December 2016
Been a year since my last update... I wasn't sure if I would post this or not since I mostly fell off the ERE bandwagon this year, but I figure this is the kind of forum to prefer a negative data-point to survivorship bias ;)
Financials
Around February I ran into some trouble with my rental situation and found myself needing to move in a hurry. After a week of trying to find a new place at a similar price point and finding no options excepts room-shares or doubling my commute to an hour-plus each way, I'd had enough.
I had the economic power to set myself up in an awesome living situation, I was only reluctant to use it because of some vague notion of early retirement that had
zero benefit to me in the present. I wasn't going to be FI in the next year no matter what I did, so I could either spend it commuting long hours from a hovel shared with multiple roommates, or experiment with a slightly higher cost of living for the year.
So... I moved downtown, upgraded my ancient IKEA furniture to new IKEA furniture, replaced my worn clothes, bought a laptop for "work", started buying groceries at whole foods, became a regular at the local coffee shops, and basically ignored every tenant of ERE for the year.
As a result of spending money carelessly on whatever I wanted, my savings rate dropped from 70-80% to 50-60%, and my portfolio finished up the year at slightly over 500k. So... things are still looking ok from a retirement perspective, the stash is growing and I can always bring spending back in line.
As an experiment the results have been mixed-- being within walking distance of work has been a *huge* win, as has the walkability of the downtown with everything in easy reach. My new place is awesome: great view, well maintained, modern fixtures, quiet, great location, laminate floors (wall-to-wall carpet is evil). Clothing/electronics replacements were a plus, I've definitely been under-budgeting those letting things wear out. Spending in other areas hasn't really had any net benefits other than not needing to pay attention.
Work
On the job front things have been bad recently. Around the Mar/Apr timeframe I was moved onto a project originally planned for 4 months of development. Early on it started going sideways... technical problems, crippling hardware limitations, absurdly low estimates, unrealistic demands, inadequate resources, multiple teams with contradictory objectives, etc. As it went on and the pressure mounted heavily I started working longer and longer hours, going home and putting extra time in at night and on the weekends, working straight through lunch, postponing vacation time, etc.
Now we're 9 months in and no end in sight. Team morale as been terrible (not helped by a round of layoffs in the middle when another division was sold), tensions have blown up into messy interpersonal conflicts, I put on 20lbs (before turning things around recently and losing 10 of those), my stress levels have never been higher, I've been fighting through a flare-up of an old RSI, and struggling with burnout and depression.
I should be looking for another job, but I'm having trouble convincing myself I even *want* one, let alone the additional load of a job search, interviews, relocation, and extra-effort ramping up as the new guy. It's the smart move though, so I may need to act on this in the new year.
If I had kept my spending low would the situation be any better? Not really... eliminating the commute was a *huge* win for me and has made the situation more bearable. Walking to/from work has been the only exercise I've gotten some days. Even at my current burn rate I have over a year of runway in cash and 15+ years in total, so financially I'm in a pretty good position regardless.
Future Plans
At this point I don't know. Unless things change rapidly at work (no indication they will) I can't see myself there much longer. Maybe I'll buckle down and do a job search, maybe I'll just reach my breaking point and resign, maybe they'll terminate the project and lay off our team (potentially the best outcome for me at this point, because of severance and EI).
I had a big health scare recently which is currently looking like a false-alarm, but has me re-evaluating some of my lifestyle choices. Maybe I'll post some more about this in the Health Questions section another day.
On the ERE front I've been toying with a variety of fairly radical solutions for an Early-Sabbatical-Extreme as my burnout levels increase. Most of these are probably just work-escapism-fantasy, but it keeps me lurking on forums like this anyway. At the very least I've decided to bring my spending immediately back in line, by locking my monthly spend to SWR plus CoL Adjustment (in other words the point where I
would be FI with no behavioral changes if I simply moved out of Vancouver thereby halving my rent. Since I track on a rolling average basis, that would show up as crossover with the lower line in my chart by next January.
TLDR had a bad year, spent a bunch of money, still hanging around the forums.
Happy new year everyone
