Sean Ongley

Author: Sean Ongley

  • Start From Where You Are

    Start From Where You Are

    Image of Newberry Road taken on my iPhone, January 2017.

    Nobody has an identical story. This applies to every human being and their finances. Even though we share a common system, currency, and world, your story is your own, so you have to start from where you are.

    It may be that you were born into a trust fund, or poverty, or somewhere in between. There are hardships for everyone in this life, in this world. You may find yourself wealthy one year and broke the next. Everyone has a different rock bottom. If you never had any money in your life — your parents were broke and you never built a steady career — then you might be in the best position to grow wealth.

    I am pretty much talking about myself in that last observation. I will share my story so that you understand how a low-income person can dig out of chronic poverty.

    My folks were cleaning service workers in Santa Barbara, California. They built a small business and started poking through to the middle class for the first time in their lives. Neither of them finished college. They both grew up in rural towns of the mid-west. My father’s parents always rented. My mother’s parents bought affordable property. One side gambled, the other side drank.

    To cut to the chase, my parents ended up selling the cleaning business, finding middle-class jobs, migrated the family to affordable Tucson, went bankrupt, and dug themselves back out of that, now retired and barely meeting costs.

    They were not drunks or gamblers — they lost extra money to other bad habits. They didn’t have enough financial sophistication to manage risk. It was tough on all of us. Look, they did better than their parents, but they instilled a poor understanding of finance. They are not totally to blame, it ought to be a major aspect of public education.

    It took until roughly age 35 for me to begin the journey of financial planning. All the years between age 18, when I first moved out of the parents house and began living on my own, I felt good about having $100 leftover at the end paying bills. I slowly ratcheted that up between about age 30 to 35, but I was not holding money, not investing, it would always cross back to zero and I’d have to get on the phone to fight overdraft fees far too often.

    There is one valuable discipline I learned in fifteen years of being a poor adult, starving artist rebel character: Austerity. I do not need much. Earning less than a thousand a month for years at a time will teach you how to live on less than a thousand a month. If you have not read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, do it. You will understand.

    When you understand how the poverty mentality forces you to buy things with the only extra money you have, before you have even saved up an emergency fund, then you will cease to do this. You will prioritize much better. Knowing how to be poor is an amazing skill when you’re making yourself rich on a low income.

    My credit history comprised mostly of student loans. I had defaulted on them in 2010. I did not understand what had happened. I got my Associate’s Degree, then dropped out of University studies without buttoning up the loans. I was a punk. I thought nothing could touch me. I started changing my habits and attitude at this time, very slowly.

    First thing was first, I consolidated my loans in 2011 under the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) program. This is a fair deal — if you can call our regressive student finance system fair at all — because if I do not cross a reasonable figure considered excess income, I do not owe any payment on a monthly basis. If I continuously reapply for the program then all debt will be forgiven after twenty years. So far, in eight years, I have made all my payments on time. What is the payment? Zero dollars per month. There are drawbacks, but we’ll table that.

    In 2018, I began making overpayments to my student loans, to ramp up my credit score. The more payments you make, the more months in a row that your debt figure goes down, the more credit points you accrue. Also, you get a tax break for those overpayments. Because they are just paying down interest, you get to deduct that from your tax burden.

    January of 2017, I was living on a farm on the northern edge of Portland, Oregon, in discussion about a two-year live-in caretaker position there. I would be able to save money fast, the plan was to sock away capital and move to the east coast where property was cheap. Then, a massive snow storm came in, held ice for two weeks, and collapsed the road in a mudslide on the day of the big melt, literally splitting access between the two halves of the property straddling Newberry Road. The job was cancelled and I was asked to move. 

    My seasonal job at the soccer stadium was not restarting for months. The snow storm stopped my other travel-based income for two weeks. I had spent extra money over Christmas. I was flat broke. I moved into a basement room with my girlfriend, who was also broke, at her bosses’ house. Our lives were insane.

    By the end of the year, we were driving away from Portland with about $15K between us. In a world where people of our income bracket statistically speaking don’t have $400 to cover an emergency, where even fewer can maintain a 4-figure balance in their bank account, I would say we did an incredible job turning our situation around.

    I want to look at that year of my life in pinpoint detail, because I believe we could have had $15K each if we were only a bit more adept and considerate of the opportunities in front of us. Nonetheless, we pulled it off. We pulled ahead and neither of us have been down to $100 after bills since.

    Through 2018, I learned about how to buy a house and changed my life by moving to Philadelphia. Through 2019, I learned how to properly save money. The lessons I learned last year have serious implications on my failure to grow my savings toward buying a house in 2018.

    Anybody with as little savviness as I had then can learn from my mistakes and develop their assets immediately. One of the big boats in that equation might be sailing now: Bitcoin. Right now it is surging and I think by July, BTC will settle at a new resistance point far above the $20K high of 2017.

    Having told my story, I want to get into the financial weeds next time I post. I want to show how great our financial opportunities are compared to our parents, even in an economy that is garbage.

    Until then, good luck, talk to you later.

  • World Wide Wall

    World Wide Wall

    A short documentary follows two artists installing a mural at The Portland Mercado.

    Watch World Wide Wall (2016)

    World Wide Wall is the title we used for this 2016 documentary for television. It was suggested by Producer Kathleen Dolan, the individual responsible for culling this whole project together, under our brand THRU Media.

    We have a billboard sized mural that brings together two continents and two artists, Pablo Solares and Rachel Oleson. Obviously it’s a play on world wide web, but it is also a wall that brings down cultural divisions — not unlike the internet.

    Nobody made a dime on this, by the way. We spent nothing also. It was put into regular rotation on Portland public access network Signal, and has been available on YouTube for free. We did not have the budget available to market this as a film, therefore we didn’t take the time to perfect it.

    I do have some considerations toward editing this again, tightening it up by a few minutes, basically just getting my editing chops back, so that I can bravely take on another documentary. My credit for this is Editor.

    I was fortunate enough to be given a well-prepared batch of video from Videography Forrest Brennan. He is kind of the genius behind this. Kate and I showed enthusiasm, and without much experience, I’d say we punched above our weight class. Forrest was already a journalist by education and videographer by trade, but he also did a great job. He has a good intuition.

    The reason I became editor however is that Forrest was too busy to edit and I wasn’t happy with his first cut. It was only roughly six minutes and I felt he did a disservice to his own narrative. I still think he was trying to save time because he had already volunteered a tremendous amount of time and value. So I took a chance on my own edit. It became my full-time job for longer than I expected. Worth it.

    Because I was so engrossed in the process and did not take time to accept reviews from colleagues before publishing, I can see finally that my cuts need some work. Nonetheless, I am proud of it. We are all proud of it.

    Please enjoy World Wide Wall.

  • Democracy and Personal Freedom in Big Finance

    Democracy and Personal Freedom in Big Finance

    Photo of Slovak Radio Building, an upside down pyramidal structure for me represents how we need to build society.

    This is a freewheeling introduction to what should be a series of articles designed to walk a beginner through the daunting field of personal finance. I want to make my motivation, and in a sense, my qualifications clear in this introduction.

    As bad as the outcomes of our economic system have been for average working class folks in the last several decades, including myself, the average American is confronted with greater access to financial investment products than ever. I would advise any young person today to get their first job in High School and start that portfolio before they enter college. It is not a college fund, it is a post-college fund. Or, I would say, “Skip college!” But that’s another argument.

    I am a great example of what is possible for a low-income person. Here is the short of it: I went from, at the beginning of 2017, flat broke, on food stamps, bad credit, and crashing in someone’s basement for free, to, by the end of 2017, keeping thousands of dollars in the bank, a good credit card, and a credit score around 700. I even had a vacation that year. I only made $1,500 a month. By January of 2019, I owned my first home, had a second credit card, a credit score of 750, and several thousand dollars in the bank. I made just a little more that year. We are approaching 2020 and I have my finances diversified over several investments while maintaining an emergency fund, a third credit card, and passive income as a landlord. At this rate, I could retire in twenty years, especially if I stick to a full-time job. I haven’t!

    Beyond personal financial liberation, there is a social-political motivation for me to develop a portfolio. Our capacity to engage with corporations as shareholders is greater than ever. The opportunity to grow personal wealth while supporting companies that we can believe in is also greater than ever. Numerous social challenges confront us, but if each to our own utilize finance as democracy and democracy as finance, then social solidarity can make a difference at the core of the corporations, and possibly spawn startups that would not otherwise see a market without our investments flowing toward positive ends.

    I’m not going to take the time to source my claims here, but I am sure of the following statements: Average incomes have fallen against inflation, homeownership rates have fallen, workforce participation rates have fallen, average household costs have risen, wealth disparity has risen, and corporate profit has risen. Feel free to verify these observations. I am stopping myself from going into climate change and health care. If we each practiced finance correctly then I am positive this would improve.

    There are many problems facing us. We can engage directly from the mature position of shareholder, or we can stand on the sidelines and complain from a social media feed. When you are a shareholder of a company, you have the right to complain. When you are not, you do not. For example, the difference between a regional credit union of which your membership represents a share of ownership versus a major corporate bank of which you are just a customer: One directs profit back to account holders and into local communities more effectively than the other; I will let you guess who.

    If the product you consume from the company, as a customer, does not meet your satisfaction, you may complain, but as far as how that product is produced, you have no leverage. Perhaps a can of coke is just as satisfying as ever, but you want to reform Coca-Cola’s corporate practices. How do you do that? Activism generally includes boycotts, strikes, picketing, and journalism, in the tool box. How about adding participation through investment?

    The stock market is a public, democratic system. Most of the biggest companies are publicly traded: Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Ford, U.S. Steel, etc. If you own just .000001% of Coca-Cola, you still have .000001% of the annual votes. There are votes every year, and various positions are adopted by the Board. Commonly, Board members hold more than 2% of the shares.

    There can be an upside down pyramid so that the masses are directing policy up through the Board rather than what we are accustomed to, where only the wealthiest investors hold influence.

    The more people that own shares the more diverse the set of owners. If ten million Americans own .000001% of Coca-Cola, together they own 10%. They have massive sway, assuming there is solidarity between them, they could even organize and put an activist on the Board with that kind of leverage. 10 out of 300 million, that is only 3% of the populace; they ought to find at least partisan solidarity.

    Fact is, it is easier to open a brokerage account and invest small amounts of money than ever. Only fifty years ago, a single market transaction would cost the equivalent of one week’s average median salary. Now it is free at a range of established brokers.

    I personally use Robin Hood. They offer exactly what I need: a good web-based interface with instant access to my deposits and fee-free trading, including cryptocurrencies. In future blogs I can dig into features within Robin Hood, such as stop and limit orders, fractional shares, and financial management tools.

    It’s not just about opposing a company’s practices, it is also about engaging with a company you believe in. I personally try only to purchase from companies that I care about. I hope my stocks are held in companies that are working on the solutions to climate change and social inequity. Whatever aspects about them I do not like, I feel better voicing that as a shareholder than just someone standing by.

    When you rent your housing, you’re throwing money wherever the person or company you rent from is throwing their money. They may be shareholders in companies you adamantly oppose. There are all kinds of externalities, social and environmental ramifications that we cannot see immediately in the production or consumption of a product or service, associated with our consumer behavior. I believe you should spend your money where you feel good about it, but only after you’ve funded your investments, and your investments should make you feel good.

    My next post will take you through how I evolved from chronically broke to constantly growing my assets. If you have more spare income than me, you’ll be wealthier than me in no time by following my advice.

    If you would like to support my personal finance content then you can join Robin Hood and hook us both up with a free stock.

  • People Love to Talk and Animals Love to Lounge

    People Love to Talk and Animals Love to Lounge

    Pet owners and safari lovers surely notice that the seeming aim of the animal kingdom is to secure time for lounging. Once their bellies are full, there are no to-do lists and frameworks to abide by. For this, we are envious.

    Humans are not so different (myself being one of them I can speak certainly). We go through quite a few extra abstract steps to get there, but ultimately we are trying to lounge. Set aside the extremes, like addicts and clinically depressed folks that cannot get out of bed. Looking at the so-called average person, I would suggest that we have a combined weakness and advantage like no other in the animal kingdom: Language.

    I understand that we are discovering the scope of language across the animal kingdom — notably in dolphins and primates — but let’s face it, gang, our throats and our brains are built for language. It is to the extent that some of us speak many languages, while a select few can do that plus study the languages of the animal kingdom.

    There is this weakness, however, and it is the reality of language. Just think about this. You may spend a full day inside your house, especially during the holidays, doing nothing really but shooting the shit with your family and friends. 

    Look at yourself from a bird’s eye view. There you are, sitting at a table for hours, just making sounds out of your throat and doing nothing in particular. You aren’t lounging, you are probably reliving past experiences, sharing stories, listening and thereby living vicariously through other people’s stories. You may be world traveling and having direct arguments with the President! From your head. We love language because it produces a more exciting reality.

    “Storyline Fever” is a new song out by the late David Berman under the moniker Purple Mountains. He was a genius with language. The realities he spun can be surreal but they frequently take you outside the self and into the primal and universal truth. We can work ourselves up into a fever with language, or transcend ourselves.

    Our brains in western neuroscience are viewed as the seat of intellect and consciousness and this is accurate, but eastern (especially Chinese) science has long viewed that the seat of intelligence and enlightenment is in the heart. The heart does not have the storage capacity that the brain has, but it knows what to do with the information.

    In America, our hearts are separated from the brain, so they are constantly firing out of sequence. It makes for a very messy social-political-economic order. I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds about this, I am observing a broader truth here.

    When we don’t practice the alignment of heart and brain, we are guided excessively by brains. The problem there is that the brain is just relaying possible scenarios. It is the vessel, not the captain. The reality most likely to be accepted with this kind of misalignment will be the one that produces the strongest emotional reaction. Because we are not accustomed to the subtleties of the heart, we only accept the grossest signals.

    The repression of the Chinese through an economic structure forces the heart into submission, although, I would say it is better expressed to say that the heart is captured, as Chinese folks abide in the political-economic order to an unhealthy degree. Their enhanced intelligence is pointed toward totally materialistic aims, because that is the structure of a communist government where religion has mostly been replaced with materialism. The Chinese are crushing it, by the way, because they have long understood how the heart works.

    We really should watch ourselves with the realities we’re spinning with language, in our heads, in our dining rooms, on our Twitter accounts, and remember that our brains are a vessel, not an identity. There in that brain you store your identity. Who owns that vessel? One can only say God because there is no taking that body with you, as we say of our possessions.

    There are volumes written over the course of human history about the argument between the everlasting self and the self-identity associated with the body, that is, spiritualism versus materialism, theism versus atheism. I am a student, not a professor. But we can say something for sure about all this: Watch it. Watch those thoughts, watch those realities, listen to the subtleties in your language, get above the realities you are creating for yourself, and maybe then you can lounge it off.

  • Bike Tour: Tacony Creek

    Bike Tour: Tacony Creek

    Join me on a late August sunny morning ride through Philadelphia’s Tacony Creek Park. It is no secret that I live somewhere along this long stretch of forested public watershed.

    I am a volunteer in the effort to revive this wonderful public resource. I bought my first home along this creek. Moreover, I appreciate the great tradition of public green space that Philadelphia has pioneered over the course of three hundred years. This park is about one hundred years old.

    Additionally, my aim is to cover all four major watersheds in Philadelphia: Pennypack, Cobbs, and Wissahickon. These flow into our great rivers, the Schuylkill and Delaware.

    Another goal of these videos is to tap into the growing market for stationary exercise content. Think of this as a Poor Man’s Peloton. If I could map out the terrain and input that into a 5-mile ride and sync it with my video, I would.

    Starting where I am, we have a shaky video without image stabilization, but you still get a good sense of the complete bike path running along Tacony Creek. I could advance this with shock absorption and a second GoPro mounted to my helmet. A third camera on the back of the bike would make it a complete multicam editing project that would allow for much better views of the parks. If I had an extra $300, I could make it happen. We’ll see.

    Also, I threw my own music in there because Free Music Archive was down. It has changed hands. I hope to continue to utilize it for my video projects in the future. And I hope to start composing new music very soon. Music studio is in the works.