Loutfard's journal

[ertyu]

good good
congrats

so many people have the wrong approach, you have to get people with something they WANT and are motivated to work towards. you have to persuade them that they'll be ok and it'll be ok. otherwise you get this situation where you might get buy-in from "half" the person--but if the other half of them thinks it will be a struggle and they will be deprived they'll keep struggling against themselves and kicking and screaming and backsliding (ask me how i know - this is me with eating well and so on). your approach was exactly right.

[loutfard]

https://somethingnutritiousblog.com/lentil-burgers/

These are incredible:
- healthy
- cheap
- vegan
- easy and fast to make
- tasty
- very forgiving in terms of ingredients
- easy to freeze
- keep rather long in the fridge or even without cooling
- easy to eat on the road

As long as there are lentils and a bit of whatever flour is around in them, these work out great. Anything else is optional. I love to make them with some cumin and red chili paste for example.

My dear wife is super enthusiastic about them too.

[loutfard]

I'm starting to realise what a close friend had told me long time ago already:

I already have a less than part time tenured, low stress, meaningful government job, with a salary above the average full-time salary.

This means I already have most of the ERE freedom right now. Full financial freedom? Not yet. Fairly probably, our savings rate will make that a reality too somewhat closer to normal retirement age...

[Western Red Cedar]

I already have a less than part time tenured, low stress, meaningful government job, with a salary above the average full-time salary.

This means I already have most of the ERE freedom right now. Full financial freedom? Not yet. Fairly probably, our savings rate will make that a reality too somewhat closer to normal retirement age...

What is your motivation for leaving work? What is your vision of life without a traditional job or career? What would your days, weeks, or months look like?

[loutfard]

What is your motivation for leaving work?

- No intellectual challenge. Everyone who knows me tells me my brain is exceptional. I have no use for most of the exceptional parts at work very much, if at all. That challenge I'm used to finding outside work.
- I mostly work with children. That gets challenging with age. That would be neigh impossible to change.
- Silly rules creep. Impossible to change.

What is your vision of life without a traditional job or career? What would your days, weeks, or months look like?

I'm slowly working on this ERE web of goals of mine. A very rough sketch of a few contours. I'm seeing my thoughts evolve. That's probably logical, coming from FIRE to ERE.

I am happiest working on medium term somewhat self-directed technical projects sprinkled with some nonconformism and/or art. That works best in a small team or a kind of a confederation of individuals, a herd of cats. I have quite a number of very diverse projects under my belt already. If this sounds very vague, that's because I'd rather not expose myself too much.

Some longer term people projects would hopefully be my aging parents, my godchild, my partner, our favourite little nephew and friends.

I'd also be very happy leaving this earth knowing my net contribution to humanity was positive, and my ecological footprint relatively small.

[guitarplayer]

That would be neigh impossible to change.

In Scotland they spell this 'nay' (I know you like languages)

Have you given any more than casual consideration to moving across to Latvia when you wrap up your work?

[loutfard]

Have you given any more than casual consideration to moving across to Latvia when you wrap up your work?

Yes, obviously, we might move then. From a FIRE perspective, the numbers look as if they'll work out in a few years.

From an ERE perspective, there are many more things to consider. I've not completed that web of goals exercise on my own yet, let alone together with my significant other. Some things I already know would need consideration:
- The legal retirement age here is 67. Any early retirement below the age of 63 might have a very severe negative impact on my very generous government pension.
- Medical care in Latvia is ok, but not superb as where we live now.
- I already have an absolutely stellar work/life balance. Should I concentrate on optimally using the giant galaxy of time off it affords me to build a semi-ERE?
- ...

[ertyu]

- I already have an absolutely stellar work/life balance. Should I concentrate on optimally using the giant galaxy of time off it affords me to build a semi-ERE?
- ...

My answer to this would be yes. It's a mistake to wait to move in that direction until one pulls the plug completely. One finds oneself with no income and no skills. Much better to begin building any skills you plan to keep relying on while still having some sort of income.

[loutfard]

My answer to this would be yes. It's a mistake to wait to move in that direction until one pulls the plug completely. One finds oneself with no income and no skills. Much better to begin building any skills you plan to keep relying on while still having some sort of income.

The answer obviously is yes. The question was more like "and forget about the ERE bits until the earliest possible formally allowed early retirement date."

[loutfard]

I'm building stairs at our countryside place. Beautiful, sturdy and cheap. Never done anything even remotely like it before. It's a fun challenge, with treads in a turn. Expenses so far have been about 250€, including some more materials than strictly needed. Those I will use on other projects around the house.

My wife is still at our primary residence, working her job. She'll join me in a week, together with my parents. They've been our greatest supporters on our countryside house project. We bought them the plane tickets and will host them. Really looking forward to picking them up from the airport in their old car. They gave it to me a few years ago after I helped them negotiate the price of their new car down by several thousand euros.

[loutfard]

I just bought clothes for the first time in ages. 1.13€ for the polo shirt. 1.57€ for the shorts. Incredibly rich selection at the thrift shops here.

[ertyu]

Western European charities accept clothing donations and resell them to eastern european second hand stores for cash. Where I am from, clothing is also to be had for cheap. You do have the requisite resellers who would pick over the store first, but if you aren't pretentious and don't care about what brand your clothes are, clothing is cheap. Second hand textiles are cheap, whereas anything manufactured is expensive. Therefore, traditional fiber crafts - making quilts, reuphostering old furniture with sewn together patches of second hand denim, making various pouches, wallets, hanging wall holders, etc - pay well. So does trying to figure out how to make common household goods from textyles vs. other materials.

[loutfard]

Western European charities accept clothing donations and resell them to eastern european second hand stores for cash.

The interesting observation for me being that second hand clothing from western Europe is more expensive in the west, and cheaper and more plentiful in the east. Even if in the west, the few reuse shops are heavily government sponsored. Oh well, another geo-arbitrage opportunity I guess.,,

[hunterweir]

I'm enjoying your journey & wins so far! Your suspicion that you may have BMI driven sleep apnea and need to make weight loss a priority is one I've had myself for a while. How is your web of goals is shaping up? Those two seem to be the one-two punch I need myself as I'm trying to kick start my journey. Cheers

[loutfard]

How is your web of goals shaping up?

I've seen my WOG evolve a lot. My thinking on my current main job in particular has changed a lot. I plan to spend some time updating my web of goals, in tandem with making the common one with my wife more explicit. The plan is to do that during the our common long holiday and have something tangible and up-to-date by the end of August.

[loutfard]

Long time no journal post.

The person I already call my wife and I are planning to getting married soon. Very limited ceremony. Just my parents and one sibling plus spouse and child. My wife also decided she wanted a wedding photographer and a wedding dress. The plan is to have a big party at our summer house with plenty of family and friends in a few years.

My wife is starting to appreciate and my ERE mindset more and more. She's getting more comfortable getting into it herself. As an example, when my parents were visiting at our summer house, my wife took my mother to a second hand clothing supermarket. She's still saying how much she enjoyed that. Seeing my wife and my mother enjoying themselves in such a frugal spot was a really happy moment for me.

In more mundane ERE news:
- I have found good quality lentils at 2.87€/kg . Belgian EREmites: https://www.colruyt.be/nl/producten/24838 . Disclaimer: my only relationship with them is as a retail customer.
- My wife has found a sub-150€ wedding dress online.
- We have not used a sharing car for the past two months. The 200€/month budgeted for that goes straight into our very modest stock portfolio.
- We still occasionally use a food waste app.
- Getting married will yield us +- 1100€/year in net tax advantage.

The elephant in the room is still my sleep. I still need to have myself checked for apnea. Once my sleep problem is sorted out, I should be able to spend some of my plenty of spare time on generating more income. That should accelerate ERE by a lot.

[jacob]

As an example, when my parents were visiting at our summer house, my wife took my mother to a second hand clothing supermarket.

Hitting a couple of thrift stores is pretty much a must-do tradition when my parents come to visit. The savings "pay" for the tip. They buy $80-100 worth of clothes that would be $1000+ retail basically filling the suitcases for the way home.

I've personally gotten lazy. Instead of hitting the stores myself, I buy "by the lot" on eBay. There are people who will do the buying and sorting for you, so I buy e.g. "A 10 sweater lot size L" in one go. This is likely the end of a good thing as the market achieves efficiency.

[loutfard]

Food, housing and breaking conventions are today's topic.

Food. We've gotten rather good at quilting a hodgepodge of food sources into our web of goals:

- supermarket A: fresh produce in two food waste app runs a week at 80% off sticker price. Very good quality, if close to expiry. We eat, process and freeze it all.
- supermarket B: specialist vegetarian meat replacements, plus some fruits, vegetables and bread: two food waste app runs a week at 80% off sticker price
- my parents: apples, berries, eggs, jam, pumpkins, tomatoes, walnuts, zucchini when in season
- online bulk order at specialist supplier: more walnuts, almonds and cashews
- two nearby parks: apples, even more walnuts, chestnuts
- chick peas, rice, spices, herbs: very price competitive Asian shops we pass on the way home
- beans, cheese, chocolate, coconut cream, cookies, dry pasta, eggs, flour, lentils, milk, mushrooms, oil, quorn, pureed tomatoes: local supermarket C, very competitive retail price
- around our summer house: cantarels and next summer also porcini from the forest, honey from one neighbour, and hunted meat for my father from another neighbour

Yesterday my wife discovered a nearby hotel is selling its breakfast buffet: bread, lots of cheese, croissants, danish, boiled and baked eggs, freshly cut vegetables and three kinds of yoghurt. We tested it today. Plenty for three or four days of breakfast and lunch at about 0.5€/meal/person. This looks like it's reproducible.

We also mostly stopped drinking alcohol. We try to keep a few bottles of beer and wine around for visiting friends and family, but we hardly touch alcohol ourselves anymore.

We mostly stopped going to restaurants. If my wife has any restaurant cravings, my wife now usually sends me off to collect from a local restaurant with popular veggie offerings using a food waste app. A 5€ order will usually feed us both, and then some. She'll eat the occasional dish with some meat. I eat the veggie stuff. If no food waste app is available, we sometimes go an have fries. The rare restaurant visits are almost exclusively reserved for three types of occasions:
- meeting friends who strongly prefer it
- our anniversary
- a few times during the month in summer when we're both at the summer house. Luckily, restaurants there are between half and a third the price.

Web of goals wise, all of this doesn't just fit in. It feels like custom patches made for quilting. We pay like beggars. We eat like kings, but healthier. When working from home, the food waste app runs force me out of the house, down the hill and back up again with the spoils.


Housing. I know I've been sharing thoughts about this before.

A lot is to be liked about our life in a quiet corner of this wonderful, walkable, safe and rich university city near the very heart of Western Europe. We have wonderful neighbours. Hardly any cars passing through our street. Central square is ten minuts on foot. One of the best connected railway stations in Europe is twenty minutes on foot. Plenty of concerts and lectures. The bus to the national airport stops 200m from our front door.

It's a great spot to live, but very expensive. At one point near the beginning, my current place cost me about fifteen years (!) of my full yearly net wage. At the time, I threw all my savings at it, took on zero and low rate debt with parents and public institutions, and optimised by financing at ridiculously low interest rates and letting two rooms to young academics against city rules. Now the illegal tenants are gone and my wife is sharing in the mortgage payments. I have over 2/3 equity in it now, and mortgage payments are a very manageable 13% of our current income.

Our investment portfolio is super small, under 50k€, because we prioritised the summer house in my wife's home country. I built it extremely efficiently in terms of both price and ecology. We're both very happy with it, except for the fact that I built it too big. Financially, many would tell you this was done very cleverly. In hindsight, we were lucky with excellent timing in terms of interest rates, land value, construction materials and labour pricing, and inflation in general. A 200 m2 super insulated eco place on over 2ha of land in a super beautiful spot with some tourist appeal. It will soon be paid off, but that does not make it more ERE compatible.


Breaking conventions. Pippi Longstockings is my hero!

I had started writing here about people wearing a red and a green socks, introvertion and people scared by what others might think. That will have to wait for a few days to weeks, as I am knackered.

[loutfard]

I'm overweight, on the edge of obese (BMI 29.5). As I've mentioned before, I suspect this makes me suffer from sleep apnea. I've let this fester for far too long. Doubleplusungood. Time for action.

I find consciously eating limited portions very hard. My mind wanders. Before I know, there's another serving on my plate. Intermittent fasting on the other hand sounds more compatible with my mind. Food on uneven days only is about as clear as it gets. I speculate that will work better for me. Plus, if I may believe the limited medical research, the intermittent fasting might yield more positive side effects.

So wish me luck. Intermittent fasting it will be!

[delay]

I find consciously eating limited portions very hard. My mind wanders. Before I know, there's another serving on my plate. Intermittent fasting on the other hand sounds more compatible with my mind. Food on uneven days only is about as clear as it gets. I speculate that will work better for me. Plus, if I may believe the limited medical research, the intermittent fasting might yield more positive side effects.

So wish me luck. Intermittent fasting it will be!

That sounds like a steep way to start. Curious to learn how skipping whole days suits you.

I started more slowly, first stopped eating breakfast. A month later I was at 14:00 - 20:00 eating windows, and finally narrowed to 18:00 - 20:00. All of that just three or four days a week. Since starting half a year ago my weight dropped from 30 to 23 BMI. Hard to tell if it's purely fasting, I also switched to better quality food, like avoiding sugar, buying unprocessed meat and drinking raw milk.

Best of luck with fasting!