All for the Sake of a Shirt

Some of you may have heard this story before.

Back in 2014, I saw this picture of Jeremy Lin and Lecrae.

I thought, that's a cool shirt, maybe I'd like to buy that...

But the problem is, how do you go about finding a shirt with nothing more than a picture to go off of?

I searched "guy with balloons shirt", "Up Shirt", etc. but to no avail.

I gave up looking and put it on a mental back burner.  What would happen is that once a month/whenever I remembered, I would try looking for the shirt online.  I started to even scour the most obscure of internet forums, trying to find people who commented on this picture, as well as reverse image searching to find other sites that hosted the picture.  It became more about the process than the actual shirt.

~6 months later, I had a breakthrough after multiple failed attempts.  On a random basketball forum, I found someone who had the same question as I did, and below another commenter gave two words that would lead me to the right path: Imaginary Foundation.

Imaginary Foundation, I would find, is a small, pretty hipster shirt company with a lot of trippy designs.  I went on their website and looked at their entire catalog, but could not find the shirt.  I emailed customer service, who replied saying that they do not produce that shirt anymore. This was a setback, but they did give me the official name of the shirt - "Airborne".

I then searched the internet again for "Imaginary Foundation Airborne" shirts.  Most websites said that the shirt was out of stock, but I managed to find one website that had it.  

It was a British Amazon-like site that I had never heard of before. Everything was marked in British pounds, and I had to end up using Paypal to pay for it.  The shirt was the most expensive I have ever bought -- 70 pounds or $90 -- but I kinda expected this since it was not being produced anymore.  I also wasn't going to back down after coming this far.

No problems happened with shipping and the condition was brand new.  Nowadays, I only end up wearing it once or twice a year, and have to take great care in washing/drying.  

I just tried looking for it again, and it seems every website says it's out of stock.  I guess I somehow own a rare collector's item.  I think I now understand what art collectors/archaeologists feel when they finally find what they're looking for.  It's less about the end goal, but rather the journey of getting there.  The thrill of the hunt!

A Year on the Road

In 2017, I traveled more than any other year in my life.  For this post, I wanted to see exactly how long I spent on the road and how much my travel time was "worth" in terms of dollars.  Most of this travel occurred from January to September.

I had to travel for work, Mondays-Thursdays, every week until the very end of September (going back to mid-September 2016 actually).  During that time, I don't think I spent a single Mon-Wed night in my NYC apartment (holiday weeks I went home to NJ). 

Major cities visited (for work): 
Wilmington, DE
Cedar Rapids, IA
Chicago, IL
Philadelphia, PA
Atlanta, GA
Orlando, FL
Miami, FL
Dallas, TX
San Francisco, CA
Boston, MA

Major cities visited (not for work):
Las Vegas, NV
Raleigh, NC
Stamford/New Haven, CT
Paris
London
Amsterdam
Copenhagen

The following is what people talk about with regards to "consultant perks" I guess:

Flights
American Airlines is what I take:

In 2017, I (my company) spent $8,770 on flights, which spanned 46,007 miles in distance, totaling 61 segments/flights/times gotten on an airplane.

I also flew one United flight and 5 European airline flights for a total of 67 flights taken but I'm not counting those for this tally.

I ended up with 85K award miles for redemption.  A one-way ticket within the U.S. costs approx. 10K points, so that equals 8 one-way tickets rounded down. I'm going to go with The Points Guy, who says a mile is for 1.4 cents, for an estimated total value of $1200. 

Trains
I never had taken an Amtrak train before this year but to get to Delaware, Amtrak/Acela is the best way.

I took a total of 30 train rides (15 round trips) this year, mostly between NYC and Wilmington.  I was awarded 20K points as a result and used 3K last year for redemption.

If we count each one-way ticket to cost 3K points, that means I accumulated around 6 total one-way trips on Amtrak. Assuming a price of $70 per one-way ticket, that equals around $400 in value as an estimate.

Hotels
Marriott and Starwood all the way.  The merger enabled points to be shared, but not the actual nights stayed (yet).  I stayed at both of these brands but tried to mix it up; in my opinion, Starwood hotels are a little more modern/better.  Although the best hotel I stayed at this year was the Marriott Marquis in Miami.

First, on the Marriott side:

I stayed a total of 56 nights in Marriott hotels in 2017.  Last year I earned ~250K reward points, most of which has been used already.

As for Starwood:

I stayed a total of 75 nights in Starwood hotels in 2017.  I earned 150K reward points and basically have not used any.

You can convert Starwood points to Marriott points at a 3 to 1 rate, so to sum them up let's say I accumulated 700K total Marriott points.  According to The Points Guy, a Marriott point is worth 0.9 cents, so that yields $6300 in value.  Yeah, hotels are a lot less stingier than airlines for point redemption.

In total between Marriott/Starwood, I stayed 131 nights. Including European/other hotels, I must have hit 140 nights not spent in NY/NJ.

Car Rental
I did Avis but they have the worst customer service so I'd recommend another company...

I did not use any points because I just did not find myself in a situation where I needed to rent one...lol.  So I don't know how much exactly points will get you but playing around with the site, my estimate is a whopping $300 (man, the worst bang for buck by far).

Credit Card/Cash

For business expenses I cannot use my personal card but rather my corporate card which is Diners Club (who still uses this honestly).  The Points Guy estimates each point to be worth 2.1 cents, so that equals $700 in value.

In addition, for meals I got a per diem stipend of ~$200 per week, the extra which can be pocketed without tax.  So assuming an excess of $100 a week and traveling 35 weeks in the year, that's an extra $3500. There's actually an obscure rule where you can't go a whole year (52 weeks) working in another state without taking a 60-day break; otherwise, you'd have to pay taxes on your expenses/extra cash to that state. But I've never gotten to that point of course.

Summary
In all, the total of the "perks" equals $12,400.  And most of that came from 9 months out of the year, not the full 12. 

But of course, this lifestyle comes with drawbacks, like the delays that come up, whether it be a plane or in a cab stuck in traffic. Taxes are a bit tricky as well since you owe them to the state in which the work was performed, so you may owe money to like 5 different states...

Compared to my coworkers, my numbers aren't even that high.  Some of them fly cross-country every week.  One of my coworkers got sent to Japan and was only allowed to come back every 2-3 months...

It was good to quantify my benefits and to decide whether this is all worth it...down the road.