Amazon Purchases Since 1998

Amazon.com allows you to dump your entire account order history since the beginning of time. I ran the report yesterday and was about to get data starting late 1998. I am 100 percent sure I purchased items from Amazon before that, but the historical data is gone.

The request said it could take as long as a month, but my report was done in three hours.

The data came in a large .csv file which I opened in Micrsoft Excel. There was only one tab with 28 by 2037 rows. I am going to focus on the Total Owed column which includes taxes, shipping, and discounts.

Total orders = 2,037
Total owed = $69,361.89
Average total owed = $34.07
Max total owed = $1,463.98

In case you were wondering, the top five items were computers and electronics:

Apple MacBook Air MD232LL/A = $1,463.98
Apple MacBook Pro MB990LL/A = $1,194.00
Sony VAIO VGN-CR420E/L = $1,099.99
Sony A55VHZ 16.2 MP Digital SLR = $1,049.00
2012 Apple 11-inch iPad Pro = $924.19

On the web, there is a statistic that said the average Amazon Prime customer spends $2,400 per year. Prime was introduced in 2005 but did not become popular until 2011. Here is my spend by year.

After COVID, I went shopping crazy and bought a lot of stuff. I also forgot to add return data, although I do not return many items from Amazon.

COBRA Election

I should have read the email sent by my previous company’s benefits director. I thought she had sent me a sample letter, but she actually sent me a copy of what I would receive in the mail. The letter included the sign-up website and a registration ID. Luckily, she called me directly and went over some things with me today.

The process is confusing. I needed to sign up with a company called WEX Health. From the website, they appear to be another third-party benefits administration company. I think the trend has been to outsource a lot of administrative functions, especially in human resources, in order to save on employee costs. Anyway, I signed up, chose my insurance elections, and set up a recurring ACH to pay for the premiums. Here is what everything cost:

Blue Shield PPO: $568.34/month
Delta Dental PPO: $40.00/month
Lyra Health Coaching: $1.15/month
VSP Vision: $6.24/month

Total is about $616 per month which is extremely cheap for good health insurance. The benefits director suggested I get the Lyra Health Coaching since it was only $1.15/month, but I do not even know what it is for. She also said she would go chase down WEX and downstream providers to get my COBRA paperwork processed as soon as possible so I will not have issues with my medical appointments next week.

COBRA Insurance Gap

Since finishing my last college degree in 1995, I have never been unemployed. In America, health insurance is typically tied to your job, unless you are over 65 years old, or you are on welfare. By law, I can continue my current health insurance from work, there is a gap nevertheless. So, even though COBRA insurance will retroactively cover me back to June 1st, I technically do not have insurance currently.

From the information I received when I quit, I know it will take a few weeks to even get the COBRA paperwork. However, I did not to be cur off from everything on May 31st. I am running low on prednisone and went online to try and refill the prescription. Instead of seeing my long list of medications, I found nothing. It seems my account was closed, which I understand, but I also lost all the upcoming refills. That means I will need to call my doctors for a new prescription at my local pharmacy. I did confirm with my friend that at her pharmacy, they will refund you the cost of your prescription if you have to pay retail but later have retroactive insurance coverage. Luckily I have lots of medications, other than prednisone. My friend also said that prednisone is super cheap wholesale, like $5 for 100 pills, and she can get some for me. Hopefully this can be resolved before I start running out of more expensive medications.

As for doctor visits, the director of benefits at my prior employer said I need to ask the provider to delay filing the claim, or pay first and get reimbursed when COBRA insurance is active. Unfortunately, I have a lot of appointments scheduled in two weeks. From past experience, something or everything will go wrong and I will need to deal with insurance issues for the next several months. There are pros and cons to single payer insurance in countries like Canada, but not switching health insurance providers all the time seems like a huge positive. I just hope any negative impact is only financial and not physical.

New Ankle Problem

I started a post this morning about being called into the orthopedic surgeon’s office. Well, the news is worse than I expected. I should not be surprised because the worst always happens to me.

Here are some x-rays of my foot:

From top left to bottom, the dates are:

February 7, 2024
April 22, 2024
May 13, 2024
Today, May 20, 2024

You can see clearly that my ankle is dislocating downwards in the front. There is a growing hole right before you get to the toe bones. The problem was apparent on the May 13th x-ray, but much more obvious today. The other ankle surgeon at the office, a church friend, said that the bone is softer/weaker due to Charcot Foot, and usually that causes dislocations, fractures, and bone disintegration. By giving me another non-weight bearing cast, they hope to stabilize the ankle, and have it try to heal on its own.

Based on my luck so far, that is not likely. I will probably need more surgeries, including external fixators on the foot/ankle again. In the meantime, we are still waiting for another CT scan to get more clarity on what is happening.

Why does all this shit keep happening to me?

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In case you do not know what external fixators are, they are exactly what the name says: external hardware to fix broken bones in place. Here is what I got last time.

Retired

After twelve years and eleven months, and twenty-nine years after getting my MBA degree, I am retired from my current company and retired from corporate finance. Since I have been on medical leave for the past four months, not much has changed except that I do not have a paycheck anymore.

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During the employee’s exit interview, the company gives you your last paycheck and accrued vacation as manual checks. I just looked at the two checks I received, and the authorized signature is mine. I was treasurer until 2018-2019 so that cannot be legit. I hope the checks do not bounce since I noticed after I deposited them on mobile app.

Final Work Tour

I gave a tour of our factory last night. Employees are allowed to give tours of our factory for friends and family. Since I am quitting on Friday, I got a request for a tour from a friend and her family. I purposely pushed the date out since my ankle is still not 100%.

The tour itself went well. I arrived at work a bit earlier than the 7:00 pm time to drop off some candy and pick up a box of my office stuff accumulated of the past thirteen years. The actual tour took about an hour since there were quite a few questions. About midway through the tour, I knew my ankle was going to hurt. Afterwards, I went to dinner with my friend, then drove her home. I arrived at home around 10:00 pm and just crashed. My ankle was very sore plus there were multiple neuropathy attacks. I finally took one pill from my dwindling supply of Norco, and I feel a lot better.

My friend works at a pharmacy, and she gave me some sample pills of gabapentin. I have discussed this medication with my endocrinologist but decided to put it off. After the ankle injury, I feel the neuropathy attacks have been more intense so maybe it is time to revisit my decision.

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While at work, I visited a co-worker friend in the Shareholder Services team to make sure that I received my stock vesting. We vest on May 15th and November 15th. The only reason I worked hard to push my retirement date to May 17th is to get my final block of shares. It is not an insignificant amount so I am glad I was able to get it before I quit.

Farewell Office Party

I mentioned in several posts that I am retiring soon, and that date is now only two weeks away. My boss told me that they will throw me a retirement party on my last day, and I found out it will be lunch from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm. I told this to a former co-worker who also worked twelve plus years at the same company. She quit right after maternity leave so she did not receive any going away party. She said she wanted to come so I asked my boss’s assistant, and they said okay. My first ex-coworker friend said we should also ask another ex-coworker to come. She also worked at the same company for twelve plus year, quit after maternity leave, and did not receive a party either. I actually met the second ex-coworker from a previous company, so I have known her for nineteen years.

I hope that was not too confusing. I really did not want a farewell party, but now I am looking forward to it. I hope there will also be some acknowledgement of my two ex-coworkers since we were really the foundation of the current department, and it was kind of sad that they left after maternity leave without coming into the office again.

There are a lot of recent hires so most of them probably will not know who we are anyway. Just come for the free food!

Supplemental Short-Term Disability

I may have mentioned this before, since I have been on disability and medical leave so many times. Our company provides some supplemental benefits via The Hartford insurance company. My understanding is that the benefit is two-thirds of weekly salary, up to a $1,600 maximum. The maximum is also affected by what I receive from the State of California for short-term disability. Previously, California provided up to $1,357 per week so I received several hundred dollars per week. However, the state cap is now $1,620 per week so even though I filed a claim with The Harford, I pretty much ignored the process after finding out the maximum benefit was less than what the state offered.

Today, I received a call from The Hartford asking to confirm my disability end date. I provided it but asked why it mattered. The customer service representative (CRS) said I should have received some checks. While she was still on the phone, I checked all the unopened mail and found about $450 in checks. Strange. I looked at the statement closely and discovered that there is a minimum benefit of $50 per week. Even though I was paid more than the maximum benefit, the minimum benefit must still apply. It is not a lot of money, but it is better than $0.

Work Reunion Dinner

I went to a dinner last night at Honda-ya in Tustin. The group consisted of current coworkers and ex-coworkers. It is not really a reunion where people have not see each other in many years since four of us still work at the same company. Out of the six other people, three have worked for me in the past, and I have mentored two others outside of a direct-report relationship. After I retire, I will probably only keep in contact with this group, plus a hnadful more.

Honda-ya is a pretty good izakaya in Old Town Tustin. They do not take reservations so we got there before 5:00 pm to put our name down. We did get seated after a few minutes and stayed for about two hours. I said I would pay the bill and it came out to about $300 for seven people. The past time I did this, we only have four of us and the bill was almost $400. It was a lot of fun just to catch-up since I have been out of the office for almost three months.

I also tried a piece of sashimi. I had a bad experience many years ago when I threw up a piece of fresh tuna. It is not in the photo, but I had a piece of yellowtail belly. All I tased was the soy sauce. I also did not like the texture since it was kind of fatty. I could feel my gag reflex coming so I quickly swallow it and washed it down with lots of water. Oh well.

Ankle Update 20240223

There is really nothing to update. I mentioned before that there was a three period between the last appointment on February 7th and the next appointment on February 28th. Well, despite thinking I would never survive the three weeks without a nervous breakdown, I only have five days to go. I am hoping that my ankle is healed enough to switch from a cast to a walking boot. Even if I need a few more weeks of healing, I want to ask the surgeon for a boot, and I can continue to keep the weight off my right leg. That would allow me to take the boot occasionally to put on lotion and scratch itches.

As for living at home alone, I have gotten a lot better at climbing the stairs on my knees. Two weeks ago, I had to rest on each landing on the staircase because I was exhausted. Now, I can climb up non-stop and hardly break a sweat. I still try to minimize the number of times I need to go up and down, but it is no longer an issue. I also have lots of food with the recent Factor 75 prepped meal delivery, and the remaining Costco family meals.

The amount of work I have to do has dropped off even more. I still offer to help, but I only “worked” for four hours the past two weeks. Due to being on medical leave, it is all unpaid except for disability, but I am okay with helping.

Chase Private Client

Due to a $2,000 bonus many years ago, I have “Private Client” status at Chase bank. One of the benefits is sending out wire transfers for free instead of paying $30 per transfer. The only downside is a $250k daily limit on outgoing wires. That is not an issue until the day you need to send out a large wire. However, you can go into the branch, or set up wire by phone agreement to get around the $250k daily limit.

Last week, knowing I may need to move some investments around, I filled out a wire by phone agreement at my local Chase branch. The bank manager seemed a bit confused, but I was able to fill out and sign some forms. I just got off the phone with Chase Private Client and evidently the branch manager did not complete half of the form, so I am unable to proceed with the wire transfer. I went to the bank on Wednesday, so it has been at least two additional bank workdays. The CSR on the phone said she will call the manager to have them complete the form and call me to let me know I can proceed. So far, thirty minutes and no call back.

I initially started this post becuase the Chase Private Client phone portal is crap. After making me punch in my 16-digit bank card number, it asked if I wanted a callback instead of waiting. I pressed “1” for yes and I got an immediate callback. Why offer me that option if there is no waiting? Also, they do not inform the client about the wait time until after you make a choice. During the callback, the option to connect to a CSR did not work, and after three tries, the automated system hung up on me. Very not impressed.

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It has been three hours and no response from Chase Bank. This is pretty lame. I am sending out a wire today online and will need a second wire transfer tomorrow to finish the transfer. I am not sure who to talk to about this, but I guess I still cannot send phone wires.

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The fraud team from Chase Bank called me right away. They needed to verify my identity and then gave me a bunch of warnings about fraud and making sure I knew the recipient. I guess they need to do that for consumer banking but having been treasurer for three years at a large company, I know that wired funds are nearly impossible to reverse.

No More Medicare

So, my Medicare coverage ended yesterday. I was eligible for Medicare due to ESRD while I was on dialysis. This carried over when I received a kidney transplant three years ago. The rule says that kidney transplant patients can keep Medicare for three years post-transplant. Since I was still working and making salary, I was in the highest Medicare premium tier and my monthly payment was around $600. Going forward, I will only have my work insurance, then COBRA when I finally retire in a few months.

I am not sure if Medicare was worth it after transplant. With two insurances, I did not have to pay anything for medical services since Medicare covered 80%, and my work insurance covered the rest. Now I will be subject to deductibles and co-pays but save on Medicare premiums. I also have the option to continue Medicare coverage just on my anti-rejection medication, but since no one accepts Medicare Part A for drugs, I will probably rely on my work insurance for prescriptions and deal with everything together when COBRA runs out.

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The Social Security Administration did send me a letter last month reminding me that my Medicare coverage ends on January 31, 2024. I am 50/50 on whether they stop debiting my bank account for premiums at the same time.

First Day of the Rest of My Life

Today is the first day of my proposed medical leave. I say proposed because I have not filed the paperwork but will do so today. Once approved, I will be out of work but collecting $1,600 of disability each week. After three months, I will take one month of vacation, then I will be officially done with my current company after thirteen years.

I have not figured out what to do next.

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Day one of “retirement” and I got two requests for one-on-one meeting and another director contesting how my boss reassigned my previous staff to new managers. Sigh…

Done

I have been talking about retirement so long that now it is a reality, I am having a hard time accepting it. Technically, I am still employed, but after today, I have medical leave, and my boss said I could use PTO to get to the next stock vesting date. So really after today, I should be done with work. I said I would answer questions and stuff, even after the official termination date, but I am done with work.

Unmotivated

I have an LED light strip that I intended to put up as Christmas lights in front of my house. It has sat in its box for close to two months. Finally, one week before Christmas, I got it out of the box and fully planned to put it up above my garage. I pulled out the step ladder, measured the installation location, and promptly gave up. My neighbor even came across the street to see if I needed help. I told him no and that I would try again earlier next year. However, I do need help getting out of this depressive slump.

I spent about six hours with a church friend yesterday. Initially, we were meeting for lunch, and to have him explain the bond market to me. We did do some of that, but I spent most of time talking about my work friend issue. It took a lot of embarrassing sharing, but I think I received some clarity on why I have been depressed. It is too complicated to discuss on a blog post but basically I have lost a close personal friend instead of just a work friend, which will take much longer to process and recover from. From the friend’s perspective, I am now definitely a mid to low level relationship. This discrepancy and how it affects communications is going to cause me a lot of grief and heartache until I can adjust my expectations quickly and deal with the loss.

Understanding a problem does not make it suck less.

Impending Doom

I started posting here about four and a half years ago, and here is what I wrote:

It’s been almost two years since I started dialysis. I really don’t have anyone to talk to about the struggles of life with dialysis so I’m going to share with Internet strangers.
https://mybadkidney.wordpress.com/2019/06/23/welcome/

Since then, my physical quality of life has vastly improved after a bypass surgery and a kidney transplant. However, I am feeling more than ever that I need to see a therapist.

After my health struggles, I lost a lot of interest in work. What kept me going the past five years has been my relationships with both old and new coworkers. Being an introvert, each friendship means a great deal since I do not have that many. Therefore each time someone leaves, it feels like a punch in the gut. This is exaserbated by the fact that I am contemplating retirement.

I posted several times about my new work best friend and that she was let go from our compaany last week. Ever since then, I have felt an uneasiness and a sense of impending doom. The last time I felt this bad was when my wife of seven years divorced me. I am still in contact with my work friend, but once you are no longer coworkers, the level of interaction goes way down: no more quick texts on Microsoft Teams, no short walks in the factory, no sharing tea over coffee. My motivation to go to work, already low, is now practically nil. Of course this is all in my head, but it is hard to separate feelings from fact. I will have to adjust to loss once again.

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To the piece of shit that fired my friend, fuck you.

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The only other person that I blocked on Linkedin was someone form the old company that practically begged us for a job. After much difficulty, we did get a director level postion approved. Then the asshole use that offer to weasel a senior director position back at the old company. That was twelve years ago.

Backstabbers. Never forget, never forgive.

Resignation

My new best friend at work just got fired today.

My friend has only been working for the company for about fifteen months. The entire time she has had one terrible manager after another. I have seen nasty emails sent by her current manager, and there seemed to be a targeted vendetta against my friend. After over twelve years as a director in the same department, I know everyone’s management style and effectiveness. Additionally, there is definitely a toxic cultural influence from our CEO.

I am old enough to know that nothing is 100% black-and-white. My friend usually comes into the office at around 10:00 AM. That is not rare for our department and company, but most people are in by 9:00 AM. However, if you get your work done, typically no ore really cared about your hours. There was also complaint that my friend was away from her desk often, but her team would not train her or assign her work. Right when she was hired, our collective boss put her under the worst manager and he bacically ignored her for six months. The unfortunate outcome is that my friend got the label of someone that did not get anything done, and a low performer.

I am very upset. Of course, when a friend is tired, it is a sad situation. This is different as I am part of the management, though my friend was not on my specific team, and I have worked for our CFO for twenty-four years. My friend is only twenty-five years old; that mean I have know my manager since she was one. I have raised this situation with my boss before, and he acknowledges that collectively, the managers in the department has done a poor job. I was also helping to find a solution that would keep my friend in the company. What no one expected was that my friend would be fired two weeks before Christmas. In hindsight, the fact her current manager called a meeting for Friday afternoon should have been a clue, but both me and several other employees did not think this would happen.

My friend texted me while she was being fired in a conference room. Af first I was shocked, then I thought about walking out since it was Friday and terminations are usually done on Fridays. I think it was an extra cruel to just walk her out without warning, company policy or not. My friend ended up driving home in tears and was almost involved in an accident on the way home.

What now? In many previous texts I talked about my pending retirement. Current plan is to exit at the beginning of February or March, with a possibility of some part-time or consulting work. A this point, I am disguested with the entire situation. Still, I want to unduely impact other employees so I will likely work through the calendar year and walk away. Right now I cannot imagine going back to the office and giving 110% to my work. We are a huge company now and there are many people working hard. However, having investt twelve plus years into the company, with many sacfices to health and relationships along the way, it is very disappointing.

January 12, 2024 will be my last day.

The Big Short

I just watched this movie this afternoon. It is about the 2007-2008 financial crisis. I just divorced my ex-wife in 2006, and I was working at my previous company. Since I was renting and did not have any investments, I was not really impacted by the financial crisis. There may have been a layoff at work, but I kept my job at the time. House prices did drop as a result, and we purchased our current house in December 2009. The market did drop further but as we all know now, rebounded with a vengeance, especially in Southern Califonria.

Even though I work in finance, I learned quite a bit from the movie, especially investment terms. I also like the way the movie was filmed/edited. There were many reality TV show sidebars that were included in the actual scene. The “explainers” by random celebrities were great too.

It is kind of racist, playing off the stereotype that all Asians or Chinese are good at math. However, it is also a bit ironic since most of my finance career has been building models in Excel, and being an ex-engineer has definitely helped. When I applied to business school, my cousin-in-law was teaching at NYU Stern. She said I should apply there, hinting that she may be able to help with the admissions process. Would I have ended up on Wall Street as an analyst versus starting my finance career in corporate planning?

Recently, I have been invited to invest in a bond fund managed by a church cell group member. Even though I was the treasurer of a large company for three years, I know next to nothing about investing, and have zero knowledge about the bond market. My friend did explain a lot of things over several lunches, but it is still mostly a big black box for me. Since his bond fund is also mortgage-backed securities focuses, I should have him explain the movie to me.

Buying Unnecessary Stuff

I have been looking at a pair of bookshelf speakers for a long time. These are the KEF LS50 Meta, and they are very highly rated. For Black Friday, they are on sale for $1,000 per pair. For the longest time, the price was $1,600 per pair. I believe my very old McIntosh amplifier can drive the speakers. However, I already have many (mediocre) amplifiers and speakers. Right now, I do not even have the same speaker connected to the McIntosh. The left channel has a JBL speaker, and the right channel has an Infinity. These are both large eight inch two-ways and sound satisfactory.

In the past, I have been careful with buying stuff, especially non-essential things like electronics. This was mainly because I created financial budgets and plans for work, but also I was poor. Now that I can afford things, it is tempting to go out and just buy stuff I have always wanted. I have some leeway, but that could be very bad if I want to retire.

In the end, I need to decide what I want to do after retirement. Sitting around listening to music is attractive, but I have good wireless headphones and that feels like a berter choice. I also have another audio system in the family room with decent psb/Polk audio apeakers. I guess I am afraid to get hooked since high-end audio equipment can be very expensive.

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Ugh, the struggle is real. I just checked Amazon again and instead of Monday, the delivery date is now December 8th. The “seller” also changed from Crutchfield to The KEF Store. I went directly to the KEF site and had a pair of black LS50’s in the cart, but I opted out again. They are great speakers, and the price is low. I have another month to think about it.

Retirement Timeline

I found you yesterday that a coworker just gave notice. He has only been at our company for two and a half years, but he is one of the few that I really respect at work. We have a lot of immature and disliked managers, and like me, he actively tries to mentor the younger analysts, so they have a different perspective on management. He is also a white guy that lived and worked in China, so we often speak to each other in Mandarin.

Additionally, I am somewhat sure that two other coworkers that I am close to will quit soon. I know I just posted about a conversation with a church friend that I should stay longer at work, maybe as a part-time employee. But after hearing about several coworkers quitting, I am seeing the management issues at work more clearly, and also less inclined to drag out my exit. Depending on the year-end accounting close schedule, I am looking at either February 2nd or 9th as my last day of work.