you could spend a week reading about each of them. I typically find this stuff fun, but it has it’s limits. I spent a lot of time researching various articles that listed 4 or 5 good states, but none of them gave me anything to compare or went into detail on why they are good. I finally stumbled upon Saving for College’s 5 Cap Rating System. With their list you can pretty quickly scan through and weed out quite a few sub-par states. In my research, I only looked at plans that had 4.5 Caps for the out-of-state and had a direct sale option. This left me with just a handful to consider. I still needed to narrow it down which required me to reject some plans.

Reasons to Reject a state’s plan:

Minimum Investment
Since I intend to invest only $500, any plans that required more than that had to be excluded. I came across a few that were $1000 to start and some that seemed to require automatic deposits of $25 a month. After eliminating those I was left with about 4 or 5 different options.
Maintenance Fees
Some states charge $25 a year if you don’t have $25,000 in assets with them. We are expecting to contribute $100 a year in addition to our initial deposit. Those maintenance fees would be 25% of each year’s investment. This eliminated Utah for me despite the fact that it’s one of the best state plans according to most reviews.
Expenses
Like mutual funds, 529 Plans have expenses. Like you and me, the financial folks have to make their living. There are numerous reports on how index funds often outperform the managed funds, so I prefer to go with them. They typically have very low expenses since they aren’t out visiting companies to research their investments. So I looked at the expenses of the remaining choices. I was happy to stumble upon two states with expenses as low as 0.30% that matched all the above criteria.
Investment Options
I might be getting a little picky here as most plans offer the basics – age-based plans, equity plans, balanced plans, etc… However, a few plans go above and beyond and offer more choice. Other plans offer fund families you might already know and trust.

The Winner
Ohio passed all the tests with flying colors. I don’t have the beneficiaries social security number, so I haven’t signed up yet. Maybe during the final review there will be some kind of gotcha, but right now all systems are go. They seem to have put together a best of breed program. There are no fees, no significant minimums (just $15 per investment option). Their expenses are amongst the lowest I found (except for you lucky folks who live in Louisiana) as long as you go with their Vanguard option. I’ve read that you can mix and match a few different Vanguard funds, which, if true, is going to be icing on the cake. If it’s not true, then I’ll go with the Aggressive Growth option as it’s 85% Vanguard Total Stock Market Index and 15% Vanguard Institutional Developed Markets Index Fund. I love the way that Vanguard has handled my ETF portfolio, so I’m excited to give them a little more money to work with.

The Runner-up
Michigan almost had it all – it really was a photo-finish. The only differences I could find were in the investment options. TIAA-CREF is a great organization, but I don’t know them like I do Vanguard. They also had only three static investment options and it didn’t seem like you could build a portfolio from them at all. Though their all equity option was tempting, I’m passing Michigan for more choice.

Have you invested out-of-state 529 Plan? If so, I’d love to read in the comments what factors influenced your decision.

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My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (April 2026)

Lazy Man — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:50:58 +0000

Every month, I write an article that shows my passive income and my growth toward my life goals. We’re very late in May, and I’m just starting to review April. It usually only takes me a few days to begin this article, and April feels like a distant memory. For that reason, this update may be a little shorter in some places.

In the past, I’ve done some personal/family updates, but I’ve started writing this over a week after I would like to have it published. I’ll quickly mention that I turned 50 in March, then get to the numbers.

Goals for 2025

I put all my goals in a spreadsheet that I ~~stole~~ borrowed from Retire By 40. Here’s what it looks like for this year:

(Click it, and it will open in a new tab.)

Passive Income

My Passive Income Pyramid

I used to have three side hustles with a passive component: a dog-sitting business, this blog, and a website I manage for a non-profit. They all required some active work. However, I could do them all even while working a full-time job. I considered those partially passive income. This blog and the retainer for the non-profit website are minimal, so consider it almost all dog boarding.

Dog Boarding/Website Income

This is the least passive of all incomes. I only count this as 50% passive. Dog sitting has been very steady over the last few years. It’s been close to $50,000.

That’s changed this year. Business is down about 40%. It’s nice to have the break, but I’m ready to host more dogs. The summer is usually quite busy, but that hasn’t been the case.

April’s Dog/Web Real Income: $3,026.35

There’s a path to earning more from web work, and I’m probably going to pivot to that for a bit. I still have more than enough family stuff to do.

Rental Property Income

We have two rental properties. Both still have mortgages, and the rental income is around $1,100/mo. One mortgage is done in 2027. The other one is a small loan, but it has another 15 years on it. If they were both mortgage-free, we’d make around $32,000 a year.

For the purpose of this report, I calculate the rental property income using the following formula:

(Rents After Estimated Expenses) * (Equity Percentage Owned) = Income)

The idea is that we only own a percentage of the equity, so I should only count that percentage of the rent after expenses. When we own everything, the equity percentage will be 100%, and the rent will be after expenses.

In April, Zillow estimated our properties were worth $13,000 more than the month before. The seasonal market is just starting to hit its peak time. We also paid off almost $1,000 in mortgage principal. That meant our EPO went from owning 84.48% of our properties to 84.91%. The rents after expenses are $2,900/month. Using the equation above, our estimated income from this area would be $2,460. That’s up from $2,448 in March. Twelve dollars is a nice gain for this number.

Dividend Income

My wife and I have been nearly maxing out our retirement accounts for a couple of decades. The markets have done very well over that time. Overall, we have a nice retirement nest egg.

I don’t track dividends from all the accounts. I’m doing well to get my wife to log in to her TSP (the government’s version of a 401k) account and give me the totals. I simply assume we could invest the money into an ETF that pays a 2.5% dividend. For example, HDV, a high-dividend ETF, currently yields 3.01%.

I also have profit-sharing income with a private company in which I own a small stake. I get a check each month that behaves like a dividend – it’s just taxed a little differently.

April’s estimated dividend income was $6218. In March, it was $5,897. You can see why the $12 in real estate gains are unexciting now. That was nice, but nothing compared to this $321 number. The stock market can jump around a lot, and I can see a 20%+ correction coming, but I’ve been wrong about that for a couple of years now. I’ll just keep on growing money while everything is going good. I have been putting more and more money into bonds and treasuries to try to protect these gains.

Unlike the previous two sections, this income is 100% passive. For this reason, I don’t have to adjust the numbers.

Total Passive Income

Dog/Etc.: $3,026 – Adjusted to $1,513
Rentals: $2,460 – Adjusted to $1,968
Dividends: $6,218 – Remains at $6,218

Dogs/Etc – Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line

Total Adjusted Passive Income: $9,699

Here’s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track:

The blue line represents the monthly total adjusted passive income. The red line represents the 12-month average. This removes some of the seasonality of dog boarding. That’s the important one.

This April’s numbers were the biggest jump in some time. That important red line mentioned above has hit another new high, as it has for 13 of the last 15 months. The most passive components, real estate and dividends, passed $8,000 for the first time. They blew by the number at $8,186 – almost at the magic $100,000 milestone.

My wife continues to work as well. She has 27 years of high-level military service. That means she’s vested in a pension that would double all this passive income. I also earn some income that falls outside of the areas listed above. It’s not passive, so I don’t mention it here.

I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth gained 4.79%. I can’t remember too many months like that. I can’t remember too many months like that. It’s all the stock market, though, and it can easily go back down quickly. This is why I’m “pocketing” some gains in treasuries and bonds. They are less likely to go down and still give some income in the meantime. For the whole year, our net worth is up 5.81%.

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($80,000)

My income has been dropping over the last few years, going from $98K to 488K to $81K. Last year, I stayed mostly the same at $80,593.

Now that I’m 50 and we’ve got a good set of assets, I don’t feel the need to push this. It’s more for self-worth feelings than anything else, I guess.

In April, I made $5,026. For the year, I’m at $18,097. That pace would bring me to $54K. Dog boarding ramps up in the summertime, but we have some extra travel this year, so I’m very likely to fall short on this one.

Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations

I can’t remember doing anything to improve the website or operations. I have a whole list of stuff to do, but I was too busy to get to most of it. I’m also not motivated to do much for operations when we don’t have nearly as much business as we’ve had in the past.

AI Everything

I mentioned last month that I’m working on a guide for boys and young men on how to live the best life. It’s inspired by Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway (affiliate link), which I’ve been reading. I’m using AI to shape it, and I’ve added a bunch of other sources.

The problem is that it always feels like it can be improved. I have to call it good enough and print a version to present to the kids. Once again, perfect is the enemy of good. I should be able to finish this in a couple of hours this weekend.

I have also been using AI to research the value of private high schools. I don’t think I’ve ever been so flummoxed by anything before. I had always assumed that we’d send the kids to public high school, take advantage of dual enrollment, and hack together a great Bachelor’s degree in maybe three years.

Part of the master plan with this was to use my wife’s military discount for a cheaper private school and give them a head start. Our oldest (7th grade) doesn’t have to try to get A’s and is often bored by the material. When we visit the private high school classes, he finds them fascinating and engaging. I think he’s just sliding through the public high school classes.

I’m not sure if the AI is helping me come up with any answers, but I’m able to have it review some of the books on the subject and give me some analysis. I’m careful to take any findings to another AI for verification.

Health

As I mentioned above, I got old, turning 50 a few months ago. For my health goals, I’m mostly using this separate article about health goals from last year.

Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat*2) mass >60)

My goal of getting this number to 60 could be achieved by losing 169 lbs and having a body fat of 21.5%. Wow, those numbers don’t seem likely at all, right now.

Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)

I rate my diet from 1 (poor) to 5 (great) each week. It’s mostly a gut feel for how the week went.

I used to do the same for exercise, but I’m switching that up to use Heart Points from my Pixel Watch. This is more honest than my gut feeling and just as easy for me to use. Then I add both scores (diet and exercise) for the month to get Body Points.

With the weather improving, I’m getting a little more active. My diet has been just average, though. I have 47 diet points and 40 body points, for a total of 87 points. That’s a pace for 261 points – not good enough.

I measure brain points on the same scale. They are based on doing things like Duolingo (Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, and Chess), and the NY Times puzzles (Wordle, Strands, and Connections). I want to include more creative stuff, such as drawing and/or music. Until I add those, I’m likely to max out at 4 points per week by doing all the previous stuff.

At the end of April, I got to 70 Brain Points. That’s a pace of 210 points. It’s close, but not quite there.

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

I am able to bring this to my doctor, and she can adjust my medication based on the data.

In April, my blood pressure was 134/78. In March, it was 135/81. It’s a little better, but not perfect. However, by the end of the month, the latest increase in medicine has helped it stay in a good range. I feel like I’m in good shape here.

Doctor Appointments

I didn’t have any doctor appointments. It feels like the first time I said that in a while.

Longevity Research (40 hours)

I did a little longevity research. I’ve been watching Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever on CNN. That qualifies.

Hobbies

Most of my hobbies are related to AI nowadays. I can come up with some fun ideas and go down the rabbit hole. Here are a couple of others that I am working on.

3D Printing

The kids keep 3D printing, but it’s the same old stuff. I want them to create some new stuff with TinkerCAD or something. I need to help them set up accounts and such. They had them a long time ago, but it has been a few years. I haven’t found the time to get them going on that. Also, I’m spending the hours of 3-6 every day running them to karate, Scouts, or play practice.

Play a modern song on a ukulele

So far, no work on the ukulele. It sits tucked away under a table. I would bring it out so that it would be in view, and I’d be encouraged to play it. If I did that, it wouldn’t be long before my wife hid it back under the table to eliminate the clutter.

Family

Declutter and Organize House

My wife and I did a very good spring cleaning of the garage in April. IT took only about 2-3 hours and made such a big difference. We probably have another 5 hours left to go, which we could spread over a couple of days. We had been waiting until the weather gets better, because it’s no fun cleaning a garage that’s 35 degrees.

Travel

Last month, we focused mostly on planning our excursions for our upcoming Alaska cruise in June. I’m starting to look into planning what to do when we’re in Tuscany in August. So far, I’ve just gotten discouraged as it’s far from the major cities. It’s my wife’s idea for a trip, so I’ll let her take the lead.

Kids

The kids are at the age now (12 and 13) where they either love each other or hate each other. They are either working well together or getting into big fights.

In April, we put a lot of time into looking at high schools for the 13-year-old. I mentioned it above in my AI section. We toured four high schools, and they take the better part of the morning. It’s a different world than what I’m used to.

Final Thoughts

I’m so late in getting out, we’ll save any extra thoughts for another day.

The post My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (April 2026) appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

How I Manage Dozens of Projects

Lazy Man — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:43:55 +0000

I’ve mentioned before that I have ADHD. I seem to be managing at least a dozen completely different priorities at any time. Also, I can’t seem to say “No!” to adding new projects. I get bored with the current one, and the new ones are always more exciting.

You’re probably thinking, “Cool story, about your brain, bro.” That’s okay, I’m guessing there are a few of you out there who are the same way. Our society moves faster and faster every day. I’d like to blame it all on smartphones and TikTok, but I think it’s deeper than that. I find that as soon as I learn something about AI, it’s obsolete by the start of the next week.

Today, I thought I’d switch from personal finance to productivity. I don’t think it is a big departure; the two are intertwined. Much of my work is done on a computer, so that’s going to be my specific focus. To give it a little more of a financial focus, I’ll explain how it might save me hundreds on my next computer.

The Most Important Digital Tool: Your Web Browser

My web browser accounts for about 98% of my computer’s app usage. Some people use mail programs and office suites, but I use Google’s tools: Gmail, Docs, Sheets, etc. They are all browser-based.

I manage several different projects at any given time. Each of these has its own space, with its own workflows:

Lazy Man and Money – This has its own browser window with Gmail, writing app*, social media apps, WordPress, and approximately 600 browser tabs of stories that I intend to read and write about someday. I’m not exaggerating. It is literally hundreds and hundreds of tabs.
Personal – This is a generic window that handles most of my personal life. It has its own Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Google Messages for Web, Google Voice, and… another few hundred tabs of non-financial articles that don’t fit into the Lazy Man and Money profile.
My Dog Boarding Business – This has the same Google suite of apps, but also my mailing list website, my Grasshopper (virtual phone) account, and the website/WordPress dashboard
My Local Small Business Group – I develop a lot of projects for that group. I created an event system, a job board, and some apps that track how much business we refer to each other. I run all the technology, so it’s not just those, but the website, mailing list, and a bunch of other stuff.
Kid Wealth – I have all the blogging links of Lazy Man and Money, but for my Kid Wealth website. I don’t go into this space much anymore, because it wasn’t worth slowing down my computer since few people visit the website.

It’s hard to log in to multiple G Suite accounts and apps at the same time. It can get confusing quickly. To keep all these spaces isolated, I created separate Firefox Profiles for each. I realize I’m one of the few people using Firefox, but Google Chrome has profiles too. The rest of this article will use my experience with Firefox, but please stick with me. Once you get the concepts, you should be able to apply them to the browser of your choice.

This works well for organization, but when I had more than 2 profiles open, my computer would freeze. I have a very powerful laptop with 64GB of memory, but it was no match for all this. Of course, having nearly a thousand browser tabs was a key problem.

Limiting the Number of Browser Tabs

It may sound easy to just say close them, but that causes me a ton of mental stress. I’m a digital hoarder, and I know it.

One solution I found was the OneTab browser extension. It opens all open tabs and lists them in a single browser tab. This is a good solution, because I can feel like I haven’t lost the “very important” information that I will (never) need. I would run this every couple of months to refresh my system. It works, but things get progressively slower until I declare bankruptcy and run this.

A few months ago, I found a complementary solution called unloading tabs. I could select all tabs and choose “unload tabs” from a context menu. This would essentially do the same thing as OneTab, but it wouldn’t delete the tabs – just the memory it uses. In the last month, I found the Auto Tab Discard extension. This automatically unloads tabs that you haven’t used after about 10 minutes. It works beautifully, and having a thousand browser tabs no longer slows down my computer.

Limiting the Number of Firefox Profiles

Having all those profiles was great for organization, but it means that I’m not running one Firefox, but five separate Firefoxes. If one Firefox process takes 7GB of memory (which is typical), then five of them take 35 GB. That’s not efficient. I still run some non-browser apps, so my computer can once again slow down.

While learning about Auto Tab Discard, I also learned about Firefox Multi-Account Containers. These work almost exactly like profiles, allowing me to segregate different areas of my life. The difference is that these use a single Firefox process, so adding a new workspace doesn’t use another 7GB of memory. The only downside is that I can’t have different extensions for each workspace. That’s a bonus for me, though, because I no longer have to think about whether I have all the right extensions in all my profiles.

It took a little work to make Multi-Account Containers work like profiles. Specifically, if I’m in my Lazy Man and Money container and open a new tab, I want that tab to be in the same container. Firefox assumes no container much of the time. It took me about an hour to figure it out, but once I installed the Multi-Account Containers and Sticky Window Containers extensions, it worked perfectly.

Dealing With All Those Tabs

This is still a work in progress. My plan is to dump them into Google’s NotebookLM. That’s an AI that can digest a lot of material and do some cool things with it. I’ve only used it briefly, but the podcast and mindmaps are useful. Ideally, I could find some way to roughly sort them into various areas such as health, technology, finance, etc. That would help me identify targeted areas to use.

If any readers are doing anything like this, please leave a comment or contact me.

Final Thoughts

From a financial perspective, making my computer run more efficiently is a HUGE win. I’ve been tempted to buy a Framework laptop that would let me upgrade and replace parts as they break over time. However, I’ve put off that decision because buying 64GB of memory to match the computer. You’ve probably read the news, but AI companies are buying up all the RAM, so prices have gone up from $250 to around $750-$800. Making my current RAM run more efficiently can hopefully help me wait until the memory supply picks up.

This article went into the nuts and bolts of Firefox, but many of the same concepts will work with your browser of choice. To come up with similar optimizations, you may have to spend some time with an AI app. If you spend a lot of time in a web browser, it is worth it.

As I was writing this, a voice in my head screamed, “Just change your habits!” It’s really hard to change yourself. I have some ideas on how to do that, which I might share in a future article.

I’ll leave you with one final piece of irony. One of the reasons why I stick with Firefox is that I don’t like the idea of one company controlling my technology experience. I do realize how silly it may sound to avoid Google Chrome and still use a dozen of its products, as I covered above.

* I’m currently using Simple Note as my writing app. I only like how it syncs everywhere. It has some major problems in managing many articles. It also doesn’t support Cut and Paste keyboard shortcuts. It’s inexcusable. If you have any suggestions for something better, I’m all ears.

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I Finally Cut the Cable (after Two Decades)

Lazy Man — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:24:06 +0000

[Note: I go off on a few tangents in this article. You can always just skip to the next section when I’m deep in the rabbit hole.]

Cutting the cable

I’m often both ahead of the curve and far, far behind the curve. I write about an idea when only a few people are considering it, but I only execute on it long after everyone else has. I wrote about Bitcoin in 2011, but didn’t buy any until 2022.

I wrote about cutting cable television in 2007, but didn’t actually do it until last month. In both cases, tens of millions of people jumped in while I waited on the sidelines.

Why It Took So Long to Cut the Cord

The California Era

When I first considered cutting the cable, I had just moved from Boston to California. My brother had set up a Slingbox, so I could watch local Red Sox and Patriots’ games. Slingbox was a piece of hardware that took a TV signal and made it available over the internet. The picture was grainy for sports – you couldn’t see which football player just made the tackle. (This was before HD was common.)

I just bought the MLB.tv package. For the Patriots’ games, I had to go to a bar to watch their Sunday ticket, since we were renting and not allowed to get DirecTV. That was expensive, because I didn’t like to milk a drink for a three-hour game.

I also became accustomed to having a DVR. I had one of the first DVRs with ReplayTV (it was better, but less popular than TiVo). Without cable, there was no DVR, and it was literally like 1985 when you had to be there to watch a TV show.

I did give it a try, though, with a Mohu Leaf. That got a lot of channels, which I’ll circle back to later in the article.

Owning The Content Era

In 2011, I discovered that it was possible to create my own cable box and DVR. It used a CableCard, which is a standard created by law largely so that cable companies couldn’t own the cable box and kill off companies like TiVo selling DVR service. I bought a device called the HD HomeRun Prime, put in a cable card, hooked it up to a computer running Microsoft Windows 7 and enjoyed no DVR fees. It required Windows 7 because it had Windows Media Center(WMC), which had approval to work with CableCards to unscramble the paid TV channels. WMC included TV listings (the cable guide), which was also a key component.

I used this solution for 14 years, but it wasn’t easy. In 2009, Windows stopped developing Windows Media Center. I have a conspiracy theory that they were paid off by cable companies. Over time, Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7. A big blow was shutting off the TV listing service. Fortunately, one person created some software to make it work. I still had to subscribe to a service and pay $20 a year. The software was extremely difficult to set up, but fortunately it worked well after that.

Somewhere in 2023, the TV listing service changed in my local area. I couldn’t get it set up after that. For a couple of years, I just recorded things like an old VCR, setting the time and channel to record. These were almost always just Patriots’ games when I had to be elsewhere. By this time, I was already paying for a lot of streaming services.

Sounds like a lot of hassle, right? Yep. However, it saved me about $25 a month. That’s $300 a year… and over $4,000 over 14 years.

Just as importantly, I OWNED the content. Hard drive space over the years has gotten cheaper and cheaper, so I have a collection of so much. It would most pay off in the:

Kids Era

We had our first boy in late 2012 and our second in early 2014. It was extremely helpful to be able to replay episodes of shows like Blaze and the Monster Machines. It was great to copy the files over to a tablet or phone to help with those times in public when you just have to keep them busy while you tend to adult stuff (like have a conversation with a friend).

Fast forward to today, and I have episodes of Adam Ruins Everything that are finally age appropriate for them. You can’t stream it on any subscription service. You can’t even buy a DVD. You can “buy” the episodes on Amazon, but that isn’t really ownership. (In case you are curious, Amazon argued that specifically in court and the fight continues today.)

Resistance to Change

Last year, I decided to get a cable box. With the TV listings broken, watching cable was something that I rarely did anyway. I decided to give it a try – with TV listings and DVR back, would I watch more cable? I watched a little more cable, at first, but then stopped. My kids only watch YouTube and streaming channels. (My 12-year-old learned the other day that streaming TV doesn’t work when the internet is down – LOL).

I kept this up until last month. What changed? Our “bundle” (internet/cable) savings with Cox Communications (our cable provider) had expired. The bill exploded by another $40 or so. I could subscribe to a new bundle, but it would only save me about $15. I’d still pay $25 more than before. At this point, our bill was around $225 a month. That included our internet service.

My Solution to Cutting the Cable

I started to research how to cancel cable completely. I didn’t know where our old Mohu Leaf was (affiliate link), so I put one in my Amazon cart. I found that there are similar devices to my HDHomeRun Prime to record over-the-air TV. It looked like I’d get all the Patriots games with the exception of the ESPN ones. We’d still get the ones on Amazon Prime and Netflix. (The system of watching sports nowadays is an unmitigated disaster.)

The more I went down the over-the-air path, the more I realized it looked like my FrankenBox that I had for 14 years. Also, there’s the important point that my wife watches a few cable shows every night before bed. That never needed to be a DVR, so a $4/mo. The box was good enough.

There are a lot of streaming services that give you access to those cable shows. Some examples are Hulu TV, YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Fubo. DirecTV even offers a subscription for people who don’t want to install a dish on their roof. They typically run $45 to $70 and include a pseudo-DVR function. You can watch recordings later, but they expire, and you certainly don’t OWN them.

I looked into all of these and decided that YouTube TV made the most sense. It had all my local channels, so I had sports, and it had all the channels that my wife watches. Long-term, it is around $83 a month, but I might be able to get a plan with fewer channels for closer to $65. We’re getting a promotional plan now, so we’ll see what we really use.

Our Internet connection is still with Cox. I downgraded from 500Mbps to 300Mbps, which is still more than fast enough for everything we do. I didn’t need the 500Mbps speed before, but that was the bundle that saved us money. Going with the slower speed would have actually cost more.

The price for that internet service is $70/month. With YouTube’s $85, we’re at around $155. That’s a savings of about $75 a month. If we find we don’t need all the channels, it could be $90/month. My wife found that YouTube TV is actually a little easier to use than Cox. Our TV handles it natively through an app, so it’s one fewer remote control. She doesn’t have to think about how to switch from cable to streaming.

It’s worked perfectly for the last month. It turns out that I still don’t watch live TV. That will change when it comes to football season.

There is one “gotcha” that I glossed over. Watching the Red Sox has become a challenge. A subscription to MLB.tv like I had in California is $150/year, which comes to $12.50 a month. However, they are blocked from showing Red Sox games in Rhode Island where we live now. To get the games, we have to subscribe to New England Sports Network, which is largely owned by the Red Sox. (They have 80%, and the Boston Bruins’ parent company owns 20%.) That subscription runs $30/month. Ouch! There’s really nothing else of interest on the channel for me, so it feels like PPV of $1+ per game. I can usually catch about 2 games a week, so it realistically turns out to be $4/game. In contrast, my Disney+/Hulu subscription is about $5 a month (on their annual Black Friday deal). Both have ads.

It’s crazy to me that I can watch almost all the Patriots’ games for free, over-the-air, or included with local channels, and the Red Sox cost so much money. The demand for the NFL completely dwarfs the MLB.

Final Thoughts

I hope I didn’t get too far off-track. In the end, I found that watching television is personal. My tastes are very different from my wife’s. My kids’ tastes changed over time. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to television.

Additionally, where you are in life matters. We were far more frugal in our early 30s than we are now at 50. Back then, I wanted to save money and invest as much as possible. A dollar invested in the S&P 500 in February 2007 has grown to $6.86 today. I’ve got less patience to jump through hoops, but it works out because we can pay for convenience. While that may sound like we shouldn’t have cut cable at all, it barely took any time and is essentially the same. The $70/mo. will more than pay for our streaming services, especially on their annual Black Friday deals.

The post I Finally Cut the Cable (after Two Decades) appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

Eleven Years of Solar Power Reviewed

Lazy Man — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:47:03 +0000

Another busy week, and I completely missed Earth Day. I’ll make this a smaller post and call it good enough for Earth Week. Last year, I did a ten-year solar review, and there isn’t too much new to report.

In 2025, our solar panels have produced 8.3MWh. It looks like our average price per kilowatt hour was $0.28 last year. That’s down a couple of cents from the 30 cents last year. Overall, that means our bill would have been $2324. That’s an oversimplification, because the price changes in some seasons. I just used the AI answer because it’s good enough for these rough estimates.

Many people will have cheaper energy than we do in Rhode Island. Around 90% of our energy comes from natural gas, and the vast majority of that is pumped from Pennsylvania. The only way to control our energy costs is with green sources such as solar and wind. So while no one thinks of RI as a sunny state that would be good for solar, the math works out quite well.

Over the eleven-year lifetime, we’ve generated 98.2MWh. I have a dashboard that says it is worth $16,700, but there is no explanation of how it arrives at that number. It looks like electricity was 17.5 cents per kWh in 2015. With that growing over the years to 30 kWh, we can grab a rough estimate of around 24 cents kWh. If we do 98,200 * $0.24 we get $23,568 of value in that time. We had to pay $16,000 to get them installed. It seems we would have come ahead (as of now) if we had invested the money at around 3.5%.

The financial case doesn’t look great in hindsight. The markets have grown 12% annually. Our panels are still guaranteed for another 14 years, but that alternative universe has a huge head start. I don’t think it will catch up. Still, there’s also the fact that buying solar panels was a forced investment. We could have spent the $16,000 on frivolous stuff with no financial return. Instead, we locked in the savings for a long time and removed temptation from the equation. It’s also great not having to think about energy costs.

Finally, there’s the whole aspect that I’m writing this article for Earth Day. A financial break-even is still a win for Mother Earth.

That’s it for this week—more updates next time.

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My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (March 2026)

Lazy Man — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:44:57 +0000

Every month, I write an article that shows my passive income and my growth toward my life goals. The end of March and the beginning of April have flown by me. It seems like every day I get some new task that eats up a day of my life.

For example, my son lost a lens of his glasses while we were traveling. His backup pair got cleaned up somehow, so tracking down a company that can make the unusual prescription was quite the hassle. So much for decades of hearing “LensCrafters… glasses in about an hour.” They, like nearly everyone else, could only promise 7-10 business days.

Setting Goals for 2025

I put all my goals in a spreadsheet that I ~~stole~~ borrowed from Retire By 40. Here’s what it looks like for this year:

(Click it, and it will open in a new tab.)

Passive Income

My Passive Income Pyramid

I used to have three side hustles with a passive component: a dog-sitting business, this blog, and a website I manage for a non-profit. They all required some active work. However, I could do them all even while working a full-time job. I considered those partially passive income. This blog and the retainer for the non-profit website are minimal, so consider it almost all dog boarding.

Dog Boarding/Website Income

This is the least passive of all incomes. I only count this as 50% passive. Dog sitting has been very steady over the last few years. It’s been close to $50,000. The biggest variable is how much we travel. I can’t board dogs while I am away.

March’s Dog/Web Real Income: $2,601.67

The bad news is that the dog business is down around around 30% this year. The good news is that March was a little better than previous Marches since we took a shorter vacation.

Rental Property Income

For the purpose of this report, I calculate the rental property income using the following formula:

(Rents After Estimated Expenses) * (Equity Percentage Owned) = Income)

In March, Zillow estimated our properties were worth $6,500 more. We also paid off almost $1,000 in mortgage principal. That meant our EPO went from owning 84.14% of our properties to 84.48%. The rents after expenses are $2,900/month. Using the equation above, our estimated income from this area would be $2,448. That’s up from $2,438 in February. This number almost always moves slowly, so this is actually a nice gain.

Managing rental properties requires some work – a few days a year. For this reason, I only count 80% of this number as passive income.

Dividend Income

My wife and I have been nearly maxing out our retirement accounts for a couple of decades. The markets have done very well over that time. Overall, we have a nice retirement nest egg.

I also have profit-sharing income with a private company in which I own a small stake. I get a check each month that behaves like a dividend – it’s just taxed a little differently.

March’s estimated dividend income was $5,897. In February, it was $5,949. The war in Iran, with crazy oil prices, has been making it hard for the market to do much. I actually expected it to be a lot worse. It may be several months or longer to move on from this, but when we do, I expect the market to jump significantly.

Unlike the previous two sections, this income is 100% passive. For this reason, I don’t have to adjust the numbers.

Total Passive Income

Dog/Etc.: $2,601 – Adjusted to $1,300
Rentals: $2,448 – Adjusted to $1,958
Dividends: $5,897 – Remains at $5,897

Dogs/Etc – Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line

Total Adjusted Passive Income: $9,156

Here’s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track:

The blue line represents the monthly total adjusted passive income. The Red Line represents the 12-month average. This removes some of the seasonality of dog boarding. That’s the important one.

Even though the month’s numbers were very average, that very important red line above continues to hit new highs. In the long run, dog boarding will be nothing, but in the meantime, investments are supporting an increasing share of the income.

I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth lost 0.51% last month. For the year, our net worth is up 0.98%. The stock market has moved more in a few days this year than in the past few years combined.

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($80,000)

My income has been dropping over the last few years, going from $98K to 488K to $81K. Last year, I stayed mostly the same at $80,593.

As I get closer to retirement, I’m more than happy to keep pursuing the same goal.

In March, I made around $4,581. For the year, I’m at $13,071. It’s around 52K. That won’t get me to $80K. Fortunately, dog boarding ramps up in the summer months. I don’t know if it will be enough, though.

Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations

I can’t remember doing anything to improve the website or operations. I have a whole list of stuff to do, but I was too busy to get to most of it.

AI Everything

I’ve been reading Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway (affiliate link). A friend recommended it to me, and it is great. I highly recommend it if you are a young man or the parent of a young man. My wife is interested in reading it. It covers the life lessons the author has learned, including many of his own faults. Most people don’t talk about that stuff, and it’s very blunt and straightforward.

For the AI aspect, I’ve been working with Claude and ChatGPT to distill the main ideas of this book and several others into a consolidated guide to a “best life.” I want to set aside 20 minutes a day to go over one aspect with my own kids. For example, one topic could be the importance of grit. I have no grit, so I’m going to take the Galloway approach and be honest that it’s something that I need to work on myself.

Little projects like these that pop into my head and lead to the above section being, “I can’t remember doing anything to improve the website or operations.”

Health

I hit the big 5-0. For my health goals, I’m mostly using this separate article about health goals from last year.

Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat*2) mass >60)

My weight this month was 173.3 lbs, and my body fat was 23.6%. That means my lean mass was 132.4, and my fat mass was 40.9 lbs. This is a score of 50.6 using my formula. Last month, my average weight was 172.9lbs, and my body fat was 23.2%. That was a score of 52.6.

Higher is better, and I moved in the wrong direction. I am not surprised, though. My kids’ school break is in March, and we usually travel then. We went to Aruba, and I ate about 5 cows’ worth of steak. I was more active, but it wasn’t enough. I’m spending most of April making up for it.

My goal of getting this number to 60 could be achieved by losing 169 lbs and having a body fat of 21.5% . That might not be too ambitious, but changing one’s body composition is hard!

Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)

I rate my diet from 1 (poor) to 5 (great) each week. It’s mostly a gut feel for how the week went.

I used to do the same for exercise, but I’m switching that up to use Heart Points from my Pixel Watch. This is more honest than my gut feeling and just as easy for me to use.

I add both scores for the month to get Body Points.

With the weather improving, I’m getting a little more active. My diet has been just average, though. I have 32 diet points and 24 body points, for a total of 56 points.

I haven’t had time to add anything else yet, so it’s still 4 a week because I have these down pretty well.

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

I started measuring my blood pressure every day (sometimes twice a day) last year. It was too high. However, it was never high in the doctor’s office, so my doctor gave me the lowest dose of medication. I got this blood pressure monitor and it tracks it over time in an app. I brought this to my doctor, and she upped my medication by a tiny bit. That link to the device is an affiliate link, by the way.

In March, my blood pressure was 135/81. In February, it was 138/83. That’s a little better. At the beginning of April, my doctor approved a slightly higher dose of my medicine.

Doctor Appointments

I had a cleaning at the dentist, which concluded a string of four straight monthly visits. After the appointment, they tried to book me six months out, but realized that they had no appointments left in 2026. They wouldn’t give me one in 2027, so they just put me on an emergency cancel text list that starts in October.

I’d switch to a different dentist, but my last three dentists didn’t know how to bill military insurance and would end up sending bills to my house. I had to mediate them for hours after every visit, which shouldn’t be my job.

Longevity Research (40 hours)

I didn’t do much longevity research in March. I put in one hour as a default, because I’m sure I came across some news stories. They obviously made an impact, since I can’t remember them.

Hobbies

Most of my hobbies will focus on the AI idea above. Here are a couple of others that I am working on.

3D Printing

The kids keep 3D printing, but it’s the same old stuff. I want them to create some new stuff with TynkerCAD or something.

Play a modern song on a ukulele

Year-to-Date Progress

I’ll give myself a few points for getting the 3D printing back working (it’s been broken a few times).

Family

Declutter and Organize House

I didn’t declutter much, but I’m counting another household upgrade in here. Our wifi has been having issues with dead spots throughout the house. I didn’t understand why it would suddenly not work. The mesh network had great coverage in the past.

Turns out that we’ve added too many devices that compete for wifi in the house. The wifi 5 standard simply wasn’t good enough. I upgraded to 7, and it’s been excellent. Hopefully, this will future-proof us for another 7-10 years.

Travel

We are still planning our trips; we do that throughout the year. In March, we went to Aruba for my 50th birthday. Aruba is easy for us because we own a timeshare. It wasn’t our week, but we had sold off the right to use it last year, so we could just use that money. I had only been in the October to December season, usually late November. It was much busier in March. All the cheap car rentals were sold out, so we just skipped the car and took a taxi everywhere. I estimate that we saved a couple of hundred dollars.

I had originally planned to go to Japan for my 50th, but I was only 70% prepared, so we’re going to try it next year. Ironically, we still have to flesh out a couple more trips this year, so I may be too late on Japan again.

Kids

The kids are at the age now (12 and 13) where they either love each other or hate each other. They are either working well together or getting into big fights.

This past month, my oldest decided that he’d just ride his bike to play practice across town without telling us. It’s probably normal for many 13-year-olds, but he just started learning last year and only went around our dead-end cul-de-sac a few times.

For a little backstory, I never learned to ride a bike. Well, I could do some basic circles, like around a track on a smooth surface. I didn’t trust myself on the streets with traffic. I’ve let my wife take the reins on teaching the kids, and a few years ago, they went out a few times, but nothing in the last couple of years.

It was fairly annoying to have lost a kid, but he’s pretty responsible and loves play practice, so we were able to put it together quickly.

In March, I also finished signing the kids up for camps. I also spent a lot of time filling out a scholarship application to a four-year private high school. It was like applying to college. It’s super competitive, but you miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take.

Final Thoughts

Life is just a whirlwind now. I’ve been struggling to find the time to get this out, and I have to turn around and write my annual Earth Day article. I don’t know how people with real jobs do it.

The post My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (March 2026) appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

Should We Pay Taxes This Year?

Lazy Man — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:57:58 +0000

That’s probably the most ridiculous question I’ve asked. We’re far enough away from my April Fool’s day article that you know it’s not just an old article.

Before I get into that question, though, I have to add the standard disclosure for anything involving macroeconomics these days. I’m going to try not to be too political. However, how taxes fund our country’s security and services will always be inherently political.

I know some people who feel like there shouldn’t be taxes at all. Usually, when I bring up the idea of good roads, police, fire protection, military, etc., I get them to admit that there should be some taxes. There are not too many people on the other end of the spectrum – those who want to pay more taxes. Instead, there are plenty of people who enjoy many services and would like more of them. There is a wide range of people in between.

Should We Pay Taxes This Year?

Of course, we should pay taxes. It’s the ethical, lawful thing to do. I had never considered any alternative until recently. Here are a few reasons why:

1. The United States is Scamming Taxpayers

I wrote that article in 2018, but it boils down to one simple thing. The United States could make filing taxes VERY easy, like many countries. The government has the data for many people. They make you spend hours figuring out how much to pay them. Almost every other country does the math for you.

The US would be the same way, but tax preparation is a big business with government lobbyists. Click the link above if you want to learn more about that.

This has always annoyed me greatly, but I’m still the good little soldier paying taxes as I should.

2. The government doesn’t want your tax dollars.

That’s the message the government is sending to me. Here are some actions it has taken:

Reduced IRS workforce – From this Reuters’ article on the downsizing of the IRS:

‘The IRS is navigating a period of significant upheaval, with its workforce reduced from approximately 100,000 in 2025 to around 75,000 staff currently. The reductions include a 30% cut to audit staff and a 20% cut in customer service representatives, leaving remaining employees working double time,’ [Jared Slipman, chair of Obermayer’s Tax Department] said.
IRS Funding Cuts
From this article:

The administration has rescinded nearly $54 billion of the $80 billion previously allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act, specifically targeting enforcement and technology upgrades.

Let’s focus on the part of eliminating funding for the enforcement of paying taxes. The IRS has put together a great page on the “Tax Gap” . The tax gap is the term that the IRS has for the amount of taxes that Americans owe and that they actually pay. That link shows the gap was over $600 billion in 2022. (This is further evidence that the government knows how much tax you should pay.)

More money for enforcement catches the tax cheats and more than pays for itself. It’s probably the only area of government spending that actually makes the government more money. In fact, the link at the top of this section (here again) shows that $1 spent on enforcement of the top 1% of taxpayers brings in $14. If that money is focused on the top 0.1% of taxpayers, a single dollar brings in over $25.

Why doesn’t the government want that money?

I should be able to direct the tax dollars I pay for tax enforcement and keep the return for myself. Let’s pretend that I owe the government $10,000 so that it can perform all its functions. Can’t I just give $1000 for tax enforcement of tax cheaters in the top 1% income? That’s essentially the same as paying $14,000. The government would be making $4,000 on the deal. What a win-win!
Shutting Down Direct File
Remember what I wrote above about how the government doesn’t want to make filing taxes easier? It wasn’t entirely true.

Recently the IRS shut down Direct File.

They had a program called Direct File that the the Government Accountable Office found hugely successful. It was a pilot program in a few states. The biggest criticism that I found was that it wasn’t used very much because many people didn’t know about it.

It seems to me that companies like TurboTax and H&R Block were opposed to the program as it threatened them.

So the government has reduced customer service and enforcement to catch tax cheats, while making it more difficult for people to file taxes for free.

If the government doesn’t want your tax money, why give it to them?

Trump Suing the IRS for $10 Billion

Perhaps this is being political, but I consider it calling a spade a spade. I purposely linked to the Fox News article to put it in the most favorable light for Trump.

Trump is suing the IRS for $10 Billion because an employee leaked his taxes. Yes, the taxes that he promised he’d share dozens of times, if only he weren’t being audited. (Note: Anyone can share their taxes at any time – it doesn’t matter if you are being audited. Also, it doesn’t appear he was being audited.) You’d think that would undermine the case, and it would be thrown out of court quickly. But it’s America, and only Judge Judy can decide ridiculous lawsuits in 11 minutes. In the meantime, taxpayers are going to pay for the courts, lawyers, etc., even if nothing ever comes of the case.

As President, Trump has shown that he controls the Justice Department, and he exerts a lot of power over the IRS by appointing the IRS commissioner. It feels like he is essentially the prosecution and the defense in his own case to steal $10 billion of taxpayer dollars? Who is representing the taxpayer’s interest?

How many places have lost Americans’ data? Imagine if everyone just sued each organization for $10 billion dollars. Forbes would have to create a new “non-billionaires” list.

I know, it’s not fair to compare the government leaking Americans’ data to private companies. However, that still means each American should be able to sue Elon Musk’s DOGE for stealing Social Security data. How about we cut them a deal and only take a billion dollars each?

Final Thoughts

Of course, I’m going to pay taxes this year. In fact, I’ve already paid them. There’s a small chance that we owe a little more money because my income doesn’t have income taken out of it automatically.

Even if I had the choice, I’d still pay taxes. Even if I could get over the moralistic issues, why take the gamble? I always play it safe, especially in areas where there are big consequences, such as jail.

I also love the services the government provides. Every year, news stories cover a survey about which countries have the happiest people. Scandinavian countries always seem to rank at the top. They often cite many of the things that those taxes pay for.

The post Should We Pay Taxes This Year? appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

I’ve Automated My Entire Life. Do I Still Exist?

Lazy Man — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:25:03 +0000

(The below article was posted on April Fool’s. There are some truths, more stretches, and some downright lies. The important thing is that I’m not using AI to write my articles… yet ?)

When I first started this blog, one of the reasons why I went with “Lazy” is that I wanted to stress money automation. You can automate most of your money with these three things:

set up a 401k plan with your employer
autopay on your credit cards/rent/mortgage
money from your bank to buy index funds

With the time I saved from automating my money, I moved into other areas. I bought Lutron Caseta lights and shades. I got an autoslide patio door kit. Now the dogs let themselves out whenever they want.

(Definitely AI generated!)

I even stopped parenting my kids several years ago. They learn a lot more by doing stuff themselves. They also appreciate the fruits of their labor, such as when they make their own grilled cheese.

Most of my stress wasn’t from doing things – it was from deciding things. So I started eliminating decisions. I eat the same cereal for breakfast every day. I eat the same Ramen and chicken breast for lunch every day. I found a great deal on Haggar Cool18Pro pants and wear them every day. Wearing the same clothes worked for Steve Jobs, and he made a lot more money than I could ever imagine.

I’ve worked hard to eliminate many chores. We’ve had landscapers come to handle the yardwork for years. We have had a cleaning service that comes every 10 days or so for years as well. I was probably one of the last people to embrace Instacart for groceries. I’ve also got a laundry service.

In many ways, AI was the missing piece. How doesn’t get too much email, right? Why write anything when I can harvest the collective wisdom and experience of a billion people in a neural network? Did you know that’s essentially how the human brain works anyway? Yes, AI can make mistakes, but it’s essentially four years old. Have you met a human toddler who doesn’t make mistakes? Typically, more than half of the United States thinks that the President makes a ton of mistakes – it doesn’t matter which party is in office. Given those two realities, most people should be fine with my automated email solution.

If you’ve followed my articles in the last year, I’ve worked on duplicating my voice with Eleven Labs’ AI tools. I’ve made a video version of me with HeyGen AI. I’ve hooked it up to OpenClaw to do all other computer work.

That brings me to this blog. I’ve put 20 years and around 3 million words into this blog. That’s enough to build a very strong neural network. In addition, over 95% of personal finances haven’t changed in that time. Is this article me or AI? What if it were a hybrid of 90% AI and 10% me to make it sound human? What if it was 25% AI to come up with the ideas and outline, and 75% me writing the words? Can you tell? Does it even matter if almost all of my articles get only one or two comments nowadays?

A couple of days ago, I turned 50. I thought the new decade would hurt, but I had ten years to get used to it. Yesterday, I had the day to live out my laziest dreams. I had nothing scheduled or urgent. I thought about what I should do, but I quickly got stuck. I hadn’t had to make a decision in a while. René Descartes in the 1600s famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” When I blew out the candle of my birthday cake, did I blow myself out of existence?

Full disclosure: The owner of this website would like to inform you that some of the links in the above article may earn a commission if you buy a product after clicking them.)

The post I’ve Automated My Entire Life. Do I Still Exist? appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.

Lazy Man and Money

Betting on Oil and Treasuries

1. Oil, Oil, Oil

2. Treasury Bills Reach 19 Year High

Final Thoughts

My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (August 2026)

Goals for 2026

Passive Income

Dog Boarding/Website Income

Rental Property Income

Dividend Income

Total Passive Income

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($80,000)

Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations

AI Everything

Health

Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat\*2) mass >60)

Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

Doctor Appointments

Longevity Research (40 hours)

Hobbies

Family

Kids

Final Thoughts

I Built My Own Quantum Computing Index. Do This Instead…

The Obvious Way to Invest in Quantum Doesn’t Work

I Went ETF Shopping and Nothing Fit

So I Made My Own List

The Two I Threw Out

About Using AI for This

The Shortcut ETFs

Are the ETFs’ expense ratios worth it?

Final Thoughts

My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (July 2026)

Goals for 2026

Passive Income

Dog Boarding/Website Income

Rental Property Income

Dividend Income

Total Passive Income

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($80,000)

Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations

AI Everything

Health

Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat*2) mass >60)

Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

Doctor Appointments

Longevity Research (40 hours)

Hobbies

Family

Kids

Final Thoughts

I Bought an AI Computer (and it was Much Cheaper than you Might Think)

What I Actually Wanted It To Do

The Machine

Can I Make Money with this Machine?

The Cost per Component

Should You Open a Trump Account?

The Politics of Trump Accounts

Final Thoughts

My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (May & June 2026)

Goals for 2026

Passive Income

Dog Boarding/Website Income

Rental Property Income

Dividend Income

Total Passive Income

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($80,000)

Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations

AI Everything

Health

Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat\\\*2) mass >60)

Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

Doctor Appointments