C40's Journal

[theanimal]

There's good outdoor climbing in southern Illinois so I'd reckon there's a decent chance of good outdoor climbing in Missouri as well.

[C40]

Flexibility is rather sports-specific in that it will be useful in some sports/movements where flexibility is required and detrimental in other sports/movements where flexibility is not required. Importantly, flexibility is NOT an absolute good thing to have (more and more research shows this). You might want to think of the opposite of flexibility as a quality called springiness as opposed to pliability. Whether flexibility is good depends on what your goals are. Your other fitness goals are running and heavy lifting. In that case flexibility will either not matter much (running) or work against you (lifting). You also put sex under fitness and for that I'd say flexibility would probably work for you, haha Generally flexibility is good for speed and range [of motion] activity and poor for strength and power activity.

hmmm... Well, the main reasons I'm thinking about flexibility are:
- Injury prevention. This is the main one. Am I wrong believing that being flexible will make me less likely to get injured when doing physical activities, lifting weights, or having some kind of accident/fall?
- Bicycling - flexibility helps to ride comfortably and powerfully in more aerodynamic positions. (and maybe a very slight safety benefit if improved handling that comes with a lower position)
- Running - I was thinking it'd help me to run faster/longer/in better form. (I don't know much about running though)

I guess what I'm going for is making improvements towards a well-balanced and fit body. (and not being just strong or just fast/endurance)

[C40]

@ Tyler, Cimorene, theanimal, and GandK:

- I like yoga because it is something I can do on my own without having to go to classes in certain places at certain times. Also, lots of women.

- Climbing looks interesting also. I actually did a fair amount of indoor climbing back in high school. I'd like outdoor climbing much better. This has some good alignment with van-touring. There are quite a few dirtbags living in vans. Hot, fit, female dirtbags too.

- I think I just need to learn about proper posture and methods to make it natural for me. In 2014 I made some pretty big improvements with my hip angle. I'd had it rotated forward (with the front of my hips low and the back high) way too often and I've gotten much better about it. I still need more focus to make it normal. I think next up would be fixing my forward neck posture. I'll be pretty motivated on this one because of how ugly forward neck posture looks.

[jacob]

It depends on the activity.

For lifting weights, static stretches can weaken the muscle-tendon connection and actually make you more prone to injury on a heavy grind like the deadlift. You'd be stronger on that if you didn't stretch. Conversely, some flexibility is absolutely essential to some of the more ballistic Olympic lifts.

Flexibility will probably help you on a fall since there's no strength involved. It's more a kind of chaotic gymnastics.

It will make no difference in running. There's like a million studies of this. The range of motion involved in running is so small that having muscles capable of extreme range of motions is irrelevant. The force required to take a step is similarly small. Don't waste time stretching. Spend it on warming up and cooling down instead. Running is mainly about getting pounded by ground impacts to prevent a long "forward fall".

Unless you're stiff as a board, I don't see how it does anything for biking. An aero position doesn't require one to be able to touch one's toes. Spinning high RPMs seems to be much more about technique to avoid antagonistic behavior because the ROM is even smaller than for running. Hence, same recommendation as running.

Conclusion: Stretching increases your range of motion. It may decrease the resistance of the antagonistic muscle for motions that mostly rely on speed or happens cold---e.g. kick to the head for a martial artist---but it's not as important as technique (you'll punch harder if you can completely relax your bicep until the exact point of impact for example). However, it also makes the muscles and tendons weaker over the entire range of motion. In particular for dynamic strength (hockey), you'd want your muscles and tendons to be more like new rubber bands than old stretched out ones. Whereas for dynamic range (figure skating), you'd want the stretched out version. The body adapts to whatever sport/activity you're doing. You can rarely have it all(*) because it's simply impossible to have two physiologically contradictory properties at the same time. It's all trade-offs.

(*) Crossfit is the best attempt at having it all. However, even their elite level [for a crossfitter] is somewhat short of the medium performance of a hyperspecialized athlete. E.g. even an average guy on the track team can outrun a word-class crossfitter. Of course the track team dude will lose in just about all the other events.

[llorona]

Do you work at a desk a lot? Is that the reason for the issue with next posture? If so, chin retraction exercises or using foam rollers might help.

If you really want to measure progress, I guess you could take a "before" profile photo of yourself standing against a wall, then compare it to other photos taken at regular intervals.

[C40]

Jacob - Thanks for the additional info on flexibility. That helped to clarify things (and to make clear to me that I should learn more about this some time)

llorona - Quite a bit, yes. Not as much as I used to, but still a lot, and I notice that when sitting, I am often slouched forward. I think as long as I am intentional about it, I will improve, and I will notice. I've noticed improvement in my hip rotation since focusing on it, and I've also noticed that when driving I had been tightening my back in a very unnecessary way (I think this is related to the hip rotation)

[C40]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
JANUARY 2015
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


SPENDING: $1,451

• Entertainment - $641
• Home - $540
• Food - $259
• Clothes/Hygeine - $88
• Transportation - $23
• Sold things – ($84)

WHAT? $641 for Entertainment!? What the hell is that?

• $193 – Dating (About 15-20 Dates! Wow)
• $148 – Tea (I’m pretty stocked up for now)
• $128 – Kindle (My old one “bricked”)
• $63 – A Really nice Portenzo case for the Kindle
• $23 – A bottle of ink

I’ve been dating a LOT in January. It definitely got to where I was feeling “date fatigue” and decided to slow back down. The results? One FWB, one potential relationship (or likely FWB at least)




READING

I did a lot of reading in January:

SEX AT DAWN (Christopher Ryan) – A book about the history of sex. This was a VERY interesting book. If you’re going to read this, you might want to read “The Selfish Gene” first for context. It also has a giant bibliography.

What Every BODY is Saying (Joe Navarro) A book about body language. It’s good but there are probably better body language books out there.

Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus (Violet Blue) – A pretty good book about a favorite pastime.

VAGABONDING (Rolf Potts) – I read this for our book club. It’s a great book. It’s concise and well-written. I like that it is basically a traveling philosophy book – about how to manage your travel and what kind of mindset to have – with tips and specifics worked in as examples only to support the main message. (Sort of like how the ERE book is a process/philosophy book more than a specific “how to”)

How to be the most engaging person in the room (Jordan Gray) – This is only really useful for people with BAD social skills. Still wasn’t bad to read as a reminder of some things.

A book for work that wasn’t very good

(note, if these aren't easily available at your library, they are all available through, uhh, other methods)





CHARTS






A PROMISE FOR THE FORUM

I have a number of personal finance education posts in mind that I’ve been meaning to write and post as individual threads. I’m saying here that I’ll write them to encourage myself to get around to doing so. I’ve learned a lot from both my career in manufacturing and management, and from reading personal finance books/blogs/forums, and from applying and refining these concepts myself. I’m not a good writer, but I can communicate well visually. So I want to make these posts to try to communicate the concepts well, and as a writing exercise for myself.

Subjcts I have in mind so far:

• Yearly Goals and tracking
• Applying the Pareto Principle in real life.
• How to align your daily activities and short-term actions with long term goals
• Home organization / minimalism / 5S
• Visualizing your financial health – Charts!

[henrik]

Looking forward to those posts!

[GandK]

Me too. All 5 of those sound like they'd be good topics.

[C40]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEBRUARY 2015
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


SPENDING: $801

• Home $470
• Food $279
• Transportation $255 ($230 = Insurance)
• Entertainment (-$178)
• Travel $0
• Clothes / Hygiene $0

FOOD DETAILS:

• $150 - Groceries
• $104 - Gardening equipment
• $25 - Eating out

TRANSPORTATION DETAILS:

• $230 - Insurance
• $25 - Gas

ENTERTAINMENT DETAILS:

• (-$435) – Sold This pen*.
• $112 – New pen
• $45 – Internet service
• $20 - Dating
• $55 – Other

* - An awesome pen. The body is like 50% lava rock. The nib is 23k Palladium. Just not worth the $ right now to me as I wasn’t using it that much, and when I did use it, I often would wish it worked a little better for me. I wasn’t comfortable modifying such an expensive nib myself. And to make it work better I’d have to do it myself, or take it to a nibmeister in person (hard to do). I’d already sent it to a very good nibmeister to have him improve it.

I pared way down on the dating. Don’t have much interest right now. I’ve been spending more time by myself and with a couple friends.

My income was high this month because my pension value got a yearly bump up in value. This month my net worth increased by over $20k. (Half from saving and pension increase, and half from investment price increases). I’ll get my yearly bonus in March, so I’ll have high income again.






CHARTS


I have some kind of urge to continue making more types of charts. Here’s one.




On one of my various “Am I FI?” charts: CONTACT!!




Nice bump on the NetWorth this month:



Next month I’ll get to have an “I’m $400k rich!” party.



I made these charts to track progress vs. my yearly goals. So far, I’m on track.









STOCK PURCHASES

• HCP in my IRA. (A healthcare property REIT. Gonna be all kinds of baby boomer old folks moving into my senior housing in the next 20 years)
• NSRGY (Nestle. The most powerful food company in the world).

Let’s go, pay me!!!








PROGRESS ON PERSONAL FINANCE LESSONS

I’ve been making some progress… It takes me quite a while to write, but it feels like good exercise.

Here are some excerpts for a tease/preview



(The three columns are excerpts from different places.
I’m starting to wonder if I could eventually make this into something worth selling.







READING

The 4 Hour Workweek By Tim Ferris. Of his three books, this was my favorite, by far.

• Very ERE relevant
• Tons of good information. (on a wide variety of subjects)
• Helped me generate some more ideas for improving and/or expanding my hobby income sources
• Good information for making your current job easier – how to spend less time doing it, how to negotiate working remotely, how to get people to stop bothering you
• Information on setting up simple, fairly passive businesses/income sources. Direction / ideas on sourcing materials and setting up so you don’t have to manage inventory and shipping yourself. I may see if I can apply this to an idea I’ve been meaning to test out.
• Good information on using the Pareto principle in real life – mainly work situations.

I guess you can get access to the first 50 pages here, but the book should be easy to find other ways; there are a lot of copies out there.





BEST USE OF VACATION IN LAST YEARS OF WORKING?

I expect to work two more years. I’ve been starting to think about how to use my work vacation days over these two years. Right now my vacation days balance is at 4 weeks. I believe I’ll accrue 5 weeks per year. So that’s 14 weeks total to use. I can have a max balance of 6 weeks at a time. I know I’ll use a couple weeks worth of this for holiday trips. So that leaves me with about 3 months total vacation time. Some options:

• Use a day here and there. Shorten my workweek to 4 days per week by using a day every week. I could do that for one year straight. This isn’t that appealing to me because in some ways, I already do it. (for example, if I’m working somewhere away from home one week, I often travel back on Friday. Whether I get back at 9am or 1pm, I generally don’t do any work after getting back). Mondays are often similar. So there’s not much need or room for doing this.
• Spend them a week at a time. This would give me a lot of weeks - 6 per year, plus the holiday trips. I’d spend some of these at home. I don’t have much desire to go on one week vacations. Once my mom and step-dad get on the road in their RV, it would probably be an option to fly out to near where they are and spend a week with them. If I start building a van near the end of my working time, I could use the vacation time to build it, and/or to go on test trips.
• Take long vacations from work. If I travel to somewhere far away, this is how I’d want to do it. My current position could allow me to take 2, 3, or maybe even 4 weeks off without any serious issue. Southeast Asia? South America? I could take a month off each year.
  • I could also request sabbatical time. My company has a sabbatical policy, but I’ve never heard of anyone ever taking one. It could allow me to take a portion of the mini-ERE periods as non-paid. If I need an excuse, I could say I need to go take care of a family member, and I’d just be exaggerating how much help they need. But I’d run into some trouble if they say I need to use FMLA instead
• Quit with my vacation balance near max. I’d get about $7,500 (post-tax) from this.
• Try to use up all my vacation after the date that I would have quit, to extend my insurance, and accrue some more vacation during that period. I’d also accrue another 3 days during that period and thus be able to go 7 weeks. That would feel a bit dishonest, and would probably make it so they wouldn’t hire me back in the future if I asked. I could approach it as a mini-retirement – and use the time to make sure that I feel ready to quit – and if so, tell them that I’m not coming back at all or only for a short period.

SOME HOBBY PICTURES

Last year, the seeds that I started indoors didn’t fare all that well. I think they didn’t get enough light. So I set up a little grow light station. I’m using 4 bulbs: 2,500 lumens each at 5,000 kelvin. I got a timer and have it on for 14 hours or so per day. I may add reflective barriers using aluminum foil to keel the light in better. It was $55 for the lights, bulbs, and timer, and $12 for these seedpod holders. I used part of a shelving unit that I already had.







Working on pen nibs. I’m left-handed. Writing left-handed is difficult – English and most languages are generally designed to be written with your right hand. But it’s not all bad. When you’re right handed and you use normal nibs, writing very well can depend on how “springy” and “flexy” the nib is. These are expensive qualities – and ones that I could not generate myself

Instead of normal flex nibs, I like to use Italics. This is a little bit of a blessing, because when it comes to italic nibs, well, they aren’t that complicated. They don’t need to flex. They just need to be ground to the right dimensions, including matching your writing angle. And no one can match my writing angle better than me.

I can modify a cheap steel nib myself and grind it into an italic nib that works very well for me – that’s at the writing angle I actually use. It will work every bit as good as an expensive italic nib, or one that I had a very highly skilled nibmeister work on. Why? Mainly, it’s because the writing angle is important, and when I grind it, I grind it into my own writing angle. It takes some skill, but it’s not hard to learn. And when I’m working on cheap nibs, it’s ok to experiment and to have some end up in the trash. The other night I made a nib in 15 minutes that writes nearly as well as the really expensive one I sold this month.



Saint Louis can be kind of a shit-hole. But one good thing it has is neat old buildings. This is inside the Library downtown.



I updated my tea storage method by putting it in smaller jars. I think this may help the tea to stay fresher (as I’ll keep the rest of it in the sealable bags they come in – which I can evacuate most air from).


And I’ve been drinking a lot of it lately. The caffeine can be annoying though :-/

[jacob]

You could quit with your vacation balance but cash it out into your 401k (presuming you're quitting early in the year). That's what I did.

[EdithKeeler]

Love the pics, and those are some awesome charts.

[spoonman]

I love that library photo. The high ceilings remind me of a cathedral.

[C40]

It feels like about once every six months, I've reanalyze if/how I can retire earlier than whatever my projected retirement date is at that time (It’s currently April 2,017)

(For the TL:DR Version – just skip down to the handwritten plan)


Through some combination of thinking about and researching the following two things, I’m back in “how soon can I retire?” mode.

• Living in Thailand – AND also thinking about hobby/side income - because many of the Bloggers/Youtubers living in Thailand don’t have a retirement nest egg and are therefore also talking about how to make money.
• That my networth is getting well ahead of the projection that I used to determine the April 2017 retirement date. If I extrapolate the last 2 year’s growth rate, that puts me at over $500k in April 2016, and over $600k in April 2017.

My daydreaming and research switched back to Van Touring a few days ago. Then, last night I watched this video on Youtube: Without Bound - Perspectives on Mobile Living. If you look past the cheesy chilling piano music, and past the tin-foil hatters, there is a gem in this documentary. That gem is Randy Vining. He has a blog (mobilekodgers) that I had read before – but that never stood out to me the way his speaking in this documentary does. He has a very ERE-friendly slant, and he has a very encouraging type of positivity. If you could cut out just his portions of the documentary, it’d be worth watching for anyone interested in ERE. One thing he made very clear is that it’s easy to live off of $500 while living in a van or camper.

At work today, while feeling re-motivated to find a way to retire earlier, I went for a walk. I read books at work to develop my professional skills. During the times I read while working at the office, I like to leave my desk and go read somewhere else. We have a few places on our campus that are good for this – but not many. So I went walking around our buildings to look for more spots. While walking around, I meandered through cubicle farms, past offices and conference rooms. Here’s what I saw: People sitting at their desk in silence, staring at a computer screen, clicking buttons. Most people were doing this. They’re going to be doing this all day long. And tomorrow. And all of next week. And next year….

I fully recognize and appreciate the irony that I voluntarily look at a computer during a lot of my free time, including this very moment. But I still can’t imagine that all these people really want to be doing this. What I saw was a depressing mass of people sitting there, plugging their bodies and minds into our huge company, and I saw sort of a vision of their souls (or their internal selves) just sitting there, looking at them from out of body, waiting and waiting for them to do something more meaningful. Now, I work for a good company. By common measures, rankings, and awards – and based off my own opinion – this is a great place to work and a great company to work for. But… It still stinks.

I walked around for half an hour. I found one good reading spot but it was on a sort of roof terrace, outside, and it was too cold today to sit out there. I walked past my normal spot and there were some people there. While I was walking around, and when I got back to my desk, I did my “when can I retire” analysis (instead of ever doing the reading I'd planned to).

Here’s what I’ve thought up today:

• I know that I’m capable of earning more money after I quit my job. I’m not certain how much effort it will take. When I compare another year of working to how long I’d have to be earning, say, $5,000 per year of hobby income, it looks like just working the additional year makes sense (because I’d have to make the hobby income forever, or for many years, to catch up). But – that’s looking at hobby income as I currently do – as something in ADDITION to my full-time job. I’m confident that hobby income will come easier after I retire. When I’ve taken time away from work, entrepreneurial ideas come far easier and far more frequently.
• I think it might actually be a good thing to quit while expecting that I need to earn some more money. My current plan is basically to wait until I reach a very secure level of retirement. That security would feel nice. It would also allow me to go on many adventures or change my life in more ways later on. But there’s also a higher risk of me wandering through a search for purpose – and being bored – and maybe becoming depressed – effectively making myself into a lazy and aimless trust fund kid.
• Another poster, I can’t remember whether it was Spoonman or MyBrainGetsItchy, wrote about intentionally generating friction in his life. I want to make sure I have some kind of challenge/friction in my life. That challenge could be to make some more money. And if it is - guess what – I get to retire earlier. YAY! Web of goals and all.
• I could probably make somewhere around $500 per month from hobby type work, or some kind of part-time working effort. According to the mobilekodgers guy, I could keep my ongoing expenses that low.
• My net worth is just over $400k right now – I could get to $450k-500k in one year.
• If I get my net worth to $450,000 or $500,000. That, along with the hobby income, should easily be enough.

With those things in mind – I drafted an updated Escape or Launch Plan. Here it is:


(that last line should say to use income from Work, hobby(shirts), and post-tax dividends



After I finished writing this, in some kind of a signal to convince myself how serious I am about the plan, I left work with half of the workday still remaining. Now it’s shirt-designing time.

I posted this plan on my refrigerator. I might laminate it. Here we go! Let’s see how it works out. If nothing else, this should keep me pretty busy over the next year.

[jennypenny]

Quit before you're completely ready. Sometimes life's more fun without a net.

You don't need to spend that much on a van. Get something cheaper until you're sure you want to continue. If you like it and decide to continue living that way, you can trade up to a used Roadtrek or similar. I have a high-top, but it doesn't fit in most garages. I'd try out both styles of van to see which you prefer driving. There's a youtube channel called Dan Travels that shows how he converted a standard size van. His style is very utilitarian, but it's stealthy and inexpensive.

[George the original one]

Consider whether renting house is better than selling house.

[jacob]

Definitely confirm the hobby income potential! I've found that some of my hobbies would have been a real struggle to drive past $500. Copy-editing was an easy goal and the only cost was 15 hours/month of not-so-interesting work. Bike repair would have been a real struggle as most of the money didn't come from the repair but from buying cheap and selling rich after some trivial repairs. Internet blog/ad-money would have been barely doable (the blog currently makes about $600/month in ad income) but I think I already had 300k views/month or something of that order.

The book makes more today but didn't exist at the time. The job makes way more today but didn't exist either.

In short, without being entirely FI, it might be a crap shot as to whether you can make up the difference. However, if you pursue value-generation in some form, you'll probably come up with something sufficiently remunerative sooner or later.

I'm glad I was fully FI before pulling the trigger in 2009. I would not have enjoyed the friction. The biggest downside here is ending up with more money than you know how to spend.

[C40]

Maybe I should clarify something - I'd consider myself fully FI at $500k. I consider myself basically FI, or FI-Able right now (I'd just have to get rid of my castle of a house or find a room mate - something I plan to do for sure as I have no desire to stay here long-term.



@Jenny - You're right.. I'm just planning on buying a cargo van - what I call the older/smaller style - like the one DanTravels has.

In that older style, It should be easy to find one in good shape for $5,000-$7,000.

As for the newer models - where I showed a $15,000 max, these are models that have only been out about one year. So they haven't depreciated much. (I'm talking about the larger Ford Transit, Dodge Ram Promaster, And Nissan NV2500). 5 years from now, this style would be a no-brainer for me.

How important is it to be able to stand up inside the van? I'm not sure. It seems like it would be very nice. I've driven and been in the back of both sizes of vans. The higher top vans feel VERY different inside - like they'd be much more comfortable to live in. Problem is, it's hard to decide if that's worth spending so much more for one right now. I don't think it would be worth it at this point, so I'm planning to start out with the older style.


@George - Yep. With the basic calculations I've done so far, it does not look like it'd be worth it. I'll check in greater detail as the time to act approaches. Also, in the area I live, I don't expect house prices or rents to go up much over time.


@Bigato - Thanks for the confidence, and for sharing your stories.


@Jacob - I'm pretty confident about the shirt sales. What I need to confirm is if the design strategy changes I'm thinking about will sell well. If they sell anywhere near as well as what I was doing before, I'll be set. My designs before had some copyright infringement issues, and they were nearly all based on current pop culture subjects - things for which interest peaks and then dies out over time. With that strategy I had some high selling periods where my sales got up to $300-$400 per month. I could've scaled that up by making more and more. But I don't want to rely on that type of income because it's not very sustainable. At the end of 2014, I had a ton taken down and my entire account frozen until I cleaned it out. I could go and put most of the same designs up again, but I don't want to rely on that.

What I'm working on now are designs with no infringement/takedown risk. This would also open up the number of different shirt sellers that I could post my designs on. Interest in and searches for these styles would not decline over time. If the amount of people searching out and buying designs like this is in the ballpark of the pop-culture styles, I'll be set, easy.



Other hobby income ideas that I could try out at some point later on:
(I started writing more details about these but I don't want to get into that right now.. maybe that'd be good for a later journal post)

• Portrait Photography. (Very saturated, but I believe new opportunities exist in shooting portraits for people to use on Dating sites/apps, which are spiking in popularity and use while people's pictures suck and have not yet improved to match hot much they are using dating apps)
• Nightlife Photography. Also likely saturated. But opportunities probably exist if establish a reputation among corporate events/parties.
• Nature and wildlife photography. Probably only useful as supplying material/visuals for a blog
• Selling physical things. (have a teaware idea I want to test out. The challenge is setting it up in a way that I don't have to manage inventory)
• Writing / Blogging / Youtubing. Possible subjects: Van conversion. Van living. Dividend investing. Nature/Wildlife photography. I'd have to get much better at writing though. As of right now, I just don't think these kind of things would really suit me well.
• Consulting at my current employer . This may be a very real possibility. It would be easy to do while van-touring. When I quit, I may (first) try to negotiate part-time work. Even if I quit entirely, there will be the possibility of it happening within the first year or two. If I work 50% of full-time, I might make just as much money as I do right now.
• Some kind of drop-shipping business - This would be more work than hobby. I don't really know how plausable this stuff actually is. I'd need to talk to someone in person who's actually doing it.

I know I had some other ideas but I'm drawing a blank right now.. I should make a serious list of these options and notes..

[Ego]

How important is it to be able to stand up inside the van? I'm not sure. It seems like it would be very nice. I've driven and been in the back of both sizes of vans. The higher top vans feel VERY different inside - like they'd be much more comfortable to live in. Problem is, it's hard to decide if that's worth spending so much more for one right now. I don't think it would be worth it at this point, so I'm planning to start out with the older style.

Pop tops offer the best of both worlds. You might get a low top van and see if you can acclimate to it. If not, you could have Sportsmobile add a penthouse for you.



Alternatively, you could watch local junkyards for poptop vans and retrofit the mechanism to your vehicle. Generally, the canvas is the thing that goes. If you have the old canvas as a template you could have a new one made.

[akratic]

Pull the trigger now!