disparatum's journal

[disparatum]

I think most people use these journals to track their net worth and efforts to reduce spending, but I feel I've gotten a pretty good hang of that over the past two years. My expenses average around 800/mo and based on the 4% withdrawal rate, I will be FI in the next 1-2 months. As a 27 year old, I would prefer something closer to 3%. I cannot say that I feel or anticipate feeling very differently once I've achieved FI. This may be the nature of the particular goal (slowly converging on success without great unpredictability) or a quality of goals in general, but I've found that by the time I've achieved something, I have already "priced in" most attendant emotions. This does not seem quite universal (based on other's journals), but I've thought about this at length (and this site has certainly had a major role in that). The gist of it is that I think at some level goals become less meaningful and that most people's advice to me over the duration of my life to set them and achieve them is really just a tool I have less use for as I become more skilled. I think there are valid objections to this, certainly, but anyway.

I also have a wife and will probably have a kid at some point. So there is uncertainty there, and a certain inclination to work "just one more year." Fortunately, I have no choice but to leave my current profession of the past 7 years and move on to something else. "One more year" would necessarily entail signing a contract for 3 more years and those would be perhaps the most difficult milestones of my particular career path. Honestly, I feel I've learned the big things in my profession and additional time does not seem as useful. I don't think honing this particular skill set is necessarily worthwhile.

If anyone is interested in my particular monthly expenses, they break down to about this:
400/mo rent
50/mo utilities
100/mo groceries
23/mo internet
25/mo car insurance
18/mo property insurance
5/mo cell phone
1.50/mo email
~25/mo eating out
~25/mo beer/wine
the rest is on books/hobbies/etc

I did notice that I spent about $200 in gas over the last year which I think is pretty good. This is mostly a function of moving closer to work, bike commuting, and a personality that does not need a ton of external stimulation.

I will have a "side gig" after I leave my job that will continue to pay 10k or more per year. I'm currently active duty military and will be transitioning to the selected reserves. 10k for a weekend a month and two weeks a year would more or less meet my yearly expenses, give me very cheap low deductible family health insurance, and give me the option to make additional money by taking assignments that can last from 3 weeks to a year at will. I'm also still eligible for a pension when I'm 60. I don't see the military get suggested very often as a viable way to quickly achieve ERE (I think because to many people it seems to put a great constraint on choices and is at odds with their personality), but I have to say I'm glad I chose this route (I will note that I chose it initially for quite different reasons many of which didn't pan out quite the way I imagined. This fact has given me a lot to think about, but maybe for another post.) I graduated with no debt (positive net worth even), got paid well, and living on a ship is cheap (monetarily. Psychologically maybe not). Anyway, my decision to stay affiliated with the military is obviously one with quite a large "tail risk," but I have some thoughts on that, and I don't think it's quite as cut and dry as it seems.

The whole point of this post, and the journal in general, was to think through possible 'next step' type decisions. But I've already typed this much and still haven't gotten to that, so I'll stop here for now and continue later. In short, I have some ideas and some leads but nothing definitive, and I'm alright with that. Other people seem more concerned about me than I am about myself, but I think this is somewhat expected. My wife is open to just about anything, although I generate contradictory ideas at such a rapid pace that she has some difficulty keeping up. Keeping friends and family up to speed is even more difficult and I think probably a waste of time. Despite my penchant for to-do lists, timelines, and planning to the last detail, I am quite at peace with the utter lack of clarity surrounding the near future.

[disparatum]

Well, I originally started this journal in the hopes of getting some input into my next steps after I leave my current job, but it seems I've already decided what to do, so I'll just talk about my decision.

I was originally very opposed to going back to school, mostly because it seemed like the obvious choice, its expensive, and I felt I could teach myself what I wanted to learn. Over the past two years though, while I've gained a lot of confidence in my ability to teach myself, I've also realized that this method leads to strange knowledge gaps and a certain lack of rigor. Based on what I think I've learned about the state of the world, as well as where I'm at in my life (newly married, no children, 27 yrs old) and the opportunities available, I pursued/considered 3 things:

1. Get a trading job at a hedge fund in CT
2. Teach myself furniture making over the next two years by following this book (amongst others)--http://lostartpress.com/products/the-jo ... et-maker-1
3. Get my PhD in Policy Analysis through a think tank on the west coast

(1) paid a lot and was in an industry that I've grown increasingly fascinated with. I interviewed but did not receive an offer (2) was also something I was interested in, do-able in my current financial state, it would be a true test of whether I was really FI or not, and I would learn a tangible skill. Ultimately I chose (3). I feel it will give me a lot of tools and fundamentals that I think I was lacking trying to teach myself. The location is the second to last place I want to live in the US and going back to school seems like a cop out, but it checks a lot of other boxes for me in terms of challenge and personal fulfillment. Tuition is paid for through the fellowship, and my stipend should cover all my living expenses. I'll also have money coming in through the GI bill (which I have to use within 10 years) and a side-income . The timing seems right here (young, relatively unencumbered, able to take advantage of the extra funding sources just mentioned, and I got accepted to start this year, not next year, or 5 years from now).

My savings rate will drop from 85-90% to probably 40%, but is this even worth worrying about? I guess I'm still anxious about the future, and a part of me thinks that if I'm not gardening, building things, and becoming self-reliant then I'm wasting precious time. Clearly those things are not an all or nothing proposition, but I feel like I should be working full time on increasing my resilience.

There seems to be this pull within the ERE philosophy between nomadism and homesteading (I wish there was another -ism that I could use instead, but I can't think of one) that I'm not quite able to resolve. I think both are potentially acceptable solutions to dealing with uncertainty about the future, but each has some traits or ideals that seem incompatible with the other. I have some more thoughts on this that I'll post later, but I wonder if anyone has encountered a similar struggle trying to decide which way to go.

[George the original one]

You don't mention how your spouse fits in?

[George the original one]

It's hard to reconcile a nomadic lifestyle with a homesteading lifestyle as they're kind of polar opposites (unless you have the Asian steppes to wander around and call the whole thing "home"). A homesteader who travels is usually just called a tourist!

[jacob]

"Homesteading" vs "nomadism" is a constant struggle for me. I think it's because my timeframe is somewhere in between the rather long term (10-20 years) that favors the homesteader and the rather short term (1-2 years) that favors the nomad. I do things on a 3-6 year timeframe. I put "homesteading" and "nomadism" in quotation marks to underlines their more abstract generalizations.

"Homesteading" prioritizes accessability. If you have the tools available, you can do a lot more than if you haven't. Try to do much of anything with or as an "extreme" (the <200 things genotype) that doesn't involve the stereotypical eating out, yoga, jogging, or selling ebooks typed in on a macbook air. Homesteading implies enough tools for a high degree of self-reliance. A homesteader can drill a hole, tighten a bolt, glue stuff together, make food, store food, fix things, etc. A homesteader can access a lot of the world by virtue of having a large set of "tools" available. By "tools" I really mean anything from a rain jacket to a MIG welder. Of course, "tools" can be rented or bought and thrown away, but the former is highly inconvenient for anything but the simplest and most immediate jobs and the latter is very expensive.

"Nomadism" priorities optionality. I've currently optimized the tool part above and it comes to several hundred pounds. Most of what I own is "tools". I can dress for almost any occasion. I can fix almost anything. The only thing I'm short on is supplies. I'd have even more "access" to solutions to problems if I had supplies at hand. Being tied to a lot of stuff is very destructive to moving around though. It also requires a lot more maintenance and dealing with stuff. Owning stuff is not free. The heaviest gadget I own is a house. It weighs many tons. It's not going anywhere, so if I'm moving it's not coming with me.

So it's really a struggle between being capable to do things (homesteading) and being able to do things (nomadism). A nomad has a greater quantity of things to do by virtue of being able to move/relocate to them. However, the nomad is typically unable to engage at a very deep level because of the lack of tools. A homesteader has a depth of experience with more quality. However, the available selection is much smaller because it's restricted to locality.

Until someone invents the sonic screwdriver, I don't see how to reconcile them.

[reepicheep]

Disparatum:

I <3 you. You're me, in 3-5 years (minus the desire for a public policy PhD). I will be following very closely. How did you undergo the transition to the Reserves? Do you have that set up already or is that something you're setting up in the future?

[UrbanHermit]

I don't see the military get suggested very often as a viable way to quickly achieve ERE (I think because to many people it seems to put a great constraint on choices and is at odds with their personality), but I have to say I'm glad I chose this route

It's true it doesn't get mentioned much on this forum, but there's a long time poster on another board I read that has written extensively about this path. He has his own blog now, which was feature on ERE a while back: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/guest ... ement.html

Not quite as extreme as your $800/mo though, but not bogglehead level over-saving either.

2. Teach myself furniture making over the next two years by following this book (amongst others)--http://lostartpress.com/products/the-jo ... et-maker-1

I don't see this as mutually exclusive with either of your other two options. My grandfather did joinery in his spare time, and furnished his own home, and all of his children's homes with custom pieces that would have been insanely expensive purchased retail. He did a bunch of barter deals, and some cash sales as well. His entire setup took up an area about 8x8 in the corner of the garage with no power tools other than a table saw and an air compressor. He'd put on some talk radio (pre-podcast era) and putter away in there for hours, never saw it as work really.

[disparatum]

@jacob: Putting the "nomadism" vs " homesteading" thing in terms of time frames was helpful. I think I may also be an in-betweener in the 4-7 year timeframe. This may correspond roughly to the high competence/journeyman stage of mastery in a particular field which does foretell continuing difficulties if I do maintain some sort of serial mastery of one complex subject after another type of lifestyle.


I realize also upon further reflection that I've never lived for more than about 16 months in one dwelling or 3 years in one city. The movers came and packed up everything to put into storage on Wednesday. They will hold it for six months while my wife and I travel around the US before bringing it to our ultimate destination in CA. It's also the last move that will be paid for by the military which has served to precipitate this little philosophical crisis. Along these lines, a couple things I've noticed this week:

(1) I have too many books. The majority of packed boxes contained books. While I have purged about one hundred (selling, giving away, swapping), I still have 2-3 times that amount. There will be a larger purge when I settle down later this year. I have this idea that if/when we have children, I want him/her to grow up with easy access to books, because I want them to be curious, self-teaching, lovers of literature, etc. This, I've realized is dumb for a couple reasons: I've been thinking this for 10 years, still no kids. It's not like they'll be reading Wittgenstein anytime soon and many of my books are around this level. Libraries exist. So this is a failure in discerning between the perceived problem and the real problem (I want my kid to grow up with books in the house vs. I want them to be intellectually curious). The latter has many solutions, the former just one or two.

(2) Cleaning supplies and bottled liquids in general are irritating. Movers won't pack or ship them. They're all half full, or worse, unopened. I'll be going powdered from now on or just using vinegar (this is mostly what I use anyway, but I still manage to accumulate pledge, windex, 409, etc, etc, etc.)

The more general principle is maybe realizing that opportunity cost works both ways--in a "minimalist, optionality-abundant, fast-transient lifestyle," owning things weighs you down, can prove difficult/expensive to move with or get rid of, and may not end up being used in time. In a "owning the means of production, maximizing resources, long time horizon" type of lifestyle, not owning things places constraints on possible solutions and means forgoing good deals/values because "You don't have a use for it right now".

This leads to

(3) The concept of BIFL and opportunistic value-buying can be deceptive. In the former case, I bought 3 lie nielsen planes because I wanted to learn woodworking, know these planes hold their value and are very good, and figured I should just get something that will last a life time. Since I bought them last year, I've used them very little, rust spots have managed to appear on the shoe (corollary, taking care of things is its own skill and one that is not taught in the consumerist curriculum) and now they're packed in boxes for the next six months, and I've no idea if the warehouse is climate controlled and how the planes will hold up during the humid summer. Corollary two is that buying things as an impetus to learn something is a classic consumerist trap and it doesn't matter if you BIFL or not. In the latter case, I've also picked up a number of decent old tools for gardening and woodworking at the numerous estate sales in my area because they were a steal and now I will have them when I need them. Unfortunately the "when I need them" has not come to pass and moving them is another pain. I probably won't have room for a garden or enough room to work on projects requiring a #7 jointer where I'm moving.

I want to answer the questions and address some other points people brought up, but I've run out of time. Will try tonight or tomorrow. Thanks again!

[jacob]

I have and am dealing with exactly those issues. I can't say I have a solution or even if there is a solution.

In terms of books, I used to collect. I still recall a postdoc (I was a masters student at the time) incredulously inquiring why I was buying books when they were available at the library because "books are so heavy to carry around". I later realized that when I was transporting the books I acquired in grad school back to my parents whenever I took the 12hr train ride. This process took 6 months(!) of 40lbs+ backpacking.

My solution to this problem is to try to own very few books. It's stupid to go without books, that is, it's stupid to hold off on buying them because the price/value ratio tends to be through the roof. However, it's also very stupid to hold onto 97% of all books because the marginal value tends to be zero or even negative once you read [most of them] once. Today, I have very few books I hang onto. Less than 5. The rest are listed for sale.

Ditto supplies like cleaning fluids. I blame DW though.

BIFL makes sense if you're using the stuff, but often it's just an excuse to buy luxury items. The main goal should be to minimize cost/use ... not to BIFL.

[disparatum]

@George the original one. My wife is fairly flexible and up for almost anything. She eventually would like to settle down near her family in the upper midwest, and I would like this as well. BUT, another reason for doing the grad program is that we would like to have a kid in the near future and there will be money coming in which will allow her to forgo working for however long she might want. She does paralegal work which seems flexible geographically. I also think it would be easy to arrange a telework situation, but maybe this is optimistic. I am curious to see the true monetary burden of a child. It is hard to discuss this meaningfully/rationally with friends who have or are expecting children. I pitched the idea of letting the newborn sleep in a cardboard box rather than buying a crib and got a lot of googly eyes from new/expectant mothers at my office. One screamed at me. Another said I shouldn't be married and certainly shouldn't have kids. I later learned this idea is not without precedent (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22751415), but Jesus, you wouldn't know it from talking to these people.

@reepicheep, arranging the transition to the reserves was very easy. Not sure how it differs branch to branch, but affiliating immediately (so that there's no break in service) entitles you to free healthcare for 6 months as well as a monetary bonus for certain designators (this may be navy specific). So I will be going immediately into the reserves, but should be able to arrange it so I can make up drill periods in the fall since my plan is to travel around the US for the next 4-6 months. PM me if you have more questions.

@UrbanHermit, I have run across articles by Nords previously. It's definitely a viable path that almost no one considers. He stayed long enough to receive a pension, and this makes it even easier. Yet, everyone I speak to in real life plans on immediately getting another job after their first retirement. I also plan on trying to keep the woodworking hobby going in parallel. It is easy to build it up in our minds and convince ourselves that we need this much space and all this equipment. It's much more useful and cheaper to make do with what you have. So that is the goal.

@jacob/bigato, getting down to 5 books still doesn't seem doable even after my decision to offload a great majority at the next available opportunity. It will be a real challenge. Ultimately I think you are both right. Over the last two years, I have taken to moving my thoughts and annotations from the margins of books to a document on my computer. I transcribe meaningful passages and responses and arrange them by category. This has helped obviate the need to keep the originals around because I can refer to the document instead, and forces my to synthesize and distill ideas. I've also found trying to pack an entire book's worth of meaning into a few aphoristic phrases to be incredibly challenging but also worthwhile in the long run in terms of storage density and understanding.

Thanks again for the responses.

[disparatum]

9,500 miles driven (+ flight to Hawaii)
92 days on the road
23 friends and relatives visited
22 states visited
17 books read

I meant to post monthly updates but seem to get sidetracked fairly easily and with each passing month the number of things to cover seems more and more daunting. I am in Hawaii for the next week or so, my wife and I having decided on the spur of the moment to stay with some old friends from when we lived here a few years ago. We got the plane tickets with some left over airline miles. Biggest cost is food and the airport parking in San Francisco. There were cheaper options off-site, but I thought long term parking at the airport might be safer (I did not anticipate this particular cost when we packed all of our belongings for the next 5-6 months in the back of a VW Golf. It actually hasn't been much of an issue, as most of our time has been spent in the middle of nowhere but became a bit of a headache while visiting family in San Francisco where apparently you can't leave anything valuable in your car in his part of town without it being broken into.)

Overall, our road-tripping expenses are about 90% of our cost of living while living in an apartment. I was thinking it would be less, but visiting friends in large cities can be somewhat expensive. So, the costs are just different. If we were doing this long term (a year or more), I think costs would continue to go down.

Living out of a hatchback has not been that difficult, and over time we've become rather efficient at packing/unpacking. We've had no problem finding many cheap/free campsites along the way and the weather has cooperated for the most part. It did rain all night while camping in the Badlands, and I was glad I had sealed the seams on our tent before getting there. We quickly realized about a month into our journey that we brought too much stuff and jettisoned a few boxes worth of clothes and other unneeded things along the way.

I realize in hindsight this was a matter of trying to apply the same optimizations that worked well while living in an apartment to living out of a car. Stockpiling as a means to reduce trips to the store clearly doesn't make as much sense when space is limited and you are driving past stores all day long. And while the heuristic of wasted money = wasted resources usually works well at an individual level, it doesn't necessarily apply at a world level, and I think I am slowly getting over the idea of 'losing money' when I give things away that I can't use any longer. I think that this came up in another thread, where jacob said that as he accumulates money, he's more willing to give things away than take the time to reduce carrying costs. The 'lost' money means less. I think this is as much a wealth thing as it is a philosophical/spiritual thing, but I suppose I am not far along enough on either path. I think I'd like to work on this more. Money, for better or worse, means much more to me than it ever did before (ERE). The feeling becomes particularly acute when visiting/staying with old friends. It's obviously very generous of them to let us stay with them (for free), but that doesn't mean I want to go bar hopping and pick up the tab (because what else is there to do for fun besides go to a bar?), and yet I feel like I should. I try to provide value in some way--fixing their dishwasher, diagnosing a broken washing machine (not worth fixing), cooking meals--but I can't get over the desire to cancel out debts as quickly as possible. Certainly they are welcome to stay at our place at some later date, but are they going to want to stay in my tiny ass apartment with minimal furniture and no tv? Are they going to want to read and take walks while they're there? Cause that's a lot of what I do. I developed an intense aversion to debt far before I ever read this website, and I'm starting to feel that it is antisocial in some ways.

Mostly, what I've realized during this trip is that my interests and habits have diverged so markedly from most of friends that I've begun to feel somewhat isolated. This has been masked for the last two years because I lived in an apartment with my wife and we are perfectly content being with one another but has become very clear as I've sought to maintain past friendships over the last 3 months. In many cases, they are simply not interested in what I have to offer (while I feel like I should be interested in what they have to offer or at least repay it in kind). I almost feel like I've tricked them a little as I am clearly not the person they invited to stay with them.

We are not sure yet what we want to do once we return from Hawaii. We have a few weeks before we are house sitting in the LA area (this will be a good opportunity to find an apartment). The southwest is even less hospitable in the middle of July, but we would like to visit some of the parks in that area.

Anyway, I have more thoughts, but I'll stop here.

[disparatum]

I have had the opportunity to do a little sailing both in San Francisco and here in Hawaii over the past few weeks. I am getting more and more interested in it and think I will look into getting more involved once we are settled in LA. A friend in San Francisco recently got a deal on a used JR 24 (I think that is the model), and we took it around the Bay. I had to do a fair amount of sailing while in college, but of course the fact that is was compulsory soured my attitude toward the whole thing and I never ended taking full advantage of the opporunity to learn. I did some local stuff in a 26' boat and one one week trip along the east coast on a 44.

Anyway we sailed counter clockwise around the bay from the marina toward Sausalito then to the Golden Gate Bridge. A lot of the terminology was coming back and I helped where I could but mostly just asked a lot of questions. Here in Hawaii, we sailed along the southern side of Oahu with a friend of a friend who owned a 27' trimaran. In a previous life this guy was a middle school chemistry teacher but is now more or less retired and does boat building on the side. He had previously set the record for quickest transit from LA to Oahu (5 days, 22 hours. I think the record now is 4 days and something).

You quickly get into open ocean out here and it brought back some memories of the only time I've ever gotten slightly sea sick (sitting in the cabin of aforementioned 44, trying to dead reckon in choppy seas). But overall it was a great time and I asked a lot more questions. I think I would be more interested in cruising than racing, but that might be because I don't know much about the racing side of sailing. But maybe when I leave LA, we will try the sailing lifestyle. Maybe I can get a good deal on a boat in Greece when the time comes ; ). I don't anticipate buying one in southern California, although buying and maintaining might force me to learn (my friend in SF had quite a time getting his boat from the location he bought it to the marina where he'd rented a slip, especially with the only help being two friends that had never sailed before). Nevertheless, I'll probably look for ways that requires lower initial investment.

[jacob]

Might have been a J/24? That's a very common one-design boat on the sf bay.

In terms of sailing for the sake of sailing (not necessarily going anywhere but back home), I liked racing a lot better than cruising(*). With racing you're constantly adjusting sails and course to go 0.2kts faster or point 3 degrees higher. The whole crew is working to tack 1 second faster than the other boat to gain the tactical advantage. You're also constantly breaking equipment and wearing out sails (I'd never race my own boat ). Consider it a crash course in sailing. In cruising, you generally don't care about any of those things. I recall more than one episode when we were racing hard and being wind-blocked by some big-ass boat (naturally faster): "Are you guys racing?!"... "No! (lifts beer)" ... "Would you mind tacking to give us some wind?" ... "Sure no problem" ...

(*) Possibly because the cruising I got myself on involved the skipper tying the tiller to a winch and trying to make small-talk for 5 hours... AAAAAAAHH!!!! (Hey, at least I sounded more American than the hipster from Oakland with the fake British accent. Accent-win!).

I'm comparing daysailing here. More than once, while racing, we broke stuff on our race boat that had no spare parts. The worst case here was abandoning the race and motoring in (actually it got far worse than than ... because once the motor failed) but you get the point, Cruising is more aimed at navigation, anchoring, and fixing stuff. Based on my 2 years of sailing experience, I know almost nothing about that, but I can make your boat go 0.1-0.2kts faster and I won't panic if you're sinking (been there done that, twice).

Ocean racing is somewhere in between. I suppose it depends on your position... cruising favors skippering and navigating. Racing favors trimming and foredeck. Invert if you're lazy/like beer.

TL;DR - Racing = spending a lot of effort and equipment to go 0.2kts faster. Cruising = having fun just being on the water, hmm ;-P