Hristo's FI Journal

[Hristo Botev]

More Lockdown Silver Linings

Just finished Albert Schweitzer's autobiography. I was a little surprised that this was on the Great Books list I'm following, and I almost skipped it as all I know of Schweitzer is that his historical Jesus theology doesn't jive with my Catholic faith (something about Jesus simply being a good-natured but delusional non-God). It certainly wasn't an engrossing read, but it was a quick read; and ultimately worthwhile.

My main takeaway was that Schweitzer likely would have been an ERE adherent: he was an anti-consumerist Renaissance man (acclaimed theologian, preacher/pastor, academic, lecturer, concert organist and organ builder/craftsman, practicing medical doctor, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian), who stubbornly refused to listen to "no," and who rejected throw-away culture and technology in nearly all of its various modern manifestations as being detrimental to human progress, both spiritually and physically. From an ERE perspective, what's not to love about a guy who refused a donated motor boat for his African medical clinic because he could get down the river just fine in his dugout canoe, without the unpleasant noise and fumes of a gas motor; and a guy whose one pair of pants got shorter and shorter over the years as he repaired the tattered and worn cuffs by simply hemming them up, over and over again.

Also, fascinating to think that in Europe in early 1914, most learned men believed that, largely thanks to technology, mankind was on an upward trajectory toward perfection (this is a completely non-Catholic view), and that further wars were becoming almost unimaginable. It's a great insight from Schweitzer that, after seeing two world wars and the nuclear arms race, our civilization is actually deteriorating/regressing and technology is largely to blame.

He also has some great insights on his decision to go to medical school past the age of 30 so he could practice missionary medicine in Africa, giving up the wildly successful career he'd already established as a theologian/academic and pastor (not to mention concert organist). And his explanation as to why he doesn't encourage most men to follow their "restless spirit" and "do something special"; recognizing that "such people wanted to dedicate themselves to larger tasks because those that lay nearest did not satisfy them." Rather, we'd all be better off if those people, and everyone, just focused on acting humanely in their regular, mundane, everyday lives. It's very reminiscent of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower). He says:

Of all the will toward the ideal in mankind only a small part can manifest itself in public action. All the rest of this force must be content with small and obscure deeds. The sum of these, however, is a thousand times stronger than the acts of those who receive wide public recognition. The latter, compared to the former, are like the foam on the waves of a deep ocean.

The hidden forces of goodness are alive in those who serve humanity as a secondary pursuit, those who cannot devote their full life to it. The lot of most people is to have a job, to earn their living, and to assume for themselves a place in society through some kind of nonfulfilling labor. They can give little or nothing of their human qualities. The problems arising from progressive specialization and mechanization of labor can only be partly resolved through the concessions society is willing to make in its economic planning. It is always essential that the individuals themselves not suffer their fate passively, but expend all their energies in affirming their own humanity through some spiritual engagement, even if the conditions are unfavorable.

One can save one's human life, along with one's professional existence, if one seizes every opportunity, however unassuming, to act humanly toward those who need another human being. In this way we serve both the spiritual and the good. Nothing can keep us from this second job of direct human service. So many opportunities are missed because we let them pass by.

Everyone in his own environment must strive to practice true humanity toward others. The future of the world depends on it.

[Hristo Botev]

More Lockdown Silver Linings

Just finished Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther. My main takeaway: as long as there is life, there is hope. Also, really glad I didn't read this book when I was Werther's age and melodramatically suffering through my own love forlorn.

All in all, I thought it was a fascinating insight into the mind of a passionate young man, inclined to melodrama. Whether trying to understand why a young man might kill himself or do any other seemingly inexplicable drastic thing, this book would be a good start.

Next on the list is Sophocles' tragedy Ajax.

[Hristo Botev]

Just finished Sophocles' Ajax; some takeaway quotes:

On pride -

"Father, with heaven's help a mere man of nought
Might win victory: but I, albeit without
Their aid, trust to achieve a victor's glory."

On brains over brawn -

'Tis not the big Broad-shouldered men on whom we most rely;
No, 'tis the wise who are masters everywhere.
An ox, however large of rib, may yet
Be kept straight on the road by a little whip.

[Hristo Botev]

Finished Flannery O'Connor's Everything that Rises Must Converge. Incredible how much she is able to cram in so few pages, with so little happening on the surface. The plot is basically: mom and son take a bus ride together. And yet, she's so good with inner dialogue and using symbols that the story somehow manages to be both incredibly dense and also a short and easy read. Definitely looking to read the rest of her stories.

My big news was that I managed to get my "literary society" (book club) off and running. We had our inaugural (virtual) meeting last week, at which we discussed Seneca's Of Providence, from the perspective of what life lessons a Catholic man living in 2020 can glean from it. It was fun; and I think/hope we have the core group of guys we need to keep this thing going for months and even years to come. The book for the next meeting (hopefully in person) will be Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins. As a fan of Southern Gothic literature, I'm embarrassed to say that I've actually never read anything from Percy before, especially given that he was a Catholic (like Flannery O'Connor). So I'm looking forward to the read.

As for finances, one of many silver linings is that our expenses have come down, even though we are spending more money (amazing it's possible) on groceries and alcohol, as well as utilities and things like school supplies for the kids distance learning. For both March and April we'll be right at 50% for a savings rate, as opposed to 30% from January or February. My big hope is that we come out of this having accepted as totally normal some expense-reducing habits like cleaning our own house, doing more of our own home improvement stuff, eating out less, growing more of our own veggies, etc.

[jacob]

It's not just money-saving. Doing your own adulting also builds character and it shows a good example to the kids. They learn that the house doesn't magically clean itself which is useful knowledge (and attitude) when they eventually move out.

[Hristo Botev]

Does mixing your own cocktails count as "adulting"; cuz those things don't magically make themselves.

[jacob]

I've come to appreciate how a lot of values and habits are vertically transmitted to either be fully aligned (the child grows up to adopt very similar behavior to their parents) or anti-aligned (the child will grow up to become the exact opposite of their parent). The way someone cleans their room is very likely to match the way their parents cleaned their rooms. Do they keep things off the floor? Off the table? Are things stacked or piled? When is clean clean enough and dirty too dirty? Ditto money. Children who grew up making their own money treat it differently than those with a fixed allowance which again leads to a different result that those who got allowance but instead what they asked for depending on their ability to convince. Ditto outsourcing handyman tasks vs DIY'ing it. It all leads to different outcomes at the end.

It's an interesting experiment. I should have added "builds a specific character" instead of the generic presumption that outsourcing household adulting doesn't build character as if character was one-dimensional.

[Hristo Botev]

I'm trying not to read too much into your two replies, Jacob. But I don't exactly know what you mean by "adulting"; when I hear that new-agey word I think of my wife's cousin who couldn't figure out how to make it in the world, without her parents' financial support, after graduating from a ~$50K/year college. And so her alma mater hired her back into some BS student affairs-type department where she gets paid a ridiculous amount of money to, as far as I can tell, teach college students how to use an alarm clock and do their own laundry; as in, she's teaching students to do all the shit she herself can't figure out how to do, apparently so that he alma mater doesn't have to claim her in the unemployed column in the statistics it sends parents of prospective students. And of course now the college costs ~$60K/year because it has to pay people like my wife's cousin.

I do NOT think it is somehow anti-adulting to do a cost-benefit analysis to say: it costs me $X/hr to pay a cleaning person to clean my house, and I get paid $X+/hr to work, therefore I'm going to choose to pay someone to clean my house while I spend more time at work. I don't personally subscribe to that hyper-specialization way of thinking, but it is certainly a rational, "adult" way for a white collar professional in the US to choose to life their life. Whether you're talking about one-dimensional character building or specific character building, surely you understand that there is in fact more to life than simply developing DIY skills and building up an early retirement nest egg so that you can separate yourself from society, if needed or desired. Ford wouldn't be Ford if he was doing his own laundry (insert ironic Brave New World reference); or Edison; or Mozart; or Musk; or whoever, go down the list. I personally find myself in a career that I enjoy on a professional level, but it's not one that I'm driven to be the best at (I'm somewhere between punching a time card and seeking world domination in my career); but I certainly don't fault my colleagues who have that drive, which NECESSARILY means they outsource lawn maintenance, their kids' education, cleaning out the gutters, etc. etc. You (and I) can take issue with whether that sort of hyper-specialization is positive or negative at a society level or even a family level. But to suggest that those people aren't adults, in that they haven't learned or they don't practice the skills necessary for adulthood, is just wrong.

[Hristo Botev]

April 2020 Financial Numbers

What a roller coaster this has all been financially. Although the net worth is still down from its January 2020 peak, for April 2020 I gained back the $50K hit I took at the end of March 2020. No doubt the roller coaster will continue for quite some time, but it's at least nice to see some of the money back, if only for today.

For spending, our family of 4 had $8,200 in expenses for April, and $8,400 in savings, for a savings rate of a little over 50%. Would love to one day get the monthly family expenses below $5,000 ($1,250/person), even with the Catholic school tuition.

[Hristo Botev]

More and more when I get performance-related correspondence from my "boss"--my job title is "partner," but it's really in name only; I've no desire to have an equity stake in the firm at this point--I find myself pulling up my net worth/early retirement tracking spreadsheet. I don't really want to or plan on retiring any time soon, and I couldn't really without some sacrifice; but it's comforting to pull up the spreadsheet and see that the FU money that was there when I left the big firm world and moved to a scaled-back job is still there, and in fact has grown, even with the current market volatility. There is also something that is just especially exhausting about managing a full-time job from home while simultaneously doing this distance learning/home school thing with the kids.

[Hristo Botev]

I've stuck with the running; 5x a week. I'm now running 4 to 5 miles a day, without needing to stop. Seems like, at my age level, obesity is one of the single biggest comorbidities for coronavirus; as good an excuse as any to finally push me to getting out of the "overweight" BMI category. I'll need to make some changes to my diet and drinking to make that happen, but if I can get a solid foundation of habitual exercise, that's a good start. I'm trying to work in some kettlebell stuff as well, but I haven't quite figured out yet how to make that part of the regular routine.

Following on a story I heard on NPR this morning, if some states (e.g., Texas) are going to tell older workers that they won't lose their unemployment benefits eligibility if they refuse to return to work when their employers open back up, I wonder if that won't end up applying to younger, obese workers as well (seems like the same reasoning would apply). And forgive my conservative leanings, but does that mean young(ish) workers who are not obese (due to healthy lifestyle decisions) are going to end up subsidizing unemployment for their obese contemporaries? Asking rhetorically.

[Quantummy]

Regarding UBI or work optional unemployment, Milton Friedman said the following or something very close: "If you start paying people to be poor, pretty soon you're going to have a lot of poor people."

I'm not progressing near your speed but currently about 3/4 in on Crime and Punishment - pretty good and seems to be getting better. Your reading progress and topics are giving me some motivation!

As to shoulder issue, I've had problems and sought acupuncture, PT, and have held off on surgery consult for a few years. Last fall came across Shoulder Pain? The Solution & Prevention, (5th Ed) by John Kirsch, MD. I don't feel 19 again, but after doing his recommended exercises/ protocol, my shoulder is much improved so I highly recommend checking out his methods / book. Of course there's info on web about it.

[Hristo Botev]

Regarding UBI or work optional unemployment, Milton Friedman said the following or something very close: "If you start paying people to be poor, pretty soon you're going to have a lot of poor people."

Interesting; I mean, if you paid me $1,000/mo., with no expectations or questions asked, it'd be hard for me to stay motivated to go to work every day. So I think, ultimately, I just don't see where that $1,000/mo. stream would be coming from long term. It might be there now, in our current pre-COVID economy (I have no idea if that's actually the case), but paying every adult a "freedom dividend" or whatever you want to call it would fundamentally change the economy, and make it less productive. I think it's also the sort of the dilemma of my own Kirkian/Burkian, non-libertarian-type of conservatism--socially conservative with some economically progressive leanings--that there just aren't any "right" answers (e.g., collectivist socialism isn't right on one side, and neither is pure economic libertarianism on the other). The answer is something in the middle; I guess. But we also have to think of the moral costs; which is to say, to quote Seneca from my recent Great Books adventure: "Good men labor." When you take out the economic need to labor, then I think most men will stop laboring, left with no other purpose in life but to satisfy hedonistic desires.

I'm not progressing near your speed but currently about 3/4 in on Crime and Punishment - pretty good and seems to be getting better. Your reading progress and topics are giving me some motivation!

I've slowed down as my free Great Courses trial expired, and that was really the motivation to keep me reading (the particular course I was following provided both the reading list and the carrot in the form of the 30 minute lectures I'd listen to after reading the lecture's book). Perhaps I'll treat myself to the Great Courses subscription for my birthday; though I am really learning to HATE the subscription financial model as a whole; seems like it is everywhere you look now. I definitely want to read Crime and Punishment.

As to shoulder issue, I've had problems and sought acupuncture, PT, and have held off on surgery consult for a few years. Last fall came across Shoulder Pain? The Solution & Prevention, (5th Ed) by John Kirsch, MD. I don't feel 19 again, but after doing his recommended exercises/ protocol, my shoulder is much improved so I highly recommend checking out his methods / book. Of course there's info on web about it.

I'll definitely check that book out; thanks! I just want to be able to throw the ball around with my kids again.

[Mister Imperceptible]

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2554/2554-h/2554-h.htm

[Stahlmann]

Regarding UBI or work optional unemployment, Milton Friedman said the following or something very close: "If you start paying people to be poor, pretty soon you're going to have a lot of poor people."

:-DDD


internet, here we go again

[Hristo Botev]

"Well the most outlaw thing that I've ever done was give a good woman a ring"

[Hristo Botev]

"Time flies when you're making babies
Do you miss your little black Mercedes
Do you miss the girl you once had time to be"

[Hristo Botev]

This is definitely a "I'm sick of this shit" kinda day.

On the positive side, I wonder if this all is really benefiting my son. He's as much of a boy's boy as you're likely to find, and he seems to be thriving in an environment where he: can mostly set his own schedule regarding school work; doesn't have to hear the same fairly elementary concept taught over and over again in twenty different ways to make sure all ~25 kids in the class get it; gets to spend hours on his own or with neighborhood kids, exploring our neighborhood, building forts, finding vine swings, riding his bike, kicking the ball or playing baseball, and just generally getting dirty. He's probably slept about as well as he has in years. Amazingly, he probably spends less time in front of screens now than he did before this all began.

My daughter has struggled a bit more with the lack of social interaction and structure, and definitely more at the beginning. Since then she's been able to become friends and spend time with other neighborhood friends and she's been connecting virtually with her school friends. And she's been a lot better than my son about structuring her day around schoolwork (and she has more of it). And she's discovered some new hobbies; most notably video editing (she made me a great video for my birthday).

Not sure what this is all going to look like starting Monday when the school work ends, with almost all of the summer camps closed down. We'll have to come up with some sort of structure, with most of the day devoted to free-form, unsupervised, outside play and exploration. If I lived in a place where the kids couldn't really go outside without supervision, due to safety concerns or whatever, I don't know how DW and I, or the kids, would survive. It is absolutely horrific to consider the idea of literally spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with all 4 of us in the same 1,300 sq. ft house, going outside only for family walks or whatever.

[Hristo Botev]

Getting dangerously close to buying an Airstream. Nothing ERE about it; DW and I are just getting cabin fever. The purchase would involve us selling our car (a small crossover SUV type thing) and buying something that could tow an Airstream (likely a Ram truck). We don't drive that much as it is so not worried about the everyday gas mileage issue. A friend has industrial land a couple miles a way where we could park it. We can tell ourselves that we'd save money on hotel rooms and on cheaper vacations (road trips to see family and to state/national parks vs. Disney cruises, European vacations, etc.), which is probably true. But this wouldn't be a purchase aimed at getting to FI quicker; this would just be good ole' 'Merican consumerism.

We also have the beginning of a core group of friends with younger kids who might be regular camping companions. One family already has a trailer camper, and another went to go look at an Airstream this weekend and is planning on getting one eventually.

Not pulling the trigger yet. First step will be to figure out if we can find a truck at a price that would have us spending close to nothing out of pocket, once you account for the trade-in. Then perhaps we'll rent an Airstream for a trip to see if it's for us.

Went to a Ram dealership this weekend so DW could test drive a truck to see if it's something she could drive as our everyday car, and what do you know, she kinda loved it.

2 months in quarantine + cocktails + Miranda Lambert records = Airstream purchase

[Hristo Botev]

Ultimately, if DW and I get through this with our jobs (and our lives, of course) and without too much damage to the net worth, then I suspect there's going to be a pretty strong desire to "live a little." I TRY and resist the temptation of equating the whole Carpe Diem/Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori/YOLO thing with consumption (whether of the goods variety or the experience variety); but I'm not Taoist--I can only stare at my tomato plants and contemplate life from my back patio for so long.

Also, if I've got this desire to go out and spend, I have to think that's true for much of the rest of the country as well; and that makes me think that people just aren't going to tolerate lockdown much longer. We're opening back up one way or another; and although it'll likely start as phased and gradual in some sense, I don't think it'll be too long before we're back to life 90% as normal; knowing that we're going to be living with some risk of death until there's a vaccine (if that happens).