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Detailed DD post [re-post after r/pennystocks removed it]
I posted this yesterday morning (UK time) but after 5 hours or so, pennystocks deleted the original post. A few people messaged me asking for it to be shared in a few High Tide specific pages. So here it is! -- This is my first time posting a DD post – a friend of mine who moderates on SPACs has shared some analysis I have written previously, but I’m keen to share this here, and see if there is any appetite for sharing my own personal written DD I have on the 30 stocks I have across a number of different portfolios. I have modified this format, as it was originally a script for a video which I created on the stock. If you prefer to listen – check it out here: https://youtu.be/qsjwU7kkPsw Some of the market stats (market cap, current multiples, etc.) are correct as of Feb-06, and clearly a little outdated since the price movements. Not a financial advisor, do your own DD. I am long HITI and have an expectation of a long term hold on this stock. Overview
High Tide Canada-based cannabis retail company, operating under multiple brands. It operates under 3 core divisions:
Brick and mortar retail – 4 key brands with just under 70 locations in Canada. Brands include: Canna Cabana, New Leaf, Meta Cannabis and Kushbar. Forecast to have around 115 stores by end of 2021
Online retail – has 2 brands, both of which attract millions of viewers per month – Grasscity.com and CBDcity.com
Wholesale – manufacturer of paraphernalia in US and Canada. Number of products are branded with various celebrities, Snoop Dogg, Paramount Pictures, Trailer Park Boys and many more
Has good c-level execs and experienced executive board; hold significant stake in the business. CEO Raj Grover holds just over 21% of the shares
Currently has a market cap of around $280m. Still significant upside to the valuation – see analysis later in post
Investment Merits Very strong market growth:
Business has demonstrated growth both organically (through new store openings, more online sales and greater wholesale sales), as well as inorganically through M&A
Growth in markets which High Tide has a physical presence in is expected to be very strong. North American cannabis market (Canada and US) is forecast to grow by 30% a year to 2027 (source: research and markets)
Analysts covering High Tide are forecasting growth in excess of this, which is positive to see and implies capturing market share
New markets / geographies ‘opening up’, legalizing and regulating cannabis is also an exciting and realistic prospect for incremental growth:
The US federal legalization debate is on the table
Many other countries are considering this too and High Tide is well positioned for these; this is catalyzed by the fact that government debt has increased significantly as part of the response to the COVID-19 health crisis. This needs to be repaid somehow, and increasing tax rates on existing taxes is an unpopular political move. Finding new tax revenues is a more palatable way of increasing tax revenues for governments. This is especially important in countries where elections are upcoming.
Personally I do expect to see this accelerate the agenda for the regulation and legalization of cannabis in many new countries
Whilst predominantly Canada and US based, High Tide does have presence in some markets where cannabis is not regulated or legalized, the UK for example (~10% of Grasscity sales are made here) and so it is well positioned with a strong and established brand to capitalize on this opportunity, when / if the market ‘opens up’
Regulation
High Tide benefits from the regulatory focus and overhang on the cannabis retail sector as it represents a strong barrier to entry, making it more challenging for new competitors to enter market
Participants in the market need to have licenses and ensure consistent compliance with laws to continue operating – failure to comply can result in significant financial penalties
Personally I normally don’t like investing into retail. There are usually fairly limited barriers to entry, minimal differentiation and negligible customer loyalty, however the cannabis market does have different characteristics in this respect and makes it a more compelling proposition
Regulation also benefits those with scale, something High Tide has as the leading player in the market. It costs money to obtain and retain licences to operate and it costs money to ensure compliance with all the laws and regulations and that all staff are acting in accordance with these
Some parallels in this respect which can be drawn to casino gaming in casinos; you don’t see new casinos popping up at the same rate which you see new restaurants or apparel stores opening
Demand
There’s a lot to like about the demand dynamics for High Tide. It’s vice-nature means that demand is less correlated to disposable incomes. Given where we are in economic cycle, especially important consideration
For those doubting this, check alcohol, tobacco or gambling expenditure across economic cycles historically, for a proxy
Strong performance throughout COVID-19 crisis
Despite heavy weighting towards brick and mortar, (the most hard hit part of retail) it has effectively managed the shift to online, which is a positive
Has relied on government support and financial assistance in the form of job retention schemes (address in more detail later in post)
This demonstrates management are capable and have effectively navigated the challenging situation
Data
Massively summarized from the video, (and my video on KERN) so check that out if interested in this point, however, they have unique access to supply chain data which could be monetized effectively and generate strong levels of recurring revenues
Other established sectors have a trusted party with such unique access to data (e.g. alcohol, lithium, different foods, etc.) and the opportunity here is enormous
I would like to see High Tide capitalize on this
Forecasts financials & analysts
Currently 2 analysts covering High Tide, both have a buy rating on the business
Their coverage is slightly outdated (expect this being updated soon and a further catalyst for positive price action) and their price targets are 60c; at the time their reports were published, they were forecasting a 4x upside (HITI was trading at ~15c)
Same analysts also forecasting strong growth - 77% CAGR to 2022. They are forecasting revenues of around $250m and EBITDA of $46m. A reminder here, these are professional analysts, not YouTube students – these come from their financial models, the assumptions of which are discussed with management
Going to go quick here, its explained more slowly in the video but High Tide is currently valued at a significant discount to the other listed peers
Looking at EV / FY+1 Sales multiples – EBITDA not meaningful as some of the peer group are EBITDA negative and High Tide itself has only recently become EBITDA positive
Personally, I think Planet13 is the most comparable given its business model
Taking both Planet13 multiple and peer group average multiple, this is then applied to High Tide’s forecast FY+1 sales to calculate an enterprise value – this is adjusted for net debt to get to a market capitalization and then divided by the share count to get an implied share price
The table below shows the implied stock price valuations from this analysis
Net debt will change in coming year given the capital structure and a large number of convertible notes – this has been ignored given it will have small impact on the price
The share count will change as a result of dilution from various instruments – if this bothers you massively then look at the valuation discount on the basis of the enterprise value as it does not impact this (and only slightly on the market cap given minimal impacts to cash from instrument execution, etc.)
Not accounting for any stock split, consolidation or any other M&A deals
The FY21 financials are on the basis of the mean broker estimates from Thomson Reuters – Seeking Alpha has different and slightly outdated ones
US is only a small part of the market which High Tide addresses, while a change in regulation would have a big impact on the company, currently it is unlikely this would happen, given the discussions about potential federal legalization
Canada regulation is established and not going anywhere
Other countries likely to legalize and regulate cannabis, as outlined earlier
Dilution
No escaping that there will be some significant dilution for shareholders, as pointed out in the table below, but this should be already priced into the stock
Potential that new equity issuances could occur to help finance growth, but provided this growth is delivered, it should be accretive for the stock price
A risk that investors need to be aware with for all companies which have relied on government financial support during COVID-19 measures. Such support has resulted in the number of businesses going bankrupt decreasing massively – this is at a lower level than it ever normally is and is masking some real underlying issues within companies. As investors we need to be open eyed about this
As High Tide has benefited from support in the form of the Canada’s Emergency Wage Support scheme, there is the risk that once this is lifted it may become apparent that the cost base has not been effectively managed
Personally, I think this is mitigated by the synergy analysis conducted as part of the M&A. A full cost base analysis would have been conducted to calculate the potential $8.4m synergies so strong likelihood that this is under control, but should keep on our radar and reassess
Marketing expenses and celebrity licenses
Need more information to ascertain whether these are underpinned by a compelling ROI. Seen a lot of people suggest this is a great positive, but the impact on sales volumes from these is unknown, as is the terms of these license agreements (e.g. split between upfront fee vs. volume-based fee)
No escaping the fact that it is an increased cost and so need to understand the ROI this generates to determine whether it really is compelling
Is there really more demand to pay a premium for Snoop Dogg bongs, Guns n Roses papers, Cheech & Chong grinders, or whatever they may be?
So far management have suggested this has been helpful in driving new sales, but this is something to dig into more
I am 35 years old, make $56,000 ($231k combined), live in Seattle, and work in higher ed administration
Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long! Section One: Assets and Debt As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design. The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now. I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding. Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar. Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account). Equity: None, we rent. Savings account balance: Approximately $45k. Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k. Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance. Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded. Section Two: Income Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid). Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college. I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that. Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck. Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID. Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice. Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None. Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month. Section Three: Expenses Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost). Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month. Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing). Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc. Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard. In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years. Debt payments: None. Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times. Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month) Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future? Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.) Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share. Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time. Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time. Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month. Regular therapy: $0 Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies. Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k. __________ Day 1 Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though. I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip). Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch. I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point. Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine. Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53). I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week. Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai. Daily total: $222.89 Day 2 Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning. Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants. I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill. Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments. K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01). Daily total: $22.01 Day 3 Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out. Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error. Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point. Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack. After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle. Daily total: $0 Day 4 Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good. Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48. Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing. We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget). Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly. Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course. Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it. Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast. K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm. Daily total: $239.34 Day 5 Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious. We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin. Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm. The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free! In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip). Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek. Daily total: $80.51 Day 6 Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain. By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners. On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb. Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side. We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo. Daily total: $0 Day 7 Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay. One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly. Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out. I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet! I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo. Daily total: 70.36 Food + Drink: $395.23 Fun / Entertainment: $26.40 Home + Health: $26.60 Clothes + Beauty: $0 Transport: $16.40 Other: $170.48 Grand Total: $635.11 I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.
I am 25 years old make $75,000, live in Northern Virginia and work as a Senior Advisory Specialist
I live with my boyfriend, W., but we do not combine finances. Additionally, I would like to put a content warning here at the top: I discuss tracking food and weight loss throughout this money diary. Section One: Assets and Debt Retirement Balance - $19,195 in two 401ks (current and former company) and $18,478 in a Roth IRA (my grandparents set this up and matched the money I made working in high school/college - I'm very grateful that they set this up for me!) Equity - no equity currently, I rent and do not own a car Checking account balance - currently ~$5,000 (I try to keep it around this amount) Credit card debt - $0 (I pay it off every month) Student loan debt - $9,500 remaining to pay off the loans for my BA in political science (here's hoping I finish it off this year!) Stocks - $1,190 in stocks from my former company. I also have some miscellaneous other stocks that I was gifted when I was younger and I'm unclear on the value of them (my dad manages them for me) Savings - $1,500 (it took a big hit while I was unemployed this past summer) Section Two: Income Income Progression: High school (2012-2013) - I worked at a local office supply store making $7.50/hour. I did this for fun spending money a few days a week after school. College (2014-2017) - I worked two on-campus jobs. The first was as a front desk person at the fitness center beginning at the end of my freshman year; I typically did ten hours a week at this job. The second was as an assistant in our career center, and I did this for the entirety of my senior year; I typically did five hours a week at this job. Both paid $8.50/hour. Internship (2015-2017) - I studied abroad off-cycle from July to December in Australia, and was offered an internship doing recruitment and operations work at my mom's company after randomly meeting the COO in an elevator and impressing him in a brief conversation. What originally was going to be a five week internship went on to be part-time remote when I was at school, and full-time when I was home for the summer and on breaks. It paid $12/hour and introduced me to human resources and strategy & operations. Company #1, Job #1 (2017-2018) - After graduating college, I moved to begin working in Washington DC as an associate at a healthcare firm making $40,000/year. I really enjoyed this work and my team, even though there were some times I had to work long hours. I was promoted to a senior associate role after my first six months, which came with a 10% raise. Company #1, Job #2 (2018-2020) - I decided that, while I liked my role within the company, I wanted to gain client-facing experience. I applied for and moved into a analyst role in a different department at $52,000/year. I was excited about this role because I got to travel and train clients onsite one to three times a month and build up a lot of important business skills. About halfway through 2019, I was told that they wanted to pay me more because they felt my effort outpaced my seniority and was out of the blue bumped up to making $70,000/year. During this role, I was also eligible for up to a 10% bonus based on how my team did. Unemployment (2020) - Due to COVID-19, my company took a big hit being in the healthcare space. The vast majority of my team was made redundant in June 2020. While a super stressful time, I did get some severance and used it as an opportunity to assess what I really wanted in my next role; I knew I liked being client-facing, but realized I wanted to get back to human resources in some way. Company #2 (2020-present) - I took my current role as a senior advisory specialist in the fall. I was able to negotiate a $75,000/year salary and a 5% bonus. The work I do is very energizing and rewarding, and I'm hopeful I can stay here for a while and move up the ladder because I like what I do a lot! Main Job Monthly Take Home: I make $4380.90 each month after deductions. I get paid twice a month. Deductions (per paycheck) · Medical insurance: $29.50 · Dental insurance: $7.50 · Eye insurance: $2.75 · 401k contribution: $156.25 (I plan on increasing this after my student loans are paid off) + 4% company match Side Gig Monthly Take Home: I run a book blog on the side, and while I currently don't make any money off of it, publishers often send me advanced reader copies of books! I save a lot of money that way, because I am buying books constantly. Section Three: Expenses · Rent: $975 for my portion of the one bedroom apartment that I share with W. I pay slightly more than half because I make more money than he does. All utilities are included. · Student loans: $500 is the minimum I pay per month because I want them paid off as soon as possible (the minimum monthly payment is about half that). I usually throw extra money towards them when I have a low spend month. · WiFi and cable: $140.06, which is absolutely ridiculous and I keep saying I'm going to call Comcast and negotiate this down but get lazy and don't. Yell at me in the comments to do this! · Netflix: $14.88 (I also let my best friend use this) · Spotify: $9.99 · Hulu with live sports, HBO, Starz, and Showtime add-ons: W. pays · Amazon Prime: W. pays · Nail salon subscription: $40 (this is cheaper than the cost of a gel manicure and includes a free gel mani every month plus extra bonuses, which makes this very worth it despite sounding extravagant!) · Care/of vitamin subscription: $70 · Boxing membership: $179 for unlimited classes · WW: $15.11 (I'm on a six month deal currently) · Fitbit Premium: $9.99 · iPhone payment plan: $31.20 (this will end in November for my iPhone 11. I am still on my parents' unlimited data phone plan and have been told I never have to leave, which is a total blessing!) · Google storage: $2.12 · iCloud storage: $2.99 Additionally, I have an annual payment of approximately $2,750 for my life insurance policy; I have a blend of whole and term life. I am currently not making these payments, as my grandparents created a fund to pay the first several years of premiums as they felt it was important for me to get life insurance at a young age so it could start gaining cash value. I am incredibly grateful for this! Day One - Tuesday 1/19 7am: My alarm goes off and I am still tired. W. and I cuddle for ten minutes or so before he gets up to make us coffee. We drink our coffee in bed while watching a few YouTube videos from our favorite content creators; the two of us are very into a video game that we play together and consume a lot of content around it. 8:30am: Time to get back into work! We both work from home right now, so we move into the living room together. My inbox is surprisingly empty after a long weekend, so I dive back in to a client request that I didn't finish before closing my laptop on Friday. 9:00am: I have a few morning meetings, so I take a few minutes to get ready. I throw in my contacts and brush my teeth, then get dressed from the waist up in a comfy gray Fortune Ivy sweater and hoop earrings. I make another cup of coffee to keep my energy up. 9:25am: I move into the bedroom to take my meetings. I have a bed tray for my laptop, which makes it feel more desk-like on my bed. I first have a meeting with another member of my team to discuss how we're dividing up a project that we're working on together, followed by two town hall meetings. At some point during my meetings, W. texts me that he ordered an energy drink powder that we've been meaning to try and Venmo requests me for my half ($23). I munch on the last four donut holes we have left over from the weekend for a snack during my meetings and make sure to log what I eat in my WW app. 1:00pm: Out of meetings and in need of a break. W. comes into the bedroom and asks me if I want to go out on a quick walk, which I happily agree to. I throw on Girlfriend Collective leggings, my lucky Rangers sweatshirt, ballet flats, and a freshly washed mask and we head out. After a good 20 minute walk, W. offers to pay for McDonald's for lunch, which is great but definitely not WW friendly. I get a 10 piece nuggets and large fries, and W. gets himself a few burgers. He pays and we take it home to eat on the couch and chat for a few minutes before I have to get on more work calls. 2:00pm: Time for more meetings and project work! I return to the bedroom and call into meetings for an hour, including a weekly meeting I facilitate, and then put my 800th rewatch of Grey's Anatomy on the TV in background while I work. 5:30pm: I log off of my laptop right on time for a Facetime date with my DC best friend, A. We met at my first job and have been close since the minute we met. She just moved into a new apartment and got a new job, so she gives me a tour of the new place and we catch up for about half an hour. After we hang up, I say hi to W. for a few minutes and then go hop in the shower. I do my usual skincare routine (a bevy of Ole Henriksen products, I swear by them) before throwing on comfy clothes and joining W. in the living room. 7:00pm: I throw the Rangers-Devils game on my iPad (I'm a diehard New York sports fan except for basketball) and text my hometown best friend, B., about absolutely nothing while W. plays a video game for a while. I'm not super hungry, so W. heats up leftover tuna casserole for dinner while I just cut up an orange. At some point we mute the hockey game to watch a few episodes of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, our first forray into the Housewives franchise which we've quickly become addicted to. We brush our teeth and make it to bed around 10:30pm. Total: $23 Day Two - Wednesday, 1/20 7:00am: Usual morning routine: wake up, cuddle, coffee, and videos. I get out of bed to make the coffee this morning. 8:15am: I join W. for a quick morning shower before work starts for the day. I also do my weekly weigh in and I'm down almost another pound! The progress is slow, but that is also the healthy way to lose weight. I mark it down and log my coffee. 9:00am: I text with my mom about today's inauguration while I work. She wants to know if I can hear anything from my place, but besides the occasional sirens, there is no big fanfare yet. I set a reminder on my phone to turn on the news in a bit to listen. 10:45am: I finish up a difficult client request and send it off to their account team. W. gets me a lemon Pellegrino from the fridge for me to enjoy during my 11:00 meeting. 12:30pm: Out of my meetings and we have a new president!!! W. gives me a recap of Biden's speech and I find myself getting emotional after watching the video of Kamala getting sworn in. After wiping away the tears, I throw some chicken, buffalo sauce, and seasonings into our pressure cooker so we can have easy lunches: chicken sandwich and salad for W., chicken quesadilla for me so I can easily measure out how much of each food item I'm using. I log my food and we eat together during a quick fifteen minute break. 2:00pm: After changing out my water bottles (I like to drink out of reusable water bottles over drinking glasses, not really sure why) I remember why I don't like to use this one. I log on to the Hydroflask website and order a 21oz bottle with the sports cap lid ($28.58). I pick a color that's on sale because it's cheaper, find a coupon code for free shipping, and go through Rakuten so I can get 2% cash back. I also figure now is as good a time as any to get dressed since I have to be on camera for my afternoon meetings, so I throw on a camel and black polka dot Papermoon blouse and black Beyond Yoga leggings. 3:45pm: Weekly check in with my manager while I snack on a sliced cucumber. He and I discuss my 2020 review, which he literally had to do for me when I was less than a month in the role, and what my goals for 2021 are. I am setting my intentions on Friday, and I am very excited to think through what I want to accomplish this year. We discuss a few other projects and end a little earlier than expected. A friend of mine is streaming on Twitch, so I put his stream up on the TV while I work on a data project and gift a sub to a fellow viewer ($5.99). I see that someone has put a 4:30-5pm meeting on my calendar for tomorrow, so I have to cancel out of my 4:45 boxing class. Sigh. 5:45pm: I wrap up my work and head out to chat with W. for a bit. We decide to play our favorite video game for a while, so we log in and start playing in duos. We get a win in our very first game! After a while, our good friend N. joins us, so we switch to trios. At some point during what becomes a marathon gaming session, W. makes himself a frozen pizza and I drink the last two Stella Cidres we have in the fridge. Brush our teeth and head to bed around 11pm. Total: $34.57 Day Three - Thursday 1/21 3:57am: I wake up for absolutely no reason. I hate when this happens. It takes me over an hour to fall back asleep. 7:00am: Usual morning routine, cut a little short for me to get ready for an 8:30 meeting. 10:00am: In desperate need of a break from my work, I log onto Etsy to pick out some cute candles for A. as a little housewarming gift. I have to text her for her new address, which kind of ruins the surprise, but I know how much she loves candles so I do it anyway ($32.86). 1:00pm: I get off of a client call that I shadowed with a member of my team. I have just decided on my focus area, hence why I am trying to get more exposure to the client work here. My teammate and I debrief and agree that I'll continue to shadow the calls that she does with this client so I can see the whole process through. 3:00pm: Out of another team meeting and exhausted from work. My 4:30 meeting cancels, and I'm bummed for a few minutes because I cancelled my boxing class to be in that meeting. But my mood turns around almost instantly - I got off the waitlist for the 6pm class! I text W. so he knows, and he asks if I can make him dinner before I go because he doesn't want to wait until I get back to eat. Fair enough. I agree and get back to work on my data project. 3:30pm: I get an email with the return label for my Fitbit. I've had it for a year and it randomly started giving me a rash on my wrist, so Fitbit is reimbursing me the total amount I paid for it. Customer service at its finest! I send the label to my Fedex store for pickup tomorrow, since I don't have a printer ($0.52). 5:30pm: I wrap up my work for the day and throw on Old Navy active leggings and a tank, tie back my hair, mask up, and head out the door to the boxing studio. It's endurance day and we do eight minute blocks instead of six, so I am dying by the time class is done. After class, I go to Target to pick up a few miscellaneous items we need: half & half, white vinegar, and chocolate peppermint stick Luna bars ($10.64). I mobile order and stop by Chipotle on the way home to grab a dinner of crispy chicken tacos and chips and guac ($16.23). 7:30pm: I stop by the concierge desk on my way back into the building to grab packages I have waiting and to catch up with my favorite concierge. She is a delight to talk to, but busy tonight, so I don't stay too long. Once home, I devour my tacos in about four minutes and then shower before putting on the Laker-Bucks on the iPad while W. plays video games. We migrate to the bedroom after halftime to finish it and are both exhausted that we fall asleep immediately after. Total: $60.25 Day Four - Friday 1/22 7am: Usual morning routine. After watching two videos, W. announces that he isn't feeling well and is taking a day of PTO. I get him tucked comfy into bed with a movie and start my work day early. I put Grey's Anatomy on the TV while I work. 11am: I am hungry after powering through work all morning, so I place an order for a cheese pizza from Wiseguys ($21.99). A nice quick walk will feel good. 11:30am: I mask up and head out to pick up the pizza, stopping by CVS on the way to get a Red Bull for W., a Diet Coke for myself, and a bottle of Benadryl because I ran out ($27.27). I eat a slice of pizza while watching a bit of a Twitch stream before getting back to work. I also spend some time texting with B., as well as my older sister, C. 1:30pm: Back to back calls. When they're over, I check in on W., who unfortunately only feels worse. He decides to try and nap, and also informs me that he wanted to watch a Marvel movie so he added Disney+ to our Hulu subscription. He pays for that, but I'm happy we'll finally be able to watch those shows we've been missing out on! 4:30pm: Done with my projects and decide to call it a little early today. I appreciate that my manager doesn't particularly care if we stop early when all of our work is done, and I need to go to the Fedex store. I listen to one of my curated Spotify playlists (a lot of Halsey, Taylor Swift, Joan, and Flor are on this one) while I walk there to pick up the label I had printed. As I walk out of the store, several of my music friends start texting me - Halsey cancelled her summer tour. I am bummed because I was supposed to travel and go to several shows with friends. I make a mental note to start cancelling hotel reservations and request my Ticketmaster refunds tomorrow. 5:30pm: Manicure time! I've started doing gel manicures every other week because I have a horrible nail biting habit and this is the only way I can stop myself. I catch up with my favorite nail tech and the salon owners over a glass of sparkling rose. Today we do a nude-pink polish with black and white polka dots. When that's done, I also poke around at the beautiful jewelry they sell and pick out a pair or multicolored acrylic bow earrings. My subscription covers the manicure, so I only have to pay my tip (25% of the service cost) and for the earrings ($24.87). I text W. to let him know I'm on my way home and he asks if I can pick up NyQuil for him. I pop into CVS on the way home to get it ($16.94). 7:30pm: W. and I have a quiet evening, bouncing between a few TV shows and basketball games. We call it an early night and go to bed before 10. Wild Friday! Total: $91.07 Day Five - Saturday, 1/23 8:30am: I wake up feeling pretty well rested. W. is still sleeping, so I get out of bed quietly and head out to the living room. I answer a few work emails that came in last evening, including a stretch project to present some webinars later in the year! I used to facilitate webinars in an old role of mine, so I'm looking forward to flexing that muscle again. I also submit my Ticketmaster refund requests, cancel some hotel reservations, and peruse my favorite auction website. I spy my dream Louis Vuitton bag (Speedy 40 in canvas and leather) at what could be a steal. I do some mental math at what would be the max I would splurge on it and set a max bid. I'm currently winning and text B. with excitement. 9:45am: W. texts me that he's awake but still not feeling well. I crawl back into bed for some snuggles and ask him what he needs. He wants bagels, so I agree to go out to pick them up if he pays for them. He orders a BEC on an everything bagel for himself and a multigrain bagel with butter for me. I throw on black Girlfriend Collective leggings, a Halsey tee, and my Adidas superstars, grab my mask and jacket, and head out the door. It's a little chilly, but it feels good. It's a quick turnaround to get back with the bagels. W. and I eat them in bed while watching some Real Housewives. 12:00pm: We're still in bed. Oops. We transition into watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and W. orders us some Popeye's to eat throughout the day: 12 piece spicy chicken, biscuits, fries, mashed potatoes, and a large Diet Coke to split. We will heat up leftover Popeye's for lunch someday this week. I embrace the fact that this is not going to be a good WW week for me, and remind myself it's okay to be human and have some indulgent weekends. Progress, not perfection! 5:00pm: W. dials into his weekly virtual D&D session and I decide to solo queue my video game for the evening. I debate having some wine, but decide the fast food was probably enough for my stomach and that I don't need to add alcohol into the mix. W.'s session wraps up around 9:30, so we chat while I clean the apartment a bit before taking a quick shower. I towel dry my hair, toss on some weekly skincare (eye cream and a fancy serum that I'm not really sure what it does, it just makes my skin glowy) before settling into bed. Total: $0 Day Six - Sunday 1/24 3:00am: I wake up congested as can be. I get two Benadryl and a Zicam from the bathroom, lay back down, and pray for sleep to come. 9:10am: Well, I guess sleep came. I missed the start of the booking window for upcoming boxing classes, but luckily there are still openings in all the classes I wanted. I'm trying to up my workouts, so I decide to try the Wednesday morning class as well. Maybe I'll like being a morning workout person? 11:00am: W. and I both decide to call our respective moms. My mom and I try to talk at least once a week on the phone (we also text every day, I just haven't mentioned it, whoops) and we catch up on random bits of each other's lives for about 45 minutes or so. I tell her about Halsey cancelling tour and we're a bit worried, as we're supposed to see Maroon 5 together later in the year after it got rescheduled from 2020. Hopefully by the fall we'll have herd immunity, though I'm not super positive that concerts will happen. I miss concerts :( 12:00pm: I do a bit of apartment maintenance: taking out the trash, breaking down boxes and taking them to recycling, wiping down the countertops, etc. W. comes out to the living room when his phone call ends and we try to decide what we want to do. W. is still not feeling great, which is worrying, but he has no COVID symptoms. He gets a quick telehealth appointment and is assured that he most likely has the cold/head flu thing that is going around and should stay home to not burden the healthcare system. The doctor assures him that me coming/going from the apartment shouldn't transmit whatever W. has and that while he should stay home until he is feeling better, as long as I'm sanitizing and showering often, I can leave. I'm guessing a lot of people are asking that question since the doctor told him that unprompted, and I'm relieved to know that I won't be unknowingly getting someone else sick. 1:00pm: W. and I decide to order Vocelli's for a late lunch/early dinner: bacon and cheddar pizza rolls and a build-your-own stromboli with bacon, spinach, and extra cheese. I have a GrubHub gift card from Christmas so we don't have to pay out of pocket for this meal. We play some video games together until the food gets here, then pause to eat and watch an episode of Shark Tank. When we finish eating, we go back to gaming because there isn't much else to do while W. is sick. 7:00pm: I move into the bedroom so we can watch the Rangers-Penguins game on my iPad while he plays a different video game and I scroll on my phone. My dad randomly calls me, and I'm worried something happened to my grandpa (he's my last living grandparent and lives alone). Luckily, Grandpa is fine and my dad was just jealous that I talked to my mom this morning while he was out running errands. He's adorable. We catch up for about ten minutes before he has to go. When 8:00 rolls around, we switch over to the Wizards-Spurs game since they're finally playing again and mute the hockey game. Both teams lose and I'm a sad sports fan. We brush our teeth and throw on some Futurama to fall asleep to. Total: $0 Day Seven - Monday, 1/25 7:00am: Usual weekday wakeup routine. When it's time to get to work, W. decides he'll work from the bedroom so he can continue to rest. We order Starbucks (peppermint mochas for both of us, turkey and pesto panini for him, sprouted grain vegan bagel for me) on UberEats and split the cost because we wouldn't normally have it delivered ($14.87). I listen to calls while I work and get dressed in a bright color Girlfriend Collective set and black Forever 21 active tank to try and offset the dreary weather. 10:00am: Out of my first set of meetings and I run the laundry down to the laundry room ($3.25). I listen to a Twitch stream while I work and continuously check on the Louis Vuitton I'm bidding on. The auction ends tonight at 8pm and I'm still winning! 1:00pm: Still working through projects. I have been outbid past the maximum I set for myself on the Louis Vuitton, which is disappointing but I'm sure I'll get one eventually. I can still dream about it in the meanwhile :) 2:15pm: I take a quick break to package up my old Fitbit and place an order for a replacement. It ends up being free because of my full refund; the only cost is not having a tracker for a week or so. Could be worse! I make myself an energy drink using the powder that we ordered earlier this week to fuel my afternoon meetings with some non-coffee energy. 4:30pm: I throw on my sneakers and mask, grab my gym bag, and head off to boxing. After a few tough client requests today, throwing some punches feels amazing! 5:30pm: Out of class and off to Safeway and Target for some filler groceries. I did a big food shopping last Monday and we ended up doing a lot of takeout, so we don't need much. I get milk, yogurt, frozen berries, ciabatta rolls, frozen popcorn chicken, peanut butter pretzels, and two types of cereal. I text W. to let him know I'm on my way home ($23.70 for my half) and despite the drizzle, it is a refreshing walk. 6:30pm: Freshly showered and time to decide what to do for the evening. I find a movie, Collateral, by doing a reference search for a movie vibe that I loved (Inside Man, if you're curious) but am disappointed to find out it's not available on any streaming service. W. saves the day by telling me we actually own it on DVD but have never watched it, and lo and behold, it's buried in our giant plastic tub of DVDs. Movie night saved! We curl up on the couch and watch the movie with leftover Popeye's. 8:45pm: The movie is done and I'd give it a solid 4/5 stars. While discussing our favorite parts of the movie, we get into a random fight. I find myself getting heated for no reason, take a deep breath, and ask him to explain his side. W. has severe anxiety, and it turns out he had a few anxiety attacks during the movie so he wasn't articulating himself properly. We talk it out and he apologizes; he's made a lot of progress on dealing with his anxiety, but he has a long way to go. Not wanting to end the night on a bad note, we decide to stay up a little later than usual so we can watch some more Real Housewives and feel better by the time we go to bed. Asleep by 11:30. Total: $41.82 Weekly Expenses: Food + Drink: $118.71 Fun / Entertainment: $5.99 Home + Health: $68.06 Clothes + Beauty: $24.87 Transport: $0 Other: $33.38 Lastly, reflect on your diary! This diary was very typical in some ways, and atypical in others. I normally cook a lot more, but with W. being sick I definitely used that as an excuse for takeout, hence why I'm following WW to try and lose weight! I think if I continue to be careful with my spending I can pay off my student loans this year and build my emergency fund back up, so I'm definitely buying less "fun" things in 2021… but if another Louis Vuitton comes around I'll probably bid on it :)
Alright. Hear me out autists. We all know bears are gay. But with TSLA shares reaching an ATH of $816.99, it sure seems like its fundamentals are completely divorced from reality. And the media analysts have been pounding on TSLA for seemingly years now. So is this a good company to be a gay bear on? Or Nah? (edit: TSLA ATH now @ $884 lol)
On 7 Jan 2020, Royal Bank of Canada admitted that "There is no graceful way to put this other than to say we got TSLA's stock completely wrong" and upgraded TSLA from $339 to $700. And on 6 Jan 2020, Morgan Stanley upgraded their TSLA price target to $810 when just 18 months ago they announced their comically low price target of $10 (that's $2 post split) resulting in a massive rally. Did Morgan Stanley dive head first into WSB level 3 autism territory, or is there something that the uninitiated could be missing? Let's do a deep dive into Tesla the company and see if their stock really is in a bubble, or if there could be some substance behind the current insane rally.
The common FUD narrative among TSLAQ is that TSLA's $800+ billion market cap is now larger than the 10 largest auto manufacturers combined. (edit: Apparantly this is a common FUD talking point that is/was false. TSLA is/was nowhere near that level when it was touted around as so. Although it is undeniable that Tesla's market cap became more and more absurd throughout 2020)
Indeed, this is quite insane. Even without us autists doing complex calculations, a simple google search shows that they would have to sell around 65 million vehicles a year to be priced at that level. So how many vehicles did Tesla produce? Tesla announced on 2 January 2020 that they've sold a little shy of 500K vehicles for CY 2020 with plans to increase production by 50% YoY. This would ultimately bring them to 20 million vehicles produced by 2030.
20 mil by 2030. Although we all know the term "Elon Time", which refers to CEO Elon Musk casually announcing an estimate of a product and missing projected timelines by large margins, there seems to be some credibility to this statement. Back in 2014, Elon Musk gave an interview (2:28) where he stated "I feel comfortable that we'll be able to achieve at least half a million cars a year by 2020".
OK. So let's give him the benefit of the doubt. As a matter of fact, Tesla is actually building factories at breakneck speeds with construction literally running 24/7 and each of their large factories (Austin and Berlin) is said to be capable of producing up to 2 million vehicles a year. Giga Berlin which was an empty field 9 months ago is already close to finishing its outer construction layer. Obviously they plan to announce more factory constructions in the future as well. So they do seem to be on track to grow on average 50% YoY for now. But 20 million cars produced by 2030 is still massively shy of 65 million vehicles. Even with growth factored in, TSLA's stock valuation still seems insanely high. So what gives? The common explanation among the Tesla fanboys is that TSLA is a tech company, not an automotive company, so it should be valued just so.
So what is this mystical technology the fanboys speak of, and how is it being deployed in terms of profitability for Tesla? Well, it turns out that Tesla has three main technological advantages and two main revenue streams that might put them leaps and bounds ahead of competitors.
Autonomous Driving - Tesla is the current market leader in vehicle autonomy. It has over 3 billion miles logged as of April 2020. The next industry leader Waymo (owned by google) has approximately 20 million miles logged. One thing for sure is that no company will be able to catch Tesla in terms of pure data advantage within the next 4-5 years. And when it comes to Artificial Intelligence, data is king. This could be the bread and butter of Tesla. Tesla already charges customers $10k per vehicle to enable full self driving in which 25% of their customers choose the option. However, Tesla hasn't taken full profits on their books yet due to it still being in beta mode. Once they solve autonomy, an over-the-air (OTA) software update will be sent out just like how your iPhone updates and bam! now you have a self driving vehicle. Let's say Tesla charges $2k a year for a self driving vehicle that can also function as an autonomous uber driver which will help you pay down your vehicle or self driving subscription service. That's like selling two iPhone pros per every customer every year. And customers on their robotaxi network will also have to share 20% profits with Tesla. Think about this. The highest cost of ride hailing are for hourly wages. If no human is required to drive that vehicle, the cost of the ride hailing service will become insanely cheap. So cheap to the point that many people who live in cities will feel like they no longer need to own a vehicle and just call a robo taxi. People already do this in large cities! As this process accelerates, vehicles that don't have autonomy solved will lose market share dramatically every year. People who want cars will mainly want to buy a vehicle with an autonomous option, and people who don't care about owning a car will use robo taxis. If Tesla solves autonomy 4-5 years ahead of competitors, the entire auto industry will be disrupted by Tesla just like how the iPhone ended Blackberry and Nokia's dominance.
Vehicle Manufacturing - Tesla is an innovator when it comes to vehicle manufacturing technology, specifically robotics. Along with their insane factory automation process, they also have giga casters that mold car pieces quickly and efficiently that no other manufacturers have, and giant automated paint shops. This cuts down massively on labor and allows for quicker production while keeping margins high. Due to innovative technologies like these, it is estimated that Tesla's Shanghai Model 3 vehicles net around 30% profit margins, even after they've recently slashed their prices by 8%. Tesla recently slashed their Model Y price by 30% but still boast an astonishing 29% profit margin which is approximately 3 times the industry average. So even if robotaxi doesn't work out, they are still an industry leader by a large stretch in terms of profit margins. These margins will only increase after Giga Berlin is operational due to no longer having to ship vehicles across the Pacific to European customers.
Vertical Integration - Tesla is well known for its vertical integration. This is mainly due to having supply chain issues in the early days, but what this has enabled is agile production capability and larger profit margins. Due to this capability, Tesla improves components of their vehicles on the fly instead of the annual model release the traditional industry uses. Also, they don't have to share profits with suppliers or worry about constraints, delivery delays, or slow progress on contracts.
No Advertising & Dealerships - Elon Musk is a walking billboard. The media literally gives Tesla free advertisement every day. As production increases, Tesla might have to start advertising in the future. But for now it seems like Teslas are selling themselves. Tesla has literally sold 100% of the vehicles they've ever produced, and they have never advertised any of their vehicles. Also, they do not have to share profits with dealerships with direct-to-consumer sales. If their market dominance and technology superiority continues, it is bound to stay the industry leader just like apple did with its iPhones. And if they solve autonomy first which they seem on track to do so, what's more to say?
Regulatory Credits AKA Carbon Credits - This is one that TSLAQs love to bring up when it comes to Tesla profits. You see, a handful of US States enacted a law that requires manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) in their state which will earn them ZEV credits. If not, they will either have to pay a massive penalty fine, or buy ZEV credits from vehicle manufacturers who have plenty to spare. And Tesla has an overflow of ZEV credits laying around. So Tesla is literally getting paid by other vehicle manufacturers to build their vehicles. TSLAQs (incorrectly) state that the only reason Tesla makes a profit is because of regulatory credits. However, Tesla's ZEV credits only make up around 5% of their revenue (page 4, row 3) and it is slowly falling. No serious vehicle manufacturer will likely produce ICE vehicles in the year 2030 so ZEV credits fazing out is to be expected. Tesla vehicles are massively profitable as mentioned in bullet #2 even without the ZEV credits.
So we went over the main revenue streams of Tesla. And if all works out well, it seems likely that Tesla has a good chance of 'winning' if they maintain their market leadership. However, the competition is coming, right? We have our favorite EV players such as Nio, XPeng, Li, Rivian, BYD etc. Also the traditional ICE manufacturers VolksWagen has their ID.4, Ford has thier Mustang Mach-E, Audi has thier etron, Porche has their Tycan, and GM has the Chevy Bolt and 30 EVs planned for the future. It seems inevitable that these industry giants with their massive resources will overtake Tesla. Or will they?
Why the Competition is NOT Coming (Tesla's Moats):
Difficulties of creating an EV vs. Mass Production: Creating a shell of an EV or a prototype is extremely easy. If anything, Nikola has showed this to be true. Rivian seems to be having the same issue Tesla had when starting up where they had to constantly push back release dates due to how difficult it is to engineer and manufacture an EV. So designing a prototype is easy. Manufacturing an EV is another thing. But mass production is a whole different beast. It took Tesla well over 16 years to perfect their technology and mass produce their model 3 despite having the best engineers in the world working for them. Ever wonder why every single vehicle manufacturer has constantly been pushing back their EV production timelines? It's because EVs are difficult. Also to note is that no vehicle manufacturer other than Tesla has been able to achieve mass production in EVs. And until then, Tesla has no competition in the near horizon.
Supercharger network: Tesla has the largest charging network in the world by orders of magnitude and they will continue to grow. VW is a low trailing second in the market due to penalties in their dieselgate scandel and as a lucky maneuver, decided to build their electrify-america charging network. BTW, due to sunk costs, VW will likely be the only traditional ICE manufacturer that stands a chance of survival in the long run. Tesla owners barely get range anxiety like they used to back in the day. This is because it is easy to find a charging station even if they are going on a long trip with their map integration. However, you cannot say the same for the other EVs.
Lidar vs. Camera: Tesla's vehicles notoriously does not use lidar technology. Instead, they almost only rely on vision (cameras). There are three main reasons for this. (I.) Cameras are extremely cheap. Lidar is not. One of Waymo's vehicles are estimated to have cost over $250k back in a 2017 estimate. Although in recent years Waymo seems to have developed lidar hardware that costs 90% less at $7.5k, it is still ridiculously expensive compared to cameras without adding much value. Here is Elon Musk's explanation, massively paraphrased: "Cameras augmented with AI can do almost all the things that lidar does chiefly depth sensing. Human vision does not require a separate depth sensor, and the entire driving infrastructure is built with human vision in mind. Lidar is a fools errand." Instead, Tesla augments its self driving technology with radar and maps. (II.) Lidar technology is usually augmented with something called HD maps. This is extreme detailed mapping (to the centimeter level) that helps lidar depth sensors with navigation. However, the issue with HD maps is that the file sizes are obviously large. And when detailed maps need to be updated due to construction or whatever which happens everywhere, every day, an OTA update needs to be sent out. And how do you update a fleet of all your vehicles when nationwide full coverage of 5G isn't a thing? So vehicles like Waymos are extremely good at driving within their geo-fenced locations, until they leave the area. And then they are absolute crap at it. OTOH, vision-based self driving vehicles are initially bad at the task until they have sufficient data and then they can drive well in almost every situation even without it being connected to the network. (III.) Vision-focused self driving AI can be augmented with additional sensors such as radalidar afterwards, but the inverse does not work. To put it short, if your lidar sensors disagree on the information they see at the moment, its entire system cannot function.
Misdirected Competition: Remember how we talked about ZEV credits? Well most ICE vehicle manufacturers only sell their vehicles in ZEV mandated states and nowhere else. They literally lose money when they sell their vehicles, or have to massively hike up their prices to make a profit even with tax credits, unlike Teslas. For this reason, they only make enough vehicles to make up for their ZEV credits. Naturally, one can assume the limits of effort gone into such vehicles. Now, let's talk about the EV start ups. I've already mentioned the massive growing pains they will have to reach mass production. However, the Chinese EV startups have one thing to their advantage - massive 5G infrastructure within China which will undoubtedly benefit automation, especially in the case of HD maps. However, this doesn't apply outside of China. To add to this, they do not produce in-house custom AI chipsets which is a massive hinderance in processing data. Tesla did this with Nvidia for a while and ultimately decided that they had to design their own chips because of the lackluster performance.
OTA Software Updates - A minor point, but Tesla has been designing their own software for years now. Well known to the public, Teslas update very frequently and with each update gets slightly better UI and performance. Yes - a software update allows Teslas to get better efficiency out of their vehicles. One can argue that any auto manufacturer can implement OTA software updates, but Tesla is leagues ahead at the moment with top notch software developers.
Talent Pool: Guess what the #1 company engineers want to work for is? That's right. Tesla. #2 is SpaceX. Try all they want, but the best engineers aren't going to want to work with Ford or GM.
"The Competition": I already mentioned the half-assedness of traditional ICE vehicle manufacturers but I wanted to bring up another point. One thing that traditional ICE manufacturers have weighing them down are their employees. Their ICE engineers don't translate well into a totally different EV drivetrain. There are sunk costs (equipment etc) that deal with ICE manufacturing processes. Also, Ford, GM, and VW all have unions, pension funds, and stockholders. What do you think their reaction will be when they decide to ditch the currently-profitable-but-soon-to-be-shrinking ICE vehicle component and transition into resource intensive EVs? That's right. They won't like it. The only solution is to half-ass it and slowly transition into EVs while trying to keep afloat their ICE vehicle component. With massive product line diversification and lack of focus, this is not going to be an easy transition. VW CEO Herbert Diess famously stated that "My goal for the future is clear: leading the Group into a sustainable and successful future. The global transformation in the industry will take roughly ten years, with or without Volkswagen." and tried to convince board members basically stating that VW will need to transition into EVs within 10 years or go bankrupt. Ultimately, Diess wasn't successful in achieving full cooperation of the board and had to compromise in his goals to a more gradual transition. The competition is NOT coming. Oh, and as for Waymo and Uber? Well Uber recently sold off their self-driving startup, and Waymo sunk a jaw dropping $3.5 billion for their operation. LOL. They are paying drivers to monitor their expensive "autonomous vehicles" while Tesla gets this done while making a profit. As of 2020, Waymo still only has 600 vehicles and has never left the bounds of Pheonix, AZ.
OK. So I'm sure I've missed some points but I think this paints a decent picture on why Tesla is considered the one and only market leader at the moment. Now let's go into...
Tesla's Disruptive Potentials:
The $25,000 EV: In Tesla's battery day announcement, Tesla projected that their battery technology will enable them to build a $25k vehicle in the future. According to projections using Wright's law, this seems to be plausible. Most think this will happen around 2023-4. Think of the disruption this will bring. EVs are well known for having lower maintenance cost vs. ICE vehicles due to not having as many moving parts. The true cost of ownership for a $25k vehicle will be vastly superior to a $20k ICE vehicle. Once this happens, ICE vehicle demand will fall through the roof. The only ICE vehicles being sold at high volume will be used vehicles. What happens to the traditional ICE manufacturers then? Tesla vehicles are already perceived to hold their value much better than other brands because of the overall feature it comes with.
Tesla Auto Insurance: Tesla collects massive amounts of data. They can easily profile their customers' driving patterns, check if they have self driving enabled, the route they drive etc. Currently Tesla vehicles are insured at a much higher premium vs. economic ICE vehicles. Once Tesla goes fully into the insurance business, traditional insurance companies will not be able to compete with them on price or margins. This is because the insurance business is based upon data on the customer and projections.
Solar City - Tesla's other business deals with solar panels, Tesla power walls, and their Autobidder software which sells the electricity that you generated back to the grid. Tesla currently offers the lowest solar panel price in the U.S. and moreover, takes 20% of the revenue generated from their autobidder software. Renewable energy is poised to grow. More than 50% annually is the current projection. And Tesla seems to be one of the industry leaders in this market as well.
Risks:
Failing autonomous driving: definitely a major risk as the current stock price is largely betting on this single technology to materialize. However, their current progress and the rate of improvement after rewriting their autopilot code seems promising.
Failing mass battery production (battery supply issues): Although Tesla is the largest producer of batteries in the world, they will need to produce more if they want to keep up with the current pace of expansion. This will be a major bottleneck for Tesla if they cannot solve this issue. As a solution, Tesla has reduced their reliance on copper and are said to be producing batteries with little to no copper. We shall see how this pans out.
Tesla is infamous for its poor Quality Control on their vehicles and slow/poor Customer Service. We shall see if time solves this issue.
Lack of Tax Incentives: Tesla's vehicles no longer provide Federal tax incentives to U.S. customers. However, they seem to be doing fine with over 80% EV marketshare in the U.S. alone. They're stealing market share from BMW, VW, Acura... you name it.
Elon Musk Death: Elon Musk has been able to achieve amazing engineering feats. If he dies, I'm sure a lot of the company's potential will go with it.
Alternative Battery Technology:
Solid State Battery - Quantumscape which is currently the leader in this sector has plans to enter mass production by 2024. We shall see if their battery technology turns out to be as efficient as Tesla's. If QS's SS batteries turn out to be superior to Tesla's, they might have to start purchasing from them.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell (HFC) Battery - Likely not a good use for vehicles. Very low efficiency and wasteful vs lithium-ion batteries. Currently no infrastructure for HFC in place. Might be useful for freight shipping. Elon Musk famously stated that HFC's are "Fool Cells"
Tesla Future Products Lines:
Cybertruck: Insane profit margins, amazing performance. estimated production end of 2021 or 2022
Semi Truck: estimated production 2022 or later
Model S Refresh: Insane specs. Likely release is 2021
2020 Roadster: Insane specs but surprise! The "2020 Roadster" renewal never happened and most are projecting 2022 or later
$25k EV: 'nuff said
TSLA Analysis:
TSLA Institutional Ownership: 62.85% TSLA Insider Ownership: 5.21% TSLA Fanboy Ownership: estimated 5%+ So there is a stable 70%+ of ownership that will not/cannot sell this stock, unlike PLTR which has only 12% institutional ownership and 63% insider ownership. This is the reason why I think the stock won't drop tremendously even when it tanks. There are plenty of people who are willing to snatch up more shares at a discount.
Why did TSLA shoot up so quickly in 2020: This is my personal opinion, but TSLA fans are known for doing deep research into the company. In the early days this was in forums such as the Tesla Motors Club where they shared their own research on revenue, projections, and potentials. Now we have YouTube and information dissemination has gotten easier. Interest in investing has skyrocketed in 2020. Stock market trading GLOBALLY has gotten easier via smartphone with apps such as Robinhood and the prosperity of the American stock market has no doubt attracted global retail investors. For years, Tesla's stock has been pushed down by FUD analysts. Paid by big oil and traditional ICE manufacturers? Or really that dumb not to do any DD and spread completely false information on a company that you are massively shorting. We might never find out. Retailers have caught onto Tesla's potential ahead of analysts this time. And as in Morgan Stanley and RBC's case, analysts have just been catching up on the future potential of Tesla to not make a further fool of themselves.
Future scenarios and Personal Opinion: Currently, Tesla holds over 18% of the global EV marketshare. As more EV players come into space, it might seem like Tesla is in danger of losing marketshare. Not everyone wants a Tesla and that is understandable. But as the overall pie is growing, Tesla, with their 50% YoY production increase plans (which is exponential growth), will likely remain a market leader sustaining their current 18% market share even in 2030 just like how the iPhone did. This is, of course, if they can keep up their growth.
Even if TSLA fails to develop their robo-taxi network technology, their full self driving subscription seems highly likely to materialize at the current pace albeit a lower revenue model.
Ultimately, do I think the current stock price is a bubble? Fuck yes I do, maybe by up to 20%. I'm not buying any more TSLA shares anywhere near this price. My FOMO was back when the stock price was $415 after doing my DD and this was with the intention to buy more shares even if the stock bottomed out. Well, it never bottomed because the S&P inclusion was announced shortly after I purchased it.
But if you ask my personal opinion, you gotta be a "buy high sell low" type top level autist if you're looking for short term gains and purchasing at this level. I'm looking at long term, slow moving, dead ass boring, Bitcoin HODLing, Warren Buffet style "time in market beats timing the market" boomer gains here. My next purchase will be whenever the stock price, if ever, bottoms out. However, just because I think TSLA is overpriced doesn't mean that I'm shorting this stock either.
Amazon was notoriously non-profitable or barely profitable until 2015 because they were reinvesting their profits into expansion. That is what Tesla is doing right now. Remember all the analysts who continuously warned investors for over a decade to stay away from AMZN because they are unprofitable? Well, I don't see any sane analysts parroting that narrative anymore. And then its stock price shot to the moon after they enabled profit mode. It's stock price nearly doubled due to the pandemic and I'm still not planning on shorting this stock even though the pandemic will likely go away in less than a year.
I don't know how TSLA will do in the short term. Nonetheless, I do believe that Tesla has the best chance among any auto maker out there to reach a $2-10+ trillion valuation within 10 years. So I'm just going to lean back and enjoy the show.
TL;DR: Tesla HAS NO COMPETITION. This is as if android wasn't developed until 4 years after the iPhone was released. Do NOT short or buy puts on TSLA. Although the current run seems absolutely insane, there is some substance to hold it up and possibly keep shooting up higher
Positions: TSLA shares @ $415 and a bunch more with an average price of $518. No calls because my wife's boyfriend did not permit.
Back of the Napkin Calculations
Warning: These are literally back of the napkin, pure crack fantasy calculations based on four factors:
Tesla will be able to increase production by 50% YoY until 2030 without fall in demand or issues scaling. As a side note, Toyota sells 10.5 million vehicles in a year so only time will tell if Tesla is able to sell 20 million vehicles a year.
ZEV credits will gradually diminish due to manufacturers switching to EVs.
Tesla will solve level 3 autonomy by 2022 and will charge customers $1k/yr. Tesla will have level 5 autonomy by 2026 and launch its robotaxi network by 2027 which it will then charge customers $2k/yr.
The robotaxi revenue is from the 20% profit sharing Tesla plans to do, but as far as the numbers go, I straight up pulled it out of my ass while referencing Uber's revenue and fudging numbers.
Year
Vehicles Produced
Vehicle Sales Revenue
ZEV Credits
Full Self Driving Revenue
Robotaxi Revenue
Total Revenue (Vehicle Related)
Notes
2019
367k
20.2 B
0.6 B
0.36 B (est)
21.6 B (est)
FSD early access (cost $8k, 1 time fee)
2020
500k
23.9 B (est)
1.5 B (est)
0.6 B (est)
26 B (est)
FSD early access (cost $10k, 1 time fee)
2021
750k
35.8 B
1.3 B
0.9 B (est)
38 B (est)
FSD at Level 2.5
2022
1.1 mil
53.7 B
1 B
1 B+
55.7 B
FSD at Level 3 (FSD subscription service - lower pricing model @ $1k/y)
2023
1.7 mil
80.6 B
0.7 B
2.7 B+
84 B
2024
2.5 mil
120 B
0.4 B
5.2 B+
125.6 B
FSD at Level 4
2025
3.8 mil
181 B
0.1 B
9 B+
190.1 B
2026
5.7 mil
272 B
-
13.7 B+
285.7 B
FSD at Level 5
2027
8.5 mil
408 B
-
30 B+
1 B
439 B
Robotaxi Launch (FSD subscription service @ 2k/y)
2028
12.8 mil
612 B
-
55 B+
5 B
672 B
2029
19 mil
918 B
-
93 B+
13 B
1 T
2030
20 mil
1 T
-
130 B+
20 B+
1.1 T
As you can see, I omitted R&D expenses, operating expenses etc., and haven't even attempted to calculate their net profit or factor in that Tesla's revenue might drop due to introducing cheaper variants. But this back of the napkin, crack infused revenue model shows that Tesla's potential can be gigantic. This is even without its other businesses like Solar City or Tesla insurance etc. Please... don't reference this anywhere because it is dumb math and I likely made some huge errors lol.
Hey, guys. I was on Facebook this morning and came across a post from a friend asking everyone who had their own home or apartment to sound off. Well, I sounded off by asking how everyone could afford that. I make $17 an hour and I can't even afford a 1B1BA apartment in my area. And some guy had the audacity to tell me I needed to manage my money better, because people make a lot less than that and can do it. At first, I was honestly offended. But then I realized that he could, possibly, be right. I've always thought my budget is pretty bare bones. I'm not crazy frugal, but I also don't go out and buy everything my little heart desires. Quite to the contrary. Anyway, I thought I would come here to see if my budget really needs some tinkering or if this other guy is full of shit. So without further ado: Monthly Net Pay (Approximate) - $2,175 YouTube Music - $9.99 Storage Space - $73.00 Mobile Phone (Device & Plan) - $109.54 Gym Membership - $19.99 Gas - $30.00 Miscellaneous - $25.00 Car Insurance - $177.00 Health Insurance - $282.73 Food - $300.00 Auto Loan - $312.69 Dental Insurance - $34.96 Student Loans (PAYE) - $68.00 (Total Debt Burden is Approximately $34,000) That leaves me with about $730 per month. And apartments around here cost 70-80% more than that, minimum (reference: https://www.apartments.com/germantown-md/). That's without even taking utilities into account. To address a few items above, I know my food budget is a little high. But it's not spent eating out. I try to eat pretty healthfully and that costs a little bit extra. My auto loan and insurance are also pretty high. For the loan... It kinda is what it is. I need my car. And for the insurance, I've been in some BS accidents in the past where I've hit debris in the road that was pretty much unavoidable. And of course I'm at fault for that, so my premiums are high. But I recently got a quote for per-mile insurance that will provide me with substantial savings. Finally, health insurance is expensive. But it's not something I'm willing to compromise on. I don't qualify for subsidies. Is my budget reasonable or am I spending too much on things I don't need (or even things I do need)?
Detailed DD post [re-post after r/pennystocks deleted it]
I posted this yesterday morning (UK time) but after 5 hours or so, pennystocks deleted the original post. A few people messaged me asking for it to be shared in a few High Tide specific pages. So here it is! Hope this is OK for the mods here? -- This is my first time posting a DD post – a friend of mine who moderates on SPACs has shared some analysis I have written previously, but I’m keen to share this here, and see if there is any appetite for sharing my own personal written DD I have on the 30 stocks I have across a number of different portfolios. I have modified this format, as it was originally a script for a video which I created on the stock. If you prefer to listen – check it out here: https://youtu.be/qsjwU7kkPsw Some of the market stats (market cap, current multiples, etc.) are correct as of Feb-06, and clearly a little outdated since the price movements. Not a financial advisor, do your own DD. I am long HITI and have an expectation of a long term hold on this stock. Overview
High Tide Canada-based cannabis retail company, operating under multiple brands. It operates under 3 core divisions:
Brick and mortar retail – 4 key brands with just under 70 locations in Canada. Brands include: Canna Cabana, New Leaf, Meta Cannabis and Kushbar. Forecast to have around 115 stores by end of 2021
Online retail – has 2 brands, both of which attract millions of viewers per month – Grasscity.com and CBDcity.com
Wholesale – manufacturer of paraphernalia in US and Canada. Number of products are branded with various celebrities, Snoop Dogg, Paramount Pictures, Trailer Park Boys and many more
Has good c-level execs and experienced executive board; hold significant stake in the business. CEO Raj Grover holds just over 21% of the shares
Currently has a market cap of around $280m. Still significant upside to the valuation – see analysis later in post
Investment Merits Very strong market growth:
Business has demonstrated growth both organically (through new store openings, more online sales and greater wholesale sales), as well as inorganically through M&A
Growth in markets which High Tide has a physical presence in is expected to be very strong. North American cannabis market (Canada and US) is forecast to grow by 30% a year to 2027 (source: research and markets)
Analysts covering High Tide are forecasting growth in excess of this, which is positive to see and implies capturing market share
New markets / geographies ‘opening up’, legalizing and regulating cannabis is also an exciting and realistic prospect for incremental growth:
The US federal legalization debate is on the table
Many other countries are considering this too and High Tide is well positioned for these; this is catalyzed by the fact that government debt has increased significantly as part of the response to the COVID-19 health crisis. This needs to be repaid somehow, and increasing tax rates on existing taxes is an unpopular political move. Finding new tax revenues is a more palatable way of increasing tax revenues for governments. This is especially important in countries where elections are upcoming.
Personally I do expect to see this accelerate the agenda for the regulation and legalization of cannabis in many new countries
Whilst predominantly Canada and US based, High Tide does have presence in some markets where cannabis is not regulated or legalized, the UK for example (~10% of Grasscity sales are made here) and so it is well positioned with a strong and established brand to capitalize on this opportunity, when / if the market ‘opens up’
Regulation
High Tide benefits from the regulatory focus and overhang on the cannabis retail sector as it represents a strong barrier to entry, making it more challenging for new competitors to enter market
Participants in the market need to have licenses and ensure consistent compliance with laws to continue operating – failure to comply can result in significant financial penalties
Personally I normally don’t like investing into retail. There are usually fairly limited barriers to entry, minimal differentiation and negligible customer loyalty, however the cannabis market does have different characteristics in this respect and makes it a more compelling proposition
Regulation also benefits those with scale, something High Tide has as the leading player in the market. It costs money to obtain and retain licences to operate and it costs money to ensure compliance with all the laws and regulations and that all staff are acting in accordance with these
Some parallels in this respect which can be drawn to casino gaming in casinos; you don’t see new casinos popping up at the same rate which you see new restaurants or apparel stores opening
Demand
There’s a lot to like about the demand dynamics for High Tide. It’s vice-nature means that demand is less correlated to disposable incomes. Given where we are in economic cycle, especially important consideration
For those doubting this, check alcohol, tobacco or gambling expenditure across economic cycles historically, for a proxy
Strong performance throughout COVID-19 crisis
Despite heavy weighting towards brick and mortar, (the most hard hit part of retail) it has effectively managed the shift to online, which is a positive
Has relied on government support and financial assistance in the form of job retention schemes (address in more detail later in post)
This demonstrates management are capable and have effectively navigated the challenging situation
Data
Massively summarized from the video, (and my video on KERN) so check that out if interested in this point, however, they have unique access to supply chain data which could be monetized effectively and generate strong levels of recurring revenues
Other established sectors have a trusted party with such unique access to data (e.g. alcohol, lithium, different foods, etc.) and the opportunity here is enormous
I would like to see High Tide capitalize on this
Forecasts financials & analysts
Currently 2 analysts covering High Tide, both have a buy rating on the business
Their coverage is slightly outdated (expect this being updated soon and a further catalyst for positive price action) and their price targets are 60c; at the time their reports were published, they were forecasting a 4x upside (HITI was trading at ~15c)
Same analysts also forecasting strong growth - 77% CAGR to 2022. They are forecasting revenues of around $250m and EBITDA of $46m. A reminder here, these are professional analysts, not YouTube students – these come from their financial models, the assumptions of which are discussed with management
Going to go quick here, its explained more slowly in the video but High Tide is currently valued at a significant discount to the other listed peers
Looking at EV / FY+1 Sales multiples – EBITDA not meaningful as some of the peer group are EBITDA negative and High Tide itself has only recently become EBITDA positive
Personally, I think Planet13 is the most comparable given its business model
Taking both Planet13 multiple and peer group average multiple, this is then applied to High Tide’s forecast FY+1 sales to calculate an enterprise value – this is adjusted for net debt to get to a market capitalization and then divided by the share count to get an implied share price
The table below shows the implied stock price valuations from this analysis
Net debt will change in coming year given the capital structure and a large number of convertible notes – this has been ignored given it will have small impact on the price
The share count will change as a result of dilution from various instruments – if this bothers you massively then look at the valuation discount on the basis of the enterprise value as it does not impact this (and only slightly on the market cap given minimal impacts to cash from instrument execution, etc.)
Not accounting for any stock split, consolidation or any other M&A deals
The FY21 financials are on the basis of the mean broker estimates from Thomson Reuters – Seeking Alpha has different and slightly outdated ones
US is only a small part of the market which High Tide addresses, while a change in regulation would have a big impact on the company, currently it is unlikely this would happen, given the discussions about potential federal legalization
Canada regulation is established and not going anywhere
Other countries likely to legalize and regulate cannabis, as outlined earlier
Dilution
No escaping that there will be some significant dilution for shareholders, as pointed out in the table below, but this should be already priced into the stock
Potential that new equity issuances could occur to help finance growth, but provided this growth is delivered, it should be accretive for the stock price
A risk that investors need to be aware with for all companies which have relied on government financial support during COVID-19 measures. Such support has resulted in the number of businesses going bankrupt decreasing massively – this is at a lower level than it ever normally is and is masking some real underlying issues within companies. As investors we need to be open eyed about this
As High Tide has benefited from support in the form of the Canada’s Emergency Wage Support scheme, there is the risk that once this is lifted it may become apparent that the cost base has not been effectively managed
Personally, I think this is mitigated by the synergy analysis conducted as part of the M&A. A full cost base analysis would have been conducted to calculate the potential $8.4m synergies so strong likelihood that this is under control, but should keep on our radar and reassess
Marketing expenses and celebrity licenses
Need more information to ascertain whether these are underpinned by a compelling ROI. Seen a lot of people suggest this is a great positive, but the impact on sales volumes from these is unknown, as is the terms of these license agreements (e.g. split between upfront fee vs. volume-based fee)
No escaping the fact that it is an increased cost and so need to understand the ROI this generates to determine whether it really is compelling
Is there really more demand to pay a premium for Snoop Dogg bongs, Guns n Roses papers, Cheech & Chong grinders, or whatever they may be?
So far management have suggested this has been helpful in driving new sales, but this is something to dig into more
Not another HITI / HITIF DD post... detailed analysis incl. valuation [re-post after it was deleted on r/pennystocks for some reason...]
I posted this yesterday morning (UK time) but after 5 hours or so, pennystocks deleted the original post. I had a message to share it on here too, so here it is! -- This is my first time posting a DD post – a friend of mine who moderates on SPACs has shared some analysis I have written previously, but I’m keen to share this here, and see if there is any appetite for sharing my own personal written DD I have on the 30 stocks I have across a number of different portfolios. I have modified this format, as it was originally a script for a video which I created on the stock. If you prefer to listen – check it out here: https://youtu.be/qsjwU7kkPsw Some of the market stats (market cap, current multiples, etc.) are correct as of Feb-06, and clearly a little outdated since the price movements. Not a financial advisor, do your own DD. I am long HITI and have an expectation of a long term hold on this stock. Overview
High Tide Canada-based cannabis retail company, operating under multiple brands. It operates under 3 core divisions:
Brick and mortar retail – 4 key brands with just under 70 locations in Canada. Brands include: Canna Cabana, New Leaf, Meta Cannabis and Kushbar. Forecast to have around 115 stores by end of 2021
Online retail – has 2 brands, both of which attract millions of viewers per month – Grasscity.com and CBDcity.com
Wholesale – manufacturer of paraphernalia in US and Canada. Number of products are branded with various celebrities, Snoop Dogg, Paramount Pictures, Trailer Park Boys and many more
Has good c-level execs and experienced executive board; hold significant stake in the business. CEO Raj Grover holds just over 21% of the shares
Currently has a market cap of around $280m. Still significant upside to the valuation – see analysis later in post
Investment Merits Very strong market growth:
Business has demonstrated growth both organically (through new store openings, more online sales and greater wholesale sales), as well as inorganically through M&A
Growth in markets which High Tide has a physical presence in is expected to be very strong. North American cannabis market (Canada and US) is forecast to grow by 30% a year to 2027 (source: research and markets)
Analysts covering High Tide are forecasting growth in excess of this, which is positive to see and implies capturing market share
New markets / geographies ‘opening up’, legalizing and regulating cannabis is also an exciting and realistic prospect for incremental growth:
The US federal legalization debate is on the table
Many other countries are considering this too and High Tide is well positioned for these; this is catalyzed by the fact that government debt has increased significantly as part of the response to the COVID-19 health crisis. This needs to be repaid somehow, and increasing tax rates on existing taxes is an unpopular political move. Finding new tax revenues is a more palatable way of increasing tax revenues for governments. This is especially important in countries where elections are upcoming.
Personally I do expect to see this accelerate the agenda for the regulation and legalization of cannabis in many new countries
Whilst predominantly Canada and US based, High Tide does have presence in some markets where cannabis is not regulated or legalized, the UK for example (~10% of Grasscity sales are made here) and so it is well positioned with a strong and established brand to capitalize on this opportunity, when / if the market ‘opens up’
Regulation
High Tide benefits from the regulatory focus and overhang on the cannabis retail sector as it represents a strong barrier to entry, making it more challenging for new competitors to enter market
Participants in the market need to have licenses and ensure consistent compliance with laws to continue operating – failure to comply can result in significant financial penalties
Personally I normally don’t like investing into retail. There are usually fairly limited barriers to entry, minimal differentiation and negligible customer loyalty, however the cannabis market does have different characteristics in this respect and makes it a more compelling proposition
Regulation also benefits those with scale, something High Tide has as the leading player in the market. It costs money to obtain and retain licences to operate and it costs money to ensure compliance with all the laws and regulations and that all staff are acting in accordance with these
Some parallels in this respect which can be drawn to casino gaming in casinos; you don’t see new casinos popping up at the same rate which you see new restaurants or apparel stores opening
Demand
There’s a lot to like about the demand dynamics for High Tide. It’s vice-nature means that demand is less correlated to disposable incomes. Given where we are in economic cycle, especially important consideration
For those doubting this, check alcohol, tobacco or gambling expenditure across economic cycles historically, for a proxy
Strong performance throughout COVID-19 crisis
Despite heavy weighting towards brick and mortar, (the most hard hit part of retail) it has effectively managed the shift to online, which is a positive
Has relied on government support and financial assistance in the form of job retention schemes (address in more detail later in post)
This demonstrates management are capable and have effectively navigated the challenging situation
Data
Massively summarized from the video, (and my video on KERN) so check that out if interested in this point, however, they have unique access to supply chain data which could be monetized effectively and generate strong levels of recurring revenues
Other established sectors have a trusted party with such unique access to data (e.g. alcohol, lithium, different foods, etc.) and the opportunity here is enormous
I would like to see High Tide capitalize on this
Forecasts financials & analysts
Currently 2 analysts covering High Tide, both have a buy rating on the business
Their coverage is slightly outdated (expect this being updated soon and a further catalyst for positive price action) and their price targets are 60c; at the time their reports were published, they were forecasting a 4x upside (HITI was trading at ~15c)
Same analysts also forecasting strong growth - 77% CAGR to 2022. They are forecasting revenues of around $250m and EBITDA of $46m. A reminder here, these are professional analysts, not YouTube students – these come from their financial models, the assumptions of which are discussed with management
Going to go quick here, its explained more slowly in the video but High Tide is currently valued at a significant discount to the other listed peers
Looking at EV / FY+1 Sales multiples – EBITDA not meaningful as some of the peer group are EBITDA negative and High Tide itself has only recently become EBITDA positive
Personally, I think Planet13 is the most comparable given its business model
Taking both Planet13 multiple and peer group average multiple, this is then applied to High Tide’s forecast FY+1 sales to calculate an enterprise value – this is adjusted for net debt to get to a market capitalization and then divided by the share count to get an implied share price
The table below shows the implied stock price valuations from this analysis
Net debt will change in coming year given the capital structure and a large number of convertible notes – this has been ignored given it will have small impact on the price
The share count will change as a result of dilution from various instruments – if this bothers you massively then look at the valuation discount on the basis of the enterprise value as it does not impact this (and only slightly on the market cap given minimal impacts to cash from instrument execution, etc.)
Not accounting for any stock split, consolidation or any other M&A deals
The FY21 financials are on the basis of the mean broker estimates from Thomson Reuters – Seeking Alpha has different and slightly outdated ones
US is only a small part of the market which High Tide addresses, while a change in regulation would have a big impact on the company, currently it is unlikely this would happen, given the discussions about potential federal legalization
Canada regulation is established and not going anywhere
Other countries likely to legalize and regulate cannabis, as outlined earlier
Dilution
No escaping that there will be some significant dilution for shareholders, as pointed out in the table below, but this should be already priced into the stock
Potential that new equity issuances could occur to help finance growth, but provided this growth is delivered, it should be accretive for the stock price
A risk that investors need to be aware with for all companies which have relied on government financial support during COVID-19 measures. Such support has resulted in the number of businesses going bankrupt decreasing massively – this is at a lower level than it ever normally is and is masking some real underlying issues within companies. As investors we need to be open eyed about this
As High Tide has benefited from support in the form of the Canada’s Emergency Wage Support scheme, there is the risk that once this is lifted it may become apparent that the cost base has not been effectively managed
Personally, I think this is mitigated by the synergy analysis conducted as part of the M&A. A full cost base analysis would have been conducted to calculate the potential $8.4m synergies so strong likelihood that this is under control, but should keep on our radar and reassess
Marketing expenses and celebrity licenses
Need more information to ascertain whether these are underpinned by a compelling ROI. Seen a lot of people suggest this is a great positive, but the impact on sales volumes from these is unknown, as is the terms of these license agreements (e.g. split between upfront fee vs. volume-based fee)
No escaping the fact that it is an increased cost and so need to understand the ROI this generates to determine whether it really is compelling
Is there really more demand to pay a premium for Snoop Dogg bongs, Guns n Roses papers, Cheech & Chong grinders, or whatever they may be?
So far management have suggested this has been helpful in driving new sales, but this is something to dig into more
I recently went on a research bender to find stuff college students can get for free. So far I've used the following discounts:
$26 per month off auto insurance at Progressive
8% off cell phone bill at AT&T
6 months free Amazon Prime
2 months free Kindle Unlimited
$3 per month off YouTube Premium
Free Checking Account at USBank
Free Microsoft Office 365
Free unlimited storage from Google Drive via G-Suite
Lots of other free software.
This is frugal so don't go buying stuff you don't need, but if you already pay for any of this stuff, keep your student status in mind. Following is a list of student discounts and other free stuff I poached from u/jacurtis :
Adobe Creative Cloud - Get access to every Adobe Creative Cloud application (there’s like 15+ of them) in the “Master Collection” for $19.99/mo instead of $55/mo. Then after you graduate the you can continue to save by paying $29.99/mo for as long as you keep it. If you just want Photoshop and Lightroom you can get the photographers bundle for $9.99/mo instead of the normal $19.99 price. Amazon Prime Student - This was already mentioned so I’ll skim over it but it’s too good of deal to ignore because most people reading this are probably paying full price already. So you might as well convert your Prime membership to a student rate and save money every month! Apple Music - You get Apple Music for $5/mo which is half off the normal price. Apple Products - Go to the education link at the bottom of the Official Apple website to save on almost any Apple computer. I just saved $100 on one of the brand new Apple MacBook Pros that came out a few weeks ago with the new M1 chip. Apple Pro Apps Bundle for Education - Get full versions of all of Apple’s pro apps in one bundle. You get Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage. All of these apps are $199 for the whole bundle. That’s about $1,000 worth of software for $200. Best of all, these are eternal licenses. So you buy it once and can keep it after graduation. The New York Times - Get access to the NYTimes for very cheap. The digital newspaper subscription is $4/mo instead of $15. BUT... for $6/mo you can get “All Access” which includes The Crossword and New York Times Cooking. This normally costs $25/mo!!!! I love getting the crossword for student pricing. Github Student Developer Pack - Literally way too much free stuff to list here. Anyone interested in programming, technology, engineering, can get thousands of dollars in free stuff here. Go sign up for this pack which is maintained by GitHub but includes offers from 101 different vendors by my count (I might have miscounted +/- 2). Highlights include Free Pro account to GitHub, free pro account for Canva, several free domains, $50 in Twilio credits, waived transaction fees for Stripe, Free Premium Developer Interview training, Free MongoDB certification, $50 in digital ocean credits, free upgraded accounts to tons of developer services and a ton more. JetBrains - Free Access to All Premium IDEs. This is another one for developers. But these IDEs are usually very expensive ($375 per year normally). It’s free while you’re a student. Here’s How to Get It Logitech - Through Logitech’s website you can get 25% off anything! This includes normal stuff like mice, keyboards, and webcams. But it also means gaming goodies, or sim stuff like flight sticks or driving wheels. Microsoft - Save 10% on the Microsoft Store. So any PC users out there can save some serious dough as a student. SetApp Mac Apps - This one is obscure but insanely cool. SetApp is a collection of extremely high quality Mac Apps. This is everyday stuff. You have to look at the list to really see what all is included. But it’s well over a hundred apps. It’s normally $10 /mo and you get 50% off. It also includes a lot of premium apps for iPad and iPhone. So if you have a Mac, check out all the apps you can get Spotify + Hulu + Showtime - This bundle is $5 a month and includes Spotify Premium (usually $10/mo), Hulu (normally $6 /mo), and Showtime (normally $9/mo). So you get all three for half the price of Spotify Premium alone. And let’s be honest, a lot of you are probably paying for Spotify Premium already at $10 a month. So you might as well save 50% on that and pick up free accounts for Hulu and Showtime as cherries on top. A few others: Car Insurance: almost every car insurance company offers discounts to full time students. Usually 10-25%. This could save you $10-$50 a month! Cell Phones - Your mileage will vary on this one. But all the major phone carriers do offer discounts towards students. But in typical phone carrier fashion it’s inconsistent and unpredictable Ski Passes: this will vary again depending on where you live but most ski resorts offer season passes for fractions of what they normally charge. I’m talking about $100-$200 a year instead of $800 - $1000. So if you ski you might as well cash in.
I posted a much more extensive list available specifically to WGU students on the wgu subreddit if anyone is curious.
I am 39 years old, make $116,500 ,live in Chicago, and work as a Project Manager
Section 1 - Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance: $43,000. I’ve ebbed and flowed in my contributions because some jobs simply had no retirement savings plan options (or I was woefully uneducated about them—everything I know about money is self-taught from books or the internet after age 22), let alone matching. This current job has been the most generous. My spouse has his own 401(k) at about $25,000 for the same reasons.
Savings Balance: $5,000. We had to use our emergency fund a few times when spouse was out of work in 2018 and again in 2019 with government shutdown. Aaaaaand, we may have to use it now. More on that in a bit.
Checking Balance: $3,000 today. Some bills need to go out. Sometimes we get as low as $300 before payday because I’m chucking it at debt and paid rent.
Credit Card Debt: $17,500 remaining from well over $65,000. A lot of it was spending beyond our means for some years, mostly dining out and two vacations, there’s also some medical bills from a toe injection, MRIs from when we were very underinsured and my spouse got a disc injury, and there’s also two tax return bills in there. We were very aggressively paying it down for a good while.
Student Loan Debt: $12,000 for a BA in Creative Writing. I barely graduated. Earlier this year we paid off my spouse’s, who borrowed far less than I did (same degree, 3 years ahead of me).
Car Loan: $19,000 remaining on a 2015 Persona Prius. I fully admit we got a little screwed on this loan/car purchase and I hate it and want it gone.
Section 2- Income Income Progression:
In college I was always working about 10 hours a week of work study for $5.15, and then I didn’t want to go home during winters and summers so I found what work I could on campus. Barely saved, I knew nothing about money other than spending it. Oooof.
I graduated in 2003, floated between food service and retail and customer services for 3 years, including a horrendous stint in newspaper advertising. When I started my corporate career, I was an administrative assistant in 2006 making $11.15 an hour in a MCOL town in Illinois for 6 years as the recession stomped any chance of raises.
In 2012, after years of going above and beyond my expected duties, I got promoted and started my project management career in earnest as a scheduling/budget analyst for $45,000.
In 2014 I was training other schedulers enough that I asked to be promoted to mid-level analyst at $55,000 and it was approved.
In 2015 I was regularly sharing work from my team lead, and I asked for another promotion to senior-level analyst. After it was denied (they said I needed my PMP), I was recruited to work for the competition as a scheduleproject coordinator at $70,000.
In 2016 my spouse got laid off from his $45K job at the same. The first job offer in 2 months came from Chicago and then I got the same job in a different team as project coordinators at $60,000 each. Both of us study for and get our PMP designations, which change the game for our job applications.
In 2018 I was recruited by the competition next door for $90,000 as a contractor in a PMO (project management office) team.
Currently: After 18 months I was offered to cross over as an actual employee with PTO again (after years without), and at $110,500 a year plus a bonus based on company performance that was $6,000 last year. I’m not counting the RSUs I also receive since I can’t do anything with them yet but likely I’ll sell them to pay off the debt and boost my retirement.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $2,750 twice a month after taxes, insurance, retirement, and additional federal withholding (I loathe having a big surprise at tax return time). This is going to change by the time this diary publishes because…
Important Note: Just before I started this diary, my spouse got laid off from his contracting job (details withheld for privacy purposes). He was making $87,000 a year and taking home about $2,280 every other week after insurance, taxes and retirement. He is filing for unemployment while he cashes out 70 hours of unused vacation, and that means either 1 or 2 more paychecks of comparable size. We’d normally chuck those at debt, but we’re going to shore them up to make sure we can still pay bills and rent.
Section 3 - Expenses (monthly unless specified)
Rent: $1,925 for 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, washer and dryer in unit, and a gated parking spot. We have roughly 1,300 square feet in Uptown, which isn’t quite as popular as the others, and therefore a little more affordable.
Utilities: $100 for electric and natural gas since we started working from home. Natural gas is $45 in the summer and will reach at least $180 in the winter due to poor insulation. Internet is $97.85 for 1 GB speed.
Cell Phones: $132, includes our Netflix.
Renters’ Insurance: $20.
Auto Insurance: $167.
Savings: $500 automatically plus little round-offs based on daily transactions.
Subscriptions: Mine: Apple iCloud $0.99, Spotify/Hulu $10.89. Google Drive $50 annually. Spouse’s: Patreon $46, Audible $120 annually. Ours: YNAB $45 annually, Amazon Prime $119 annually.
(Before the layoff we averaged about $200 monthly with all our annual and monthly subscriptions to Spotify/Hulu, Patreon, New York Times, Apple News, YouTube Premium, Audible, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Office 365, Qapital, and YNAB. We share and swap logins for streaming services with some friends and family.)
Debts: Minimum payments come to $1,000. Before the layoff news this month we were throwing about $4,000 each month to aggressively pay down the debts and had paid off 4 credit cards this year.
Pet expenses: $500 average for food, one grooming, preventive medications, and one physical therapy appointment. We’re still figuring out the average monthly cost of his second arthritis medication.
Memberships: $250 average annually for our professional designations. I’m going to ask if my work will cover my costs when it’s time to renew.
Gym: $55 with a locker in my office building. I haven’t been there since March 13 and it’s been on hold.
Mass Transit Pass: $105 for unlimited Ventra card, deducted from my paycheck pre-tax. This is also on hold.
Section 4 – The Deets Weekly Totals: Food - $174 Clothing - $155 Household - $28.45 Beauty - $22 Entertainment - $18 Pet - $285 Total $682.45 Day 1: (Mon Nov 25)
5:15 a.m. – First alarm goes shhhh. Fifteen minutes later my real alarm goes off. I get up, wrap up warm and coax the dog out of bed to get some relief outdoors and feed him morning kibble and meds. While the Nespresso makes my first cup of coffee, I take him back to bed and he aggressively snuggles my spouse.
By 6 a.m. I’m logged into work and answering email/Skype questions from the European desks. My job is mostly checking for compliance documentation and educating people on required processes.
6:30 a.m. – Spouse’s alarm goes off. I start the drip coffeemaker and shower. Eventually he stops snoozing and goes out to the nearby Jewel for some things our curbside pickup order couldn’t find: garlic, parsley, eggnog, eggs, frozen veg, pork scraps for fried rice, and he gets some more things including gingersnap cookies, doughnuts, some add-an-egg breakfast cups and a freaking ribeye. We have a talk about our future food budget when he gets back, the ribeye and doughnuts (which weren’t even very good?) shouldn’t have happened. $73.31.
7:30 a.m. – While I wait for a Jira extract and Excel macro to do their thing, I browse my go-to job sites and find 5 listings my spouse could apply to and put them on the Kanban board I made in Trello. He’ll log in later and click on the ones he likes and applies. I’ve been doing this every day since we were told of the layoff, but I’ll probably be doing far less of this next week when his work officially ends. It helps keep my anxiety busy.
11 a.m. – Spouse makes some spicy ramen for himself for lunch. I warm up a packet of seasoned rice/quinoa mix and fry an egg over it.
3 p.m. – After some more meetings and mostly a lot of email about the new 2021 changes, I’m done, and start picking up the kitchen and around the house. I find I have little desire to deep clean 9 months into staying at home, but I still try. Mostly that means doing laundry and sweeping.
4:30 p.m. – Spouse logs off from work and applies to a handful of jobs I listed.
6 p.m. – Fuck. The chicken we were going to cook smells … off and nothing’s defrosted. We do find some rice and porkchops that we can thaw for tomorrow, but not right now. We call this hitting the Fuck-It Button and order C’est Bien Thai delivery (lard nar for me, veggie spring rolls to share, and panang for him). It’s …. okay. Not worth a repeat order. Hopefully this is the only time we order delivery this week, it’s one of our biggest habits. $55.
After some TV (including His Dark Materials), I wind down at 9 with my skincare routine and relaxing music and turn in at 10. I am the world’s lightest sleeper, so having a specific routine and a set time to get ready for bed is important to me. And I love sleeping in our comfortable bed.
Total spend: Food - $128.31 Day 2: (Tues Nov 24)
Morning: Same as before.
11 a.m. – I have a nice quiet morning of mostly email and a few meetings, but nothing annoying (yet). Spouse’s job—the one he’s losing—treats him to lunch in the form of $20 Caviar credit because they can’t bring the whole team together to do a holiday meal. He gets two shakes and a burger from Shake Shack, I pick one, and we ask the person that delivered it for their Venmo info since we couldn’t add tip on the app. $10.
1 p.m. – Sometime after I walk the dog in the rain, I decide to send an email to my boss about the news, because there’s a chance we may have to move to follow the work. An hour later I get a kind reply, but a clarification: I can’t just work from anywhere when offices reopen, I’ll need to be able to work out of some specific company locations. Okay, sure, that can be done. My spouse starts making garlic confit.
5 p.m. – I logged off an hour ago (a bit later than usual but every other week my team meeting runs late), my spouse stayed later for a team meeting, then strains the garlic for storage. It tastes alright but we had it on plain bread, and I feel like it wants toast and salt instead?
6:30 p.m. – Dinner is pork fried rice with some old cooked rice in the fridge. There’s even leftovers to put under an egg for each of us tomorrow. Score. We watch the latest His Dark Materials, then move on to Elf, which we’ve never seen. Eh.
8:12 p.m. – Spouse walks the dog. I clean up the kitchen and wash the large cutting board. After we towel the dog off from his walk (he’s a low-rider corgi, we have lots of old towels for this purpose), I start winding down at 9.
Total spend: Food - $10. Day 3 (Wed Nov 25)
5:45 a.m. – Took some effort to get out of bed this morning from a strange dream. But it’s easy to shrug off and I’m logged in by 6:10 a.m. There are some questions on documents from the QA team in India, and I try to answer them but unfortunately, they still need to be sent back to the project team. Ugh. This will impact some month-end metrics.
6:30 a.m. – Ooof. My calendar shows 6 back-to-back meetings in 3.5 hours. I need to shower now or hold my peace until after lunch. I hurry through it and manage to get another hour of email in before the first meeting. Ireland’s connection is crackly but I manage to understand them. The rest are easy.
7:21 a.m. – I do NOT need a fifty-dollar Milk Bar pumpkin dulce de leche cake. Dammit. (I blame the Girls Night In newsletter and their gift idea list.) But fuuuuu it’s 20% off and I’m not done stress-eating. When my spouse wakes up, he showers and heads out for parsley, guess he couldn’t find any yesterday. I ask him to also get a frozen pizza. $7.14.
11:30 a.m. – Last meeting of the day complete, and I inhale my half of the leftover fried rice with a crispy fried egg. It’s the perfect thing to warm up before walking the dog in the cold damp. Because I’ve got the time, I let him take as much time as he wants and sniff around while I multitask and find some more jobs for my spouse to apply to.
12:30 p.m. – I put my headphones on and try to get as much e-mail cleared away as possible.
3 p.m. – Here’s a good stopping point for me. Poof, no more work for 4 days.
4 p.m. – After I pick up around the apartment and start a load of laundry, I download some videos I need to stitch together for a greeting for my hobby group, then make Smitten Kitchen’s baked pumpkin and sour cream puddings. My spouse logs off work and takes the dog to the vet for a growth we found on his leg.
5:45 p.m. – I didn’t get conferenced into the call with the vet, and my spouse ordered a needle biopsy now instead of going straight for scheduling removal and a better biopsy. $285.
7 p.m. – The dog is still hangry when he gets home. We heat up the frozen pizza for dinner while we sift through the freezer for tomorrow’s protein and write up a timeline of what needs to be done when.
8:30 p.m. – I let the dog out for relief, pick up after, and come back in to snuggle on the couch. He’s a little grumpy about the bandage on his leg. We finish watching Elf and then I keep watching West Wing while my spouse starts some games of Among Us with friends. I gently tap him on the shoulder when he gets a little too loud.
11 p.m. – I turn in.
Total spend: Food - $7.14 Pet - $285 Day 4 (Thu Nov 26 – Thanksgiving)
6:30 a.m. – I get up to take care of the dog and then we come back to bed.
9 a.m. – Oh yes. We usually are in Wisconsin for the holiday with my in-laws, but that’s obviously not happening. I’m sad to not see people (and buy all the cheese and New Glarus) but I also don’t mind being home. We have coffee and the omelet-in-cup things my spouse got 2 days ago. Then I finish a video project and send it out.
10 a.m. – Mise and cooking begin, starting with braising and then chilling the short ribs we found in the freezer. I’m also making the green bean casserole I wanted, and my spouse is making mashed potatoes for a non-dairy friend to come exchange later (friend ordered a dinner for one but it comes with potatoes au gratin, we’re going to switch spuds). I’m glad I made dessert yesterday.
2:30 p.m. – After the gratin arrives and we exchange spuds, we call our friends in Seattle and hang out for a little bit. We’ve had them over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in years past and miss cooking for them so damn much, but this is still pleasant.
6:30 p.m. – The timing is almost perfect, and everything’s ready at once. The short ribs are phenomenal. My spouse passes out on the couch afterwards, I walk the dog in the evening and turn in at 10.
Total spend: $0. Day 5 (Fri Nov 27)
6:30 a.m. – Spouse’s alarm goes off. He’s working today (his last day of work), I’m technically not but I do have a meeting I need to attend at 8. I get to snooze a little even if the dog is mildly grumpy about ‘late’ breakfast and I am still in my robe with coffee in hand when the meeting happens.
7:30 a.m. - I had such plans to raid some online Black Friday sales and stock up on things or upgrade some staples. But now I’ll just enjoy window shopping. I do have some e-mail for my volunteering I need to get done today, so I get on that, and I check that all upcoming bills are scheduled/paid and there’s cash available for it.
11 a.m. – I’m craving some snacks, though, and we have a small amount of money on our Qapital debit card that I need to use up before we can close it and stop the membership fee, so I go out to Aldi. Sometimes I shop like a 6-year-old there. I get chocolate cookies, seashell chocolates, a pumpkin cake roll, prosciutto, popcorn, a buffalo chicken flatbread pizza (do not recommend, so salty!), a fancy tub of yogurt, and mango. $26.
11:30 a.m. – I take a 5 mg gummy and after it kicks in (some 90 minutes later) I run a hot bath with a Lush snowman bomb, a cold Diet Coke and a cup of the various chocolate snacks, and ahhh. The tub is actually big enough for me to submerge in, and my spouse scrubbed the tub yesterday for me. It’s exactly what I wanted.
4:30 p.m. – After he’s done with his workday, the spouse and I sit down and watch the new Mandalorian episode (‘The Jedi’). My only complaint, even if it’s a big one, is Rosario Dawson. Otherwise, damn, that was good.
6:30 p.m. – Dinner is a variety of Thanksgiving leftovers. I have no complaints. In fact, I kind of want to make another casserole.
Total spend: Food, $26. Day 6 (Sat Nov 28)
6:30 a.m. – I wake up, take care of the dog, and it’s back to sleep.
9 a.m. – Coffee and contemplation. I have a bowl of Cheerios since the milk needs drinking. Spouse doesn’t eat until 12 – a frozen pack of tamales. I scramble some eggs.
1 p.m. – Spouse tells me he’s grabbing a game from Steam’s sale, something about space salvage. We usually set about $100 a month each for personal spending, but that too gets clamped down until further notice. His game is $18. I tell him I’m wanting a pair of fuzzy slippers, he asks if that means my feet won’t be as cold at night. I cash in a number of rewards and points and get a pair of LL Bean’s Wicked Good slippers for $55. That’s probably the extent of our Merchmas shopping. (Lol no)
2 p.m. – The vet calls and says the biopsy is inconclusive; the mass was too small to get anything off a simple needle sample. We schedule a removal surgery for what will be Day 8 for this journal. The estimated cost will be anywhere between $1-1.5K. Thank goodness for 0% APR on a CareCredit card we’ve kept open.
6:30 p.m. – Dinner is some found pork chops from the freezer and roasted brussels sprouts. The evening is mostly spent doing our own thing. I try to read a Kindle e-book called Romeantically Challenged but my heart’s just not in it. I’ll try a little more later before I return it.
10 p.m. – Eh, good enough to go to bed. All this dark, I stg.
Total spend: Entertainment - $18 Clothing - $55. Day 6 (Sun Nov 29)
6:30 a.m. – Spouse wakes up to take care of the dog for once and also get his bread proofing and ready. I try to sleep in a little but don’t succeed. It feels a little bit like anhedonia.
8:30 a.m. – After coffee we find a box of Trader Joe’s pumpkin pancake/waffle mix in the pantry and the spouse makes some for breakfast. I check our accounts and see that my paycheck is in, and I budget out the next 14 days of bills with it in YNAB. My spouse has at least two more paychecks coming (one of them will be his vacation days payout), and we’re going to make it stretch.
12:30 pm. – After the loaf of sourdough cools, lunch is a very tasty ham and cheese sandwich on fresh bread. We talk about what he thinks he wants his days to look like (some online training, some cleaning, some chores), and that I do want to grab a few things from Target.
1 p.m. – After a good long walk with the dog I place an order for pickup: Comet powder, Barkeeper’s Friend (a must for our kitchen cleaning), a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner, Honey Bunches of Oats, and Versed’s retinol. I blame Hyram and Cleaning TikTok, but have no regrets, really, I’m glad to get any of these cleaners with the holidays and Second Lockdown. I also get a gallon of milk while I’m there to pick up my order. $35.
6:30 p.m. – At some point I doze in between TikTok scrolling and the spouse watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. After the movie he gets up to make dinner (the last of the pork chops and brussel sprouts), and then he gets ready for the last session of a friend’s short Alien RPG campaign. I scroll around YouTube to get my productive brain spinning a little better (it works, I write up almost all of my Money Diary), walk the dog, run the dishwasher, and start turning in early to unwind without screens and try the new retinol.
Total spend: $35 Food - $2.55 Beauty - $22 Household - $10.45 Day 7 (Mon Nov 30)
6 a.m. – I tell myself that I’d still have fun only window-shopping. NOPE. Then again, the more I think about it, the more likely I’d still not buy anything because I was really eager to pay off all our credit cards first. But I did notice that we’re down to our last roll of poop bags and I’ve been meaning to get some wireless comfort bras for continuing to work from home, so I grab a thousand bags and 2 bras from Amazon. $55.
9 a.m. – It’s my spouse’s first day of unemployment. He finally gets up and warms up his coffee from the carafe, and sits down to his game. I admit I have to try hard not to get distracted and (wrongly) jealous of his newfound free time. Most of my email and meetings today are from people who are scrambling to get year-end documentation and processes done in time. I’m grateful for good headphones and CHVRCHES.
11 a.m. – I cook up a pack of ramen and get back to work in time for a lunchtime meeting, and more attempts at calming frantic people.
3 p.m. – I’ve had enough of it, and get an email that my hold for a digital copy of Tiny Habits is in, so I download it and start reading. Maybe I can steer myself to being more empathetic. I run two loads of laundry, empty the dishwasher, scrub the stove (kinda satisfying, should have done it after Thanksgiving) and clean the bathroom sinks. I leave the vacuuming and kitchen floor to the spouse for another day. Then I spend some time running the dog’s favorite toys around and reading.
6:30 p.m. – Dinner is grilled cheese and tomato soup. It's 19 degrees out after windchill and our apartment is drafty, so we put in a small fire and I watch some Kitchen Nightmares. The cold season ahead makes me raid Old Navy's sale on a whim, and I get two pairs of fleece leggings, two pairs of flannel pants for my spouse, and two pairs of cozy socks, all for half off. $70.
10 p.m. - Before bed, the dog gets extra kibble since he can’t have food tomorrow before surgery. There are few things that show betrayal as accurately as a corgi denied his breakfast, I'm not looking forward to the confrontation.
We've seldom bought this much clothing in six months, let alone a single week, but between sales and the desire for cozy, I couldn't pass these up.
It’s not uncommon for us to make multiple runs for groceries, though this is a little high for unexpected impulses. We were pretty good about cutting down on luxuries and nice-to-haves (like Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams) when furloughed or out of work, and I feel okay on that front.
I do hate that I am bored and frustrated that I can’t do the holiday shopping I think I want to do, and that’s something to work on. Hopefully I take it out on the house and clean a lot instead.
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