White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Where are you and where are you going?
oldbeyond
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by oldbeyond »

From my experience, blending beans/lentils seem to make them easier to digest. This can either be spreads like hummus but also in stews. We’ve sprouted mung beans, the sprouts also seem easier on the stomach, especially if given a short stir-fry.

We’ve grown lettuce and some herbs in hydroponic tanks with good results. At our latitude that means electric lighting in the winter months, but it can be integrated with your home lighting, serving several purposes. The water, containing a bit of mineral fertilizer, can be use to water house plants once it has to be changed. Tanks can be DIY:ed and light sources can be bought reasonably cheaply.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

@Scott2 @Lemur

I've tried all of the preparation tips for beans/lentils. I do soak the soybeans prior to cooking for tempeh as well. At some point down the line maybe I'll give lentils/beans another shot in small quantities. I think @Scott2 hit the nail on the head that beans/lentils are a nice supplemental protein source, but are too high in fiber to use as an animal protein replacement if you are eating a very high protein diet (a typical meal for me is 35-40 grams of protein, so not really practical for any plant based protein other than tempeh/soy). The lentil recipe I used was from the ERE blog and I think I had 1-2 servings of lentils per meal if I remember correctly (about half the protein came from lentils and half came from cheese). I've stayed away from some of the highly processed plant based protein powders because the nutritional aspects can get a little wonky when you're artificially consuming more plant protein than you physiologically should be able to.

In terms of tempeh being too labor intensive, I actually find it very manageable if you look at my instructions in the Soy Processing thread. I have made great strides in efficiency over the past couple of attempts. Soak overnight like regular beans, then cook in instapot like regular beans, then drain/evaporate excess liquid, then spread on baking dish to allow to cool, then mix with tempeh starter powder, wait 24-48 hours, then harvest tempeh and refrigerate/freeze for later use. I don't dehull the beans which is the most labor intensive step. I eat a lot of tempeh (5.5 ounces/160 grams per meal) and I can still make 2 weeks worth of lunches in one batch. I might borrow my roommate's instapot so I can double that to a month's worth of tempeh in one batch. Yes, you still have to cook it again prior to consumption, but total labor that's involved is comparable to if you gut/clean your own game/fish or harvest/process your own fruits and veggies prior to consumption.

I like greek yogurt and go through about 2 quarts per week, so for me making yogurt is more labor intensive than tempeh. 1 gallon of milk turns into about 2 quarts of greek yogurt after straining for ~12 hours and I only have one instapot that is yogurt mode capable, so I'd have to do that weekly. It might be something that I still do, but the amount of labor involved means I'd be doing quite a bit of work for only saving a small amount of money each month. If I had the ability to get milk without going to the grocery store then that would be a different story.

Re: the frozen fruits/veggies. I do use frozen fruits and veggies at the moment but I'm transitioning to more canned goods. This is also a bridge step to eventually growing and processing my own bounty.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Asush wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:15 pm
Interesting to hear you've had success and found it straightforward, I will look into it again. Do you reuse the spores/ culture? And if so can you do that for a while/ indefinitely?

Have you tried making seitan? I find it straightforward and convenient since the ingredients are dry, and it is a good source of protein.

You've also reminded me to look into microgreens again. I tried growing small lettuce/ spinach plants on my window ledge but that did not go well! One thing that has worked for me with produce is to make a few jars of sauerkraut ~once per month - it's not fresh but has other benefits and allows me to stretch time between grocery trips a bit longer. I keep the jars in the fridge which might not work for you (although they wouldn't spoil in the case of power outages - they'd just continue fermenting faster)
Here are the instructions for the latest batch I made: viewtopic.php?p=247487#p247487

I have a large bag of tempeh starter that I keep in the freezer. I imagine it will probably last me the entire year since I use only 2 tsp of starter per end product that yields about 2 kg of tempeh. I have read it is possible to allow some tempeh to spore and then pulverize the result to make your own starter, but I haven't tried it yet. I use Raprima brand tempeh starter which I think is imported from Indonesia. I tried the Cultures for Health tempeh starter from Amazon at first but got poor results, so I recommend using the real deal stuff from Indonesia at least until you get your process down.

I haven't done any of my own fermentation other than tempeh, but lacto-fermentation is definitely on my list of projects to try at some point. I haven't tried making seitan or miso either. Microgreens with a grow light are very easy to grow indoors in my experience.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

I've gotten a thrill seeing how low I can get my spending since I started closely tracking every expense again over the past few months. I look forward to the end of the month when I can write up my total spending, savings rate, net worth, etc on here. However, since cooking all my own meals has become pretty much routine, there aren't really any more drastic reductions in my food spending. It used to be that I got a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day if I could look back that I cooked all my meals and didn't spend any money. Now that has become routine, so the thrill has faded.

I actually think this is a positive development and necessary for me to move towards the post-consumer perspective. Although the satisfaction with reducing spending was important to provide motivation in the initial stages, ultimately deriving purpose from not spending money is just the other side of the same consumerist coin. I need to get comfortable with the routine/monotony of low spending because that boredom will force me to do the actual work on other activities to provide more purpose within a WOG framework.

Scott 2
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Scott 2 »

white belt wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:56 pm
ultimately deriving purpose from not spending money is just the other side of the same consumerist coin
Your journal is like watching someone else solve my problems, in fast forward.

Jacob has talked about cooking that makes restaurant food unappealing. I think this is key for preventing regression, once the novelty of earning a monthly low score has worn off. Rather than feeling monotonous, one is excited for their food, made their way. Cooking presents a daily chance to try something new, with higher quality ingredients than any restaurant meal. I also make conscious effort to avoid palate fatigue. Eating the same thing every day is great, until it's not.

Obvious applicability to all skills noted here.

I still get a thrill from checking the monthly money. Is my system working? Do I make any changes for next month? It's something I worked hard on. I don't see the appreciation wearing off. I debate between - is that consumer lock in, or enjoying a skill I developed? Talking to my parents about their retirement lately, I lean towards the skill option. There's so much to know.

oldbeyond
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by oldbeyond »

I’m still somewhere in the no mans land between WL5 and 6, but my cooking is relatively strong. To me it helped to take a step back from optimization and approach food preparation in a more playful manner, focusing more on creating great meals. Learning cost-saving techniques came naturally as a byproduct and improved skill make simple dishes palatable since the execution is better. It’s common now that I get to cook while others offer to do (to me) duller tasks when meeting family and friends, and I sometimes get provisioned with ingredients in return for cooking a meal out of them. Replicating the quality of the food we eat in the marketplace would be very costly and much less rewarding.

I’m a decent home cook, far from these master chef-style semi-pros, but restaurants have lost their allure to a large extent. Some labour-intensive stuff that I can’t be bothered with might be nice now and then, and novel flavor combinations fun, if rarely matching the classic ones in the long run.

I intend to utilize the same pattern/strategy for other skills I want to develop. It’s easy to get sucked back into the local maximum of “efficient consumption”.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Scott 2 wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 6:18 am
Your journal is like watching someone else solve my problems, in fast forward.

Jacob has talked about cooking that makes restaurant food unappealing. I think this is key for preventing regression, once the novelty of earning a monthly low score has worn off. Rather than feeling monotonous, one is excited for their food, made their way. Cooking presents a daily chance to try something new, with higher quality ingredients than any restaurant meal. I also make conscious effort to avoid palate fatigue. Eating the same thing every day is great, until it's not.
Well I still feel like I'm solving some of my own problems in slow motion so I'm glad others find this useful. I guess cooking has made restaurant food less appealing, but it's also clear there are many foods I can't replicate at home. To me, certain cuisines are easier to cook at home than others, so it's much less likely that I'll go to a Mexican or Italian restaurant anytime soon because in my experience I can create a 90% solution to most dishes I would order at such places. More exotic or labor-intensive things like Asian foods requiring special equipment and ingredients might still have some appeal at restaurants, although homemade sushi is next on my list to learn because my roommate has made it before. Getting a "good enough" solution at home is also more appealing when I consider the alternative of having to travel to a restaurant, wait to be seated, wait to order, wait for my food, etc etc (especially due to the reduction in service and quality of restaurants in the COVID era). I used to do a lot of takeout food for convenience but now it's more convenient to just batch cook meals or whip up something easy at home.

It's not that I will never go to a restaurant again, it's just that those occasions are now limited to 1-2 times a month in social or dating settings. Before doing this cooking challenge I was way overestimating how many meals I need to eat out for social reasons. At this stage in my life, nearly all my meals are eaten alone at home or packed to eat at work.

Scott 2 wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 6:18 am
I still get a thrill from checking the monthly money. Is my system working? Do I make any changes for next month? It's something I worked hard on. I don't see the appreciation wearing off. I debate between - is that consumer lock in, or enjoying a skill I developed? Talking to my parents about their retirement lately, I lean towards the skill option. There's so much to know.
Right, I guess I should differentiate between something like active portfolio management, which can be quite rewarding depending on temperament, and just tracking expenses to play the "how low can I go" game. Eventually the latter game loses it's appeal when the new spending level has been normalized.

oldbeyond wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 6:05 am
I’m still somewhere in the no mans land between WL5 and 6, but my cooking is relatively strong. To me it helped to take a step back from optimization and approach food preparation in a more playful manner, focusing more on creating great meals. Learning cost-saving techniques came naturally as a byproduct and improved skill make simple dishes palatable since the execution is better. It’s common now that I get to cook while others offer to do (to me) duller tasks when meeting family and friends, and I sometimes get provisioned with ingredients in return for cooking a meal out of them. Replicating the quality of the food we eat in the marketplace would be very costly and much less rewarding.
I took a two-pronged approach, combining the optimization batch-cooked meals for the workweek with more elaborate/exciting dishes on days off when I have more time to prepare them. Both types of meals have their place because I don't want to spend all of my free time cooking. Before doing the cooking challenge I had the batch-cooked utilitarian meals down pretty pat, but I didn't have the more exotic recipes to break up some of the monotony of the other meals. Now I have those in the rotation along with a few more utilitarian meals, so I can keep things fresh. I find I enjoy rotating between recipes every few weeks and now I have the flexibility to do that whenever the mood strikes me. I also test new recipes whenever I get craving for a specific dish that I haven't made before, then after 1-2 attempts that gets added to the rotation.

Dave
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Dave »

white belt wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:36 am
Well I still feel like I'm solving some of my own problems in slow motion so I'm glad others find this useful. I guess cooking has made restaurant food less appealing, but it's also clear there are many foods I can't replicate at home. To me, certain cuisines are easier to cook at home than others, so it's much less likely that I'll go to a Mexican or Italian restaurant anytime soon because in my experience I can create a 90% solution to most dishes I would order at such places. More exotic or labor-intensive things like Asian foods requiring special equipment and ingredients might still have some appeal at restaurants
I'm not sure which cuisines and dishes you are referring to here, but if you like such cuisines, Chinese/Thai/Indian are generally doable if you live in a city of some size. I spend half my time in a Midwest city with a population of around 100,000 and there are several grocery stores with an impressive supply of various Asian ingredients. I've observed this in numerous cities of such size. In my experience there isn't much special equipment required.

If you like (US) popular dishes like Thai curries (green/red/yellow/panang/massaman), Thai noodle dishes (pad thai, pad see ew, etc.), butter chicken, chicken tikka masala, dal fries, Chinese stir fries, etc., you can put these together in not much more time than some of the Mexican and Italian dishes. Some of the (incremental) ingredients used in these cuisines are fish sauce, oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, curry pastes of various kinds, noodles, and some Indian spices (there are a few but you see them in more and more places, not too hard to find) etc. Even if they aren't in your city, you can bulk up next time you are out of town/visiting someone elsewhere in a bigger city.

Without knowing what you like this is a shot in the dark, but here are a few recipes that I started with that helped me get the ball rolling:

https://www.recipetineats.com/chicken-pad-thai/
https://www.recipetineats.com/thai-stir ... ad-see-ew/
https://www.thecookingguy.com/cookbook/ ... uce-recipe (good with assorted proteins/veggies/rice, in a stir fry)
https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/moong-dal-recipe/

I'd just start by looking at dishes that you don't currently make at home but like at restaurants, reading 10-15 of the recipes online to see common threads, and going from there. You'll see there are only a few ingredients that you don't already have/know where they are, and you probably can find them not too far from where you live, and once you get a few of these you'll probably be able to make many other dishes of that cuisine. And obviously sub out the meat for tofu/tempeh/etc. if you are trying to go in that direction.

For what it's worth, I used to think the same thing about non-Mexican/Italian dishes, but once I started cooking them I can see it's not really much more effort beyond grabbing a few other ingredients. This was a big game changer for me as I moved through a few types of different cuisines because suddenly there was very little that restaurants could offer me anymore in terms of satisfying certain cravings. Being able to make a decent variety of restaurant quality food was especially crucial in getting my spouse on board with not eating out as much. Now we just don't care about restaurants anymore, beyond when it's convenient while traveling/socializing.

Asush
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Asush »

Thank you for the tempeh tips and instruction. I am inspired to try

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

@Dave

Thanks for the links. I was just listing Asian cuisine as a stand-in for dishes that require special equipment and/or ingredients that I might not readily have on hand (ingredients like obscure animal or vegetable products, not just spices that are easy to find at ethnic grocery stores). The Asian dishes you pointed out are pretty easy to make, but I actually don't eat Asian food all that often. I enjoy ramen and sushi (ramen at home is easy, sushi is on my list to learn). Also authentic Chinese food* because I spent so much time studying abroad there, specifically Sichuan dishes. Another dish would be peking duck, which I just don't have the patience to learn to cook when I only eat it once a year maybe.

I actually have Sichuan red pepper powder at home that gives me decent flavor when I do kebobs, but there are certain dishes that are very difficult at home without a wok and a lot of prep time (just as an example). You could make a similar argument with not having a smoker, deep fryer, or coal-fired pizza oven for other cuisines. However, as we've both pointed out, if it's something you eat frequently than it's often possible to come up with a good enough solution for home cooking.

* = A classic movie scene showing the prep required for some traditional gourmet Chinese dishes is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-2QBYKI8LU

Dave
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Dave »

Loved that scene, very cool!

Got it. Yeah, I see what you mean regarding those particular types of foods.

I suppose the way I've framed it for myself is in line with your last point - there are a lot of recipes from many cuisines that are fairly easy to make with minimal equipment and readily available ingredients, and I am happy to just exist in that range of cooking. It seems to me that it's hard to have it all in that if we want to live fairly low-impact lives we are going to have inherent restrictions on what we can do with the full range of equipment and ingredients.

My personal strategy has been to exhaust the easier range before going after the full version, and along the way I've been pretty happy with some of what I've made. You mentioned pizza. By playing with the recipe and using bread flour and (pre)heating a pizza stone to max oven temperature, I've gotten crust I'm pleased with that is competitive with most restaurants. I've also made stuffed pizza (using circle cake pans) that rivals Chicago-style stuffed pizza. No doubt that certain ovens would allow production of other styles of pizza, but at some point it felt like enough for me without having to invest in additional equipment. For Dave, the incremental value of other types of pizza didn't justify the additional investment in equipment.

And to your original point I quoted, I totally agree with you that restaurants can fill the rest of the gap on occasion. It's just finding our sweet spots of which special things are worth producing ourselves vs. outsourcing or going without. In the event it wasn't obvious, my main point was some things surprised me how easy they are to make, and I didn't know that until I tried. I think in theory I thought I would keep going further with my cooking, but unless you love cooking for the sake of cooking, there is diminishing returns as you add more and more recipes to your repertoire. At some point I didn't care about being able to make more types of Thai curries or noodle dishes that were harder to make.

I feel that on the sushi, always wanted to do it too but have never tried. We did poke when we were in Hawaii, which is a good example of my approach - it's a lot easier to make than sushi and also very delicious. Nevertheless, sushi is great and I would like to make it at some point. Please post if you end up making it!

BTW, I have been really enjoying your journal and all your changes, thanks for sharing your thought process on everything.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

I'm doing my write-up early this month because I'll be traveling this weekend.

September Report

Expense Total: 1618
Housing - 800
Food/Restaurant - 276
Social/Entertainment/Alcohol/Bars – 139
Dating – 129
Car/Transportation/Insurance – 105
Health/Fitness – 71
Other - 54
Cell Phone/Music - 44

This is by far the lowest spending month I've ever had in the new location; 50% of what I was spending just 2 months ago! I was hoping to get below 2x JAFI this month but I'm at least within striking distance. I debated how to categorize some of the expenses so I go into detail below.

Housing
I still didn't get around to talking to my landlord about a work exchange but it's on my to do list. Right now my housing expenses are a full 50% of my total expenses and equivalent to 1x JAFI on their own.

Food/Restaurant
I continue my cooking efforts. I stumbled upon a good tempeh gyro recipe that I will be making again in the near future. No meals eaten at restaurants this month, but I actually discovered one of my travel reward credit cards will give me a $20 credit for eating out each month, so I will be able to use that for social meals when required. Shopping at Aldi seemed to trim a lot off of my grocery bill and was the biggest factor in getting me under $300 (other than cooking all my own food). I think I could maybe trim off some more by making my own yogurt from gallons of milk, which I should give another shot. Getting <$200 would be a real challenge but might be possible if I had some home production of fruits and vegetables.

Social/Entertainment/Alcohol/Bars
I grouped all of these together this month and I think I might do it from now on. The only thing that will get confusing is if I have a restaurant meal with alcohol, but for this month it worked. The huge chunk of this spending (~$100) was karaoke and a gift for a friend's birthday party. Not really a way to get around those expenses and it was probably worth every dollar from a social capital standpoint. Still need to work on finding some social activities that don't revolve around going to a bar.

Dating
Pretty quiet on the dating front. I still need to find some new partners as one is moving at the end of this month and I haven't gone on any recent first dates, which explains some of the spending for premium features on dating apps.

Car/Transportation/Insurance
I bike commuted for the first 2 weeks which helped to keep gas expenses low. I broke a spoke so I had to drive for the rest of the month but hopefully I can fix the bike in the next week so I can get back to bike commuting before we hit the icy winter months.

Health/Fitness
I'm doing my own programming now but for the past month or two I feel like I've been a bit stagnant with my lifting. I need to sit down and flesh out my entire program. I'm currently in maintenance so the temptation is to just do the minimum to maintain my current physique, but the problem is I have been missing sessions so I just need to get back to following a program and enjoying my lifting. Getting close to my "dream" physique has had the paradoxical effect of making me less motivated to lift because I know it takes way less work to maintain vs build more muscle. I've lost some lower body strength because I haven't been squatting as frequently, but some of that might also just be a result of being 15 lbs lighter which leads to less favorable leverages. I think I want to continue working on olympic lifts, but it's clear I need to revisit my fitness goals now that I'm my own coach.

Other
Filters inserts for masks. Haircut. I moved the Spotify subscription to the cell phone category so it's more apparent that it is a monthly service.


Financial Snapshot
Rolling 3 month expense average: $2318
Net Worth: $395k
Stock: 39%
CTF (currently long): 23%
Cash: 10%
Bonds: 16%
Gold: 9%
Crypto: 3%

I found an accounting error on my net worth spreadsheet (lesson learned). It turns out I double counted some assets in my IRA when moving stuff around and never updated it in my spreadsheet, which probably happened months ago. So I corrected for that error which reduced my portfolio by about $10k. The rest of the decline is due to the stock market correction over the past few days.

Due to the accounting error my gold allocation is much lower than I previously thought, so I'm legging into buying a lot more gold to get my allocation closer to 20%. I'd like to reduce equity exposure but I'm limited because I have so much money in my TSP that I can only allocate to indexes for stocks and bonds. I also have $50k of VTSAX in a taxable account, so if I wanted to reduce equity exposure I'd be incurring a ~$4k tax bill, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense unless I felt absolutely certain that the top is in. I did increase my CTF allocation because now I'm even more convinced we are still in a long term commodity bull market and I need some exposure that is non-correlated with stocks. I'm also still holding way too much cash for my risk tolerance; currently 2 years worth of living expenses which doesn't make much sense when I am still working full-time and it's nearly impossible for me to get fired for the next 2.5 years.

I'm about 1/4th of the way through the TastyTrade Whiteboard Options playlist and I'm also working through the Reilly and Brown textbook. I'm starting to understand the options lingo, but I don't feel comfortable enough yet to incorporate it into my own portfolio. I do think I might be able to get some long vol exposure with options trading and maybe I can even do some income generation, but it's too early to tell for sure. The studying has all taken place at work which is a nice bonus.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by mountainFrugal »

I have been enjoying your journal and seeing the ratchet being applied each month. Keep up the good work!

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Update after the first week of October. This month was going to be somewhat of a test because I had a beach weekend scheduled with friends that had some fixed costs which I couldn't really reduce. Luckily it wasn't hugely expensive because we mostly made our own food and we stayed at someone's beach house so there was no cost for lodging. Nevertheless we did go to some bars and a casino (although I didn't gamble), along with renting a boat for a half a day. All-in-all, the trip cost me $360, but gave me a lot of social connection with old friends which I think I am generally lacking at this point in my life. That's probably going to break my trend of decreasing monthly expense though, even as I maintain the habit of cooking all of my own meals.

I realized at some point after that weekend that I am not at all in-tune with my emotions (likely as a result of some peer comparison, when I realized some of my friends are much more emotionally open). Working in the military often required compartmentalizing emotions to accomplish the mission, which makes one extremely effective in high-stakes situations that are common in military operations, but is absolutely disastrous for relationships and functioning in daily life. So I'm trying to get back into the habit of doing regular journaling and particularly trying to reflect more on how things make me feel, rather than just the cool rational analytical thinking that I know so well.

I wrote in my journal for the first time in almost a year and I realized I hadn't fully processed the emotions of leaving my last location and in particular leaving my ex-GF. I thought a lot about her and even cried, which is not a common occurrence. The exercise along with some other things floating around head over the past few weeks made me realize that I was likely being a bit too rational with my romantic relationships. I couldn't come up with a good reason of why we decided to breakup other than I didn't want to deal with the logistics of a long-distance relationship since travel costs, time spent away, etc doesn't make sense to my rational brain. However, I do still feel a strong connection to her and that she is still value-add to my life despite the possible drawbacks.

So in an entirely unexpected turn of events, I'm strongly considering dating my ex-GF in a long distance arrangement. She is an ENFJ medical student and we are very compatible with a variety of goals (e.g. she is quite frugal by nature, she is very interested in having a house husband, she has spent time working on farms so really enjoys animals and aspects of the permaculture lifestyle, she is very independent so likely well-suited to long distance, she is interested in moving to my retirement location for her medical residency, she probably doesn't want kids).* We dated for 9 months at my last location (the 2nd half of which was exclusively) and we've remained in contact. I reached out to her again earlier this week after we broke things off 3 weeks ago to help each of us move on, and we both realized that we had similar feelings. We have two trips planned this month as a trial run to see how we like doing the long distance thing. Worst case is it doesn't work out and we at least both have closure.

All of this means I might be spending a few hundred dollars a month on travel expenses for the foreseeable future. The good news is I still have a lot of travel credit card benefits, so I can leverage those to reduce costs. The bad news is I will have to emit a lot of carbon on 2 hour flights to visit her when I thought I wouldn't have to fly anywhere again for a long time. But this would be a temporary arrangement until she finishes medical school (which happens to be around the same time I plan on retiring from active duty).


* = Much less important, but also quite possible she will become a surgeon and make ~$400k a year for all of you concerned about the financial risks of romantic partnering

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mountainFrugal
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by mountainFrugal »

In my experience... if friends ask more than twice to hang out and it is obviously going to cost money... it is usually worth it (within reason). Good friends get harder to maintain as you get older because it becomes harder to get together and form new memories. If you do not form new memories, then conversation defaults to reliving old times. It can be fun, but gets old if you relive old times every time you get together. If you are feeling bad about the money spent maybe take charge in organizing next time and find something easier on the wallet? Alternatively, put your friends name in your calendar and just randomly call them on the phone. They will likely be shocked that you are just randomly calling to catch up instead of bringing bad news. haha.

Good luck rekindling things ex-GF. Sounds challenging, but doable .

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

@mF

Well I shouldn't complain too much because my friend is generous enough to allow us to use his family's beach house for an entire weekend, which would cost a few hundred dollars per person just to rent even in the offseason. I agree that I probably could have steered the events slightly to the more frugal side and maybe I will do that next time. Some of the expenses were incurred myself because I drove my own car instead of carpooling with another friend (this gave me flexibility to have dinner with family prior to driving back). I'm strongly considering taking the train next time around instead of driving myself, but I didn't book the tickets far enough ahead of time to make that economical. I'm having trouble making the tradeoff between spending money and social/family connections, but so far I'm willing to spend some money for what I believe to be important.

There are a few things that play in our favor for the ex-GF situation. My 6 on/4 off work schedule means it's easy to visit her at least monthly for 4 days at a time. She also has some flexibility with breaks due to the medical school schedule and additionally will have location flexibility when she starts rotations. I'm also fortunate that there are relatively cheap 2 hour direct flights from the airport near me to her location. Driving is 8 hours, so feasible for an extended trip, but not really for 4 days at a time.

Dave
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Dave »

white belt wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 1:50 pm
So in an entirely unexpected turn of events, I'm strongly considering dating my ex-GF in a long distance arrangement. She is an ENFJ medical student and we are very compatible with a variety of goals
Happy for you to hear this! Always hard to know how a relationship will turn out, but this sounds like a very positive thing for you, both in terms of this relationship's possibilities and also for opening up to processing some emotions. Definitely been there.

The extra money over the short-term isn't much to get excited about, and re. the carbon you could look into high-quality offsets if you wanted to go that route. I'm not very informed on carbon offsets, and know enough to be skeptical, but I have to imagine that some of them are at least partially helpful, if that can help you get comfortable with it. And the money associated with buying offsets, again, not going to be some life changing amount over a few year transitional period.

This kind of ties into the "investosis" thread Ego posted - seems like spending some $ is worth exploring this option based on what you've said.

I know things are in early stages, but I am excited to see how this goes for you.

white belt
Posts: 1450
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

@Dave

Thanks for the well wishes. This is very early stages, but I have dated her off and on for the past year, so it's not like we are starting from scratch. She is one of the most compatible people I've ever dated, although we do still have different traits that complement each other (e.g. I think we have compatible world views because we are both N and J, but her E and F complement my I and T so it's not like I'm dating myself).


There were two primary reasons why we ended up breaking up around June (when I moved due to Army requirements):

1. I really didn't want to do long-distance

This was entirely coming from the rational part of my brain, as I thought through the downsides of having to spend time/money traveling and how little in-person time we would get to spend together for the immediate future. I also had some experiences earlier in my dating life that soured me towards long distance, but I think that was largely due to a lack of maturity for both me but particularly for my partner at the time. I flip-flopped when I actually listened to my emotional side and also seriously engaged with the idea again. The reality is we are both very independent, so even when we were dating we probably averaged 3-4 nights a week that we saw each other. This leads me to believe that there is a good chance we could make long-distance work in the short term, especially since we're talking about seeing each other for 4 days every 2-4 weeks (it's not like we're living on opposite sides of the world).

2. I was concerned about long-term monogamy not being a good fit for me

This is still a bit of a concern, but I feel like I am moving towards being comfortable with monogamy again. I've spent the last 4-5 months at my new location having fun dating around, although I'll admit it hasn't been as life-changing or rewarding as I originally thought it would be prior to moving to this new location. I also think seeing most of my peer-group coupled up has had an impact, if I'm being honest with myself.


I went down a rabbit hole reading a lot of the threads regarding marriage, pre-nups, etc. I am a very future-oriented person and I believe possible-DGF also is, based on all the discussions we've had and the fact that she is an ENFJ. Along with being independent, she also seems to be very willing to put in the work to build a strong relationship. I can envision our goals to be homeotelic; a partnership where we both work on our own projects that also synergize and make the sum greater than the parts.

The financial compatibilities are important too, although I haven't fully discussed with her my net worth or specific ERE plans. She caught on to the fact that I don't value material things from me living in a 300 sqft studio and driving a 15 year old car, which is one of the reasons she said she is attracted to me. She's also said things like, "I'm very comfortable with my lifestyle in my current 2BR $125k house and I don't understand why so many medical students are already daydreaming about spending their high salaries on stupid things like fancy cars and big mansions". She requested to use the money that her parents' had earmarked for her wedding someday on some of her med school expenses because she feels like that's much more practical (she has a 50% med school scholarship and went in-state, so I think she'd graduate with ~$100k in debt and plans on doing a high-income specialty like surgery or internal medicine). The only changes she said she'd make to her life when she starts making a lot of money is to buy some new clothes since she's been wearing out the same ones for 5+ years and get a couple horses because she enjoys riding them. I'd put her around WL3/4, which is a huge leg-up compared to most girls I've encountered in our society (again I haven't really introduced any specific ERE concepts to her yet, so that's all of her own volition). I can envision a world where I am comfortable going all-in on joint finances (as @Ego and @7WB5 have recommended previously), rather than attempting even-Stevens 50/50 split or being overly concerned about possible losses due to divorce, etc.*


* = I understand there are risks, but I don't really foresee the worst-case scenario chop to 50% of my net worth as catastrophic, especially as I continue to build skills and lower my expenses. Maybe this equation would change if children were involved, but neither of us want them in the immediate future. I also don't feel like p-DGF is the type to go after me for all my financial resources, more like the type to make clean break and re-assert her independence by diving deeper into her own work/projects (also very likely she will have higher income than me starting from residency onwards).

white belt
Posts: 1450
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

It's getting towards the end of the month and I have some thoughts floating around my head. I'll save my comments about the dating situation until the monthly update since we have a bunch of activities planned together this weekend.

Work isn't terrible, but I definitely have a ton of extra mental capacity and the INTJ itch to do something productive even though there just isn't very much work related stuff to do. Since I now have a fully trained counterpart that does the same job on my team, we are able to alternate on the work and take an additional day off each during the week. This means in a typical month I might now be working 15 days a month, but still with the rotating shifts. I've also been able to go to the gym 1-2 times a week during my shift, which is saving me another 1.5 hours each time I do that.

However, I still haven't quite figured out what to do with all that newfound free time. I mean I could literally work a second job considering even when I'm at the office, I just have to physically be there and am only doing 1-2 hours of work if things are running smoothly. It would need to be some kind of side hustle that I can work on whenever I want since my schedule and requirement to put out the occasional fires precludes me from doing anything that requires specific time windows. Obviously during my free time outside of work I have a ton of options on what to do, but at work I'm limited to reading stuff on the internet and maybe the occasional book if my boss isn't around.

One of my colleagues trades a lot of crypto and is deep into that world. I think some active investing/trading might be a good fit as a side gig because I have so much time to do research at work. I've been dipping my toes into getting more into a macro investor framework with some of my money, but I haven't quite narrowed down an area I want to focus on specifically. I need to do a lot more research but I'm having trouble finding good resources that aren't behind paywalls. The other bigger issue is I haven't really come up with a personal investor statement, so I'm still figuring out my own risk tolerance. I know one of the basic rules of trading is to know yourself, but at the same time it's hard to get an accurate sense for personal risk tolerance when my entire investment life has been in an enormous bull market (with the exception of one month at the start of COVID19).

So far my uranium trade and commodity trend following positions have been doing very well, however we are also in a situation where basically every asset class including equities, crypto, commodities, real estate, etc are all doing phenomenally well. I feel like we are in a point in the economic cycle (if we even have those anymore) where it is difficult to not make money.


On the spending front, this month will definitely break my trend of decreasing expenses over the past few months. I have a few social activities this weekend that will cost money so I will wait until next week to post my exact numbers, but likely will hover around $2k for the month. A lot of this spending was for infrequent social events, so I anticipate to get back on trend next month.

I'm starting to run into hard limits in terms of reducing expenses in my current lifestyle. I think getting to 2x JAFI spending (~$1550 a month) might still be possible, but beyond that seems unpossible at the moment due to the following factors:

Housing*: I live in a VHCOL area and have pretty much maxed out what is possible with my current arrangement. I still could inquire about a work exchange with my elderly landlord, but my impression is that taking care of the house/yard is one of the few things that he has to fill his time.

Car ownership: I can't ditch the car with my current work requirements, even if I get back to commuting primarily by bike. If at some point I switch to a 9-5 schedule then I can sell the car and have my public transportation paid for, which would reduce my transportation expenses.

Long distance dating: Right now I'm paying for airfare for at least one trip a month, although so far I have been able to offset a lot of this with typical travel hacking due to the fact that I have some premium credit cards that waive annual fees for military. We are not on that stage of cohabitation yet, but there are much fewer economies of scale benefits when doing long distance because duplicate households/vehicles/tools/etc still need to be maintained.


* = Due to my tax-free housing allowance, I actually pocket much more in the current area than I did living in cheaper areas, so I actually shouldn't complain too much about this.

Having said all that, I optimized some recurring expenses and it turns out I can get my gym membership costs cut in half. We're getting into the realm of diminishing returns with all the changes only saving me maybe $50 a month.

Dave
Posts: 545
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:42 pm

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Dave »

Seems like active investing/trading could be a good fit with your current work/time situation. It also has the benefit of playing extremely well into RE life in that it could, if successful, either amplify your returns at a given level of risk or reduce your risk at a given level of return.

The financial pillar isn't the one that is generally prioritized at higher WLs, but I think if one does choose to focus on it it can be powerful. I'm biased because I spend a plurality of my time focusing on active investing, so take everything I say in this post from that (biased) perspective. To me, though, active investing can, if thoughtfully approached, introduce a degree of robustness that lacks from more/most passive strategies.
white belt wrote:
Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:05 pm
...The other bigger issue is I haven't really come up with a personal investor statement, so I'm still figuring out my own risk tolerance. I know one of the basic rules of trading is to know yourself, but at the same time it's hard to get an accurate sense for personal risk tolerance when my entire investment life has been in an enormous bull market (with the exception of one month at the start of COVID19).
Given how thoughtful you are about things, I'm sure you already this, but I venture this (risk tolerance) isn't something you can really figure out without getting some meaningful capital out there in whatever system you're curious about.

Active trading/investing has a very different feel than holding diversified funds. I transitioned fully in ~2015 and despite lots of prior reading and study, learned a ton after diving in. It's really cliché, but it is one of those things you can only learn a lot of by doing it. I did those mock portfolio exercises in finance courses in college and they're borderline useless, beyond gaining a basic familiarity with markets. It's one thing to talk about investment ideas or to talk about very small positions - it's another to run a strategy and have substantial financial weight behind it, especially when it's no longer wholly tied to the performance of indexes you have little control over. When your performance sucks, it's on you. That feels different than an index being down.

I'm about the same age as you so I haven't gone through a sustained bear market either - although I went down 50% really quickly, albeit briefly, in 2020 - so it's hard to know for sure how we'll react in that scenario. But we don't have the ability to fully know beforehand. No way around that. Each period of poor performance will give you incremental insight, though.

Seems to me if you want to get into it more you need to put enough capital to work where you'll really care about it. I'm not suggesting 15% of your pot, but enough where if you lost it all it would matter to you. This ability to have meaningful losses will introduce a more authentic experience that can teach you about yourself, if you enjoy it, if it's something that's worth it to you, etc. And with an amount that, in the worst case, you can tolerate the loss of.

And it's very likely you will lose some of it at some point. That's the cost of education. I also see no way around this. If you want to be an active participant in markets, you will lose money sometimes. All the preparation in the world, all the reading, and all the IQ won't prevent that. So it's good to be prepared for that as a possibility.

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