I outlined my financial intentions for 2021 but sitting down to define concrete steps was overwhelming. I have many interests, but only so much money to play with each month. It’s not practical, given the strategies I want to employ, to dive into multiple asset classes and industries at the same time. Instead, I’m taking a step back and only focusing on the next 3 months.

This year is about growth stocks, specifically finding the Amazons before they become Amazon. I have determined a few industries and business models that I believe will have a long term impact on our society, and I’m looking to capitalize on that. I’m all-in on the philosophy that we overestimate the short-term impact of technology but underestimate it in the long run. 2020 accelerated future growth and open my eyes to a lot of this given Communications and EdTech platforms, whose value wasn’t recognized until the moment arrived.

Given I’m focused on future disruptions, I wanted to begin in a sector that I know well and I’m personally invested in FinTech. I have spent the past few weeks identifying stocks or businesses in the public and private sector that I believe have the potential to succeed in the long run. I have looked at businesses that most serve the US and China, given that the best way to stock pick is really to focus on areas that you truly understand. My thesis is designed around a 5-year hold, and it’s difficult to have such conviction without in-depth knowledge of where I’m putting my money.

Apart from spending my short-lived career in FinTech, I added this sector to my future growth list due in part to my experiences abroad. The amount of leapfrogging happening globally for payments is baffling. I remember the first time I tried to use cash in China and the cashier looked at me funny. The QR code, a digital identifier for every facet of life, really was eye-opening and unbelievably convenient. I remember their introduction in middle school, but the American public seemed wholly against them. They’ve made a comeback this pandemic in restaurants, but that infrastructure is still behind what I’ve seen abroad.

I’m convinced that it won’t only be payments and investment platforms, but I expect wealth management for retail consumers to get better. At some point, the activists will converge and aim to reduce economic inequalities through technology and attempt to democratize wealth transfer. That being said, I do think that’s a state far in the future, but today I am seeking the companies who could provide these services to the public as well as the service providers for those companies.

When considering these investments, I am taking a hard look at taxes. I believe that some of these speculations could pay off, and if I was to find the next Amazon, I am not keen to lose my gains at my current tax rate. Thus this quarter’s growth investments are mostly within my Roth IRA, while my 401k is divided up amongst target-date funds, indices, and ETFs. This keeps my long-term accounts separate in terms of risk profile and thesis.

Lastly, given I have a level of diversity in other accounts, I am concentrating my investments on a handful of opportunities, public and private. This ensures I have the time to put into my research, which in turn gives me full confidence in my decision making, without regard for public influences on the markets.

I’ll just say it, this wine kicked me in the teeth. Fresh out the bottle, my mouth is dryer than the Sahara. This scorched earth drowned in tannins, doused in acid was a liquor that should not be had alone. It is bolder than any Barnard woman and I don’t say that lightly. This is a wine that’s made me think, and I’m certain, this is what darkness tastes like.

Grown from the mind of Alain Brumont, this Madiran redefined the appellation known for pretty appalling wines. He’s designed a glass that is purely a product of its environment by rejecting insecticides, watering his vines from the fresh spring, and allowing the local flora to grow between the rows, blending with the vines. His grapes are graded, counted, and pruned by hand; his bunches thinned to amplify the sun exposure. The technique is sublime, but it’s the Tannat that’s really on display.

Native to the region, this grape flaunts its categorical power so much so that it’s often blended with Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc to temper its authority. Brumont’s employs 20% of the Sauvignon, which is in line with the AOC’s 60% Tannat minimum. It’s common to introduce oxygen during the winemaking process to soften this tannic and alcoholic grape. This bottle does so with barrique aging in up to 80% new oak barrels for about fourteen months.

Even though I was assaulted, my initial impression is that this is one for the cellar and the decanter. It’s an earthy, Southern fire; the smoke blending with the underripe blackberries, sour cherries, and a dash of allspice. You can feel and smell the flames, so much so that this would be perfect for Boston’s arctic climate. Then again, this birdy flew South for winter, and thankfully I’m getting to enjoy this with mom’s garlicky roast with braised potatoes, and warm gravy topped with crispy bacon.

It’s astounding to think that forty years ago Château Montus was abandoned with no vines to offer. Alain Brumont, having dedicated his life to winemaking, acquired it one year after taking over his family’s Château Bouscassé. His father forced him to leave school at sixteen to work and that he has, tirelessly. Brumont’s devotion to his region and in turn Tannat has motivated him to find the right terroirs to support his grapes. Château Montus offers the Tannat vines a red clay topped with galets rouges, large, round, reddish rocks, which produces spirited, Herculean wines.

This Madiran has waited nine years for me, and frankly, it could have waited for another. Wines like these will age beautifully, and I’m going back to NOLA Wine Merchant to grab a few more bottles for future winters. Straight up, I’ve tasted darkness, and I am all the more better for it.

The Malbec really influenced my wine itinerary and I became determined to canvas South Western France, but today I realized my mistake. I took a quick trek to NOLA Wine Merchant, which specializes in the Old World, only to remember how business works – you need a supply that meets the demand in a financially efficient manner. Sud Ouest is brimming with a potpourri of wines, not all of which are known nor sought out by the average consumer, thus this will be quite the quest to find them.

To sweeten the deal, the last administration left us with a swag bag of taxes, specifically a 25% toll levied against French, Spanish, German, and U.K. wines. This of course was revenge for the European subsidies granted to Airbus, which the United States took as an assault against Boeing. I will add that Boeing admitted to knowing there were issues with the 737 Max, which killed 346 people over two plane crashes. My wine habits should not be at risk due to their morally corrupt and economically compromising decisions, but as always, I digress. These tariffs are imposed upon the shopkeepers and restauranteurs and ultimately levied against my bank account.

I can’t be the only one to notice that we are in a pandemic. Restaurants and small business should be protected and not taking a hit for corporations such as Boeing. While the last administration perceived this favorably, as it will drive consumption to domestic and New World wines, some of us like to get our fix elsewhere. Like Côtes de Gascogne, an IGP (indication géographique protégée), which is a region with less strict winemaking guidelines than an AOC, situated in Armagnac. It’s predominantly known for its white wines which makes up 90% of production. I had my heart set out on finding a Colombard, a local grape, but given the state of the world, I shan’t complain about what I did stumble upon.

Biscaye Baie, settled in the soul of Gascony, nestled between the Pyrénées and the Atlantic, grown in terreforts, a siliceous soil made up of white clay and limestone, produces a Sauvignon Blanc I can only describe as an adult SweeTART. It’s crisp citrus notes marry sharp granny smith apples with a lingering taste of steely, candied lemon rinds. It’s a silky wine that persists long after the glass and would pair beautifully with a dozen raw oysters. Today I’m having it with Kao Pad Poo (ข้าวผัดปู) a Thai Crab Fried Rice, who’s seafood freshness, onion sweetness, and Thai spiciness is offset beautifully by the wine. It’s aromatic creaminess is a result of cold maceration, a process of soaking the grape skins with the juice prior to fermentation to enhance the color and flavor, as well as aging sur lie with batonnage for a month, which simply means to to age the wine in a vat of dead yeast and to stir for thirty days. As questionable as that sounds, it produces a full, velvety texture that plays nicely with the acidity.

Initially, I was disappointed when I came across a Sauvignon Blanc, which is native to neighboring Bordeaux; I was keen on finding a Gascogne original. Though after my first glass, I went hunting down the receipt. The price was staggering, taxes be damned, because for such a complex wine I expected to pay more. In fact, after a bit of research the entire region feels underpriced. 11th century Gascony, under British rule, exported millions of bottles to the island. Once France regained control their favor shifted as the Bordelais saw Gascon wines as an economic threat and instituted the polices des vins forbidding the exportation of wines from its ports until a majority of Bordeaux’s own bottles had been sold. The once prized and popular Gascogne saw its notoriety plummet as Bordeaux became world renown.

My mother calls me a wino, but through the sarcasm I know she’s thinking alcoholic. Given I grew up in New Orleans, a city where people drink like fish, that’s a fair presumption, but if I’m honest there was a point in my life when I hated wine.

In 2015, I flew to Aix-en-Provence for a semester abroad, and quickly realized that the French drink wine at every meal, but breakfast. I tried to get behind it, but I really couldn’t see the appeal of rotten grapes. So, I did what anyone would do and took a wine class. After a few weeks I found a craving for something other than incredibly sweet, white wines that favor grape juice. I found my palette and continued to expand it over the years.

More recently, I find myself drinking less wine; perhaps it is the pandemic and the desire not to bottom out into a wine-filled pit of despair. That aside, I’ve had a craving to recommence my studies and dive headfirst into the bottle. First, a refresher; a quick tour around France to reacquaint myself with where my journey began.

A few weekends past, my sister directed me to a local wine shop, Spirit Wine, where the shopkeeper was super knowledgable. It was actually this visit that inspired me to get back into my craft, yet I digress. I immediately sought out a Malbec something fruity from Argentina, but my sister groaned. Looking to appease my company, I asked the merchant if he had a French Malbec, something more approachable, a bit drier and spicier, which led us to Clos La Coutale. A vignoble that predates the French Revolution, situated in Cahors, where the vines were planted by the Roman Empire in 92 A.D.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Black Wine of Cahors was sipped in the halls of Aliénor d’Aquitaine and England’s Henry II, Avignon’s Pope John XXII, Russia’s Peter the Great, and beyond. It earned its title of “le Vin Noir,” due to it being the darkest, one of the strongest, and most tannic of its age. This popularity lasted until the mid-1880s, when the Great French Wine Blight, ravaged the vines with a phylloxera infestation. These parasites damaged over 40% of French vineyards and decimated Cahors. If that wasn’t enough, the winter of 1956 brought a lethal frost that required 99% of the vines to be replanted.

It wasn’t until 1971 that Cahors received it’s AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée), which specifies the standard for wine from the region and in turn yields brand value. The Cahors AOC requires its wine to be made of at least 70% Malbec, known locally as Côt or Auxxerois, thus these vines were replanted alongside Merlot and Tannat.

Malbec is a thin-skinned, dark grape that is incredibly sensitive to climate. It’s prone to frost, pests, and rot; it needs sunshine but not too much and a dry clime to produce delicious, full-bodied wines. Clos La Coutale sits south-west facing on the Lot Valley, protected from the cold winds, in alluvial soil of gravel and limestone, which produces the calcium carbonate that rewards us with acidity and structure.

After six generations of refinement, Philippe Bernède’s current blend is 80% Malbec and 20% Merlot, followed by a one year nap in oak barrels. This deep rubied wine was sweeter than expected, reminiscent of chocolate and cherries. Though there is a balance as the dark fruit flavors, their tangy pits, and the mineral-rich soil crescendos into tannins. While I would have killed for a bowl of piping hot cassoulet with this glass, I was relegated to a roasted brussel, bok choy, and onion bowl topped with guac and a seared salmon filet. Given the buttery salmon and the pungent, chard veggies, the alcohol hitting the back of my throat was a welcomed accompaniment.

I remember waking up in Venice panicked that I had missed my train, but there was just enough time to toss my things in a suitcase and sprint to the water taxi. Along the way I gave myself 30 seconds, 1 minute tops, to grab some cash from the ATM, but that turned into 3 minutes and 5 minutes when my card repeatedly declined. Logging on to the app, I realized that there was NOTHING in my bank account. What I never fully appreciated is that when you are moving money from one account to another, or you pay for things via PayPal or Venmo, or anytime you’re purchasing from the internet there is often a lag in those charges.

Born out of necessity and disdain for financial surprises, every day for the past year I have been closing my books; tracking every cent in and out of all accounts, including my wallet. It has been tedious and exceptionally arduous as I, the FinTech product manager, found something wrong with every single app out there marketed to do this work. Instead, I took on the anachronistic chore of maintaining a financial ledger detailing each transaction using AirTable, think user-friendly .xlxs that allows for deeper linking akin to relational databases. My only goal was to create a system that could tell me what is in my accounts in real-time, as my bank can’t seem to do so.

A year later and I have profited tremendously from tracking my expenses as I now have so much data on myself such as my total spend across several categories like my monthly utilities or how much Uber is profiting from me alone. While this was never the purpose, I also have an easy way to track my Net Income. More recently, I began tracking my portfolio’s P&L and my Total Debt, specifically my student loans to see how quickly interest is accruing and I am making payments. Collectively this provides a snapshot of my real-time Net Worth.

Having a high-level view of this information has made it easy for me to define this year’s financial resolutions. While my AirTable has taken a year of cultivating with periodic changes, it truly simplifies my decision making as the scope of my finances is easily accessible. When building products, it is important to do something that doesn’t scale so you can collect random bits of data, sift out what’s not important, and then iterate on the solution in a more systematic way. That’s exactly how I’ve been approaching my finances

My Financial Tracker

I’d love to blame my faulty relationship with money on the global pandemic, but tbh we weren’t really close before the ‘rona. It had a way of finding me, and I had a way of spending it. As someone who is building a career in finance, it’s truly appalling that I know what to do but often find myself choosing a different path. It wasn’t until the world shut down, that I had time to assess my financial affairs. Over the last year, I gained an understanding of my assets and liabilities alongside my life goals, which in turn has enabled me to produce a flexible action plan for my money.

Step 1: Envision your ideal life and identify the aspects that will cost

• [emergency fund]: I don’t believe this is the last pandemic or economic crisis in my lifetime
• [student loans]: I left business school after one year, and eventually I plan to finish
• [rent]: If and when the COVID dies down, I’ll be moving back to New York
• [cost of living]: New York
• [wedding]: I really love a good party
• [children]: I know that at some point I want a family
• [house]: I hope to buy a home individually or with that family
• [car]: If and when I leave New York
• [children’s college tuition]: Does one need children?
• [late-term medical bills]: As an American, it will be a cause for concern as I age
• [retirement]: With enough money to float emergencies that arise

Step 2: Determine if these are short-, intermediate-, or long-term costs

• [short]: emergency fund, student loans, rent, cost of living
  
• [intermediate]: wedding, children, house, car
  
• [long]: children’s college tuition, retirement, late-term medical bills, retirement

Step 3: Establish your financial focus for the next 12 months

1. Given the uncertainty felt from COVID19, I would feel more comfortable if my emergency fund covered me for an entire year.
2. I want to focus on growing my net-worth, by reducing my liabilities, specifically my student loans, and in turn growing my assets by investing in new asset classes
3. I need a plan to reduce my taxes because it is my largest, uninformed expense
4. Set a new strategy for my stock portfolios, including my retirement fund

Step 4: Craft a high-level plan to help move the train in the right direction

1. [emergency fund]: Over the next year, 25% of my income will be deposited into a high-yield savings account, granted the rates are low
2. [student loans]: I plan to set a date by which my loans are paid off, based on the excess capital from my monthly budget
3. [taxes]: For once I want a clear understanding of the tax code so that I can take full advantage of the credits and deductions
4. [investing]: I’m refocusing my active portfolio on private investments, currencies, and real estate while maintaining a passive investment fund for retirement.

Step 5, 6, 7… is really to go deep, so you can put dates and deadlines on the calendar as well as set habits to achieve these goals. It will be a lot of planning, strategy, and perhaps a bit of research, but your finances will be all the better for it.