Two Years of ERE
- I joined the forum in Jan 2020. My TTM Expenses were >7jafi (1jafi=$8,500 for simplicity) TTM in 2019.
- By Jan 2021, my TTM CoL Expenses was 2.2jafi.
- Now, my TTM CoL expenses is 1.3, and I've been <1.0 since September.
- My 2021 TTM Actual Expenses is 2.5 and includes capx for some builds (one of which I'm getting bought out for) and a one-off surgery.
If you stare at it long enough, this one graph has everything interesting about my financial circumstance in it.
My Relationship with W*rk
- At the beginning of 2020 I had a FT job.
- I dropped to 8hrs/wk in ~July 2020.
- I was laid off in May 2021. I worked for @mooretrees for two months in early Fall. I'm not earning income at the moment, but I'm working on a visualization studio with friends, help DW out with her art business, and have paid projects lined up with my parents. If I *needed* to make money, I could drop what I'm doing and go make some money. This is something I worried about before dropping from FT employment. Now, I feel how insanely easy it is to pick up paid activity of some sort if one so desires. At the moment I have other stuff to do though, so nah.
My FIRE Goals
- In Jan 2020, my goal was to FIRE in 2027.
- In Jan 2021, my goal was to "not need to work FT" for good no later than 2024.
- In Jan 2022, I no longer need to work FT for good. (Unless I'm wrong, which I'm probably not.) I consider myself "As-If FI", meaning that I am resolved to only do things I want to do that are on-mission, and generate my required yields of income incidentally.
My desired outcomes for 2021 were:
- Lifestyle CoL < 1 jafi. Nailed it, 4 consistent months <1jafi.
- Econ and investing fundamentals education completed. Not complete, but begun.
- At least one comfortable shelter complete (the container). Not complete, pulling out of the container project, focusing on family land as home base.
- Get back to FTE and re-engage accumulation phase. [Contingency: continue semiERE, focus on side hustles/entrepreneurship.] Did the contingency plan.
- Tax-Advantaged accounts game totally dialed. Yep.
- Starting to spend time "learning by doing" with low stakes investing. Not started.
- Strategic Approach: Apply 80/20 thinking to every dimension of my life, with a focus on high-leverage activities that will hasten my achievement of autonomy/time wealth as quickly as possible. For example, some activities have a high satisfaction ROI, but will muddle my progress towards autonomy. Consider these activities very carefully, and consider shelving them until I'll be apply to apply my full attention to them. I consider this attitude to be largely internalized; yes.
Desired Outcomes for 2022:
- Finish building a dry cabin/art studio on the family land, by end of Feb.
- Sell my truck.
- Fly to Portugal end of Feb; if they'll let us in, we're going.
- Spend the rest of the year/as long as we want slowtraveling the world, relying on Workaway and the like to keep CoL very low (target remains <1jafi). Route is Europe > Turkey/Jordan/Oman > Asia > Down along Indonesia > Australia and NZ > Patagonia > Back up. Aim is to fly as little as possible.
- NW is not less than it was at beginning of year. I'm not likely to earn much income this year, and that's fine. I think I can not *lose* any money, though.
- Develop Renaissance Knowledge (see below)
- Blog consistently
- Podcast consistently, assuming I don't decide it's a bad idea and shut it down
- Research and implement a longevity practice.
- By December, be knocking on the door of WL7. This might be overly aggressive, and trying to rush it is a terrible idea. But I want it on the list to keep it in mind; I'm squarely in wl6 skillnode building phase, but don't want to get totally lost in it. There's a point to all this; achieving a mature nonconsumer internalized mindset.
Renaissance Skills, Renaissance Knowledge, Renaissance Wisdom
I feel like I've spent a lot of this last year developing practical skills, like cooking and eating for <$200, mending things, unlearning patterns of consumption, how to not need a cell phone plan, etc. Renaissance *skills*.
I'm feeling a desire to develop Renaissance *knowledge*; physics, biology, chemistry, history, politics, economics, literature, and better search and analysis cognitive tools. My current response to a lot of the 'controversial' intellectual topics of the day is to act on a precautionary principle, eschew certitude, and punt on developing well researched and analyzed positions on them, because I've got other shit to do that's more pressing. I want to develop my intellectual capacity, both in terms of depth of knowledge (hence the desire to dig into basic sciences and history again) that I can pull from as well as skills related to logic, fallacies, and the more modern skills of "search and analysis".
So I intend to do a lot of reading while traveling this year.
An implicit part of my current strategy is that, with my FU stash providing slack, I'll get a better lifetime ROI on non-financial asset building at this moment. The development of skills, knowledge, wisdom, connections, idleness, et cetera are more important at this moment in my life than adding more cash to the stash. It's like my life is a garden, and I have several rows of tomato plants [money]. But I don't have any other plants, or compost, and honestly I don't know much about gardening at all, and maybe bees or something?? So instead of planting more tomato plants, I'm reading books about composting and soil amendment and bees and permaculture and etc etc. Instead of just planting more of the same crops, I'm taking a step back from a production mindset to work on becoming a more competent gardener.
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I quoted Steinbeck this time last year, and it's so damn good I'm going to quote it again:
John Steinbeck wrote:"In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear."
I'm reading Lifespan and contemplating the potential of making it, in decent health, to 2100. The above quote resonates to me in terms of approaching the design of an entire life. When it comes to lifestyle, I think it's really common for (young) people to really only think, or *feel*, about designing a lifestyle for the ages of 25-55. Beyond that it's a sort of grey fog of darkness. That lends a sense of urgency, I suspect. Also, most people don't deal effectively with contemplating their own mortality. I myself haven't spent any time thinking about how I want to feel when I'm 75. Or 90. Or 115. I haven't thought about being 65 and having another 40 years of good solid life in front of me.
It's a tricky balance. On the one hand, I don't want to put off living a good life because I think I've got all the time in the world, manana. On the other, I don't want to not even notice my life because I'm rushing around too much, in a scramble, frantically keeping busy mostly (if I'm being honest with myself) because I fundamentally can't handle the idea of not existing any more and need to distract myself from the horrible yawning abyss of death that is right.... over....
thereohmygodchristquickturnonnetflixorsomethingFUCK. [eta:
relevant]
This kind of long term thinking is the theme of this year for me. How would you live if you thought you were going to live well to 120? Might that not be a good way to live even if you get hit by a bus in a decade? I suspect it might be.