Low Income, Early 20s, Anti-Wage-Slave Living: Walwen's Journal

[white belt]

Hi everyone, just checking in to share a few things.

My 50% is Another Man's 5%


Average Grocery List And Non-Essential Expenses
I also wanted to share a grocery list of mine. It's hard for me to say something like "This is two weeks of groceries" because some of it is pantry staples that will last months and some of it is treats I ate the same day. The fees are because I had it delivered.

18 (x2) oz chicken breast 13.98
16oz stew-cut carrots 1.00
5lbs russet potatoes 4.29
8oz kerrygold butter 5.39
4ct Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream Cones 9.59
32oz Low-Sodium Chicken Broth 1.79
32oz Chicken Bone Broth 5.89
3ct Garlic 2.69
3lbs Yellow Onions 3.19
15fl oz Lemon Juice 2.09
16oz Baking Soda 0.94
8.1oz Baking Powder 1.99
3ct Active Yeast Packets 2.29
2lbs White Rice 1.79
53fl oz Orange Juice 3.69
6oz Blackberries 2.50
8oz Shredded Mozzarella 2.50
8oz Shredded Cheddar 2.50
9.25oz BBQ Fritos 4.39
5.3 oz (x4) Chobani Fruit-on-The-Bottom Yogurt 4.00
15fl oz (x2) Bolthouse Smoothie 6.00
3.5oz Crispy Dried Bell Peppers 1.67

If you’re trying to gain weight, you want to focus on fatty protein sources and fast digesting carbs. So chicken breast and veggies isn’t going to cut it. Dark meat chicken, beef, pork, etc with higher fat content are all good. For carbs you want white bread, pasta, and anything you can drink (protein shake, whole milk, smoothie, etc). Junk food can also be good if your body can tolerate it, but you want to still make sure you’re hitting your protein and veggie intake first.

[Walwen]

Hi everyone! It's been a minute! A lot changed in my life, as always happens.
My family is all in bad health: my grandfather has been in the hospital for the past few weeks after surgery, and my mom has been having cardiac symptoms that look rrrreally bad but refuses to go the doctor because she knows they'd admit her to the hospital as well. My sister is 0 support since she moved away with her (comparatively) rich insurance-tech-career boyfriend, so it's just "Walwen Mans The F Up" season three.

One of my coworkers left for a higher-paying job, so I was offered to switch to his schedule, and took it. I used to work Saturday/Sunday 8-4 and Monday 4-8 (20hrs.) Now I work Monday night 10pm-10AM and Tuesday night 10pm-10AM. Everyone I told about this acted like it was a hour cut. This is 4 more hours per week. On top of that, I always fill in shifts: my average is actually 28 hours a week, with these extra 4, I predict my average will go above 30.

The other benefit of working night shift is it is EASY AS PIE for me. Between 1AM and 6AM, almost nothing happens: someone might want to talk about life, go for a smoke, and I get some desperate phone calls, but my hands are free to read, work on the computer, etc. You have to have some responsibility, but I used to work solo shifts in the day- I know what to do when people fight and have schizophrenic episodes.

I'm not sure how to take the best advantage of this schedule.
I don't really want to get a second job or anything until my granddad is stable at home.
I'm also using a lot of the time on my life coach certification, so basically, I want to finish that before taking up any new large commitment.

I'd like to do something cool and self-fulfilling and flexible. The stable income from the shelter job is enough for me already. I think I'm going to put more into art.

I've gone on several day trips in town, visiting every gallery there is- about ten of them. I thought I would start with the pay-to-play "everyone is welcome here" community association, where you just pay 50 a month, and keep all your sales.... because almost no one ever sells anything. I almost never see anyone there besides the artists.

In contrast there are two small local galleries that are both open to new artists. I've chatted up the owners a few times. I think I could get into one of them. And they both have very good splits, much better than industry standard. And I actually see people shopping there every time I visit.

What would I actually sell? I have a few ideas. Affirmation wall art. En plein air watercolor scenes. Textile wall art. Macramé hangers. All things I could feasibly churn out and feel I'm a skill level to sell. A bit more left field- I think I could feasibly sell handmade knitted accent pillows. Weird, I know. But I'm a skilled knitter, I'm used to knitting everywhere 24/7, and I've crunched the numbers and the margins would be okay. Can't paint on the bus or drag a large canvas to work, but I knit the night away during 3rd shifts. And I do get a little creative burnout and run out of juices when painting- it's not so with knitting.

I invested in NVDA right before they had that lucky day, so now I'm up 38% on NVDA and my Roth IRA is up 8% YTD, which I think is good? It's less than a year old.

It just seems an unorthodox choice for someone interested in arts and homesteading. I can't help wondering if it's driven by a desire to compensate for self perceived weakness ?

I would also suggest reading up about Christian pacifism and sincerely asking yourself if taking up arms is ever right for a Christian.

I would also recommend you try bodyweight exercises and functional fitness over gyms, dumbbells etc as it's a lot easier and better connects you to your body. At least that's what I have found.

UGHHHHH. The rest of my post deleted itself somehow.


TLDR:

My best friend raised me like an older brother. He's in the infantry and a homesteader. The military lifestyle with all its benefits lends itself well to my goals.

I want to be a religious affairs specialist or in HR or healthcare. The military really isn't all GI macho man bullshit. The nerds won, you know.

I eat a shitton of eggs, milk, and butter lately, and learned to make heavily caloric cream sauces which I dump on top of my favorite pan-seared chicken breasts to make them more caloric. I've gained ten pounds.

I found a woo-woo counselor who doesn't wear shoes and works out of an up-scale yoga studio. She's crazy. She's a perfect fit for me.

I got super salty thinking about how unfair it is that I'm weird. Some weird people can choose to become normal but I don't think I can. I still think I'm going to be a highly successful weird person, and I get mad when people assume that my being an outsider means I plan to piddle away my life or don't value myself or something is wrong with me. One of those "God gave his silliest battles to his silliest little goober" things.

Great to be back! What would you do if you only worked 2 days a week and made 14k a year??? And had no bills???

[DutchGirl]

I think most people are weird in some way. A lot of people get really effective at hiding it, at least to the passerby. But other people embrace it.

I love the specific weirdness of my boyfriend, he's a computer nerd. I'm also weird and he loves me for it - or sometimes finds me entertaining because of it. Shrug.

What I worry about for you is your living situation: what would happen to you if your grandfather can no longer afford to give you a rentfree place, or if he dies? I'd start making some plans for such a situation.

[Walwen]

I rented my own apartment before this, affording it was fine. But mainly, well, my granddad's house is down the street from my mom's. I'd move back in with her if I had to.
I say "house" but it's a manufactured home on a rented lot. So he owns the manufactured home the way you'd own a car, but he can never own the land. But you could never move this house, so really it's just.... renting haha.
I'm not sure of the will situation and I'm not sure how to say this: I want this house. My mother is in the same situation: she owns her manufactured home and also rents the land. And my sister lives in a much nicer rented stick-built house with her wealthy boyfriend.

The last I heard about the will, it was to split everything between my mom and my uncle, who lives across the country and has his own nice stick-built house. So what the hell would a man across the country want with a mobile home here? The money. It wouldn't be much. If you sold this house today, rough estimate, 30k, so maybe he'd get 15k tops. My mom has talked a little bit about just giving him more inheritance money in exchange for her getting the house, but honestly, I think my mom would want to sell it for the money too, just to have a few thousand to spend on shit like top of the line appliances and fast food. Last I heard the inheritance is about 80k. It was a lot more before my grandmother had to go to a skilled nursing home before her death and they made him drain his accounts before they'd pay for anything, it was 9k a month for six months....

That was when I was a minor- and before I sort of came into my own as the heir male of the family. I know I have a lot of bias in this department, because well, I'd like the house. I'd be able to afford the lot rental: it's 700 a month. With all the utilities, taxes, all that, it comes out to about 900 a month to live here. That's the same as my old studio apartment cost. I could get a roommate too- I have a few buddies I've talked about that with. It's a three bedroom, two bath house.

My grandfather gave my sister his car when he bought a new one, and just had her pay him a very fair amount of money for it over a year. I wonder if I could strike a similar arrangement with my mother. As in, she'd pay my uncle off with 10k or whatever out of her share of the inheritance for him to not force her to sell the house, and then she'd give me the house, and I'd pay her that 10k over however many months.

Unfortunately, my family is one of those that gets incredibly spooked and offended if you talk about death, inheritance, wills, etc. It is very, very possible that the will is different now than it was last I heard about it. I think my granddad did change some things once all his grandchildren were no longer minors, but I don't know what.


I started applying for some jobs yesterday, almost on a whim.... There's a job literally in walking distance of my house that sounds great, but you have to be 21. I thought, man, I'd really like a job in walking distance.... there's a lot of benefits. So I literally went on google maps and found all the businesses I could walk to, and went on their websites and applied for jobs willy nilly. I want a mindless labor job where I can just grind hours. I think I'm actually overqualified for some of the positions and they're the types of jobs immigrants tend to fill. They made a big deal out of needing to have authorization to work in the US lol. You never know, but I anticipate at least one interview out of the 5 places I applied.... It's going to be an issue more with scheduling, since I want to keep my current job.

I think I'm discriminated against in my current job and several of my coworkers have told me they'd support me if I made a claim, but I guess I'd rather not stir the pot. They're hiring two fulltime positions and a part time position for my exact role, but never offer me fulltime hours. Apparently, they've said openly (while I wasn't there) that they don't want to give me fulltime, despite being qualified, because I plan to enlist. I'm not sure if that's exactly against the law, but it's DEFINITELY against company policy. If I threw a shit-fit I'm sure I'd get what I want, but at what cost? Rather just get a second job.

[Tyler9000]

You'll find loads of different approaches to investing on this forum. Indexing, value investing, permanent portfolio, butterfly portfolio...just to name a few! If you haven't already explored it, https://portfoliocharts.com/ is a great resource. I think it was actually tyler9000 on this forum who created it, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Yep -- that's me.

Even though asset allocation is my area of expertise, one of the things I really appreciate about ERE is the diversity of investing approaches. So you're likely to find several good ways to approach the problem, and there's a good opportunity to find one that best matches your investing personality.

[Walwen]

Hi everyone!

Life changes so fast....

I got the second job I wanted! I haven't started yet because they have to do a background check.
My goal-setting has not been very good.... because I am hitting them too early, hahaha. Now that I will have nearly twice the income, things are really going to take off....
I didn't think I would be able to max out my Roth IRA this year, but now I think I will. My expenses are just so low.

Maybe it's a little anti ERE, I don't know, but I'm trying to figure out how to budget for slightly bigger purchases. For "the nice things" if that makes sense. Stuff I just never bought as a kid, but now can (potentially?) afford as someone with income. Talking 80-400 dollars. It's easy to say, "Well just think about if you'll really use it and like it and it's worth it", but there are LOTS of things I would use and like and think are worth it. So I always veer on, "don't buy it." But I think it gets in the way of my personal development. For instance, of course you can always make art with just a bic pen and scratch paper: but I can't make stuff to build my portfolio like that. I'm at a point where I should buy professional paints or at least nicer quality student stuff- but there's QUITE a price jump between student paints and professional.... I'm a pathologically frugal and everyone will lean towards saying "don't buy" because they buy too much, but then I never ever buy at all, and what's the use of having money at all if you never ever do anything?

[Scott 2]

Congrats on the second job. Your potential is showing.

An article I read recently, suggested thinking in terms of energy, rather than money. If an investment lets you put even more back into the world, it may be worthwhile. Skill development. Reputation. Connections. The wealthy use money to create opportunity. Ideally, other people's money.

Maybe you spend to make a piece of art. Someone's impressed enough, that they'll buy supplies for a custom piece. Maybe they love it so much, they put you in contact with someone who commissions work. That's a big return of energy.

[Walwen]

Thanks!

The second job is going well. As I thought, it's pretty much mindless for me, and it's nothing I don't do at the shelter already. It's moderately physical so I hope it'll be good for my general body conditioning.

I went out and they had a 70% off sale on the nicer student quality watercolor, so I bought 40 bucks worth. I showed some art to some people who said it was very good, but I still am not super confident. I think I'll try to join a more serious art forum, something more out of the way/gated than, say, DeviantArt or Reddit. Everyone I ask for criticism IRL says the vaguest things or just gives their own ideas, stuff like "I think you should paint sunflowers" or "I don't really like the color blue." An upsetting thought nags in my head.... "I need to go bigger. This works best on a larger canvas." Not MORE material cost! I have 9inch by 12inch cold-press watercolor cotton sheets, and that's what it's gonna be!

I watched several videos of a moderately successful abstract watercolor painter. Not a household name, but someone who made their living (and lived in a nice house) entirely off of selling her paintings in fancy galleries to rich people, and the prints online to poorer people. After watching her paint for thirty minutes, she took the entire painting and turned it upside down. I lost my shit at this and it's hard to explain why, but I keep thinking about it.

I think the takeaway is that the marketing aspect of art might really mean more than any talent at all, and even more than that, there's a lot more skill in art than the actual creative portion. Think about simple geometric wall art. Anyone can draw a circle in a square in a triangle on a piece of paper and tape it to the wall. But someone who paints it in professional quality paint (with a guide underneath to make all the lines perfect), on a nice canvas, with a nice finish overtop, has made something that sells everyday to unimaginative housewives for 100 buckoroonies. This is a different type of skill, but it's still skill.

For example I made a whole little painting on this canvas meant as a fridge magnet: then I took my mod podge to it to finish it... and the mod podge smeared all the paint, since it's water-based. Whoops. Painting ruined. Improving as an artist, at least for me right now, is mostly about stuff like this: not the creative talent portion.

With my new schedule I really have to be an adult about time management. I don't get multiple days off in a row anymore. It's easy to put off something Saturday when you can do it Sunday.... but if I procrastinate something now, I have to fit it in around a full workday. I sat down and planned out when to sleep and eat, which is more complicated than you might think, since I switch between night shift and day shift jobs.
I feel much older than my older sister was at my age.... She was a college student living at home with mom still paying her bills, writing two page essays on music appreciation and buying Starbucks with her student loan money. I remember when my mom gave me the talk that it was time for me to start paying my own phone bill since I had income.... I told her I had switched it over about six months ago, with my first check. She has no idea where any of her money goes.

Another little worm of a thought in the back of my head... Like Emperor Palpatine.... "Walwen... you are destined to reach great heights in leadership! You are so mature as a young man! By the time you are 30, people will line up to make YOU the boss! You are proving yourself capable of holding so much responsibility!" Noooo! No corporate overlords! I don't WANNA be a middle manager! I don't WANNA be the boss! I want a lavender garden and to forget what a W-2 is someday! I want to pay my dues, do my time in the system like a good little soldier, then GET OUT! I have been told I am an "especially loyal worker with high work ethic." I have to keep this in check, lest it chain me to the rat race!

[Laura Ingalls]

Have you thought about an overnight job with development delayed folks? It pays awful but some are exceptionally easy and you basically get paid for sleeping. Might make living with family members more palatable too if your seldom there

[Walwen]

Have you thought about an overnight job with development delayed folks? It pays awful but some are exceptionally easy and you basically get paid for sleeping. Might make living with family members more palatable too if your seldom there

I did actually! That was the place close to my house I originally wanted to work at: but you have to be 21.
I just live with my granddad and we're on the same wavelength, he doesn't bother me.

[inkolore]

Really enjoyed the read. It's pretty crazy to me that there are other people in their early 20s who have come across ERE. I'm frankly not sure what people my age (23) think about, like I don't even know what people mean when they say "adulting" for instance, seems to me that ERE is what being an adult is : living deliberately even if it means being different or seen as weird or whatever.

I would be very interested in knowing how you came across ERE. I am someone who is incredibly online, and I've found myself going from circles which are generally against the modern world (at least its worst excesses and abuses) to circles which focus on finding freedom within it, including ERE.

Hope you can balance your personal interests while juggling your 2 jobs. Doesn't seem like it's an easy situation but you strike me as someone with the strength of character to handle difficulties, and the tradeoff from that is obviously the higher pay.

[Walwen]

Really enjoyed the read. It's pretty crazy to me that there are other people in their early 20s who have come across ERE. I'm frankly not sure what people my age (23) think about, like I don't even know what people mean when they say "adulting" for instance, seems to me that ERE is what being an adult is : living deliberately even if it means being different or seen as weird or whatever.

I would be very interested in knowing how you came across ERE. I am someone who is incredibly online, and I've found myself going from circles which are generally against the modern world (at least its worst excesses and abuses) to circles which focus on finding freedom within it, including ERE.

Hope you can balance your personal interests while juggling your 2 jobs. Doesn't seem like it's an easy situation but you strike me as someone with the strength of character to handle difficulties, and the tradeoff from that is obviously the higher pay.

Thanks for your read!

I was always interested in things like alternative living styles and tiny homes before they were a trend, ever since I learned how poor my family is intergenerationally. I didn't really feel like I could "make it" into the "middle class", so my mind was always going, "what are my options?"

As I touched on briefly my career-military best friend lives off-grid and is a homesteader now. He's a little older than me and like a mentor so I've learned a lot by watching his journey, saving the money, buying the land, moving out, the good and bad of it.

He also inspired a lot of maturity in me although I was already naturally just... one of those more mature kinds. I think without him in my life I would still be in college now, taking out obscene loans, bullshitting my way through classes with no relation to any career, not having a clue what career I want, basically treating it as extended high school and wasting the most fertile years of my life to invest (financially and otherwise.)

He's not an ERE guy but I'm a book guy so I found the ERE book some time ago. Honestly isn't my type of read, but then I found the community attached and well clearly I'm a fan


The benefit of both of my jobs right now is that they meet a lot of my "soft" needs so to speak. I think the biggest "soft" need I have is the innate desire to tend to routines on every scale from washing dishes after cooking to decorating for the season. I know this is pretty intensely introspective but it's something I think about a lot. I'm not a Type-A perfectionist or show-off who compulsively cleans or wants attention for making floral displays. I'm an extremely dissociative type of person, detached from existence, dead dead dead inside due to my background, and respecting traditions/routines/etc is incredibly therapeutic and breaks up that sort of "locked up" feeling. Decorating bulletin boards, creating high-quality guides for how to properly make reports into the computer system, showing up to the Friday meeting at 9AM on the dot, wearing a uniform, even scrubbing toilets: these things are literally curative to my internal angsty problems. It's literally the Work Cure and I literally enjoy working. I come home and I'm energized and want to have more fun.

A lot of time management comes into play and quite simply the solution is just to schedule and keep the schedule. It's REALLY easy to throw dozens of hours a week into the bin on TV shows, Youtube, the Magic Black Screen in general. It's a bit of a meme, just like the "make your coffee at home to become rich" but it's also pretty true: if you just eliminate a nasty youtube/tiktok/etc habit, you can fit in an entire hobby. A lot of people my age will become actively offended by this view and will insist they "need time to relax/decompress" or even claim it "helps their mental health" to.... doomscroll on Reddit????

Something I learn more and more is that a lot of people have a notion of relaxation and leisure as "I stop thinking and enter a trance sponsored by Jeff Bezos and Google AdSense", that entertainment means watching TikTok in bed or playing video games for 3 hours straight. People my age that is. I think concentration and general executive functioning plays a large part: I really truly don't think most people my age could put together a 50-piece puzzle without checking their phone at least once. It's incredibly unhealthy to equate relaxation and entertainment to "endless hits of dopamine from the screen" but that's truly what I think most people my age do.
It's really possible to paint in a half hour. I have a minimalist setup, I already know what type of exercises I like to do, or I just google "fast watercolor sketch ideas", I paint, then I leave it to dry and go back to whatever else. Once you learn to actually do things on a schedule and in a modular fashion your potential skyrockets compared to someone that bumbles around based only on "the time that things happen."
In a day, I can workout twice, listen to five albums, watch a movie with a friend online, paint, and knit... on top of cooking, work, and chores. And it's really not that hard and I don't set strict times or alarms for anything besides when I wake up each day, so I can get to work on time.

Of course there's the big disclaimer that I'm single without kids.

I learned a great deal of this from a short, little, and old book I read called How To Live On 24 Hours a Day.https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22 ... mages.html


I have a "hustle" idea. I bought a big two gallon bottle of concentrated mildew house cleaner. I cleaned the mildew off my house and my mom's house. I still have 90% of a bottle of mildew house cleaner, as we live in trailers. A lot of our neighbors have mildew and they do ticket for it sometimes. I'm not afraid to cold-call or door-knock, not with my jobs lol. I already own all the stuff to do it: why not run around to all my neighbor's houses and ask if they'll pay me 20 bucks to wash their houses? That might sound low but remember they're single-wide trailers. I'd be making like 30 bucks an hour.

[ertyu]

I like this hustle idea. Take care of yourself and your health while sorting out the mold; some types are dangerous to breathe, wear protective gear esp if you'll deal with mold a lot

[Walwen]

Here's a bit of a twist!

I have really enjoyed my second job as a housekeeper for an old folk's home. The people, the environment, the benefits, everything. BUT.... I didn't have enough work to do. I work three days and really finished everything the first day with time to spare, even doing extra stuff like polishing every banister, window, appliance, and doorknob in the building to burn time....

I saw on a counter the job application for a maintenance assistant....
Then I overheard the lead maintenance man (my supervisor) say, "I don't like any of these applicants, I don't want to hire any of these people!"

Hmmm...
So I asked my boss if I could become fulltime and do BOTH the housekeeping AND be a maintenance man. He was super pleased and revealed he was already plotting how to get me to work fulltime because they all love me so much. Also it came with a raise of course, and fulltime benefits. We sat down and signed the papers the next day. But I don't start the new duties for another two weeks.

Putting in my resignation at the shelter made me feel a little guilty.... I realized after some conversations and overheard comments that I am really doing the job of two people there- for less than Taco Bell pays their dishwasher. Working 10pm to 10AM, my coworkers that are supposed to stay until midnight all just leave early "because you can handle it". And instead of scheduling someone to work the front desk from 8am onwards, they just have a gap from 10 til 2. So I'm doing the last part of 2nd shift and the first part of 3rd shift, on top of my 3rd shift. They HATE when I take a day off because they literally have to bring in two people to replace me and contact three people: tell the 2nd shift guy to actually stay until midnight, get someone to come for 3rd shift, and get someone to come in for 1st shift at 8. I really had to sit back and take that in: When I call off, they literally need to get two more bodies on the schedule and ask a third to work an extra two hours.

There is no way they'll be able to fill in the schedule well without me, and hardly anyone there is as dependable as me. But that's their problem. I'm going to go take two jobs at another place and they're gonna pay me more and I get a 401k.



This is how I set up the 401k. I hope it makes logical sense: it's my first time.
They offer both pretax and Roth contributions.
The match is 100% up to 3%, and then a further 50% match up to 5%.

I am young and in a low tax bracket. I have no crazy APR debt or anything going on.
I set up to do 5% of my income as Roth contribution. That way I get the full match and it's post-tax which should hopefully save me money in penalties later in life.

I don't go over the 5% because I would rather try to max out my Roth IRA. With this raise and increase in hours I think I can do it this year.

I haven't really been "at it" very long, the adult sphere of saving money, getting W-2s, etc. About 18 months really. I think I'm doing good but I just really want to see the numbers shoot up, and it just takes time. With this new job, it's a whole new ballpark.

Recently I've had a few different conversations where people around me treated 100 dollars as a near-insurmountable sum to save or invest in anything. Listen, I don't wipe my ass with 100 bills either. But these are conversations like, "I can't get my dental work done because the only way I can come up with 300 dollars would be to put it on a credit card", and everyone thinking that buying a 450 dollar escooter would wipe out my money. I have also had people think I am incredibly poor because I don't drive, that it's solely because I don't have the money.

It's super weird to me because all of these people buy a shit ton of fast food and are obese. Every single one that I had these interactions with is morbidly obese. I live in a weird world and culture, not the ghetto by any means but white trash trailer park yes. People think it is magic that I can afford, say 100 of art supplies once a month. But they spend 15 dollars at Starbucks and went ten times this month. And the food isn't that GOOD is the crazy part. I worked (very briefly) in a froufrou coffeeshop. If you like a flavor literally go buy the flavor syrup- it's not sorcery back there. I end up with artwork and they end up with hypertension. I could fly off the political handle but I'll refrain...


The point is, I've been at this for basically a year, and I think the ERE philosophy already has its rewards. I think a lot of people think that ERE or FIRE or frugality in general means you live like a penny-pincher until you're 65, then maybe go on a yacht until you die, and they want to have fun NOW instead. But I think I'm having more fun NOW than a lot of my peers. I don't think the Starbucks is really that fun for them. I think they suffer pain from not going to the dentist. I think they suffer massive opportunity costs. I always seem to have money for what I want, and these people who spend all their money, they never seem to have money for what they want. I don't know why it works that way.

[Chris]

Congrats on the fortuitous twist in your career path! Sounds like a positive, albeit unexpected, change.

This is how I set up the 401k. I hope it makes logical sense: it's my first time.
...
I am young and in a low tax bracket. I have no crazy APR debt or anything going on.
I set up to do 5% of my income as Roth contribution. That way I get the full match and it's post-tax which should hopefully save me money in penalties later in life.

I don't go over the 5% because I would rather try to max out my Roth IRA.

Excellent goal. But as to the employer match, those always count as pre-tax, meaning that those amounts will be potentially subject to tax down the line.

And just to play devil's advocate, here's the case against the Roth 401k. This is not advice, just information.

No matter which way you contribute, you may be eligible for the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit, depending on your situation.

[Walwen]

Thanks for the info!

I'll have to look into that tax credit.... This is the first year I'm going to be not claimed as a dependent. I should be eligible.

[Laura Ingalls]

Recently I've had a few different conversations where people around me treated 100 dollars as a near-insurmountable sum to save or invest in anything. Listen, I don't wipe my ass with 100 bills either. But these are conversations like, "I can't get my dental work done because the only way I can come up with 300 dollars would be to put it on a credit card", and everyone thinking that buying a 450 dollar escooter would wipe out my money. I have also had people think I am incredibly poor because I don't drive, that it's solely because I don't have the money.

It's super weird to me because all of these people buy a shit ton of fast food and are obese. Every single one that I had these interactions with is morbidly obese. I live in a weird world and culture, not the ghetto by any means but white trash trailer park yes. People think it is magic that I can afford, say 100 of art supplies once a month. But they spend 15 dollars at Starbucks and went ten times this month. And the food isn't that GOOD is the crazy part. I worked (very briefly) in a froufrou coffeeshop. If you like a flavor literally go buy the flavor syrup- it's not sorcery back there. I end up with artwork and they end up with hypertension. I could fly off the political handle but I'll refrain...

There are lots of different flavors of this not just caramel and mocha It scales up too.

When we semiretired we lived with my mom for awhile. It ended up not working for a pethora of reason. I had this conversation with one of my siblings. He said he wanted to retire by 50 (he was~41 at this time). Yet at the same time he could not believe we had 25x expenses saved. Nine years later guess who has 37x expenses saved and who is still working? We get along better now and are much more accepting of each other’s capacity to choose their path (aka better boundaries.).

Anyway you get away from the working class/disability check set to middle and upper middle class minds get blown by not working or not working at a job that pays well enough to support your lifestyle. Paying cash for major purchases.

I also think there are people that are so afraid of looking poor that they keep themselves perpetually broke. It’s sort of the anti-ERE. To me this life is more about no F’s given so you can live the life you design (of which you are doing an amazing job at btw. I personally love frou-frou coffee but to me that means a big two lbs bag in the mail from some third wave fancy micro-roasters of some wacky coffee collective. My way costs about the same as some stale gas station crap or a couple of K-cups. Since my web of goals involves my sweetie brewing said coffee I don’t even have to leave the house.

[Walwen]

I just wanted to post some images from some online visualizer thingies.
It hasn't even been a year, and I can't believe how poor I was when I moved out of the house.
I sure lived like a maniac- I think it mentally and physically harmed me, but was also essential for me to move on in my life.

I think my income is a little underestimated but I'm going off the numbers I remember in my head, not looking at my bank accounts or anything. However I almost certainly underestimated taxes as well.


And this is what my rough situation looks like now:

That tax number is legit, not pulled out of my ass.

Most people in my situation would spend about 300 or more a month on medical supplies, but instead I am insane. I still wish it would get lower but there have to be limits to my miserliness lol. If it's 120 now, and looks more like 300 for normal people, why was it 0 before? Well, turns out you can just not buy medical supplies and suffer for free.

A lot of places and people really switch gears when medical stuff comes into play and say "hey, pull out all the stops!" but I mean, that meant not saving anything. And yes this is all after my (very nice, and free through my mom's employer) insurance and every other trick in the book. How was I supposed to not save money when I was 18 with 0 money saved? I can go without and make it work- I can't "make it work" if I can't make rent. I looked into charitable assistance for medical stuff, trust me I looked, I have all the hook-ups, but none of the programs were for my situation, you'd have to have 0 money around or literally die without it.

It's still kinda a circular thing of "Too sick to work more, must work more to afford medical expenses" but it's gotten a lot better.

I haven't talked as much about this because I get personally annoyed with a lot of the common comments that fly out of the woodwork, but it IS one of my major goals like I mentioned in my OP.
I always feel like it's the start of an infomercial. EVERYONE seems to have this insatiable impulse to say.... "THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY!"
And you know, I agree- but it's just super duper frustrating. I'm so sick of explaining and I'm so sick of everyone having a guru or a Wikipedia-style knowledge of "But doesn't XYZ treat XYZ? Can't you just do XYZ?"

Argh! I really need to spend twice as much on medical stuff- I CAN afford it now. But I don't WANT to, and I DON'T agree with the idea of "pull out all the stops for certain things!" I'm a young guy and it's my choice how much I want to put myself through. The more I devote to medical stuff, the more of a burden it becomes. The more I spend on it, the more I want to be cured- and the more money and time I devote to trying to get treated- completing the circle. It only stops when I stop going to doctors, stop getting more and more invasive tests done- I feel a lot healthier even though I'm not, when it can just go on the backburner and I return to my life. Especially because I am very good at hiding stuff and everyone believes me when I hide how sick I am, and everyone thinks I'm getting sicker if I actually start going to doctors etc. Sometimes I have extremely petty thoughts, that I wish I had something with a big ol' fundraiser, awareness ribbon, charity 5k race type of public awareness, so that I could become a "warrior" and talk about it freely and people would shut up. Instead it's just confusing and frustrating all over- for me, but also for anyone I talk to.
I know it's easy to maybe say, "Daw, but people will be understanding if you are sick", but with my career and general life aspirations....? People's first thought is that I need to completely change my life plans and that I'm not gonna make it. I really do hide my situation from the workplace because I worry about stigma: that I might lose my job or be passed up on for promotions or treated as less competent in general.


I hope this rant will help another young person out there see something a different way, or that someone will relate.
It would be a lot worse if I wasn't an ERE type of guy. When faced with the expenses, others might just keep consuming and spending like normal, and even take out debt to pay for it. I really worry that having high medical expenses will "cancel out" not just the money numbers, but all the thought and dedication. Even more than making money or investing money, isn't ERE and FIRE in general about not SPENDING money? And you're telling me I'm supposed to spend half my rent in medical stuff, for, like, ever? I'm so immature about it lol.

[Walwen]

Hello again!

I think I am really beginning to grow into my own.

It's a long ways away- but my off-grid homestead friend has agreed to take me on as an apprentice.

Today at work, I had three conversations with three different people who all insisted I should go back to university because I'm soooo smart. And in my head I just had to bite back.... "No no.... I'm not going to university in the foreseeable future... but I AM going to go spend two months DEEP in the forest, taking care of goats and chickens, without A/C!" They wouldn't understand.

So right now I have uh, three positions at my job. Housekeeping, maintenance, and kitchen helper. I love all of it, is the funny thing. Everyone is so worried that I would hate being in the kitchen, but it's fun to me!
I like washing dishes- don't let anyone know! I'm cold all the time: the hot steam and the smell of the sanitizer is enjoyable to me. Working with water is enjoyable to me: it keeps my head on straight. There's lots of little mental games involved, at least for me, and that sort of thing is enriching. The best way to put dishes on a rack: the optimal route to put things away- recognizing in advance what'll need scrubbed more. And when I'm serving, I get to people-watch: everyone has their quirks, and it's my job right now to memorize them all. Some of the residents eat off colored plates, some of them never want ice, some of them need their food shredded, things like that.

I finished everything early, and then went and scrubbed all these long-standing grease marks off the doors, fixed a bunch of loose spinning drawer handles, generally ran around doing the things that everyone else is perpetually too busy to do. What else is youth for? And I get 8 free meals per week!

I guess all the Zen and stoic philosophy I got into as a tween is really paying its dividends, as I seem generally much happier and steadfast than the people around me. The less-aggrandizing alternative theory is that it's pretty hard to top the bad in my life. I was an honestly miserable child and did not have this experience of childhood being a "pure, innocent, stress-free time." People can't imagine that I can both come dead last in a race but it's also my personal best by a giant leap. One man has 4k to his name because he just lost 50k gambling: another man has 4k because he's gotten his first real job and saved every penny, and it's the most money he's seen in his life. Perspective. Context.

I've decided again to just, well, not do the medical stuff. I just have 0 faith that the medical system and doctor's appointments will improve my condition, compared to my 100% knowledge that it will cost hundreds of dollars in copays, and lots of my time. I haven't gotten any better, but in a way, I do get better when I just decide that I'm over it and go live life.

[Walwen]

Today my mom told me, "I'm going to give you some motherly advice. Since you are working fulltime now, I know you save a lot of money and everything, but make sure you spend money to have fun and buy things you want." Then she took me to Starbucks.

Nothing is wrong with this in principle but it kinda disappointed me. Just that I don't think she gets it.
We had gone to a hardware store and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The tetris effect had been killing me lately! At work I have been repairing walls all day long, and then come home and am frustrated- it would only take minutes to patch all those nailholes! So I finally bought some spackle and things, and the repairs only took an hour, and this wasn't some overwhelming stress for me: I was satisfied like a cat in the sun. I also window-shopped and got a bunch of paint sample cards, because I think repainting my bedroom and staining the outdoor ramp and adding traction tape is next on the list. I also got LED plant lights to replace the lower wattage light in my bathroom: the bright full-spectrum light both helps me wake up in the morning a lot when I go shower, and allows me to grow plants in a windowless bathroom, where they do really well with the humidity. I also bought an energy drink.

My mom saw these things: lightbulbs, spackle, paint samples, and just thought: overwhelming work. And an energy drink? Chemical supplement to force yourself to work more. She literally cannot understand that it makes me happy to do things and that even saving money makes me happy.

And why was she there at the hardware store? Wanting to buy a dryer because hers died. But it was incredibly stressful for her. Even a 500 dollar expense is a shock that she's going to put on a credit card, as she has almost no savings. But you know, we still went to starbucks because "fun is important." I cannot imagine the fun from a 7 dollar diabetes drink outweighs the lifelong sense of overwhelm she constantly expresses to me.

I had the same experience when I bought a nice pie dish. She just thought I must be such an overwhelmed stifled soul with a miserable overworked existence, and how terrible that I spend my money on cooking things, because cooking is another source of endless misery. I really like my pie dish and enjoy cooking pies. She said "You're just lying."

I don't pay any rent, but I have my desire to inherit this house: the most logical thing to do, imo, is spend some of my money towards making it nicer to live in for myself and my grandfather.

I guess it's just consumerism or something. When she says "buy yourself fun nice things" she really means "you clearly have money to spare, so why aren't you spending it on random toys and fast food like I do to cope with stress?" The best part is that I still DO eat junk food and buy random toys sometimes. But she just openly advocates for lifestyle creep: "you make more money now, so please go buy more junk and crap."

Even when I tell her point-blank that I enjoy doing things like gardening or cooking, she directly tells me it's a lie or that's not "really" fun. The only "real fun" has involve paying money to some giant conglomerate, watching a screen, as little physical activity as possible, and lots of sugar, apparently.