12. I'm lightly considering renewal of my professional certification. There are some problems I'd like to throw money at. This could be boredom of inactivity settling in, but it's on the radar. I still wonder if some paying work could fit my other priorities.
I think this could make a lot of sense if you can do it on your own terms. Either a light FT job or just freelancing as a consultant on a project basis (if that’s possible). If you can ramp up/down as you have time/desire I think that’s an ideal setup.
I find my problem with [high paying, time consuming] FT work is whilst it can be interesting it’s just too all-consuming. A pure salary mindset is just “on” until you don’t need it, then “off”. I’m not sure either of those are necessarily ideal, if you do actually like aspects of what you do + enjoy the benefits of having earned income to complement/regulate investment income.
Bonus if it contributes to your social concerns as well. I think an ideal well-designed life just blurs the lines between all of this stuff such that it’s less about removing earned income entirely but rather introduces it as an aspect integrated with everything vs. a primary focus.
One of my friends works at a consultancy where they build websites for non-profits.
I was surprised to find the old food pantry software maintained by a local for profit consultancy. Part of the reason they were switching, was to adopt an ERP system designed for the food pantry vertical. The prior application was custom development and too expensive to enhance.
One of the constraints I've found selling my professional skill set, is it builds upon a corporation's heavy need for control. Organizations that afford what I'm good at, use full time labor. Moving to a part time or gig base role requires retooling. I worked at a consultancy about 12 years ago. It's a different skill set.
While I'm still hoping to find local, long term people first - that search hasn't gone so well. For the most part, people with capacity for work, go to work. Especially when they're trying to achieve something.
I also think I've yet to fully unwind "I want to do this" from "this will get paid". Knowing I don't like to DIY my plumbing, doesn't necessarily mean I want to learn the latest web stack.
I switched from a smart phone to an old flip phone
I strongly considered this switch. I couldn't find a path without a large amount of hassle. Even reducing my smart phone use to once a day, I often hit barriers. Navigation. Tracking my nutrition. Checking in at the gym. All solvable, but tedious in aggregate.
I like the idea of the light phone 2, but got stuck at the premium price tag. Is my will power so bad, that I must pay $400 to disconnect? That brought me back to trying to solve my behavior with the smart phone.
The Garmin watch I picked up last week has unexpectedly reduced the draw. It sort circuits some common triggers - checking weather, reviewing my calendar or Todo list. The tiny screen gives just enough of a hit, fending off cravings.
I find my problem with [high paying, time consuming] FT work is whilst it can be interesting it’s just too all-consuming
The opportunity cost of working is my biggest hesitation. While recovering from surgery, I've had time to revisit fond memories. Very few of them are hours spent on the computer. Even if I enjoyed that time in the moment.
There are, however, good memories around those times. Relationships with my coworkers were bigger than I appreciated. There's something to sharing the effort, succeeding or failing together.
I've also been considering how quickly physical capacity can leave us. Pre and post surgery feel dramatically different. The rapid change is sobering. What if it wasn't temporary? How do I wish my physical capacity had been spent? Probably not using the computer more.
Found an interesting solution for my professional certification. I was able to move it from suspended to retired status, at no cost, via emailing with support. That closes the credential cleanly, while also buying me the option to re-activate it, for an extra year. I'd previously considered documenting continuing education hours and paying the $150 renewal fee. I hate to pay for something I'm not using, so this feels much better.
As I'm recovering from surgery, the prospect of sourcing computer work looks much less appealing. The cold weather is fading. Foster kittens are scheduled to arrive next week. I'm almost cleared to bike and lift. My wife and I are planning a container garden this weekend. I'm signed up for a couple library events each month. I have a shift at the food pantry tomorrow, as well as an event next week. I need to finish the video game I was playing while convalescing. There's lots to do, that I don't want to give up for computer time.
Surgery required me to pause just about everything in life. As I turn things back on, the surprise straggler is my gym membership. If I keep it active year long, the cost is $360 - essentially 10% of my discretionary spending budget. While that's a good deal, I don't love the recurring expense. We have gym at home, after all. So I've casually applied for a weekly floor shift at a favored local gym. I'm not sure if they'll hire for such limited hours, but it would solve my objection and throw off a tiny amount of play money. I enjoyed working at the gym while in school.
It's been about 6 months. Thought I'd do an update:
1. Money - Budget remains on track, closer to our low estimate than high. We'll land around $50k for the year, with 40% of that being medical / dental / vision. I'm hopeful those costs diminish year over year, starting in 2025. Groceries are the other big sink - trending to $9k for the year. I don't see those changing though. Indexing remains a meh investment strategy, but no plans to change it.
2. Charity - I volunteered for a weekly 3 hour shift at the food bank, over the past 6 months. We're currently fostering this year's second round of kittens. We ran into a problem a couple weeks ago, where the two conflicted with and my parents stepped in to help. A sign of over-committing. In late spring, I checked in runners at a local 10k as well.
3. Family - We get together with my parents for lunch at least once a month. I do yoga with my mom 2-3x a month. I've had a couple bike rides with my dad, though those have proven hard to fit in my schedule. He wants to go for 30+ miles, starting at dusk. We do get together to work on bikes occasionally. My wife spends a lot of time with her sister and niece.
4. Marriage - My wife and I are together almost every day. We hit a new local forest preserve this morning. There's often a weekly bike ride. We both did the continuous glucose monitor and have been learning new ways to eat. The foster kittens are also a shared activity.
5. Health - Recovery from hernia surgery was slow, but successful. I've had some other vision and headache issues. Chasing them down is annoying and ongoing. Braces continue the slow march to jaw surgery next year. My blood work and other markers are all great.
6. Exercise - I workout a lot - 10h+ a week. I'm spread waaay to thin here. My attention divides between running, biking, rowing, yoga, and lifting. I abandoned plans to buy a new bike, when I realized it's been several weeks since I rode. I've only used my rowing machine 10 times all year. I did restart the gym, at $40 a month. It gets me yoga with Mom, and I like lifting outside the house.
7. Travel - We took a short train trip during the Summer, rented a small house and explored the town for a week. Activities included hiking, kayaking, museums, botanical garden, arbor, and shopping. Credit card churning offset most of the cost. Travel is important to my wife, so I'm trying to make it work. We're very much in a WL4 mindset here.
8. Discretionary spending - I'm behind, trending to about 50% of the budget. That includes purchases that sit unused, because I'm too busy. I'll watch for deals around black Friday, but don't have unmet material wants. The time to select and integrate new things is the primary barrier. I'm busy with free consumption - volunteering, library, parks, insurance wellness program, cooking, exercise, etc. OfferUp did obsolete my Android 10 phone, so I do have a new hole there. I've got a plan explore LineageOS, but again time is the constraint.
9. Home - Neglected at best. We never got around to hiring a housekeeper. I hate to clean and take zero pride in the house. This will become a problem, unless patterns change. There are many untended minor chores. Examples include caulking, grout and screen repair. Fortunately, the town home association takes care of big stuff. My wife loves where we live, so moving isn't on the table.
10. Earning Money - Other than some credit card churning, there's nothing going on here. I browse linked in and part time jobs, but am too busy for work. Sometimes, I mull over the benefits of a short full time job. I could hire away all the home problems. However, the 2024 jaw surgery depends on my very specific insurance plan. That's a large barrier to any change.
11. Social - Volunteer work was to socialize with people sharing my values. I met some good people. Events included a dinner, an ice cream social, a golf outing, a 5k festival, and beer making. I also learned my life doesn't have space to add more close relationships. The main benefit - I alleviated my fear of retiring into a boring, lonely old man. Making a social life without work feels easy.
12. Video Games - My oldest hobby, neglected. I've played two games in the past 6 months. My backlog is over a dozen titles, with 4 of them bought in the past 6 months. I'd like to spend more time here.
13. Media - I consume 4-8 audio books per month. My interest in Netflix has waned, but I've been exploring free content from Kanopy. Generally, it feels like I've read all the books and watched all the stories. I still listen to something when working out, driving or cleaning.
Overall - things are good, but I'm over-scheduled. My freedom too strategy for 2023 focused on branching out. That worked a little too well. It's time to sacrifice some good things and focus myself. I can pick out obvious mistakes:
1. Confusing behavior I admire, with behavior I aspire to. I don't hold a renaissance ideal, for instance.
2. Saying yes to all opportunities, instead of being discerning around the opportunity cost.
3. Falling to the temptation of virtue signaling. People love to hear you volunteer.
This is basic homiletic web of goals stuff. Since most most of my life used a freedom from strategy, it didn't really come up. With last Summer's freedom to transition, the landscape has changed. Some loose pruning criteria:
1. Use my strengths
2. Build on existing relationships
3. Favor a growth mindset
4. Favor a strong barrier to entry
5. Favor activities that offer leverage
6. Minimize the need to be at a place at a time
Once unexpected implication - I cancelled the food pantry shifts. Checking people in fails most of my tests. Funny how that works. There's a path where the charity is a good investment of time, but I'd need to lean in much harder.
I may adopt well being criteria from the book Flourish. A gap analysis could point to obvious adjustments.
Or maybe I'll cancel everything and play video games all day. Now that I'm better at freedom to, I can create a full schedule of interesting activities at any time. It'd be hilarious if my end state was where I started, only with confidence I'm not missing out.
Imo just keeping your mom going to the gym is worth 40 bucks a month, let alone the benefits you personally get out of it. Cool!
That was a good thought, about the difference between admire and aspire to.
I'm curious, now that some time has passed after your continuous glucose monitor experiments, what patterns of eating have stayed with you? One I adopted based on your experience was engaging in physical activity after food, even if the activity is light. So I'm curious if there's any others that would have a similarly low barrier for adoption for me
now that some time has passed after your continuous glucose monitor experiments, what patterns of eating have stayed with you?
A picture of this morning's breakfast sums it up. Roast cauliflower, protein drink, cheddar, oats with berries and almond butter:
1. Savory breakfast
2. Eat veggies first
3. I eat 1 and 1/3 servings of a grain with a meal. I used to eat 2.
Now that's auto-pilot eating. I still have days with a pint of ice cream or pizza. If I'm going to eat junk, I have as much as I want, of whatever I want. I'd rather limit frequency than amount.
The best distillation I've seen of the CGM lessons comes from Jessie Inchauspé. Marketing aside, her work is on point:
I thought I would do more part time work when I FIREd. I had fantasized about getting a part time gig at the game store or the local shooting range. It turns out I never felt motivated to do either. I should have, in retrospect, but the idea of having to get up every day for a few hours just never spoke to me.
I think when I do it again I'll try to get the part time job RIGHT AWAY so that I don't lose the "muscle" of being some place on time. Even one shift a week would be fine, just to remember how to do it, I guess.
In contrast [edit: spelling], I started substitute teaching, where I could just pick up a shift whenever I wanted. Turns out I hated the work. I had subbed years ago, and school was totally different. Now the kids all have their phones in class, do 100% of their work on laptops, etc. Basically just totally unengaged as people. About as far from interesting as I could imagine. However, a great indicator that we're right to be home schooling.
Last edited by Salathor on Tue Oct 10, 2023 11:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
I think when I do it again I'll try to get the part time job RIGHT AWAY so that I don't lose the "muscle" of being some place on time. Even one shift a week would be fine, just to remember how to do it, I guess.
When I went back to fulltime work in 2012 after 1.5 years of freedom, I remember being utterly exhausted after each work day. I went to bed 2-3 hours earlier. Same experience when I had a full time summer job during undergraduate. However, this exhaustion only lasted a week. The "muscle" is likely easily retrained.
PS: It may be different after a longer break. It's been 8 years for me now.
Even one shift a week would be fine, just to remember how to do it, I guess.
This was my thought with the weekly food pantry shift. Turns out it screws up the whole day. I'm waiting around to go, and then depending how stressful the work is, I have zero motivation upon leaving. Part of that is on me - signing up for work that targets my weaknesses. It also means I'm taking the car, which constrains my wife's Saturday. It fails almost all my tests.
From what I can tell, part time positions aren't hiring one shift a week workers. Especially interesting ones. And a small number of hours at $15-20/hr doesn't offer a meaningful impact for me.
I think for part time to be worthwhile, there needs to be a substantial commitment. At the very least, some sort of differentiating skill. And the work itself needs to feel educational or rewarding in some other way.
I've observed some people doing paid half time positions at local non profits. Maybe viable. But, I'm not convinced it is less work than a remote full time tech job (earn to give). For a position like that, I'd also feel iffy about displacing someone, who might need income to help.
Ultimately, I find freedom around schedule and location a key benefit of FIRE. I was undervaluing it. I might not have anything to do, but that doesn't mean I'm not doing anything.
Have The One Shift first thing in the morning. It will incentivise a regular sleep schedule (you need to not go overboard on the other days if you want Shift Day to not be painful) and it gets The Thing out of the way, leaving the rest of the day to loaf around.
That's a good example of why the recurring commitment is annoying. Early morning is reserved for my outdoors stuff, before the UV index gets too high. I also prefer to get up without an alarm. 30-60 minutes late or early doesn't matter, unless you have to be somewhere.
All solvable problems, but ones of my own creation. Easy to eliminate. And it turns out I value flexibility over just about everything else.
The hard truth about my food pantry volunteering, is I don't think the impact was very significant. I saw a wealth transfer from donors to employers of the food insecure, making intolerable wages otherwise survivable. It was also a tax haven for grocers, providing an option to turn waste into lower contributions to government. One source of people in need? Falling through gaps in underfunded government social safety nets.
I'm sure the services are valuable to the individual recipients, but I found it increasingly harder to ignore the systemic faults. And especially the limits of what I was doing.
I think there's space for positive work within that framework. Specifically using it as a pipeline for people to grow out of poverty. But in practice, I don't think my contributions were doing that.
Absent systemic impact, I think the charity work itself needs to feel intrinsically rewarding. For me, the pantry often failed the test.
Fostering animals for the local shelter has been better in that way. It's fun to take care of and socialize kittens. Years down the road, we might see a picture of them all grown up, a pet in someone's home. That feels good too.
Animals obviously have a commitment as well. But it's on my schedule, in my space. That completely changes the equation.
it turns out I value flexibility over just about everything else.
Yeah, that's valid. And in the end, what's the point of reaching FI if you won't honor that.
The hard truth about my food pantry volunteering, is I don't think the impact was very significant. I saw a wealth transfer from donors to employers of the food insecure, making intolerable wages otherwise survivable. It was also a tax haven for grocers, providing an option to turn waste into lower contributions to government. One source of people in need? Falling through gaps in underfunded government social safety nets.
I saw a wealth transfer from donors to employers of the food insecure, making intolerable wages otherwise survivable. It was also a tax haven for grocers, providing an option to turn waste into lower contributions to government.
That sounds like a recurring theme for charities. When I was a student there were cheap rooms for children of "poor laborers". Curiously these rooms were well maintained, had a professional cleaner, and amenities. The inhabitants seemed to be well off, going on ski holidays and wearing good clothes.
When I was older I talked to a manager at work. He was enthusiastic about the city I studied in. He told me his nephew lived in the building for "poor laborers"! So I assume the building was a charity where rich families donated in return for a say in who was selected for the rooms.
The higher you are on the social ladder the harder the wind blows in your back. I wonder how it's a stable system.
Essentially, the less advantage a person comes from, the worse they are at leveraging a small hand up.
I saw it at the food pantry first hand. Some would arrive from Venezuela, speaking only Spanish, illiterate, with no concept of things like a county. They might even have untreated vision issues. What are they supposed to do? Some food helps, but it's far from solving their problem.
Trading broken communication with me via Google translate for twenty minutes, to update a database record??? It's hard to say that did much for anyone.
Then I look at it from the other side, as a salaried worker managing one's personal tax burden. A smart move would have been funding a donor advised fund. I could have used that tax free money at charity dinners, golf outings, silent auctions, plant sales, races, etc. I could play for less and claim to be a philanthropist at the same same time. I wish I'd done this, honestly.
Volunteering at those events is a sort of loophole. Throw on a sport coat and take tickets at the expensive dinner. You're getting a free plate and chance to rub elbows.
Similarly - as a business owner, one could donate services to the same. Essentially getting tax deductible advertising costs, with a group already vetted for significant purchasing power.
So there's this undercurrent of charity maximizers, where the mission is tangential. It's probably better than nothing. Some might call it win/win. But it's definitely not as simple as giving = good.
I guess it depends on what your goals are. If your goals are to achieve some sense of peer status and tax write offs, then the money options you listed are definitely superior if your peers are those attending those dinners. It is not clear to me that those options are superior in offering further development to the extent that you note is lacking at the food pantry.
In terms of direct impact, I have had good experiences with churches/religious organizations. There may not be much going on in your immediate area, but there is a lot going on downtown if you are interested in going outside your local area.
It seems like some type of contractor role could solve your scheduling issues, allowing you to take on projects as you please. But I'd be surprised if something like this exists in the charity world, unless you are bringing a very specialized skillset to the table.
Looking further, I've underestimated the difficulty of obtaining material benefits via the DAF strategy. Regardless, some portion of our consumption is always via charitable sources. That could be maximized.
Buying plants from our animal shelter's fundraiser was superior to Home Depot in every way, for instance. We'll also always have interest in museums, arbors, parks, gardens, libraries, etc.
There was probably a tax game to play, while we were higher income. Long term, a significant percentage of our estate remains allocated to charity.
I do think a positive direct impact is feasible via the food pantry. But I'd need to commit a lot more time. And I'd need to find that specific work rewarding, OR seek greater belonging in that giving community.
If working directly with people - learning Spanish is almost a must. And then becoming familiar with systemic support options beyond food, helping individuals to navigate them. Dipping in as unskilled labor 3 hours a week just isn't that helpful. If I wanted to learn Spanish or just loved meeting new people, it would be great work.
If I was lonely, they offer a strong volunteer community. I could lean into warehouse work, helping create a place of purposeful belonging. Simply slinging boxes would fail the leverage test, but there's a growth path available. Not that it plays to my strengths, but my interpersonal skills could improve.
Taking on some form of IT support for whatever charitable organization might be most helpful. That would play to my strengths. One does have to be committed enough to overcome the communication overhead though. At this time, I'm not.
The ultimate barrier is spreading myself too thin, more than faults in any individual charitable model. It's also possible philanthropy belongs in the admire vs. aspire bucket.
I agree with you on contracting likely being more flexible. I wouldn't be surprised to find myself retooled and doing some sort of async tech work over the next decade. I think part of my problem with employment, was holding heavily collaborative roles that required frequent nights and weekends. I really value flexibility.
