Dear Friend,

Hey there, how’s it going?

During a recent dinner with Jessica, we mentioned how we find our joy nowadays is primarily to cope and to build resilience against today’s ever-maddening world, but deep down we really, really miss being joyful for its own sake. I recently saw a chart on Reddit (similar to this one, but not exactly) that detailed how our happiness sentiment peaked around 2021 — right when the first COVID vaccine became available, but that optimism has since fallen off the cliff and man… do I feel that. Hang in there, am I right?

In my time writing to you in the past five years (omg), rarely do I tell you about this one thing that’s constant on my mind: Money. Our society just doesn’t love talking about it, at least here in the US, yet it’s literally the single source to wake me up in the morning (First thing I do is to check my bank balance on my phone) and/or keeps me at night (I used to lose sleep trying to optimize my credit card setup). Whether it’s personal finance, credit card points, or even my brief affair in crypto (again in 2021), my relationship with money provides a sense of calm on the best of days and reveals my greed at its ugliest on others. So five years into this, let’s just talk about it — taboo or not.

(Quick Disclaimer: In this attempt to openly talk about my finances, please bear in mind that my intention is not to brag nor ask for a pity party. I recognize my privilege of having a decent job (in this economy!), with no kids or pets, but also not yet a home owner, etc. Point being, we’re all on different journeys and we have different priorities.)

Today’s Budget is $975.72

I’ve been managing my own expenses practically since the first day in college, and in the years since then I’ve gotten pretty comfortable, if not confident, in how I manage my personal finance. Up until very recently, my money management had mostly been aggregation-driven, as in I would rely on services like Mint (RIP), YNAB, and most recently Copilot, to aggregate all my financial information into one place — which grants me a macro-view of how much money is coming in vs going out at any given time.

While admittedly a personal finance nerd, one of the main questions I often have but can never confidently answer is simply, “How much can I spend today?”. I could kinda ballpark based on my upcoming credit card bills and how much I currently have in my savings, but I can’t really give you a specific figure until I do some serious math.

Recently I learned about this indie but imho underrated app, aptly called Today’s Budget. Their core concept is to figure out this exact question based on my current recurring income and compare that with all my upcoming and recurring expenses (and saving goals). There are some bells and whistles on top of the app, but that’s basically it. And it’s been really eye-opening to see that after all things considered, I can spend exactly $5.10 every single day.

So what does this exact number mean? It depends on how I choose to look at it, either that I should cut down reduce my spending/lower my saving goals, or that I should spread them out to reduce their frequency. But keep in mind that this amount is after considering everything (eg: recurring expenses, investing schedule, saving goals for upcoming bills, etc.), and day by day my overall budget has accumulated to $975.72 ever since I started using this app last month. So now, if I really want to splurge today, I can do so up to that amount, guilt-free.

I highly recommend checking out Today’s Budget — the app has no bank syncing and it carries minimal privacy concerns since everything is on-device (or optionally sync via iCloud). I was using the free version for the first 2 weeks, and it was completely serviceable, though I ultimately decided to pay for the lifetime license (~$45) to support the two sole developers who work on this app.

Invisalign Jail

The week I returned from Thailand was when I first started my Invisalign treatment. It’s been a decision weighing on my mind for the past few years, basically since my dentist told me that my overbite is causing some serious issues with the back molars, and that it’s worth considering teeth alignment treatment not only for aesthetics but also for overall health reasons. And having gone through a lengthy and borderline-traumatic experience with traditional braces in high school, I was not going to willingly sign up to go through exactly that again.

It’s not a cheap procedure by any means, all around $5,000(!) out-of-pocket, but there’s some money in my FSA that’s been rolling over for the past few years. (Sidenote: FSA is super weird, like I never know how much and for how long I can roll over any of my money before losing it.) And since the Open Enrollment period was right around the corner, and the orthodontic place allowed me to pay using next year’s FSA, I eventually decided to go for it.

Otherwise it’s been okay three weeks into my treatment, though it’s true that the first week was by far the roughest. The biggest ordeal had been the abrupt shift in my habit, in that I loved to sip coffee and snack throughout the day. All of that is now banished as my daily meals are restricted to less than 2 total hours per day. The rest of the time, I call it being in Invisalign Jail.

This will be my life in the next 15-18 months, but all in all I know this is one of those rich people problems so I shouldn’t complain.

Rich People Problems

Speaking of rich people’s problems, I’ve been getting hit increasingly hard with every tax season — much of it is because of the stock market, but especially because both Walmart and Apple have been doing well in the past few years. Now, to be clear, I’m all for paying my fair share of taxes to a government that takes good care of the underprivileged and builds out lasting infrastructure for the masses. But well, it’s different now — the White House is missing a whole damn wing as of this writing after all. So I finally did one of those (relatively) rich people things and set up my own Donor-Advised Fund. This just means I’ll save on paying some taxes next year, you know, tax money that would not go toward foreign aid or public media anyways, and instead I can significantly up my own donations through the DAF toward foreign aid or public media. Resist in place, or my small version of it.

Gosh I can just talk about personal finances all day, but this letter is getting long~! Thanks for reading this and being with me on this journey. LMK if this is interesting to you — Money is a taboo topic until we talk about it.

And here's the rest of it…

Thanks for reading this and being with me on this journey. Let me know what’s going on in your world! You can also check out past issues of Dear Friend, on my website. Here’s the rest of it:

• The photos I took this month
• Interesting enough to share but not enough to write about:
  • Top-down views of Hong Kong, as captured by photographer Derry Ainsworth
  • History of the Cha Chaan Teng
  • Samin Nosrat's Favorite Places to Eat in SF
  • Reneé Rapp's Halloween Costume Is So Good She Needs to Get It Cleared; Talks Bite Me (Her interviews are themselves performances)