slog's journal

[slog]

With a few posts under my belt this week I'm attempting to leave lurker status behind and I feel like getting a journal post up is an urgent matter. So many of the forum threads engage the same names that the whole environment seems intimate. Shoving myself into the conversations without providing more background feels like walking into a strangers house and trying to chat them up about the weather. To start with the Financial Independence Vitals:
Debts: 0 - Finished paying my student loans in 2015
Physical Assets: ~0 - I own some objects of worth and utility (kettlebells, bicycles) but not enough for me to worry about tallying
401K: ~50,000
Stocks/bonds: ~17,500 -currently just using betterment. Savings rate is my current hurdle
Cash: ~7,500 - after seeing the market dance around this year I'm planning to grow this number a little

Monthly Budget Buckets after 15% salary goes to 401K: either what I'm spending or allowing to accrue and spend later
Rent: 695
Travel: 300
Commuting: 100
Gifts/Donations: 70
Other transit: 60
Mobile Phone: 35
All Utilities: 49
Spotify: 11
Netflix: 5
Bicycle: 10
Divvy: 5
Home Insurance: 9
**Play: 870 - This is my catchall for buying things, feeding myself and entertainment. I'm sure I can do better in a lot of places but this is where I really gnash my teeth right now and often bust my budget
Minimum cash to savings : 300
Minimum cash to betterment: 600
This is sort of structured as a zero sum budget but there's an overhead so when something goes awry I'm not in trouble.
To summarize the take home pay:
Spending I'm relatively at peace with: ~975
Play: 870
Saving: 900

The next step? Would like to look at owning real estate with renting potential.

Bio and lifestyle
27 year old male living in Chicago with two roommates. Relatively healthy and fit but had some issues with anxiety and panic manifest at age 25 (work and caffeine were primary stressors). Mostly under control but having a panic attack while driving has resulted in a lasting unease. Read a book about Highly Sensitive people that made me strongly suspect I was one and provided some interesting framing of my teenage years but not so sure its on the mark. Hold a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Spent 2 years working in a biomechanics lab then the last
3.5 in the refining industry. My career moves have been underwhelming so far. Invested my "human capital" (and some cash) very heavily in trying to get a type of folding bicycle to the market and start a business. A failed kickstarter took the wind out of those sails for now. Serial bachelor/monogamist (currently bachelor) although hoping I can teach myself to enjoy some casual dating before I'm 30 Definitely started towards ERE from an environmentalist standpoint. Seeing bikes for their full utility is one revelation I can actually give credit to my younger self. I do enjoy writing but this first post is coming out very list-like and I'm going to let it have its due. Looking forward to getting to know everyone better and learning from you all more actively.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Welcome! I like the name.

Sorry the kickstarter didn't work out. Bicycles seem to be a very crowded market. At least you gave it a try!

[thrifty++]

Welcome. Your in great financial shape for your age. It must be nice having paid off those student loans. Yes I am clinging to my cash at the moment given how markets have gone the last 8 months. Too scared to chuck more into equities with all the wobbles that have been going on.

[slog]

Thanks for reading! I'll try to get on some sort of monthly schedule.

@Gilberto: Agree that the market seems crowded. What set our design apart was born of original thought but given enough time combing the market we found other's doing the same sort of thing. I think the learning was immense and at very least it's an interesting resume builder.

@thrifty: That's encouraging to read, I feel greatly outclassed by this community. Yes, getting the loans paid off felt like my first big FI achievement. I do not travel for work often but had an opportunity to spend five weeks out of state last year. My discretionary spending basically dropped to zero for the time and I had that bump in saving to just make the final payment and be done with it.

[steveo73]

Great name. I would focus on optimising your spending as much as possible especially since you don't have kids. I think myself and my wife are optimised but the kids keep spending money. My son is going to a concert that is costing us $80. I never do that. My wife doesn't want to say no.

[slog]

@steveo - Thanks! And definitely, I have some splurges but I'm trying to be smarter about them and also respect my budget and let it have a say in what I commit to. I declined accompanying some friends to Six Flags on Saturday ($50 ticket and I'm sure plenty of peripheral charges) and subsequently a brunch invitation (which in Chicago can get out of hand fast). Hoping for nice weather for pickup ultimate frisbee for free!

Going through a downturn at work that will be eroding my income like a furlough but without the same strict rules.
Basically my pay will be cut by 10% for the rest of the year but I'll also be given 10% flex time. Was pretty annoyed yesterday but when I look at things versus when I started here it really is OK. I'm still making slightly more than my starting salary and I don't have the student loan payments like I did back then. And with a "summer hours" structure we usually have from Memorial Day to Labor Day I'll probably be able to cash in my extra 4 hours a week for taking Fridays entirely off. Working nine hour days Mon-Thurs then using the flex time to take the half day off.
That's entire workday free for looking for better work or taking on entrepreneurial endeavors. Or maybe I'll decide that there's something else entirely that I should be spending the time on. I just need to make sure I don't piss the time away, this is a unique opportunity for me.

Only big lifestyle change has been a commitment to an Intermittent Fasting eating schedule. I wait until noon to start eating for the day. Not doing anything to routinely throw this off but if there's free doughnuts or something I don't worry about not complying for the day. Black coffee in the morning gets me going and suppresses some hunger but may eventually try to switch back to green tea. I feel the stimulation from caffeine pretty strongly.

[slog]

I used the link in the Myers Briggs thread and looked at those results for the first time since college. Initially

• ENFP-A "The Campaigner
• Extraverted 56%
• Intuitive 65%
• Feeling 54%
• Prospective 64%
• Assertive 64%

Then after deciding I should try minimize the use of the "neutral" option per the instructions:

• INTP-A "The Logician"
• Introverted 62%
• Intuitive 74%
• Thinking 60%
• Prospecting 81%
• Assertive 68%

The percentages on the different spectrum's didn't jump around too much, but getting different results makes me suspicious of my ability to understand myself. I'll sit on these for now and try to flesh things out in a later post.

Stuck with the Intermittent Fasting and wait to eat until around noon. Has made it much easier to stay on top of having food packed for the day. While I've already internalized that my eating can be like alchemy, just put the necessary ingredients in and don't worry about it being a fancy meal, one of Jacob's posts about a lentil rice pilaf helped me simplify my lunches greatly. He recommended lentils, rice, and sauteed onions. On the recent batch my results were great with a few extra steps. I soaked the lentils for 24 hours before cooking (did not discard the water), added garlic and jalapeno to the pan when sauteing the onions, and dumped a can of sauerkraut into the mix near the end. Adding a little chili sauce to the servings makes it pretty tasty and it has a nice consistency. With no breakfast and an easy refrigerator stable lunch made in mass I only really have to worry about dinner. I do like to cook, but it's easier to have the energy to try new things like homemade pizza crust when it's with less frequency.

Along with the dietary success I've been doing alright in the exercise department. Keeping pretty consistent with the Simple and Sinister kettle bell routine, been kicking ass at frisbee, and found a new running crew that goes weekly in my neighborhood so I can use them as a way to keep some endurance challenge in my life.

Ladies, not so good. While I've been able to get some momentum going, by the time I asked one woman out she had started seeing someone else. And this week had the rug pulled out from under me when I got a call back from another one that if we got together again she'd prefer it be as friends. Ah well, keep playing the odds.

Received my last full paycheck before the 10% flex-time paycut kicks in. You will be missed dollars! I already adjusted my budgets in Mint so I am prepared for what is to come. I was getting amped up to increase my savings rate right around the time of the news hitting, so lets see if I can still increase it despite the loss of income! I started keeping a running tally for my "play" budget in my pocket notebook. Even though my transactions are all tracked electronically having that running tally always in my pocket and seeing cash transactions in real time rather than $100 atm withdraws has been a successful strategy. Probably a bit of gamification, it feels like a health bar that needs to last the month.

Was doing some long term strategizing and got hard numbers for my mom's financial situation. She has car and mortgage payments that were not too bad. But she has about 10,000 in credit card debt and a nearly 50,000 consolidated loan that was back from myself and my brother attending college. I've checked in at hands length a few times because I knew she was dealing with the credit cards but was making progress on them. I'm glad I finally decided to get the full picture but man I was physically ill to see that student loan debt. I didn't even know if she had any, turns out there was quite a lot! My brother is not, and will probably never be in a situation to help her out so it feels a little daunting. She seemed to be of the opinion that it could just sit there until she's dead, but in 10 years of payments (she will live much longer barring something unexpected) she'll have basically paid the current balance it will just have grown all along. Even though I'm not sure precisely how we'll proceed to tackle this the conversation was productive because she took to heart that she needs to put herself first from now on. She has done quite a lot for her family and charities which IMO needs to wait at very least until that credit card balance is zero.

[slog]

Things have definitely changed for me since the last post. In a way they already feel mundane though

I had a separate thread going where I was looking for opinions on whether to self-select for a layoff over the summer. I ended up taking the deal and enjoying a short bout of paid unemployment and actually was able to land a job I wanted largely because of my availability. I even enjoyed three working days of double pay. On paper I should be making a lot less money at my new job. However, for the first time in my post college work life I am paid hourly. Time and a half is a wonderful thing. It fluctuates but so far I am making more money at least as often as I am making less. Work is only about five miles away so I have been able to bike or use mass transit when the weather gets truly combative. Shedding the awful commute was a big win. The extra biking even has a noticeable effect keeping me slender. I thought it was the more active work place but when I took the better part of a month commuting by train I realized my assumption was wrong or at least incomplete.
The job is pretty neat. I spend far less time on a computer which caused my attendance on the forums to drop off. The workplace is small and the ability to see effort turn into progress is much appreciated.
Not long after my last post I started dating a woman on the fringe of my social circles that I had long been attracted to but always sort of scared off because I knew she had a son. For the most part it has been fantastic. I'm trying to really drill down and confront the complexities of sharing a life together with some urgency now. If we need to part ways it's going to hurt so the sooner the better.
On the FI side of things, for the first time I have a six-figure net worth. Small potatoes with all the cool things you can read about in these forums, but for me it's a milestone.

[El Duderino]

Congrats on the NW growth and isn't cycling the greatest? just started riding a bit more myself (nowhere near the 5 mile stint you're doing)

Interested to learn how things develop with the job and your relationships. wage jobs can definitely be awesome too.