Ben's Aiming for ERE Journal

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BenBrinkman
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2014 3:06 am

Ben's Aiming for ERE Journal

Post by BenBrinkman »

Hello everyone, without further ado, I will start documenting my progress to FI. I already introduced myself in the respective forum area for that. You can read that here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6996 I talked a little bit about what steps I've taken so far, but I realized that I was somewhat vague about my situation so I will start by reiterating and expanding on things a bit. I will go through the first eight "days" in the 21-day makeover series of posts that Jacob wrote and discuss a bit of how I am taking each of those ideas and applying them to my life.

I live in Omaha, NE and have been working for about a month as a full-time IT Professional. Currently still driving a car, but I have put down a deposit and have a new apartment lined up that is much closer to my job, and right across the street from a Bag 'n Save (grocery store)! Once I get settled in at my new place I plan on selling my car. I am moving into a two bedroom apartment and am working on finding a roommate. Once I move in and have a roommate I will have a monthly rent of $360/person/month.

So once I have the roommate lined up, that will cover Day 1 of the ERE 21-day makeover. I will also be working on "Day 2" before I move, because then I will simply have less stuff to move :)

Day 3 is mostly self-explanatory, and the way Jacob describes it is straightforward for anyone who properly followed the advice in Day 1.

As for Day 4, I will probably be able to do this one pretty soon too. I'm not on a contract anymore and my current phone is through one of those Verizon Edge plans. My plan is to look at how much money I still have to pay verizon for the phone and I'll pay the remaining lump sum, quit the service, and sell the phone. I have no reason to carry a phone, Jacob's logic in that article makes a lot of sense and I can use the Google Voice/Hangouts that I'm already using (pretty much everybody with my number has my google voice number, not my actual cell number) for free SMS and phone calls with just a computer.

Day 5 is interesting because I already have a lot of tech-related hobbies, which pretty much just involve Unix and Linux and therefore don't cost much money (like PC gaming or collecting gadgets would). As far as quitting a TV addiction, I've never been much of TV watcher but as you may have read in my introduction, I was a social media addict until I deleted those accounts a few weeks back.

Day 6 is straightforward, I pretty much wear what I have and don't intend on buying clothes that I don't need, and that's pretty much how it's been for my entire life.

Day 7 is the tough one for a lot of people, but once I move, it will be an easy one for me. I will be close to work and the grocery store, what would I need a car for?

Day 8 is the big philosophical one. To be completely honest, I can't give a good answer to how this one applies to me. Probably because I don't really know what is motivating me, other than that I don't want to be tied to a job for most of my life. I really want to be able focus on my hobbies "full-time" which is probably why I am motivated to achieve financial independence sooner rather than later. For me, my hobbies have always been more important than the social status associated with acquiring stuff.

The reason why I'm not going over the other thirteen days is because they're mostly associated with tasks that I haven't been able to focus on yet. Day 19 as I mentioned before is not a big deal because I don't watch much TV and therefore never have and never will pay for an expensive cable package.

I am working on crunching the numbers for the next two "days", for budgeting and calculating net worth. I will post those results in this thread once I figure it out.

George the original one
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Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Ben's Aiming for ERE Journal

Post by George the original one »

The 21-day makeovers are always interesting in the journals because we get to see which parts have similar and dis-similar thinking.

cmonkey
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Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:56 am

Re: Ben's Aiming for ERE Journal

Post by cmonkey »

Welcome to the forum.
Probably because I don't really know what is motivating me, other than that I don't want to be tied to a job for most of my life.
I think that's all the motivation you need really and it is what motivates most people here. The freedom to do what you want instead of being a wage slave. Since you have just started your IT career, you are smart to be starting this journey now. IT gets pretty meh.... 5 years from now (when you are FI) it will probably have turned into a slog.

BenBrinkman
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2014 3:06 am

Re: Ben's Aiming for ERE Journal

Post by BenBrinkman »

It's been a while. Unfortunately some things have changed since my initial post that have thrown a curveball in my plans as described above. I am now getting back on track, however. I will start with an update in regards to each of the "days" described above. In the time since, I got laid off from my job but fortunately I got a new one very quickly, still in the IT field. More on this later.

Day 1: I moved into the new apartment, and had a roommate move in shortly after. Needless to say, it was one of those very bad roommate experiences, and I ended up having to kick him out. Unfortunately, that means I'm stuck paying $720 in monthly rent until I can figure something else out. I thought about trying hosting on airbnb, however I'm almost certain it would be in violation of my lease and they (the management) would probably find out even if I decided to take the risk because of how airbnb displays my info so publicly. If anyone has more insight on airbnb in regards to apartment leases, let me know. Otherwise I will consider it something to avoid.

My other thought is to get a new roommate so I'm thinking I should maybe try a method other than craigslist (what I used before) and find a roommate through other means. That might take a while. If anyone has insight on getting into better roommate situations, it would definitely be appreciated to hear something. Then again, that may be a good topic for a thread of its own, perhaps in "housing questions".

Day 2: I didn't make as much progress on this as I would have liked, prior to moving. But I'm working on it. Like I mentioend previusly, I don't have cable and don't watch TV however I do have a TV that I used to use for playing video game consoles, before selling those. That might be a good start in terms of something to sell, as it's a fairly nice-sized and non-ancient TV that was purchased a couple of years ago and I'm sure I could still get decent money for it. I could probably sell the stand it sits on, in addition.

Day 3: I'm still in the same situation as before, in regards to groceries.

Day 4: Still have the same plans in mind. However, since Google has more recently made changes to their voice service making it difficult to use without a forwarding phone, I will probably get a cheap flip phone (throwback, I know) and use it with the Ting service. That way I only pay for what I use, other than the $7/month line fee. If someone calls me and I'm not at a computer and I use my good judgement to know it's not an emergency, they can wait until I get to a computer :P

Day 5: I still enjoy my hobbies that involve learning and using Unix. I am also looking at practicing guitar more often. I'm reading through the ERE book for the third time and I am realizing that I need to branch out beyond my tech-related hobbies and find more varied subjects to learn about (that are still free of course). I'm working on figuring that out.

Day 6: Still the same.

Day 7: Haven't quite accomplished giving up my car yet ;) My new job requires a lot more transportation than my old one so I'm having to think more creatively to find a solution.

Day 8: I have a lot more clarity about this now, which is good because it's helping me be more laser focused on making sure I save extreme amounts of money. I consider myself an entrepreneur but I'm waiting to achieve financial independence before really working on that, as a business may not provide income right away. The other thing that is motivating me is, I want to have a significant other, possibly kids (not sure on that one) but nonetheless, I have decided to delay dating and all of that for after achieving FI, so that I have the most stability possible.

Now I will discuss the "days" that I have not talked about yet.

Day 9:

I will post monthly updates on this, these are estimates of what things will look like for February, I will post in March about how it actually turns out.

February 2016 Projection:

Money I spend: $1159.72
Money I keep: $791.28

I know this doesn't look all that extreme (~40% savings rate), but it's the best I can do in the short term. I'm just starting out and figuring things out at the moment. Hopefully sometime during February I can get a decent roommate situation. In optimizing that housing expense alone, I can make March look more like ~63% savings rate. There are also ways to further optimize my grocery spending that I will start exploring. I'm not exactly happy with paying $150 per month on groceries for just myself.

I'll be back (hopefully soon) to talk about net worth in regards to "Day" 10. I figured a lot of important details out just from writing this post. As a result, I'm quite content at the moment.

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Ben's Aiming for ERE Journal

Post by George the original one »

Good to see an update! Yes, the housing is your quickest path to savings nirvana. In general, not all roommates will turn out as bad as your first experience.

BenBrinkman
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2014 3:06 am

Re: Ben's Aiming for ERE Journal

Post by BenBrinkman »

Once again, I'm very late on an update. In addition, a lot more things have changed again.

First off, let me say this. My parents are the best people ever, and I have a lot to thank them for. You'll see why in a moment.

Housing Update:

After months of difficulties finding a suitable roommate, and lots of shoddy maintenance solutions on behalf of the apartment's management, my parents decided to voluntarily step in and help me out. I didn't ask them for help but they decided they were in a situation where they could buy a house and rent it out to me at $450/month. They also helped me break my lease at the apartment. I also have my grandparents to thank, as they have lots of passive farm income even in their retirement which allowed them to originate the mortgage to my parents, that way my parents wouldn't have to deal with a bank mortgage.

The only stipulation they've made is that I can't have any roommates until I decide (and yes I plan on doing so) to buy the house from them. I'm going to wait on that until I am already FI and have extra funds on top of that to pay in cash. At that point a (well screened) roommate will be nice because I can use their rent payment to cover utilities, taxes, and insurance and essentially have free shared housing. It's well located, and it's no suburban home. It's in a nice centralized location in Omaha. Closing date is this week, on Thursday.

Savings Update:

I have been slipping on this like crazy over the last few months, with all of the housing stress and work stuff. Beyond that, I will take my own responsibility for it, as I know I have messed up. I'm starting a new job in a week, so hopefully it will be less stressful. Now, with July coming up, I'm going to try to set a goal for savings rate, based on estimates on utility bills and what not, along with all of the variables that I know the values of.

July 2016 Goal:

Money I spend: $885
Money I keep: $1035
Savings rate: ~53%

I'm going to want to push my savings rate higher, so my goal is to work towards reducing food and transport expenses going into August. August and September will also have five paychecks instead of the typical four, so I will group those together.

August/September 2016 Goal:

Money I spend: $705.24
Money I keep: $1694.76
Savings rate: ~70%

That's quite good but the five paychecks makes a big difference. So let's look at a October goal just to even things out.

October 2016 Goal:

Money I spend: $705.24
Money I keep: $1214.76
Savings rate: ~63%

Assuming I can reach each of these goals over the four month period I'll finally have hit a good start.

I'll keep about $1500 in my bank account, and invest the rest. So the amount of money being invested at the end of these four months is: $4139.28

I think I have a pretty good investing plan in place, I will outline it later after I do more research on it.

So thank you for reading this long update. Hopefully I can be back with more info sooner rather than later.

BenBrinkman
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2014 3:06 am

Re: Ben's Aiming for ERE Journal

Post by BenBrinkman »

Hello everyone. It's been a bit too long between updates. I guess we will just have to get used to sporadic updates from me :)

So I'm still renting the house from my parents at $450/month. That's going well. There has once again been a decent amount of changes. Not as many as last time though. Since the housing situation is stable, I've had a lot of time to think about the underlying philosophy of my life and plan some lifestyle changes from a different perspective. Obviously I can optimize my expenses further and I'm working on doing so.

From the income perspective, I am now self-employed. I have decided that for now I would rather have less income in the first place and learn how to live on that small amount of income than to make lots of money with the hopes of saving it but falling back into old habits and spending it all instead. This way, I can focus on building better financial habits and then start saving/investing as my self-employment income starts to increase more.

So I'm doing IT consulting and want to start doing software development freelancing. I also decided to start doing Uber driving instead of getting rid of my car. I am trying to make arrangements so that I can use my car for the sole purpose of Uber driving and do all of my other transportation via bicycle or walking. I am trying to do more exercise and start eating healthier so I can get to that point.

That's all I have to say for now but hopefully this vague post will motivate me to write more, and more often.

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