Sponsored Ad

You don’t need “a financial advisor.”
You need the right one.

Habits matches you to vetted advisors who already work with hundreds of people like you…same income range, same life stage, same questions.

It takes a few minutes. It’s low pressure. So whether you’re a first timer or thinking of a change, this is the obvious next step.

Use their mobile app, your computer, or use their instant match solution if you’re pressed for time!

Top Content

Threads >

I’ve been on Threads for a few months now. It’s new, it’s different, but one thing is fersure…it is 10x better than twitter/x.

For years it’s felt like X/Twitter went from a fun, care-free, informative place (whether that was for funny memes, sports updates or political stuff), to a hell hole of bots, paywall’s and dystopian level sh*t.

Similarly, how in ‘22 we all wanted tech. But these days, I think we all wanna jump back to era without push notifications, algorithms, and 24/7 news cycles.

Main Story:

Why I Drove 7 Hours for a Couch

Time and money are funny. In my head, they’re the only 2 real currencies that exist. Everything else is just noise layered on top. Back in my JPM days, we used to joke with clients that the only universal truth about money and happiness is spending money to save time.

DoorDash so dinner is waiting when you get home. Fast passes at Disney so you’re not standing in line for 90 minutes in the sun. Direct flights instead of layovers so you don’t lose half a day sitting on airport carpet.

It all sounds logical until you’re the one making the call.

Is it really worth spending $200 more to save 90 minutes? You’re still getting to the same place. Couldn’t that money be used elsewhere? At what point does “buying time” stop being smart and start being indulgent?

A few weeks ago, I accidentally stepped right into that debate.

Time and money only make sense in hindsight, never in the moment.

Remington and I had been talking about getting a new couch forever. And by forever, I mean about 6 months of half-effort and full frustration.

We went deep on Facebook Marketplace. Haggling with strangers. Getting ghosted. Ghosting back. Finding couches that were cheap but would’ve cost more than they were worth once you factored in a U-Haul, delivery logistics, and the mental energy of coordinating everything.

Eventually, the couch became the #1 topic every Saturday and Sunday. I complained constantly. Our old couch was a piece of shit. Ripped. Unstable. Too small. I barely fit on it. At some point, I started posting about it on social media asking for recommendations, retailers, photos, anything.

Then we spent an entire Saturday hitting showrooms. West Elm. Ashley Furniture. Bob’s Discount. RH. All over the city. Our budget swung wildly. $500 in one store. $3,000 in another. My most annoying trait showed up in full force: I don’t really care how much something costs as long as I feel like I get the value out of it.

The problem is you usually don’t know the value until years later.

We landed on West Elm as the best bang for the buck. Everything else either felt cheap or wildly overpriced. But when we went online, everything we liked was expensive and had a 5+ month delivery window. Clearance was closer to our $1,500 target, but still wouldn’t arrive until late March.

So naturally, we spiraled.

Instagram polls. Over 100 submissions. Then the DTC furniture rabbit hole. Joybird. Article. Cozey. About 20 websites later, we had 25 SKUs open across 2 monitors. Scorecards. Voting systems. It felt like I was back at the bank executing a block trade instead of picking something to sit on.

That exercise did absolutely nothing.

We just yelled about 10 couches that all looked identical on a screen. At one point, I went on a rant about how every furniture retailer probably buys from the same 10 overseas manufacturers anyway. Might be true. Felt true.

We ended up back at West Elm. Because we didn’t want to buy a couch we’d never sat on.

You can over-optimize anything into paralysis if you try hard enough.

So we started calling showrooms.

Eventually, we got connected to one over 250 miles away. Different city. Exact couch we wanted. Massive discount. The catch was simple. No holding. No delivery. We had to pick it up. About a 7-hour round trip.

We told ourselves we’d give it a week.

By Friday, I called again and the manager answered with, “Is this Jack or Remington?”

I burst out laughing.

She said it was still there. If I could get there by 5 pm, she’d pull it off the floor and give us the price. Remington was doing Mohs surgeries all day. I texted her 2 words: “I’m going.”

I booked a U-Haul. Moved my afternoon Zooms to phone calls. Hit the road.

After 3.5 hours, I walked into the store and was treated like a movie character. Not because of content. Because I was the representative of the insane couple who’d been calling every day about a clearance couch. They had it wrapped. Ready. Helped me load it. Secured it for the drive back.

I tipped the guy $20 for wrapping it so carefully, which in hindsight might’ve felt weirdly formal, but he saved that couch from a brutal winter drive.

I got home starving, caffeinated, and running on adrenaline. Remington helped me unload it. I dragged our old couch to the elevator, threw it into the U-Haul, drove it around the corner, and launched it into the dumpster like I had gorilla strength and a point to prove.

Returning a U-Haul at 11 pm in the pouring rain is a special kind of misery. Taking photos in the dark while soaked through feels personal. By the time I got back into my car, it felt like I’d jumped into a freezing pool.

And I did not care at all.

Because I had a couch.

Some wins don’t feel efficient, they just feel right.

All in, we spent just under $1,000 on a couch that retailed for $3,500 and would’ve taken 5 months to arrive. Add gas, tolls, snacks, and fees, and the U-Haul came out to about $262. Call it $1,300 and the hours between 3 pm and 11 pm on a Friday in winter.

Pessimists will say you need to factor in what you’d pay yourself for those 8 hours. Optimists will say what else were you really doing at 3 pm on a Friday in winter?

What I say is simpler.

I saved at least a grand. Got a phenomenal couch. Walked away with a ridiculous story. And got reminded of my favorite paradox.

Time and money behave the same way. You can optimize them endlessly. Debate them endlessly. Try to make every decision “correct.” Or you can decide what actually matters to you and spend both accordingly.

Sometimes the best decisions don’t look smart on paper. They just feel right when you sit down.

The real value isn’t whether you saved time or money, it’s whether you’re glad you spent both the way you did.

Feedback for Jack

Did you like this email?

You can add additional feedback after selecting one of the options below.

Login or Subscribe to participate

Enjoyed this newsletter? Forward it to a friend or use the referral link below!

Sharing Is Caring

Do me a favor, if you enjoy this, share it with a friend!

Keep Reading