First off, let me begin this by writing “My Bad.”
I have been at my current place of employment for thirteen
long years, during which time most of those who were older than me when I started have now retired or soon will.
One by one, they have been replaced by Millennials with few
exceptions.
One of those Millennials is now my boss, but this is not about
him.
This is about an extremely tech-savvy Millennial whose face
I would have loved to punch on more than one occasion.
He has made numerous remarks to me over the three years that he has been with our employer that would be characterized by an overly sensitive college student as microaggressions.
Chastising me for allowing the department’s iPad to get down
to 60% after a long night meeting (really?!), asking when I was going to bring
in treats one day while I was enjoying treats brought in by someone else,
telling me that he did not know or care where a certain item was that I needed
and he was generally in charge of.
He used to make wisecracks about the beater of a car that I drove for several years in an effort to be frugal while paying nearly three grand per month for our son's college, saving for our daughter's, and Paying Ourselves First around $1,300 to $1,700 per month.
You know, microaggressions too small to really bother me all
that much, but enough that I sometimes fantasized about running into him on the
street on a dark night years from now when a simple assault or battery case may
not cost me my job. Especially
considering all that I have done for our community while he has contributed
little to nothing besides mapping out single family lots.
 |
| He made fun of my old Subaru wagon 🙁 |
Speaking of mapping things out, his position involves GIS,
or geographic information systems if you are unfamiliar with the term.
Those who deal in GIS typically think that it is the most
important thing in the organization, much as the cops think that policing is
the most important aspect, public work personnel believe that theirs is the
most important and I consider economic development to be the most important
aspect of a community.
Because of reasons that I do not care to elaborate upon and
that you would not care to read about, the person who had been in charge of
this guy for the past three years no longer is and this Millennial is now
the go-to GIS guy in town.
As such, I was forced to coordinate something with him this past week.
The forty hours or so that I worked last week were jam packed with meetings, conference calls, reports, emails and the
like. Some of it was good, much of it
was bad and there were a few things that were downright ugly.
One of those ugly things entailed the Powers That Be
deciding to require a business plan from a young entrepreneur who I have been
assisting for the past six months.
Mind you, they have not typically requested one of
petitioners before them, but on a whim they did this time. Which brings Yours Truly to be helping this
young guy who will be launching an Indian restaurant to create a business plan,
which should include several demographics report.
I could bore you and I to tears with every detail, but the
short of it is that I asked to meet with the young Millennial GIS guy whom I had only spoken directly with for a total of perhaps ten minutes in three years beyond
his snarky remarks that I never responded to.
When I got closer to being less financial dependent and
pulling the IMRF plug, I was probably going to give it back to him and a few
other folks too.
Despite a few complaints about being transferred to a
different department last year and being assigned to a Millennial boss who
treats economic development much the same way a bull would treat a China shop, my boss and I have become fairly close over the past year.
My boss has big clout in the community and, because of the way our
community is run, a positive word from me about someone tends to go a long
way. Especially as I describe their
contribution to a project or their courteous and professional manner of doing so.
On the flipside, when I tell him of something that I hear on
the negative side, he is no wilting flower who will not act upon it. He can bring the hammer down swiftly and you
do not want to be the one being hammered.
Of course I hope that it never comes to that in my case, but I do not
plan for it to.
I have been a good worker bee for a quarter century and can remain one for seven more years or longer if need be.
I mention it because if this particular guy gave me a hard
time or was reluctant to help or made another snarky remark, I again would not
have replied but now that I am so close to the second-in-command and use his
name freely, I receive more respect in turn.
Also, my boss is the one who obviously should be and probably will be
the first in command, but nobody is supposed to say that out loud.
I have been a good worker bee for a quarter century and can remain one for seven more years or longer if need be.
 |
| I've been a good worker bee. |
So did this kid remark upon my ignorance of GIS? Did he say something snarky or make an excuse not to meet with me or help me?
Quite the opposite.
What he did was impress the hell out of me and I went from
wanting to punch this kid in the face to wanting to hire him or at least
interview him on a podcast some time.
First, I must report that he was well beyond helpful with my
project, going so far as to set up a GIS account for me and writing out
step-by-step instructions on how to use it.
He also generated the report that I needed prior to doing that.
Worthy of its own post or perhaps a chapter in my “someday”
economic development tome, GIS has hundreds or perhaps thousands of
applications including numerous ones related to the field of economic development. I now have unfettered use of the technology.
Truthfully, I am not sure how this happens, but I often end
up talking about finances with people.
It does not matter if we are meeting to discuss opening a coffee shop, a
fifty million dollar industrial project or subdividing a ten-acre lot into
thirty home sites. It also does not
matter if you run in to me in my neighborhood while I am walking with my baby
or meeting me at the beach or going on a double date with me and my wife. Eventually, we’ll start chatting about
finances.
It was no different with my meeting with the GIS Millennial.
I imparted my typical wisdom, which is to tell folks to Pay Yourself First. Not only does this kid pay himself first with every paycheck, he maxes out his Roth IRA with $5,500 per year and has done so for his first three years of work. Twenty-eight years old and has almost as much in his account as I do!
We spoke about trading a bit. Being a Millennial, he trades on the Robinhood app, never having paid a trade commission and he buys odd lots of shares, say $100 or $200 worth of them at a time.
I explained how I always purchase in lots of a hundred so I can sell covered calls on my shares should I choose to do so, although I have not done so for a few years now.
He listened with interest about selling call options, then explained that he analyzes stock purchases in the way that you are supposed to, considering the price to book value, forward earnings, dividend history, product trends and more.
He has bought and sold shares in Tesla, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Nvidia and a few other semiconductor companies.
The thing that impressed me about his stock trading is that he told me that he enters both stop orders and sell orders at ten percent, never holding stocks for more than that loss or gain. He further told me that he has only had a stop order sale a few times but has bought and sold many of his stocks for ten percent gains, several of them repeatedly.
He told me that he sold Tesla for modest profits several times, just losing ten percent on a few hundred bucks worth of shares lately as shares got slammed a few weeks ago.
When he told me that Nvidia shares have hit $280 I nearly fell off my chair.
He was surprised when I told him that I purchased Nvidia for about $20 per share three short years ago in summer of '15, but sold them off when it went up a few hundred bucks. As a matter of fact, my shares were called away after I had sold an option on them for a few bucks.
Man, do I feel stupid now. Instead of dinking Nvidia for $300 or so, I would be up twenty-six grand now had I held on to the shares. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
I told the GIS Millennial something that I have learned about myself over the years. I am pretty good at buying the right stocks. I am just f*cking horrible at selling them.
Perhaps that is the reason that I refuse to sell my hundreds of shares of a highly speculative, highly volatile "stock" called NUGT, the Direxion triple-leveraged gold miners ETF. I told him that I am embarrassed to admit how far down I am on this fund, and I am embarrassed to write it here. Let's just say that I gambled big on it and it did not pay off. I thought that, by now, I would be able to pay down our house as we refinance, pay off my wife's car and perhaps take a great family vacation or two with my capital gains. But it has been quite the opposite.
Had I entered a stop order on my first hundred shares or perhaps two hundred shares or even my first five hundred shares, I might only be down one or two grand. Life goes on, you move on to the next investment or speculation.
I asked him if he has ever considered being a financial adviser or perhaps finding some way to combine his GIS expertise with stock trading. He wondered what I meant by that and so do I.
I told him how I had investigated Bitcoin quite a bit two summers ago when it was still under a thousand bucks per share, but my wife dissuaded me from purchasing any.
There is a notion that one should not invest in something that one does not fully understand, and my explanation of what cryptocurrency is and how it is used was so garbled that nobody understood it, including me.
I admitted to the Millennial that I like to think that I would have sold my bitcoins when they hit $20,000 earlier this year, but would probably have continued holding them hoping that they would go even higher. I still think that they might, but do not feel strongly enough to "invest" in cryptocurrency.
I asked him that considering his technical expertise, has he ever considered mining cryptocurrency?
He surprised me by saying that he has, but not Bitcoin. He has mined Ethereum, but told me that he no longer does because he was spending roughly the same amount in electric bills that he was making with the cryptocoins. He said that he had over a $500 electric bill from ComEd earlier this year because he was running his laptop 24/7 mining Ethereum, but ended up with only a few hundred dollars' worth, thus he stopped.
I told him that all things being equal, the cryptocurrency could wind up being worth far more than the U.S. currency that he is spending today on electric. He said that he would consider that, however paying himself first and his new mortgage makes it hard for him to pay $500 per month or more in electric if he wants to keep purchasing stocks.
Your mortgage? I asked. Last I had heard, he was renting a room in a house with several other Millennials.
He explained to me that he has just recently become a homeowner, having purchased a two bedroom condominium in a pretty nice town about a half hour north of where we work this past June.
I was somewhat surprised, having heard and read quite a bit about how young adults of his generation are saddled with so much student debt, and told him so. He admitted that he still has about fifty grand worth of student debt, but that he chips away steadily at that, too, in addition to paying himself first, paying a mortgage and investing in stocks.
We ended up chatting for nearly an hour and a half, with him impressing the hell out of me the entire time. I joked that we should have an investing club at our place of work, which elicited the first chuckle that I have ever heard from this guy. He told me that would be fine, so long as another guy who we work with, a Millennial guy who I gave advice to lately, would not be involved.
The GIS Millennial told me that the other guy turned his thousand bucks invested via the Robinhood app into less than $600 bucks over the same time span that he had more than doubled the same amount, all while the stock market has been steadily rising.
How did he do that? I asked.
He explained that the other guy buys the same type of stocks that he does, mostly tech giants, but purchases them after great news that makes them rise and then panic sells them as they decline. He is one of the guys that every personal finance blogger and author warns against, someone who buys high and sells low. The opposite of Warren Buffet.
Although the other Millennial is a likable guy and will joke around and talk sports with you, I started seeing him in a different light. I should like a thoughtful, studious investor more than a guy who buys and sells based on Yahoo! Finance headlines.
When I commended him on his diligence and how impressed I am at his Paying Himself First at about fifteen years younger than I started doing so, he explained that it is his intention to be able to retire at the age of sixty.
Having read so many bloggers in the #FIRE arena, I was very surprised. I thought that his goal was probably to retire by the time he was my Prime Age if not earlier.
No, he explained. Many people his age, he said, will be lucky to be able to retire at all. He just wants to continue investing in himself, keeping up with the latest technology and paying down his mortgage as much as he can.
He then told me that he contributes some extra funds to IMRF, the retirement fund that both of us contribute to as municipal employees in Illinois, but only an extra $25 per paycheck now. He said that he will be increasing that to an extra $50 per paycheck, which could ultimately help him retire a year or two earlier than the age of sixty.
Now, I obviously do not have a crystal ball. I would not be in the position that I am in if I did, and I certainly would not bother writing these words for you to read.
But what I do have is a quarter century of experience post-college, and I have witnessed the successes and failures of many other people, along with what traits they displayed.
This twenty-eight-year-old displays many traits to me that point toward quiet, determined success. I envision him making a lot more than the $62,000 that he currently earns (our salaries are on our employer's website), and I would not be surprised if he was contributing an extra $200 or $300 per paycheck into his retirement account ten years from now.
Of course, he is not even married yet, thus he does not have to shell out the kind of money that I do to support my wife and two children.
When I got home and told my wife about our discussion, she reminded me that at the age of twenty-eight, we had been married for over two years and already owned a condominium in Evanston and she was a stay-at-home mom with our young son as I toiled as a Probation Officer.
All true, but of course many of us Gen Xers did not need to learn "how to adult" quite as much as this generation does. In my own case, I just did it, as my friends all did. We moved out of our parents homes, we got married and many of us had kids in our twenties.
But I am impressed nonetheless with a Millennial who has done so considering the many times that I have read and heard how so many of them are unable to move out on their own or purchase a property due to their high amount of student debt.
I offered to buy the GIS Millennial a coffee, but he declined, saying that he does not drink it. He prefers Dr. Pepper.
I only mention that because it is far different from wanting to smack him. From now on when I pass him in the corridors or see him in the break room, I'll be sure to say hello to the guy and ask him how things are going.
He may relate to his computers and smart phones better than he can to people, but if I am not careful, I just may learn some things from this highly impressive Millennial.
It was no different with my meeting with the GIS Millennial.
I imparted my typical wisdom, which is to tell folks to Pay Yourself First. Not only does this kid pay himself first with every paycheck, he maxes out his Roth IRA with $5,500 per year and has done so for his first three years of work. Twenty-eight years old and has almost as much in his account as I do!
We spoke about trading a bit. Being a Millennial, he trades on the Robinhood app, never having paid a trade commission and he buys odd lots of shares, say $100 or $200 worth of them at a time.
I explained how I always purchase in lots of a hundred so I can sell covered calls on my shares should I choose to do so, although I have not done so for a few years now.
He listened with interest about selling call options, then explained that he analyzes stock purchases in the way that you are supposed to, considering the price to book value, forward earnings, dividend history, product trends and more.
He has bought and sold shares in Tesla, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Nvidia and a few other semiconductor companies.
The thing that impressed me about his stock trading is that he told me that he enters both stop orders and sell orders at ten percent, never holding stocks for more than that loss or gain. He further told me that he has only had a stop order sale a few times but has bought and sold many of his stocks for ten percent gains, several of them repeatedly.
He told me that he sold Tesla for modest profits several times, just losing ten percent on a few hundred bucks worth of shares lately as shares got slammed a few weeks ago.
When he told me that Nvidia shares have hit $280 I nearly fell off my chair.
He was surprised when I told him that I purchased Nvidia for about $20 per share three short years ago in summer of '15, but sold them off when it went up a few hundred bucks. As a matter of fact, my shares were called away after I had sold an option on them for a few bucks.
Man, do I feel stupid now. Instead of dinking Nvidia for $300 or so, I would be up twenty-six grand now had I held on to the shares. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
I told the GIS Millennial something that I have learned about myself over the years. I am pretty good at buying the right stocks. I am just f*cking horrible at selling them.
Perhaps that is the reason that I refuse to sell my hundreds of shares of a highly speculative, highly volatile "stock" called NUGT, the Direxion triple-leveraged gold miners ETF. I told him that I am embarrassed to admit how far down I am on this fund, and I am embarrassed to write it here. Let's just say that I gambled big on it and it did not pay off. I thought that, by now, I would be able to pay down our house as we refinance, pay off my wife's car and perhaps take a great family vacation or two with my capital gains. But it has been quite the opposite.
Had I entered a stop order on my first hundred shares or perhaps two hundred shares or even my first five hundred shares, I might only be down one or two grand. Life goes on, you move on to the next investment or speculation.
I asked him if he has ever considered being a financial adviser or perhaps finding some way to combine his GIS expertise with stock trading. He wondered what I meant by that and so do I.
I told him how I had investigated Bitcoin quite a bit two summers ago when it was still under a thousand bucks per share, but my wife dissuaded me from purchasing any.
There is a notion that one should not invest in something that one does not fully understand, and my explanation of what cryptocurrency is and how it is used was so garbled that nobody understood it, including me.
I admitted to the Millennial that I like to think that I would have sold my bitcoins when they hit $20,000 earlier this year, but would probably have continued holding them hoping that they would go even higher. I still think that they might, but do not feel strongly enough to "invest" in cryptocurrency.
I asked him that considering his technical expertise, has he ever considered mining cryptocurrency?
He surprised me by saying that he has, but not Bitcoin. He has mined Ethereum, but told me that he no longer does because he was spending roughly the same amount in electric bills that he was making with the cryptocoins. He said that he had over a $500 electric bill from ComEd earlier this year because he was running his laptop 24/7 mining Ethereum, but ended up with only a few hundred dollars' worth, thus he stopped.
I told him that all things being equal, the cryptocurrency could wind up being worth far more than the U.S. currency that he is spending today on electric. He said that he would consider that, however paying himself first and his new mortgage makes it hard for him to pay $500 per month or more in electric if he wants to keep purchasing stocks.
Your mortgage? I asked. Last I had heard, he was renting a room in a house with several other Millennials.
He explained to me that he has just recently become a homeowner, having purchased a two bedroom condominium in a pretty nice town about a half hour north of where we work this past June.
I was somewhat surprised, having heard and read quite a bit about how young adults of his generation are saddled with so much student debt, and told him so. He admitted that he still has about fifty grand worth of student debt, but that he chips away steadily at that, too, in addition to paying himself first, paying a mortgage and investing in stocks.
We ended up chatting for nearly an hour and a half, with him impressing the hell out of me the entire time. I joked that we should have an investing club at our place of work, which elicited the first chuckle that I have ever heard from this guy. He told me that would be fine, so long as another guy who we work with, a Millennial guy who I gave advice to lately, would not be involved.
The GIS Millennial told me that the other guy turned his thousand bucks invested via the Robinhood app into less than $600 bucks over the same time span that he had more than doubled the same amount, all while the stock market has been steadily rising.
How did he do that? I asked.
He explained that the other guy buys the same type of stocks that he does, mostly tech giants, but purchases them after great news that makes them rise and then panic sells them as they decline. He is one of the guys that every personal finance blogger and author warns against, someone who buys high and sells low. The opposite of Warren Buffet.
Although the other Millennial is a likable guy and will joke around and talk sports with you, I started seeing him in a different light. I should like a thoughtful, studious investor more than a guy who buys and sells based on Yahoo! Finance headlines.
When I commended him on his diligence and how impressed I am at his Paying Himself First at about fifteen years younger than I started doing so, he explained that it is his intention to be able to retire at the age of sixty.
Having read so many bloggers in the #FIRE arena, I was very surprised. I thought that his goal was probably to retire by the time he was my Prime Age if not earlier.
No, he explained. Many people his age, he said, will be lucky to be able to retire at all. He just wants to continue investing in himself, keeping up with the latest technology and paying down his mortgage as much as he can.
He then told me that he contributes some extra funds to IMRF, the retirement fund that both of us contribute to as municipal employees in Illinois, but only an extra $25 per paycheck now. He said that he will be increasing that to an extra $50 per paycheck, which could ultimately help him retire a year or two earlier than the age of sixty.
Now, I obviously do not have a crystal ball. I would not be in the position that I am in if I did, and I certainly would not bother writing these words for you to read.
But what I do have is a quarter century of experience post-college, and I have witnessed the successes and failures of many other people, along with what traits they displayed.
This twenty-eight-year-old displays many traits to me that point toward quiet, determined success. I envision him making a lot more than the $62,000 that he currently earns (our salaries are on our employer's website), and I would not be surprised if he was contributing an extra $200 or $300 per paycheck into his retirement account ten years from now.
Of course, he is not even married yet, thus he does not have to shell out the kind of money that I do to support my wife and two children.
When I got home and told my wife about our discussion, she reminded me that at the age of twenty-eight, we had been married for over two years and already owned a condominium in Evanston and she was a stay-at-home mom with our young son as I toiled as a Probation Officer.
All true, but of course many of us Gen Xers did not need to learn "how to adult" quite as much as this generation does. In my own case, I just did it, as my friends all did. We moved out of our parents homes, we got married and many of us had kids in our twenties.
But I am impressed nonetheless with a Millennial who has done so considering the many times that I have read and heard how so many of them are unable to move out on their own or purchase a property due to their high amount of student debt.
I offered to buy the GIS Millennial a coffee, but he declined, saying that he does not drink it. He prefers Dr. Pepper.
I only mention that because it is far different from wanting to smack him. From now on when I pass him in the corridors or see him in the break room, I'll be sure to say hello to the guy and ask him how things are going.
He may relate to his computers and smart phones better than he can to people, but if I am not careful, I just may learn some things from this highly impressive Millennial.
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