Puking Rainbows' Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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pukingRainbows
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:56 pm

Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by pukingRainbows »

Where to begin?

I'm 35.

I'm seeking financial independence. I would like to connect with a community of people. I'm also trying to improve my writing.

I have little to no experience with social media, forums, etc. I don't like to text. There seems to be an etiquette to all of it that I haven't figured out. I like this forum for the ideas as well as the earnestness of its contributors.

I have a family and two homes beside one another. I rent out the basement where I live and the entire house next door.

I am self-employed and have a love/hate relationship with my job. Some days it seems like the perfect outlet for experience and growth, and other times I am ready to just set everything ablaze and walk away. I'm currently trying get everything as perfect as possible and then walk away after selling part or all of it.

In many ways, I feel like my lifestyle is already financially independent, if that makes any sense. I mean to say, I am already doing things I want to do and can control how and when I work to some degree. However, I still have bills and debt that require my active effort to pay.

Anyway, my focus this year is to build up cash reserves to offset slow business times, pay down my mortgages and learn about investing.

In many ways, I feel like my path is not the most common route to financial independence. However, reading people's thoughts and ideas on this forum fills me with inspiration to apply what I can to my own journey.

Thanks for reading!

DutchGirl
Posts: 1646
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 1:49 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by DutchGirl »

Hi, and welcome. I think you'll find that on this forum, people take a lot of different paths towards financial independence. I'm employed and setting aside a bit of every paycheck, but others are self-employed, partially-employed, independent, etc, etc. It's all okay, too :-)

I hope that you'll enjoy being here, and I'm sure you'll be able to work on your financial independence / improved financial circumstances.

pukingRainbows
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:56 pm

Re: Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by pukingRainbows »

Thanks DutchGirl! I'm very glad to be here. I've already learned so many things from my months lurking here.

January 2016: Small Beginnings

This month I've been consumed with the idea of Antifragility and it's approach to complex systems. The methodology is quite loose and open-ended, leaving it to the person to figure out their own best solutions. For me, ERE seems like a good strategy. Creating a lifestyle that reducing expenditures to eliminate fragility and cultivating the Renaissance ideal as a way to benefit from volatility, uncertainty, stress and the like.

I've also jumped on the KonMari bandwagon and last month removed much of the extraneous from my living space. The effect of which has been noticeable and welcome. The house feels less cluttered and easier to live in. Also, the stuff around me definitely improves my mood when I see it. My modus operandi was basically thinking, "Do I want to leave this for my kids to sort out when I die?" and "What if I was in a hospital room, what would I want around me?" Haha. I'm not sure why my thoughts went to death and sickness, but it was effective.

Right now, I'm re-reading the ERE book. I found that reading it for the first time, I didn't quite absorb certain concepts and looked at things from a very personal perspective as it really mirrored my own ideas on living a good life.

Going through it again, I find myself focused on more abstract concepts and trying to see how these ideas could be applied to myself and my business. Seeing the business as it's own entity striving for 'early retirement' seems to resonant with me as an idea.

So far, this year has started off well. I'm looking forward to seeing how the ideas and concepts I've been stewing in will develop into action, habit and lifestyle.

pukingRainbows
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:56 pm

Re: Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by pukingRainbows »

February 14, 2016: The Plan

I've been listening to podcasts lately which is a new thing for me. Mostly found through links on this forum. Thank you!

I really enjoyed Radical Personal Finance's breakdown of Financial Independence into different stages. It provided a lot of clarity as well as direction for me.

I'm currently floating between Stage 2 (Financial Stability) and Stage 3 (Debt freedom). To progress into Stage 4 (financial Security) I need to save enough cash to be ready for unexpected problems as well as opportunities, (I have the former right now but not a sufficient amount of the latter). Also, I need to get my second mortgage into a stronger positive cash flow position.

The action plan going forward is nice and simple: Save up 'dry powder' to capitalize quickly on opportunity and continue stamping out my mortgage until I can refinance to an adequately lower monthly payment.

Once these are accomplished, I will begin making moves to build my passive income portfolio. For now, I will focus on educating myself to prepare to take that step.

I'm excited! Thank you to everyone on this site for the inspiration, information and company on this journey.

pukingRainbows
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:56 pm

Re: Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by pukingRainbows »

March 8, 2016

Should I wipe out my smaller mortgage or pay down my bigger one? I'm continually thinking which I prefer. It seems to change day by day. It'd be nice to just have one mortgage and one completely paid off house. But I'm paying a lot more interest on the other mortgage and getting the principal down enough to improve the cashflow on the eventual refinancing will be really helpful going forward.

Hmmmmmm.

Also, I realized that my future investments will most likely stem from starting new businesses once I have the time available. I like creating things and so far, my interest in stocks/bonds/REITS is pretty low. I'm still learning about it and it does sound interesting, but it feels a little too passive for me. I want to be more involved right now. I think it will be a component of my future income stream but I'm still trying to figure out how.

The idea of providing venture capital and angel investing appeals to me as I can be more directly involved in a business. I'm a long way from that point but it is kinda cool to think about. Does anyone here have any experience with this?

tommytebco
Posts: 257
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2012 4:48 pm

Re: Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by tommytebco »

"they" always say pay down higher interest accounts first. This minimizes expense, reducing debt fastest.
The one or two mortgages on the books thing doesn't seem important .

pukingRainbows
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:56 pm

Re: Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by pukingRainbows »

It's been a year since I last posted.
I still don't enjoy writing blogs or texts.
I'm trying to participate more in the forum but I get overwhelmed trying to read and understand everyone's perspectives. In general, I don't understand how people have the patience to read pages and pages of a thread, especially, when the writing is people's ideas and arguments. Good for all of you who can.

Some updates:
- My home's mortgage payment has been lowered from $1350/month to $200 due to lump sum payments and refinancing.
- My rental house cashflow has been improved by $600 also due to lump sum payments and refinancing of the mortgage.
- I'm shooting for "Financial Security" (housing, food and transportation covered by passive income) by 2019
- In the process of leaving my current work. Maybe this year, but probably next or the year after.

The Plan: Keep Paying down mortgages and lower food expenses by a growing beans, tomatoes, greens, and berries.

In 2019, I plan to go back to school to shift into a new career: manual therapy. I'd like to have my finances secure to be able to go back to school full time to learn.

That's about it. Steady as she goes. =)

pukingRainbows
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:56 pm

Re: Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by pukingRainbows »

Update!
Another year later.
I've been fasting and working on a lot of personal development.

I just finished my second fast of the year. This time I went for 86 hours with no food except one coffee a day and water and a bit of fennel tea.
My goal was to try and get firmly into ketosis and use that to transition into a less carb-heavy diet. I just broke my fast with a really fatty pork dish and boiled eggs with garlic simmered in bacon grease. Very heavy... but I feel great! I hope that's a sign that my body has become better adapted to handling fat as fuel.

Also, thank you to the many fasting threads on the site. They were the inspiration for this effort.

pukingRainbows
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:56 pm

Re: Puking Rainbows' Journal

Post by pukingRainbows »

ERE and JBP

I’ve wondered how these two things interact and wanted to articulate my thoughts through writing.
I came to ERE because I was fed up with the consumerism that I saw swallowing up people’s lives. The way people worked so hard to make so much money so they could waste it as quickly as possible on things that gave them the feeling that their hard work was worthwhile and important.

I got bored of it fairly quickly. I saw that it only lead to more of the same, more expensive, more luxurious and more mindless consumption. I didn’t see myself being satisfied at any point and hoped there was another path that led to something better.

ERE was one of the paths I found. It opened up the possibility of working hard for a completely different outcome. Essentially building up enough financial momentum to carry you forward through the rest of your life, with your time freed up from the necessity of doing any more financially obligated work.

This was like having light at the end of the tunnel. Work had been put in its proper perspective, I thought. Not as the purpose of life, but as a means to an end. The end being financial independence. So I read and learned and changed my life accordingly.

At some point though, I found myself confronted with a similar scenario.

I was working hard and saving money towards the goal of financial independence when a question occurred to me. It’s a pretty common question in ERE I think: what do I do after achieving financial independence? I had no idea. A big challenge in my life has been decisiveness. I like many, many things and find it extremely difficult to choose one and focus solely on it. For a long time I was doing many different jobs, hobbies and activities at once, juggling them all through the week. It was busy and fun but not sustainable in the long term for my health or sanity.

The general answer to this question seems to be: do whatever I want. And notably, many of the things I want to do involve being compensated with money. For me, it’s a useful sign that what I’m doing is valuable. If people will give me money for my time and effort, that’s pretty validating. And maybe that’s unhealthy, but regardless, it is true for me.

And so my answer would be doing the things I enjoy which would then, provide me some money. Which then brought up the question, why not just do those things now? I can still work towards financial independence but it would just be much, much slower, and I would already be living the ideal lifestyle I would be if I was actually financially independent.

So where Jordan Peterson come into this?
Almost there!
My initial thought as described above, was essentially doing things I wanted that would then provide me some income that would then further me along the path of ERE.
My framework for my life as well as my motivation, were still primarily ‘financial.’
What happened after being exposed to JBP’s message was a radical shift from this. Or it's better to say, 'expansion from this.'
Now, it’s like the financial and ideological framework described by ERE has become a facet of a larger, more complex system.
It exists alongside other facets like psychological, intellectual and the spiritual.

The idea that society needs each individual to be their best in order to create a better future is one of the basic tenets of Dr. Petersons’ work and it really appeals to me. I find it incredibly motivating in a way that I’ve never experienced.

I’ve always enjoyed self-development across all realms but having it aligned to a greater purpose really took it to the next level. It allowed me to connect my actions to my greater community and broaden my normally narrow self-centred focus. As well, it connected me to so many different areas of study that I had not previously been exposed to.

I think it offered me a feeling of purpose that went beyond mindless consumption but also meaningless freedom.

I should say, this is based on my own experience and it’s not meant to criticize anyone else’s endeavours or lifestyle. For example, I don’t think FI would be meaningless freedom for everyone, but just that it would be for me.

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