Product Reviews From Matt MacLean - Reviews meant to save you time, money, and energy

Product Reviews From An Engineer

by Matt MacLean | Jun 4, 2019 | Posts

What’s The Purpose?

It seems like there are a million products now with the intention of distracting you or taking away your precious time. I want to start highlighting my favorite products or services that save me time, improve my daily life, and allow me to get back to work that’s meaningful to me.

I design and engineer products for a living, which means I’m constantly analyzing products and figuring out how they work. A good designer should constantly ask themselves, “how will this product improve people’s everyday lives?” It seems like the question most product teams ask is, “how can we sell a million of these things at the highest margin?” So often, I’ll come across a product that doesn’t perform the way it should, doesn’t solve the problem it claims to solve, and I kind of lose my shit. I get launched into these thought spirals and starting shouting, to no one in particular, “who approved this color??” or “why did they use this material?” or “why is this packaging so bulletproof, even a pair of garden shears can’t open it?” Now I’m thrown way off track from whatever I was doing and have wasted precious time that I could’ve used for other creative pursuits.

I think I know why I really enjoy making and designing products myself – I get to make things the way I want them to function, and salve this blinding rage towards subpar and inefficient products that could have easily been made better.

There are so many distractions, annoyances, and frustrations that crop up in our daily lives that prevent us from staying the course and doing the work that’s important to us. When I find a product that eliminates one of these annoyances, saves time, or increases productivity, it feels like a small miracle! It makes me want to grab a stranger on the bus and tell them I’ve struck gold!

Unfortunately, this would violate the social contract for public transit, and greatly infringe on someone’s day of productivity. So I want to do the next best thing, and share a few thoughts about products that I’m a fan of, or just anything that improves my everyday life. My hope is that some of what you read here will help you to spend more time doing what you love, and less time yelling at inanimate objects.

How To Get Free Unlimited Cloud Storage

by Matt MacLean | Jun 9, 2019 | Posts

Consolidating to Google Drive

A friend of mine recently discovered that his old college Gmail account wasn’t showing any limit to his cloud storage. He put this to the test, and consolidated multiple accounts on multiple cloud storage drives to a single GDrive account. And it worked! So if your school uses Gmail for their email server and allows you to use it indefinitely (UofMN and UofMich for sure), then hop on this immediately and stop paying for expensive cloud storage! I provide steps below that show how to do this yourself.

This next part has made life a whole lot easier for me. Once you have everything moved over to one cloud drive, you can setup a file stream on your desktop to access all the files locally as well. All your files will still be local to your laptop, but they’ll automatically sync to your cloud drive. This is similar to how Dropbox’s desktop feature works.

Because of these couple tricks, I started running my business off cloud storage exclusively. Overall, it’s been a massive relief to not constantly worry about backing up my projects off a local drive. I also signed in to this same GDrive account on my phone. So now, anytime I need to scan a receipt or a signed NDA, I can upload it right to my working folder for that specific project / client.

Here are the steps to take to try it out for yourself:

Sign in to Google Drive with your school email. Try dropping in a few files here if it’s empty to see if it has unlimited storage. It should look like the picture to the right. See how it shows 229 GB used with no upper limit? Just a pure endorphin rush right there.

2. Go over to MultCloud to set up an account and begin transferring all your other drives (Dropbox, Gdrive, iCloud) to your new Gdrive account. Fair warning – the free version only transfers 50GB of data. So you may need to manually transfer files over that limit if you want to keep costs down.

3. On your GDrive homepage, click on “Settings” in the upper right corner. You will see a dropdown link to download “Google Drive File Stream.” This is a very useful add-on tool that will show you all your cloud files in windows explorer as seen below. You can then work directly from your desktop without constantly worrying about backing things up to the cloud. If you’re a Mac user, I have no idea about this step. I’m guessing it’s similar. Although, you may anger the great iCloud for trying to circumvent its stranglehold on vertical integration.

4. Enjoy unlimited cloud storage! Be sure to download on your phone to access all your files anytime. Pretty slick!

OXO Cold Brew Coffee Maker

by Matt MacLean | Jun 17, 2019 | Posts

It’s summer time in for us in Chicago, which means as soon as temps go above 65, it’s time to cram in as many patio BBQ’s, street festivals, and rooftop happy hours as your body can handle. Intaking a steady flow of caffeine will be necessary to power through the endurance game, but sipping on a hot coffee on a humid 90 degree day is less than ideal. Thankfully, someone invented cold brew coffee. Not only is it a delightfully chilled beverage, it also has enough caffeine to wake a hibernating bear, so it feels like you’re mainlining energy straight into your bloodstream. Cold brew is also way less acidic, so it’s easier on the stomach after you pummeled it with $3 Tecate’s for 12 hours straight. If you haven’t gotten on board with cold brew yet, I don’t know what to tell you. Just thank the nearest basic white girl for popularizing it, and go try one for yourself. They really did a great job pushing the narrative on this one, and I’m personally grateful.

Cold brewing is a time intensive process, which means it gets a bump in cost. You’ll drain the funds quickly if you rely on the neighborhood coffee shops for your supply. My cold brew budget started getting wildly out of control, so I looked into making my own. Turns out, it’s super easy! It’s basically just pouring coffee grounds and a bunch of water into a container and letting it sit for ~16 hours (which begs the question, “why isn’t it called room-temp brew?” Not a great ring to it, I’ll admit). After that, you’re left with a concentrated batch that lasts about a week or so, depending on your caffeine addiction. This ends up being way less time consuming than making a fresh cup / pot every morning, and it’s cheaper than going to the coffee shop.

There are a lot of at-home cold brew devices out there, but my favorite is the OXO Cold Brew Coffee Maker ($40 on Amazon). It’s simple, intuitive, and reliable. So much so, I got a bit angry after I used it for the first time, and shouted, “Gah! Why didn’t I think of this?!” to no one in particular. It has very few moving parts, so mine has held up well for about two years with no issues.

How It Works –

There’s a large container on top where you pour in your coffee grounds and water. The filter on the bottom stays sealed through the brewing process. When brewing time is up, you flip a toggle, and the seal is lowered away from the filter. The liquid coffee drains into the glass carafe below, leaving the spent coffee grounds in the top container. Throw away the coffee grounds and put the concentrated cold brew in the fridge to dose out as you please.

One amazing feature OXO also included – the lid to the carafe also doubles as a measuring cup! It has a measuring line about halfway up to dose out one serving of concentrate. Dump that into your glass, then fill the same cup all the way to the brim with water. Mix that together and you’re left with a perfect ratio for a single serving of cold brew! When you measure out the water, you’re basically just rinsing out the cup, so you can pop it back on the carafe and not worry about washing a separate measuring cup – saving you time on doing extra dishes.

I have a couple minor annoyances with the product that you might encounter yourself. If you grind the coffee too fine, you’ll create a thick sludge that clogs the filter, and you’ll have to separate the rest of the grounds from the liquid yourself like an old-timey prospector. But instead of panning for nuggets, you’re trying to squeeze out a few liquid ounces of concentrate from a dirt-clod of coffee grounds, shouting out, “Yee-haw! Gimme some of that black gold!” every time you harvest a couple drops. The only way to avoid this, is to grind your coffee on the COURSE setting, and of course, to have roommates around to temper your weird behaviors.

The glass carafe is also fairly brittle. It’s not the same tempered glass or thickness you’re used to with the classic glass juice pitchers. I’ve broken one in the sink so far when I was washing it with other dishes. This isn’t the end of the world, though, since you can buy replacements on Amazon for $20.

Here are the basic instructions from OXO –

Best Place For Men’s Haircuts

by Matt MacLean | Jun 25, 2019 | Posts

I always figured that if you have short hair, a haircut should be fairly easy and straightforward. But somehow, I still get burned by massive swings in quality every time I move and have to find a new barber or stylist. I’ve gone through the entire gamut of hair cutting options, from the neighborhood barbershop to the high-end, suburban mom, salon treatment. The best of the bunch is the chain Hair Cuttery, and here’s why:

I went to a barbershop my whole life until I was 25, mostly because I grew up with the notion ingrained in me that “men go to barbershops, that’s just the way it is!” It took me a very long time to realize there’s a better option out there.

If you haven’t been to a barbershop, here’s a brief rundown of the experience: You walk into a mostly empty storefront and are met with three grizzled barbers complaining about something, the specifics of which don’t really matter. You sit down, paw through the stack of magazines consisting of Field and Stream, Autotrader, and the occasional Playboy, and wait for the next chair to free up. Without fail, the first available option is the guy who once swiped his clippers against the back of your neck so aggressively, it looked like an aspen sapling got mangled by a weed whacker. But you’re too self-conscious to request the other guy, and don’t want to risk sounding whiny and high-maintenance to the rest of the patrons, so you’ll hop up on the chair and hope for the best.

Now it’s time to tell him how you like it cut. Forgot what you said last time? Don’t worry about it, because no matter what you say, you’re getting a crew cut with number 3 on the sides and a half inch on top.

If you have any local references saved up, now is the time to bust them out. Acceptable topics of conversation include: high school sports, being annoyed with cheaply made wares, and how much of a dipshit this new mayor is. The back-and-forth will probably lose steam after a few minutes, which will leave you sitting silently, facing away from the mirror, while you listen to the menacing buzz of the clippers and wonder to yourself, “What’s going on back there?” and, “How is he STILL taking more off the top?”

At the very least, the man is efficient, and trims you up in under 15 minutes. You’ll know it’s time to wrap up when you feel him tracing over the fresh razor burns on your neck with the hard, plastic tip of a Shop-Vac. After he rubs it over your now fully exposed scalp a few times, he’ll finish by holding it firmly against your eardrum. I’m guessing this is to suck out any loose hairs, earwax, or extra braincells you don’t want in there. Or maybe, it’s so you can experience the thrill of standing inside an airplane engine. Usually, I would rationalize this to myself and think, “Well, a haircut isn’t supposed to be comfortable, it’s supposed to be precise and thorough!”

You’ll thank the man, shake his hand, and smile. He’ll charge $12 and you tip him $3 in cash, regardless of the outcome. You’ll then wear a hat for two weeks while it “grows in,” because haircuts are supposed to have built in lead-times. That’s just how it works.

I eventually broke away from the barbershop to see if there were better options, and progressed to the next logical choice, SportClips – the Hooters of hair salons.

As a man, you may feel insecure walking into a hair salon, surrounded by women, asking you the tough questions like, “what would you like your hair to look like?” So you try out SportClips, where they stand by their mission of “You’re not gay for wanting to get your hair cut at a salon, no! Look at all these sexy women dressed in sporty outfits! We covered every wall with 60” TV screens blaring SportsCenter on repeat! How could that be gay?!” Unfortunately, they spend all their energy on convincing you that salons are manly, instead of delivering solid haircuts. So once you leave, you’ll slowly piece together that you basically paid a business $25 for a damp towel, a mediocre haircut, and to temporarily suppress your insecurities for an hour. And if you feel yourself needing that, you might as well stick to the barbershop and spend the extra cash on talk therapy.

Next, I decided to swing for the fences. Let’s try out the fancy boutique salon. Surely, I can overcome my baked-in, heteronormative bullshit, and get my hair cut by people who actually know what they’re doing, right? And let me tell ya,– these places are incredible. They have great customer service as soon as you walk in, they play tolerable music, and they give you advice on what would look good on you before they even start cutting your hair! It’s unheard of. There’s also the nice perk that a very attractive woman would tell me how fashionable I am the entire time (even though I know it’s bullshit, because I’m a cheap engineer who prefers fabric with optimal moisture wicking functionality over any sort of style choice. Not exactly the recipe for high fashion). But for this high-end experience, you sure do pay for it. I walked away with a $44 bill. Not exactly sustainable if you’re on a budget and doing that once a month.

The logical in-between choices are the chain salons like Great Clips, Supercuts, Floyd’s 99, and Hair Cuttery. After a few years of trying out various locations, they all seem to have the same caliber talent and are around the same price of $15. The problem is, every 1 in 4 cuts or so, I’ll get the occasional hack job that scares me off from one location, where I can never show my face again since I’m too self-conscious to specifically request NOT having that particular stylist again.

The solution and clear winner –

Hair Cuttery lets you go on their website and book appointments ahead of time with specific stylists. It shows the stylist’s experience level next to each of their names (Salon professional, Designer 1, Master Designer, etc.) The hair-hierarchy is a left to interpretation, but I’m guessing the more expensive, the better. Instead of spending top dollar at a fancy salon, go to the chain salon and pay medium dollar for their top stylist. Then you know you’re getting a hair veteran that will guarantee a solid cut. Plus, after visiting them a few times, you’ll have a go-to person and won’t have to panic as you try to remember how you usually describe your cutting preferences. This will save time and money, getting you back to the work you want to be doing.

Gboard For iOS

by Matt MacLean | Jul 1, 2019 | Posts

Remember when teachers spent years preaching to us that cursive was an absolute necessity in the real world, and without it we would fall behind everyone in our college classes?

How terrific!

Good thing there’s an app now that actually helps you write faster. It’s a significant upgrade from the antiquated skill taught by catholic schools, who for some reason, made it their mission to force confused, left-handed, 3rd graders with graphite smeared pinkies to “shut up and conform!”

I’m a huge fan of Google’s Gboard for iOS. After I switched to Cult iPhone, I missed having the Swype keyboard that allowed me to type much faster. I was happy to see Google came out with their own version for iOS. Ideally, I want to spend as little time as possible responding to texts and emails, so this helps me knock those puppies out QUICK and get back to my task at hand.

It might be tough to get used to at first, but after you spend a couple weeks using it, you won’t want to go back to the archaic finger pecking method.

Remember switching from ABC texting to T-9 texting? Yeah, it sucked at first, but we all became all-stars at it after like two weeks. If you can make that switch then, you can do it again now.

If you’re still hesitant to make the switch, it also functions well as a regular typing keyboard, so you can fall back to the old ways if you get sick of swiping.

So fire off those texts, put the phone away, and get back to what you were doing in the first place!

Passive Income With Getaround

by Matt MacLean | Jul 15, 2019 | Posts

Like a lot of city dwellers, I mostly use the train and Uber/Lyft to commute around town. A few years ago, I was debating whether I should sell my car to get some extra cash since I didn’t really use it anymore. I decided instead to start renting it out on the car sharing service, Getaround, so I could make some extra money and still be able to use my car for weekend getaways. Here’s what I learned over the past three years using the service, and how you can make $600 a month with very minimal effort.

How It Works –

People rent your car when you’re not using it and you make around $600 a month.

If you decide to sign up (first of all, ask me for a referral so we both get a $200 bonus!), the Getaround team will pick up your car and install some hardware and software into the system. They will rent this out to you for $20 a month and a one-time $99 install fee, which incentivizes you to keep your car listing consistently active to make up that sunk cost. Once the install has taken place, your car is ready to rent. Users can search your vehicle in the app, reserve your car for a certain amount of time, then unlock your car with the app. They’ll then get the key from inside the car and start their trip. Ideally, they fill the car up with gas to the same level they found it and return it to your parking spot or street. I keep my car in the free street parking zones close to my apartment, so users just park it within a couple block radius.

The reason I chose Getaround to use instead of other car sharing services (like Turo), is because those require you to personally hand off your keys to the renter. Since my goal is to maximize my free time and minimize the amount of forced small talk with strangers, the remote unlocking feature was a huge draw.

A Look At The Numbers –

If at this point you’re like, “Hey, sign me up! Let’s get some side cash!” I’ll outline what I think is the best way to get into this.

There are a couple rules for acceptable cars. As the terms state right now, a car has to be newer than 2008 and less than 125,000 miles. I assume this means the car always needs to be less than 11 years old as we move forward, too.

To maximize your profit and get the best use out of a vehicle within these constraints, I’d recommend getting a 2015-2016 Toyota Prius (or similar car) with ~30,000 miles. Here’s how I arrived at that conclusion –

I’ve logged the mileage data and monthly income for my 2014 Mazda 3 for the past three years I’ve been using the service. The usage is fairly consistent. Plotting the mileage over time showed a linear trend of 1,560 miles per month. This means that the most usage you can get out of a vehicle is about 6.5 years until it gets to 125,000 miles. In this window of time, you’ll want to buy a vehicle as cheaply as possible and sell it for as much as possible once it’s outside the window.

My monthly earnings have averaged to $592. This average has been increasing every year since the service began, but it’s tough to say whether this trend will keep increasing, steady out, or decline once the service becomes saturated. For now, let’s use my current average.

It seems like the Toyota Priuses (I refuse to call them “Prii”) in my neighborhood get rented out the most and they hold their value pretty well. So I’m going to use this car as a case study, even though you can go with whichever car you prefer. Newer cars with more bells and whistles also get a price bump on Getaround as compared to older cars with cloth seats, tape decks, and cigarette burns. They also have an option where they will automatically price your car to match the market demand. I’d recommend doing this, since it automatically lowers the price slightly during the week when demand is lower and raises it during peak weekend hours.

Here are some current prices for 2014 or newer Priuses with low miles. There’s a sweet spot where you can maximize your monthly profit and cash out on the vehicle after keeping it active for ~5 years. Springing for a 2015 or newer car will give you a higher priced listing on Getaround, and ensure you’ll have a decent resale value at the end of the car’s service life. If you spread out your pure profit over time, it should work out to ~$400 a month!

Things To Watch Out For –

Be aware – if something goes wrong, the users can call the Getaround 1-800 number or your personal number. To ensure you don’t get a massive amount of panic-stricken calls asking you how to use a push-to-start ignition, make sure you put in DETAILED step-by-step instructions in your vehicle description on how to start and operate your car. I figured most people knew how to step on a brake pedal and push a button to start a machine in 2019. Turns out, that’s not an easy one to navigate for most folks. So initially, I had fairly vague details written out on how to get in and operate my car. After about the 10^th call asking, “How does this thing work? I need to get to my kid’s 8^th grade graduation! You’re a monster!!” I made sure to add in excruciating detail to the start up instructions on my listing. This did the trick, and my call volume is back down close to zero.

Getaround insures your vehicle up to $1mil for damages. So basically, anything that happens during a user’s trip will be covered by Getaround. It’s up to you to be diligent about this and make sure you’re checking in on the state of your car. I make a habit to check my car every two weeks to see if there are any new dents, scrapes, or messes that need to be dealt with. If you find damage, you can report it in the app and someone from the claims team will either send your car to a shop or give you the cash to deal with it yourself. If the damage is minor enough, I usually choose the cash option and hope a little duct tape and elbow grease will solve the problem.

The user is supposed to take a picture of the fuel gauge before and after the trip to show they returned it at the same level. If they fail to record this, and you suspect they didn’t refill the tank, you can fill the car back up, take a picture of your receipt, and email Getaround for reimbursement. They will also add on $10-$15 for the inconvenience at your next payout, which is a nice little bonus.

Getaround will also change your entire outlook on parking tickets. I used to get that daunting envelope in the mail postmarked from the city and my heart would sink, knowing I was about to shell out $100 for some “parking an inch too far from the curb” nonsense. But now I see one of those things in my mailbox… and get excited! Because it means I get free credit card points for paying the ticket online, a full reimbursement from Getaround, and a $15 bonus from them as an inconvenience fee.

So if you’re interested in getting some extra cash with a bit of up-front cost and minimal effort afterwards, contact me for a code and sign yourself up! Then watch the monthly checks roll in and get back to the work that’s important to you.

Mint: Budget, Bills, and Finance Tracker

by Matt MacLean | Aug 2, 2019 | Posts

Why I Love It And How It’s Worked For Me –

Mint is incredibly useful for tracking monthly budgets. And best of all – it’s free!

A couple of years ago, I wanted to quit my job and start my own business. Figuring out how to track and monitor my spending was hugely important for taking that next step. For me, I wanted to save up at least six months of float to be able to convince myself to cut ties with my safe, warm and fuzzy, monthly salary.

This meant I needed to cut down on certain monthly spending categories. Once I had these goals in place, things started clicking together.

After a couple months of tracking spending, it became clear how much I needed to save and what I needed to cut back on. One of my biggest revelations was realizing I was spending a disgusting amount each month on alcohol. I started asking myself this question, “Am I getting $5 worth of happiness for every $5 I’m spending at these bars?” The answer – not a chance. Once I stepped back a bit, it became clear I was spending way too much money going to obnoxious venues I didn’t like with people I didn’t enjoy being around and then feeling guilty because of it. So, I set a limit for myself, which helps hold me accountable to spend less money on doing things I don’t enjoy (like buying booze to make the environment or people around me more tolerable), and more money on things I do enjoy (like concert tickets, writing classes, and ski trips).

This also had the nice side effect of forcing me to find my tribe of people and do more of things that make me happy. Before this, I didn’t have a clear goal in place and didn’t have the numbers laid out in front of me, so there was no real motivation to change my negative spending behavior. Once I put in place a larger goal of wanting to save up at least 6 months of float so I could start prioritizing happiness, and the smaller goal of monthly budgets in certain categories to achieve this larger goal, I had a lot more incentive to cut down my extraneous spending. After a couple months of staring at the data, it was a lot easier to shift my behavior.

(No idea whose income this is… maybe a Kardashian?)

How It Works –

First, you link all your bank accounts, trading accounts, credit cards, student loans, car loans, etc. to the app. Fair warning – this might be jarring to see an actual dollar amount for how much student debt you’ve really accrued. It had been awhile since I calculated the grand total, and I needed a casual ten minutes to rock back and forth in the fetal position before I could continue my day.

Second, budgets are set. When I first downloaded the app, I had no idea where to set my budgets. This is fine. Mint will automatically set monthly budgets for you based on your previous spending trends. Then, when you get a few months of data points, you can drag those budgets up or down depending on your goals.

After everything is linked, you’ll want to check in every few days to look at your recent transactions and make sure everything is categorized correctly. It’s usually pretty accurate, but sometimes Mint messes up and you need to move around a “shopping” charge to a “grocery” charge. Or change all those Venmo charges from “bank transfers” to “excessive brunch spending.” It all depends on how granular you want to get.

Each month I’ll go back and look at the monthly break down for where my money went. I log each category of spending into a spreadsheet, so I can look at my month-to-month spending in a more digestible way. This helps track progress and make the data more usable.

I also use Mint for tracking business vs. personal expenses, but ultimately QuickBooks is a better tool for that purpose (which is ~$12 a month for independent contractors).

Once this becomes a routine, it removes a lot of that mental churn that gets caught up in asking, “When are my bills do again? When does that credit card payment autopay? How much did I spend on Lime scooters last month?” So check out the app, alleviate some of that stress, and get back to doing the things you care about.

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