Why money can make you miserable even if you're careful

Such a simple object, isn't it?  With money, you can get stuff.  Lots of stuff.  But the emotional effects are not to be underestimated. Money can change people in so many subtle ways.  It's like metal rusting from the inside.  You can't see it directly, but you know something's wrong.

Prior to May 2010, I had very little money, I also didn't give it very much thought.  I got paid a regular salary and I managed to get by with whatever I had.  But every purchase required some thought.  Something like a ¥40,000 PS3 would need careful consideration with the salary I was getting.  And I could never afford things like new cars, or land, or a nice condo.  So I never thought about these things, and was content carrying on my life like a "normal" person.

Then in May 2010, I released my first app to the App Store, Real英会話, and on the first day, I only made ¥500 from app sales.  Well hey, that's not bad, I thought.  If this keeps up that's a nice bonus to my existing salary.

But the second day, I made ¥10,000.  And that was pretty incredible I thought.  No way this will continue, right?

Third day, ¥50,000.  Fourth day, ¥259,000. 

Fifth day, ¥480,000.

I still remember that moment when I saw that fifth day number on my iPhone between my classes at night, and I had to step outside just to catch my breath.  Standing next to the Coca-Cola vending machine outside the school, I felt disbelief and a crazy fucking high like you would never believe.  I had to call someone and tell them what happened just to let some of this craziness out of my system.  This was like three times my monthly salary in a single day!

Am I really this awesome?

How far will this go?

When will I actually see this money?

Can I like buy a huge house and stuff now?

Am I going to be a millionaire?

Thoughts and dreams bursting through my head, and the best part of it was...really the best part of it was...

The best was yet to come. 

Those were a happy few months, I'm telling you.  I would go about doing work as usual, and then on Saturday nights I'd always go to this nice izakaya, Kishimiru, and drink beer to my hearts content, all while yelling to myself "I'm rich! I'm rich!  I've finally made it!" -  in my head quietly of course.  I told people that when my first paycheck came in, I was going to dance topless on the street from the sheer ecstasy of it all.

It seemed to take ages, but in August 2010 my first real paycheck from Apple finally came in, and it was a whopping ¥6,963,383.  For me, at that time, that was a ginormous amount of money, especially since after four years of teaching English I had only managed to save ¥1,000,000 in the bank.  I kept that statement on my wall as a keepsake... a reminder of that time when I first made it big. 

But for some reason, the whole spaztastic excitement of it all kind of died down, and I never did dance naked on the streets.

In the following months I bought all the things I kind of wanted for a while but could never afford comfortably.  A totally souped up Macbook Pro with 4GB RAM and 256SSD drive (cost ¥240,000), a top-of-the-line air conditioner (cost ¥300,000) a new 46" LCD (cost ¥86,000) and I'm pretty random other stuff like new clothes and what-not.  I didn't buy a new car however, because I really liked my tiny Daihatsu Move, as "crappy" as it may seem to Benz and BMW drivers.

I'm going to fast-forward one year from that now, and tell you what my life is like now.

I've gained weight.  I pretty much got fired from my teaching job because I refused to co-operate with my co-workers, whom I all subconsciously thought were brain-dead losers for not making nearly as much money as I did.  I somehow picked up nasty drinking habits like drinking in the afternoon (and then driving right afterwards on occasion).  I drink so much coffee in one day that my stomach often has this gag reflex from all the acid.  I compulsively check my iPhone every 15 minutes for my app rankings and reviews.  I have to answer support e-mails practically every hour and I get about 100 of them a day.

I live in constant fear of rivals who are are out to slander my application any day of the week. I have to get receipts at all the restaurants and every purchase is now analyzed with the additional criteria of "is this tax-deductible".

I have my own company (which really means I just paid the ¥200,000 or so to register it legally), I have a tax accountant, I'm in the top tax bracket in Japan, I pay the maximum health insurance fee, I have three macbook pros, two macbook airs, two mac minis, a 27" Cinema Display, two iPhone 4's, two iPhone 3GS's, an iPod Touch 2G, 3G and 4G, an iPad 1, an Ipad 2, I rent an office, drive a new car (a "modest" Mazda Demio).

None of the stuff I own means anything to me.  Most of my electronic toys just sit there in my room collecting dust, doing nothing.  Really, all I use is the first Macbook Pro I bought, and the iPhone 3GS that made it all happen for me at the beginning.   I just buy new models "on a whim", unbox them, sniff the "new plastic" smell, dick around on the machine for a few minutes before getting bored with it and realizing it's not worth the trouble to transfer my entire development environment to a new machine that's really not any faster.

And overall, I'm not nearly as happy as I was before.  The most ironic thing, I feel so poor - not emotionally - but financially too.  I probably have about ¥30,000,000 in straight-up cash sitting in my bank account now, but my feeling is... that's jack shit money.  I need ¥100,000,000 to be doing anything significant, like buying some great land, or building a five-story building.  It's a screwed up perception, because I bet with ¥100,000,000 I'd just be whining about something I could be able to buy for ¥200,000,000, like building a custom-designed masterpiece of a building.

So, what the hell happened in that one year?

That story, is for another day.

CVT: does it really suck?

After five years of driving a really old Daihatsu Move 2nd generation, I've finally upgraded to this:



2011 Mazda Demio Sport, 1.5L.

As with any new purchase in life, it's the difference between the new thing and the old thing that really defines the final "experience".  But the biggest difference between the this car and all the cars I've driven before, is that this one was equipped with a CVT.

Since I heard of CVT I always thought of it as the "loser tranny", that kills all feeling of acceleration and makes the car boring to drive.  I was actually terrified that without the gear shifting, it wouldn't feel like a real car anymore.

Now with actual driving experience, I think CVT are pretty damn good.   The bottom line is that it keeps the engine revving at the ideal point at any given time, so it does have this kind of "perfection" feeling in its concept.

Casual driving is so much quieter.
If you coast through the city at a regular pace the rpms never go past 2500 even when you're getting off from a red light.  Thats QUIET.  Every auto-car I've ever driven up to now almost always goes past 3000 in first gear before it's willing to shift to second.  The Demio can provide all the acceleration you need in normal circumstances and never go past 2500.

Highway Coasting is made even quieter.
I'm guessing because the CVT allows a wider range of gear ratios, even when going at about 120km/h on the highway, the rpm meter still does not go over 3000rpm.  This means maintaining a high speed on the highway is quieter with CVT.

Acceleration is even more responsive.
If you want to accelerate hard the CVT responds almost linearly to how hard you depress the accelerator.  The harder you push down, the higher the RPM's, until it reaches at maximum of 4200 which produces the maximum torque on a Mazda Demio.  There's of course a little bit of lag as the tranny computer adjusts to your sudden change in driving style.  But it's way better than an auto because the auto has to downshift in addition to reacting to your driving style change, causing another 0.5 second lag where the car does not accelerate at all.

.. but it does feel a little... boring
Because the engine revs at a fairly constant rate throughout your drive, you don't get that trademark low->high->low->high RPM orchestra from shifting gears.  So, it does lose a little bit of flair or character.  But I only really missed this in the first few days... it's something that can be forgotten quickly.

The car picks up speed deceptively quick.
Because of aforementioned lack of noise, the car actually picks up speed a lot more quickly than you'd be aware of.  I mean there were many times I thought... judging by the noise... I should only be about 60km/h but bam I was already past 80km/h.  Definitely needs time to get used to.