And now for something totally different...

[SouthernAlchemy]

I've been lurking for a few months, just reading through a single journal at time. At this point and I feel like I know some of the characters on here pretty well. It is always interesting to read through and get to know someone. I always feel myself rooting for people at different points in their journey. It is awesome to see how people have handled the things that pop up in life, especially ones that I know are coming such as Covid, but also stock market fluctuations and the like. Everyone seems resilient and adaptable and maybe that is in large part due to the ERE philosophy and having like minded people to connect with here.

With all that said, I am starting this journal to join this awesome community and keep myself on track as I get into a new phase of life. Disclaimer: I am not working towards early retirement and I am not extreme, at least compared to some/most of the other forumites.

I am a 48 year old male, married, with two teenagers, living in the suburbs of a rapidly growing region of North Carolina. About two years ago, shortly before my 46th birthday, I walked into my job and quit. My plan was not early retirement, at least in the sense that I was planning to sit on the beach and drink Mai Tai's. I was going to gain some skills, experience and connections in a totally new field. Then I would leverage those into self employment, working when and where I wanted. It sort of worked, but, as happens, a contract job turned into a full employment offer and about a year in, I was back in the rat race. My perception of everything is different, however, so now I take it all in stride and enjoy it. I did struggle with the decision to actually take the job, and I wouldn't have taken just anything, because I didn't really need to. That's FU money in action.

So... why the journal? Without the motivation of financial independence I have spent the last year or so without much focus. I want and need to find purposeful things to keep me engaged with life in a meaningful way. As such, I concocted a web of goals for the year. It is a mix of things that I enjoy but have not always given my full attention to and some new skills that I'd like to learn and go much deeper with than I would have been able to with a 'career' hanging over my head. So this is a journal to keep me accountable for this web of goals and hopefully engage this community, getting some thoughts and input as well as sharing some of my before and after stories of the (not really) ERE life.

TLDR: If you are looking for a journal with a bunch of numbers and life hacks, this one is probably not for you!

[AxelHeyst]

Welcome! Is the contract job > FT in your old field, or the new field you were hoping to get in to, or something in between?

It sounds like you essentially used a FU-empowered semiERE "gap year" to hit refresh and gain perspective, and although the plan didn't work out exactly the way your foresaw (do they ever?) you've improved your situation and are able to think/act about your life more clearly. Excellent! Looking forward to following your thoughts/journey from here.

[unemployable]

Welcome. I've been all over NC including living in the two big metro areas. I've been looking to move to the mountains for some time.

[SouthernAlchemy]

hey unemployable! I grew up down around the coast and have never gotten to the mountains as much as I'd like, but I love it there. Sometimes, I am tempted to move there, too. I was just in Hendersonville and thought it seemed pretty awesome. You'll get there soon, I bet.

[SouthernAlchemy]

I've never really liked goals. Of course, there have been a few that I have accomplished throughout my life, but most were a vague idea of what I wanted rather than a defined goal and roadmap to get there. I am a very big picture, broad stroke kind of guy and when goals get too narrow I feel too restrained and start thinking I am on the wrong path and begin to daydream about other paths that I could/should be on. On the flip side, when my goals are too broad they don't offering any guidance on how to get there, so are not helpful on a daily basis and are easily dismissed. I am sure a productivity guru would dismiss the following as not really goals. I tend to agree, since they are not really measurable at all. My point, however, is not to be productive so much as to create a way of living and being that is in alignment with my vision of a fulfilling and creative life. In my personal journaling, I have given up on using the term 'goal' and use the terms mission, objective or skill when I am laying things out for myself. Below is my web of 'goals', I'll give a brief look at my thinking on each and maybe go into detail individually in later posts. You'll notice they kind of line up as either objectives or skills, and complement each other, I think.

- Health/Wellness - rather than anything in particular I want to focus on creating an overall healthy lifestyle. I recently read 'Primal Blueprint' by Mark Sisson. It resonated with me and I am using it as a guide for this objective.

- Gardening - I have lived in my current house for over 15 years and have always had a garden. It is small and there is a lot of room to expand, and I finally have the time and energy to do it. In addition to growing my own food, I want to focus on 'beauty' in the front yard. Hopefully that will inspire some of my subdivision neighbors to treat their landscapes in less destructive ways.

- Adventure - at 48, I suspect the loss of my youthful wanderlust may be somewhat natural, but I don't have to accept it. I need to get out and experience the world around me. I also suspect this aspect of my life is the victim of a long term stressful 'career.' At the end of the week all I wanted to do was go have some drinks and forget about work. This led to weekends that were mostly wasted, fluctuating between drinking and feeling bad from drinking, and vacations that mostly centered around sitting on a beach and drinking. Stupid.

- Cooking - a skill, but it is an objective for me since I have the skills I just don't apply them the way I should. So 'cooking' is shorthand for 'feeding myself and family in a way that is consistent with my other objectives.' Practically, I do want to do more preserving - drying, fermenting, canning, etc. - of both what I grow and local, seasonal things.

- Guitar - I have had a guitar following me around since college. Every once in a while I'd pull it out and strum a few chords. Recently I have been playing a lot and getting better than I ever had been. I'd like to get to the point that I am comfortable sitting around a fire playing and singing for people.

- Photography - another skill that I want to focus on. I enjoy taking pictures of the garden and adventure destinations. Also, my daughter is into photography, so this is a way for me to connect with my surly, withdrawn teenager.

- Storytelling - as a strong introvert, my conversations are typically brief and to the point. Storytelling is a skill that will help me build connections and be able to better share my thoughts and feelings with family and friends. I see guitar and photography as complementary to this skill. I am working on a blog, with a lot pictures, focused on my garden. Posting here on ERE is a storytelling outlet. Lately, my wife and I have been making the kids stay at the dinner table and share and listen; always interesting! There are many ways to extend this skill and I am always looking for new ways to practice.

I was thinking about including the graphic representation I'd drawn with connections between all these, but it's sort of a disaster. Hopefully some of the connections are obvious. Nevertheless, it is what I am going with for this year!

[SouthernAlchemy]

@AxelHeyst It is completely different, but something I'd been thinking about/interested in for a while and did a bit of work on before quitting. Since I was going into something totally new, though, I knew there was a possibility that there would be a long drawn out period of time where there was no actual income. It could have easily been a multi year gap and financially I wasn't that concerned. Between the contract -> full time job and a couple of other projects I worked on, it turned out to be only a minimal decrease in income. It was definitely a great reset and worked out maybe the best way it could have. Of course, things change, and the best thing is, I feel even more empowered to drop the job if necessary and move on.

I think I also needed a reset in my personal life and that is kind of reflected in the goals I posted earlier. I didn't always feel this way, but for the last several years of my career I definitely felt like I was experiencing the same day/week/month/year over and over, and while I have begun to shake that feeling, inertia is a bitch.

[2Birds1Stone]

Welcome, looking forward to following along and learning! Some of us are too focused on the numbers and lifehacks, and need to learn how to focus on what's important, aka the WOG!

[SouthernAlchemy]

Hey 2B1S. I hope I can make it interesting, but there a lot of people in this community doing a lot of cool things.

Lifehacks are indeed awesome. I realize I did it the hard way. Had ERE been around when I began my journey, FI would have come much sooner! So anything I put in here about my journey to FI could be considered what not to do, anti-lifehacks, if you will

[SouthernAlchemy]

Although the web of goals I laid out for myself has some good potential long term stuff in it, while thinking about it and the future in the general, I realized that I was kind of putting time limits on myself, as in 'you don't have time (in this life) to do that.' Example(s): do I think about starting a business, building my own house, creating a permaculture style farm, sailing around the world, or [insert other grand vision here]? Yes, but then I realize I'm kind of old and I ask myself- is this what I want to do with my time left? For me, there is a lot more pleasure in the doing than in the having, so the answer is usually maybe, but which is the 'right' one? Damn, it's a messed up way to frame the question.

Like every teen/twenty-something, I thought (if I ever actually did consider it) that I'd live forever. Over time, maybe I thought about mortality a little bit, but with kids and career, it wasn't much of a focus. Then about 5 years ago, my dad died. He was 72. Of all the grandparents, I thought he was going to live the longest. He was healthy, was very active and had lots of friends and interests. Cancer didn't give a shit. The inevitable questions about my own health and habits and genes swirled around my head until I had capped my life at 72. Which is not far away. Which makes me over-analyze any kind of goal that might require more than a year or two of commitment.

The existence of this limiting thought pattern and its stupidity hit me like a punch in the face the other day. I was reading something (Primal Blueprint?) and there was mention that the record for oldest human was 120. Will I live that long? Likely not, but I could. And I am not even halfway there. There is another lifetime left to go! While I'll never get back to the delusion of immortality offered by youth, resetting my 'cap' has been invigorating.

Clearly, a lot of people (not here) misinterpret what retirement is supposed to be, and maybe that is why they avoid it. Maybe I have been avoiding it. The WOG I set out is a good reset and will help prepare me for bigger, grander second lifetime, but it is time to put some bigger things back on the table.

[SouthernAlchemy]

I know I claimed in the first post that there would be no numbers, but I do keep track of these things, so I thought it would be worth throwing a brief recap of January’s financials up for the record. I have kept track of net worth monthly for a few years, but don’t have very detailed records going back to the beginnings of my journey. Similarly, I’m not much of a budgeter and have never kept track of my savings rate. This is certainly the reason FI took longer than it could have, but fighting a budgeting battle against a spouse who is only marginally on board is not worth the pain and heartache. So, being the one who oversees the household finances, I have always engaged in stealth warfare, which involves automatic deduction to various savings vehicles immediately upon getting paid and then at some point in the month announcing that there was no more money, so spending had to cease and the pantry had to be empty before considering any grocery shopping. Accordingly, savings fluctuated over the years, being much higher in the pre child days, took a nose dive during the baby years, edged back up through the elementary ages and now seems to be leveling off in the teen era in spite of expanding interests and travel (pre-covid…).

When I sat down to add it up, I was expecting a healthy decline in net worth. It is mostly in the stock market and that has been a bumpy ride this month. Generally speaking, about 2/3 of NW is in tax-deferred accounts, which I may adjust quarterly. 1/3 is in taxable accounts which is mostly passive, a good portion of which is in index funds, but also there are significant dividend and buy/hold accounts. Currently about 15% (of the 1/3), I actively trade in the market, which can mean stocks and options that I may hold for 2 or 3 weeks. This more or less just keeps me interested in the market rather than making a real impact on NW. When volatility increases, however, I tend to step back and watch from the sidelines. I’m not much of a risk taker, though I do like to take a gamble occasionally.

With all that being said, for January 2021 net worth actually increased(!) …drum roll, please… by 0.13%. Hey, I’ll take it. Although on the plus side of the ledger, it still reinforces the feeling that has been nagging me to diversify, most likely, into real estate. I’ll be looking into that more in the coming months.

Savings rate hung around 25%. We are not very high income, so this generally does not seem to have any affect on NW. It appears to be true that at a certain point investment returns become more important than savings to growing net worth.

Also, I did, through no effort on my part, get a promotion at work and a 5% raise. I will just add that to my 401k paycheck deduction and go on with life. In the distant past, I maxed these deductions out, but lessened them over time as I realized I probably needed some available cash to retire earlier than 59. Now, 59 doesn’t seem that far away and the extra money isn’t really needed.

[SouthernAlchemy]

Its been a while so I thought it was time for a check in post. I may or may not expand on some of these thoughts, but I wanted to get a couple things down for now anyway. I get into ERE journals in a bingy sort of way and I want to add a post before I drift off to some other corner of the internet.

Recently I got a raise. Actually over the last year I've gotten a promotion and a couple of other raises (yes, this is different from the promotion and raise mentioned in the year old post above). With the most recent one, I am now making more than I was when I lost my job back in January 2009, victim to the financial crisis. It was not a milestone I was really keeping track of but was kind of interesting to reflect on. I had a fair amount saved up even back then and had a small side hustle that was developing into something bigger. I didn't really care about the job itself. I was actually glad to see it go. I was in no way ready to not have a salary coming in, though. I basically had to work my way back up in an industry that was severely damaged and changed by that whole period. Not great, but a pretty good motivator for FIRE. It was another 9 years before I was able to walk away on my own terms.

I didn't go into this new job intending to start a new career. In fact, it seems like I am going to have to actively try and limit my growth within the organization. They are pretty good about matching pay with responsibility and I like the work, so it's not a bad situation at all. I have been thinking about presenting my boss with a plan to go part time and just be responsible for the stuff that I really enjoy. I'm not sure how that will go over and I don't even know if I'd be able to extricate myself from the other stuff at this point. Overall, it is interesting because I am fundamentally playing a different game than everyone else at work.

In other financial news, I have one more mortgage payment. Over 2 houses and various types of mortgages (30,15,ARM) I have been making house payments for about 20 years. Although I've been pretty aggressive about paying it off, it was still a surprise to see the bill a couple of months ago and realize that I was almost done. At this point, I am not sure how I am going to deal with the cash flow change. I'm not too interested in shoveling even more money into the stock market, and I have never been that interested in having a rental property either. Seems to be a problem that I have no business complaining about, though.

I've been reading ERE journals for a few years now and I've never really known what the 4 letter personality types that people refer to are all about. I finally found out mine! Apparently I am an INFP - T. The description is fairly accurate for me although maybe a little shallow. It is kind of interesting, but I'm not sure that knowing this will have much effect on my life. Maybe I'll dig into it a little bit, though, and see how I might leverage it. I don't remember if I've read anyone else's journal who is this type. It is sort of dreamy and unfocused (check) so not necessarily a great fit for ERE, but it is has worked (slowly) for me. Let me know if you fall into this personality type! Of course, there seems to be this new color based thing going around so maybe I need to figure that out at some point.

[unemployable]

This might get me banned here but Myers-Briggs is pretty much pseudoscience. It has its uses in dealing with others but I understand classifying people like that is taboo nowadays. And I'm IxTx, very strong I and T but down the middle on the other things; it's Wednesday night now so I must be ISTP for another hour before I turn into a Judger.

[SouthernAlchemy]

ha! It's just me and you here, unemployable, so you're safe. I took another test on a different site and came up with something different. I think I could be Ixxx, depending on what I had for breakfast. INFP seems to fit with the least amount of squinting, though. At this point, it is a convenient way to explain things about myself and/or make excuses for my behavior, but otherwise I haven't really been able find a good use for this knowledge. Back in the corporate days, I remember 2 or 3 trainings where we spent days with similar personality tests and how to apply them. Of course, the end goal was manipulation of employees and customers. So, yeah, I get your disdain.

[Hristo Botev]

Belated welcome @SA; glad you are journaling and I'm looking forward to following along.

[SouthernAlchemy]

This summer I have been doing some fermentation of the harvest. So far I've made a couple of krauts and some chimichurri. Pretty easy and interesting. Consumption results, though, have been, um, unusual? I've consumed significant portions (1/4 cup?) of the various items 3 times now. A few hours later and it feels like there must be a war going on in my intestines. I don't feel bad really, just kind of bloated, but then after a few hours of that and, well, let's just say the end result is not pretty. I am back to normal after moving some stuff out, though-

I have enough ferments now to eat a bit daily for a while. I am interested to see what happens to my digestion, mood, cravings, energy and whatever else is being correlated with the microbiome these days after some ongoing regular consumption. Of course the minimum positive result that I am looking for is just being able to eat this stuff without a digestive reset every time. I'm traveling a bit in July but after that I'll start the daily experiment -

I only started doing this as a way to preserve some food from the garden, but I am kind of surprised at how my body has reacted and want to learn/test more. My diet is pretty good overall, I think, and I can eat pretty much anything without worries. I don't know if my body's acceptance so far is unusual or not or will get better over time. I've not really seen anything similar mentioned in what I have been reading. Curious to know what others' experiences with live ferments might be?

In the unlikely event you have been inspired by reading the above, I have been leaning on these two books:
Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz - classic, worth a read even if you're not going to actually do it
Fermented Vegetables by Shockey and Shockey - this has more structured recipes in addition to the basics. Chimichurri recipe (pretty good) in this one.

[Western Red Cedar]

Curious to know what others' experiences with live ferments might be?

I haven't really experienced the GI issues with our personal ferments. We have been making Kimchi over the last decade and we use a traditional family recipe but tweaked it a bit so it is vegan (no seafood). We make a batch every 2-3 months and have an ongoing supply in the fridge. Once we get to the last jar or two, it often has a really strong flavor so we make Kimchi Jigae with it.

I've played around with a few of the recipes in Katz' book, but sauerkraut, kimchi, and sourdough bread were the ones I continued to make. I'm still experimenting with different sauerkraut recipes, and added ginger to my last one. If I had a garden I'd probably expand the fermentation experimentation.

I got a copy of the Noma Fermentation cookbook from the library a couple years ago. It is probably worth a look if you can find a free copy. I didn't really use any of the recipes, but the structure of the book is interesting and the beginning gets into quite a bit of detail on the science behind fermentation.

[Slevin]

I am not a nutritionist, so adjust the weighting of my opinion / understanding accordingly.

My understanding of fermented food nutrition is that as you start to consume more and more fermented foods, your gut biota are going to highly increase in diversity. And if you do this without a ramp up effect, I.e. going from eating zero fermented foods to eating multiple cups per day, that’s kind of like going to the gym as an average untrained person and trying to deadlift 500 pounds. It might cause some adverse reactions. I would suggest trying to ramp up the intake more slowly, starting with a half serving (1/4 cup kimchi or sauerkraut) and then every week increasing servings by maybe one half serving per day. Results at 6 servings per day were pretty phenomenal, but they were kinda going for shock and awe in that study, and you can probably get good results with much less.