Re: 7Wannabe5-Take9-One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts
Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 7:02 am
@llorona
Thank you for your kind words.
Thank you for your kind words.
---the more you know, the less you pay
https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/
https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewtopic.php?t=12683
Clearly, this is the camp in which I fall. However, it is also quite clear that my barrier(s) to (1) are psychological rather than functional. I could obtain a full-time-job-working-for-other paying more than $40,000 year quite easily. I am not inherently lazy and will spend all day building a stone wall or tutoring disadvantaged kids or reading thick books. I have a degree in mathematics, have done coursework in economics, and my C.P.A. with graduate degree in Taxation super-salaryman father taught me about compound interest when I was in elementary school.Jacob from the blog wrote:To successfully retire early, you need to fill these three requirements
1)You must make enough money and be able invest it well.
2)You must be able to budget your spending.
3)You must be able to enjoy living without work.
(You could argue that 1) is two things, but if you don’t make enough money, you can’t invest in the first place, so it’s effectively one criterion.)
Let’s see what happens, when some qualities are lacking...
Those who got (2) and (3) but lack (1) will do okay, but they will never accumulate enough money to be financially independent. Likely they will just work at little from time to time. They will never retire.
Since you're someone who always seems to be spinning a variety of plates, I'm curious about how you conduct your accounting of income/expenses for 1 eco-Jacob purposes. As my streams of income/expenses and WoG has expanded, I've found my own accounting has become more and more convoluted for purposes of eco-Jacob.7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2023 11:14 amWhat I do want to do moving forward is get my own spending once again under 1 eco-Jacob PPP adjusted = $12,000/year and get some new and interesting ventures/activities up and spinning in my lifestyle. The very simple metric that will allow me to know that I am heading back towards balance in alignment with my own core value system will be my level of distracted dollar store cookie eating vs mindful delight in homemade fresh plum napoleon.
The surplus cash could dramatically change lives of those kids you tutor. There's also potential to affect change within the individual corporation, subverting the institution.
I don't entirely disagree, but the U.S. market/system is such a cluster-fuck, it's difficult to even get a hold on rational pricing. However, it seems like the rational cost of an MRI is approximately equal to the timber value of a 60 ft softwood tree after 20 years growth. So, plant a tree could be just about right.Scott wrote:I think access to modern healthcare effectively breaks a naive 1 eco-Jacob strategy. Short of declining potentially dramatic improvements in quality of life or lifespan, the best one can do is take offsetting actions. Maybe plant a tree after getting that MRI.
I could also chug a 5th of Vodka and drive around in my Smart car on the chance that I might run down a serial killer.Scott wrote:Maybe you help build an AI technology, that moves a manual decision process into a technological box. In the process, you encode some existing social bias. Due to that, it can now be legislated against, allowing regulation that dismantles the previously hidden discrimination.
I want to thank you for offering this suggestion, because thinking through my response strongly confirmed my take on 5 levels.Scott wrote:The surplus cash could dramatically change lives of those kids you tutor.
Hah, this got me laughing out loud. You've seemed corporate curious in recent posts. I thought I'd offer the best arguments I've found, in favor of joining the collective. I am 3 years removed now, so it's possible I have rose colored glasses.
Hey, now you made me laugh out loud! I can see how my posts might have read that way, but really it was much more like I was metaphorically giving up on love, deep compatibility and desire and considering a dull marriage-of-convenience for the purposes of better health insurance acquisition. The hilarious thing is that the other thread I recently started was because I was also literally considering a dull marriage-of-convenience to an affluent partner for the purposes of better health insurance acquisition.Scott 2 wrote:You've seemed corporate curious in recent posts.
Actually, two worlds with which I am extremely familiar since I spent my childhood until age 12 in Livonia (perhaps the most white bread commuter suburb in the world at the time ) followed by upward-with-the-Jones' movement to two even more affluent suburb/exurbs, and I either lived or worked in Ann Arbor area from age 19 to age 49. My DD32 was recently employed as a boutique head-hunter for some of those fast paced startups. I've only been (intermittently) living, gardening, and teaching in extremely economically depressed areas for the past 9 years, but that is also about when I joined this forum.The skills you are studying could net out much more than $40k/year, nestled into a climate controlled cubicle. Maybe a plodding insurance company in Livonia, or an fast paced startup in Ann Arbor. It'd be a short drive from your students, but an entirely different world.
I just read that book too! And I absolutely agree that $1000 invested to prevent a family with young children from being evicted can be hugely influential and also efficient towards preventing much greater, harder to fix problems down the line. It has just been my experience that by actually being there in person, trying to teach the kids some actual skills, or taking needful action in the moment like helping a kid who has been dropped off at school with no coat and burning up with fever, I can be even more effective/efficient.Poverty, by America
They highlight how fragile life can be for those young kids. A few hundred dollars often makes the difference between stability and a collapse that takes years to heal. Or maybe never heals.
Gotcha. I agree that we're more aligned than opposed. My newest free thought is that there should be a new version of ERE known as Anarcho-Eco-ERE, which would basically be Eco-ERE minus any (or as little as possible to be realistic) reliance on Corporate Capitalism/Stock Market. I just started reading Emma Goldman, and she is already my new heroine. Clearly, I have always been of an Anarchist bent, but I just didn't know it due to ignorant assumptions I made about the movement. This also explains my long-term Like/Hate relationship with Libertarian philosophy. I tested as highly Eco-Anarchist on the LeftValues quiz.I'm not a pick from 100 values type of person, but I'd say we're more aligned than opposed. I'm just less of a free thinker. There's an ease to knowing exactly what's happening this year. Throw in the perks of corporate life, and given my temperament, it's not so bad. If I can get up without an alarm and make it to yoga class, I'm ambivalent about what's on the screen I'll inevitably be staring at.
Well, I used to describe my ideal lifestyle as The Adventure Cottage Library, so that does sound appealing (if you sub out black coffee for herbal tea), but I would really prefer to be city mouse/country mouse poly-home-orous, and I'm not particularly interested in continuing to live by myself in a domicile, now that I've given it a whirl. My sisters, our kids and I are all planning to put down some sort of footprint in the northern woods and water realm where we usually vacation in the summer, so that would be some of what you described.chenda wrote:I always think you'd like to live in a cosy cabin deep in the woods near a small town with book clubs and herbal cafes...or is that just me ?
That sounds marvellous7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 5:48 pmMy sisters, our kids and I are all planning to put down some sort of footprint in the northern woods and water realm where we usually vacation in the summer, so that would be some of what you described.
I think it's the same, for me, in that I trapped my mind into thinking that my situation would be fundamentally different when I achieved a 4% SWR. I figured once I had all my time liberated from working FT I'd be living my best life. Semi-ERE is a good reminder that I'm still working through a lot of stuff- motivation, skills, emotional, meaning, etc.
Yes, it's possible to formulate any idea in any number of ways: principles, laws, algorithm, framework, constraints, ... Some formulations may be easier than others. More importantly, the preferred formulation is likely subjective. For example, some will prefer a set of rules, others will prefer the principles.
That's how I've always done it. I've never had an itemized budget per se. I consider such tools to be too simplistic. Ditto the idea of having a meal plan.
Financial capital is analogous to physiological capital. It's a lot easier to make more when you already have it. S-curves apply to both. Taking baby-steps on the left side of the curve only builds capital slowly if at all. The ROI is low and so the leverage on effort is inefficient. The financial analog to a non-ideal weight is debt. As such it takes extra effort to get out of it. All that effort is cumulative because interest keeps compounding. It's better to get out of it fast than putting the effort off.
They're different formulations of the same thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpo ... at_it_does so it does not matter whether one is motivated by ethics, values, ... or metrics when it comes to the actions one actually takes. If it quacks like a duck...
Yes, we need to practice at the work we would do even if we weren't being paid. Or that's not even quite right, because sometimes "being paid" itself can be fun or rewarding, perhaps to the extent that it resembles the "Create a Yield" principle in permaculture.Bicycle7 wrote:I'm also appreciating about my semi-ERE strategy right now of intermittent/part-time work the fact that I'm not minding, maybe even enjoying some intermittent work that gets me out into the world, interacting with/helping people (secondary Fe) and learning new skills. I've been fairly miserable when working FT, though lately, it has felt like a pleasant life enhancer to work a few hours here or there, PT. The akin being, hard dieting as the FT work, feeling hungry and dissatisfied, and the PT being over a longer period of time building up practices around intuitive eating.
The analogy between working to make money/budgeting and working-out to burn kcalories/conventional dieting is easy to make, although obviously somewhat weak because human physiology is subject to homeostasis. I frequently track my overall spending and my kcalorie consumption, so I've often wondered why I am fairly "good" at being frugal and fairly "bad" at dieting. It might just be because all my favorite vices are quite inexpensive. In spite of the obvious downsides, such as loss of "erotic capital" or the hassle of hauling around the two holiday hams attached to one's ass all day, studies indicate that overweight and obese humans are just as happy as those who have a lower weight, and I think this "discovery" is one of the many factors that leads to the extremely high likelihood or regaining any weight lost through dieting.The phenomena of regaining weight, after dieting, in the subsequent 5 years, could be likened to people who FIRE, fail to find a meaningful structure post-work, and go back to working full-time a year or two later. Not because they enjoy it per se, but because they didn't find something better.
Right, I was being a bit rhetorical and lazy with this question. More like I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice/handy for me if somebody created a list of 12 ERE Principles akin to those for Permaculture and those found in this book on Intuitive Eating?" ( I also think a Pattern Language for ERE would be cool.) Luckily, I have an electronic copy of "ERE". so it didn't take too much effort to ascertain that ERE is a philosophy book about strategy, and the Renaissance strategy is based on a combination of Consilience and Resilience. The principles of resilience are modularity, diversity, and slack (loosely coupled feedback processes.) Some principles of consilience (from the internet) might be integration, progressive unification of knowledge, independent inquiry, inductive reasoning, pattern observation. The Strategic Principles in the book are Modular Design and Contingency Goal Setting. The Tactical Principles in the book are Identifying Needs and Wants, Building Block Construction Method, and Appropriate Response.jacob wrote:Yes, it's possible to formulate any idea in any number of ways: principles, laws, algorithm, framework, constraints, ... Some formulations may be easier than others. More importantly, the preferred formulation is likely subjective. For example, some will prefer a set of rules, others will prefer the principles.
Yeah, I never follow meal plans or attach fixed amounts to spending categories. Usually when dieting, I just assign myself a daily allotment of Kcals to be spent according to my druthers and this "works" in the sense that my weight goes down in rough accordance. I track spending in categories, but only concern myself with monthly or yearly tendencies. It has been my experience that both my weight and my spending go up when I don't track them, but "out of control" spending for me is around U.S. poverty level and "out of control" weight for me has gone much higher.jacob wrote:That's how I've always done it. I've never had an itemized budget per se. I consider such tools to be too simplistic. Ditto the idea of having a meal plan.
As I mentioned above, this is a tempting analogy which I have often considered myself, but it breaks down pretty easily, or can become dismaying in many different ways. For instance, a study revealed that the most highly represented personality types in eating disorder clinical setting were INFJ and INTJ (both with 8th function Si), likely due to tendencies towards harm avoidance and perfectionism AKA the pessimistic flavor of irrationality. This is how my extremely health concious, extremely slender multi-millionaire dysfunctionally-miser (as opposed to functionally-frugal) friend ended up in the hospital seriously ill from drinking too much waterFinancial capital is analogous to physiological capital. It's a lot easier to make more when you already have it. S-curves apply to both. Taking baby-steps on the left side of the curve only builds capital slowly if at all. The ROI is low and so the leverage on effort is inefficient. The financial analog to a non-ideal weight is debt. As such it takes extra effort to get out of it. All that effort is cumulative because interest keeps compounding. It's better to get out of it fast than putting the effort off.
Exactly! The Purpose of What a System is What it Does would conclude that the purpose of the conventional diet and fitness industry is to relieve consumers of their money and leave them in exact situation where they started, generally in very short order, or 5 years max at 99th percentile. IOW, evolutionarily designed mechanisms towards homeostasis beat delusions of infinite will-power hands down each and every match. This is why focus on health measures that may render an overweight or obese individual metabolically healthy although overweight/obese may likely be more productive than those that focus on weight loss as mechanism. Although, this may become moot due to the new highly effective drugs on the market, currently at $550/month out-of-pocket minimum, but likely to reduce in price.jacob wrote: If it quacks like a duck...