Their initial impressions are not always positive. Immediately upon boarding you’re greeted with weird upsells, shows that don’t sound very good, and a very annoying mandatory life boat drill. By the end, though, almost all of them love cruising and can’t wait to go on the next one.

It’s important to realize that unless you’re a retiree in your 60s or so, cruising isn’t built for you. If you’re a younger person who likes to be productive and active, you’re swimming upstream a bit. However, cruise ships are so huge and have so many spaces and activities that you can cobble together your own amazing trip. As a bonus, you’ll be doing things that most people aren’t so it won’t feel crowded.

Before I even go on a cruise, I try to find one that has at least one activity that I like to do. My favorite is rock climbing because it’s physical, I can only do it for a short amount of time, and it’s a challenge. Almost all big Royal Carribbean ships have rock climbing. I also really love the surf wave, and even mini golf is pretty fun. Some cruises have roller skating, ice skating, or laser tag.

My favorite line is Royal Caribbean because they have so many fun activities, but if I’m not going to go on one with activities, I like Holland America or Celebrity because their food is a little bit better and the ship environments are really nice.

I know people who like to cruise solo, but I find it a lot more fun to do with friends. Even one friend is great, but a big group can be really fun. As I write this I’m on a cruise with seven other friends, and different groups of us like to eat, work, and rock climb together.

Once you get on the ship, drop your stuff off at your room and scope out the whole ship. Before I started doing this I would often find really cool spaces or venues on one of the last days of the cruise and wish I had found them earlier.

In particular I’m looking for a place to work. Since no place is actually meant for work, this usually means I’m spending my days in a lounge or bar that may or may not be open during the day. On ships you’re generally allowed to go anywhere, even if it’s closed. Right now I’m writing in the dining room between lunch and dinner as the waiters line up the glasses on all of the tables.

In the morning I usually go to my work spot and have tea with my friends. Cruises are very relaxing and it’s nice to look out at the sea, so I really enjoy having a situation where I can sit and stare out at the ocean over a cup of tea while talking with my friends. Other people have breakfast, go for a jog, or swim. One of my friends is so obsessed with the Flowrider surf machine that he would often get a session in before I even woke up.

I skip breakfast, but if you eat breakfast you’re probably better off at the buffet than the dining room. It’s about the same quality food.

You can eat lunch in the dining room or the buffet. At lunch it can be a toss-up which one has better quality. Recently some cruise lines have been doing chopped salad bars in the main dining room where you point and they make you a huge awesome salad.

After lunch I always work. I know I titled this post how to get maximum enjoyment, but getting work done is part of that for me. Just two or three hours of really focused work with no distractions can make a day at sea very productive. On my last three cruises I’ve written a year of blog posts twice and a book once. The consistency of the days makes it very easy to divide a task up across days and make sure it gets done.

If I’m ahead of schedule I’ll sometimes take a break in the middle to go rock climbing or something, but I always ensure that I finish my tasks before dinner time. Dinners on cruises can be big, and sometimes I don’t feel like working afterwards.

Every other day I do a workout before dinner. Ship gyms used to be terrible, but now they’re more than adequate for a solid workout. I try to time it so that I can pack up my work, get in my workout, take a quick shower, and walk to dinner.

You should always eat dinner in the main dining room. Breakfast is questionable, lunch can go either way, but dinner is much better in the dining room. My favorite night is lobster night, where I routinely eat 12-16 lobster tails. Rack of lamb night is my second favorite. I’ve had some excellent fish as well as some terrible fish, so it can be a bit of a gamble.

What most people don’t know at first is that you can order as many things as you want from the menu. On normal nights I’ll typically get 4-5 appetizers/salads/soups, 2-3 entrees, and 1 dessert.

After dinner I like to read, do crossword puzzles, or hang out with my friends. One friend and I have the tradition of watching the show Billions, so we try to sneak into a conference room and hook our laptop up to their system.

One of my favorite parts of being on a ship is the sleep. There’s nothing like the rocking of the ship in a dark stateroom to get you well rested and ready for another amazing day at sea.

I wrote this over a year ago, but by the time I was ready to post it, Covid hit. Now cruises are just starting to get back in business and it’s a great time to book new ones. I had seven canceled during Covid so I’m raring to go. Even if you’re skeptical about cruises, you owe it to yourself to get a few friends together and give them a try. You’re very likely to be surprised at how awesome they are. And of course… book using my site, cruisesheet.com.

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Photo is a glacier from a cruise ship. Alaskan cruises are uniquely beautiful. I’m hoping to go on 1-2 this year.

Hilo is the rainiest city in the US, which provides a natural buffer against tourism. If you’re going to book a weeklong vacation in advance, you might not want to choose somewhere where it may rain for several of those days. But this same rain, along with the size and geography of the Big Island, means that just about everything can be grown or raised right on the island.

In general the food in Hilo is defined by extremely high quality (usually local) ingredients, and chefs who are obsessive about making great food. Here are some of my favorite places.

Poke Market

Poke Market is so good that my friends and I literally go here every single day for lunch, except for Sundays when they’re closed. Sometimes we get two bowls on Saturday so that we can have it on Sunday too. The owner, Ernie, was a chef at Nobu, and he brought that level of refinement to Poke. The fish is perfectly cut, and his sauces and sides are incredible. I always get the “Rainbowl” which is a little bit of everything. It’s so good that as soon as I finish my bowl I always consider going back to get another (and I’ve actually done that a few times).

Kula Shave Ice

I also go to Kula Shave Ice every single day. Unlike normal shave ice, which uses gross artificial syrups, Kula uses local organic fruit to make theirs. The ice is perfectly shaved and all of the toppings are amazing too. I always get two flavors with coconut haupia cream on top. The lilikoi and lime are probably my favorite flavors, but they’re all great so I get something different every day. The owner, Tiffany, also makes homemade ice cream which is sometimes available and is also amazing. I get mine with light syrup, which sometimes leaves some unflavored patches inside but makes it much less sweet when it’s all melted at the end.

Mohala’s Bayfront Fish and Chips

Mohala’s is usually the first place I go for dinner, and most likely to be repeated if I’m there for long enough. That’s saying a lot because it’s also probably the least healthy place I go, so I’m biased against it. They deep fry fresh fish and it’s essentially the perfect fish and chips. The variety changes every day, but all of their fish are great. I didn’t get ahi for a long time because I thought it might be dry like canned tuna, but it’s actually the best one. Portions here are enormous, which is almost too bad because the fried smoked mozzarella is the best fried cheese I’ve ever had but I just can’t eat more than their normal fish portion.

Pineapples

Pineapples is the most touristy looking restaurant in Hilo, which still doesn’t make it all that touristy, but it was enough for me to avoid it for a long time. I finally went with my brother, and after that he wanted to eat there every single night. Not everything is excellent, but most items are. The Local Plate, Kalbi Ribs, Kabocha Curry, and Skirt Steak are all perfect tens for me. The desserts are too sweet and the coconut crusted fish wasn’t very good, but everything else is great.

Foodxjitsu

You wouldn’t guess that the best sushi I’ve ever had would be from a random guy selling it out of his mom’s house where he lives… but it is. To get the sushi you have to DM him on instagram and then go pick up your plastic platter of sushi at a specific time from his driveway. My friends ordered it and I was too skeptical to join in, but I tried a few of their pieces and was so blown away that I ordered my own on the next trip. It’s expensive (~$100/person) but there’s zero filler and you get a lot of sushi. He even does weird innovative stuff like dry age toro and put it into nigiri.

Papa’a Palaoa

This bakery is really hit or miss. The cookies, which you’d think would be pretty easy to make good, are pretty mediocre. However– their cream pies are as good as a cream pie could possibly be. They make lilikoi (passionfruit), key lime, and coconut. The lilikoi is my go-to pie, but the others are equally good.

Mom’s Hilo

Mom’s is a new Japanese place and I’ve only been once but I thought it was excellent. I haven’t eaten enough there to make specific recommendations, but I look forward to going back and trying more. The best thing I had so far was the Ahi carpaccio. I sat at the bar and watched the chefs prepare the food and you could tell that they really cared about making it great.

Hilo Burger Joint

I’d give the average burger at Hilo Burger Joint an 8, but the Green Chile Burger is a 10. You can substitute salad for fries to make it healthier and they’re open late.

Jackie Rey’s

This restaurant looks so generic and boring from the outside that I didn’t go for years, assuming that it was an overpriced tourist trap. I finally went (after spending so much money on food in Maui that the sticker shock had disappeared) and was very pleasantly surprised. I got the seafood plate that had two of the best shrimp I’ve ever eaten, a crab cake, grilled fish, and mashed okinawan sweet potato, all over a Thai coconut cream sauce. It’s a little bit expensive for what you get compared to other places, but I still look forward to going back.

Two Ladies Kitchen

This tiny Mochi spot always has a line. I’ve eaten most of their flavors (mainly because I didn’t realize how huge they would be the first time I ordered a dozen), and I honestly find most pretty lackluster. However, there are three flavors that are SO good that I go every time I visit Hilo. The best is the strawberry shortcake mochi, butter mochi is a close second, and the seasonal pumpkin pie mochi is really good too. You can’t leave Hawaii with fresh fruit, so butter mochi is the only one you can bring back to your friends.

Tetsumen Ramen

In Japan, where this chain is based, Tetsumen would merely be average or slightly above. Outside of Japan, though, it’s as good as it gets. Everything I’ve ever ordered there has been great, and a big bowl of ramen is the perfect escape from the inevitable rainy day in Hilo.

Tabaraka

This new Lebanese food truck turned a parking lot into a fairly delightful place to eat. I’ve tried a bunch of their pitas and plates and all of them were excellent. I really like the kebab plate because you get to try so many different things and you get a lot of pickled vegetables.

Hilo is really an awesome place to visit. It really shocked me just how good the food was, especially considering what a small sleepy town it is. If you get the chance to visit, let me know what you think of the places I listed here.

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Photo is a picture of the Rainbowl from Poke Market

Tea Time with Tynan #5 is coming Sunday at 10am PST! In case you haven’t been before, I do a live stream where I answer questions and tell stories. The readers who show up are awesome and we can all chat together.

How do you choose where to buy a place?

The way we’ve chosen each place has been different. We chose the island because we desperately wanted to buy an island, and the Halifax, Canada area was the only place to buy a cheap island that looked good and was accessible. In retrospect I think we got really lucky here, because Halifax is great. Budapest was chosen because I went there a couple times and loved it. It was the first place in Europe that I really wanted to get to know on a deeper level. Its central location also made it an easy sell as a European home base. Hawaii came when we realized that all of our properties were better suited for the summer than the winter, so we started looking for tropical places. I originally chose San Juan, Puerto Rico, but after visiting it again I wasn’t convinced it was a slam dunk. Japan has been on the list forever as it’s the one place that all of my friends and I keep going back to year after year. The only reason it was the last one purchased was because it was so hard to find a good place.

Within each city (island excluded), we try to buy as centrally as possible. Budapest and Hilo (Hawaii) are right downtown. Tokyo is 4 minutes from a station that servers two major subway lines, and a 15 minute walk to Shinjuku.

How much do they cost and how is money handled?

Each one has been in the 100-150k range TOTAL. People always think that you have to be super rich to do this, but you basically just have to be at the “could buy an extra used car” wealth level. Each one has been split 6-11 ways, so people have contributed anywhere from under $10k to just over $15k.

Ongoing maintenance varies a bit. Most properties are in the ~$50 a month range per person, but Hawaii is $100 because the HOA fee is annoyingly high.

For the initial purchase I figure out a price range in which I know I can buy a property, and then I get everyone to agree. Once we find the property I pay the deposit myself (it’s always much less than my share is going to be anyway), and then I collect money from everyone else. I have also learned to leave a buffer of $5000 or so to cover initial furnishings, unexpected fees, etc. I create an LLC and a bank account (Wells Fargo only has a $500 minimum to have no fees on a business account), and have everyone send their money there.

I use stripe to collect monthly fees, which are deposited to the bank account. Usually I just pay everything with my own credit card and then reimburse myself. I track expenses in Google Docs (I have one sheet for all properties to make things easy).

In practice bookkeeping is a little bit loose. Several of us who use the properties a lot often end up paying for stuff without reporting the expenses, and I sometimes forget to log mine anyway. This started because there was a big wealth disparity during part of the island development, so one friend funded a few big expenses like buying us a better boat than we could have justified (after we sunk our first one) and building a platform for the yurt.

How do you convince your friends to buy these properties with you?

This really starts with just picking properties that I know people will enjoy and then selecting friends for whom buying a share of the property will be a great value. Luckily most of my friends like to travel, have similar interests to me, and can afford ~$10k for a lifetime vacation house. I send a big long email that I call something like “The Hawaii Hard Sell” and I outline why I picked the place, what there is to do there, how much it will cost, and what the experience will be like once we get the place.

After doing the island I had a group of 3-4 people who will say yes to any property, so I sometimes give them a preview and get them on board first so that I only have a few other spots to fill.

How do people get out of it later?

You can technically sell your share to anyone, but in order for them to have permission to access the island they must get unanimous approval from the rest of the group members. In practice nobody ever sells their share. One friend who was involved in Hawaii but moved to a country where it was really hard to get to Hawaii ended up selling his share at cost to another friend, and then using that money to buy into Tokyo instead.

I try to make it VERY clear up front that this is not a financial investment and that you should assume the money is spent and unrecoverable. That way we think of these properties as permanent home bases. If we did much more expensive properties, this would not be possible.

How do you handle maintenance and upkeep?

What happens in practice is that people who use the properties the most end up doing the most work, but they also get the most benefit. For example, I’ve been personally involved in every island project from clearing trees to cutting trails to building the yurt. These have all been really hard work but… I also use the island the most. My friend Brian is also very involved in every property and he does a ton of work on them as well. Other people do almost no work, but they also barely ever visit the properties, so they’re not creating any sort of wear and tear.

I personally handle all of the bills and paperwork and all that, but I got to pick the places and the people, so the arrangement is more than fair.

Do couples count as one person or two?

Shares are sold individually to each person. Any member can invite unlimited friends/family members to accompany them whenever they want, but cannot send unaccompanied friends. This extends to couples. If I have a share but my wife doesn’t, we can always go there together, but she can’t go by herself.

How do you handle usage?

At a fundamental level, anyone has the right to go to any of their properties at any time no matter what. In practice, though, there are a few different kinds of trips that happen.

Most commonly a few of us get together and say, “Hey, want to go to Hawaii next month?” We plan a trip and then just go. I don’t think it has ever happened that more than one group has randomly been at a property at once.

If someone wants to bring a lot of guests or wants the place to themselves, they post in the property-specific facebook group and requests that no one visit during that time. Technically others could still visit, but people respect requests.

Once in a while one of us will just pop over last minute without telling anyone.

We also have an informal rule that those who use the properties the most yield to others. I’ve visited all of the properties the most, so if I had a trip planned but someone else wanted it to themselves, I would just change my plans. Right now one owner is living in the Hawaii place every other month, but he has made it explicitly clear that anyone can displace him at any time.

People often think that scheduling would be difficult, but it’s much more common that we would be trying to get others to join us on trips than it would be that we would be trying to exclude them.

How many people can each one accomodate?

It varies from property (Tokyo is 4, the island is probably 15), but I generally try to make it very comfortable for 2 people, and feasible for as many as possible. For example, in Budapest there are two bedrooms. The big bedroom has two twin beds that can be joined into a king. So a couple or two friends can visit and have a ton of space. In the other much smaller bedroom we have a bunk bed plus a trundle bed. Downstairs we have a fold-out couch.

Each property has two bedrooms (though in Tokyo one of them does double duty as a living room), so that two friends can go and have separate sleeping and work spaces.

Anything else?

I think those are the major questions that people were curious about, but I know there are always more questions. Something to think about is that when I started this I didn’t know any of this information and had to just figure it out. If I can figure it out, you can too. Get some good friends together, choose a property that makes sense, err on the side of it being inexpensive, and then figure it out as you go. That’s half the fun, to be honest.

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I am doing another YouTube Live Tea Time With Tynan today! Join us!

Photo is a bridge near our place in Hilo

First, the decision to do a trip at all was much easier. The three of us that went on the trip all own the property together, so it makes Hilo an obvious place to visit. There are also no logisticts to worry about. We can come or go on any days we want, don’t have to check in or meet someone to get keys, and have our minivan parked out front. Imagine if we wanted to go to Maui. We’d need to rent cars, choose an airbnb, and all go on the same days because no one wants to pay for an Airbnb by themselves if others leave early.

And, of course, the marginal cost was totally insignificant. We had to buy plane tickets (or use miles, more realistically), but we had no lodging or car rental costs. Because of this we can go on trips whenever we want, so we tend to travel together much more often. Before owning a place in Hawaii I visited once every few years. Now I go once every few months, almost always with at least one of the other owners.

Once we arrived in the apartment, everything was just as we left it. I changed into my linen Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, both of which sit in a plastic bin under one of the beds. I took out my set of sheets and made up one of the beds. Unlike an unfamiliar apartment or AirBnb, I feel like I’m home.

The next day we went and had poke at Poke Market, which I think may literally be the best poke in the world. We eat lunch there every single day, so we know the owner and all of the employees. We chat with them for a while and catch up on the latest Hilo news. Even though we don’t live there full time, we’re regulars and have made friends all around the city. When we leave people don’t ask when we’re coming back, they ask how long we’re leaving for. Besides getting to see friendly faces immediately, we don’t have to waste any time figuring out where to eat. We still try new restaurants all the time, but we have our default routine.

After Poke Market we go get shave ice at Kula Shave Ice, which is one of the best shave ice places in the world. They have lots of employees so we don’t know them all, but we’ve become friends with the owner. I ask her about some sesame oreo ice cream she had on her instagram a few months ago and she says she’ll try to make some before we leave. From Kula it’s a two minute walk to Nautilus Dive Shop, a really cool mom and pop dive shop. I actually learned to scuba dive there 20 years ago. We ask about the conditions and get some advice on when to dive. They found a GoPro underwater, so they give it to me to charge for them to see if they can look through the pictures to figure out whose it is.

We end up not diving that day, but instead dive a few days later. We have three sets of scuba gear in a closet, so we don’t have to pay to rent anything except for an air tank. We just load our plastic bins into the van and head to the beach. Sometimes it’s amazing and we see really cool stuff, other times it’s just a relaxing hour underwater with the usual fish and sea life. But for $8 and no hassle, we may as well go whenever we want. I brought a diving compass this trip so we explore a few hundred feet beyond our usual underwater landmarks. If we were renting and going on vacation, we would have to rent all of the gear and go with a diving company. If we didn’t see amazing fish we might feel like it was a waste of money.

In the afternoons we might go for a little hike or something, but we’re also happy to just stay at the apartment. It’s equipped pretty well for us to work, and because we know we’ll be back dozens or maybe hundreds of times in our lives, there’s no pressure to be doing tourist stuff all the time. Some days we just sit around and drink tea and chat, taking breaks to play VR together.

We also spent a good day or so improving the apartment. Our living room use to be pretty spartan and had one awful light mounted to a noisy old ceiling fan. We replaced the ceiling fan, got end tables and lamps, some decorative pillows, and a couple poufs for extra seating. Now the living room feels great and I noticed that we congregated and spent more time there than usual trips. It was fun to permanently improve our apartment and was very inexpensive for all of us because we shared the cost six ways. I also got really bad allergies at the apartment so I got a HEPA filter and started running it. I was skeptical, but it solved my allergies completely! I don’t think I could count on an Airbnb to have an air filter.

I left tonight, but one friend is leaving tomorrow and another friend is staying for almost an extra week. It’s impossible (or at least expensive) to have that kind of flexibility if it’s not your own place.

Even leaving is easier. I just put my stuff back in my little bin and lock the door behind me. If this was a once-in-a-lifetime Hawaii trip, maybe I’d be sad that I was leaving or be disappointed that I didn’t pack every single day full. Instead I just feel grateful for my trip and look forward to doing even more next time.

I hope this post gives a glimpse into why it’s so great to own properties with your friends. You can’t just do the math and decide that AirBnB is a little bit cheaper and easier. Those things are true, but it’s such a different and better way to spend time in different places that there’s really no comparison.

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By the way, people always ask me to write a book on how to buy properties with friends. I doubt I’ll write a book, but I think I will do a YouTube Live and talk about it and answer questions. If that’s something you’re interested in, let me know.

I did a podcast interview that was just released a couple days ago. Check it out!

In particular I had a very tough time sticking with projects. I would start one project, get bored or frustrated or distracted, and switch to a different one. I was only able to change my behavior when I had a few key realizations:

1. If you always switch projects, you will never finish a project, and thus never receive the rewards of that project. This is incredibly obvious, but never comes to mind when we’re thinking about giving up on a project. This doesn’t mean that it’s always best to stick with every project, but it does mean that you have to have some ability to finish a project.

2. When I want to quit a project, it’s usually because I’ve experienced most of the downsides and none of the upsides. If I’m halfway through a programming project I’ve done a lot of work, have probably experienced a bunch of frustration, still have some outstanding issues to deal with, and haven’t made a single customer happy or received a single penny. It’s important to recognize that this is exactly the wrong position from which you should make a decision.

You must also realize that you are comparing apples to oranges. We never know all of the obstacles or downsides of a new project, so we are comparing reality with fantasy. That’s not a fair comparison.

3. Completing one project makes it more likely that you can complete another project. Quitting early makes it more likely that you’ll quit likely next time. For that reason, we should bias ourselves towards completion, all other things being equal.

Once I had these three realizations I began to stick to things. My simple rule was that I finish what I start, no matter what. This sounds simple, but it has some big implications.

Most important, it means that I have to be very careful about what I start and that I need to know where my stopping point is. If I know that I will finish everything I start, I am much more diligent about making sure it’s a good idea and I think more about what might be difficult or unpleasant about the project.

The stopping point that I choose isn’t a final destination, but rather a waypoint where I get to decide whether to keep going or not. I always tie it to a time where I will have received some benefit for my efforts and can see the beginnings of real success. For example, if I were to start a business, I would say that I can stop once I get ten customers. That means that I have to do the work of building the product and sharing it with other people, but if I start receiving that success and don’t think that it’s the best thing for me to do, I can still quit.

For a long time, I considered my primary identity to be an “executor”. Not the guys who work the gallows, but someone who just got things done. I looked for evidence that I was an executor, like getting a lot of tasks done in a day, and when I fell short of that level I reminded myself that I was an executor, so I should just keep executing. It’s easy (and seductive) to get attached to an identity of a dilettante, but it’s better to think of yourself as someone who sees things through to the end, and to try your best to live up to that identity.

Last, think about people you admire who had the kind of success that you’d like to have. How many of them chose projects and saw them through to the end? How many of them hopped from project to project, giving up when they faced resistance? I always find it hard to think of even one person who is the former.

Having the ability to stick to one thing and see it through to the end is a valuable, and maybe even necessary, skill for reaching your goals. First understand and convince yourself why it is important to see things through to the end, understand the pitfalls that will lay in your path, and adopt the identity of someone who sticks to things.

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Photo is some crazy pelicans we saw in Cabo.

I did a live YouTube “office hours” with my friend Noah Kagan. It was so much fun. Should I do one for my readers too?

This year’s gear post isn’t all that different from last year’s (can you guess why?) but there are enough new cool things that I think it’s worth doing one. Hopefully travel becomes a little more normal in 2021 and I have the opportunity to test out some more gear.

Wool and Prince Button Down

I’ve talked about this button down for who knows how many years now, and I still love it just as much. I still haven’t replaced the shirt that I bought two years ago, though a lack of travel this year definitely contributed to not needing to replace it.

For those who haven’t read my gear post before, I love this shirt because it looks great, is durable, and is very comfortable. And, of course, it’s made out wool.

Buy at Wool and Prince

Wool and Prince V-Neck T-Shirt

I also didn’t replace my V-neck this year, because it has held up pretty well. It didn’t fade as much as my previous one did, although the neckline is a little bit less crisp than it was previously.

Buy at Amazon

Wool and Prince Pants

I’ve now been wearing these pants for over a year and they still look exactly as they did new, no signs of fading or ripping in any way. Pretty amazing, because my pants definitely get the most wear and tear of any of my clothing. I also ordered some new jeans from Wool and Prince, but I lost so much weight during Covid that they don’t fit! I didn’t get the smaller ones back in time to test, but I loved the feel of the fabric. They are a lower percentage wool than the pants above, so I’m not sure how their performance will be. I also got the sweatpants from Wool and Prince and I LOVE them and wear them every day at home, but they’re probably too casual to make it into my travel bag.

Buy at Wool and Prince

Rip Curl Global Entry Boardwalk Shorts

Who would have thought that I’d recommend something from Rip Curl? I’ve been unhappy about short selectiosn for a long time, and finally started looking into shorts that could also function as a bathing suit since I don’t swim all that much. I searched for shorts that would dry quickly, be long enough to pass as normal shorts, and have enough pockets to be useful. The Global Entry Boardwalk fits the bill and works surprisingly well. The design is extremely thoughtful, with lots of hidden perforations to drain water. Pictured are a slightly worse/shorter version that I bought in the airport on the way here because I forgot mine at home and wanted something for the photo.

Buy at Amazon

Icebreaker Anatomica Briefs

These are the briefs that I’ve been wearing for years (two new pairs every year or so) and I don’t see how they could really be any better. That said, I’d definitely try a pair made by Wool and Prince if they started making them.

Buy at Amazon

Montbell Plasma 1000 Jacket (Japanese Version)

Once again, the king of warmth to weight reigns supreme. This jacket has lasted for many years now, is nice and warm, and looks ok. If you buy it in Japan it will have pockets, but if you buy it in the US it won’t.

Buy at Montbell or in Japan

Arcteryx Norvan SL Hoody

I loved the idea of the windbreakr as a shell until I found myself running through a storm in Riga, soaking wet, desperately trying to find a working ATM so that I could get cash to get to the airport.

After a ton of research, this seemed to be the lightest shell (4.4oz) that isn’t specifically meant for road biking. It’s not as tiny as my non-waterproof windbreaker from last year, but it’s fully waterproof and dries very quickly. The fit is perfect. Online people talk about how it’s so fragile that you can’t use it with a backpack, but that hasn’t been my experience.

I’ve now had this shell for over a year and it shows no sign of wear.

Buy from Amazon

Crocs LiteRide Pacer

Finally the ultimate shoe has been created, and against all odds it’s made by Crocs. I actually like the normal slip-on ones better, but they don’t look amazing and I hear about it constantly from friends and family. These sneakers look pretty normal, especially in the all black configuration. The reason I love Crocs is because they’re durable, easy to wash, and don’t need to be worn with socks.

Buy at Amazon

Roav Eyewear Lennox Sunglasses

These sunglasses are still kicking and despite being forgotten in my pockets many times they still look brand new. They’re polarized, look cool, and fold into the smallest package you can imagine sunglasses folding into.

Buy at ROAV

Breitling Transocean Unitime Watch

As far as I know, this is the only mechanical watch that can show all 24 time zones and can switch between them with a twist of the crown edit: reader Matthew Dawn sent me examples of other (expensive) watches that also do this. It’s a little bit big for my wrist, but worth it to easily be able to see all of the time zones at once. If smart watches didn’t have to be recharged constantly I might switch to one, but I love mechanical watches and am happy to wear this one.

As I mentioned last year, a more budget version is the Omega Seamaster GMT, though there are a few Breitlings that are around $3500 with a leather band or $4500 with a metal band.

Buy on ebay

Minaal Daily Backpack

I’ve had this backpack for four years now and it looks as good as it idid when it was new. I occasionally look around at other backpacks, but I’ve never found one that is so well built and looks so clean. The size is just about perfect for the kind of travel I do— I usually travel with it about 1/3 empty which makes it very easy to reach around and find stuff, but leaves enough room that if I buy a bunch of tea (or, say, want to carry an Oculus Quest to Christmas so that my family can try it) I have room.

Buy at Minaal

Sonicare Qi Toothbrush

Unfortunately these are essentially impossible to find these days. I have no idea why they stopped making Qi compatible toothbrushes and went back to their proprietary standard. I love this toothbrush because it’s the best quality electric toothbrush and I can charge it on any qi charger, including the back of my phone. I wish I had an alternative to recommend but I don’t.

Toiletries

Despite the fact that it’s for animals, the Wahl Professional Animal Super Pocket Pro Trimmer (quite a name) is the best travel shaver. It runs off a single AA battery and, unlike the ones meant for humans, has an adjustable guard. It’s definitely not as good as a full sized trimmer, but it gets the job done.

The nail clippers are my trusty Henckels Ultra-Slim Nail Clippers. This is the same pair I’ve had for six years and they’re still just as sharp and effective as ever.

The scissors are Tweezerman GEAR Scissors. I think that I actually bought some fancier Dovo Solingen ones when I thought I lost these, but to be honest I can’t tell the difference fram a practical standpoint, so it’s better to just buy these.

Keith Titanium Travel Tea Set

I’ve now been using this tea set for over two years and I love it. It’s an absolute dream for a tea lover and it allows me to make perfect Chinese tea anywhere I go. I ended up buying an extra cup that I travel with sometimes so that I can make four cups, and I modified it by anodizing the titanium and cutting off the handle of the fairness pitcher. The titanium imparts no flavor and is virtually indestructible. If you love tea and you travel, you should have this.

Buy at Outdoor Player (available elsewhere, but always more expensive)

Kanpai Titanium 350 Thermos and 3D Printed Tea Containers

This is the lightest double wall water bottle you can get. I love the extra-wide mouth and the no-taper design that makes it easy to clean and to store things inside. It comes with three tops but I just use the hot water one. It’s absolitely perfect for keeping boiled water in.

As soon as I got my 3D printer I designed and printed a set of stacking tea containers designed to take up about 95% of the interior volume. I can now hold 50% more tea than I could before. If you want the STL files to print this, you can email me (I’m still iterating). They were hard for me to make, especially because they were the first time I tried to make screw threads, which took a lot of trial and error.

Buy at Amazon

300W Immersion Water Heater

I’m still using this immersion heater with a slightly obnoxiously large switch, but it’s worth it for the convenience of not having to unplug in between water boilings and for the faster boiling speed.

In case it’s not obvious, I put this in the Kanpai Thermos and use it to boil water. Often I’ll put the top on and wait until I’m in the air before I make my tea. You can also ask for hot water on the airplane, but it’s sometimes not very good.

Buy at Amazon

Packtowl

They don’t seem to make this size anymore, which is 12×22 edit: Patreon supporter Alexandra found the 12×22 version! It’s the perfect size because it’s very compact but just big enough to dry your entire body if you somehow don’t have a regular bath towel wherever you’re staying. I can’t find anything else that’s the same size, which is frustrating. Usually I use it as a base for brewing tea. I’m tempted to get the small 10×14 inch one to replace it (the snap pulled off so it’s harder to keep compact) but wouldn’t look forward to drying off with such a tiny towel. The one I linked below is the closest size I could find that looked decent.

Buy at Amazon

Carbon Fiber Money Clip

I still have my rather expensive Koolstof carbon fiber money clip, but there are cheaper options on Amazon now that seem to be identical, so I’m linking one of those instead. I can’t imagine why someone would use any wallet other than this. It’s super compact and light, doesn’t set off the metal detector, and is very easy to use. Mine has retained its springiness for many years now.

Buy at Amazon

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Phone

I expected this to be an incremental rather than revolutionary upgrade from my Note 10 Plus, but I chose to upgrade because Samsung had a good sale and was offering a high value for my Note 10 Plus even though the back of it was cracked. And while most of the phone is an incremental improvement, the camera is a huge level up.

I never see this discussed anywhere else, but the sensor size of the new camera is 1/1.33″, which in the range of good quality standalone cameras. A larger sensor allows for better low light shots as well as shallower depth of field. The sensor is 108MP but binned down to 12MP. This upgrade has moved the photos of the phone from “Good for a phone” to “Good”.

The camera also has a 5x optical zoom that can combine data from the main sensor for zoom up to 50X. Photos are totally usable up to about 20-25X and quality degrades pretty quickly after that. However, check out this photo I took of the moon at 50X!

It has its issues, but I doubt most people know that you can take a handheld photo from a phone and see individual craters on the moon.

The wide angle camera is good too, but not much different from other wide angle cameras.

This is the first phone I’ve had that has 5G and I have to admit that it very rarely makes a difference. By the time I write the next gear post it’s possible the infrastructure will have caught up and it actually matters, but for now I wouldn’t pay extra for a 5G phone.

I use T-Mobile service with the Global Plus add-on, which gives me free LTE everywhere. I happened to add it on during the <7 days where it offered unlimited LTE rather than a 15GB cap. Project Fi can be a bit cheaper, but T-Mobile includes free voice calls to and from every country with Global Plus, and I’ll definitely get a lot of use out of that.

Buy at Amazon

Lenovo X1 Carbon (Japanese Version)

I still have the 5th generation, but I am waiting to be able to go back to Japan to buy the Nano (a slightly smaller and lighter version). The X1 is very high performance, has an LTE sim slot, has a trackpoint, an excellent screen, the best keyboard, and plenty of other benefits.

The port selection on the computer is perfect (2 USB A, 2 USB C, HDMI) and I love that it has a microsd and sim slot. The only non-perfect thing is that the speakers are pretty terrible, but I understand that they are good in newer versions and in the nano.

I always buy Japanese keyboard laptops because I get extra keys that I can remap. I can’t imagine a better setup than this, except for a speaker upgrade.

The new 7th generation has processors that are twice as fast as the one I have now, even higher res screens, and speakers that are actually good. I’ll upgrade before the next gear post.

Buy at Lenovo Japan (good luck)

CARD Travel Adapter 4-Pro

I still love this adapter. It has eliminated 3-4 other items and actually performs many of their functions better.

First, it’s a 45W PD USB-C charger, which charges my laptop and my phone. It also has three extra USB-A sockets, so you don’t need a separate USB charger. On the back side it has three different plugs that adapt to fit every country, so you no longer need a travel adapter. And the socket on the front can accept any plug as an input, so it’s an anything to anything adapter. Plus that socket is always empty, so the device also serves as a power splitter.

As far as I know there’s no other device like this. There is a new charging technology called Gallium Nitride (GaN) that can make chargers much smaller, but even the smallest plus the smallest accompanying accessories isn’t smaller than this. I do hope they remake it wih GaN.

Two hidden benefits to this are first that it’s much harder to lose than a travel adapter, and second that the European plugs stick better in a lot of airplane sockets. On the back it has a cover that holds a spare fuse. I threw it away to make the unit smaller and easier to use.

Buy at Amazon

Hokonui Q5 10000mAh Power Bank

I spent an embarassing amount of time finding the lightest 10k mAh wireless power bank, and I think this is it. I bought a few other bigger ones this year and each time went back to the Hokonui

It works as it should and has a cool pull-out phone stand that I actually use quite a bit. The only downside is that it doesn’t seem to do well with low power qi devices. I couldn’t get it to charge my toothbrush.

Buy at Amazon (out of stock)

Sony WF-1000XM3 Active Noise Canceling Earbuds

After many years, I finally left my headphones at a TSA checkpoint and lost them. I eventually got them back, but in the meantime I took the opportunity to buy a bunch of true wireless active noise cancellation headphones. I assumed that they wouldn’t block more noise than my custom in-ear monit

ors from 1964 Ears, but wanted to try anyway. At first I was proven right. The Sennheiser, Panasonic, and Technics earbuds all had really good sound quality but such poor noise cancellation that I couldn’t reliably guess when it was on or off, even on a plane. My last pair to test was the Sony set and I was blown away at how well they block sound.

They are comfortable, though not nearly as comfortable as the custom in ear monitors. The battery life is good, the sound quality is very good, and the ANC is great. I still carry my custom IEMs in my bag and haven’t decided which will ultimately win the battle, but if I were just going off value, the Sony’s are an easy win.

Buy at Amazon

Cables

Here’s my collection of cables. The first is a very thin HDMI cable. I’ve had mine forever, but I think it will probably be taken out of my bag soon because I rarely use it. The car adapter is such a genius invention that I have no idea why it was discontinued. It’s flat and compact and puts out 2.4A. I hope I never lose it. The third cable is just a random USB to micro / C cable.

Incense Holder

During a two or three hour tea session in Shanghai the girl making the tea handed me a long thin wooden box and told me to try to open it. It took a couple tries, but when I got it open I saw that it wasns’t just a puzzle box, it was an incense holder. I bought it, not because I ever burn incense, but because it was such a cool little box. Fast forward a year or two later and now I’m really into incense and carry the incense holder around everywhere. I didn’t think that I liked incense all that much, but through some experimentation I found Jnkoh Juzan, which smells amazing.

I don’t know how you can find the incense holder, unfortunately.

Bolt Lighter

To make the incense easy to light while traveling I bought a Bolt USB cigarette lighter. It’s rechargeable by USB, works pretty well, and is nice and compact.

Buy at Amazon

KeySmart SC1 AirKeys

With all of our shared properties around the world I’ve ended up with a decent collection of keys. In some places we have key lockers or electronic locks, but I like to have physical keys just in case. They were starting to get a bit heavy so I replaced all of them with aluminum keys, which are far lighter. Do I really notice the difference in my backpack? Not really, but every little bit adds up. You can get these at Home Depot or Lowes and the MinuteKey kiosks in some of those stores also have some aluminum keys.

Bonus – Oculus Quest 2

I don’t really think I’ll still be carrying this a year from now, but for the past few trips I’ve brought my Oculus Quest 2 along with me on trips and I love having it. I’ve played Walkabout Minigolf and Population One at the gate during a layover and Tetris Effect and Pixel Ripped 1995 on the plane. Tetris in VR on a plane is a really great way to make the hours go by. I also experimented with watching TV shows on the plane in VR and it’s a pretty wild experience to feel like you have a whole theater to yourself.

I forgot to get a photo of the oculus, so instead I have a photo of me playing Population One at a gate.

Buy at Amazon

Summary

There were only 3-4 changes this year, but that probably means that next year will have more, as there will be more options for upgrades when I start packing and looking for improvements. I also have a few ideas for 3D printed things that could make life a little bit easier. I’m glad that this year I switched from a rather niche headphone to an inexpensive one. Usually my gear post gets a little less practical for the average traveler each year.

Using money for stability enables you to decouple your lifestyle from your income and expenses. If you make $1000 per month and require exactly $1000 per month to live, you probably have very little stability. Even one unpaid day off would throw your month into chaos, as would a small unexpected expense. Building up a buffer of savings allows you to be unaffected by such things, as does having an income that is several times greater than your expenses.

Utility is simply converting your money into something that provides a benefit. Buying food counts as utility as does giving a gift or renting a car.

If someone derives a lot of stability and utility from their money, they are set! These two elements alone create a good personal finance ecosystem. Focus on them when allocating your money.

Once you can provide yourself with the basics like shelter and food, you should focus primarily on stability. When I moved into my RV (shelter) and had enough passive income for food, I immediately shifted my priorities towards stability rather than excess utility. Many people have never truly felt financial stability, so they don’t understand how beneficial it is.

One way to think is: “For how long can I sustain my current level of utility under worst-possible-case conditions”. The pandemic has provided a reasonable benchmark. I would focus on getting this duration to at least a year before focusing seriously on increased utility. Beyond a year is still valuable but it feels more abstract, as anyone who is capable of saving up a year of expenses is also probably capable of figuring out how to earn more money within a year.

Thanks to advertising it’s very easy to imagine the benefit of buying an iPhone (though it may not be as big a benefit as is promised), but it can be hard to imagine the benefit of two more weeks of financial buffer. For that reason, this initial push towards stability can be challenging for a lot of people. It’s tempting to just buy stuff.

Once you get to more than one year of buffer, you can consider allocating additional savings to utility. Wait until the money is in the bank, though. Don’t finance something and use future earnings to pay for it, as that decreases your stability significantly.

Let’s say that you save up a year of expenses and have an extra $10,000 in the bank. I would next consider how I could convert that money to the most utility over my lifetime. We’re all different, but good uses for me have been trips with friends (memories and bonds that last a lifetime) and shared properties with friends.

A good starting point to figuring out what these things are is to think back over the past five years and thank about which experiences or memories have made you most grateful. For me the list is almost entirely quality experiences with people I care about, so I try to spend money in ways that generate more of those things.

I find that most people end up spending on utility they don’t care about. They buy a car for $30,000 that gives them 1.2 imaginary units of utility versus a $5,000 car that gives them 1 imaginary unit of utility. These purchases are usually because people don’t think much about what actually gives them satisfaction, and instead they look to society, the media, or advertising for clues.

If you spend efficiently on utility, you will probably find that continued stability is easy. When you are getting a lot back from every dollar you spend, you don’t need to spend as much, and you are more motivated to invest in stability to keep the things you have. When you spend money and don’t get much back, you feel like you have to spend more to fill the void.

Stability for you may be two months or it might be several years. Utility might be the same sorts of things that provide me with utility, or it may be a wood shop in the backwoods. The particulars don’t really matter as much as the general concepts. Understand how money can benefit you the most and focus on those things.

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Photo is Liliuokalani gandens in Hilo. I took a walk there yesterday and even in the rain it was really peaceful and pleasant. Feels great to be back in Hawaii after 8 months!

In some ways I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve liked not traveling. Or, rather, I think that my lifestyle of nearly constant travel caused me to forget about the benefits of staying still. Staying in Vegas I’ve enjoyed seeing the seasons change, connecting a little bit more with local people, having a rock-solid routine, and doing projects that require longer sustained periods of time.

That said, I have of course been dying to travel.

The first thing that surprised me was what a big deal it felt like to travel. Before COVID I would go all over the place with very little planning, but planning a 3 day trip to Mexico felt like a big deal. It gave me a little glimpse of how most people think of trips as “big deals”.

Once I got on the plane, though, it felt normal again. I was practically giddy going through immigration and customs, which is certainly not how I normally feel about the process.

I was surprised at how quickly my Spanish came back to me and how much fun it was to speak it. I probably hadn’t been to a Spanish speaking country in over a year, so it was like this portion of my brain got to wake back up.

The biggest thing I felt, though, was that my world was so small without travel. I felt like I had been cooped up in a bedroom for seven months and was only now allowed to walk around the whole house. Saying that my world felt small sounds like a bad thing, but it isn’t entirely bad. I think I got to know Vegas and the people and things in it better because I was there for so long.

In a normal year I fly between my usual places: Tokyo, Budapest, Hawaii, Vegas, Halifax, a few other places where I don’t have homes like London, New York, and Chengdu, and some random one-off places. Throughout the year I see all of my friends, most of whom don’t live in Vegas. I see all of the seasons, usually multiple times and in a weird staggered order, I visit many of my family members a few times per year, and I see pretty every climate.

A few days before I went to Mexico I realized I hadn’t seen rain in months. I’m not necessarily someone who craves a lot of rain, but I found myself yearning to sit at the window seat in Zhao Zhou, looking out over a rainy Budapest.

While I didn’t take the privilege of getting to travel all the time for granted, I took a lot of these little details for granted. You don’t crave rain until you don’t see it for months, and you don’t miss your friends until you don’t see them for a while, either.

I don’t see myself doing a lot of international travel in the near future, mainly because the borders are closed everywhere I would normally go. But this one little international trip helped remind me what I’m missing out on and how eager I am to be able to expand my world again. It also helped me appreciate even more just how great I had it when I was flying around several times a month, and will hopefully make me even more grateful for it when it comes back.

Oh, and I lost my earphones going through security, which I think is the first time I’ve ever lost anything going through security. I guess you do lose it if you don’t use it.

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Photo is the Parochia in San Miguel de Allende. I flew my drone really far there.

About a year ago I realized that you could ski in Las Vegas. I hadn’t thought to look before, for obvious reasons. Skiing was a ton of fun, especially with my wife and friends, and it actually increased how much I like Vegas by a couple percentage points.

That realization made me think about what other things Las Vegas might offer that I’ve never even thought about, especially outdoors things. People who live in Las Vegas often say that the nature is their favorite aspect, which was totally counterintuitive to me at first. I spend all of my working time indoors, so it makes sense to look for outdoor activities for recreation.

The big obvious attraction is Lake Mead. You always hear people talk about it and you see it from above on certain flights. It looks amazing and unlike any other lake I’ve ever seen. I searched and the marina is under an hour away from my house.

I don’t really care about waterskiing or even swimming, but I do like being on boats. My cousins have a nice boat in Vermont and when we go up there they just blast the boat out into the middle of the lake, cruise around, and then drift somewhere while we hang out on the water. The best time to go is sunset. If I had a boat, I would love to just cruise out there and relax on the water.

On a lark I looked up scuba diving in the lake and it turns out you can also do some pretty cool wreck dives there, including one of a B-29 airplane (though it’s temporarily prohibited). My wife is a diver too, so maybe it would be fun to go out there and dive.

I knew nothing about boats, but after a day or two of research with few constraints I learned a lot about them. At first I thought my ideal boat was a pontoon boat, since I don’t care about water skiing. Then I found deck boats, which are sort of like speed boats with tons of open seating on the top. I found cuddy cabin boats, which are like speedboats with a tiny cabin in the front. I liked the idea of being able to sleep on the boat, but the cabins looked pretty miserable and I figured that maybe I would never actually use it.

Then I found a 2003 Bayliner 285 for sale and fell in love. It’s a 30′ boat which has a full cabin downstairs, like a miniature yacht. It has two beds, a dinette that turns into another bed, a small kitchen, and a full bathroom. Upstairs it has two decks that you can hang out on, and on the back it has a huge swim platform.

It’s also just about the biggest boat that still has a single engine, which is good for maintenance and fuel economy. The big question mark in my mind is currently fuel economy. I’ve done some research and found that it only gets 2mpg, but I think the distances I would travel on the water are pretty small. I’ll have to figure out where the good spots on the lake are and how much it costs to get to them.

The boat only costs $25,000, which is surprising to me. It looks like it’s worth four times that. From what I understand, I should budget another $5000-7500 for the first year or two for maintenance, and then expect fewer expenses in the future.

Of course, my plan is to split the boat 2-4 ways to make it very inexpensive to own and maintain. Who wouldn’t want to pay ~$7k to own a little yacht on Lake Mead and get to take it out whenever they want? I’m looking forward to spending time out there swimming, reading, working, and maybe even scuba diving.

—

I wrote that before ever looking at a boat or visiting Lake Mead. Shortly afterwards I checked out the boat I mentioned and while I loved it, it was in really rough shape and wouldn’t even start. Just going to the marina and seeing the boats out there made me sure that I’d buy a boat, though, so I got a friend to split one with me and kept looking. We had an agreement to buy a Larson Cabrio 274, but then the sellers backed out on closing day. The marina was facilitating the sale and were embarrassed, so they offered us the same price on a much better boat that they had received in a trade-in. It’s a Cruisers 280CXI and we absolutely love it.

It’s funny reading the post above because I wrote it less than a week after having the idea of buying a boat, and it all turned out to be true, except it turns out I enjoy swimming in the lake a lot more than I expected I would. My favorite thing is to go out with my wife and/or friends, swim around in the middle of the lake and then cook some burgers on the grill as we drift. We’ve also done a few overnight trips at the beaches on the other side of the lake.

I’m not sure if this post is very interesting, but at the time of writing it I thought it might be as I don’t usually capture my mindset before a big unusual purchase / activity. I could easily keep writing and talk about boating all day, but I’ll save that for another post.

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Picture is us pulling up at one of the beaches last year. It’s too bad the lake is closed for coronavirus because I’d love to be out there more!

My latest coronavirus obsession is 3D printing. I’ll write about it soon.

One of the biggest challenges in Tokyo is that you must buy a vacant apartment. An apartment that is occupied may take years to vacate, as apparently renters are entitled to renew their leases with no price increase. If you want them to leave or even to increase their rent, they must agree to it.

Location in Tokyo is not as simple as finding the center of the city and trying to get as close as possible. The ideal situation is to get an apartment that is a short walking distance away from a station that hosts lines that provide good coverage.

Last, most apartments in our price range (around $100k US) were not only small but only really had one room. I felt strongly that we would want to have two rooms so that two groups or individuals could each have a little privacy.

Over the past few years I’ve tried to put an offer in on about 5-7 places. Each time there was some reason it couldn’t work. Sometimes it was already sold, other times it was a price error, other times the land was leased.

Two months ago I found a place that seemed to meet all of the criteria. It had two small rooms, was only a five minute walk from Nakano-sakaue station, which has two excellent train lines going to it, was vacant, and looked good. I put in an offer and sent the deposit immediately upon acceptance, before even getting friends onboard. I then flew to Tokyo to check it out and found that it was even better than I had hoped. The rooms didn’t feel as small as I thought they would, its immediate neighborhood was very nice and had good restaurants and stores nearby. We even have a small balcony that overlooks the Shinjuku cityscape.

Next week I’ll be flying in to get the keys and set up the apartment, which I’m very excited about. I’ve been staying with the same friend since I started spending time in Tokyo 12 years ago, so it will be a pretty weird adjustment to have my own place in a slightly different neighborhood. I usually spend most of my time in Shibuya, which is still an easy 15 minute train journey away, but will probably spend more time in Shinjuku since it’s within walking distance.

Done with Real Estate

Besides my place in Vegas, I now share four properties with friends: The Island, Budapest, Hawaii, and now Tokyo. I’m done! I think five places is on the upper end of ideal, and having any more may be net negatives as they would probably siphon time away from the existing places. Two other people own every single property I have (including their own places in Vegas), one more has all non-vegas apartments, and then the rest have one or two.

My total outlay for every single property, including Vegas, was just under $100k. Not bad for one home, an island, and three vacation homes! In fact, if you amortize this amount over the six years I’ve been buying these properties, the average monthly cost was less than $1400, which is right in the range of what a lot of people pay for a mortgage or rent. I love how having all these properties seems so extravagant, but it’s actually much more financially effective than what most people do.

Now that I’m done looking for properties, my goal is to work on the existing ones to make them all extremely nice. Vegas is done, Hawaii is pretty much done, but the others need work. We did a renovation in Budapest but still need to get nice furnture, and Japan is obviously just an empty box at this point. The island will never actually be done, but there’s a lot of high-leverage stuff we can do there.

Sharing these properties still remains far better than owning them individually. Last month my wife and I visited Hawaii and got to enjoy some small improvements that the previous visitor had made. After us another friend showed up, found out that our car inspection wasn’t current and dealt with it.

It’s hard to explain exactly how owning with friends is better than any alternative (renting alone, renting with friends, owning alone), but it really is the best. It’s nice to have so many people caring about the place long-term and to have the continuity of always staying in the same place and having your stuff there.

To date we’ve had exactly zero conflicts on any of the properties, unless you count a fairly heated debate on whether or not we should have a goat at the island. Besides new friendships with locals everywhere, co-owning these places has strengthened and created friendships between owners, which is sort of the point.

You Should Really Try This

I’m a little bit amazed that no one else has done this. My other wacky ideas like living in an RV and being a professional gambler got adopted by a lot of people, but I haven’t heard of a single other person who has bought a property like this with their friends. Maybe it seems like a big deal so people are daunted by it? Or maybe it’s even rarer than I think it is to have such an awesome group of open-minded friends?

Either way, it’s worth investigating. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to find good apartments for around $100k, and at that price point it can make sense for a lot of people.

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Photo is a shrine we pass walking from our apartment to Shinjuku.

Superhuman 4 is now full and has a small waiting list. If you would like to be added to the waiting list, please let me know.