All You Have Is Money.

“You’re so poor. All you have is money.”

– Kara Swisher

These days my focus is less sharp.

Most of the time I am spending time driving my kids to school, getting our home set up, and cooking meals. Every now and then I supported our school. Compared to when I was working for Casetify or when I was building my own coaching business, my mind has a lot of room. And just like any room with excess space, if I am not careful with what I want to put into the space, crap and clutter accumulate.

And it has been hard trying to fill my empty but always anxious mind with useful things. There have been times when my idle brain wandered into unproductive spirals. Thankfully, my brain has repeatedly and reliably pulled me back into areas that are interesting and perhaps even useful. I want to spend a bit of time putting these scattered rabbit holes together.

Spending money
Private school, Steiner school
Living like the 1%
The economy, Robert Reich’s book
How to behave like a responsible citizen, the justice raging leftist in me
A general sense of discontent and confusion, difficulty in ever working for capitalism, anarchy, communistic ideals.

We are spending a lot of money these days because we are trying to build out our new home in the UK. We have rented a large space. It’s a 5 room, 3 bath, 3 storey house. It is luxurious and it costs 2500 pounds a month (relatively very cheap actually …). This excessive spending has been torturous. It feels like death by a thousand cuts because we are buying a lot of things. Each purchase was a reminder of how extravagant and lavishly wasteful we have become.

At the same time, we are sending our kids to posh private schools. Jing is at an elitist school, and Chai is at a scrappy but still ridiculously privileged Waldorf school. We can afford all of the above only because we have benefited entirely from the massive run the baby boomers and Gen Xers have had in the last 50 years. This surge in wealth for a very narrow few owes something to hard work, but far more to rigged economic systems worldwide, from Thatcherism and Clintonism to the latest tech driven ultra rich bubble.

Fact: I got to where I am today because of my mom’s success. I never had to support her financially, and she saved enough for us for multiple lifetimes. That safety let me chase my own goals. For example, ten years after college, I took a full detour, accepted a big pay cut, and restarted my career because she made it possible. The restart led to roles at Nike in the mid 2000s and Apple in the 2010s. I worked hard and earned promotions, but the real jump in my wealth came from one lucky break: the RSUs I received at Apple during its huge market cap rise in the 2010s. My skills helped but I will not over credit myself. My mother gave me the degree, internships at brands like Duracell and Microsoft, and the freedom to do whatever the fuck I wanted.

I was very privileged and I now see that this ride, for my mom and people like me, owed a lot to economic policies in the 80s and 90s. My wealth also mirrors the spillovers of those politics, including the inequality that is pushing people toward the extremes.

So I feel blessed and I feel guilty. I was more lucky than capable in my so called financial success. I worry about not doing enough or not doing the right thing. Each time I spend money, I feel more wasteful. It throws me off balance.

I lean on our school to steady that feeling. We have put a lot into building it, and I believe in why it exists, a Waldorf school rather than another international private school.

But it still feels not enough. The biggest reason is that it is not my school. It is Sharon’s. I am tagging along.

I do not know if I will ever feel enough, even if I build something of my own to repay what I have taken from society. But I know I need to act on this angst and let it guide my next steps …