#EveryStreet Salt Lake City

On December 13th, 2020 I finished my yearlong project of running every street of Salt Lake City. Without a doubt, this has been the most demanding running goal I have ever set for myself (and I ran a 50-miler a few years back…). This project was complete with physical, mental, and logistical challenges that — when thrown in during the year that was so difficult already — tested me in a number of ways.

I won’t bore you with the play-by-play of each run (which, if you have a Strava account, you can trace back all my 2020 runs here) nor give you an exhaustive breakdown of all the interesting things I’ve seen, but I do want to spend a few paragraphs discussing the impact of committing yourself to achieving a goal that seems so far-fetched and, at times, insurmountable by simply performing a series of tasks one day at a time.

It’s tough to put into words what running 994 miles across 118 runs — yet alone all the route planning and map double-checking — meant to me. It’s easy to put up a finished map with all streets marked complete and understand the finished product, but thinking about each individual run or each time I printed off a small portion of the city gives me a better sense of what was required to get there.

And this is so true with respect to all sorts of facets of my life: education, relationships, work, hobbies — you don’t just suddenly arrive at a point of expertise but, rather, through consistent hard work, you eventually just sort-of get there.

So I challenge everyone who happens across this website (whether it be for Number Sense practice material or for running advice) to think of an area of their life that they can practice consistency with and try to better themselves one small step at a time. I promise you, the journey will be way more fulfilling than the celebration at the finish line.

P.S. – If you’d like to read a re-cap of this particular project, you can check out an article that Andy Larsen from the Salt Lake Tribune put together! And if you have any questions about how to pull something similar off, just leave a comment.

Effective Altruism

As readers of the website might know, I am an avid enthusiast and follower of the FI/RE movement (e.g., Financial Independence, Retire Early). If you want to read more about that, I suggest starting with this article here and follow it up with more of my favorites here.

There has been a complimentary theory that has started to revolutionize charitable giving that many FI/RE proponents have endorsed that is called Effective Altruism. The gist of Effective Altruism is that if you truly believe all lives are equal then you should focus your giving towards having the most impact with regards to saving lives. Oftentimes, this means donating towards health-related organizations that operate in under-developed countries as each donated dollar tends to go farther in those places.

The person most associated with the movement is popular philosopher Peter Singer. He’s written several books about the subject and put on a pretty convincing TED talk which you can watch below:

 

Singer has also set-up a website at https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/ that encourages people to pledge towards Effective Altruism and highlights charities that tend to provide the most benefit for the donated dollar. My wife and I chose to donate our funds towards the Fistula Foundation, but you can take a look at other suggested charities here.

If you have the means, I highly encourage doing your own research about effective altruism (that includes reading-up on some of the nay-sayers as well) and come to your own conclusions on how and where to give.

Reddit Post // US House of Representatives’ Tax Plan

My Top Reddit Post of All-Time

Funny thing happened earlier this past week: after being a relatively inactive user for the past 9 years, I decided to submit a recent NY Times piece outlining the proposed US House of Representatives’ Tax Plan to one of my favorite subreddits, /r/financialindependence.

Outside of the daily discussion threads, this subreddit’s typical activity is far less than what the 300,000+ subscribes would suggest. So it came as a little bit of a shock that my post garnered so much interest (almost 1000 “upvotes” and just as many comments).

Perusing the comments sections, I helped some people understand the US Tax Code a little bit better and outlined some obvious winners and losers of the proopsed changes. In a nutshell: if your household* taxable income (less your standard pre-tax contributions such as for 401(k) and HSA plans) is around $90,000 — enough to cap out the lowest proposed tax bracket of 12% — , you have children, and you have previously been filing using the standard deduction then, CONGRATULATIONS, you are the biggest winner of the new tax plan.**

As for the losers, if you are a dual-income household who make around $200,000 to $400,000, have children, and have previously heavily itemized, you are the biggest losers and will, most likely, be paying more for taxes. This mostly describes households in high-cost of living areas (California, New York City, etc…) that are traditionally blue-state stalwarts.

Anyways, I highly recommend people who pay taxes educate themselves on how exactly the bulk of the US Tax Code works (if you are a “normal person,” it’s actually not too complicated) and judge for yourself how the proposed changes would affect you.

* This is presuming you are married filing-jointly. If you are an individual, cut the income levels approximately in half for the big winners/losers.

** Note: the top 1% (or more specifically, the top 0.2%) are truly the biggest winners as the estate tax repeal would far exceed any modest benefits the “middle class” would get from the new plan (also the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax is a huge benefit to certain wealthy people who make specific types of income).

Advice for College-Applying Students

Now that the college application process is in full swing for you High School Seniors out there, I thought I’d do a follow-up on my Advice for College-Bound Students and focus in on providing a few insights when trying to select an appropriate college.

For those that didn’t read through the prior post, here is a tl;dr version of my college experience from a decade ago:

  • Got accepted into a few top-tier universities (including Rice) as well as the usual lineup of Texas public universities (UT, A&M, and TTU).
  • At the time much to my regret (but in retrospect, probably the smartest thing I’ve done), I decided to attend Texas Tech University under a full-scholarship.
  • Had a pretty rough transition period where I was close to transferring, but ultimately decided to stick it out and get more involved with stuff outside the classroom.
  • Wound up with a handful of degrees (both Bachelor’s and Master’s) and some incredible life experiences that shaped me into what I am today!

As you can see, my college experience – especially the application and decision-making process of where to go – was a roller coaster of emotions. I only highlight this fact to show you that I’ve been through what most of you are probably starting to experience now and, through the lens of hindsight, I feel like I can give you a few things to chew to help with your own decision making.

(1) College is what you make of it. I harped on this point in my prior post, but it is true. Opportunities exist everywhere at pretty much every single college or university out there and it’s up to you to seek them out.

(2) Educationally speaking, Bachelor’s degree coursework is virtually universal across all accredited institutions. Regardless of where you go you are pretty much going to learn the same stuff in order to get your Bachelor’s degree. This is based off of a plethora of anecdotal evidence and the fact that universities typically structure curriculum to meet accreditation requirements. As a result, the stuff you learn is fairly homogenous across institutions.

(3) The true value of the Ivy’s and other prestigious universities is that there are more opportunities per student and there is incredible social value attached with a degree from there. This makes it easier to form meaningful connections with important people and “move up the chain” faster (whether that be starting off a career a ladder rung or two higher or gaining entrance into well-known graduate programs). Other would, however, argue about this benefit…

(4) Student loan debt sucks. I wish I could shake every incoming freshman and yell this fact to them. Although I was super upset at the time, one the best thing’s my parents have done for me is vehemently refuse to co-sign on any sort of student loans. This made it difficult to secure funding at reasonable interest rates and forced me to re-examine my decision under a more rational lens, ultimately leading to my making the financially prudent decision to go where I had a full-ride.

I know all of these crazy high tuition amounts ($20-$50k+ per year) seem like monopoly money. Eventually though, you actually have to pay it back. Even if you have an incredibly well-paying job, this debt almost never gets resolved under short timeframes. I can’t stress this enough: student debt incredibly stunts your financial trajectory and really does affect your long-term goals. Because you’ll be paying off student loans early in your career, this means that you won’t be saving up for whatever future big-ticket items you have in mind. This creates a domino effect: you’ll buy a house later in life, you’ll (most likely) be married and have kids later in life, and you’ll retire later in the life. This is a very real thing and has a very large impact on your future. (In fact, I plan on doing a more in-depth post about this very topic later).

(5) Once you have your foot in the door for whatever post-college endeavor you find yourself in, no one really cares about your Bachelor degree anymore. I subscribe to the screening theory of education that a college degree’s value is not derived from the curriculum but rather from the soft-skills – stuff like grit, time management, and prioritizing – that you gain over the four years of constant deadlines and projects. These are the skills that you take to your next step (whether it’s a job or a grad degree or whatever) and once you are jumping off from that entry-job or Master’s degree, no one really cares about where you did your undergrad from.

Keeping these things in mind, it’s pretty easy to see what the optimal strategy from selecting an appropriate college would be:

  • Go to wherever gives you the best financial deal to minimize your student loan debt. Strive to apply for any scholarships in order to lessen the financial hit.
  • Explore opportunities outside the classroom that that university has to offer that align with your interests and what you like doing. Ultimately, make a mark with those opportunities and connect with similar people. Basically, become that big fish in a small pond.
  • If you decide to pursue a graduate school, explore universities that are well-known in whatever sub-field you’re interested in (this is the time when prestige starts to matter). If you decide to enter the workplace, best of luck! Keep in mind that because of the extra-curricular and the informal networking you developed with others, you are a leg-up in getting hired!

Anyways, just some thoughts for you to consider. Of course, this approach isn’t for everyone and there are unique situations out there, but as a whole I stand by it being the best path for extracting the most value for the least amount of cost out of your higher education.

30 Day Challenge // Part 1

Was inspired by a recent TED talk I heard concerning challenging yourself to do something new every day for thirty consecutive days. Basically, it’s a behavioral modification technique that is rooted in the idea that in order to develop a new habit you need about a month’s time of doing it continuously. If you really wish that you could stop biting your fingernails — go a month with biting them and, odds are, the behavior will stick.

For my first set of thirty day challenges, I simply wanted to go without mindless surfing, so I axed out Facebook and Reddit completely from my life. Additionally, I also wanted to give either my dog or baby a walk around the neighborhood because it is something I love to do but oftentimes — whether through fatigue or scheduling — I hadn’t been able to do consistently.

Well, with August in the books I’m here to report that I almost completely kept to my two goals! I successfully didn’t check Facebook or Reddit for the whole month and I only missed three days of walking due to inclement weather — so I’ll chalk that up as a success as well. I definitely can see both of these new habits sticking and plan on brainstorming a complete set of challenges I want to do and start implementing them on a monthly basis, two-at-a-time.

Advice for College-Bound Students

Since the majority of the current traffic to my site is motivated, high achieving students (who else would be wanting to practice mental math over the summer?!), I thought I’d spend a short amount of time talking about my path to where I got to currently and share a few valuable things I’ve learned along the way.

For starters, I know personally how important where you go college means to you. If you were anything like me, that decision occupied the majority of your senior year of high school. Additionally, you can’t help but compare where you go with other people. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would go to Texas Tech — especially after I got into some other top tier universities. Nothing was more depressing as I sat on the award’s podium at TMSCA State sharing with the newsletter writer that I was going to Tech after hearing my fellow winners rattle off a seemingly top-ten list of prestigious universities (Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Cal Tech, etc…). At another time, I’ll talk a bit more about my decision making process of going, for free, to a state-school rather than accepting student loans to go to a more renowned university…

Anyways, one thing that I now learned, with the help of hindsight, that I didn’t particularly think much about back then is how college is a means to end rather than the end itself. No doubt, you are so wrapped-up in completing all your essays, applying for financial aid (whether it’s scholarships or FAFSAs), and prioritizing where you want to go with every admissions letter you receive that it’s tough to take some time and reflect on exactly what you want to use college for and how it can help you advance towards some of your over-arching life goals. I know, heady “adult” stuff for 17/18 year-olds to think about.

Nowadays more so than ever, what you study in college — especially for your Bachelor’s Degree — will not be applicable in 99% of things you will need to do for your future profession. So why do we go through this costly routine if it doesn’t matter? The simple answer is to show future employers (or reaffirm to yourself, if you are fortunate to have entrepreneurship tendencies) that you can do something hard and can challenge yourself further than you have ever challenged yourself before. Although we think of college as a quantitative judge of character (what was your degree, your GPA, your GRE score, etc…), in actuality it is a qualitative one. The most important things you can learn while at university are not Maxwell’s equations or the litany of Joyce’s obscure allusions in Ulysses, but rather stuff like proper time management, self motivation, goal setting (and achieving), and work-life balancing.

And these qualitative lessons are applicable wherever you decide to go. Even if you go to an non-elite university where the coursework is a breeze for you, there are always additionally opportunities that you can find to push yourself forward and help improve on your character . I tell yourself as someone who learned this lesson the hard way. I spent my first year at Tech mostly brooding about easy I had it and how unchallenged as was — wishing a lot for just something more. What I slowly realized is that if I wanted to challenge myself, I can’t relay on others to do this, I have to rely on myself. This idea, what some would call “grit,” was the number one thing I took from college, and needless to say, I didn’t learn it from a textbook. As a direct result of my sudden personality change, I approached professors to help with Putnam training, enrolled in graduate-level courses early on in my under-grad, wrote IEEE student papers, and the list goes on… These are all things I did mostly outside of my classes to become a better person — both from a technical as well as from an inner-human perspective. Even with these few activities I did during my undergrad, it started a chain reaction that led me to where I am today: it led to my getting considered and accepted into an all-expenses-paid dual-degree graduate program that I got to do in Denmark and Germany → my securing an awesome job at the height of the financial crisis when good jobs were hard to come by → my current career advancement and my successful completion of my MBA → and no doubt it will lead to where I want to be in the future, whatever that is.

So when you are choosing colleges and where to go to, please don’t lose sight of what exactly is the worth of college. To be honest, most universities teach the same material in their classes, but it’s what you decide to do to push yourself beyond the lessons that will lead you to the true value of that degree.