A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

[IlliniDave]

Not All Achievements are Big

So, I'm 50 years old, educated through graduate school, and have finally achieved moderate competence in a simple chore that really is of no significance. I can lay a bead of caulk without it looking like the tube spontaneously exploded in the room. As a bonus I painted a wall with the results being distinctly different than those kindergarten finger painting projects of mine my mother has kept all these years.

I also got my little venting system back in place to recycle heat from my dryer. I don't get good results in the cold, rainy fall weather here using my garage to dry clothes so I'm back to the dryer for a while (garage works great in the spring, summer, and early fall), but at least I'm capturing most of the heat as well as dumping some much needed moisture into the air. I get a +2F bump on the first floor of the house, and about a +1 bump on the upper floor in the vicinity of the landing.

Those things won't shave years off my ER journey, but it feels good to fight back a little.

[llorona]

Caulking is pretty significant! It's one of those little tasks that, if ignored, can lead to big problems later on. At the very least you don't have to pay someone to do for you.

[IlliniDave]

Thanks, llorna! It's a small accomplishment, but me and my caulk gun have had a rocky relationship for the year-plus I've been fooling with it and it's a relief to begin to see some successes. This is just some prep work for interior painting, so not as difficult as some of my earlier projects. All-told I avoid spending at least a couple hundred USD per room doing my own painting, more for the well-worn ones that need a lot of prep work. I may be kidding myself about how far I can advance in this vein (I'm miles from being a self-sufficient repairman/renovator), but it's fun.

[Hankaroundtheworld]

Hi, quick note after reading "re-centering", I think we all die alone, even if there are people around us, those last moments are very lonely and introspective (what I took from real cases in my family), if this is of any comfort. Of course, being alone when u r alive is something else, and this seems more a "western world" problem (many people seem to be alone, or at least living alone), but then again, it is only a problem if you think it is a problem. People who are "thinkers", tend to forget "action", but we only learn from our actions, so to move on, actions (and sometimes "shame-attacks") need to be taken ! I know, I am a thinker too

[IlliniDave]

Hank, yeah, that's what they say about birth and death--things that in some sense, in the instant they happen, you do alone. At the time I was thinking along the lines of the process of life ending more so than the moment it ends. All indications are I'll mostly be a loner from this point out, which I'm fine with. But for whatever reason the thought I mentioned was jarring enough that it made me think, which resulted in a conclusion that being "mostly a loner" is a long way from living in isolation. I agree that action is essential, and I see no conflict in introversion and action. Just the arena may be somewhat different than that of a more extroverted person. Thinking to the point (maybe overthinking) that results in elevated worry and/or regret is what I try to avoid.

[IlliniDave]

November 2014 Summary

So, I'm getting a little ahead of myself as the financail markets are open half a day today and I will spend a few dollars at the grocery store today or tomorrow, but presuming the markets are not excessively volatile, this should be close enough.

Q4 2014 to-date has seen a growth in net worth of about $40.6K which is right around my quarterly average for the last 2.5 years. Mostly it's been due to bounce-back in the broad stock markets since the Q3 drop. Invested assets are down around $61.2K reflecting a real estate purchase which closed on 10/29. At the closing I had a $63K lien on the property of which I retired $9.5K in November. Excluding mortgage payments total spending for the month is around $4,600, of which $2,875 was the remaining cost of replacing the carpet in my home. Ongoing living expenses came in under $2K for the first time since April. Now that most of the renovations are complete I'm hopeful I can come in below $2K on a more regular basis. I can't say I'm hopeful about getting the average down to or below $2K/month. On paper it seems quite doable, but life has infinite capacity to toss knuckle balls at me. My current nominal ER planning is based on $3,222/mo post-tax spending capacity (the goal is to get by contentedly on significantly less) with the ability to handle up to $3,670/mo post-tax spending without depleting resources. I still have some work to do to convince myself those are viable numbers for me for an extended period. Today's nest egg could provide about $1,100/mo post-tax. Roughly speaking I need income from the nest egg/invested assets to cover about half my future living expenses. So I've got a ways to go.

Beyond the dry and boring stuff, not a lot to say. For the first time in a while my fridge/freezer is pretty well stocked as I jump on loss leaders and other food items discounted for the holiday.

On a philosophical/introspective level as always I struggle with keeping myself centered in the here and now. Although in most respects I lack nothing right now, I still have a penchant for inventing things to "need". This weekend is well-themed for taking some time shift focus more towards gratitude than want (I do my best to ignore Black Friday and all it entails, ha!). It's a little too early to start thinking about how calendar 2014 played out as a whole, but it seems like for me it's going to wrap up as fairly positive.

[IlliniDave]

On Fear and Freedom and $3,800

I spent some time stress testing my ER plan, and took it a few steps farther. Skipping all the dull details what the numbers say is that I can forgo the ratrace as soon as I can accumulate another $25K in wealth assuming I find some way independent of my retirement money to fund life until I get to 55, and further that from 55 on I can make it on $3,800/mo pre-tax. If I stick to that spending level religiously, I will deplete my money around age 85. There are assumptions behind that of a conservative but generally benign financial environment, so it's not bullet-proof. But I tend to be adaptable and I believe there's a high probability I could make it work.

So I ask myself why not keep my shoulder to the wheel for six months or nine months or whatever and say $#%k it? Why grind out another 5 years?

For those questions I do not have neat and tidy answers.

In part it's due to that most basic of all emotions: fear. Not manifested as bowel-loosing terror, just a healthy respect for the universe's unlimited capacity to chuck havoc in my direction. Money has a delightful fungibility, and while not the solution to everything, it can mitigate a lot.

At the risk of sounding a little snobby, at this juncture of my life accumulating money is pretty easy. My job is closer to fun than merely tolerable (far opposite of awful), it pays well, and my life expenses relative to the normal version of me are very small. And I like the "game". Some people like acquiring houses or cars or furniture and working on them to improve their utility and value. I like doing that with money. That's a hard thing to admit to myself, I'd rather have the more noble viewpoint that money is unimportant or at best a necessary evil (because in the most critical ways that is the truth), but I like game, and part of the game is stoking the fire.

Perhaps I'm also a prisoner of inertia. An analogy might be that I'm like a person who spends an entire weekend in front of the TV watching great movies, a person for whom it is too difficult to set aside 80% contentment to strive for 100% when success is not guaranteed.

I now find myself challenging my long-held assumption that I actually have the mettle for this. This being LER (a homespun acronym for Lean Early Retirement).

I need to find a way to get my enthusiasm back. The soft, warm recliner of mediocrity beckons.

[Gilberto de Piento]

assuming I find some way independent of my retirement money to fund life until I get to 55

Any ideas? Is there another job you'd prefer?

I will deplete my money around age 85

According to Vanguard https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insigh ... ement-tool you have a 38% probability of living to 85, assuming you are 50 now. What then?

Perhaps I'm also a prisoner of inertia. An analogy might be that I'm like a person who spends an entire weekend in front of the TV watching great movies, a person for whom it is too difficult to set aside 80% contentment to strive for 100% when success is not guaranteed.

This hits close to home for me. I've been struggling a lot lately with how much risk to take on to try to make things move faster. You are a lot closer to retirement and I imagine that makes it a lot more difficult to make changes. I hope you can find the right path.

[IlliniDave]

Hi Gilberto, great questions. My initial thoughts are as follows...

No there really isn't another job I'd prefer. There are probably many I'd accept. At the root of my ER push is a desire to relocate "back home" to be near family and especially my aging parents. If I had no geographic pull, and thought I had to work, I'd be hard pressed to find a better job than the one I have now. If I jump pre-55 and relocate I'd be looking at a few years of really hunkering down, living on next to nothing, probably working some near minimum wage job, or wandering between several. A temporary "real E" ERE.

Yes, 50 now. Jumping pre-55 would definitely inject an appreciable risk of shortfall that would be virtually eliminated if I prolong my current path 5 more years. In reality there are a couple mitigating considerations. First, my assumptions regarding investment returns and inflation are conservative. While it's possible they may turn out to be optimistic, meaning I hit shortfall even sooner, the greater likelihood is that they are pessimistic and in the scenario I described I'd find myself with residual money at age 85. Second, $3,800/mo pre-tax would provide post-tax about $1,200/mo more than my current average spending. In reality I would strive to maintain (or operate below) my current spending, which would greatly slow the drawdown of my retirement assets. Third, per that plan I'd also have two homes, one of which could presumably be sold if need be (not reflected in the scenario). Lastly, if I do find myself 85 and broke, I suppose I'll have to do what the large population of retirees who survive on nothing but SS and a small SPIA do. One of the benefits of ER versus ERE is that after 30+ years working full time/contributing, SS will largely keep destitution at bay. SS isn't a factor in my "Plan A", but it's a good thing to have in the hip pocket should other plans get derailed and I'm reverting to plan C or D.

The main thing about making big changes close to retirement age, is that you're close to retirement age. What I mean by that is your window of time to experiment with lifestyles and subsequently hit the "undo button" if it doesn't work out is starting to grow short. The pragmatic side of me says going out and beating the streets for employment at age 80 or 85 is a non-starter. So decisions I make in the next few years are starting to edge towards having permanent consequences.

There is a certain amount of inertia at play too, but lack of recovery time from a decision that works out badly is my bigger consideration. It's easier to "cope with" having more money than you care/need to spend than it is wanting/needing to spend more money than you have. So I have a strong instinctual pull towards being cautious about when I pull the plug.

The one thing that certain is that I'll be on some path. My job is to make it the right path as I go along. Luckily I have a nice life now, enjoyable job, and good health in the family. No need to decide anything today.

[IlliniDave]

This week I decided to take a loan from my 401K to retire the small outstanding mortgage on the cabin. Tongue-in-cheek, I justify it by saying I added a 2-year 3.25% IlliniDave Bond to my portfolio. Of course it's not without risk--if I lose my job and can't repay I could get hit with as much as 45% in income and penalty taxes, and there are potential lost opportunity costs (although the way things have gone this week it looks like a savvy market-timing decision, ha!). The plus side is that the interest rate is lower and I pay the interest to myself. And the biggie for me--not having external creditors.

Oddly, I feel like I'm in some combined exercise of juggling and protecting the uprightness of a house of cards. But at the same time I can't identify any vulnerability with a high likelihood of occurrence.

Yesterday I spent some time watching a squirrel pad its nest with little oak branches (still have not dropped their leaves here). It seems I get the compulsion to prepare for the unknown future from somewhere deep in my reptile brain.

[EdithKeeler]

This week I decided to take a loan from my 401K to retire the small outstanding mortgage on the cabin. Tongue-in-cheek, I justify it by saying I added a 2-year 3.25% IlliniDave Bond to my portfolio. Of course it's not without risk--if I lose my job and can't repay I could get hit with as much as 45% in income and penalty taxes, and there are potential lost opportunity costs (although the way things have gone this week it looks like a savvy market-timing decision, ha!). The plus side is that the interest rate is lower and I pay the interest to myself. And the biggie for me--not having external creditors.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Worst case scenario, if you lose your job you could likely transfer the balance to a credit card (if you're like me, you get a lot of "zero-interest for a period of time" offers) to avoid the taxes and penalties. Not optimal, but better than getting hit with the big bucks. And it probably won't be needed anyway.

I took a loan against my 401(k) once--it worked out fine and I paid it off quite quickly.

[Tyler9000]

In part it's due to that most basic of all emotions: fear. Not manifested as bowel-loosing terror, just a healthy respect for the universe's unlimited capacity to chuck havoc in my direction. Money has a delightful fungibility, and while not the solution to everything, it can mitigate a lot.

....

Perhaps I'm also a prisoner of inertia. An analogy might be that I'm like a person who spends an entire weekend in front of the TV watching great movies, a person for whom it is too difficult to set aside 80% contentment to strive for 100% when success is not guaranteed.

I certainly relate. What you're feeling is normal.

For me, I was really wound up in our finances for a long while and tried to gameplan every possible scenario. I even worked my way into a very comfortable job that removed much of the stress that initially pushed me towards seeking FI. The financial over-thinking combined with the lack of apparent incentive to retire even made me question my goals at times. Along the way, I had a medical issue (I'm fine now) that punched me in the face and reminded me that my time is precious and that money can't buy everything. It was just the motivator I needed to close the spreadsheets and emotionally push me over the finish line to putting my career on hold.

It's OK to stay doing something you enjoy. Don't unnecessarily pressure yourself to change just for the sake of change, but always stay prepared for the day you decide it's "time". When it comes, you'll know.

[IlliniDave]

This is a bit premature, but assuming nothing extraordinary happens over the next 3 days, everything should stay within a percent or two of my rounding.

I'll start with the big bottom line. 2014 saw a growth in net worth (excluding present value of SS and the like) of about $116K, which is okay although it's $86K below my 2013 net worth growth. It keeps me ahead of my minimal glide path to success. My invested assets declined by about $49K as an appreciable amount was transferred into a non-investment real estate property. My "cash-out" net worth (what I could reasonably get if I sold everything net of taxes and commissions) is about $611K which could provide me about $1,525 per month using a 3% SWR as a swag. If I used part of the money to buy a downsized house I'd be looking at around $1,375/month in approximate income.

I threw a wrench in the works when I bought the lake shore cabin in Minnesota. It was definitely a lifestyle expense, and a large one, and time will tell whether the enjoyment will outweigh the 7-month extension of my professional employment and the slightly reduced spending potential in retirement. Although somewhat illiquid, if I can afford the time I should be able to recover most/all the purchase price through a sale should my situation change, or I decide it does not fit as well with my future as I thought it would. A first cut suggests it will cost me about $4,000/year in utilities, insurance, taxes/fees, and travel/leisure/vacation expenses.

Even forgetting about the cabin, I spent a lot of money in 2014. If I look at what I call my "regular" expenses (all the things one can predict ahead of time will occur once every year) I averaged about $2400/mo which is about $100/month more than in 2013. If I include everything (a large home renovation project, certain real estate transaction costs, etc.) I averaged around $4600/month. I like to track both numbers because I want a nest egg that can comfortably support the need inherent to the regular expense number (with some margin) and large enough to withstand the larger figure during some, but not every, year.

So all-in-all the year seems to have been adequate to keep me on track. Over the next couple of days I'll be going over things and looking at prudent adjustments going forward. If it seems worthwhile, I add them in a followup post. For the most part it will be simply keeping my shoulder to the wheel and slogging out 5 years.

[IlliniDave]

I threw out a few ideas in the New Year's resolution thread, which reflected the beginnings of my thoughts on the subject.

It's tempting to tally up my wealth, reconfirm through updated computations that my 5-year plan is doable with margin that has margin, pat myself on the back, and say, "Just keep doing what you're doing." But that doesn't feel right. I believe there is more to retirement than solving a math problem.

After buying my cabin I moved my check out date back from mid-May 2019 to 31 December 2019. So I'm about to get back into the less than 5 year window. So it is time to practice being retired. In my mind a "good" retirement is a skill one hones as opposed to a default condition that spontaneously flowers when one quits going to work.

I've probably mentioned this before but in my worldview the mind can be a trap that causes us to be absent for most of our lives. We can spend nearly all of our time chained to a stream of thoughts dwelling on the past and letting it define us, or yearning for some point in the future where the current suboptimal (or unacceptable) situation will transform into the good life. Because our lives actually occur in the present (the past and future are only electrochemical constructs of the mind, one once real but now irrevocably gone, the other simply a fantasy), the mental obsession with past and future can cause us to essentially sleepwalk through most of our lives.

I'm pretty good at putting aside the past and only drawing on it when it is of use to me in the present. Where I have my big struggle is mentally dwelling in imagined futures. In doing this I am devaluing the present (i.e., my 'life') to at best a stepping stone to get to some elusive point in the future where I can start fully living life. The problem I see is that it is all too likely I'll get too habituated to waiting for that next accomplishment and never get around to freely wallowing in the present.

Lately, ER has been that future milestone I've anticipated with the big sign that says, "Life can begin Now" sitting just beyond it. I need to replace it with a sign that says, "Life is Now" that I keep in front of me every day.

That's where the "practice being retired" idea above comes from. It would be better stated as simply to do a better job of being aware/mindful in the present. I've been yapping about that concept since I started this journal. But here I am many months later still talking about it. I've made some small progress, but it's clearly something I need to keep being deliberate about. So I see it as one of the main overarching themes that my resolutions have as a contextual backdrop.

Being pathologically focused on the future as I am ironically enough fosters a certain laziness in me. I do work diligently at turning the crank in physical/financial preparation for ER, but it's not something I can fill every waking moment with. My mind tells me I can't be truly happy until I get to ER, and therefore in my "free time" I might as well just wait until the next opportunity to turn the ER crank appears. That's a fallacy, of course, but nevertheless I fall victim to it and diddle away a lot of time while my mind races away in the future.

So, I'll start the resolutions with these two

1. Learn a new utilitarian skill
2. Learn a new leisure skill

The "new" aspect will help me harness the beginner's mind, a great tool for openness to the present moment without the mind overriding the senses with preconceived ideas.

The next ones address an area where I remain undisciplined: food. I am borrowing this from someone from the resolutions thread (don't remember who, sorry) but it is a "small" step which I have no doubt will improve my health and should head off a lot of the traps I fall into.

3. Eliminate as much refined/factory sugar from my diet as possible.

That should keep me clear of a lot of convenience foods and run a tighter financial ship.

I think I'll stick with just those three. I have a lot of other goals for things like how many of my salary dollars are shoveled into investment accounts, minimizing or eliminating various expense categories, maintenance chores to attend to around the house, and such. But those are all ongoing things at this point and really don't mark any sort of change in either my life, or my life situation.

There is one other thing I'm going to try to put into practice. Having done a fair amount of reading on the topic of mindfulness and presence, I'm going to make an effort whenever I find myself doing something somewhat unpleasant (a pointless meeting at work, a tedious chore, stuck in line somewhere, etc.) I'm going to work on various exercises to keep myself in the present rather than submit to my mind nagging me with thoughts about how much I don't want to do whatever it is I'm having to do. I messed around with that a little recently, and as hokey and New Age-ish as it sounds, it seemed to help.

Peace and Happy New Year.

[Dave]

I have really enjoyed reading your journal, ID.

I stumbled across Buddhism in December 2013, and since then I have made efforts to incorporate mindfulness into life. As you have noted, it is a challenging process when one's mind is wired towards planning for the future. We also have reinforcement that such future planning is a good thing (and it is) to ensure a positive future, but it is hard to both work towards that future while enjoying today. Like you, I have found varying degrees of success with mindfulness. I will say, and I find it deeply comforting, that peace is right here, in every moment. In many of your posts you talk as if this mindfulness is something to be worked on, when in reality it is something to be practiced at this very moment. By definition, mindfulness is being present in the moment, which is only something you can do right now - not something to be "practiced next month". It is something you can succeed at right now, and you can be enlightened in this very moment. Two years ago had I read something like what I just typed I would have laughed, but I can see the truth of it now.

Have you read Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh? It is an incredibly easy read, but offers ways to think about many different common situations.

I hope your 2015 is off to a great start, and look forward to hearing more of your journey going forward!

[IlliniDave]

Hi Dave,

Thanks, I have not read that book, nor any by him. He has many talks on Youtube, several of which I've watched. In general I agree with you. When I allude to "working on" presence/mindfulness it's primarily a matter of consistency, I guess you could say. It's not hard to switch into a mode of being anchored in the present, but I don't do a good job of maintaining it indefinitely, and long periods of time can go by before I even recognize that I have drifted back into a mind-dominated state (which usually is replete with mulling solutions for future problems which may or may not ever occur). That said, if you look at practices such as Zen Buddhism it is apparent that there are those who believe that regular, extended 'practice' does lead to improved/deepened mindfulness and understanding. But, I have not taken things in that direction.

So far, so good on 2015. My mantra for the year is: gratitude, mindfulness, and discipline. I try to revisit those themes a couple times a day.

[Dave]

Fair enough, and I can definitely understand the difficulty of consistency!

I hope things are still going well for you.

[spoonman]

If you had to do it all over again, how would you get started with meditation and mindfulness? I am such a armchair practitioner, any words of wisdom would help me get off my butt.

[Linnie]

Hi IlliniDave!
I'm also late to the ERE party being 48. You have a lot more patience than I do though. Since reading the ERE book and a few blogs obsessively for a little while; I can't wait to pull the plug.
I actually wrote Ernie Zellinski when I was 26 to tell him how much I loved his book after reading it way back then. I knew/know that I won't have any problem being retired - I just didn't know how to get there other than the usual route of working 40 years first.
And I can also relate on the dating front. It sucks! Lol. I equate Meeting Mr. Right with playing the lottery. Highly unlikely as I don't buy tickets but if either thing did happen, it would be icing on the cake. I make plans with what I can control only. However, 50 is still young and hope springs eternal.
As I read your journal, I wonder about a few things. We all have different goals for our FI days. Yours seem to be less about leaving work and more about relocating to be with family and your cabin. I'm wondering how flexible your employer is in letting you take 3-4 months off a year to spend that time with the family/at the cabin? Sure, you'd have to work longer but at a job that you like and this arrangement would lessen the fear factor. I don't know what you do but is there any chance of telecommuting? Can you job share and only work 1/2 the year? Are you SURE there are no jobs closer to your parents? Even with a pay cut this would seem to be more in line with your goals. Can you live WITH your parents to save costs? Can you rent your cottage while you are not using it? Sounds like a great Airbnb place to me. Can you rent a room in your present house? Can you take leave for caregiving so that you can spend time now with your folks rather than later? Can you take a leave of absence to try out retirement so you can actually go see what opportunities there are to make a life closer to how you want to live?
I didn't follow your worries about running out of money at 85 and having to go job hunting (although it did create an amusing image). You would foresee a need to alter the plan way before it happened and, worse case, you just starting eating the principal. No one lives forever.
I also wonder if you couldn't make some money with your writing? You are so good at it!

[IlliniDave]

2015 Q1 Update

I see I've missed a couple responses in this thread--I'll try to get to those over the next couple days.

For 2015 I've opted to do these periodic status-type updates quarterly rather than monthly. It's part of a noise-blocking strategy intended to lower distractions and stress (not that market gyrations and dollar tallies cause me that much stress these days, it's more the distraction aspect I'm hoping to curb). In hindsight, for this quarter anyway, that was probably unnecessary as life has dealt up its own series of distractions.

My mother's cancer has returned. Fortunately it is the “same” cancer in an area just adjacent to where she had the surgery last fall. A series of tests and scans failed to reveal any evidence of its spread, so there's some reason for optimism. She starts her sixth week of radiation this week and so far is holding up well. It is a poignant reminder to me of one of my goals in pursuing ER—getting back “home” as quickly as I can.

There have also been some struggles with my quasi-launched youngest daughter. Her strong desire to launch on her 18th birthday has outstripped her ability to generate thrust and maintain heading. She's 22 now, but I still feel an amount of residual guilt/responsibility for her in her plight. My softhearted nature is warring with my intellectual belief that a general “tough love” approach will serve her best in the long run—and to her credit she isn't laying around expecting handouts.

I've also had a series of healthcare run-ins myself. Nothing serious, just generic old guy maintenance. Once you hit 50 there are a few more screens and tests, which then sometimes require a bit of follow-up. I'm pretty happy I have good health insurance through my employer. Without insurance I'd be looking at either having north of $15,000 of incurred medical expenses for the quarter, or be left wondering about some unanswered questions. I definitely need to make sure I think through the topic of healthcare/medical expenses during my ER years very carefully. Right now, just saying I'm going to keep medical expenses low by eating well and exercising doesn't pass intellectual muster.

I've also struggled getting into springtime mode. In part it's because it's been a relatively late and cold one this year. But I realized the bigger part of it s because I bought the cabin last fall. All the saving and investing I've been doing through the years in preparation for retirement is part of the journey, but it is nondirectional. Buying the cabin was the first material act I've taken specific to my path. With it, I feel much less at home in my present situation, and my habitual enthusiasm for getting out and cleaning up my property and the like has taken a pretty severe hit.

What does all that have to do with ER? To me it serves as a reminder that life will go on, even in ER. ER will not be the fantasy of the investment company commercials where things are all smiles, nice wine looking out over the ship's railing, and tranquil sunrises on the golf course. It reminds me that ER is simply a next step. Sure, there will be more freedom/opportunity to follow my muse as it were, but it won't mark a divide between a time where all is bad and a new time when all is good. That's not a huge epiphany, only common sense, but I sometimes fall into the trap of looking to the future as the source of perfect fulfillment, and the present as only necessary drudgery to get there. So I need to put a reminder to balance my ambitions for the present and my expectations for the future in my “notes to self” file.

Now for the nitty-gritty.

Spending averaged $2,481/mo for the quarter, which is about $1,500/mo lower than the prior quarter. Most of the reduction is attributable to having finally completed a series of moderate renovations to my home. The quarter's expenses included about $600 +/- in unplanned medical expenses. During the quarter my net worth increased by $42,700 and my invested assets rose by $40,600—so a good quarter in that regard as it is slightly above average growth. My total invested assets are still down about $66,000 give-or-take from their peak levels last fall when I liquidated a portion of the stash to buy the cabin.

I had a nice phone conversation with my dad yesterday, and he's excited about the planning for our first stay there this coming June. He'd gotten to the point where he figured he'd never get to visit the BWCAW again, an area he first visited a decade or two before it officially existed as a protected wilderness. We'll only be making day jaunts into the park this time (it's border begins a few hundred feet by water out my "front" door), and since the rigors of canoe voyages are awfully hard on him at his age, it's probably about all we'll do together in the future (in time I'll be making a few of the more traditional canoe treks, perhaps solo). My mom is even doing some shopping in between her radiation treatments to collect up some housekeeping odds-and-ends for the place. So for now at least I have no regrets about that rather “extravagant” purchase.

Crunching the numbers further, if I was 55 today I could probably make a go of ER with what I've got now and be pretty comfortable. By sometime in 2017 I'll be accumulating assets that in all likelihood will just sit in an account somewhere waiting for me to die before passing on to my kids. Only gaining a large bump in an annuity on my 55th birthday will motivate me to hang on through the next couple years after that. It's sometimes like watching the grass grow, but I'm slowly closing in on my goals.