August 2026 update: Last paycheck, High ROI Classes, Favorite Reads and more

Favorite lesson: "You'll learn to get used to it."

Aug 09, 2026

I haven’t written a personal update in a while. These are the thoughts that I’m either too lazy to write as a Substack note, or too short for a full article. Hope you like the smorgasbord of ideas!

Last paycheck

It feels surreal getting my last paycheck after 7 years at the company.

When I was getting a consistent paycheck, I felt a certain sense of security. Seeing that direct deposit hit my checking account would make me feel richer and a bit more relaxed.

Now, I’ll have no new money coming in. I’m going to have to “use myself as a bank” and live off of savings. Psychologically, it’s something I’ve been worried about - and preparing for - over the last year.

One of the most reassuring things I’ve learned from the FI community is simply: “You’ll learn to get used to it.”

Just like anything, the first time you do anything is awkward because you have untrained muscles. But repeat anything long enough (including being OK not getting a paycheck!) and you’ll feel the fear subside. At least that’s what I hope for myself.

If you’d be interested in reading about how I plan to fund the first few years of post-work / layoff life, reply to this email with the words “SABBATICAL.”

I took a music class and think I have a new hobby

I recently finished Electronic Music I at the local community college. This was my introduction to music production using a popular software called Ableton. It’s been surprisingly fun.

Here’s one of my favorite tracks I made after 4 weeks of learning:

0:00

-2:00

I should probably give this bop a proper title, as it’s still “7-30-26 Last Song Submission - V3.” The file naming conventions from my design career will never leave me.

I’m amused about the amount of fun I’m having with it, and why I want to protect music production as a hobby:

I like “shipping” things and my musical ideas are short enough (1-2 minutes) that it feels like a fun way to iterate
I can get a song idea out as fast or faster than I can write articles, as you can probably tell from my recent Substack cadence. That surprised me. Though it’s much harder to “finish” a song idea than publishing an article, just recording a tune down scratches some itch for me.
Music is universal and has helped me connect with friends old and new in a new way. What kind of music do you like? Is just as universal as sports, who’s your team?

The next projects I’m looking into: create dedication tracks for friends using samples of their voices.

With that being said, there’s a lot more music I want to learn in support of these projects. Which leads me to the next nugget…

It takes just 1 class to expand your interests

I’ve taken two community college classes for $184/each and can’t stop talking about them. Compared to when I was in high school trying to transfer CC classes for college credit, now I am an “adult learner” just taking classes for leisure. That makes a big difference because I’m choosing what I want to learn.

My next class is a weekly DJ Workshop Class1 that will hopefully help me understand exactly WTF DJs are doing at parties and weddings.

DJ Kitty — I’m sure my cat can DJ just as good as me.

Just like music production, I don’t know if I’ll like it. But I’m certain about coming out of that class at least appreciating what DJs do at parties and concerts.

These CC experiences give me the perspective that taking classes is a high leverage lifestyle design hack.

It’s low commitment: you can figure out quickly with just one class whether you’re into the subject matter. If you’re not, you can just stop going to the class.
It’s high potential ROI: one class can cultivate and plant the seed for a new interest and hobby.
Classes have a clear start and end date and provide a good container for beginning your exploration.

On top of that, classes can be surprisingly affordable, like I’ve found via community college.

A private electronic music school I stumbled upon charged ~$6500. It gives me great pleasure that a $200 CC class was enough to scratch the itch for me2.

Lower cost classes aren’t always as good or in-depth as private classes, and vice versa (how else can you find a dedicated Kundalini Activation class from your local yogi?).

But it’s kinda cool to know that your life can start changing with just 1 class.

Aligning to seasons of life

My summer is closing (can’t believe it’s gone so fast) with a LOT of travel. Family cruise to Alaska. Vegas. Taiwan.

There’s something appropriate about starting my next class the first week of September. In this new post work life (I’m going to be saying that a lot as context…), aligning to the communal seasons of summer vacay and the start of the fall semester feels oddly grounding.

I like that I don’t dread school in the way I often did as a kid. Because there are SO MANY CC classes I’m interested in, I feel like I’ll always be taking 1-2 classes at any given time in the next couple years. I don’t do well with prolonged, unstructured time, so school adds a helpful organizing element to my life.

If you’re on the FI path or staring down the abyss of free time, I’d really try looking to see what your local community college offers.

What I’ve been reading and using

I’ll close with a short rec list of stuff I’ve been into:

I’ve been quieting using/testing Origin Financial to track my networth, spending and finances. For the past 18 months, it’s outperformed Rocket Money and similar Mint-like (RIP) competitors. The killer feature is that it’s AI is actually truly useful and accurate, because they designed this AI against the CFP (Certified Financial Professional) benchmarks. It’s been AMAZING for more advanced use classes like early retirement planning, investment allocation, etc. If you use my referral link, you get your first year for just $1. Yes, $1.
TaiwanObsessed.com was recommended to me by a friend who visited The Green Island, and it really is the most updated blog that covers everything about Taiwan travel in great detail. It helped me a lot in my upcoming trip.
Book Rec 1: Cate Hall is one of my favorite Substack writers who recently released You Can Just Do Things. The book, as its title suggests, covers different aspects of personal agency. My favorite tip that I want to implement is an anonymous feedback form so that my community has a safe way to tell me how awesome I am. Or not.
Book Rec 2: Young Money by Jack Raines covers great lifestyle design lessons mostly for Americans in their 20s. It’s uncanny how much of my life reflected that of Jack’s in my 20s, from extensive travel to Latin America and Spain. I think the core idea that stands out to me is that Life Is a Stage-Specific Endeavor → this is a free chapter from his book you can read on Substack. Reading this makes me both proud of how I designed my twenties, and is also motivating me to do more things now as I stare down the end of my 30s.
- If you like audio books, a lot of them are included/available if you already have Spotify Premium. Here’s the Spotify link to Young Money.
The almost-perfect backpack. I wanted one backpack to handle remote working, light packing, and trips to the gym. I went through 5 different backpacks on Amazon, before randomly landing on the Bagsmart Blast Pro 38L backpack. I love it - it has a clamsell design that opens into a generous compartment, has a separate shoe compartment, and the top accessible zippers are super useful. Not to mention it’s expandable from 28L→38L. For less than $100, I really like this backpack although I would easily buy another backpack if it had the exact same features, but Peak Design level materials.

I’d love to hear from you:

What’s a class you wish to take? I’d also love to hear how you developed new hobbies - what was the very early beginning stages like?

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