Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Ha, the thesis progress was more along the lines of "really wonky, a quarter done and probably won't stand up to close scrutiny but there's at least an outline." Good thing I'm not on any deadline to finish! March 2024 update Grinding away. I won a student design competition and a scholars...

After some more planning, I'll be free Tuesday-Thursday June 25-27 and wandering around the island, can be anywhere accessible by foot/transit!

Is anyone interested in a meetup sometime during the last week of June?

@rube, try university residences that operate as hotels in the summer like TMU and UofT. Looks like TMU charges about $160/night. You could also camp at Bronte Creek Park ($50 + transportation to get there) or Indian Line Campground ($60 but has TTC access). You can rent camping gear from MEC or I c...

February 2024 update : This month felt like nothing but baking, so here's what happened this month (spot the AI-generated image): Finances: https://i.imgur.com/TyeW6VT.jpeg Social life (recipe below!): https://i.imgur.com/eFwzv8y.jpeg Lentofu progress: https://i.imgur.com/dYvKvoh.jpeg Thesis progre...

I'm not sure if it'll work on a gravel bike, but isn't a bike+kickstand already a tripod? Seems like you could get away with a bit less work by using the bike for gross positioning of the easel.

January 2024 update Not much to report on, a lot of projects in progress. No more nap counter as I've fully adopted the habit. I installed Unhook and Pockettube on my browser which hides Youtube recommendations and lets you sort subscriptions respectively, turning the subscription feed into a categ...

Nthing the comment of staying as broad as possible. Over half of my first-year cohort didn't graduate in the program they started in. In my graduating class, over half of us left the field within five years or never worked in it. The odds are against you knowing exactly what you're going to want, th...

What is your time-vs-value tradeoff looking like? Some things save time but not money, and others save money but not time. There are very few consumer goods you can buy that are actual productive assets. For me, from most to least rewarding, by multiples of savings over cost: - An engagement ring......

@mathiverse: I came up with a recipe that attempts to minimize the amount of time spent standing over a pot. Cheesemaking recipes seem very idiosyncratic. - 1.3L 2% milk (makes 150g-300g cheese, depending on how hard you press it) - 1/2 tsp/2g calcium acetate dissolved into 1 tbsp water (or calcium ...

LibreOffice takes regular expressions, which is absolutely killer for me.

Obligatory plug for Libby/Overdrive, which your public library probably supports! You can also use the Microsoft Edge program for the "Read Aloud" feature and apply it to Project Gutenberg books.

December 2023 update and year in review December Naps: 4 Portraits: 30 Ever since being interrogated by students for career advice, I've been thinking about pithy "carrot vector" phrases for WLs. WL1 - "What if you had every dollar you ever earned, available to spend again in your wa...

@chenda, it depends on the currency and coin. In Canada, all coins are magnetic as they're either plated steel or nickel. Although after looking up US currency composition, my US pennies are probably worth more in melt value!

- Free walking tours. Get paid via tips to exercise and meet new people. There is competition for this though, professional tour guides often run these tours and will even pay tourism websites for referrals. The ERE advantage here is being able to offer more niche stuff like bike, geology or wildlif...

November 2023 update Naps: 3 Portraits: 20 Two money saving tips I've been using this month: Deodorant - the bit that is embedded in the plastic carrier can be extracted. Poke it out with a toothpick or scraper, suspend the bits on some flat plastic wrap above a bowl and microwave it for 5 seconds....

Thanks for the recipe, I tried it but it really wasn't to my taste. There's something about oat texture that just screams sweet to me. Maybe it would be better if I turned it into scrapple.

Could you please share the recipe? Savoury oatmeal always seems to fall flat for me so I'd be interested in trying a known-good recipe.

As far as I can tell, the message that bloggers put out was "anyone can do this," but the message that people received was "a specific kind of highly compensated knowledge worker can do this." I'd imagine that the next big frontier for FIRE is shifting from the salaried worker de...

I ended up at an office building slated for redevelopment. That might be a good way to get started on the hunt. Most of the businesses there needed to move, and it seems like quite a few were choosing to downsize but didn't have enough stuff to justify selling (I also ended up with a pile of untouch...

October 2023 update 4th journal anniversary. Naps: 3 Portraits: 74 (excluding Inktober!) My 16-year-old, junkheap-salvaged microwave died due to a blown fuse. I considered repair, but it was really worn out at this point. Instead I asked around and got two replacements lined up from a company downs...