JZ

Mountain biking Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

2026-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

Result: Worth it, and I would do a supported tour like this again. Ten days of big views, hard riding, and zero logistics on my end. Bring a better bike than I did: my hardtail’s drive train did not survive the trip.

The Problem

I wanted a big, remote mountain bike trip somewhere I do not speak the language, without planning every meal, tent, and transfer myself.

Hypothesis: A supported tour trades away route freedom, and in return I get to spend all of my attention on riding.

The Solution I Tried

This summer I rode ~500 km across the Tian Shan, from Almaty in Kazakhstan to Karakol in Kyrgyzstan, on the Spice Roads Mountain Biking Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan tour. 12 days, 10 of them on the bike, with the gear, food, and tents (6 nights of camping) moving ahead of us so all I had to carry was myself and a hydration pack. One day each on either side in Almaty on our own.

We flew in early to beat the jet lag and check out some culture in Almaty. Checking in to the Hotel Kazzhol Almaty late Friday / early Saturday was easy. It is a great central spot for walking the city. The Soviets did a great job with the place: broad pedestrian boulevards, big trees, cafe culture, very European with an Asian flair.

Download the Yandex Go app: the rides are cheap and plentiful; opt for the Comfort+. We had fantastic drivers, especially our driver to the Central State Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan; his street racer was an EDM party the whole way. According to the museum exhibits Kazakhstan was an ethnic dumping ground for the Soviets (Koreans, Germans, Chechens, and more) … which is why the food scene is so good??? A blend of Middle Eastern, East Asian, and Eastern European, all fresh ingredients.

The route

Almaty to the Kyrgyz border by bike, a helicopter drop, then over a pass at nearly 4,000 m into the Issyk-Kul basin:

You’ll notice some transfers (breaks in the routes) which occurred in our chase vehicle, a Soviet-era truck (from 1969) with a passenger box on the back:

Slava, who races in Dubai, is a proud grandfather, and ex-trucker took terrain double-clutching I’ve never seen before. A renaissance man: gracefully fishes alpine rivers, thoughtful, expert player of the card game Fool, calm in all manner of situations, loves helping, and can talk his way through sticky situations.

Kazakhstan foothills

The first day is a climb out of the Almaty foothills through Turgen Gorge to the Asy Plateau over Oi-Zhailau Pass (2,600 m). Go hard from the beginning.

Late-day light on a gravel descent from the Asy Plateau; better have your wits about you.

Day 3 is where it hit me that this is what I came for: big views, mental/physical exhaustion, technical challenge, and being in the moment. Absolute heinous descent into Saty village.

Kolsai Lakes just to the south of Saty village.

Day 4 and 5 are mostly paved roads, through rolling mountain steppe. Every serious ride needs a day you can turn the legs over and not think.

Into Kyrgyzstan for heli-biking

Day 6 is the shortest by distance and the biggest by vertical drop: 27 km with 1,217 m of descent and almost no climbing. A helicopter lifts you to a ridge at 3,500 m, and you ride nomadic trails home through forest, meadows, and river crossings. Home by the way for nights 5 and 6 was Karkara base camp with hot showers and a sauna. Amazing!

A Soviet-era Mi-8, red star and all. Flights are subject to weather and pilot discretion. Spice Roads has an alternative loop ride if the helicopter is grounded.

The view from the top. Nothing to do at this point but go downhill.

Toward Khan Tengri

Days 7 and 8 go deep into the Central Tian Shan. The camp on Day 7 sits at 3,000 m, reached by a steady river valley climb, with Khan Tengri (7,010 m) in the area. Day 8 crosses Aktog Pass and a long braided-river descent with jailoos (summer pastures) on both sides. One Chinese firm appeared to have the contract for the road development spanning the pass through most of the river valley. The pass was riding moondust; best to have a mask.

Day 9 was the crux: 70 km, 1,124 m up and 2,000 m down. It crosses Chon Ashu Pass at nearly 4,000 m, then drops through alpine tundra and spruce forest toward the Issyk-Kul basin. I had a feeling the chain on this underspec hardtail would break today. Sure enough it did, but Slava and I hammered it back together on some shale.

Overcast, with a glacier in the distance.

The last riding day is a mild 41 km of paved provincial road into Karakol, then a swim in Issyk-Kul, the second-largest mountain lake in the world after Titicaca. A fitting end after ten days of dust. The ride into Karakol through unending road construction is where my drive train finally exploded into unretrievable bits.

Charyn Canyon and back to Almaty

The last day out in the field is a 6-hour vehicle transfer back to Almaty with a lunch stop at Charyn Canyon, a labyrinth of red sandstone walls carved by the Charyn River.

Chernyy Kan’on, Almaty Region

Did It Work?

Yes. What I took away:

Go for the range, not the trail. Very little of what we rode is a “trail” in the Colorado sense. It is a way through country that stays largely as it was: herders, yurts, and no fences.
Show up fit. 1000 m of climbing a day at altitude for ten days, on rough surfaces, is a lot. The support crew handles everything else, so put your effort into the legs.
Supported touring is a fair trade. I gave up route freedom and got to spend all my attention on riding. I’ll do that again for remote places where I do not speak the language.
Central Asia is easy to get to and nobody goes. The gap between how accessible this is and how few people come is the whole appeal. 18 hour transit time: DEN -> FRA -> ALA. Foreigners can buy apartments in both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, though generally not the land …
The area is rapidly developing. There are massive outdoor recreation projects, road construction, infrastructure works going on all the time. Chinese firms are landing huge bids: https://snowbrains.com/kyrgyzstan-launches-2nd-major-ski-resort-project-with-chinese-backing/

The Western Canada Limited Company

2026-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

Result: It worked. My company, Vraid Systems Limited, moved from British Columbia to Alberta on September 22, 2026. The continuance took about 11 weeks and cost 1,003.82 CAD through a registration agent. BC was the right call in 2021 because a foreigner could run a company there entirely self-service. Then BC started requiring a BC Services Card for most filings, which only residents can get. Once I needed an agent anyway, Alberta won on everything else.

First written July 2021, updated October 2026.

The Problem

My minimum bar for most strategies: residency and citizenship should not matter. I want a Canadian company I can run from anywhere, with as little upkeep as possible: easy tax filing, no required meetings, and full flexibility to act as director whenever I need to.

Hypothesis (2021): British Columbia is the best place for a non-resident to run a Canadian company, because the whole thing is self-service online.

Hypothesis (2026): Once BC requires an agent for non-residents, Alberta is better on every count that is left.

Why Western Canada

Non-resident friendly: British Columbia lets incorporators and directors be non-residents. Alberta dropped its rule that 25% of directors be Canadian residents on March 29, 2021. Nova Scotia allows non-resident directors too, but has high annual renewal fees.
Alberta’s taxes: no provincial sales tax, only the 5% federal GST. Like other energy exporters, the province pays for much of its services with energy royalties. The combined general corporate rate for 2026 is 23% in Alberta vs 27% in BC.
Market access: once you incorporate in a member province, the rest of Western Canada is easy to sell into under the New West Partnership Trade Agreement.

The Solution I Tried

1. Set up as a non-resident

Address: for about 15 CAD a month, Anytime Mailbox or iPostal1 gives you a remotely managed address in Alberta or British Columbia. That covers the requirement for an office and mailing address in your province.
Investment Canada Act: a non-Canadian starting a brand-new Canadian business only has to notify Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, before or within 30 days of starting it. New businesses are notifiable, not reviewable. Fill out ISED-ISDE3675E and email it back.
Personal tax number: to file with the Canada Revenue Agency for your company, you need an ITN. Send in the Application for a Canada Revenue Agency Individual Tax Number (ITN) for Non-Residents with a notarized copy of your passport, wet signature from the notary. I did this at my local UPS store for $5.

2. Incorporate in British Columbia (2021)

For a real name instead of a number, reserve one with the Name Request tool for $30. It takes a few days to process.
Go through the BC Registry Services incorporation wizard for $350.
Add your name and the business name to the example incorporation agreement and articles. Do not forget section 9.10’s proxy designation. Convert them to PDF and get them notarized online with Notary Pro.

This worked well for five years.

3. Watch BC close the door (2026)

The old Corporate Online is being merged into BC Registries and Online Services. On the surface that is good. The bad news: you need a BC Services Card to do most things, which means you must be a resident. Non-residents now need a registered agent. BC made itself less competitive.

4. Continue the company to Alberta: 11 weeks, 1,003.82 CAD

A continuance moves the same company to a new province, with the same company and history and no new incorporation. I hired The Registration Center to handle it.

July 5, 2026: Ordered the continuance. 49 CAD e-filing, 399 CAD authorization to continue, 499 CAD Articles of Continuance, plus tax.
July 17: The agent applied to BC for authorization to continue out.
September 16: BC approved. That wait was most of the 11 weeks.
September 17: The snag. The company was still registered in Alberta as an extra-provincial BC company, which blocked the continuance. I logged in and cancelled that registration myself.
September 22: Continued into Alberta. Certificate and Articles of Continuance in hand.

Did It Work?

Yes. Same company, same tax number, now in a province with lower corporate tax, no provincial sales tax, and no residency strings on directors.

Upkeep is light:

Annual return: pay a registered agent to file it.
Meetings: private Alberta corporations can act by written resolution. As the only shareholder, I sign resolutions instead of holding meetings.
Taxes: two returns now instead of one. See below.
Banking: covered in Bootstrapping personal Canadian financial services.

The catch: Alberta runs its own corporate tax

The Canada Revenue Agency collects provincial corporate tax for every province except Quebec and Alberta. In BC, the federal T2 return covered everything. In Alberta, it does not. The tax number stayed the same through the continuance, but Alberta adds a second, separate return:

Federal T2 with the Canada Revenue Agency, same as before. I use https://netfilet2.taxtron.ca/. First you have to file an individual $0 tax return to get into the CRA’s system and be self-serve.
Alberta AT1 with Alberta Tax and Revenue Administration (TRA), for any corporation with a permanent establishment in Alberta during the year. It is due 6 months after year-end, and since 2025 it has to be net filed electronically, with a 1,000 CAD penalty if not. TaxTron is on Alberta’s list of software certified for AT1 net file.
Alberta account number: the Corporate Access Number on the Alberta certificate is the corporate tax account number.
TRACS: Alberta’s online account for corporate tax. It shows assessments, handles address changes, direct deposit, and objections. You enrol with a TRACS Enrolment Request.

What this means for Vraid: upkeep went from one tax return to two, plus a second government account to watch. I have not dug into the AT1 closely yet, so this part is still ONGOING.

Lesson: check for an old extra-provincial registration in the destination province before you start. It costs nothing to cancel, but it will stall the continuance until you do.

Bootstrapping personal Canadian financial services

2026-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

Result: It worked. By July 2025 I was entirely off BMO and fully on Wealthsimple. My Alberta company runs day-to-day chequeing on Wise, and its unused cash sits in non-US, and some non-North American, ETFs in a Wealthsimple corporate account. The way in: walk into a big bank branch with a passport, a driver license, and a reason. Mine was running a Canadian business.

First written July 2026, updated October 2026.

The Problem

I diversify my investments by geography, market cycle, and industry. I do the same with my money and my access to financial services. Wise gives me flexibility right away, but it does not add new jurisdictions where I can open a financial services account.

As a foreigner with no Canadian credit history, the good options will not take you yet.

Hypothesis: Start at one of the big fee-heavy banks, where running a Canadian business is reason enough to bank you, use it to build a Canadian history, then move everything to Wealthsimple and close the bank.

The Solution I Tried

1. Open a bank account

Canadian banking is an oligopoly. Most banks with physical branches charge fees for everything, and as a foreigner you have to start at one of them. You walk into a branch, show enough ID (passport plus driver license), and give them a good reason to bank you (business owner).

I scheduled an appointment online at the BMO near the Calgary airport and did all of the above. I transferred in 3,000 CAD via Wise, the minimum daily balance that waives the Plus plan’s 12.95 CAD monthly fee. It was the lowest tier where a balance waives the fee.

2. Start a credit history

You need a Canadian address and phone number.

Address: a coworking space, an Anytime Mailbox or iPostal1 address, a hotel, or a colleague’s apartment.
Phone: With no credit history, you need a prepaid plan. Koodo and Freedom are your nationwide options. Most financial institutions crack down on VoIP numbers.
First credit card: With zero Canadian credit history, the bank where you opened your chequing account is probably one of the few that will consider a credit card or revolving line of credit.

3. Move everything to Wealthsimple

Personal banking moved to Wealthsimple, and I closed the BMO account and card.

On the business side, the company that is now Vraid Systems Limited of Alberta splits the job:

Day to day: chequeing on Wise, which handles multiple currencies.
Unused cash: a Wealthsimple corporate account holding non-US and some non-North American ETFs. Same diversification idea: not everything in one geography.

Other Routes to a First Account

If you already have an American Express relationship, use it to open your first card through the Global Card Relationship program.
Some multinational banks will open an account for you in your destination country. HSBC used to be the go-to for Canada, but RBC bought HSBC Bank Canada in March 2024.

Running Vraid Systems on LLMs

2026-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Result: It worked, better than I expected. The leads pipeline and bid evaluation are fully automated. I understand the fine print of the policies I sign up for, so I can manage risk instead of just accepting it. Fulfillment is the next piece and is in progress.

First written March 2026, updated October 2026.

The Problem

Vraid Systems sells goods and software into public tenders, mostly state governments and UN agencies. That market is too complex for most mom-and-pop shops and too small for the big primes, which is the opening.

The catch is paperwork. Every tender is a stack of PDFs, procurement rules, and legal terms in a different jurisdiction. Reading all of it is a full-time clerical job, and I wanted the business to run without one.

My starting point:

With the advent of AI and LLMs many things are changing about how money is made. Administration and clerical work goes away, which means the C-suite should be reshaped, as much of what they do is glorified clerical work from their background in law, MBAs, and finance.

Hypothesis: If that is true at a big company, it should be even more true at a small one. LLMs can do the clerical and administrative work, and I only do the parts that need a person.

The Solution I Tried

Leads: Tender notices land in a Slack channel. An LLM pulls the bid documents from the procurement portal, checks them against my criteria, and posts the ones worth chasing to the sales channel. I log in to the portals myself. Everything after that is automated.
Evaluation: For each bid it checks whether we can win, the risk versus reward, and whether we can source it, then fills out the submission PDFs. Goods bids get a sourcing sheet with at least three suppliers, with customs duties and tariffs included.
Back office: LLMs review audit questions against the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), balance sheet risk, and corporate law in each place we operate.
Humans: I submit the bid, approve the sourcing, and send payments. Anything that moves money or signs my name, I do.
Network: I trade notes with other small business owners who lean hard into automation.

Did It Work?

Yes.

Leads: Fully automated, from notice to short list. Bids that do not fit get dropped before I spend time on them.
Risk: The biggest surprise. I now get the nuance in FAR clauses, liability terms, and local corporate law. I can ask “what happens to me if this goes wrong?” and get a straight answer that points at the clause.
Fulfillment: In progress. Sourcing and ordering are next.
Me: fewer things competing for my time. That turned out to be part of a different experiment, on stress.

One lesson came out of tuning the evaluation rules: stop bidding on single-lot goods tenders. Only the manufacturers win those, and it is a race to the bottom. Tenders split into lots are where a small reseller can actually win.

What This Says About Bigger Companies

In my business, the work that got automated first was the work that looks most like an executive’s job: reading policy, weighing risk, checking compliance, filling out forms. What is left for a person is trust, relationships, and signing for the money.

My partner made a better point than my original hypothesis:

I don’t believe a company’s board would vote out their social class peers even though CEOs are obsolete.

I still think Fortune’s take on the AI productivity paradox asks the wrong question. It covers an NBER survey where nearly 90% of firms reported no AI impact on productivity or jobs so far. To scale almost any system, you push as much work as possible out to the edge. If leadership admits AI changes the work, leadership is the next thing to get evaluated. This Forbes piece on replacing the C-suite is closer to right.

Running Vraid this way did change my mind on one thing. The part the LLM cannot do is the network: who trusts you, and who picks up the phone when tariffs change or an embargo hits. That is what a well-connected board member actually brings. Resource dependence: board networks provide access to information, trust, and capital. redalyc.org The research backs both sides. CEOs with technical knowledge drive more digital product innovation, at least in stable markets, CEO Human Capital and Digital Product Innovation, Information Systems Research a board that falls short is a leading indicator of underperformance, and plurality voting lets directors keep their seats without majority support. Harvard Law Forum on Corporate Governance, Glass Lewis But legal and finance backgrounds still matter when tariffs shift, or when officers can be held personally liable for oversight failures. Tariffs top BCG’s list of dynamics testing CEOs. Delaware’s 2023 ruling extended oversight duties to officers: Klor Consulting.

My updated view: vote against busy directors and zombie boards. Keep a few well-connected directors for the network you need to get through tariffs and embargoes. Point the rest of the board at making the product great.

What Is Next

Automate fulfillment end to end. Payments and signatures stay with me.

Quantifying and mitigating stress to be more powerfully human

2026-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Result: It worked, and seven months later it is holding. My blood pressure readings still average 10-20 lower. I am down to one high-quality meditation a week, and handing the minutiae of running a business to AI took away a lot of what was competing for my time. My wife tells me I am more present more often, which is great for my marriage.

First written March 2026, updated October 2026.

The Problem

I swam competitively in high school. They teach you to go fast, not sustainably. Most ex-swimmers I talk to have a loose joint or a stress injury. Most jobs are the same: fast, not healthy.

Sales at most organizations is bad for your health. Your agenda for the day keeps changing until 30-60 minutes before. A “quick call” can easily turn into an hour. On bad days I could hit 135/85, which is stage 1 hypertension under the 2025 American Heart Association guideline (130-139 over 80-89). AHA: understanding blood pressure readings

Selling is one of many things I play at. If I want to enjoy the rest of life’s play, I cannot overdo it.

It also took me longer than it should have to see how connected my mind and body are. The fake and pious language around spiritual practice pissed me off enough to stay away. You do not need their language. Power comes from finding your own. Here I use the language I needed to hear back then: power.

Hypothesis: Train my attention the way a fast trail forces me to, cut the inputs competing for it, and the numbers on the blood pressure cuff will follow.

The Solution I Tried

Phase 1: Empty Head

Mountain biking showed me mind and body were connected: empty my head or hit trees. My mind cannot act up when I am rolling through a forest at speed. Even half-conscious, uncontrolled thought can kill. I chose to focus on neutral scenes in my head. Eventually I could clear my mind anytime and stamp down emotions.

Phase 2 and 3: Awareness and Discipline

To harness something, you have to understand it. The discipline that makes you stronger: follow a course like Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Daily all the way through, every day. By the end you should understand your emotional state, acknowledge all of yourself, and integrate. Power comes from integrating all of you, not silencing a part.

You should end up with a 10 minute core practice you can do anywhere:

Settle through breathing.
Refocus as thoughts come up.
Once settled, watch the thoughts until they settle out, or until you are comfortable putting them back down.

A phrase that used to sound weird to me and makes sense now: benign gaze. You watch parts of yourself happen without taking sides.

If you prefer moving, do yoga. I asked a yoga teacher some “why” questions, and what I got out of it: yoga is a way into meditation.

Phase 4: Changing My Stress Levels

What I am doing:

Notifications: Every phone notification is off, always, except actual calls, texts, and Signal. I took away the notification permissions.
Quiet hours: Phone on vibrate during the day, everything muted from 2125 to 0730.
Practice: Meditating at least every other day. These days, one high-quality session a week holds the line.

Phase 5: Hand Off the Minutiae

The surprise came from work, not the cushion. Once AI took over most of the clerical side of running Vraid Systems, fewer things felt like they were competing for my time. Less to keep track of means less to be anxious about, and more of me shows up at home.

Did It Work?

Yes. What I have noticed about myself:

Blood pressure: Readings average 10-20 lower, still true in October 2026. I take them on the left and right upper arms after meditating, between meals. Fair warning on my own method: the usual home routine is to rest 5 minutes, then take 2 readings a minute apart, morning and night. Right after meditating is probably my best number of the day, not my average one.
Behavior: I am more often the person I want to be.
Outlook: I do not seem to focus on negatives as much.
Home: My wife tells me I am more present more often.

What I Am Not Doing

Easy or fake fixes like quitting my job, isolating, or taking drugs.
Giving up on an interesting, integrated life. Money, purpose, and mental interest still have to line up.
Giving up optionality. I want to live in certain places, see certain people, eat certain foods, and stay active at certain times.

Building a container home in the Colorado mountains

2026-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

Result: Ongoing. Ask me a year ago and I would have said mixed. The house worked: built, permitted, and the cozy desert Southwest home I always wanted. The money did not, at least not yet. Construction came to about 617,000 USD all-in on a 12,500 USD lot, more than half of it site work and water, and with a property management company running it, the cash flow came in below what I built it for. The first year added its own surprise: rotten-egg well water that has taken about 9,100 USD of fixes so far. So in fall 2026 I am trying something new: managing the rental myself, with AI and LLMs doing most of the work. My hypothesis is that this gets the cash flow close to where I want it.

The Problem

In 2021, I REALLY wanted a house that was exactly my own. No, not some mass-produced Lennar house in a subdivision A depressing Front Range view: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BR7qeqY3J43ESAji6 , but a location I enjoyed, sited in a daring way, with the industrial minimalism that matches my values.

I also wanted more cash flow. In 2020 and 2021, rates on stored cash were effectively zero https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS and, as usual, asset prices went the other way: higher than I believed their valuations should be. Stuck inside during COVID-19, I went off the diving board into the deep end of oligarch finance and accredited investing. My world view changed from “the future will be better” to actively living my better future.

In startup-land we talk about ARR https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/valuation/annual-recurring-revenue-arr/ a lot: how much cash you will have coming in each year. Applying the same idea to my life, JZ the business needed to hit a yearly number that made it profitable without a standard paycheck.

Hypothesis: Cheap land in a county that lets you build your own way, plus a factory-built home, gets me a getaway that also pays for itself as a short-term rental.

The Solution I Tried

Pick a county that lets you build

What I wanted:

Year-round activities: mountain biking, snowboarding, splitboarding, rafting, motorbiking
Good food and some cultural events
Affordable
Driveable from my (at the time) main work location in the foothills around Boulder and Golden

The shortlist: Grand Junction, Gunnison, Hayden, Norwood, Pagosa Springs, Pinedale, Poncha Springs, Sheridan, South Fork, Taos. I narrowed it to Pagosa Springs and Taos because of their libertarian approach to housing: I could build what I wanted, how and when I wanted, with less paperwork than most places. Creede in Mineral County was another interesting spot. Some Colorado counties, Mineral, Baca, Sedgwick, Delta, and Montezuma among them, have no building department at all. The state’s new wildfire resiliency code (SB23-166) reaches wildland-urban interface areas even there. CCI summary

I picked unincorporated Archuleta County (Aspen Springs 3), just west of Pagosa Springs:

Close to tourist attractions, which drives occupancy
Good food
Many mountain biking options
Mild climate with quick access to big, snowy mountains
Driveable for a long weekend

The catch: high fire risk and very few property insurance options. Take a look at https://co-pub.coloradoforestatlas.org/! I could only find commercial coverage through https://www.coloradofairplan.com/ with a 1,600 USD/year premium.

Buy the lot sight-unseen

On April 22nd 2021 I closed on an acre on the side of a hill for 12,500 USD, through one of my Colorado business entities. Great view, lots of privacy, and almost no rules about what I could do with it.

I knew the area, had looked at satellite imagery, and studied topo maps, but I bought it sight-unseen. So I hired a drone operator for an aerial survey to figure out where to put the structures. Everything from the red pickup truck to the flat bit on the right side of the image was in play:

Buy a factory-built house

Over the summer and fall of 2021 I went through the list of manufactured home producers registered to sell in Colorado. Most sellers near my land never answered. Custom Container Living did, with a reasonable delivery timeline, upfront ballpark pricing, and online designs to pick from. For my budget, space needs, and delivery constraints I went with the Double Duo.

Permits and excavation

Reading Archuleta County’s Modular building permit in 2022 wasn’t too painful, even before consumer-grade LLMs took off. What the packet asked for:

Complete Building Permit Application: easy, just contact details
11X17 Proposed Site Plan by a Colorado Licensed Surveyor: a few months and a few grand with an engineering firm
(2) Sets of Plans: the rural county wanted paper https://theplanprinter.com/
Access Approval & Right of Way Permits: pay the fee, bore under the road for electrical, build a driveway over a metal culvert, pass the final inspection
Sanitation: design the septic system with an engineering firm like Davis Engineering, build it with an excavation team like Pagosa Landworks, then get the final review once it is powered with a warning alarm
Pagosa Fire Protection District impact fee
Proof of Ownership: already had this from closing
HOA or POA approval: N/A for Aspen Springs, they only maintain the dirt roads
Pay the permit fee (cash or check only)

Pagosa Landworks took massive amounts of material out of the hillside, and we did some extremely creative things with Davis Engineering. You could probably cut the excavation cost in half on a flat lot.

Water

By this point I had become much more averse to novel construction. I had planned a rain water collection system with a massive underground cistern. After some confident words from DAK Drilling and Well Services, I went with what most people in the area do: drill a well.

The San Juan River basin is already overtapped, and it is part of the Upper Colorado River Basin, where USGS projects groundwater flow to streams could drop 29% by the 2050s in a hot, dry scenario. My guess is 5-10 good years out of the well, then another 5-10 mediocre years with the very large pressure tank I put in. That gives me lead time to add a proper cistern later. The only legal use for this well water is inside domestic use (showering, drinking, washing), then back into the ground through the septic system.

Just drilling the well to ~500ft was 52,050 USD. They make you sign a contract saying they may never hit water. A flat lot closer to surface water would probably take 25-50% off the drilling price. All in, the well, pump, pressure tank, treatment system, and well house came to 125,476 USD. Still way better than having water delivered like some of the neighbors.

Electricity

Electricity was far simpler than water. The power pole was across the dirt road, and we put the house as close to the road as possible. That kept down the cost of the driveway, the slope of the driveway (code has a maximum), and the cost of running power to the lot disconnect.

Alpine Excavation bored horizontally under Echo Ln to the power pole on the other side and fed conduit through the hole. Much cheaper and simpler than cutting into the road. JBX Electric put in the main power pedestal disconnect Think something like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yc7c_axEy8 , fixed some internal wiring once the house was delivered, and wired the septic and wellhouse.

Foundation: hire the pro

This is the most critical part of any build, and the part I handed to HYS Construction. There is no way to do it well remotely with no general contracting experience. The plans from Custom Container Living were missing some crucial details, and most construction workers have never seen the modular style we were attempting.

Hiver was absolutely amazing to work with! The traveling crew took a coarsely excavated lot in February 2025:

To a finished foundation with welding embed plates from my friend Andrew’s shop, Somnus Customs LLC, in March 2025:

They also put the wellhouse on a foundation, built a safety retaining wall behind the house, and handled the remaining electrical, water, and sewer trenching.

Hand it to a property manager

After the Certificate of Occupancy in July 2025, I signed with Vacasa to run it as a short-term rental. It went live on October 10, 2025. In March 2026, Vacasa assigned my contract to another management company.

The First Year After the Certificate of Occupancy

July 31, 2025 through October 2026.

The hydrogen sulfide saga: about 9,100 USD so far

The well water smells like rotten eggs. That is hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas, and it showed up in spring 2025, right as the house was getting ready for guests. Sulfate-reducing bacteria feed on the sulfate in the water and give off H2S. My 2024 well test showed high sulfate, a pH of 8.05, and almost no iron (0.083 mg/L).

Spring 2025: the water treatment system (UV and under-sink reverse osmosis), 15,096 USD. Installed with the pump and pressure tank. The kitchen tap was great. Every other tap still smelled.
August-September 2025: carbon block filters in the pumphouse, 1,296 USD. Worked for 5-6 months.
February-March 2026: the smell came back. Replaced every filter, including the UV and reverse osmosis, for 2,214 USD. The odor in the house was gone, but the gas at the well was the same. The driller floated a cistern to aerate the water if it got worse.
September 2026: back in force. The property manager smelled it dropping off supplies. I put a maintenance hold on the calendar from September 9 to October 28 instead of collecting bad reviews.
October 21, 2026: an air injection sulfur filter with an ozone kit, 5,618 USD. Air injection oxidizes the H2S before it reaches the pressure tank, so there is no carbon media to foul every 3-6 months.

What I would do differently: get an on-site H2S reading before buying anything. Nobody ever measured the sulfide level, so every fix was a guess.

Everything else

Leach field repair, April 2026: 1,480 USD. A fitting in the original septic install was the wrong type.
Mini-split, May-June 2026: no heat or cooling in any zone. I reached out to half a dozen HVAC companies before one fixed a leaking line set.
Electrical breakers, September 2026: breaker problems. The fix is bundled with the EV charger install.
Deck, September 2026: about 4,000 USD in labor. An 8x8 dining area and a 4x14 walkway out front, in composite, for shoulder season appeal.
Level 2 EV charger, September-October 2026: 1,170 USD in hardware. Install in progress.
Running costs: property insurance through the Colorado FAIR Plan at 1,632 USD a year, a 724 USD county vacation rental permit, a radon test (2.6 pCi/L, no mitigation needed), and snow removal.

Did It Work?

The house: yes. Fire resistant metal roof and siding, defensible space with all the shale exposed, and a south-facing driveway to keep the snow off. A Type II: Noncombustible structure in this area made the property insurance premium a lot easier.

I am very happy with the Southwest decor we found at Camino Real Imports! I always fantasized about a cozy home in the desert Southwest and stumbled into it with the right siting and accents.

The money: not yet. It took over four years from land to Certificate of Occupancy. Here is what it cost, matching my October 2026 cost reconciliation for taxes:

What	Cost
Land (12,500 USD price plus closing)	13,650 USD
Site work: excavation, septic, driveway, retaining wall, utility connection	203,205 USD
Well, pump, and water treatment	125,476 USD
Building and foundation: the house, foundation, electrical	272,261 USD
Soft costs: engineering, geotech study, general contractor fee	16,408 USD
Construction total	617,350 USD
All-in with land	631,000 USD

Furnishings are not in there yet. Add a professional manager taking their cut. Then the first year added about 9,100 USD chasing the smell, a few thousand in repairs, and seven weeks blocked off on the calendar. The cash flow came in under the number JZ the business needs.

What I would tell you before you try this:

Flat lots are cheaper. The hillside roughly doubled excavation and added 25-50% to the well.
Water is the gamble. About 125,000 USD, and the well comes with no guarantee of water.
Hire a general contractor for the foundation. Remote, with no GC experience, I could not have done it.
Concrete crews are the bottleneck. I lost the whole 2024 building season trying to find reliable concrete workers.
Chase the paperwork. The final state stamp sat for months waiting on paperwork from the house manufacturer.
Test the water for what you are actually fighting. Measure H2S on site before picking a treatment.

What Is Next: AI-Led Management

The same bet I made with Vraid Systems: the clerical work is what eats the margin, and LLMs are good at clerical work. Guest messaging, pricing, and scheduling are mostly clerical work, and that is a big part of what a property manager charges for. In October 2026 I gave my property manager notice and started running it myself, with AI doing most of the work.

Running it myself also builds toward the hours the IRS wants to see for a rental to count as a real business. More on that in the Colorado LLC post.

Book a stay directly: https://pagosacontainerhome.com/

Chronology

March 31, 2021: The “Contract to Buy and Sell Real Estate” for the raw land was executed.
April 22, 2021: Closing and transfer of possession.
January 5-6, 2022: Submitted the initial “On-site Wastewater Treatment System” (OWTS) permit application and paid the $1,023 fee.
February 14, 2022: First contact with Luke McCauley (Pagosa Landworks) about excavation and site prep.
April 6, 2022: Paid a deposit to Davis Engineering for a “Proposed Site Plan” (PSP), topographic survey, and septic system design.
April 25, 2022: Davis Engineering’s topographic survey found steep slopes (30-40% grade) that required additional geological review.
July 5, 2022: Started detailed discussions with Robert Wagoner at Custom Container Living about the “Double Duo” 2-bedroom modular home.
September 21, 2022: Trautner Geotech sent a proposal for the required geotechnical engineering and slope stability study.
December 9, 2022: The final “Limited Geotechnical Engineering Study” was issued: go-ahead for construction, with specific foundation requirements.
December 22, 2022: La Plata Electric Association (LPEA) issued the construction invoice for new electric service (Work Order #20221126).
May 25, 2023: Davis Engineering finished the preliminary driveway and building pad design.
November 9, 2023: Final driveway and building pad design done.
February 14, 2024: LPEA crews installed the meter pedestal on pole 8985.
February 28, 2024: Archuleta County Water Quality Department authorized OWTS (septic) construction.
March 25, 2024: Switched the water source from a cistern to a drilled well.
July 15, 2024: Construction loan agreement finalized with REDACTED.
Summer-Fall 2024: Lost the rest of the building season because I could not find reliable concrete workers locally.
February 18, 2025: Signed a statement of work with Hiver Salley (HYS Construction) for the final foundation (slab, piers, and footers) and site prep.
April 1, 2025: Signed a second Electric Facilities Agreement with LPEA for another 200A meter socket (Work Order #20250633). They had given the first one to a different customer.
April 15, 2025: Final coordination and payments to DAK Drilling for the well pump and water filtration system.
April 23, 2025: Custom Container Living delivered the structure.
May-July, 2025: Right of way final inspection required updates to the driveway culvert. The final state of Colorado stamp was held up by missing paperwork from Custom Container Living.
July 31, 2025: Certificate of Occupancy from Archuleta County.
August 8, 2025: Signed a “Vacation Rental Services Agreement” with Vacasa to manage the property.
August-September, 2025: Several trips to decorate, furnish, and prep the house to Vacasa’s specs.
August 21, 2025: Archuleta County vacation rental permit, 724 USD.
September 2, 2025: DAK Drilling installed carbon block filters in the pumphouse for the H2S smell.
September 26, 2025: Septic pump panel rewired, 480 USD.
October 10, 2025: Listed and live as a short-term rental.
October 24, 2025: Property insurance through the Colorado FAIR Plan, 1,632 USD.
February 2, 2026: Radon test, 2.6 pCi/L, no mitigation needed.
February 16, 2026: H2S smell back after 5-6 months.
March 5, 2026: DAK replaced all filters (carbon, UV, reverse osmosis), 2,214 USD.
March 23, 2026: Vacasa assigned the management contract to another company.
April 21, 2026: Leach field repaired, 1,480 USD.
May-June, 2026: Mini-split stopped heating and cooling. Line set leak repaired in late June.
August 2026: Vacation rental permit renewed.
September 1, 2026: Electrical breaker issues. Started planning a Level 2 EV charger and a front deck.
September 4, 2026: H2S smell back in force.
September 9, 2026: Maintenance hold on bookings through October 28.
September 15-21, 2026: Deck built, about 4,000 USD in labor. EV charger hardware bought, 1,170 USD.
October 13, 2026: Gave the property manager notice.
October 14-19, 2026: Ordered an engineered cost segregation study.
October 21, 2026: DAK installed an air injection sulfur filter with an ozone kit, 5,618 USD. Management by the property manager ended the same day, and I moved to AI-led self-management.

What I learned in 2025, or advice to 25 year old me

2025-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Short version: Stop making 5 year plans. Get close to the problem. Talk to your “enemies”. Change does not wait on more money or fame. And the tradeoffs are usually smaller than they look.

This past year I went through periods of excitement, hope, happiness, frustration, and anger. I feel closer to the integrated life I want: one where my career, lifestyle, and sense of purpose line up.

For most of my career, I solved other companies’ problems for the highest margin, kept work separate from my personal life, and had no clear sense of purpose. Now I can tell what I want at any given moment, and that lets me steer toward particular themes.

What I Learned

1. Five year plans do not work for me

I tried them and failed miserably. I enjoy too many different things to put all my time in one place.

My advice: be open to experiencing things your own way, and Gaia/God/the universe will give you enough nudges over time to figure things out. My self from 10 years ago would hate that advice.

2. Live in the problem to find the opportunity

To spot solutions, I need to experience the problem up close.

Example: my power was shut off from 4 PM Wednesday, December 17, to 2 AM Thursday, December 18. Xcel cut power to nearly 100,000 Coloradans to keep high winds from starting wildfires. Why?

Shifts in the North American jet stream, caused by greenhouse gases released by past generations
Voters in my municipality unwilling to adapt the built environment
Updating electrical infrastructure is not profitable

Spending time in that environment over the last few years is how I can name all of this. Others have figured it out too: people will happily pay for svelte whole-home batteries to ride out increasingly common grid-destabilizing storms. Natural disasters are a good business opportunity. https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/april-1994/the-economics-of-natural-disasters https://www.munichre.com/en/insights/natural-disaster-and-climate-change/weather-disasters-in-industrialized-countries.html

3. Engage with your “enemies”

Being in the problem environment led to fascinating conversations with people I would have first called my enemies. How’s that for positive?

4. You do not need to be richer or more famous to make change

Every year I lied to myself that making change took far more wealth or notoriety than I had.

Meanwhile the US dollar has lost half its purchasing power over the last 30 years. Prices more than doubled from 1995 to 2025. You need to make at least double what your parents made! That gap helps explain why my generation’s priorities are different from our parents’.

Some questions I keep asking:

I understand the need to protect the environment. So why do the people who preach this live in single-family mansions?
I understand the need for a thriving business environment. So why do the people who preach this make tax and zoning codes so hard to navigate?
I understand the need to socialize. But who is paying to go to the golf club? Eh, that’s not a good one, but someone with the leisure time to reflect on this post probably is.

5. Frustrating and exciting are the same thing

I am not sure many people in earlier generations really feel what it is like to lose half the dollar’s purchasing power in 30 years. Or to not be able to count on the electricity. Well, my grandparents did. They grew up in rural Alberta, Iowa, Kansas, and Montana.

There is no safety net for my peers who get laid off.
The lack of investment in people holds back great entrepreneurship.
Social Security’s retirement fund runs dry in 2032, and after that it pays about 78% of benefits.

It feels utterly impossible!

Yet good opportunities exist. I know, because I went after them this year. I put the time I used to spend on memes back into my business.

6. Tradeoffs are mostly self-imposed

This is not an endorsement of grind culture, quite the opposite. I want a life where I can:

Work hard when I choose
Enjoy time with family and friends when I choose
Solve a wide variety of interesting problems
Help my global community while making a profit

Neither my wife nor I will sacrifice our personal growth to grow our family, and that is incredibly motivating creatively. I believe tradeoffs usually exist because we limit our time and creativity for no good reason, not because they are built in.

What Is Next

Working full-time for another employer probably won’t work in the next stage of my life. How am I going to figure this next one out? I will keep trying things.

Going into 2026 I will fully pursue my good life: balance, emotional depth, options, and spiritual interest. Everyone’s good life looks different. What will yours be?

Protect yourself from data broker leaks

2024-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Result: It worked, and it stuck. Two weeks after signing up for a data removal service, my information was gone from people search websites. Two years later (October 2026), it is still gone. The browser and email settings below keep new data from leaking out in the first place.

The Problem

Every organization will leak your data eventually. The profit motive can get in the way of security, and they may not pay enough to hire quality people. So only give your data to services you absolutely need. Remember: if the service is free, you and your data are the product being sold.

Then there are all the organizations you give data to without knowing it. A data broker makes money by collecting your data, and lots of other people’s, then selling it.

Search for yourself on TruePeopleSearch and tell me you are okay with that information being public. That is just the top. There is much more.

Hypothesis: Paying a service to send deletion requests in bulk, plus locking down my browser and email, gets me out of these databases and keeps me out.

The Solution I Tried

1. Pay Someone to Send the Deletion Requests

Read PCMag’s review of data removal services and pick one that automates hundreds of deletion requests. I went with Incogni. It has kept working for two years.

My Incogni referral link gets you a discount: https://incogni.cello.so/iCje17eYe7z

2. Lock Down the Browser

Chrome:

Open Settings.
Open the “Privacy and security” tab.
Click “Delete browsing data”, then “Delete data” to clear everything your browser stores for websites, data brokers included. This logs you out of every website.
Click “Third-party cookies”, scroll down, and select “Block third-party cookies”. Google dropped its plan to kill third-party cookies in 2025, so this stays your job.
Open “Site settings”, scroll down to “Embedded Content”, and select “Sites are blocked …”.
Install Privacy Badger from the Chrome Web Store. Chrome does not send the Global Privacy Control signal on its own. Privacy Badger does, by default.

The old “Ad privacy” page is going away as Google removes the Topics API. If you still see it, turn everything off.

Firefox:

Open Firefox settings from the menu in the top right.
Select the “Privacy & Security” tab on the left. Firefox’s standard protections cover most of what we did in Chrome.
Under “Website Privacy Preferences”, turn on “Tell websites not to sell or share my data”. That is Global Privacy Control. Firefox removed the old “Do Not Track” toggle in version 135 because websites ignored it.

3. Lock Down Gmail

Click the gear icon in the top right corner, then “See all settings”.
In the “General” tab, scroll down and select “Ask before displaying external images”. This blocks tracking pixels, which report when and how often you open an email.
Scroll further and turn off the smart features and personalization settings, including smart features in other Google products. This stops Google from using your email to suggest features and products elsewhere.
Scroll to the bottom and click “Save Changes”.

4. If They Will Not Delete It

Use the law.

Colorado: the Colorado Privacy Act gives you the right to have businesses delete your personal data, and since July 1, 2024 covered businesses have to honor Global Privacy Control. That is why step 2 matters.
California: one request through the state’s DROP portal goes to every registered data broker, over 600 of them. Brokers had to start processing them on August 1, 2026.
Everywhere else: check whether your state has a right to deletion with the Bloomberg Law state privacy tracker. That is the sharp teeth you bring out if you have to sue.

How to keep the US government from taking your home for medical expenses

2023-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

Result: Untested. I researched this for a friend whose parents are getting older, and nobody has run it yet. The best protection is one most families already have and do not know about: a child who lives at home as the caregiver. Federal law lets a parent give the home to that child with no penalty, and Colorado will not take the home back through estate recovery while that child keeps living there. The paperwork decides it, so start collecting it now and hire an elder law attorney.

The Problem

This is a uniquely American problem. It would be hilarious if it were not so effective at enforcing the US caste system.

The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 requires states to recover what Medicaid paid for long-term care after the recipient dies. That covers anyone who got nursing home or home and community-based care at age 55 or older. The state can put a lien on the home if the person is not expected to return home, and go after the estate after death. Some states reach past the probate estate into jointly held and trust property too.

Hypothesis: Know the rules early enough, and the family home does not have to go to the state.

The Solution I Would Try

In order, starting with the cheapest.

1. Check the automatic exceptions

The state cannot recover while any of these are alive:

A surviving spouse
A child under 21
A child who is blind or permanently disabled

A transfer of the home to a spouse is also penalty-free.

2. Use the caregiver child rule

This is the one that fits my friend’s family: his brother has lived in the home as the caregiver for years.

The rule: a parent can transfer the home, penalty-free, to a son or daughter who lived there for at least two years before the parent went into a nursing home, and whose care kept the parent at home instead of in a facility. A sibling with an ownership stake who lived there a year gets similar treatment. Adopted children count, with adoption records as proof.

Two ways to use it:

Transfer the home to the caregiver. No look-back penalty and no estate recovery on the house. The catch is taxes. A gift passes along the parent’s original cost basis, not the stepped-up value at death. If the caregiver lives there as their main home for 2 of the 5 years before selling, the $250,000 single or $500,000 married capital gains exclusion softens that.
Leave the home in the parent’s name. Colorado bars recovery against the home while a qualifying caregiver child keeps living there continuously, and the child inherits with a stepped-up basis. The catch: the protection lasts only as long as they live there.

The paperwork (what states usually ask for):

Proof of the relationship: birth certificate or adoption records
24 months of address records at the home: utility bills, tax returns, voter registration, bank statements
A detailed physician letter on the parent’s care needs and how the child’s care kept them out of a facility
Dates for the transfer and the Medicaid application

Colorado does not pre-approve exclusions. Gather all of this while the parent is alive.

3. Plan 5 years out with an irrevocable trust

Gifts made within 60 months of applying get penalized. Move the home into an irrevocable Medicaid asset protection trust more than 5 years ahead, and it is generally out of reach.

It has to be irrevocable. A revocable trust still counts as the parent’s asset.
Draft it to keep the step-up. The IRS ruled in 2023 that a home in a trust kept out of the parent’s estate gets no step-up at death. A retained right to live there, or a limited power of appointment, keeps it in the estate for tax purposes. Bad wording can trade one benefit for the other, so this one needs a lawyer.

4. Insure it

Long-term care insurance keeps you out of Medicaid entirely. In 2026 a couple buying at 55 paid about $5,010 a year for $165,000 in initial benefits with inflation protection.

5. Ask for a hardship waiver

States can waive penalties for undue hardship. In Colorado, good cause includes heirs who would otherwise need public assistance, or a home that is part of a working farm, ranch, or business.

What Not to Do

An earlier version of this post had a few of these. They are wrong.

Selling the home for $1 does not get a stepped-up basis. It is a gift, so the buyer takes the parent’s old basis. It is also a transfer inside the look-back window.
A revocable trust does not protect anything. Medicaid counts it as yours.
Do not deed the home to a friend’s LLC. It is a penalized gift for 5 years, the house now belongs to someone else (and their creditors and divorce), and deducting expenses on a house a parent lives in rent-free will not survive an audit.

What If There Is a Mortgage?

Most mortgages have a “due on sale” clause. Federal law stops the lender from using it on homes with fewer than five units when:

The borrower’s spouse or children become an owner
The home goes into a living trust where the borrower is and remains a beneficiary, with no change in who lives there

Open Questions for the Attorney

Does the caregiver rule apply if the parent gets Medicaid care at home instead of in a nursing home? The statute is written around entering a facility.
Which state are the parents in? Look-back periods, estate definitions, and hardship rules vary.
Does that state reach non-probate property, like a beneficiary deed?

The Long-Term Fix

The timing of this law is suspicious. From 1981 to 1988, the top US federal marginal tax rate dropped from 70 to 28 percent. The economic consequences of major tax cuts for the rich found these cuts led to higher income inequality and no change in economic growth or unemployment.

Ironic that many of the people who voted for the politicians behind these policies will be hurt by them in old age. It does not have to be this way. We could raise taxes on the ridiculously wealthy and fund these domestic health care programs.

Where to register a vehicle

2023-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

Result: It failed. A vehicle gets registered where it lives, not where its owner would like it to live. A Montana-registered company car, driven by a Colorado resident and kept in Colorado, has to be registered in Colorado. Wyoming will cite you too if you work there on out-of-state plates without a permit. The perks below only work if the vehicle is actually based there.

The Problem

Registering a vehicle costs money every year, and the rules swing a lot by location. If you move around, or own a business in another state, it looks like you get some choice in the matter.

Hypothesis: Register the vehicle where the fringe benefits are best, like Montana’s permanent registration and zero sales tax, through a company based there.

The Solution I Tried

I researched the best spots in North America to register a vehicle, then looked at registering a company car through my Montana company.

Canada

British Columbia: Used to hold the title for the lowest registration fees in Canada, at $40-100/year.
Ontario: Since March 13, 2022, renewing a passenger vehicle plate costs $0. You still renew every one or two years, just without a sticker.

United States

Alaska: Permanent registration (pay one fee, never again) for vehicles 8 years or older in participating boroughs. Residents also get the Permanent Fund Dividend: $3k for 2022.
Montana: Permanent registration (pay one fee, never again) for light vehicles 11 years or older, as long as ownership does not change. No sales tax, so you save on the purchase too. Also also: low registration fees, especially in Flathead County.

Central America

Panama: Modern, friendly, and a strong democracy (from a memory of a recent autocrat). VAT is 7%, plus a 5% excise tax on cars. Registration is $20 for the inspection and $20 for the municipal paperwork. Registering through an entity adds another $100.

Why It Failed

Every state I looked at keys registration to where the vehicle is kept and driven, and who drives it.

Colorado:

The DMV’s position is simple: “If it is kept at a Colorado residence and driven in the state, it must be registered in Colorado.”
You count as a Colorado resident for registration if you own or operate a business in Colorado, are employed in Colorado, or live here 90 days.
Nonresident businesses have to register vehicles kept in Colorado and pay the same fees as residents. A business vehicle used mainly for business gets registered where it is principally operated and maintained.
The commuter exemption only covers a nonresident who drives in daily from a home in another state. A Colorado resident does not qualify.
Colorado use tax still applies to a vehicle bought out of state and used here.
Penalties: a traffic infraction, late fees, back ownership taxes, and a $500 civil penalty for knowing violations.

Wyoming: a nonresident working in Wyoming has to register in Wyoming or buy a temporary permit, $50 a month for up to 120 days. Daily commuters from Colorado and Montana are the exception.

Everyone else is catching on. In 2026 California charged 14 people over Montana plates, and Utah set up data sharing with Montana to find them.

What Is Left

Register where the vehicle actually lives. Montana’s permanent registration and no sales tax are a real perk for a vehicle based in Montana. A company vehicle that genuinely operates out of another state can stay registered there. One parked in Colorado cannot.

The family wealth office experiment

2021-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Result: It failed. IRS rules do not give a regular person a squeaky clean way to run their household investments through a business entity. It works when you already manage several real businesses through a holding company, and you are already traveling for a business purpose. A household with a brokerage account is neither.

What survived: real businesses in real entities. My Colorado LLC runs a short-term rental and a drop-shipping business. In September 2026 my Canadian company moved from British Columbia to Alberta.

Money often costs too much.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Problem

In any situation, location is crucial.

Gordon Ramsay

Taxes stack up at every layer of where you work: city, county, region, province, and country. If I spend most of my time in one place (the Denver metro area), residency is easy. But what if I split my time between a coworking space in Calgary, a townhome in Buenos Aires, and a cabin in Pagosa Springs? Each place has its own rules for what work gets taxed and how much. And which government gets the taxes on electricity my solar panels sell to a utility in another state?

Hypothesis: Treat the household as a business, a family office. Put it in the lowest tax jurisdiction that is still easy to deal with. Managing the family’s wealth becomes business activity, so household costs become business deductions, and tax arbitrage does the rest.

From investment management to charitable giving advice, family offices offer a total financial solution. In addition, the family office can also handle non-financial issues, such as private schooling, travel arrangements, and miscellaneous other household arrangements.

What Are Family Offices?

The Solution I Tried

1. Shop for a Jurisdiction

I compared places on two things: lowest income tax, and easy to do business in (reasonable filing fees, online services, responsive officials).

US territories: big incentives, but a trap if you still live in a US state. Income from a controlled foreign corporation gets hit with extra rules, plus spotty internet and irregular flights.
US states: only South Dakota and Wyoming have no corporate income tax, no individual income tax, and no gross receipts tax. Wyoming wins for no taxes. Colorado wins for low taxes with good government services.
Canada: every province has income and sales tax. I registered in British Columbia (350CAD to register, 45CAD to renew) for automated self-service, with an extra-provincial registration in Alberta under the New West Partnership Trade Agreement.

2. Build the Holding Company

The plan, at a high level:

Get a street address in the low tax location with Anytime Mailbox or iPostal1, and use it as the registered agent address.
Create a holding LLC there.
Move ownership of assets into it.
Have operating businesses pay it rent or royalties. Across borders, the Wise Multi Currency Account helps.
Elect corporate tax treatment so profits stay in the low tax jurisdiction, while watching for personal holding company tax.

3. Deduct the Household

The original plan was to write off household costs as family office expenses. Do not do this. Without a real business behind them, those are personal expenses, and claiming them is a good way to get audited.

Why It Failed

Managing your own money is not a business. The Supreme Court said so in Higgins v. Commissioner. The family offices that win, like Lender Management, manage money for other people, have employees, and get paid for it. (Day Pitney summary)
Investment expenses are gone for individuals. The 2017 tax law suspended them and the 2025 law made it permanent. Without a real trade or business, there is nothing to deduct against.
The IRS checks for profit. An activity is presumed for profit if it makes money in 3 of the last 5 years. A household spends money. That is the whole point of a household.
Travel has to be for business first. For a domestic trip, the primary purpose has to be business, or none of the transportation is deductible. A family trip does not become a business trip because the family is incorporated.
Where you live still wins. A single-member LLC’s income lands on your personal return, and your home state taxes it. More in the Colorado LLC post.
Canada is stricter. A corporation whose main purpose is earning interest, rent, dividends, or royalties is a specified investment business, unless it has more than 5 full-time employees. That income is taxed at 46.7% in Alberta and 50.7% in BC for 2026, combined federal and provincial.

What I Do Now

Real businesses, each in the place that makes sense for it.

Colorado: my LLC runs a short-term rental and a drop-shipping business. Those are real operations, so the QBI deduction and business expenses hold up.
Alberta: in September 2026 I continued Vraid Systems Limited from British Columbia to Alberta. BC now requires a BC Services Card for most filings, which makes it impossible for a foreigner or non-resident to self-manage. More in the Western Canada Limited Company post. Alberta also costs less:
- Corporate income tax: 23% combined general rate in Alberta vs 27% in BC for 2026.
- Sales tax: Alberta only charges the 5% federal GST. BC adds a 7% PST.

Paperwork You Owe Anyway

Cross-border holdings come with reporting, business or not.

Canada: hold more than $100,000 CAD in foreign assets, and you file Form T1135. Canada has tax treaties to prevent double taxation.
US: signature authority over more than $10,000 USD in foreign accounts means filing an FBAR. Enough foreign financial assets also means Form 8938. The US also has tax treaties.

The Colorado LLC as a wealth management tool

2020-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

Result: It worked. The 20% Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction, plus deducting the costs of running an investment and property management business, paid off. Setup cost about $225 to $375, and upkeep is a $25 periodic report each year. As a Colorado tax resident, forming in a no income tax state like Nevada or Wyoming did not make sense.

The Problem

Real wages have stagnated, and regular employees pay a larger share of national taxes than shell companies for the rich. So why not play the same games until the legislation catches up?

To be clear, I do not support an unfair tax system. I want regular people to use the same loopholes while we work on reversing the Citizens United mess.

Hypothesis: If I run an investment and property management business through an LLC, its income qualifies for the QBI deduction, and the costs of running it become business deductions.

Why it matters: individuals can no longer itemize investment expenses. The 2017 tax law suspended those deductions, and the 2025 tax law made that permanent. Expenses are only deductible if they come from a trade or business. The LLC has to actually be one: run with continuity and regularity, with income or profit as the main purpose.

The LLC runs two real operations: a drop-shipping business, and a short-term rental (the container home I built in Pagosa Springs). Rental real estate gets a clear IRS safe harbor for counting as a business under QBI:

Separate books and records for the rental
250 or more hours of rental services a year
Contemporaneous time logs: hours, what was done, the dates, and who did it
A statement attached to the tax return

The Solution I Tried

A Single Member LLC. It has the easiest paperwork and is usually the best option for the 20% Qualified Business Income deduction.

Creating It

$50 to create in Colorado.
$150 to $300 for an hour or two of a lawyer’s time to write a manager-managed operating agreement. Or pay me for one of mine.
$25 to notarize the operating agreement.
Optional: $10 to $12 a month for a mailbox with Anytime Mailbox or iPostal1. This shields your home address and can put you in a lower sales tax, less regulated municipality (unincorporated Jefferson, Gilpin, or Weld county).

Why Colorado and Not Nevada or Wyoming

Everyone talks about Delaware (zero sales tax). For an Investing and Lending business with no employees, no sales, and no tangible property, Nevada or Wyoming (zero income tax) look better on paper.

They do not help if you live somewhere else. A single-member LLC is a disregarded entity, so its income lands on my personal return, and Colorado taxes the income of every resident no matter where the LLC was formed. Forming out of state would have only added cost:

Fees: Nevada runs about $425 to form and $350 a year (articles, initial list, and state business license). Colorado is $50 to form and $25 a year. At lower income levels, Nevada’s fees cost as much as Colorado’s flat income tax (4.4% for 2025).
Crypto: Colorado’s cryptocurrency rules are more progressive, which I need for my LLC’s investments.

If you live in a high tax state, you need to get more creative. More on that in my family wealth office write-up.

Taxes

You file them with your normal personal income taxes.

If a single-member LLC does not elect to be treated as a corporation, the LLC is a “disregarded entity,” and the LLC’s activities should be reflected on its owner’s federal tax return.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/single-member-limited-liability-companies

Why the interest income qualifies: If your taxable income is under the threshold ($157,500 single or $315,000 married filing jointly when I set this up; $201,750 or $403,500 for 2026), and the business purpose is Investing and Lending (this one is), then interest income through the LLC is Qualified Business Income. The threshold matters because investing counts as a “specified service”, which loses the deduction above it. The deduction was set to expire after 2025, but the 2025 tax law made it permanent. The interest income is properly allocable to a trade or business.

Upkeep

File a periodic report every year ($25, up from $10 when I started).
Apply for an EIN and keep a bank account separate from your personal money. I like the Fidelity Account for Businesses. The downside: Fidelity (and American Express) crack down on physical addresses from a Commercial Mail Receiving Agent. Other banks let you use a virtual mail provider as your physical address. If your bank cares, check whether your address gets flagged as a Commercial Mail Receiving Agent.
Set up quarterly electronic estimated tax payments for the US federal government and your formation state, if you have no other withholding (like a W-2 employer).
Beneficial Ownership Information: nothing to file anymore. US companies are now exempt from FinCEN’s reporting rule.

Moving Assets In

To save on taxes, you transfer accounts and assets to the LLC as a capital contribution. Fiduciaries usually want:

Articles of organization and/or a Certificate of Good Standing from the secretary of state where you formed
The operating agreement, including beneficial owners (remember getting that notarized?)
Government ID for every beneficial owner with more than 25%
A bank statement in the company’s name, with the business address
A detailed description of the business activity (for anti-money laundering checks)

Depending on where you live and how much you move in, the tax savings can cover all the startup fees in the first month.

Later: Estate Planning

There is no public market for LLC membership interests. So gifting membership interests to your heirs while you are still the manager means big asset write-downs for estate purposes.