BBB Journal

[borisborisboris]

I just logged in for the first time in ages to start a journal. For the first post, I'm going to lay out the facts.

Intro:
* 34, male, married, one small kiddo, salaryman, INTJ.
* Based near Philadelphia. Get in touch if you are from around here!
* I started reading the ERE blog in 2009. Just a few months after I started working, I decided I hated it, and googled something like "how to retire as soon as possible." A decade on, I'm still working

Financials:
* Since I found ERE very early in my career, this is all in pretty good shape. Incredibly grateful to this community.
* Spending is ~3 JAFI for a family for 3, so 1 JAFI per person. That's a little generous since one of us is age 2, and also paid off house.
* SWR approaching 3%. Through most of our accumulation phase, we have invested very conservatively and left money on the table during the long bull market. This has been offset by low spending, and also solid income growth that's resulted from an (overly?) careerist mindset.
* Being more honest, SWR isn't actually at 3%, since our recent expenses don't count health insurance, and since we would like to travel a bit more once we retire. We'll be working for a while yet.
* We are working on building some small streams of passive income to increase resilience.

Non-Financials
* Being a salaryman type, I'm a lot less resourceful than most of you readers, but I do try.
* Examples of recent projects I have done myself: Built large set of bookshelves to perfectly fit an odd space in our spare bedroom (~$1,000 saved). Replaced drain pump in washing machine (~$250 saved). Removed a large-ish tree in the back yard (~$750 saved).
* I do all of our yard work. Our yard is small, but the work required is a lot because of landscaping decisions made by previous owners
* I place a big premium on pursuing work that I find interesting, and getting opportunities to work with people who are very smart/engaged. To get access to those kinds of jobs, I have to pursue salaryman type skills (like reading textbooks on machine learning techniques and working through the code in my spare time), as opposed to more ERE type skills like, say, gardening. On the plus side, I enjoy the former types of skills more, and they're remunerative.
* Favorite activities are reading (library books), hiking, building the occasional (crappy) web app, some blogging. These are free or income-producing and have been cultivated for those reasons.
* DW is vegetarian and an excellent cook, so I eat meat very rarely, which helps on food costs.
* We own two old, fuel efficient cars, and look forward to going down to 1 car in the future
* We both have long commutes, which isn't ideal, but we took them on after lots of consideration, and long commutes enable lots of other things that make our lives work (proximity to family, proximity to nature, high savings rates). We only need to commute for as long as we need to work. During covid, it's a non-issue. I expect us both to have more flexibility for remote work as well in the future after the pandemic ends, because the precedent has been set.

[borisborisboris]

Areas to work on:
* By far the most important thing in the web of goals is to build some side income online. I've had some success writing on Substack (analytical essays about a very niche topic). There are like a bazillion positive side effects, such as: (1) mitigate drawdown risk in the face of alarming asset prices (2) something to keep skills sharp and professionally engaged during retirement (3) build a network / audience through writing that could lead to future interesting employment (4) Force me to write more often, which I find extremely helpful in clarifying my thinking (5) Flexibility in time and location (6) Some tax advantages (7) Possibility of capturing upside if the venture takes off, with limited downside, i.e. optionality. (8) Discipline.

* Fitness can aways improve. I've never followed a regular regimen, I mostly exercise when I feel like it, probably averaging a couple of times a week. I need to be more consistent, and to align my diet. I also find exercising to have the side effect of stabilizing my mood.

* Investing. Currently my approach is basically indexing to a conservative asset allocation. I can get a lot better at this approach by internalizing all of the stuff over at portfolio charts, reading up on tax efficiency etc. Another possible direction is to pursue my (weakly held) view that a systematic factor approach would be much better (no good data, scared of how badly value factor has done etc.). And on the third hand, I could pursue more of a permanent portfolio, which I like because of its resilience across lots of scenarios.

[borisborisboris]

Savings rate has steadily increased over time. For every month that we work, we're putting 5-6 months of expenses into the bank. Feels good.




I never thought I'd get one more year syndrome, but a couple of things have happened:
* Having earned a more senior-ish job title, the need to work overly long hours with lots of stress has diminished. It's still there sometimes. More junior people in our department still often work the long hours, thinking it will help them get ahead. I sometimes try to talk them out of it.
* Numbers go up. Salary increases make it much harder to pull the plug, and my mindset tends toward making proverbial hay while the sun, proverbially, shines.
* With kiddo, spending hasn't really gone up much, but appetite for safety margin has.

[borisborisboris]

Building Habits

Most of my life has already been arranged to make FIRE inevitable within the next 0-5 years. Now I need to lay the groundwork to open up more opportunities for things we can do once we get there. Critically, I need better habits, because I know that my own tendency will be to do absolutely nothing once the structure of the workday goes away. I want to build up two specific habits that create some structures to bridge over into FIRE.

1. Exercise. I'm pretty casual about my exercise schedule. Exercise gets done when and if I feel like it. I'm not fat (BMI = 22) but I'm not in great shape, either. A regular regimen would go a long way in removing the behavioral inertia involved in picking up some dumbbells. Furthermore, the specific set of exercises that I do is pretty random. I've read Starting Strength, but applied very few of the concepts, instead it's more like, ugh, I guess I should do some pushups or something while the sixers are in commercial break.

I'd like my exercise routine to happen in the morning, since I do find it levels out my mood for the day, and makes it much easier to focus on productive tasks. (Focusing on work takes a lot of willpower for me, and my happiness level on any given day is closely related to how productive I feel I was).

I'm working from home during covid, which makes a routine much easier to achieve in theory, it's just about doing it.

Homework: Lift every other day. 3 sets each of Squat, Bench Press, Barbell Row, Overhead Press. Add 2 sets of burpees. I'm not going to track weight gain or anything, that's not what I'm going for. This is about general health, improving mood, and maybe a tiny bit of muscle mass for vanity.

2. Writing. One of the main activities I'm looking forward to doing more of in retirement is blogging (I am well aware that the world does not necessarily need more bloggers, thank you ).

I'm convinced blogging has lots of benefits, though. I get to opine on things that I personally find interesting, and build personal and professional relationships with other people who are into the same subject. Writing also forces me to think much more deeply about a given topic that just reading or tweeting about it. I know how to sound smart and dismissive about ideas, even if I only have a weak grasp of them (thanks to my corporate job!) But, it's much harder to fake it in an essay; the argument either holds water or it doesn't.

The trouble is that, for the type of writing that I'm doing, I need to become deeply informed on the topic that I'm writing about (I chose my subject partly so I could learn about the subject, which makes it hard to write from a position of authority). On the flip side, it forces me to do the research and to think from the ground up, something I've never had to do before). This is time-intensive (although it will become less so as I gain knowledge/skill). To get around this, I need to build the habit of focus on my subject. Rather than checking random shit on Twitter, or refreshing the fivethirtyeight election model for the umpteenth time, or indeed spending too much time on this forum, I need to focus my limited information diet to news and analysis of the subject at hand.

Being informed is less than half the battle. The rest is execution - coming up with a creative angle from which to draw insights, and then writing them out clearly and logically. Again, this is time-intensive, but doable as long as I'm making a concerted effort on a daily basis.

Homework: I will define a set of websites, newsletters, etc. that are important, and I will process them, with notes, within 24 hours. I will also write at least a paragraph of analysis into a text editor every single day, and publish every 2 weeks at least. I'm going to measure by the number of consecutive days in which I do this. Secondary metric is the number of email subscribers on my substack account.

Other habits, lower priority:
* Sleep (writing definitely cuts into this, I need to make sure it does not get out of hand).
* Staying on top of yard work. I kind of hate yard work, partly because I just don't know what I'm doing, so a lot of hard effort goes to waste. Beds are weeded, but weeds quickly re-proliferate. Hedges are trimmed, but develop uneven or weird bare patches. And so on. I am too stubborn / cheap to hire this work out, or to spray the various magical chemicals that my neighbors use. Educating myself, and getting more consistent, will help here. I do enjoy my yard when it's looking good, otherwise it's a low-level source of stress.
* Mindfulness. I find myself triggered by certain things, especially when I'm feeling tired or anxious. I know what these triggers are and when to expect them, but need to find a way to eliminate the negative mental reaction that follows. Triggers include other peoples' behaviors that I perceive to be anti-social: smoking by the playground despite signage. Blatant littering. Revving a loud, tuned, truck engine through a quiet neighborhood. Like seriously, your hobby is creating noise AND air pollution at the same time? So you can see what a cranky old man I'm becoming

[RooBadley]

Damn, Boris, you're killing it on personal finance. Wow.

But I think it's the washing machine water pump that really impresses this crowd. That particular task is an ERE right of passage.

You've seen those stupid plastic testicles hanging under the jacked up pickup trucks.
Well I think you should hang that water pump from your bicycle seat.

[borisborisboris]

@Roo thanks! The drain pump fix is probably my manliest accomplishment to date (since most of my time is spent typing numbers into a laptop). Still, it does not quite rise to a truck nuts level of manliness BTW I'm following your journal also, looks like we started at pretty much the same time.

Re: personal finance achievements. Maybe a little less so after the stock market took a hit yesterday haha. I have been thinking about doing a post on careerism and money accumulation. That topic is understandably not covered here very much, but I still think some people might benefit from hearing how the system works. Even though non-monetary skills are generally more resilient than others, sometimes it helps to at least know how to earn lots of money in conventional ways.

[ertyu]

you should do the post. there's people at all stages. some are at the beginning of their working life, some still work but have FU money, some have pulled the plug completely. there's people who can use it.

[Cheepnis]

I would also be interested to read your thoughts on careerism. Mostly since I'm not at all on that train. Too competitive and I do not respond well to competition.

[borisborisboris]

@ertyu @cheepnis let me see what I can come up with! I am a little worried it's going to turn some people off or come off as an endorsement of careerism/out of step with the broader values of this forum, which isn't the intent. Probably the right thing to do is tell it how I see it, and let others make their own judgements.

For today's post, I want to talk about eating. Since covid, I've been eating almost exclusively at home, and my diet, thoughtlessly, has deteriorated into nearly the same thing every day. And it's a weird diet:

• 8am: Cheerios, mixing in a splash of whole milk and some full-fat plain yogurt. A few raisins on top. This used to be oats but I have regressed to Cheerios which are around the house because toddler friendly.

• noon: 1 or 2 slices of Ezekiel bread, toasted with butter, a sliced apple with generous glob of peanut butter

• 2pm-ish: Bowl of raw almonds with some dark chocolate and maybe some dried fruit tossed in

• 6pm: Dinner. Whatever DW makes. She is amazing at getting nutrition and variety. Her go-to cookbook is often this one. But when we're really busy, we do substitute in pizza or pasta, say 1-2x / week.

• 830pm: Dessert. I would guess that one grocery trip a month is includes ice cream, otherwise there is a disappointing amount of junk food around for desert, but maybe some dark chocolate, fruit, and milk. Weekends, toss in a beer.

• 2-3 cups of coffee throughout the morning. I stop drinking coffee at noon out of sleep considerations.

So the first thing about this diet is that it's missing pretty much any kind of green veg, unless that is in our dinner, I need to add more green smoothies, probably for lunch.
Second, I used to be able to skip breakfast with no problems, but I'm finding that more difficult lately, probably because my body is getting used to an 8am carb heavy feeding. I want to work my way toward a short feeding window (say 2pm - 7pm). Fasting a full day each month would be something to work toward later.
Third, there's not much protein to go along with my modest weight lifting efforts. We have the fancy happy chicken eggs around but I'm too lazy to cook them; I need to get over this.

I will say this covid diet is much better than it was when I had a whole slew of options for lunch at the office. Burritos, pizza, panda express, all kinds of garbage, have been mostly removed.

To fix these things, I'd like to start fasting in the morning, and eventually get to a relatively short feeding window (like 1pm - 6pm). And I'd also like to start adding a green smoothie more often. (Fun fact, we have a Vitamix that was gifted to me in 2002! I was a sophomore in HS at the time and had no idea what to do with it, but when I eventually finished college and realized it was a fancy diet thing, it got regular use. Still works great. Blades have needed one replacement about 3 years ago).

I don't consider myself too well informed on nutrition. I feel much more comfortable listing things I should NOT eat than things I SHOULD eat (And then eating from the former category anyway). So if anyone has suggestions on a better diet, please comment on that.

[ertyu]

@ertyu @cheepnis let me see what I can come up with! I am a little worried it's going to turn some people off or come off as an endorsement of careerism/out of step with the broader values of this forum, which isn't the intent. Probably the right thing to do is tell it how I see it, and let others make their own judgements.

Not necessarily: carreerism can be seen as a way to make the "accumulation" period shortest and most efficient.

About diet:

- eating the same thing every day isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you put in the effort to ensure your meals deliver adequate nutrition. I have definitely encountered "eat the same thing every day" as a tip to make meal planning and weight loss less of a pita and more efficient. The body loves a routine. If you're one of the people who does well eating the same thing every day (e.g. you won't go seek out something else to eat just for the sake of "variety"), then keep that and just focus on designing the ideal daily meal plan.

- your diet doesn't sound that bad. Do swap the Cheerios back with oatmeal and nix the 8:30 meal in its entirety (seems like this is where most sweets, alcohol, and junk food make their way in, but even if you had a healthy snack, eating too late at night is bad for you), but other than that, it seems reasonable to me.

- green veg ideas: celery slices along with apple

- about fasting window: push your current breakfast later. keep the oatmeal etc., just have it later and later.

- about green veg: incorporate at main meal. DW can be an ally here. Also: what can you do to subsitute "when we're really busy" pizza etc. meals with salad? This mainly depends on what you like in your salad, but a pack of salad base + a can of tuna or legume + some boiled egg + whatever other veg from fridge, cut up + salt and olive oil gets me personally a long way.

which brings me to eggs: they store well boiled. pre-boil a bunch, keep in fridge, then peel, salt, and eat.

Mandatory disclaimer: a lot of the above is based on my personal taste, so it may or may not apply. Good luck with getting your diet to where you'd like it to be.

[borisborisboris]

About diet:

Thanks. It's good advice and especially helpful to hear it from someone else. Weirdly, there are often things I know I'm supposed to do, but don't act on unless I'm told. The first thing I'm going to do is start moving my breakfast back. Then, I'll start moving dessert earlier.

[borisborisboris]

September-ish update

September was the lowest-spending month that I can remember. We didn't eat a single meal out, no insurance or tax payments due, etc. If every month were like this, we'd have retired long ago Savings rate was 89%. That said, the markets were down quite a bit, and we ended the month about $6k below where we started. We're on track for another good month in October. Long-term, this isn't sustainable, since our appetite for restaurant meals and travel is going to be a lot higher post-covid and probably again post-retirement.

I've talked earlier in this journal about how important I think it is to write/blog online, and my goals to publish more posts more often on substack. Some mixed results this month: I only published one post, but it turned out to be a good one, so the number of email subscribers I have grew quite a bit. Also, increasingly, readers have been reaching out to me, unsolicited, to just like talk about my writing, which is kind of mind-blowing. Since I write about a topic that's related to my work, it's pretty easy to see this resulting in some professional connections/opportunities that I haven't had access to in the past via the standard corporate career ladder.

That last bit gives me pause: I really like writing (although I find it difficult), and there seems to be a lot of upside in it (say a small chance of a very positive outcome). Contrast that with my corporate job, which is: high-paying, but has much less upside (in both the financial sense and the self actualization sense), and somewhat less enjoyable. At some point, I need to weight the trade offs of continuing to milk the cash cow of a corporate job, or feeding the serendipity monster that is the side hustle.

The way it works is that all my posts are currently free. I could start selling subscriptions, but would have to write more frequently, which would mean quitting my job. In the meantime, I'd want to grow my email list as much as possible (essentially a prospect list). Getting the timing right to maximize the outcome in the face of unknowns is an interesting problem.

Right now, there's not much of a comparison: quitting my job to write would probably net me a pay cut on the order of 90-95%. (Although, thanks to ERE, there wouldn't be any real financial strife). If the blog continues to do well, though, there will be a point not too long from now where I'd have a good chance of covering all of our family spending from writing. And if I quit, I could reach that point sooner.

Part of this is the familiar and much-discussed-on-this-board transition from salaryman to businessman.

Other stuff:
* My diet hasn't changed much. At least is hasn't deteriorated! I was going to start skipping breakfast and shift to intermittent fasting, but lost a lot of motivation when I saw a this study come through the twitter feed that showed no real benefit. (link: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/10/09/ ... ing-study/).
* My weight lifting regimen has definitely improved / gotten more consistent. Steadily lifting every other day this month, except once with an extra day's rest due to soreness.

[borisborisboris]

October-ish Update

Ended october with some disappointing financial numbers, but stonks are up in the first week or so of november, with election and vaccine news both coming out. So net worth swings have been pretty large, currently looking good, but who knows where it will lead. I'm usually not this engaged in watching the portfolio, but we're close to a milestone. At the beginning of the month, SWR was over 3%, now it's below 3%.

First world problems

Financially, things are in a weird place.We have our downside covered (low SWR). We have an *option* to try to maximize upside, either by
1. keeping grinding on boring careers, saving and compounding for a long time, which under conservative scenarios would create, like, a LOT of wealth. We have time on our side if we choose to use it this way.
2. OR, we could stop working and pursue financial upside via a more exciting/meaningful/businessman-style approach, like a startup. This would definitely be a lot harder, might be a lot faster, and probably more interesting. I'd be more proud of building a successful business than a successful career.
3. OR, stop pursuing financial ends altogether, and retire to a comfy mmm-type life, with lots of enjoyable things like gardening, library books, personal projects, and time with the kiddo.

If I wasn't biased toward option 3, I probably wouldn't be on this website. But it's hard to walk away from option #1, since the only way we even have this option is from 2 professionals grinding out a career for a decade each. Once set aside, it won't easily return. Part of aging is giving up some optionality to pursue what's most important to you. It just kind of sucks to chop wood you can't burn.

Goals

This has been a poor month for productivity, I've fallen behind at work a couple of times and have had to work late nights to avoid dropping the ball on things. I hate myself when that happens. I've ordered an actual hard copy of Getting Things Done off amazon (a $6 splurge!) since I never read the library copy before it had to be returned. I want to motivate myself to--as it says on the tin--do the things.

On exercise, I give myself a B, a couple of missed days mostly out of soreness, but mostly good. On diet, a C, no improvement, and no regression.

On writing, let's say a B? I've not kept up with it as much as I want, but wrote another successful article that doubled my email list. I'm now estimating the email list is worth about 0.6 JAFI in ARR, with fast growth, if I were to monetize it. (That's enough to effectively lower SWR by a lot, and mitigate lots of sequence of return risk).

Plus it's led to a lot of interesting conversations with smart people that I would ordinarily have no access to, which is going to make my writing better in the future. And builds careerism-type connections. Gotta keep feeding that serendipity monster.

Careerism
Also a couple of weeks ago, I typed up a long post about careerism as mentioned above. Unfortunately, it sucked, so I deleted it. I'm going to give it another try later on, it's an interesting exercise to get some things into a text editor that I haven't tried to articulate before. As always, writing something down is a good way to show yourself how flawed your ideas and beliefs are.

[take2]

What/where is your blog? Unsure if you haven’t posted the link to preserve anonymity or because ERE’s rules prohibit it. I would be interested if you don’t mind posting and/or PM-ing.

Me and my SO are in a similar place to your situation, minus the kid. Continuing the grind on boring/frustrating yet lucrative careers coupled with low expenditure results in a lot of wealth in a (relatively) short amount of time. That alone makes it difficult to let go. We talk a lot about your Option #3 and have come to a loose idea that it’s [2] years away, mainly based on when children might come into play. I’m not sure if the goal posts will continuously move though I do imagine my desire to keep on the career grind will diminish with kids. Have you found that at all?

It’s been said on these forums before but I think the same type of people who are drawn towards optimising expenses whilst maximising income and banking the difference are often also the type of people who find it difficult to walk away, no matter how “safe” your SWR has become.

[borisborisboris]

where is your blog?

Hi anesde! Before I go on with a long response, I gotta say, you *need* to update your journal! What a cliff hanger...

I'll PM you about the blog, but it's an anonymity thing. I'm trying to maintain absolute separation between my identify on ERE (where my financials are out in the open), and my government name, which is on my blog. That said, here are a few things that I think are worth sharing about it...

*It's written for an audience that works in a very specific niche of a specific industry. Anyone who isn't in that niche would find it extremely boring (as indeed my family seems to think ). This is by design, though: people INSIDE the niche, seem to love it and engage a lot. The model is to monetize a very tiny niche at a very high price (i.e., charge subscribers more than the NYT and the WSJ combined!). That only works if the content is so niche that no other publication can provide it.

*It's heavily inspired by stratechery.com (a newsletter on tech). I don't write about tech, but I enjoy that style of analysis, and also see the upside in the business model of that site. The author there makes at least 7 figures judging from the size of the [paid] forums (which is what I mean by upside). I am nowhere nearly as talented as that, and it's a winner-take-most outcome distribution. However I also have a low enough burn rate to be happy even with a relative failure.

*Germane to ERE: the low burn rate thing is SUPER important. Lots of professionals have enough deep knowledge to write a successful newsletter. (Reading your journal, you yourself almost definitely fall into this category). However, they don't have the ability to quit their job for a long enough time to build up an email list large enough to replace their (generally quite high) salaries. Starting a newsletter requires either high savings or low expenses. And not to mention, it makes for a great, flexible, portable, engaging, post-career activity. ERE FTW

*It's both very fun and very difficult to write. Each post requires a lot of research, analysis, and polish, so it's a lot more formal than a 'blog.' But I don't know what else to call it. Maybe like 'analytical essays?' While I have a day job, I can't publish more than 1 or 2 a month unless I go without sleep.

*I publish on substack, a platform that I (cautiously) think is very promising. Lots of big names are going over there all of a sudden. I think that platform is going to stir the pot in an already chaotic media. My participation in it is a call option on the chaos.

I do imagine my desire to keep on the career grind will diminish with kids. Have you found that at all?

I am genuinely not sure! I think it might be the opposite.

First, young kids are so demanding that, as much as I love spending time with my son, I need to shift gears occasionally. Kids are very much like a career in the sense that both need balance. In fact, my kid has been an excellent *source* of balance to my career; both my personal and professional lives feel more meaningful and balanced now.

Second, having a kid makes me want to be more...conventional. I'm less willing to make lifestyle choices that are deeply unconventional (like say full time slow travel) that might make him feel uncomfortable. I realize this isn't rational, he's only 2 years old and has no idea lol

Third, I am much less comfortable with risks of any kind. e.g. sans kid, 4% SWR felt great but with kid, 3% feels dicey. Plus he needs a college fund. I don't want to settle for sketchy health insurance. We're not going to move across the country away from family. etc etc. All of these things make me more grateful for a job.

I think the same type of people who are drawn towards optimising expenses whilst maximising income and banking the difference are often also the type of people who find it difficult to walk away

You bet. Here's my theory - the first derivative of salary is what matters. My own salary have quadrupled since I first read ERE, and there is more growth in it if I carry on. So even though there are diminishing marginal returns to each dollar saved, there are also 4x as many dollars saved per hour worked, and the latter effect is, for the time being, stronger. I get more utility out of working than I did before, not less, even though I have a nest egg already. weird but true, at least for me.

[take2]

Ha, I went back and re-read the posts from my journal. I’m not sure I was in a great state of mind when I started it...it’s all rather negative and with enough specific info that I could be doxxed rather easily if anyone who knew me came across it. I should start it up again but I’m not quite sure what it is I want out of it. As to the cliff hanger that was probably a literary overreach on my part...I can assure you it’s not all that dramatic

Understood on the anonymity, no worries. I wasn’t aware of substack nor that there was such a large market out there for individual writers. The niche aspect of it makes sense, but I think that’s one of those things where it’s difficult for me to imagine it as I am personally very unlikely to subscribe to such a service, so hard to think so many others would.

I feel similarly re: appetite for risks as I’ve accumulated more. My current thinking is to increase the size of the cash portion of my portfolio to have a separate fund for any future endeavours, whether it’s RE or starting a business, or cash on hand for a black swan type event. Not very ERE of me...

[borisborisboris]

I should start it up again but I’m not quite sure what it is I want out of it.

understood, I nevertheless enjoyed reading it. A good ERE journal is a bit like a good novel, hard to draw clear lessons from them but you nevertheless learn something [ineffable] from the experience of reading. So, thank you.

I am personally very unlikely to subscribe to such a service, so hard to think so many others would.

Yes, and you're an ERE reader What if your boss was paying? Most employers would happily pay 10 or 20 bucks a month to keep their employees educated and up to speed on the relevant industry. Especially if those employers are e.g. investment funds, or executives trying to make sense of their competitors' moves, etc. They are used to paying consultants much more for this kind of thing (I used to be one of those consultants).

Tangent, but consider if you got a list of ~500 subscribers at $15/month (not easy but a reasonable base case IME)
>> 500 * $15 * 12 = $90k/year. For professionals who can write a good newsletter, this might be a big pay cut, which is why few do it. But as an ERE gig it is damned attractive

[borisborisboris]

November-ish Update

I don't have a lot this month. Like everyone else, I'm kind of floored by the stock market. *On paper* we are worth a lot more than a month ago. Expenses continue to be low, especially relative to last november when we spent lots on house maintenance, so TTM expenses are down quite a bit. NW/TTM expenses = 40x. A year ago that figure was 20x. All this is great, but at the same time the world is burning, so.

in spite of all the evidence I've laid out above in support of writing more, I have published nothing. That's a major fail and needs to change ASAP. One cause MIGHT be just having too many things going on at the moment...I'm trying to balance writing with time spent on building a better workflow and doing more foundational research on my topic that will payoff in the future. This excuse does not change the fact that I haven't written anything.

The election came and went; I no longer have to spend hours out of my day refreshing fivethirtyeight which is a relief. Only thing keeping me off a low information diet now is covid.

DW is thinking ahead to whenever covid isolation ends, and we have to go back to work. This means commuting, time away from kiddo, and lots of other stressors, so she might ask her employer to go permanently remote. They're likely to say no, but given FU money, she's in a position to give them an ultimatum. I think all of the likely outcomes good for us--we'll end up with either more money or less stress than we had a year ago. I'm interested to see how that plays out over the course of 2021.

[borisborisboris]

Feb 2021 Update

Change is afoot: DW will likely leave her job/career soon, in favor of starting a freelance/creative business. It's not exactly FIRE since she'll still be working close to full time, but it's an FI-enabled change to something that aligns much more closely with her values, goals, personality.

I think her decision makes an interesting case study.

• Short-term, her income will drop by over 80%. Seems like a big loss, on the surface
• Long-term, her efforts will be focused on creating [written] intellectual property, which is monetized over a longer period of time via subscriptions and sales. (Think ebooks, newsletters, etc., but with pretty reliable income prospects). Only a tiny portion of this value is realized at the time she creates something, which is what makes the income drop look so steep
• Making up some fake numbers to illustrate. Say her after-tax salary used to contribute $50k to our annual savings. That means, at 3% SWR, every year worked would add 50k*3% = $1500 of income to our household's top line. With her new freelancing approach, a year's worth of labor creates assets that yield ~10k / year (which would take 333k of assets to replace). So it's like a 6x raise.
• I know there are a bunch of problems with that calculation...to begin with, the discount rate on her business would be much higher than 3%. And she might not be able to create that much ARR (but maybe can do even better!). And so on.
• Nevertheless, 6x leaves a LOT of wiggle room, meanwhile her commute, work-life balance, quality of life, will all be much much better. Income streams will be more diversified.
• Most salary-type people wouldn't dream of doing something like this because they have a higher personal discount rate, and they need the income in the moment to 'pay bills' and 'service debt.' If you are ERE, you have essentially your own basic income and don't need to worry about those things.
• I think(?) this is a minor wheaton level shift on our household's part from pareto optimization toward yields and flows

"So Boris, why don't you do the same!?" Well, I mean, thinkin' about it. But my income is higher than DW's, and my creative skills are much worse, which shifts the breakeven by a lot. Having one working spouse guarantees health insurance for the family. etc.

Savings rate has been quite good, and will improve again next month. March is likely to be our permanent high-water mark in savings rate though: our low-spend pandemic lifestyle will end, DW's income will drop, etc. I think our new normal will be in the 60-70% range; that's fine, we're already FI.

I'm considering dropping some capital to add a small porch onto our house. I think it would get us outside more and add a lot of value to our lives relative to the cost.

Outlook: Getting to FI (sometime during the market run-up in the last 6 months), has really forced the issue for me to figure out what post-career life is going to look like. DW has kind of figured it out; she was pushed really hard by a bad work situation that forced her to confront the problem head-on. I have it easier at work so I can just sort of keep momentum and feel validated by my paycheck. But, given FI, I should be able to find a better use of my time.

I knew on some level I would have to have an answer for this, but until FI, never thought it would be much of a problem. Now, it is basically THE problem.

[Scott 2]

It is easier to solve problems like "what next" without work interfering 40+ hours a week. I know the traditional advice is "retire to something". But, you could take an extended break for planning.