Finances
We have been throwing a lot of money at house projects. That should slow down significantly by the end of the year. Part of our agreement with buying a smaller, cheaper house was that I would not sweat every expense when it came to upgrades. So here I am, not sweating. It does all look amazing, I can’t lie about that.
We have agreed to start tracking our spending more closely once again, starting next month. We'd let that slip over the past couple years. As FIRE or semi-ERE becomes more of a reality we'd like to get a better handle on how we're doing, savings rate wise.
Despite the high spending, the net worth continues to tick up, thanks to investments. It now sits at about ~420k (plus our paid off house). That makes me be a lot more sanguine about the fact that I could be getting laid off next month.
I am feeling really good about our situation overall. Especially when contrasted with one of my best friends who recently visited. He and his wife have great jobs in the Bay Area. He makes almost $200k/year plus gets another ~50k/year from vesting stocks, and his wife is roughly in the same boat.
But it seems like he has more money stress than I do, given his expensive house, his expensive house renovations, his new Tesla, and his kids. He told me he absolutely needs his high paying job to feel secure right now. They also might move to an even more expensive house ($2M) if his kids get into a specific elementary school. I am confident he'll be fine because he and his wife are smart, hard working, high earners -- but I am glad to not have those kinds of headaches.
90% is good enough for me
When my friend upgraded his bathroom, he put in an expensive Japanese toilet. My guess is it cost between 1-2 thousand dollars. After using my $100 toilet from Menards with a $50 bidet attachment, he announced that my setup was 90% as good as his. All it was missing was warm water and a blowdry function. Though he admitted he doesn't even use the blowdry function anymore.
This made me happy. I’ll take 90% as good for 1/10th the price wherever I can get it.
Sister saga
My little lister visited for 4 days in October. It went well in some respects and poorly in others. The good was that, when sober and not hungover, she’s a delight to be around. I think she had a really nice time overall.
The bad was that she does her very best to not be sober. She walked off the plane drunk. When we got back to the house from the airport I commented about how impressed I was that she was only traveling with her little backpack, and she went “Oh whoops, I forgot my checked bag.” So we
She also went out, alone, until 1:30AM a couple of the nights. She would just go, “I’m going out to make a phone call!” and come back 4 hours later. When I asked her one morning how long she was out for, she said one hour. It feels kind of slimy, but I was able to check when she came back on our ring camera, which is how I know she was lying. It was jarring to see how effortlessly she lied to my face, despite knowing that's just what addicts do.
On the drive back to the airport, I tried to gently confront her. I said it seems like she’s still drinking a lot, and that if she wants to go to rehab I would help her with that. She said she was not interested.
There was a long awkward silence after that. It was hot in the car, and what came to mind next was an article I’d recently read about how many babies die after their over-tired, in a hurry, absent minded parents forget them in a car. So we talked about that and it was more pleasant than our previous conversation. Thankfully the airport is close to my house.
I gave her an old laptop I no longer needed, hopefully that can help her with her job hunt somehow. The core family is slowly warming to the idea that she needs professional treatment, so we’ll see how that progresses. As far as this related to me and ERE, I will not be giving her large chunks of money anytime soon, as was once on the table.
Infertility saga
Still no luck on the baby front. We are going to do another embryo transfer (two at once this time!) in early 2024, then one more round of IVF if that doesn't work. This won't be cheap, but it won't derail us financially. The war chest can fully support these further efforts to produce a baby Smashter.
I think this will be our last go at this. But we also said that a year ago, and here we are, back on the horse. I know at a certain point age makes the decision for you, and you have to stop. We are at least a half decade from that, so I'm hoping we decide to actually stop after this round and put our energy into other things.
This process throws a wrench in early retirement or semi-ERE plans. It might be really helpful to have a job should we need to look like a good, normal couple who should be allowed to adopt a kid. The healthcare from a job might be important for ongoing fertility costs as well.
That said, I am getting pretty sick and tired of making any decisions based on a hypothetical baby. At this point we've already stuck around at bad jobs for infertility coverage and wondered if we should stay at jobs based on their parental leave policies. We also moved into the previous neighborhood where we used to reside in large part because it seemed like a good place to raise a family.
I almost feel like the second we just start living our lives however we want and don't give baby stuff a second thought, a baby will somehow appear.
Reading
“Super Pumped”, the book about the rise Uber and it's CEO, Travis Kalanick. Interesting look at the kind of character who can build such a sprawling empire and the corners that have to be cut to make it happen. Overall though, this style of book no longer appeals to me as much as it once did. At times it felt little better than if I'd just read the CEOs wikipedia page. The author also did a lot of moralizing in a way I found grating.
"How to Want What You Have" by Timothy Miller -- I
posted a long review on the forum. I really enjoyed it and it's making me happier. That's pretty much an ideal scenario from a self help book!
I am almost done with a George Saunders book of short stories called “Liberation Day.” He’s truly a master of the craft.
I got a cheap copy of "The Odyssey" at a garage sale and I just started it. It's time. It's long been one of those books that I wanted to want to read, but never really felt the urge. Now, for whatever reason, I actually want to. I'm enjoying it so far.
Fitness
I continue to work out a bunch and also finally found a semi-consistent basketball game.
I unfortunately tweaked my back yet again while playing basketball. My goal from now on is simple — don’t do that anymore. I am not quite sure what that means, but I do know that if I am playing basketball on a Sunday I won’t do an intense workout targeting my hips and lower back the Friday before. I knew I was feeling tired and creaky and injury prone before the game started, but I decided to go 110% anyway. I have to accept that my hard earned ability to get myself to train hard even when my body is exhausted and sore is starting to be more of a detriment than a benefit.
Cooking
I haven't been doing much lately, as I'm happy to eat whatever delicious meals DW makes plus subsist on rice, beans, bread, tofu, oatmeal, various greens, and protein powder. But I am hereby making a public commitment to make one of the Indian recipes @Dave sent me after our last ERE march. I've been inspired by all the skillathon chatter around here, and I think I want to level up my cooking game. Chef Smashter coming soon!
Writing and our AI overlords
In a past life, I pursued a job as TV writer, and I got quite far. I won a writing award, got a fancy agent, worked for well known writers at a big name studio, and got plenty of praise. I've also done a lot of content writing for businesses, essay writing on forums and elsewhere, and journaled daily for a long time.
I’ve long wondered if there were writing gigs that would spark joy for me in an early retirement. Then, as ChatGPT burst onto the scene, I was quick to abandon that notion. It seemed like the large language models would soon overtake me and everyone else. What was the point of caring about writing anymore?
While that still might be the case, especially for certain kinds of writing, I've realized I will always want to write regardless. The AIs have been able to beat us at chess for a long time, yet chess is as popular as ever. I think that people will always want to read interesting writing generated by humans. I know I will.
I enjoy doing deep research dives on topics that affect my life and then writing up my results in an accessible way. Maybe that's something I can lean into more when I have more time and energy in early retirement.
What next?
Despite my renewed commitment to writing, I still have not made much progress on my "freedom to". My current plan is pretty basic -- take time off to decompress, start trying different things, and see what speaks to me.
This reality is even reflected in individual credit ratings.
!