Affordability is real. But just like globalization, it isn’t new. People have always stretched, risked, and rationalized their spending. What is new—what feels heavier—is the loss of hope. Because affordability isn’t just whether you can pay a bill. It lives in your expectations about the future. What will life look like? Will you be okay? I remember seriously considering leasing a car I couldn’t afford—not because I didn’t understand the numbers, but because I believed somet

On math, money, and life in the middle My mom is turning 80. She’s learning magic. Card tricks. Sleight of hand. The kind where something impossible happens right in front of you and you feel that little jolt—wait… what? She even hired a private tutor. Some guy in San Francisco. I picture him in a black cape in a dark, candle-lit basement somewhere in the Mission. She spent years as a math therapist, helping high school students work through their fear of numbers. And it work

Maybe there was a time when a credit card really meant something. Michael Lewis once wrote in The Money Culture  about American Express and what it represented in the 1980s. Membership had its privileges — and you didn’t want to leave home without it. Snob appeal. Let’s rewind. American Express had been marketing itself as a luxury product since it introduced its charge card in 1958. In the beginning it really did solve a problem. If you were traveling — flying, staying in ho

How our feelings move with the baseline The stock market is down 1.5%. My heart rate picks up a little when I see the red numbers. Nothing dramatic. Just a tiny jolt in the body. The kind of reaction you get when something unexpected happens. Everything on my phone is red, significantly larger than it was earlier. Nothing in the real world has changed. The companies are still there. No earnings or economic data were reported . The rain outside the window looks exactly the sam

I try to be very intentional about what I spend. I think the key is being proactive instead of reactive. Over time I’ve built a kind of uniform. Right now it’s brown Sperry Top-Siders, black Lululemon ABC pants, and a black crewneck. It’s simple, me, and most importantly it keeps me from buying clothes impulsively, which I’m very good at. The uniform solves a problem. Sometimes I see clothes that look great on other people and think they might look great on me too. The unifo

Before Money Was Math, It Was Meaning Markets run on fungibility — the idea that one unit is interchangeable with another. But money didn’t start that way. Long before it became numbers on a screen, it was sacred. Before it was monetary architecture, it was bling. For much of recorded history, value wasn’t stored in clay tablets, paper, ledgers, spreadsheets, or blockchain. It was stored in gold. Gold doesn’t grow. It doesn’t compound. It signals. And shines. Empires rose an

Markets run on fungibility, Humans don't. One dollar is identical to another. A share of stock is interchangeable with any other share of the same class. Markets function because money is fungible — memoryless, liquid, efficient. And yet, few things trigger more emotion. Investors freeze when markets fall. Employees hesitate to negotiate salaries. Families argue over inheritances. We label dollars as “vacation money” or “savings,” even though each bill carries equal spending