It was eye-opening in more ways than one.
(This is a chapter from my upcoming personal finance e-book. Stay tuned for details!)
Unlike most of this book’s content, this chapter isn’t on my personal finance blog. I’m writing this in 2023, having returned from the Pacific Crest Trail, a giant 2,653-mile hike from Mexico to Canada.
It was… amazing. Larger than life. Glorious. I am definitely not the same person I was when I started the trail in April 2022. I could talk (and write, and reminisce) about the trail for a long time, but this isn’t what this book is about. If you’re curious, you can read my daily trail journal: the very first entry is over here, and the first entry where I actually started hiking (after a great deal of planning and training) is over here. I hope this inspires at least one of you!
The PCT took me five months to finish: that included taking two weeks off for an injured ankle, as well as having to skip a couple of wildfires in Oregon. If all goes as planned (but when does it ever? Heh), I’ll return to it in 2026 for a do-over, after finishing the Continental Divide Trail and the Appalachian Trail in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
When I returned to civilization, I was 31 pounds lighter, a bit more intense, a lot more feral, and much, much more radical in my financial views. Since then, I’ve regained the lost weight and most of my upper-body muscle, I’ve gotten a bit less feral (I no longer stare in awe at running faucets), but I haven’t abandoned my newfound financial views. Here they are, in no particular order.
Declutter. Declutter hard. I used to be a hoarder. I became a minimalist over the years. (That is, if you disregard my collections of vintage cameras, art, and gems and minerals.) The less stuff you have, the more freedom you have if you decide to move. To quote Tylen Durden, “The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.” Even so, even in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t imagine the sheer sense of freedom and simplicity that comes when everything you have, everything you need, fits into a single hiking backpack and stays on your back as you hike 2,653 miles.
At any given moment on my hike, I could give you a fairly short list of all the items in my backpack: a tiny camping stove, a sleeping bag, a very basic first aid kit, my trusty spork, etc. Losing or breaking any of them would’ve been a minor tragedy (rest in peace, Sporky), but I knew where everything was, I knew what I could or could not accomplish with my resources at any given moment, and I never had to worry about consumerism for consumerism’s sake. If I bought something non-edible, it had to justify its weight and utility. For example, a replacement spork, or a pair of shorts for hiking in July, or a new pair of pants when the old ones didn’t survive my glissading adventures in the Sierra mountains.
Coming back to my spacious apartment was strange: it’s far from cluttered, but it has thousands of little items, most of which (like, say, a hammer) I use rather rarely. It’s been almost nine months since my return, and that vague feeling of unease, of guilty exuberance, still hasn’t faded. I doubt it ever will.
Find and use available free services. This advice comes with a huge caveat: don’t be a jerk and don’t steal the services designated for others. For example, if you have a sizable investing account, don’t barge into soup kitchens that are set up for those who have nothing. If, however, there are specific free services designed to help somebody just like you, go for it. Maybe it’s a free tutoring service at your college when you decide to go back to school. Maybe it’s a free (or heavily discounted) cooking class for adults that want to eat healthier. Maybe it’s a free photography workshop for anyone who has a good camera. Search. Find. Use. (And, as always, don’t be a jerk.)
Being a PCT thru-hiker was physically, emotionally, and financially challenging: there were good days and there were bad ones. Whenever I found something that was deliberately and explicitly designated for hikers, it felt disproportionately amazing. Sometimes it was a rural bar that invited dirty, smelly thru-hikers to its annual chili cook-off. (Joshua Inn & Bar, I salute you.) Sometimes it was a local business whose owner made it a point to give each thru-hiker a free scoop of ice cream and a piece of pie. (Mom’s Pie House in Julian, we shall meet again! Toy Store in Quincy, ditto!) Sometimes it was a ski resort that gave a free 40-oz bottle of beer if you showed them your PCT permit. (Donner Ski Ranch, keep up the great work!) Sometimes, you’d find a local church that allowed thru-hikers to sleep inside. (Thank you, Word of Life Church of Burney, CA.)
All of those things were free. All of them were for us – the smelly and rowdy tribe of 4,000 thru-hikers on a strange quest, relentlessly walking north across thousands of miles. Not all of these free services were openly advertised: there’d always be some thru-hikers who walked past without ever partaking in that kindness of strangers. If you did your research before the hike, or paid very careful attention to thru-hiker messages posted in the FarOut app (aka GutHook), then you’d be able to find all of that – and more. Sometimes, the universe actively wants to help you, but you still need to take that last step on your own.
Slow and steady always wins. I was hiking through the windy mountains near Tehachapi when I learned that important lesson – and, more importantly, took it to heart. I’d hiked 600 miles by then, and I averaged about 27 miles on a good day. My hiking style was sporadic: I would use a burst of energy to hike fast for a mile or two, then slow down, take a quick break, and rush again. Then I met two older guys – Hal from Houston and Kevin from London. Their strategy was radically different: they’d just keep walking, slowly but inevitably, even despite the powerful wind bursts that threatened to tip you over. They were, in short, like a pair of 60-year-old Terminators: they simply didn’t stop.
They passed by me during one of my many breaks. A few minutes later, I raced past them and thought I wouldn’t see them again for a long, long while. Lo and behold, they hiked past me again on my next break. It went on like that all day long: I’d use up way more energy but in the end, I’d always fall behind. (Not unlike that story about the tortoise and the hare.)
I learned a lot that day, and I adjusted my pace afterwards. That made me a better hiker, and the parallel with personal finance is obvious: slow-and-steady investors who go with stable and reliable index funds will almost certainly outpace those who try to jump from one lucrative-seeming investment to another. You’ll never set a speed record if you follow Hal’s and Kevin’s example, but chances are, you’ll outpace your competition.
When the bell rings, run. It was the opening night at the Vermillion Valley Resort, deep in the Sierra mountains. There were dozens of thru-hikers, all of us waiting for the dinner bell in the large dining room. The routine was simple: hear the bell, walk up to the counter, get your giant serving of meat and veggies and mashed potatoes. (They cooked in bulk. It was delicious.)
And then the long-awaited bell finally rang. You’d think that all the hungry hungry hikers would follow their Pavlovian conditioning and run for it. You’d think wrong. There were a few seconds of silence. There was the slow stretching of limbs as other hikers slowly (ever so slowly) started to get up from their benches. And then there was me, nonchalantly speed-walking to the counter the moment I heard the bell. I was in the back of the room, and yet I was among the first 10 hikers in that line. The three cooks did their best, but the line still moved slowly. I inhaled all of my food and got back in line for seconds (hiker hunger is real!) while 30 or so hikers were still in line, waiting for their first serving.
In the end, we all got plenty of food. Nobody went to bed hungry that night. And yet, the sequence matters: if I took all your food from you and then returned it (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all the in-between snacks) at the very end of the day, you probably wouldn’t be very happy with me, even if your caloric intake for the day ended up the same. It’s similar in personal finance and in life overall: even though you’ll eventually get what you’re after, you can make things a lot easier for yourself if you pounce on that opportunity as soon as possible.
When you hear the bell, or the signal, or whatever it is you’re waiting for, don’t wait. Don’t try to appear cool or sophisticated by taking things easy. Run, speed-walk, pounce – do whatever you must, but seize the opportunity when you can, while you can. And then, of course, go back for seconds.
Act early to avoid huge expenses. The PCT goes through dozens of tiny towns, standalone gas stations, and resorts. Some of them were friendly and welcoming. Some of them treated PCT thru-hikers as if we were just wallets with legs attached. There was quite a lot of shameless profiteering. There were tiny gas stations or towns that wouldn’t just charge you $4.50 for a 20-oz bottle of soda – they wouldn’t even put up price stickers, and would seemingly make up the prices on the spot. Let’s just say those places weren’t too popular with the thru-hiking crowd, but if you had no other choice for your food resupply, and if the next store was 50-80 miles away, what else was there to do – hike on an empty stomach? (In philosophy and economics, this is known as Hobson’s choice: an illusion of choice where only one thing is actually offered.)
I’d done a lot of research before the PCT, and I sent a few food packages to my future self along the trail, but I hadn’t expected those levels of price-gouging. (That remains one of the very few things I didn’t like about the trail.) If I could go back in time (or if I’d researched better), I would’ve sent out many more food packages ahead of time to all those tiny towns, all those little resorts, all those borderline-illegal tiny stores with no price tags. That would’ve saved me a lot of time and money, not to mention anguish.
It’s similar in personal finance. Perhaps there’s a recurring event or an annual holiday: you can save 70% or more if you buy all the decorations and accessories on sale after the holiday, and they’ll be just as good a year later. (Well, maybe not the Easter Bunny chocolates, but you get the point.) If you buy your plane tickets at the last moment, you’ll pay a high premium. If you shop for them months in advance, you’ll be able to take advantage of price glitches, ticket sales, etc. If you plan on getting to the airport early, bring some snacks and save a ton of money on overpriced airport restaurants. The list goes on: there’s almost always some advantage, some way to stack the deck, or to at least minimize the damage if you act early enough, if you do more research, if you think ahead.
There were many, many more lessons learned, but these are the main ones. I’ve returned from my thru-hike a lot more radical than I’d ever been before, and I don’t see that going away. That’s an interesting change in perspective, if nothing else. At this point, I view shopping malls as profligate temples of mindless consumerism. Fancy cars are still aesthetically pleasing, but they’re also hilarious: they get stuck in traffic just like all the clunkers around them. My own consumer footprint became almost non-existent: I’ve just double-checked my online order history, and the only non-edible things I’ve bought over the past nine months were a few books, a new pair of jeans ($12 USD on sale), and an otamatone, a hilarious miniature synthesizer that cost $51 USD but brings me a lot of joy. (Can’t say the same for my neighbors. Heh.)
You don’t need to go on a gigantic cross-country through-hike to gain your own financial insights – you can learn from just about any situation, if you’re so inclined. These are just a few of my own
Grigory Lukin.com 