Projects

Current

• Home Automation

  I've always been interested in the potential for home automation. I started simple, inside the Amazon ecosystem — Alexa, Ring — but over time the setup grew. I recently bought a Home Assistant Green and have been connecting all of my systems together. My favorite automation turns the coffee maker on when it senses motion upstairs in the morning; it's been great to come downstairs to fresh coffee already brewing.

• Monarch Automation

  I was a long-time Mint user and was bummed when it went away. I migrated my setup to Monarch and have since built a bunch of my financial reporting and automation on top of it. My favorite is an Amazon transaction splitter that breaks every Amazon charge on our credit cards into the individual items purchased, each with its own category — groceries, personal, electronics.

• Financial Planning

  Like most middle-aged millennials, I was hit pretty early in my career by the 2008 financial crisis. Since then I've kept a close eye on our finances and built up a bunch of planning tools to make sure we're saving the right amount and on track for our goals. Monarch and a few other systems feed into a Google Sheet that acts as our financial dashboard, near-term and long-term. My favorite is a Roth conversion simulator that helps me plan post-retirement conversions to minimize our long-term tax burden.