Finances
$444k in investments
$270k in house equity
I had a very productive finances chat with DW a couple weeks ago. We agreed to tighten up our spending in 2024, especially around eating out and clothing. We are going to try budgeting again for the first time in a long time. The budget will be high and I’ll probably be too embarrassed to post it here. We should still have a greater than 50% savings rate, though, assuming we hold on to our jobs.
Job
The last few months have been a rollercoaster, even by early stage startup standards. We had a round of layoffs at the end of December, which I survived. It’s hard to say how much life the company has left, but hopefully a big new product idea the CEO has will resonate with the market.
While getting a severance and a fresh start wouldn’t have been the worst thing, I was happy to not be laid off. I want to keep the job at least until we get through some fertility treatments happening in the first half of the year. I make almost $150k without having to put in many hours, so it’s a pretty sweet gig all things considered.
The problem is it generates all the ennui you’d expect from a mostly meaningless tech job, and the soul yearns for more. One way I’ve found to enjoy my work time more has been to jot down funny or absurd things that happen, for potential use in future writing projects.
I also had an old friend I used to work with reach out to see if I could help with his business on the side. Details are scant right now, but I’m curious to see how that develops.
Personal website migration headaches
I have had a blog on Wordpress.com for almost 15 years. I recently decided I wanted to switch to Wordpress.org, so that I could get more customization options. That led me down a path of figuring out how to set up a new hosting provider. I went with Bluehost, and then started the process of figuring out stuff like updating DNS records and A records. I do not recommend this unless you have a lot of DevOps knowhow and infinite patience.
I was using free LLMs (Claude and ChatGPT) to help me through the process. They were great for comparing and contrasting different hosting providers, but pretty bad when it came to the nuts and bolts of switching domains. It kept saying confusing things, and when I’d be like, “Wait, are you sure?” it would say, “Sorry, that was a mistake. Actually try this.” I eventually just started chatting with a real human via Bluehost’s customer support and that was much better. Humans, even those who clearly don’t speak english as a first language, provide better tech support than LLMs, at least with my skill level at prompting.
But even with that improved support, my content transfer was stuck in the mud. People would claim to be doing things behind the scenes that were sure to work, but nothing did. I got fed up after my site had been down for over a week and I was told to use a confusing looking Wordpress plugin to complete the transfer. At that point I asked for their help with getting everything back exactly as it was before, and I got a refund on my Bluehost purchase. Finally, I had my site back.
This experience has given me a greater appreciation for what the DevOps people do at my company.
Fitness and fancy new gym membership
We just joined a fancy, expensive gym. It’s also a social club. The total cost for the year will be
~2/3 of a JAFI . Appalling, I know. Now I will spend some time justifying this decision, in the grand spirit of MMM buying a Tesla and then writing 1500 words on why that doesn’t go against his underlying frugal ethos.
Since moving to a new city, I have had a hard time finding a consistent basketball game to play in. I also haven’t made any new friends. My whole life, I’ve been able to find friends and jobs and fun things to do through my basketball games and leagues. I spent the last few months saying to myself that I was going to find a basketball game or find a different way of socializing but I just…didn’t. I am now accepting that it’s a blessing that I have a proven way of meeting people that I find fun and enjoyable and that I should just do that even if it costs me some money. The simplest way to go about that was to join this gym.
The monthly fee covers both DW and myself, which is nice. She cancelled her expensive subscription to a local yoga studio because she can take classes at the new gym.
I know from experience how expensive moving is. If this experience means we enjoy our time here more and deepen our ties to the community and make a friend or two, we are much more likely to stick around.
DW and are both full time work from home. This facility has very nice co-working spaces. It’ll be good for us to get out of the house more, even if we’re just working down the street.
The real kicker is the giant initiation fee you pay to join. If we stay for more than a year the cost is much more reasonable, as that fee is one time only.
So, this year my half of the cost is ~$3000, and it drops to $2000 next year if we stick around. That gets me all the basketball I could ever want plus a fantastic weight room, steam room, cutting edge recovery tools (
I particularly love these things), sauna, co-working space/lounge with coffee and tea, salt water pool, rooftop lounge, and many planned social events. It’s also a great place to take any friends or visitors.
Have I been able to stay in great shape in the past just doing pushups and pull-ups and running and using very cheap gyms if I want to lift heavy weights? I have, my whole post-college life. And I’ll happily go back to doing that if I don’t make any friends or connections and it feels overall not worth it. But for now I’m excited to give this a try, and so is DW.
I can also see a future where I get some sort of discount or free membership by offering to give basketball lessons to members or their kids. The club has golf pros, personal trainers, masseuses, spin instructors, etc. But nothing in the way of a basketball related offering to accompany their very nice basketball court. Could be an opportunity there. Ditto with DW using her yoga instructor certificate to teach a few classes in exchange for membership benefits. We’ll see!
Reading
I just finished The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. I absolutely loved his book A Gentleman in Moscow, so I sought out his other two books. If anyone else finds themselves in this position, well, you can probably just stop with A Gentleman in Moscow. I think it stands head and shoulders above his other two novels. And The Lincoln Highway is loooooong. It’s not bad, just not great. Same goes for his book Rules of Civility.
I started two books gifted by family over the holidays. One is “Agents of Chaos,” about the underground press and counterculture movement in the US in the 60’s and 70’s. The other is “The Creative Act” by Rick Rubin.
I also need to pick The Odyssey back up. And I want to check out Deep River by Karl Marlantes, per gravy’s suggestion. Marlantes’s book Matterhorn is one of my favorite ever.
Lighting up my basement office
I have long been interested in using artificial light to boost energy and stave off SAD during dark midwest winter days. I recently upped my game, inspired by this recent article by an author I like titled
YOU NEED MORE LUX. I used about 40 standard LED bulbs from my previous home office plus several mega bright LED lights to get the lux (lumens per square foot) at my desk to over 10,000. (Measured with a $30 light meter I got off Amazon). I love using the super extra bright space for an hour or two on grey winter days. The project cost a couple hundred bucks but provides a serious energy boost, especially during those post lunch doldrums. Not sure if it’s placebo or not, but I am enjoying the new setup.
Getting sick too much
I will end on a grumpy note -- I am currently sick with a cold. Sneezing, snotty, sore throat, etc. Nothing serious, but enough to annoy me and to disrupt my sleep for a few days. I think this is the 3rd or 4th time this has happened in the last 6 months. It's driving me nuts! I used to pride myself on basically never getting sick. I am in good shape and get plenty of sleep and take walks in the fresh air every day eat a well rounded diet. Theories:
- I am hanging out with my friends and families tiny, sniffling kids a lot
- I have been going to indoor gyms frequented by many strangers
- I am missing something in my diet or supplement regimen
- I am just getting older and this is part of life (late 30s)
- I catch it from DW, who has been sick a lot too, and she gets it from god knows where
- I am exercising too intensely, too frequently? This latest bout happened right after almost making myself throw up from doing incline sprints on a treadmill
I want to start monitoring how often this is happening, and what precipitates the illness, a little more closely.
Hope all y'all are staying safe and healthy out there.