Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I still think about money quite a lot, which is maybe odd considering our spending patterns have drifted inexorably towards the mainstream. I probably already moaned about this somewhere in the journal, but nursery school in the UK is about £14,000 per year for 2 children part time (25 hours per wee...

Just checking in for the first time in a while again. Almost a year this time between log ins. I don't write a personal diary or anything, so this is my closest analog to read back as a snapshot of what I've been thinking in the past - even though it's increasingly impossible to find anything ERE ab...

Hi Egg, how is learning software going for you? In case you're still interested, I think it's going pretty well. Considering I basically couldn't code at all a little over a year ago, I've learnt a huge amount in that time - more than I've ever learnt in any other job, I think - and doubled my sala...

alex123711 wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 27, 2021 7:55 am

What did you use for learning? Or was it mostly on the job?

I had a 12 week bootcamp at the beginning paid for by work, which got me over the hump of the real basics, and then almost everything else from day to day work.

Revisiting this decision, it turned out to be a fun move. I've already had a couple of full iterations through the 'wow, I used to know so little' cycle in the space of ~6 months, and I'm sure what I know now will turn out to be hopelessly miguided/naive in short order too. Quite liking the intensit...

You have a hugely different background to mine, although I could certainly make some case à la Philip Larkin that my parents fucked me up in their own way. What you said did resonate with me, though. I do agree with the general thrust that empathy/compassion is an underrated quality (at least in 'th...

Began tracing first tattoo design. It feels good that all areas in my web of goals are bubbling with activity. A bit different but in a cool way. I had my first tattoo recently (in my late 20s) and everyone working in the tattoo shop just seemed super positive and like they genuinely enjoyed what t...

Swinging past ERE for the first time in a while. Cool to catch up on reading what others are up to. To the kind commenters above: ... Best of luck to you and her. Thanks ellarose24 :) You're right it's tough, and her stalker actually rang up again this week after being off the radar for a while. I'm...

Belated congrats. Nailed it, my man.

Western Red Cedar wrote: ↑

Sat May 15, 2021 11:44 am

Trip Report - Wenaha River

Gosh, that's absolutely glorious. Beautiful

Mental health stuff sounds like a horribly shit experience. ... Hey ertyu. Sorry for not acknowledging your post for a while, but thanks for your suggestions. Really appreciate guys like you going out of your way to be helpful on these forums. I guess I neglected to say it, but the doctor did actua...

Just clocked that LivingAFI has posted a mega update, which reminded me to update my own journal: https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-update/ Kinda like an ERE forum journal, but all in one post. We don't hear enough about the post-FI life imho. Found it a super resonant post....

Sabaka wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:26 pm

@Egg @Ertyu

Congrats on all of it. I don't know how your peers found it, but you sound very relaxed about your initial training - it's not meant to be that chill (unless the army's gone soft of late)...!

Smashing the financials too - good job, Sabaka.

DH jokes neither of us being worth anything as a “trade in” This made me chuckle. Honestly, I find the OP question difficult to compute, perhaps for somewhat similar reasons to what you mentioned about wanting to keep your DH around even in a divorce scenario. I'm nowhere near you in terms of marri...

Thanks @Fiddle, @WRC! Initially, I had a bit of a tough time with second kid psychologically. The emotional connection just wasn't there from Day 1 in the way that it was with our first. I only dare admit that because I've finally come to feel affection for the litte fella now he can smile. Also bee...

Apologies for the mega-slow reply, but thanks all. This definitely resonated with me: any experience is going to increase your market rate so fast it doesn't matter much what it is. When that effect starts to saturate after a couple of years, you'll have a better idea... I'm pretty restless when it ...

I don't think that it would be possible for someone who never coded professionally to land a contact. Maybe with a 2-3 years of experience, if you really work hard to learn some particular tech stack that's currently hot, and that knowledge shows in interviews. Fair enough, but for clarity (I can s...

Most of the UK public sector IT work is outsourced to India. Do you have a source for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, but anecdotally, having managed UK (central) Government IT projects, although plenty of the technical delivery was outsourced, not once did I see that outsourcing being to India....

Hey nomadscientist. Thanks for the thorough reply. A couple of comments back: My prejudice is also that UK public sector (excluding maybe some defence and intelligence applications) is a joke but any work experience will make you much more employable than no work experience. Yeah, I feared as much. ...

After a brief break from working, I'm planning to re-enter the workplace, this time as a career changer doing a software development apprenticeship. As it's a UK governmental thing, I'm expecting to be working on some kind of public-facing web-based service, which I understand is likely to involve a...