Re: “Why haven’t you bought a Ram Rebel yet?” & “Are you going to buy the new Ram Rebel TRX?”

May 24, 2020, 11:14 PM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, Q&A

There’s been a lot of news popping up lately about the new Ram 1500 Rebel TRX, a new off-road pickup truck that’s supposed to compete with the Ford F-150 Raptor. Because my favorite vehicle is the Ram Rebel, and because I’ve spoken out in the past about how overrated the Raptor is, I’ve had an increasing number of people coming to me lately asking why I haven’t bought a Rebel yet, and if it was because I was waiting for the TRX to come out.

I figured this would be a good time for me to lay out the four main reasons why I haven’t bought a Rebel yet:

Ram Rebels are inconveniently large as a daily driver.

Even though this might not make much sense to most people, I’ll start with the raw numbers. Right now, I have a GMC Canyon, a mid-size pickup truck with stock dimensions of 212″ L × 74″ W × 71″ H. With the grille guard and leveling kit I have installed, the modified dimensions are ~220″ L × 74″ W × 73″ H. In comparison, a stock Ford F-150 of the same base configuration (basically, the “normal” family pickup truck you see on the street) would be 232″ L × 80″ W × 75″ H. A stock Ram Rebel measures 233″ L × 82″ W × 78″ H. If I were to even go as far as to get a conservative leveling kit, the height would hit 80″.

In a language that can be understood by normal people and not just truck fanatics who are also mathematicians, trucks are big. Compared to the Toyota Corolla, the most popular car of all time, the Rebel is more than four feet longer, a foot wider, and almost two feet taller. Having a longer vehicle means a higher chance of swiping things with your sides while turning. Having a wider vehicle makes maneuvering more difficult; anything over 80″ is basically considered a commercial vehicle and requires extra clearance lighting to be installed. Having a taller vehicle means you might not fit in every parking garage.

I live on the Las Vegas Strip and I drive to Los Angeles relatively often; neither of those places are too friendly towards huge pickup trucks. You generally won’t face any problems if you drive a Rebel out in the suburbs, but once you get into the bustling city, navigating narrow roads and trying to slide into parking spaces becomes a big hassle.

To be clear, these hassles aren’t just theoretical; I’ve personally faced these issues first-hand, even when driving just a regular pickup truck. There are some hotel parking garages on the Strip with insanely low ceilings, and I’ve gotten dangerously close to maxing out the clearance, even in my mid-size pickup truck. I’ve ridden in a Ford F-150 through an Orange County parking garage and the antenna kept scraping up against the ceiling. Trying to get into the Tempo team house garage requires a five-point turn with a full-size pickup truck even with the “perfect” angle, and parking at the Tempo studio requires taking up two parking spots. U-turns at city intersections become k-turns. Imagine how worse all of this would be with an even bigger truck.

If I lived somewhere out in the Midwest suburbs and had no reason to ever drive into the city, I might’ve already gotten a Rebel, but with my current living and work situation, my adoration of the truck doesn’t outweigh how inconvenient my life will become. Realistically, I only ever see myself getting an oversized off-road pickup truck after I get married, assuming my wife will have a smaller vehicle and I can take her’s when I know I need to drive somewhere cramped.
Fiat Chrysler is notorious for reliability issues.

I had to think very long and very hard before deciding to buy a GMC Canyon over a Toyota Tacoma, because one thing I prioritize very highly is reliability. Toyota Tacomas are known for basically running forever, and that’s definitely something I want.

Unfortunately, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the group behind the Ram brand, is notorious for having severe reliability issues. Recent reports have shown that they’ve improved their build quality substantially, but I’m still very hesitant to jump into a Ram truck until I wait it out for a few more years and see if critics of the future still agree that Ram is getting better.

I also know a handful of people who own Ram Rebels who have been complaining about a lot of problems coming up. Most of the issues are (relatively) minor, like the back-up camera showing up as a blank blue screen or the infotainment system not booting up at all, but some of them are also pretty significant, like clunking sounds coming from the powertrain. What’s even worse is that I’m hearing people are having trouble even getting the dealership to fix the problems at all—they would put in a work order and get the truck returned in “fixed” condition, but the problem would just come back days (or even hours) later.
All-electric pickup trucks are coming out soon.

I have enough to say about all-electric pickup trucks that this could be its entirely own blog post, but long story short, I want my next pickup truck to be an electric one. Definitely not a Cybertruck, but still an electric truck.

In summary, I think the pros of electric trucks already outweigh the cons, but for my situation in particular, the cons aren’t even that bad, so it becomes a no-brainer to snatch one of these up once they’re in production.

The timing of electric pickup trucks entering the market is actually perfect with the schedule of me having bought my GMC Canyon in 2018. I’ve been having some severe transmission issues with the Canyon, so I definitely want to get rid of it before the five-year powertrain warranty runs out. That puts us at mid-2023, which is about a year or two after electric trucks should already be on the market; that will give manufacturers enough time to troubleshoot any problems they find in the first couple years. So, I’ll be getting a new truck, but not a so-new-that-it’s-broken truck.

I’m actually very happy with how this timeline turned out and love when things fall into place, so I’m definitely not going to go out of my way to mess it up.
I’m not rich enough to get a new vehicle after less than two years.

Just because you can afford something doesn’t mean you should buy it. I bought my GMC Canyon in late 2018, so already trading it in now for a new truck would be an absolutely devastating depreciation hit. If my truck were new and I counted the value of all the modifications, it would MSRP for over US$40,000.00. If I try to sell it now, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be able to get more than US$30,000.00.

I’m still relatively young and there’s a lot that I want to save for. Going $10,000 negative on a truck, then proceeding to buy another new truck and going another $15,000+ negative again in the next two years… that sounds like financial suicide.

I think it’s clear now that I’m not opting not to buy a Ram Rebel yet just because I’m waiting for the Ram Rebel TRX. Not only is the TRX going to be even wider and taller than the regular Rebel—so it’s even more impossible for me to use it as a daily driver—but it’s speculated to have a 707 horsepower Hellcat engine, so it’s not going to be an electric truck.

With that being said, I am equally as excited for the TRX as anyone else, even if there’s basically a 0% chance I’m going to get it. Just last week, there was some footage released online of what appeared to be a camouflaged TRX out in the wild in the Las Vegas desert. A few days ago, there was also a spy shot of the console area where there’s a graphic of a tyrannosaurus rex dwarfing a truck—this is suspected to be Ram throwing shade at Ford because of how much larger a T-Rex (“TRX”) is compared to a raptor.

Re: “What would be your version of GQ Sports’ ‘My First Million’?”

April 1, 2020, 11:34 PM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, Finance, Q&A

GQ Sports has been doing a YouTube series called “My First Million” where they invite professional athletes to share how they spent their first million dollars that they earned in their respective sports leagues—the most recent episode was released earlier today and featured Will Hernandez from the New York Giants.

Now obviously, even with financial advisors, sports stars aren’t exactly known for being wise spenders. On the other hand, it’s almost become a meme at this point as to how neurotically I personally manage my own money. As a result, I’ve had a few people reach out to me and ask me to do my own version of “My First Million” as if I was also a superstar who had just made my first million dollars.

Those who truly know me know that my answer is actually astonishingly simple—I would save and invest all of it. But that would make for a very boring “My First Million” breakdown, so I’m adding in a few stipulations:

I have to use all the money. Saving is acceptable if it is savings with a specific purpose, but I cannot just throw it in a general savings account or investment portfolio and leave it alone.
I have to spend all of it on myself. This rule is actually mostly to protect myself from people who may see this hypothetical blog post and ask why I would spend money on this person but not on them.

With that being said, I can come to a few initial conclusions:

There is no indication as to whether this is my first and only million, or my first million of many, so I will take the safer route and assume this is the only money I’m getting. This is generally a better approach for superstars to take anyway, because you never know when their careers may end.
Because this is a high-profile sports contract, I believe I can safely assume that this income can be classified as employee salary, not independent contractor miscellaneous earnings. Thus, I am only responsible for my own half of FICA tax (i.e., no self-employment tax), and I am unable to take any operating expense deductions from my income tax.
I already own a lot of stuff that I want, so a majority of these purchases will upgrades of what I already have, or luxuries that I don’t actually need but would be nice to have.

So, here is how I would spend my US$1,000,000.00:

Federal income and FICA taxes With an income of a million dollars, I should expect to spend about $330,000 in federal income tax, as well as an additional $30,000 or so in Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax (which covers Social Security and Medicare). I have no state income tax because I am a resident of Nevada.	$ 360,000.00
IRA & i401(k) In the spirit of “pay yourself first,” and for the sake of my future, the next thing I would spend on is my retirement. I have an individual retirement account (IRA) and an individual 401(k) account; IRAs accept a maximum yearly contribution of $6,000, while i401(k)s accept up to $56,000. As a side note, I know I stated above that this would not be self-employment income, but I already file my taxes as a sole proprietor from running my own business and my i401(k) already exists, and there’s nothing I’m aware of at the moment that would stop me from using employee income to contribute to an i401(k), as that kind of restriction wouldn’t seem logically sound.	$ 62,000.00
2-bedroom unit in a high-rise condominium on the Las Vegas Strip I actually had to think a bit on this one. I know for a fact that I’d like to stay in Las Vegas forever if I’m able to, so I can definitely commit to purchasing a property, but I wasn’t sure what type of property I wanted. I really enjoy the lifestyle of living in a high-rise condo, but I also appreciate the privacy and comfort that a single-family house can bring. I ultimately decided to go with living in a high-rise. There are some very high-value units available in high-security, all-residential buildings like the Allure, Panorama Towers, and the Martin, and with housing prices already visibly falling in Las Vegas as a consequence of COVID-19, I think I can get a great property for a low price. Now of course, this doesn’t mean I won’t have any more housing expenses and I can quit my day job. High-rise condominiums on the Strip have sizable homeowners’ association fees, and along with home insurance and property taxes, my monthly expenses will probably still be somewhat close to what I’m paying in rent right now.	$ 450,000.00
Tempur-Pedic TEMPUR-breeze° king-size mattress I’m sure you’ve all heard of how you spend a third of your life in bed, so you shouldn’t skimp on your mattress. I completely agree with that, so much so that I decided to actually itemize out my mattress and get the best one I could find that wasn’t completely unreasonable in price. I’m no mattress expert, but Tempur-Pedic seems to have a great reputation for great mattresses, so I decided to go with one made by them. I don’t think I had this problem when I was a younger child, but as I grew older, I’ve developed a strange back pain problem. I’ve tried quite literally 5 or so different mattresses of different brands, firmness, and construction, but none of them seem to be the perfect mattress. In fact, I actually sleep pain-free for the first few nights on a new or different mattress, then my back pain returns shortly afterwards. My current mattress is a little over $1,000, and I imagine that just buying increasingly expensive mattresses isn’t going to magically fix my back pain problem, but with the great reviews that Tempur-Pedic has, I figured it was worth a shot. My current mattress isn’t bad, though—I’d just use it in the second bedroom of my new condo.	$ 5,000.00
Furnishings I actually own an incredibly low amount of furniture. Since moving from the Chicagoland suburbs to the Pacific Coast, I’ve always minimized my possessions because I moved a ton within Southern California and Las Vegas. But now that I’ve just bought a property, I imagine I can safely assume I won’t be moving again anytime soon, so I can start buying some furniture. When I get something done, I want it done in the best way possible, so if I’m going to buy furniture, I want it to be furniture that I love. I have a mild obsession over ultra-modern design, so I would actually want everything to be in white leather and glass. Of course, that’s going to be far more expensive than a boring brown fabric couch, so I’m allocating about $40,000 for the cause. Combined with the little furniture that I do already own, that should probably be enough to fully furnish the two bedrooms, living area, and kitchen.	$ 40,000.00
Ram 1500 Rebel Now here’s where the fun begins. You may already know that my “dream car” is actually a pickup truck, and it’s the Ram 1500 Rebel. The only reason I don’t actually have one already is because I’m concerned about Fiat Chrysler’s historically catastrophic reliability—I don’t want my truck to randomly break down in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t have the time and money to constantly have my truck in the shop. But, seeing as I’m outright buying this vehicle (and paired with the fact that I just made a million dollars), I’m sure I can afford to get a Ram and pay the extra maintenance costs when the truck inevitably breaks down. The particular configuration I want MSRPs at just over $60,000, but I’m sure I can get some incentives and dealer discounts to bring that price down. I threw in an extra $10,000 in modifications, like ceramic window tinting, matte black vinyl wrap, metallic gold accents, a conservative lift kit, and meatier tires. I’d just need one vehicle as my daily driver, so I’d trade in my current truck, which knocks about $25,000 off the price.	$ 45,000.00
Glock 43 I am a strong believer that you should only buy things if they serve a purpose in your life, so if I already have something, I usually won’t buy “duplicates” unless I have a really good reason to. I don’t think buying another gun is necessary, but I think having a million dollars to spend is a pretty good reason to buy another gun. Glock 43s are subcompact pistols that are generally used by concealed carriers who want to hide the fact that they have a firearm. The firearm itself goes for around $550, but with modifications, the price can climb pretty quickly. I threw in an extra $450 on the price to account for things like a slide cut, Cerakoting, and custom-colored hardware.	$ 1,000.00
Exotic leather goods I’m a big fan of exotic leather goods, with a particular interest in stingray skin. I have a stingray wallet, stingray rowstone belt, and hornback saltwater crocodile belt, among others. I’m not 100% certain what exactly I would want yet, but I would allocate $2,000 into buying more exotic leather goods. If you find a good private leatherworker instead of going for designer brand names, you can get pieces made at a very affordable price, so this budget should be enough to get me two high-quality pieces. One of them might end up being another stingray belt in a different pattern, possibly dyed a different color, with a sterling silver buckle.	$ 2,000.00
Naming rights to a room in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s new Reality-Based Training Center Yes, this is technically just a charitable donation to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Foundation, but seeing as I made a stipulation that I had to spend the money on myself, I found a little loophole. LVMPD is in the process of constructing a new training facility, and donors are able to purchase naming rights to different rooms in the building. Thus, this is my way of “buying myself something”—but also contributing to a good cause in the process. I also know that some of you who know my past history have been wondering this entire time how I’m going to figure out a way to give some of this money to a law enforcement charity… so here it is.	$ 10,000.00
Day-to-day miscellaneous expenses And finally, I’d save $25,000 of the million to cover day-to-day expenses. This covers stuff like food, self-care, health insurance, and pretty much anything else that may come up in my everyday life. I mostly keep my daily expenses slim, and seeing as I just spent $543,000 enhancing my life and another $62,000 to put into savings, I’d imagine that an extra $25,000 would be sufficient to account for everything else.	$ 25,000.00

Re: “What is your dream five-car garage?” answered by someone who hates supercars

December 28, 2019, 6:59 PM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, Q&A

I post pictures of my truck on my website once in a while, and with my recent ravaging rant about the Tesla Cybertruck, people began to pick up on the fact that I might be a car guy. Unfortunately, they would be terribly wrong, because I just happen to like pickup trucks a little bit and am not really that knowledgeable about cars… but that didn’t stop people from asking me the age-old question, “What is your dream five-car garage?”

When other people are asked this, they list off their five favorite supercars. What’s interesting about asking me this question though, as opposed to anyone else, is that I actually hate supercars. I think they’re some of the most non-functional and non-practical machines in existence, and I would never buy a supercar unless I was provided one such that I could sell it and make a profit.

With that being said, in order to maximize my profits, my dream five-car garage would be a Bugatti La Voiture Noire, Rolls-Royce Sweptail, Bugatti Centodieci, Mercedes-Maybach Exelero, and Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita. At today’s market rates, I would sell all of them for just shy of US$50 million, instantly retire, and set myself up for the rest of my life. … Yes, I literally just Googled “the most expensive cars in the world.”

That would be a very boring way to answer that question, though, so I’m going to follow along with the spirit of the question and give you the perspective of what five vehicles would compose a dream five-car garage of a not-car-guy and someone who hates supercars.

#1. RAM 1500 Rebel

Right off the bat, a vehicle that is notably missing from this list is the GMC Canyon, the truck that I currently drive. When I first bought my truck, I thought it was the best truck ever, then a bunch of problems kept coming up, culminating in me discovering that there’s literally a class-action lawsuit against General Motors in regards to a defective transmission that my truck has. That, combined with the fact that every GMC service center that I’ve been to so far in Las Vegas seems to be wildly incompetent, and, even though I think GMC and Chevrolet trucks have the nicest exteriors, I never want to deal with GM ever again.

Instead, I want to swap out my daily driver with a RAM Rebel. I’ve always been a fan of this truck, and after I randomly got it as a rental vehicle when I went to Nebraska to meet up with Jordan King and go on a road trip to Minneapolis and basically test drove it for 1,000 miles, I received confirmation that the RAM Rebel is an awesome truck.

Similar to my current GMC Canyon, I would probably modify the RAM Rebel a moderate amount—enough to make it stand out from other RAM Rebels, but not so much that it looks like a ricer. I’d start with the functional essentials: a tonneau cover so I can use my bed for storage, bed liner so the stuff I keep in my bed doesn’t slide around too much, and ceramic tint on all windows so I don’t melt to death in the Las Vegas sun.

Something else I consider a borderline essential is a grille guard, which I ideally would get in the form of a full brush guard. I noticed that there aren’t really any grille guards available for the RAM Rebel (and I imagine that you can’t just stick a normal RAM 1500 brush guard on because the Rebel is wider), so I’m not sure how I would proceed there.

As for visual improvements, I’d stick with a conservative leveling kit (I think massive lifts look a bit silly and just put you at greater risk of rollovers); and get my tow hooks, brake calipers, and badges painted in matte gold (I initially thought about red tow hooks and calipers, but I realized that red is a bit overdone).

I’m actually more of a fan of the RAM 2500 Power Wagon than the Rebel, but the Power Wagon is just a bit too big to be realistically usable as a daily driver. Even my current mid-size truck is 220″ long with a crew cab configuration and an additional ~8″ of grille guard; when I park in parking lots, I can usually hang my bed over a divider or something, but when I park in parking garages, I back into the spot with literal inches to spare and I’m still dangerously close to jutting out into the road. The Rebel is almost 10″ longer than my GMC Canyon, and the Power Wagon is almost another 10″ longer than the Rebel… so it becomes safe to assume that I would have a lot of trouble managing the vehicle as a daily driver.

#2. Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio

For some reason, I’m absolutely obsessed with the front fascia of modern-day Alfa Romeos. I love it so much that I almost bought an Alfa Romeo Giulia as my first vehicle back in 2018 before realizing that trucks are far more functional and useful, and got a pickup truck instead.

Even though I would use a RAM Rebel as my daily driver, there are still instances when having a much smaller vehicle is nice. Even in my narrow-body mid-size pickup truck, I’ve still had instances of trouble navigating in and out of small parking spaces in downtown areas of heavily-populated cities with small roads and tight parking lots. So, if I know I’m going somewhere where I know I’ll have troubles, I would use an Alfa Romeo Stelvio.

One of the reasons I’m going with a Stelvio instead of a Giulia is because I’m notoriously bad at avoiding obstacles in the road. That’s also one of the very many reasons why I got a pickup truck—having enough ground clearance and suspension travel means that I don’t have to worry too much about my apparent inability to see what’s in front of me. (To be clear, this is stuff like curbs and dips in the road; I’m not rampaging over literal solid obstructions in my path.) I wouldn’t say the Stelvio has a lot of ground clearance, but it’s definitely more than a sedan, which is helpful.

… And that’s about it. Those are the only two vehicles that I really need—one fun pickup truck and one nice-looking crossover. Of course, if I just end the list here, it would almost be as un-fun as just listing off the five most expensive cars in the world and saying that I would sell them all, so I’m going to continue… but the next one is a little unconventional.

#3. Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Airstream Atlas Touring Coach

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to work from anywhere I want. A fun fact about me that most people don’t know is that I was considering buying a Chevrolet Suburban, stripping out the second and third rows of seats, and converting the back into a little livable area with a mattress and desk. I would then live in my SUV, traveling the country and avoiding paying rent. I planned on booking an Airbnb once in a while if I wanted to settle down for a week or two, but otherwise, I would constantly be on the road, taking showers at public gyms and eating almost exclusively at restaurants.

After thinking more carefully about it, I realized that that kind of lifestyle doesn’t really fit my personality style. I also discovered how great of a city Las Vegas was (I had been living in Los Angeles prior to that point), decided to make Las Vegas my new home, and also received some housing benefits from my employer that would allow me to break even with housing costs. I ultimately settled down and lived a normal life, and just got a small pickup truck instead.

A part of me still wants to travel the country and live out of a vehicle, because I’m a very curious person who gets bored a lot and likes experiencing new things. I think the biggest part of that lifestyle that conflicted with my personality would be that I would always be going in and out of public places for food and hygiene; because I’m a very private person, I would feel uncomfortable doing so. The thing that would make it okay for me is if there was more to my vehicle than just a mattress and a desk. That is to say, if I lived out of an RV instead of just an SUV, then I think the mobile lifestyle would be fun.

Thus, the third “car” I would get as part of my dream garage would be an Airstream Atlas Touring Coach built on the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter chassis.

Being a Class B+ RV, the Airstream Atlas would come with a complete bathroom with a stand-up shower, toilet, and sink built straight into the vehicle. I’m actually very comfortable with being in small spaces, so I feel like getting one of these RVs and experiencing something new everyday would make me very happy.

#4. Lexus GX

At this point, I feel like I’m really pushing it to come up with more ideas, but the final vehicle that I think is reasonable enough for me to want is a Lexus GX.

Lexus is famous for its amazing reliability, and I presume it would be nice to have a seven-seater three-row SUV as a family hauler some day. I obviously do not have kids today, but when the day comes and my kids have friends who want to go on trips with us, I feel like there’s no better indestructible vehicle than a Lexus to go on road trips for vacation.

Not only do neither the RAM Rebel nor Alfa Romeo Stelvio have as many seats as the Lexus GX (and the Airstream Atlas is large, but it technically only “fits” two people), but RAM and Alfa Romeo are also both part of the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Group, which has historically been notorious for having poor reliability. And having your car break down while on vacation sounds very not-fun.

#5. Genesis GV70/GV80

And now, I am completely out of ideas. I’m not a greedy person, and I find greater pleasure in optimization and efficiency than I do in just having more possessions. Thus, as my fifth and final car, I would get an upcoming Genesis crossover and give it to my parents.

Pictured above is the concept model for the Genesis GV80, but I would likely end up getting them a GV70 instead (which doesn’t have a revealed prototype yet, as far as I’m aware), because my parents aren’t like me and they prefer medium-sized vehicles rather than massive ones.

Genesis isn’t really one of the most popular car manufacturers, so for those who don’t know, Genesis is the luxury brand of Hyundai, similar to how Lexus is the luxury brand of Toyota and Acura is the luxury brand of Honda. The “Genesis” name started as a model under the Hyundai make, but it split off into its own make and has expanded to a small line of luxury vehicles.

My parents have great Korean pride, but before Genesis, there haven’t really been very many luxury vehicle selections from Korean manufacturers that they could buy. I realize that this may be bending the rules of the “five-car dream garage” a bit, but I would get a Genesis crossover and just let my parents use it full-time as their daily driver.

And that wraps up my five-car garage. It might be strange to most people that my selection of “fast car” was an Alfa Romeo Stelvio, not even a Maserati Levante or a Lamborghini Urus, but I guess that’s the perspective that someone has when they don’t really care too much about exotic name brands or explosively powerful engines.

Honestly, I’d just be happy with a RAM Rebel and that’s it… but I haven’t just gone out and bought one in real life because (1) that would mean trading in a truck that’s less than 2 years old and I’m not rich enough to be able to take that kind of depreciation hit, and (2) I’m still too scared about Fiat Chrysler’s uncertain reliability ratings.

Maybe in about 3 more years when my current truck’s depreciation plateaus and if Fiat Chrysler’s reliability ratings go up, I might actually get myself a RAM Rebel.

Re: “How do you avoid spending all your leftover money?”

April 10, 2019, 7:44 PM by Parkzer • Finance, Q&A

This post is over 5 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

Within the realm of finances, one of the more relatively frequent questions I get asked is how to avoid spending all your leftover money. Everyone knows by this point that they need to save money, but with a nice, padded bank account, it can be very easy to “forget” to save a set amount during a particular month, and it’s even easier to feel “accomplished” seeing a large sum in your savings account and thinking that you already have enough.

I am by no means rich, but I personally have fallen into this scenario before, and the best recommendation I have is to “create expenses.” I’ll explain.

I am very attentive and “obedient” when it comes to addressing expenses. I make sure everything is paid on time, but not so early that I miss out on interest yield. I never forget about any obligations, and I plan ahead to ensure that obligations continue to be met even in potential emergency worst-case-scenario situations. With that being said, I’m essentially exploiting the way my brain works by triggering that sense of responsibility by creating fake expenses.

As a preface to this, the “my savings account is big enough” argument should be completely invalidated if you have less than 6 months’ worth of living expenses saved up. A lot of people say 3 months’ worth is enough, but remember, the emergency itself that is causing you to lose your source of income will likely also directly drain your funds as well (for example, an injury that will rack up medical expenses), and there is no guarantee that you will recover and return to normal in a maximum of 3 months.

Going back to the main topic at hand, let’s create an example and say your monthly income is $5,000. Your expenses in this example are as such (heavily grouped and rounded for ease of calculation):

Rent (or mortgage plus other homeowner expenses)	$1500
Utilities (power, gas, water, sewer, trash, phone, Internet, etc.)	$300
Medical insurance (health, dental, etc.)	$300
Vehicle (loan/lease, auto insurance, fuel, maintenance, etc.)	$800
Student loans or other miscellaneous installment loans	$200
Food (groceries, restaurants, etc.)	$500
Personal care (haircut, gym membership, etc.)	$100
Household products and other goods	$100
Subscriptions (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, credit card annual fee, etc.)	$50
Travel and other leisurely activities	$150
Gifts and charitable donations	$100

In this example, you have $4,100 in monthly “expenses,” leaving you with $900 remaining – I put “expenses” in quotation marks because you’ve already taken into account a very large food budget for eating out at restaurants, as well as an additional leisurely spending stipend, as “expenses.” Most people know that all $900 should be going straight into savings, but it’s easy to add an extra $50 here and an extra $100 there and end up shrinking your savings amount.

First of all, make sure you’re not forgetting about any expenses. Are you an independent contractor who runs their own business like I do and doesn’t get income tax withheld? Even if you’re a godlike optimizer of deductions of business expenses, you should be expecting to set aside at least $500 or so per month for income tax, unless you want to go from tax avoidance dangerously close to tax evasion. Are you saving for retirement? Making maximum contributions to an IRA means another ~$500 per month. Combine those two extra items you forgot, and suddenly, you’re short of money, have no savings, and need to cut back on other expenses.

Similar to how you’re budgeting leisure and luxury as expenses into your spreadsheet, also itemize savings as different, individual expenses instead of just lumping everything together as “savings” or “leftover.” Set specific goals for yourself on where each component of your savings is going, and create different savings accounts (where applicable) to keep track of each individual goal (savings accounts are usually either free or have very low daily balance requirements to waive the monthly fee).

Similar to the expenses above, here are some very simple example savings goals (mostly relevant to someone around my age) that you can tack onto your budgeting spreadsheet in the form of “expenses” to turn up the pressure to set aside money for said goals (as well as their corresponding monthly cost):

Maximum $5,500 yearly contribution to a traditional or Roth IRA	$458
Maximum $19,000 yearly contribution to a 401k	$1583
20% down payment on a $350,000 house purchase in 10 years	$583
$15,000 for a wedding in 5 years	$250
$15,000 for the first year of newborn baby expenses in 5 years	$250
$35,000 Bachelor’s degree fund for a newborn starting school in 18 years	$162

Being able to cover all that pushes you into the six-figure yearly salary range, and then you end up getting more expenses piled on just by the fact that you’re richer – you’ll be pushing a 24% tax bracket, you’ll need to purchase more insurance to protect your life and your investments, etc. As you can see, things can very quickly spiral out of control, and it’s all about perspective – you can always put yourself in a situation where it feels like you never have enough money.

So, coming full circle, how do I personally avoid spending all my money? I expand my budgeting spreadsheet to include items similar to the second table, but custom-catered to me specifically. My personal budgeting spreadsheet goes nearly 100 rows deep, and at the end of each month, I “spend 100% of what I earn” … though after reading this post, you know that that’s just an illusion to ensure I’m financially set for my future.

Re: “Why did you move to Las Vegas?”

May 20, 2018, 12:20 PM by Parkzer • Best of the Best, Las Vegas, Q&A

Exactly two months ago, on March 20, I moved from Southern California to Las Vegas. Those who were aware of my plans weren’t completely surprised, while others who weren’t expecting it got very confused, but in both circumstances, a common question has been “why?” Most of my family is still back in Illinois where I grew up, a lot of my friends and co-workers are still staying in California, and I know next to nobody who already lives in Las Vegas, so it was (reasonably) strange for me to get up and move to a different state.

So, I decided to try and clarify things a bit better in this blog post, so the next time someone asks me, I can just link them to this page instead of going through the story all over again.

First of all, it’s important to understand a few things about me as a person that are very different than the general population:

I don’t commute to an office for work. I have the great fortune of having a dream job with complete flexibility in the work I do, when I work, and from where I work. As a result, I’m not bound to a particular location for my job – wherever I choose to live becomes my home office.
I am on the extreme end of self-reliance. I do not depend on my friends or family for support, neither financially nor emotionally.
I find peace and comfort in solitude. I am also on the extreme end of introversion and prefer to be alone; all of my longings for human interaction are already satisfied through the Internet.

However, contrary to what those points may imply, I did not intentionally move here by myself just for the sole purpose of running away and being alone.

Instead, here are the real reasons why I moved, in order of influence:

Lower cost of living
When I lived in Corona, CA, I lived in a 27-year-old apartment building in a tiny one-bedroom unit that cost approximately $1,400/mo. (with electricity, gas, Internet, and other utilities paid separately) – and this was actually a gold mine of a deal. Anything cheaper than that would only be found in terrible-quality neighborhoods with a lower household income and higher crime rate. For those who aren’t familiar, Corona is on the east side of the Santa Ana mountains… go farther west closer to the ocean and rent prices continue to skyrocket.

On the other hand, I pay $1,570/mo. in Las Vegas, which numerically is a higher price… but I live in a newly-constructed luxury building on the upper-most floor with vast suburb and mountain views. Some of the amenities include a clubhouse with game rooms, a massage room, and a private movie theater; a pool with a waterfall and fountains; a gym; a rooftop lounge with a barbecue and fire pit; a Starbucks coffee machine; and free breakfast everyday. The rent price includes the cost of gas, water, sewer, trash, cable TV, and Internet. Considering that I don’t have to pay all those extra bills, my net living expenses have actually declined, and I’m still getting astronomically more value.

Cost of living also extends beyond just what I pay for my apartment – the price of food in the Las Vegas suburbs is noticeably cheaper, up to the point where I feel like I’m paying generic California Walmart prices for food items of much higher quality. Even the cost of ridesharing is cheaper here – I can easily get around with Uber in Las Vegas for far cheaper (although a portion of that is attributed to the fact that Las Vegas is also a whole lot smaller than the entire Los Angeles and Orange County areas).

And of course, there’s always the possibly of getting a random discount by showing your Las Vegas driver’s license. Because Las Vegas thrives off its tourists, there are a lot of places that provide locals’ discounts to show appreciation for and unity with those who call Las Vegas their home.
Esports proximity
Although Los Angeles will probably eternally be the main hub for esports, I personally think Las Vegas will be a secondary hub. Las Vegas is already considered to be the live entertainment capital of the world, and as esports and professional gaming becomes more mainstream, it feels only natural for it to have a bigger presence in Las Vegas. Although the opening of Esports Arena Las Vegas and Caesars Entertainment’s partnership with the H1Z1 Pro League are just two examples, I feel like many more instances like this are going to pop up soon.

Of course, being a member of the esports and entertainment industry myself via Tempo Storm, I wanted to get a head start in having a physical presence in a location I presume will have a lot of relevant events. A majority of Tempo Storm staff lives in Southern California while the remainder lives spread out in random parts of the world, so I was the first one to step foot into Las Vegas with an intent to find a residence and expand Tempo Storm’s physical reach.

This actually has already proven quite helpful. I had initially made the decision to move to Las Vegas prior to knowing Tempo Storm would be participating in the H1Z1 Pro League in partnership with Caesars Entertainment on the Las Vegas Strip, so it was very convenient for me to be local to this area during the process of setting up the new team house and coordinating with players as they arrived from across the United States and Canada.

As for events in Los Angeles, as well as Tempo Storm’s (relatively) new production studio in Hollywood, Las Vegas is just a quick 44-minute flight to Bob Hope Hollywood Burbank Airport in Burbank, CA, so for events that are still taking place in the Los Angeles area, I am a convenient distance away such that I’m still able to make it in person without any intensive travel days.
Safest area from natural disasters
I grew up in Illinois and received my undergraduate degree after studying in Wisconsin, and I literally never want to see snow in person ever again. After being pummeled by snowstorm after blizzard, I wouldn’t mind if I never really saw anything fall from the sky ever again in general. It does, in very rare circumstances, snow in Las Vegas too, but I feel like the miraculous nature of there being snow in the middle of the desert would offset the fact that I have to see snow again, so I’m fine with that. Also, tornadoes. There is a tornado season in Illinois and Wisconsin, but nothing close to that in Las Vegas.

As for Southern California, we all know that the long-overdue catastrophic earthquake nicknamed “The Big One” is about to strike at any moment. Residents who have lived in California all their lives have gotten desensitized to earthquakes, but it’s actually a real threat to that area, and I personally think anyone living there who doesn’t have to live there (e.g., for their job, family, etc.) is either ignorant or stupid.

Why invest in a property and raise your family in an area that is expected to crumble due to its relatively soft soil, causing an estimated $200 BILLION in damage? Unless every single seismologist in the world is incorrect, the big earthquake will eventually strike, setting off a chain of fires and splitting outbound interstates into pieces.

I’m the type of person who values safety, security, reliability, and predictability. I keep over half a year’s worth of living expenses in a fluid savings account in addition to more long-term investments for big purchases and retirement; I literally pay hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance so I know I won’t go bankrupt if something devastating happens to me. Being that kind of person, there is absolutely no way I’m even taking a sliver of a risk of losing everything to an earthquake that every scientist says is coming soon.

Beyond just that, a lot of tech companies have been in the news for moving a lot of their servers and facilities to Las Vegas due to the fact that it is the area of the United States least prone to natural disasters. Sure, we definitely do get torrential downpours of rain around 10 times a year, and it does sometimes get extremely windy, but those are weather effects that are on a completely different level than debilitating blizzards, destructive tornadoes, or high-magnitude earthquakes.
No state income tax
Having built up quite the online presence prior to working with Tempo Storm, I have some passive income that comes in to me for being an independent contractor with programs such as Google AdSense and Amazon Associates. Income taxes for independent contractors are particularly punishing because they end up paying “both ends” of the tax – including the portion that the employer would normally pay for full-time employees. Because Nevada doesn’t have state income tax, I get to keep a large chunk of my income just for living in Las Vegas that I would otherwise have to give to the government.

I do end up having to pay more in sales tax – I paid 7.75% while living in Corona, while sales tax here in Las Vegas is 8.25% due to a noticeably higher county sales tax – but the 0.5% is negligible compared to how much I end up saving in income tax. I also end up avoiding sales tax anyway because I make a majority of my purchases online on Amazon.
Opportunity fell into place
The existence of my current working situation (work-from-home, which I explain more above), plus the timing of the end of my one-year lease in Corona and the fact that I was able to spend my in-between time at a Tempo Storm team house, all made this move fall into place. Those items made the move possible, but what sealed the deal was the fact that I found this particular apartment complex.

I’m the type of person who spends a lot of money on items that I use regularly and refuses to buy items that I know I won’t use much. As a result, I didn’t really want to purchase a vehicle (though I would have if I had to). When I rented a car and drove to Las Vegas to do apartment tours, I found this particular apartment (in which I live right now) that was on the upper echelons of quality, but also had everything I needed in walking distance. As a result, I didn’t need to buy a car (and I still don’t have one) because I’m able to easily walk to the grocery store and tons of different restaurants, as well as a hardware store, crafts store, and a Walmart for anything else I can’t find. In the situations where I do need a car to go somewhere relatively far, there is even literally a car rental location within walking distance from my apartment.

Thus, I was able to live exactly where I wanted, avoid having to own a car, and move here without having to pay any penalties or struggle to make things work – this rounded out the plan and finalized the deal.

To round out this explanation, I also want to address some misconceptions about Las Vegas that people brought up to me when I said I was moving here:

The hot weather is not that bad
People who just associate “desert” with “hot” don’t quite realize what exactly the weather is like in Las Vegas. In fact, just purely out of temperature degrees, on average compared to where I used to live in California, Las Vegas is hotter for 4 months out of the year, about the same for 4 months out of the year, and actually colder for 4 months out of the year. Just because it’s the desert doesn’t mean it is always blisteringly painfully hot.

It actually feels less hot in Las Vegas than it does in other areas at the same temperature due to the extremely low humidity. Las Vegas is the least humid city in all of the United States, and as such, the air will absorb the sweat off your skin very quickly, leaving you feeling cool and dry. Of course, this does mean that you have to drink an absurdly large amount of water on a daily basis, but because the sweat doesn’t linger on your skin like it does in excessively humid areas, the heat here doesn’t make you feel as uncomfortable.

On top of that, it actually gets chilly very early in the morning. The coolest time in Las Vegas tends to be right before the sun rises, and during those hours, the average temperature lingers around 40°F during the winter and the upper 70s during the summer. Yes, even on days where it may reach over 100°F during the afternoon, there is a high chance it will dip down to around 80°F right before the sun comes up. That literally means that, excluding maybe July, you can literally open your window in the mornings and turn off your air conditioner for a bit.
It’s not constant parties
I personally hate parties. I find them overstimulating, and I’d rather relax and spend a quiet night at home. If someone invites me to a party for a particularly monumental event or occasion, I will often still decline the invitation, then instead invite them out for a nice dinner or a private trip/vacation afterwards. Because of this, most people are wondering why I’m moving to a place where, according to them, there are non-stop parties everywhere.

Like nearly every major city, there is a suburban location surrounding Las Vegas that is very different than the Las Vegas Strip. Now for Las Vegas, the difference is that the address even out in the suburbs is still “Las Vegas, NV,” but the environment out in Summerlin South where I live is completely different than the environment on the Strip.

If you’re referring to the Strip as a constant party, you would be correct – the Strip is a tourist attraction and there are multiple parties permanently taking place night and day. However, the farther you go out into the suburbs, the more it begins looking like a regular town; if you drive out as far as where I currently live and don’t look at any street signs, chances are that you might even confuse it with any suburb in California (though you may notice a substantial lack of natural grass in Las Vegas).

The grocery stores, restaurants, and even the huge Walmart here reminds me quite a bit of the area where I used to live in Corona. The one funny thing about my area is that there is literally a McDonald’s with a rotating sign (as in, the golden arches are literally spinning around 20 feet in the air), and I feel like that is a very Las Vegas-esque thing, but other than that, all the buildings look very “normal.”
You (or at least I) will not ruin your (my) life
Las Vegas is often the place people go to smoke, drink alcohol, get high on drugs, watch stripper shows, and gamble away all their money – it didn’t get its nickname of “Sin City” for no reason. However, again, similar to the section about parties, that all takes place on the Strip, and it’s pretty peaceful out here in the suburbs. Now, it is actually true that there are slot machines even in grocery stores, but in my personal experience, I rarely ever see them being used, and when they are, it’s only by older people who seem to be in their 70s or above.

But you may be asking, “Adam, you can easily Uber to the Strip to partake in such activities, what’s stopping you from doing that?” The answer to that would be… disinterest. I am completely drug-free (including cigarettes and alcohol), I have no interest in viewing stripper shows, and I absolutely refuse to gamble because I’m too logical. So, although Las Vegas could be the place people come to ruin their lives, I feel as if I’m particularly immune to that issue.

Although this seems incredibly in-depth, this only scratches the surface of the amount of research and thinking I did before making the decision to move here; I just summarized it into the key points to avoid writing a post so long that nobody would ever read it. To put things into perspective, I’ve literally gone on Google Maps street view and “drove” around a massive portion of the Las Vegas suburbs, and while researching for key information, I literally went to page 4 on Google results… and I have my Google search results set up to display 100 results on each page.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments of this blog post (or just ask me directly if I sent you to this page), and I’ll try my best to answer them based off the research I did prior to moving here, as well as the experiences I’ve had while living here.

Re: “Why don’t you stream Pokémon anymore?”

December 2, 2014, 11:59 PM by Parkzer • Q&A

This post is over 9 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

Pokémon was the game I grew up with.

As a child, I owned Pokémon Yellow and Gold for Game Boy Color; and as a teen, I used emulators to play a lot of the third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation games.

Back in October 2012, I streamed myself playing Pokémon White 2, and sometime around that year, I streamed a bit of PokéMMO. However, since then, I’ve been quiet with Pokémon, and haven’t broadcasted anything related to Pokémon since then.

Over time, I’ve had a few people ask me why I don’t play Pokémon anymore, wondering if I got bored of it. Recently, someone asked if I had grown out of Pokémon. Because this person was clearly mistaken, as Pokémon isn’t something that you simply outgrow, I decided to address the core reason behind why I don’t stream Pokémon anymore.

As you know, I’m a multimedia content producer, and I integrate that into almost everything I do online. I look for opportunities to create more content and get more practice making videos and other online materials. In the realm of gaming, I try my best to stream or make videos from my gaming footage.

Unfortunately, Nintendo is not explicitly okay with me using Pokémon to create my own content.

Companies like Blizzard and Riot Games clearly state on their website that it is permissible to use their games to create original gameplay content and monetize it through advertisements (which is why I play a lot of Hearthstone, Starcraft, Diablo, and League of Legends). Nintendo does not have such a policy – in fact, they have quite the opposite.

According to a statement made by Nintendo to GoNintendo.com:

“We became a YouTube partner and … registered our copyright content in the YouTube database. For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips.”

This means that, if I post Pokémon-related videos on YouTube to monetize off VODs of my stream, I may end up not getting my full share of revenue (if any at all). Nintendo doesn’t explicitly state what kind of content would be used for advertising, and what purpose these advertisements would serve – this makes the policy more cryptic and not worth the risk.

Sure, I enjoy playing Pokémon. But, I can put the time I spend potentially playing Pokémon into other games I enjoy playing that produces footage I know I can safely use to create content without having to worry about copyright issues.

In the future, if I end up becoming rich, then sure, I might dedicate some days into streaming Pokémon with the assumption that I’m not going to make money off of it and I’m doing it purely for the enjoyment. However, I’m not rich yet, and until I am, I will naturally want to gravitate towards games I know I can use to produce content safely.