Hristo's FI Journal

[Hristo Botev]

Feeling a bit down today, perhaps due to the fact that it's gray and rainy today. And likely also due to the fact that I accidentally wandered down a rabbit hole of bleakness this morning, starting with a First Things podcast I listened to on my walk to work--about how much we are letting our children down with skills-based instead of content-based education--which prompted a bit of conservative blog hunting, including this from The Imaginative Conservative:

"Our Republican politicians continue to pander to the lowest common denominator as they gradually dismantle the Republic in favor of a flabby empire without purpose or meaning. Indeed, for many of our leaders, “democracy” has become a term of religious significance and intensity, and “freedom,” not the natural law as St. Paul told the Christians of Rome, “is written in the hearts of every man and woman on this earth.” Our Democratic politicians have no regard for the dignity of the human person as they advocate, without the slightest hint of remorse, the murder of the least of us. With only a very few exceptions, our academics remain trapped in their own subjective realities, publishing only for each other. Our corporations pursue their “dreams of avarice” as we walk through the Wal-Marts of the world, mesmerized by Muzak and the shrines to the materialist gods, made, of course, in the People’s Republic of China. Abroad, things remain wretched. Europe falls prey to a centralized bureaucracy of its own secular devising, mobs shout without purpose, and its citizens of a Christian heritage no longer seem capable of being fruitful and multiplying. . . . Indeed, despite the western victory in the Cold War, systems of tyranny remain alive and well throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. . . . It all seems terribly bleak right now, the world swirling around the abyss and Americans only pushing it faster and faster."

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/ ... irzer.html

Good times. Also, I'm no Anglophile or royalist, but this "Megxit" craziness makes me really sad. Not so much that Harry/Megan want to step back from formal royal duties (who cares, really); it's the absolute sleaziness of it all--they are effectively abdicating their titles but at the same time planning on commercially exploiting those titles (and the institutions those titles represent) AND simultaneously tearing down those institutions (with their threatened tell-all Oprah interview, or whatever), while ALSO launching "public awareness campaigns" presumably so they can tell us how lacking in wokeness we all are. I don't know why this all is bothering me so much, especially the Megxit stuff. I suspect it's just the fact that here's yet another institution full of heritage and tradition (and to which an entire empire relies/relied upon for identity) that is falling victim to modernity (and blatant consumerism).

I also don't know necessarily what any of this has to do with ERE, except for the fact that, for me, ERE has something to do with trying to strip out from our lives the shallow conveniences, etc. of modernity and consumerism, in the interest of seeking out the good, the true, and the beautiful; see Wendell Berry, Sir Roger Scruton, Russell Kirk, et al. And all that good/true/beautiful stuff just seems like its more and more antiquated and irrelevant. But if not that, then what? Dare I say, the world looks more and more like Brave New World every day.

Edit: To note that, speaking of Roger Scruton, he died yesterday. Yet another reason to be gloomy today.

[Hristo Botev]

As if by divine providence, my gloomy start to the week just improved a bit, as I was just told I'm getting a 12% raise in my salary for 2020, which is totally unexpected because I didn't "make my hours" in 2019 ("making your hours" is law firm speak for billing the minimum amount of hours to clients to make yourself profitable enough to justify your salary and overhead). I've no doubt that I got this rather significant pay raise in part because I carry myself as someone with FU money; which is to say, I have the confidence in knowing that, while I WANT to keep this job (for a number of reasons), I don't NEED to keep it to feed, house, and clothe my family. And while we are replaceable cogs at some level, myself definitely included, when you own a business and someone you rely on to keep that business running is giving off vibes suggesting that they aren't desperate to hold on to their job, then you probably can't help but resolve to give that someone more money, even if they didn't ask for it.

The downside, however, is that I don't feel the excitement I felt when I got big raises earlier in my career, because I finally broke the shackles of lifestyle inflation. My mind didn't immediately jump to imagining what I'd buy with the extra/unexpected money, or what trips I'd go on. My mind didn't even jump to what debts I'd pay down with the money, as happened when I was trying to pay down student loan debt. In fact, my mind didn't even jump to thinking about how this pay bump would get me to FIRE sooner, as I don't think my life will change in any significant way once I reach full on FIRE in a few years, God willing--because my working schedule for the time being is driven not by a need for money so much as my kids' need for a stable environment for school, home, and church; and the prospect of not working full time while my kids are in school full time seems silly to me. My mind simply thought: cool, my paychecks will be a little fatter each month; perhaps we can give a little more money each month to the church.

[mooretrees]

That's a pretty interesting change in your thoughts to hear about. It's so much more relaxing to be off the lifestyle inflation treadmill.

[Hristo Botev]

January 2020 Net Worth Numbers

Net worth w/o house: $474,722
Net worth w/ house: $627,057
% of $1.8m target net worth: 35%
Net worth change from last month: $11,282
Monthly PPI from total net worth: $2,090
"True" PPI (excluding house, 529 from net worth): $1,473

Pretty lackluster month, given that we have most of our eggs in the index funds basket.

[Hristo Botev]

January 2020 Savings Rate Numbers

Total after-tax income: $19,276
Total expenses: $9,282
Surplus/profit: $9,993
Savings rate: 52%
NW needed to cover expenses: $2,784,765

[Hristo Botev]

January 2020 Expenses

Mortgage: $1,865
HOA: $254
Kids' Tuition: $1,644
Life Ins.: $59
Car Insurance: $5 (we had a credit from 2019)
Kids' Rec/Camps/Aftercare: $1,000*
Donations: $500
Kids' Allowance: $34
Internet: $30
Utilities: $0**
Cell Phones (x3): $52
Groceries: $582
Alcohol: $175***
Home: $214
Restaurant: $783 (wow)
Dog: $482 (mostly boarding for trips)
Gifts: $46
Travel/Ent: $1,416 (trips and concerts; and Netflix)
Car: $36
Clothing: $205
Cleaning lady: $240 (yep, still got her; even with only 1,300 sq. ft to clean)
ATM: $60
"Beauty" (not mine, I assure you): $54

* This is an artificial number; the real number for January is $4,689. We budgeted $12,000 for the year for this line item, and most gets spent in January, which is when most summer camp sign ups have to be done.

** We still aren't paying utilities for the new house, which is due to the prior owner apparently forgetting that he sold (as opposed to rented out) the house, despite the fact that we've sent him several emails trying to get the utilities turned over. Anyway, we're just going to go directly to the utility companies now, because this is just weird.

*** This is bad, because I actually got a gift card to a craft beer place for Christmas, and so this number isn't reflective of how much alcohol we actually purchased this month. Granted, a big chunk of this was we volunteered to buy beer for the Super Bowl party we were invited to; but still. More on that later.

[Hristo Botev]

There's a thing that's been circulating around Catholic circles called "Exodus 90," which is a "90-day spiritual exercise for men" (https://exodus90.com/). It's basically an extreme (and extended) form of Lenten asceticism. I decided to do a modified version of it, beginning today (I was purposely waiting until after the Super Bowl), to run through Easter--i.e., "Exodus 70"--in the hopes of cementing some of the positive habits I've been trying to incorporate into my life. My version of "Exodus 70" is going to look like this:

Pray the Rosary daily
Weekly reconciliation
100 push-ups a day
Run 3 times a week
Abstain from cursing (this one will be a challenge)
Abstain from alcohol (this one will be a much bigger challenge)
Abstain from masturbation (yep, I said it; this one will be a lot easier at 41 than it would have been at 31)
Abstain from social media and web surfing (except for ERE of course)
Take short, lukewarm showers (I'm not doing the cold shower thing)
At least 7 hours sleep a night
Abstain from desserts/sweets
Abstain from eating between meals
Limit TV, and read a book a week
Abstain from non-essential material purchases
Fast every Wednesday and Friday (no meat; and one regular meal with two smaller snacks that together don't add up to one regular meal)

If I stick to this, I expect my spiritual life to strengthen, to lose some weight, to have a clearer head in the mornings, and to save some money. Also, I've had a bit of vertigo for a few years now, which seems to be exacerbated by some combination of alcohol and dehydration; so I'm really interested to see if I have any symptoms at all at the end of this 70-day undertaking.

[ertyu]

Good luck man, i think you should do it. It would be very interesting to hear what effects it has on your life and which of the changes you'll decide to keep for the long haul. Looking forward to results

[Hristo Botev]

I've obviously got a long way to go before the 70 days are up, but it's telling how much clearer my head felt this morning after not drinking yesterday. I've noticed that as I've gotten older, even one relatively low ABV beer in the evening will have some effect on me in the morning.

[Hristo Botev]

Just a vent. One of our group of friends are several families of our former neighbors, when we lived in the big 5-br ranch on an acre of urban forest land. They are great; especially since my experience is it's pretty rare to form new, solid friendships in middle age. We've traveled together, both with kids and without. We have regular poker games; group outings; book clubs; you name it. It really is great. The importance of forming these friendships in middle age, and seeking out these kinds of community relationships, is a topic for another post.

But there's one woman in particular from that group who DW and I struggle to tolerate, for a number of reasons. For example, she will send texts, social media posts, etc. bragging about the fact that she spends $_,000 a year for some boutique composting operation, where people drive to your house once a week or so to empty out your compost bin, and then take it off site. Great. But you know she just does this stuff so she can brag about it on social media and among her community (I believe the conservatives refer to this sort of behavior as "virtue-signaling"). Again, great; I don't know anything about these types of operations, but apart from the transportation waste, I can see how this could be a net positive thing. But she does this (and many similar things) as essentially a modern, upper-class, urban, progressive form of "keeping up with the Joneses." We are all meant to feel less than. It's just another form of conspicuous consumerism (the savvy compost company of course posts conspicuous signs in their customers' yards so the customers can signal their virtue to all passers-by).

As an aside, her husband (who I really like) came very, very close to buying a Tesla, but ultimately opted for a new 6-series BMW; but his wife still makes sure at every gathering we all know how close they came to buying a Tesla. Of course, there was absolutely NOTHING wrong with the 4-year old Nissan Leaf that the BMW (and almost Tesla) was replacing. I mention this only because Teslas have become ubiquitous in our community for these very same virtue-signaling reasons. Who needs a bumper sticker toting how progressive you are when you have a Tesla! Your "Feel the Bern" bumper sticker don't got shit on my Tesla!

To this morning's (unhealthy) vent, however, she is also someone who has NEVER offered to help or contribute in any way when a neighbor needs help. Seriously. Meal trains when someone is sick; neighborhood clean-up days; doing her share of cooking/cleaning when we go on camping trips or whatever; you name it. But, she is the person who asks for assistance from her neighbors the most. (Mind you, they have plenty of money, and they don't have any more kids than any of the rest of us; and she recently decided to leave the workforce and stay at home; so, honestly, it's not like relatively speaking she should need any more help than anyone else in the neighborhood.) For example, she had some sort of minor injury awhile back that required her to be on crutches for a bit (but she could still walk without them.) She asked around the neighborhood to see if anyone happened to have an extra set of crutches. Mind you, crutches aren't exactly expensive, especially for someone like her who regularly has 10 Amazon packages piled up on her front porch on a daily basis. But of course I'm fully supportive of someone looking to borrow from a friend/neighbor as opposed to buying something you'll only need for a few weeks. We have crutches, from an injury DW had last year, and which DW got from her dad, who has a garage full of stuff that he finds on peoples' curbs. So DW offered them up. The woman's response: "will you drop them off at our house and leave them behind our garage sometime today before 5?" No "thanks!"; no "great!"; no "let me know when I can pick them up!" Just an expectation that we would meet her needs. She knows we don't drive. She knows we both work. We don't live in the neighborhood anymore, but we aren't far, especially by car, as we are only about 4 streets over. Whatever, DW told her no, that we'd leave them behind our car (the one we only use on the weekends), and she could come pick them up whenever if she wanted them. (For the record, she ended up sending her husband over to our house to pick up the crutches, and then a few months later they were back laying by our front door. Never a thank you. Never even a "hey, when's a good time to bring the crutches back"; not even a confirmation that we were even in town--we just found them sitting there one day when we came home from work. And this is from a woman who grew up with a southern mother who expected her daughters to send written thank you notes for every little thing.)

But that's still not my particular vent. My vent is this morning she sent a text around asking if anyone could come pick up her son and take him to school, because their garage door was broken and so they couldn't get the cars out. Now, I don't know why she couldn't open the garage door up manually; but regardless, assuming that the cars really were trapped in the garage--THEY LIVE LESS THAN A MILE AWAY FROM HER SON'S SCHOOL, in a "walkable" (by US standards, at least) community. That's 20 minutes, at most. But the thought never even crossed her mind that she could just strap on her sneakers and head out for the mile-long expedition to elementary school. Now I am fully being snarky, but in my mind I have to assume that the reason that she couldn't take the ~40 minutes to walk to her son's school and back was because she would miss her expensive, boutique gym class, where she'd probably spend 40 minutes or so walking or running on a treadmill.

Anyway, rant over. Add this to the list of stuff I have to confess this week.

[ertyu]

with people like that, don't let it get to you and keep your boundaries solid. sounds like all lady cares about is herself and her image - yes, people shouldn't be like that, but you won't change her with the force of your disapproval, you'll only get annoyed and it'll distract you from the good stuff in your life you could be paying attention to. "fade her" as kids say on the internet these days, distance, keep up the boundaries and don't pay attention to her drama

[Hristo Botev]

Thanks ertyu. That's typically been our way of dealing with her, though it's most difficult for DW, because she has to spend more time with her when the ladies from the neighborhood go out, or do a book club or whatever. It's just good to be able to vent as an anonymous person regarding another anonymous person; that's not to say no harm done, as the vent above is chock full of self-righteousness and judgmentalism. But it's good to be able to vent nevertheless, and we are nowhere near thinking we need to communicate to her our disapproval.

[ertyu]

Lady sounds annoying enough, I'd give you that .

[Hristo Botev]

I'm working on a bit of a personal project of reading books from conservative thinkers from the past 200 years or so, to try and distill what I think conservatism looks like for me in 2020. I'm currently reading Charles Murray's Coming Apart, and it's really crazy to see how much as a society the "new upper-class" has sorted itself into a whole new culture--with it's own values, tastes, hobbies, social groups, cities, etc.--in a way that just didn't really exist in the post-war world, when for the most part there just wasn't much difference in values and tastes (or even income) as between the guy managing the factory or whatever and the guy working the factory floor. It's scary, and I just don't see how it's not going to just get worse, with truly two Americas, that don't even recognize each other on a cultural level. And relatedly, it really infuriates me how patronizing policies like universal basic income are: the cognitive elite is effectively saying that a large majority of the population is just too stupid (incompetent, lazy, unfit, simple) to contribute in any sort of meaningful way in our modern world with AI and robots or whatever, so here's $1,000/mo. for you to just go away (and consume, but not produce). There is something very scary underpinning this sort of way of looking at people. This kind of paternalistic thinking seems very similar to me to the paternalism of the "good" southern whites in the Jim Crow South (i.e., the Atticus Finch portrayed in Go Set a Watchman, who was unquestionably racist, but who justified his racism within his own moral value system by telling himself it was his duty to take care of "the Negroes down here," who "are still in their childhood as a people."). This is just an ugly (and arrogant and condescending) way of looking at people, pure and simple. More and more it seems like as a society we are stratifying ourselves less along racial or ethnic lines, which is great, but instead we are now stratifying ourselves along the lines of cognitive abilities; and let's be honest, the vast majority of us are going to end up total losers in the meritocracy game. Just as an example, how rare is it now to hear about an executive or a professional marrying his (or even her) secretary, compared to how common that sort of thing was a generation or two ago? (I'm a product of one such marriage.) On one hand that's great because of #metoo and the unequal power dynamics of those relationships. But on the other hand, I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that the executive/professional and the secretary just don't even share a common culture anymore.

[Hristo Botev]

I had a good revelation yesterday in a chat with DW, as I continue to try to wean myself from a consumption first mindset.

When we moved into the new townhouse it was taken as a given that we would need to add a full bath to the bottom floor, so that our son wouldn't have to come upstairs to use the bathroom, and so that he wouldn't have to share a shower with his sister. Mind you, our last townhouse had 3.5 baths, with a shower in both of the kids' rooms. But the water pressure was bad in our son's shower, and our daughter's shower was just really dreary looking, so the whole family just shared the master bath shower; and it wasn't really much of an inconvenience. After moving in to the new place, we discovered that the shower in our daughter's room is leaking and needs to be repaired. And until that happens (that's on me), the family is again sharing the master shower. Again, not really a problem. Anyway, as we've gotten comfortable in the new place, we've decided that we really only need a half bath in the bottom floor, as it's really not a problem for him to share a shower with his sister.

Yesterday, however, DW was telling me of a Catholic podcast interview she'd listened to with Jeannie Gaffigan, the wife of the comedian Jim Gaffigan. And I remembered that the Gaffigans and their five children live(d) in a 2-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Well, shoot. How is it that we are just so fancy that our 2 kids each need their own bedroom and their own bathroom? That adds some perspective, and I think we've now realized that our son will survive if he has to climb up a small flight of stairs to get to a bathroom. It's good for him, and when he's an adult he can claim street cred by telling his friends how, when he was a kid, he had a share a shower with his sister, and had to walk upstairs to pee, and had to walk to school.

Also, I have to share a toilet, a sink, and a shower with DW; better to raise the kids with the understanding that a bathroom is just something you have to share.

[jacob]

Apparently, the fascination with bathrooms is an American phenomenon.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ms/605338/

[Hristo Botev]

Wow; crazy to see the anecdotes I've witnessed demonstrated in real numbers like that. Also, I've enjoyed every Bill Bryson book I've read, and I had no idea he'd written a book on the history of the modern house; I've already requested it from my library. (And I suspect you appreciated the reference to "Peak Bathroom" )

Relatedly, DW got the downsizing bug that ultimately led to her wanting to move into a smaller townhouse closer to the city center by binge watching a marathon of the House Hunters International show (on HGTV, I believe) when were at the beach with her family last summer. She saw that in literally every other country in the world (with the possible exceptions of Australia and Canada, which have somewhat similar cultures and a similar abundance of land), no one blinks an eye at siblings (even of opposite sexes) sharing a room, or an entire family sharing one bathroom. And that show is fascinating because it has all of these American ex-pats walking through these otherwise beautiful, efficient, infinitely comfortable houses and apartments, and complaining about the lack of square footage, bathrooms, kitchen counter space, garages, etc.

[Hristo Botev]

For anti-doxing reasons I'm going to change up this social media post a bit that DW just sent me. But this has to a prank, right?

Hi Neighbors, In the morning I'm going with my 21-year-old to traffic court for TWO tickets on X for rolling stops (both were at a stop sign midway between Y and Z). She got the first one in November and the second one in January. I wasn't in the car and cannot say it didn't happen, but she's a really safe driver who has never received a ticket until this. Has anyone heard of excessive tickets being handed out in that area? Sounds like the equivalent of a speed trap to me. Just looking for information before I accompany her to court.

This must be a meme from The Onion publication. A 21-year-old surely doesn't need to have her parent accompany her to traffic court, right? And certainly the mom realizes that rolling through stop signs (in a very heavy pedestrian area) is not safe, and defeats the traffic-calming effects stop signs provide in residential areas, and that it's in the public interest to enforce stop signs. And since when do we need character witnesses at traffic court? "No, your honor, I wasn't in the car, and I have no first-hand knowledge of what happened, unlike the police officers that actually wrote the tickets. But I can attest to the fact that my daughter is a really safe driver, because, you know, she's my daughter."

OK, this isn't healthy. I'm going to try and get some work done.

[Hristo Botev]

Just realized that DW and I are now 4 years into our intentional FI journey, as it was right around January 2016 when we started tracking things like net worth and savings rates, with a goal of hitting an FI crossover point at some point in the not too distant future. In that time our total net worth has increased from $190K to $650K, and, surprisingly, our savings rate has increased from an average of about 20% to a current average of about 55%, notwithstanding the fact that, a couple years ago, (a) we decided to take our kids out of free public school and send them to Catholic school, and (b) I chose to escape the biglaw world, even though that meant taking about a 50% paycut. We certainly could have made a lot more progress towards FI had I stayed at the biglaw job, and had we decided to keep our kids in public school (and had we gone the rice-and-beans route to early retirement), but I'm happy with the route we've taken and the choices we've made.

[Peanut]

Well I wouldn't add a full bathroom so the kids don't have to share but I would do it bc it will increase the value of your home. And if you have overnight guests it will come in handy.