C40's Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
theanimal
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by theanimal »

How do you plan to get to 20,000 followers on Instagram? Posting more photos that are high quality? I don't use instagram so I'm curious how one goes about attaining this.

Bushcraft is one of the skills I've been working on myself. This is one of the best books I've read so far Bushcraft: Outdoor Wilderness Skills and Survival The book mainly focuses on northern environments but the fundamentals apply everywhere. You'd just have to figure out what to substitute for various plants, trees, animals etc. I can provide some more book recommendations if you're interested.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

BRUTE wrote:wow, 55 blog posts is a lot. big plans! sounds like a pretty comprehensive set of goals.
Yeah, I’m not really sure how much effort the posts will take. There’s a good chance I’ll decide to do less. If I get in a groove, 55 should be no problem, but we’ll see. It will also depend on how long I make the posts vs. splitting them up.

BRUTE wrote:for the Spanish, brute recommends some type of spaced repetition app for vocabulary/sentence fractures, plus lots of practice or the memorized particles. there are online sites for finding language partners via skype.
_JT wrote:Duolingo for language learning
I used Duolingo and I think Memrize before and I liked them. I’ll probably use them both again. My cousin also sent me something to download and I think listen to. Not sure what it is exactly because It’s a big file and I don’t have it downloaded yet.

BRUTE wrote:about the cooking situation, is it feasible to run a slow cooker or similar in the van to batch cook food? brute isn't sure what those things pull in electricity.
It’s possible but I doubt I’ll bother. Using electric resistance for heat is inefficient. Upon a quick check, a really small crock pot uses like 6amps. On a sunny day in non-winter seasons, I could run that during the day without it being a problem. But I don’t see much use. It’s easy cooking with propane. Even if I batch cook (which I already do with lentils/beans/rice) I’d probably still want to heat it up each time I eat.



Gilberto de Piento wrote:You have the skills and experiences for a successful blog. I'm looking forward to following along. Good luck!

For information about the geology of the areas you are travelling through try https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rockd/id1153056624?mt=8 and Rising From the Plains or Assembling California (depending on where you are in the West) by John McPhee.

I think you should add trying rock climbing to your list of things to do. Be wary of just climbing with random people though, not everyone knows what they're doing.
Thank you :-D

I’ll check out that app and those McPhee books. I’ve been hearing about how good McPhee is, so I look forward reading them.

I suppose I should try rock climbing. It could be a good way to meet people. I had two classes when I went to a fancy high school where we climbed on indoor climbing walls so I’m a bit familiar with it. I’ve just never had any desire to do it.


jacob wrote:You could cannibalize a lot of your journal for "how I got to this [FIRE] point"-posts. Especially graphs and numbers (people love numbers).

I would suggest holding off on this until you have a "base" of 50 or so posts because those how I beat the system and did something awesome posts have a high level of virality and you want enough good posts already for your blog to be sticky when that happens.

Also, the sooner you start developing a "read this [first]"-list or some other organization of subjects, the more your future self will thank your present self.

Yeah, come to think of it, there are probably entire parts/posts I can copy and paste into blog posts (with some editing and expansion). I need to figure out how much financial stuff I think is appropriate to share on the blog. I’m not exactly sure yet, but I expect I’ll eventually share everything I do here.

Thanks for the advice on timing that kind of post.

This kind of blog advice is very helpful for me. So if you (any everyone else) want to give me more, please do.



theanimal wrote:How do you plan to get to 20,000 followers on Instagram? Posting more photos that are high quality? I don't use instagram so I'm curious how one goes about attaining this.
Briefly: Automation. I post nice pictures, and that is important/required, but what gets me a lot of followers is using a computer program to interact with other Instagram users.

Details: I read some mainstream articles/posts about how to do well on Instagram. They say the way to do it is post high quality content and they emphasize that you interact with the community. That you like people’s pictures, make real and thoughtful comments, etc (interacting with users who are interested in the same things as you). This does work… There are basically two ways that people follow you on instagram:
1 - They search for a hashtag they are interested in. Say, they search for #Vanlife. Thousands of pictures come up (always sorted by most recently posted, but with 9 fairly recent pictures stacked at the top that got a lot of likes quickly - these end up being pics from users with many thousands of followers as thats the only way for your pictures to get >1000 likes quickly). Ok.. They see a picture they like and view it. Then maybe they decide to follow the person who posted that pic. So, getting followers this way depends on posting high quality pictures and tagging them appropriately. A really good picture might get you ten followers.
2 - Community interaction. Like Facebook, you get notifications when another user has interacted with you. There are many ways (liking their picture, commenting on it, liking a comment they posted, replying to a comment they posted, following them, sending them a direct message). When they get notifications (especially for people who don’t get a lot of notifications) they will often look at the person’s profile who liked/commented/followed them. If they like what they see, they may follow that person.

#1 is making good product. #2 is advertising it. Your product does have to be good for the advertising to be effective.


Ok. so. Doing each of these take a lot of time. For me, #1 is easy/automatic because I’m already making the nice pictures. #2 takes a lot of time because it’s just a lot of looking and button pushing on your phone. I started doing my community interaction faster. Like searching for #vanlife and similar tags and liking the first 100 pictures. And commenting on 20 of them. Eventually, I was liking the pictures without really looking at them. Then after a while of that, I searched for and found a little bit of programming that I can paste into my browser console to make my account Like X pictures from a certain hashtag. Now I didn’t have to push the buttons on my phone so much. The code worked, but not perfectly, and only ran when I triggered it, and took some ongoing work to keep it running each time. So I tested some more fully automated services. There are websites/companies/apps that automate Instagram (and other S.M. types) community interaction for you, and that make your actual interaction easier (like ways to make it easier for you to see comments and respond to them. When you get a lot of notifications, it’s gets difficult to see and respond to comments, but a website app can make it easier for you to do by displaying them better). I tested out a couple. A really good one is called Archie. But it’s expensive. I use a cheaper one called Instagress. It’s $80 per year. These kind of services can do much more complicated interactions than the little “like” code I used. They can automatically like the pictures of users who follow/like/comment certain popular users that I designate. This is useful because it can expose my content to people who dream about living in a van but don't yet and thus don't post any content tagged #vanlife (Here's an exampleof a popular account whose followers I have my automation targeting ). So now this thing can do quite a bit of community interaction for me all day long. While I’m sleeping, bicycling, taking pictures, masturbating, when I don’t have internet for a week straight, etc. That gets me another 40-120 followers per day.

Some of the automation tactics are annoying. People also do these manually and they are just as annoying. For example, the comments. Since you’re automating them, the comments pretty much have to be generic. (There are ways to automate comments that will usually look real by commenting on pictures with specific or multiple tags - for example “Wow, nice sunset!” on pictures tagged with #sunset). So the comments are like “Wow, great! :-D :-D”. Right now, I’d estimate that 90% of all comments on Instagram are generic, and that well over 50% of all Instagram comments are made by a computer. When I used to get those comments, it was of annoying to get a notification and then look at it and see that it was probably just pasted in really quick by a person with no thought, or just made by a computer. Now it’s kind of funny. There’s another annoying tactic: following and unfollowing. You follow a person, hoping they will also follow you. Then you unfollow them. The automation can do this. One interesting thing since starting my automation is seeing people who’s pictures my automation commented on respond really happily. And then I think “wow, that automated comment seemed to really brighten up that person’s day”. So there is some positives to this robot bullshit game :-D :-P

Anyways… This is all pretty stupid. Why do it?
1 - To drive traffic to my blog
2 - It can be monetized. Instagram itself is not monetized for content creators like Youtube is. But, when you have many thousands of followers, you have many thousands of people looking at every picture you post, and many of those reading the caption you put in every picture. So you can get companies to pay you money. For example, they may pay to, say, hold their Hydroflask water bottle in your hand the next time you pot a picture of yourself hiking, and link to the @Hydroflask account in your comment. For people with huge follower amends (like >a million) a companies supposedly pay many thousands of dollars for just one advertisement post.

So, I look at this as fun. It’s a game to play. A way to experiment with human behavior that might just make me some money. There are some other side benefits that can happen, like meeting cool people with similar interests, getting useful feedback on what kind of pictures people like the most (in this specific format, which can be a little annoying - people like bright pictures with too much saturation. And they rrreeeeeaaaally like pictures with attractive women)

The results so far:
  • From September 2015 to September 2016, I posted ~180 new pictures. My followers went from about 100 to about 700. Then I started using Automation, and:
  • From September 2016 to now (early January 2017), I posted ~60 new pictures. My Followers went from 700 to 3,500.

    Over time, I was posting better pictures and tagging better, but most of the increase is from using the automation to 'advertise' my content.

    theanimal wrote: Bushcraft is one of the skills I've been working on myself. This is one of the best books I've read so far Bushcraft: Outdoor Wilderness Skills and Survival The book mainly focuses on northern environments but the fundamentals apply everywhere. You'd just have to figure out what to substitute for various plants, trees, animals etc. I can provide some more book recommendations if you're interested.
    Cool. I’ll try to get a copy. I’ve read a simple book (or two), and found some good Youtube videos (I really like MCQ Bushcraft His advice isn’t significantly better than others, but his voice and presentation is wonderful.) I think the important part for me is to actually practice these skills, so I need to make sure I challenge myself to do so.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »


-------------------------------------------
December 2016
-------------------------------------------


Places: Spending: $1,700
  • Health Insurance (Full year 2017): $415
  • Van Insurance (6 months): $193
  • Clothes and outdoor gear: $385 (mostly clothes for cold weather)
  • Food: $325
  • Gas: $108
  • Chair: $85
  • Other: $200
Income: $2,994
  • Dividends: $2,759 (I get many more dividends in the 3rd month of each quarter)
  • Pension Increase: $134
  • Shirt Sales: $99
  • Website income – Amazon: $2
Last edited by C40 on Sun Jan 08, 2017 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »


-------------------------------------------
First 6 Months of Retirement
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I’ve been keeping myself busy with travels and friends and various pursuits of leisure. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. I’ve gotten in better shape physically. I’ve been happier. I’ve had less stress. My creative output has increased. I’ve certainly had some “is this all there really is to life? ughhh” thoughts, but, in a good way, I think.

I’ve read that it’s pretty common for people to increase their spending for a little while after retiring - particularly those who launch right into long term travel… Well, me too. I’ve been a naughty boy:

Image
I expect this will be my main financial chart going forward. It’s just a comparison of my spending and income, and keeping a running total of the difference. The income shown here is a rolling 3 month average in order to smooth out the income and the surplus/deficit.

It’s not all that bad. I bought some expensive camera gear in October. I spent more than usual on gas in August and September. I spent more than usual on health insurance in September and December. If all goes as planned, my spending will be quite low in 2017.



Here are some more details on my spending:
Image


Image
The fixed costs were high in September and December from paying health insurance premium. In September I paid for the rest of 2016, and those were expensive because my income in the first half of the year prevented me from getting subsidies. In December, I paid premiums for all of 2017. I (expect to) get a lot of subsidy because of my low income. Thanks Obama.


Image

Looking forward, I expect lower spending on hobbies, gas, and fixed costs. I’m hoping to spent $500-$1000 in many months. Maybe even below $500 a few months.

George the original one
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by George the original one »

It is surprising how little you have spent on gas! This tells me you're not needlessly zipping around at a location and probably using your legs.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

Yeah. I try to minimize my driving by staying put in one place. Also, ideally, I try to only drive in one direction. If my general direction over the next couple months is, say, eastward, I'd ideally only drive east. No back and forth stuff. Not having to drive to and from work each day makes a huge difference.

I'm expecting to not buy ANY gas at all in January. I'll be moving around much less this year than I did over the last 6 months. I see some people living in vans who zip around the entire country each year, and I don't really get it. Well, some of them only have a limited amount of time for their vandwelling, so I can see that. But others do it when they don't have that kind of reason. It's a lot more work to drive frequently, and find new places to camp, and so on. Another victory for the "Do nothing" strategy. Just stay put and relax. Now that I've slowed down, I expect most of my driving (aside form while I'm in cities) will only happen when I've ran out of water or food.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

Image
New blog post:San Diego: Notes on the City
It's supposedly "America's Finest City". But is it though?

BRUTE
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by BRUTE »

C40 wrote:
-------------------------------------------
December 2015
-------------------------------------------

bryan
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by bryan »

C40 wrote:San Diego: Notes on the City. It's supposedly "America's Finest City". But is it though?
It's not in my top tier list of US cities, at least.

$415 insurance for 2017? What an ERE boon!

wheatstate
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by wheatstate »

Congrats on a great year. Your website is filled with success. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to learning about Baja 2017.

When you said dating in San Diego was rough post election, it made me think of this article.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... p-won.html

EXCLUSIVE: Pity the husbands of Los Angeles - sex therapist claims city's Hillary-supporting women have lost their libido over Trump victory
Kimberly Resnick Anderson claims the agony of seeing their beloved Hillary Clinton defeated has sapped the libidos of the women of Los Angeles
Sex therapist claims the 'Trump bedroom effect' is still running weeks after his victory over Hillary Clinton
One man told her his wife knew he supported Trump and 'she wants nothing to do with me in the bedroom. It's as if I am suddenly the enemy'

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

Image
New blog post:The Most Interesting People in San Diego
Hint: It's Ego and his wife. Seriously.

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Ego
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by Ego »

Hah! C40 was being polite. We're in bed before nine pm most nights.

I was about to puke at the end of that hill and C40 - on his fatter tire bike, mind you - pulls up next to me and says in the most relaxed voice ever, "That was a good warmup...." At that point there wasn't enough oxygen getting to my brain to both say something and remember what it was I said. Whatever it was, I am sure it was laden with curses.

cmonkey
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by cmonkey »

Haven't mentioned it yet, but nice looking blog!!
C40 wrote:I’ve certainly had some “is this all there really is to life? ughhh” thoughts, but, in a good way, I think.
So is retirement all you dreamed it would be? Still recommend it to the rest of us poor cube dwellers? :D

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

Yeah, highly recommended. It's within 90% of what I expected. I suppose I should write a thoughtful post on what it's felt like, the things I didn't entirely expect, and so on. Mañana.

mxlr650
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by mxlr650 »

@C40 I am really late to the party, but anyways, congratulations!! It is great to know you are enjoying life!

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »


-----------------------------
2016 Summary
-----------------------------



Yearly Summary: General
  • I was working full time at the start of the year
  • I finished converting my van around 3/8/16 and started focusing on the last house work needed to get it ready to sell
  • I moved into my van 3/26/16
  • I got my house ready for sale around 4/10/16
  • The house sale finalized at the end of May. That day I called my boss, told him I can’t work full time any more, and started negotiating a part time work arrangement. The next day I left St. Louis.
  • On 6/10 I started part time work
  • By the end of June I had decided to quit. I told my boss so on 6/30
  • My last day of work was 7/15
  • I set off for adventure on 7/17
  • Nearly died on 8/21 (**details below)


** Ok, just kidding about that one



Yearly Summary: Financial

Net worth evolution:
  • Start of year: $443k
  • After quitting: $535k
  • End of year: $543k
This gives a pretty clear summary of my finances over the past 6 years.
Image
(In this chart, my post tax income from work is shown as either spending or saving. The blue investing numbers represent investing income plus realized and unrealized capital gains)



Long term net worth evolution:
Image


On a shorter timeline you can see the growth slow after quitting. If I worked the rest of the year I’d have another $30-40k. Right now I’m glad I quit when I did.
Image


Now I have my net worth projection at 3% growth per year (but my results are likely to be less accurate vs. the projection before, because the savings component is gone)
Image



Yearly Summary: My Investing Performance

Ok. Here’s the embarrassing part. Look how much I suck at investing:

Image
The numbers for my performance aren’t 100% accurate, they’re more like ‘back of the napkin’ estimations. But they are pretty close. I like to believe that the main reasons for ‘poor performance’ compared to the index are:
  • I was using the Permanent Portfolio for the first couple years. That strategy had worse performance those years than it normally does vs pure stocks
  • My 401k fund choices sucked
  • I hold some cash
Of course, it’s surely not that I suck at investing, right? Now that the first two reasons are gone, I expect my 2017 performance to be much closer to VTI. When I did a comparison about a year ago, my post-tax investing accounts (the ones I can control fully) outperformed VTI. So… we’ll see.



Here’s a look at my investing not going as planned:

Image

When I quit and converted my 401k money to income producing stocks in a traditional IRA, I didn’t get as much income as I expected. I think the main reason is that stock prices went up faster than the dividends in recent years and I wasn’t adjusting my expected yield downward. Also, I’m using index funds in my Traditional IRA and I believe the yields aren’t as good as individual stocks. So over time I believe I could convert the index shares to individual companies and get a bit more yield.

I’m not worried by either of these investing stumbles. Low spending creates resilience. I can easily spend less than my current income. I expect my hobby income to increase. With my spending low, it only takes small successes for hobby income to cover all my spending.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

Image


New blog post:Joshua Tree
I camped a few days in Joshua Tree National Park. Didn't do a whole lot. Jut one bike ride and one hike. Got this nice picture on the hike:


Image

_JT
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by _JT »

The blogs that seem to do the best in the FIRE/lifestyle design niche offer a lot of transparency around finances, in my experience. People want to read your story and dream about how they can achieve it, and seeing the actual hard data helps with that I think.

bryan
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by bryan »

C40, I read in some other thread you went to the RTR. How did it go? I just saw Bob's vlog where he thinks it has really gotten out of hand (too much noise, at least): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlNVW2ZUqvg

Do you think the (to use @BRUTE's categorization) "hipster" van-dwellers should start their own dessert rendezvous?

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C40
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Post by C40 »

bryan wrote:C40, I read in some other thread you went to the RTR. How did it go? I just saw Bob's vlog where he thinks it has really gotten out of hand (too much noise, at least): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlNVW2ZUqvg

Do you think the (to use @BRUTE's categorization) "hipster" van-dwellers should start their own dessert rendezvous?
I'm still at the RTR, parked right in the thick of things, near the main gathering area and fire pit. It's been really quiet. Every day. Yeah, some people were singing songs around the campfire a few nights, but not loudly. I've seen some guys here and there strumming a guitar quietly. I've heard ONE person playing music on a radio, one morning. He's camped out near the edge of the group and it wasn't very loud. Of all the noise occurring here, it's like 5% music and all the rest is people talking, driving, working on their vans, running generators. I don't know if Bob has some kind of complex about music or what. My guess is Bob got a lot of anxiety from having so many people here wanting his time. There are like 500+ people here. A lot of them come here wanting to thank Bob and spend time with him, and he doesn't have time for that. Plus he's organizing the daily seminars and often or always leading them. I think he's not used to so many people hassling him and was on the edge and the one "fuck you" from somebody was way harder to take than it would've been on a normal day.

Then other people on the internet (99% of which, it appears, are not even at the RTR) pile on and make it look way worse than it is. In reality, this place is almost as quiet as a meditation retreat. It's 7pm right now and sitting in my van, I can barely hear anything other than the traffic on the interstate a mile away. Pretty much every person here is being super nice.

All that said, I would also enjoy going to a gathering with more young people (hipsters). The average age here is about 55. So far I've talked with three people who having thrilling life stories.

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