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Dust seems to be one of those things that just invades and clutters your home no matter how much you try to prevent it.  And while it’s a pain to clean it up (and believe me, I don’t consider myself very domestic!), we all have to at some point.

The characteristics of a good vacuum cleaner are:

1. Runtime – It has to last long enough to get through your cleaning cycle.
2. Suction – It needs to have enough suction to pull up whatever you are trying to clean.
3. Disposability – Throwing out a nasty dust bag can create a huge mess of its own.
4. Accessibility – Can you pull the vacuum out and clean something up on a moment’s notice?  Will you have to find an outlet first?
5. Size/Weight – it must be light enough to use comfortably.  A heavy vacuum cleaner can be not only unnecessary for the task, but also make you more unlikely to do any cleaning at all.

Based on all of the above, I settled on the Dyson DC35 (there are newer models now … the DC44 and DC59).  Why?  Read on.

1. Runtime – 12-15 min on normal, 6 on max suction.  Enough to do a quick pass across 1300 sqft.  But it’s easy enough to use that we rarely do full passes.
2. Suction – On the hardwood floors here, it picks up everything we need it to.  It is MUCH stronger than a dust buster and can easily suck up dust bunnies off a desk or in a corner without having to be right on top of it.
3. Disposability – The bin simply pops open with a latch release.  More thorough cleanings can be done by disassembling the vacuum.
4. Accessibility – This is one of the best features of the DC35.  A wall mount keeps the vacuum above the clutter … plus the charger slots into the wall mount so that you can “dock” the vacuum and it is always charged and ready to go.  Additional attachments hanging from the mount allow you to switch between floor and hand vacuum modes as needed.  And, of course, it’s cordless, so you don’t need to find an outlet for it next to wherever you are cleaning.
5. Size/Weight – The Dyson DC35 is incredibly light and not an appliance where the words “push” or “lug” have to come into play.  You might not want to vacuum several floors with it, but it’s a great choice for cleaning up a single room.

In short, I think this is the perfect vacuum for smaller living areas.  The wall mount saves space, which is by definition at a premium to begin with.  The integrated charging keeps it ready so you can “clean as you go” instead of having to lug out a huge vacuum cleaner.  It’s multipurpose, so you can replace a dust buster and a floor vacuum with just one compact device.

My only criticism of this vacuum is that it requires you to hold the button to vacuum.  This is fine most of the time.  It saves on battery life, because you can just hold the button on the areas that need it.  However, for extended vacuuming sessions, holding the button gets tiresome.

Nevertheless, it really is the perfect vacuum for a smaller space.  And arguably, even a larger one too.  I find the ease of cleaning with it means it actually gets used, as opposed to a larger and more powerful vacuum that nobody wants to dig out of the closet.  Buying the slightly older DC35 may be preferable, since you can usually find factory refurbs or used models for $175-200.  Highly recommended.

One topic of interest that I haven’t commented on my blog is my recent obsession with real estate.

Rather than going into a huge overview, I think deep diving on particular real estate topics of interest in individual blog posts will be more interesting.

So here’s a question many of my friends are facing recently.  You’ve got some money saved up, and you’re looking for a place.  You can afford a one bedroom pretty easily, or you could stretch and go for the two bedroom.  What should you do?

Well … in fact, the differences in the units themselves tend to be obvious.  I’ll outline those here.  The subtleties of this question tend to revolve more around your own finances than anything else.

Pros for one bedrooms

1BD’s cost less – Yes, we’re stating the obvious here, but it’s a big one.  Less sqft means you pay less!  If you don’t need more than a 1BD, why pay more? (There are some good reasons to stretch, actually, but keep reading for that.)

1BD’s can prevent you from overleveraging – Related to the above … if you want some real estate exposure in your asset portfolio, but you don’t want to overdo it, 1BD’s may be your best choice, regardless of how good 2BD’s are.  People who maxed out their net worth to buy a home took a huge dive in the wrong direction when the market swung negative in 2008.  Being forced to cash out at the worst possible time is very bad.

1BD’s are easier to maintain – Less square footage means you have less personal overhead.  Ask anyone who’s lived alone in a big house … it takes time and effort to keep all the rooms clean!  If you want to lead a leaner lifestyle, all you really need is a kitchen, washer/dryer, living room and bedroom (or a studio).  It’s natural and easier to keep the areas you use most often in working shape.

Pros for 2BD’s

You can get a roommate to help with the mortgage – Being a mini landlord is a great way to build your income stream.  And, if you rent out the extra room, you have the advantage of really being able to keep an eye on the place, ensuring the quality of the tenants and the property stays high!  Remember, living alone is an American conceit/luxury.  It’s not a human right, and you will waste a lot of after tax money for the privilege.

You can grow into a 2BD – 1BD’s tend to be transitional living spaces … after you graduate college, and before you start a family.  A family wants at least a 2BD so that the kids don’t wake up the parents constantly!  Transaction costs for real estate are quite high, so selling out of a 1BD into a 2BD because you need the space can set you back a bit.  This is why, unless you are a professional, I’m a fan of buy and hold when to comes to real estate.

You can maximize the mortgage interest deduction – Since 2BD’s cost more, you get closer to the magical mortgage interest deduction limit of $1,000,000.  There are a plenty of reasons not to spend more than you can afford, but, if your loan exceeds $1MM, you’ve got one more reason to hold back the spending.

A fully owned 2BD can be carried by renting just one of the rooms – Later in life, if you fully pay off a two bedroom unit, you can keep one of the rooms rented and use the other room as a pied a terre.  You’ll still make a bit of money each month (aka not be cash flow negative, which is a real no no when you retire) and you’ll still have a great place to swing by as you hop around the world.  It’s impossible to have that kind of arrangement with a 1BD, unless you have a VERY understanding tenant. 🙂

Dual income families can be more stable renters – With the premise of 2BD’s being more attractive to families in mind … if you eventually decide to rent out the entire unit, having two sources of income instead of one is great insurance against the possibility of not being able to come up with the rent.  Not to mention that, in many respects, having a family tends to correlate with stability and wanting to keep the place clean … just like you would if you were living there!

Perspective questions

Given the choice between a 1BD or a 2BD of nearly equal size, what should you get?

Go for the small 2BD.  The 2BD adds tons of flexibility, as mentioned above.

If you have a nearly unlimited investment budget, should you get many 1BD’s or many 2BD’s?

I would buy many 2BD’s.  At worst, you rent the rooms out individually like 1BD’s.  At best, you have all the benefits of being able to attract whole families and older/higher income tenants instead of just singles or DINK’s (dual income, no kids).  That’s a good segment of the market to gain access to.

Conclusion

I’ll end by saying that, in my opinion, relative to the cost, 2BD’s have a slight general advantage over 1BD’s.  The questions of personal financial leverage and commitment, however, still dominate the equation for most people.  Don’t spend more than you can afford, and don’t sacrifice other very high reward opportunities that your money could be in just to stretch into a 2BD!

But getting a roommate completely changes the equation in terms of buying a 2BD.  It can be OK to stretch the loan a bit if you are buying in an easily rentable area, because that extra rent coming in is offsetting your real leverage.   I highly recommend getting a roommate!

I enjoyed this book very much when I read it a couple of years ago.  While lengthy, it provides a very enjoyable insight into the mind of a very intelligent man, and argues against some fundamental human biases and the need to incorporate knowledge of them into our own modeling of markets and other industries.

The fundamental notion of this book is the “black swan” … that is, the extremely rare event that one almost never observes, but which defines.

1. People do not think about “exponential” distributions correctly.  They are built to understand gaussian distributions (or bell curves, in other words).  Non-linearity is just not something humans perceive well.

2. We do a very poor job of imagining or accounting for that which we have never experienced or seen.

3. Many experts are anything but.  It behooves you to think at a macro level about just how “expert” or “knowledgeable” someone can actually be at something.  Be appropriately skeptical.

4. Scalable jobs and technology displace the “good” or “better” segments of the workforce.  Would you buy a CD of the 10th best violinist in the world when there’s a CD of the best one out?  These kinds of effects create massive winners and a bunch of losers.

5. We prefer to focus on individual and easily understood narratives and events over the true complexity and causation of such events.  The book refers to this as the “narrative fallacy.”  This is a valuable insight, and one that I have extended into observations and arguments in politics, the media, etc.  It is exploited constantly by the media by making the public react to statistically insignificant, but gross or absurd, events.

6. We have a preference for the constant and predictable, as opposed to the lumpy and big.  This leaves a lot of room for making money in lumpy ways, if one has the emotional fortitude and intelligence to make the right calls.

Definitely a good read.  I often think of examples in this book when I refer to different events as they occur.  I also gained more of an appreciation for philosophy after observing how Taleb weaves his way through different thinking approaches.  I hope I’ll be able to spend more time in that area of study someday.

It is important to not let your old habits define your behavior today.  A great example that I’m writing about today for you is time and money.

Not everything is worth your time

Like a poker player sizing his bets or moving to bigger tables on the opportunities, you, in general, should be letting go of certain tasks as you become more successful.  As your earning power rises, your free time becomes more precious (and yet still very much necessary for one to recharge).  Consequently, small losses and gains should be ignored.

Here are some examples of daily activities that are worth the time to some, and not to others.

• Looking for the best deal on a flight
• Finding free parking
• Sweating over the good/better/best models of something
• Doing your own cleaning
• Mailing in rebates
• Hoarding old possessions and taking up living space
• Rushing to buy something on sale

Youth vs Age

When we are young, we spend lots of time trying to get money …. either by acquiring or conserving it.  Our early years are replete with idle time, not many ways to work productively, and summer vacations.  In order to get what we want, we have to be scrappy at every opportunity.

When we are older, we spend a lot of money trying to get back our time (if we are lucky).  We pay people to clean up after us.  We go out to eat.  We fly instead of drive.  Suddenly, the tables are reversed.

Many folks don’t quite make the correct transition from young to old, or poor to rich. That’s a little bit of a tragedy.  They spend their whole life struggling, because it’s how they grew up.  While there’s nothing wrong with studious work and attention to detail, it is crucial to transform the nature of that struggle into bigger and better things.  Don’t keep running a horse race when everyone else in your peer group is now racing cars.

Evaluating time

Now, one way to evaluate how to spend your time is to compare your average earnings per hour towards the time it will take to do something.

If you make on average 50 dollars per hour, is it worth it for you to worry about returning the socks that didn’t fit after you bought them last week?  Should you be worrying about not buying that extra storage on your phone for 100 dollars more and possibly regretting it later?  Likely, no.  Buy the best phone, throw out the socks, and enjoy the free time so you can do a better job at work.

There’s an argument, of course, that you can’t really just go out and earn another 50/hour ad infinitum.  Most salaried jobs pay what they pay … though, on average, doing a better job is going to get you up the ladder.

Regardless, you will find that simply telling yourself to think in terms of time vs money will slowly make you better at it.  It’s not important to get every detail correct … just the big ones (like negotiating big ticket items) and the frequent ones (which you will have lots of opportunities to get right over time).

Sam Walton

There’s a famous story about Sam Walton, the billionaire founder of Walmart.  An acquaintance of his, knowing his reputation for frugality, once left a penny on purpose in Sam’s path on the way to boarding the plane.  True to form, Sam stopped to pick it up.

Was that the rational thing to do?  Hell no!  Sam was a billionaire, but that doesn’t make everything he did right.  By all rights, he ought to have paid someone to wipe his ass if it would have given him more time to lead Walmart.  But what it can and does go to show you is that Sam’s obsession and outlook were probably the source of his strength at Walmart and an imperfection in other ways.

We humans have a tendency to behave irrationally when it comes to money.  For example, studies showed that many folks would travel to another store just to save a couple of bucks on a box of pens that cost $7 at the store they were already at.  But then, they wouldn’t spend nearly the amount of time negotiating the price of a new car.  This fact will be exploited against you when you are making big purchases.  Don’t let it happen to you!

Money is not a sacred cow.  It’s a tool.

Playing both offense and defense with your money is important.   We all know what it’s like not to spend money.  But sometimes it should be spent!

A good example is multiple large monitors … a clear productivity win for anyone that works at a computer.  Spend the money!

Hiring an assistant is also a great idea for folks that are being overrun with minutiae that doesn’t move the needle on their main source of income.

Books (non-fiction) are another great way to get better at something (but don’t forget, practice is still number one).  If you even have an inkling that you might learn something from a book, buy it and read it!

The point I’m making is that trading small losses now (in terms of spending) to permanently improve your productivity (or even just a chance at it) is great.  Rational people will aggressively *spend* money to “sharpen the saw.”  Perhaps even more interestingly, a truly rational person will spend money just at chances that the saw might be sharpened, because the return on a increase in personal productivity is so high.

Investing in yourself

One clear area where I bend the rules, per the above, is that investing in your own learning or productivity is usually A GOOD THING, even though the benefits may seem unclear at the time.  Such expenses should be in line with your earning power, but they often earn unseen returns in the future.

For example, I spent quite a bit of money just learning about repairing cars, changing my own oil, brakes, etc, and driving a car at the track.  Was it a waste of money on the surface?  Yes.  But now I can challenge any mechanic that’s trying to pull a fast one on me.  I can talk capably with other car nuts, which has its own benefits.  And I’m a safer driver on the roads because I know the limits of the car more than most.

If I think a book will teach me anything at all, I buy it.  I might not read it.  But then again, I might.  I rarely take away more than a few key points from any book.  But my mental model of the world has gotten much clearer over time, and it would not have happened without those books.

Conclusion

What was the right approach to your time and money in the past may no longer be correct now.  Many people make the mistake of living the last half of their lives like the first half.  Your approach to time and money should be adapted to situations of today.

Not everything can be reduced to a dollars per hour equation … but thinking about it will make you better at filtering out the events that can be.

I’ve spent a lot of time struggling with different home WiFi setups.  I really can’t count the number of times I’ve had different routers go out on me or just get flaky.  But I’ve settled on a solution that works and I’m going to share it with you now to save the world some time.

Here’s my recommended setup.

For WiFi – Use Airport Extreme’s or Express’s as standalone WiFi access points by putting them into bridge mode.  Hardwire where you can and use identical access point options … otherwise known as a roaming network.  WiFi clients will roam seamlessly between access points with the same SSID and security settings.

Place additional Airport’s strategically with the “extend a wireless network” option to get whole home or yard coverage.  This feature works remarkably well on the Airport’s and is a very good way to cover an unwired home.  While “extend a wireless network” does impact total throughput, it’s far better to use it to improve coverage to eliminate dropouts than it is to worry about theoretical performance.  You just don’t want to use it instead of a hardwired ethernet port when one is available.

For the gateway – WNDR3700 with OpenWRT as the router/gateway.   All I can say is that I’ve hammered this thing with pretty much everything you can throw at it and it’s been very stable and full featured to boot.

If you aren’t a tinkerer and don’t need anything special in terms of home router/gateway features, then just use an Airport Extreme as the gateway and be done with it.  Excellent choice if you just want to set up the parents and not get calls about the internet being down.

Note that recent generations of the Airport allow for simultaneous dual-band transmission.  Defaulting to the same SSID for both bands allows devices to roam to the best band for the job … 5 GHz for increased bandwidth and less interference from neighboring access points, but a seamless fallback to 2.4 GHz at range.

The problem with using the same SSID is that the operation of what is going on is obscured somewhat.  When using iOS devices, you can’t even tell what band you are on.  So it is sometimes desirable to use the option that names the 5 GHz band with a different SSID.  This is useful mainly in situations where you want to test the explicit performance on 5 GHz with different devices or compensate for a dumb device that doesn’t know it should connect to 5 GHz over 2.4 GHz in your house.

I used to name the bands separately, but I recently decided to switch to identical SSID’s and see how it goes.  When I walk out to the elevator here, my iPhone won’t aggressively switch down to 2.4 GHz unless the SSID’s are identical, which means the connection just dies.  And, you know, tech is supposed to make our lives easier, so I figured I would try to have a little faith in them.  I’m almost all Apple here, so I have reasonable confidence that the devices will be smart about selecting the correct band for the situation.