Relativity is a jerk.
This is school year flew by faster than the last school year that flew by. The kids have 2 weeks left. But summer is my favorite season. Egyptian blood and all.
This summer we will do less travel than prior years. We will spend 10 days in Italy/Malta for a family wedding and go to my 25-year college reunion in Ithaca but otherwise I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time home.
We got both boys new bikes as early birthday presents so they can get even more time with them. They are obsessed with them, riding every day, and my older one has started riding mountain bike trails in our local parks with friends. It’s nice to see them dosing on that same freedom I had growing up. That meme about a circle of bikes on the grass being how you found out where your friends were all hangin’. (Although middle school kids are all Apple Watch’d up now so “finding” each other is easier).
I’m also just stoked to see them sink into hobbies generally, especially because they overlap with mine, muahahaha. I took Max to Jack White on Friday in Oakland (my wife and I saw him last night in SF for a date night). He went from no concerts ever to this year seeing Foo Fighters, AC/DC, Jack White, and in June…Metallica (his favorite). He’s replacing all his wall art with rock posters. He just turned 9. Peaking too soon but we’ll see.
Zak just finished the first options project I urged him to do and I can see how empowered he feels doing it. He’s impressed with himself (and learning Excel very quickly in the process).
As of now, you input:
- stock position
as well as a bunch of option positions with:
- premiums
- strike prices
- quantities
- and whether the option is a call or put
It outputs:
The p/l vs stock price at expiration.
It’s simple but heck it’s what our Portfolio Visualizer tool does in our app.
With this tool in hand, I can now teach him put/call parity which I need him to know for where we’re going…I’m building towards him vibecoding an educational option game. I’m calling it a prototype and when we build it into our app I’ll pay him. Greasing the wheels.
Generally speaking, the kids are pretty uninterested in money. I wonder if this has to do with growing up comfortable but I also know plenty of kids in that camp who are interested in money so maybe it’s like being cheap or generous — I find how spendy or frugal people are to be poor indicators of their economic well-being. The brain’s money setting is mysterious.
That said, they are selling a wider variety of 3D printed items and now scheming on what profit margins they can snag. Hobbies are funny things. You can tell as a parent when you’re pushing it forward, but hobby-child fit is obvious when their daily progress has you trying to catch up…”wait, what did you sell today?”
I’m 10-20 on getting a phone call from school before the last day (settling to 100).
