Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Where are you and where are you going?
MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

So with a new month I also need to talk a bit about finances.
In total I spent 527.02€ in May. This was a bit more than I'd like it to be, but most of that was due to an unexpected trip to my grandparents for mothersday, so I'm fine with that.
On the savings and investment side a lot changed.

Current Savings:
Emergency Fund: 5000€
Investements: 14200€

This was mostly due to getting a huge tax return and my salary this week. All of the tax return and a good chunk of the salary went right into my portfolio. Seeing this number rise and rise feels pretty great and should easily reach my next milestone (networth of 20k) in the next couple weeks.

For my challenges there isn't much new. I'm still working on my daily tasks every morning.
For the writing goal I probably have to stretch a bit. I did some writing the last two days, although it was a journaling exercise trying to plan out my next steps and immediate goals. This ended up to become a 10 page hand written "journal entry". I'll count this as a piece of text, although it isn't really what I imagined when I set that goal.
Anyways, I think I have a clearer view on my goals for the rest of the year and am taking some action towards them.
So with that I can also plan my next steps a bit better and see work towards something.

bos
Posts: 65
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:05 am
Location: The holy roman empire

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by bos »

Just read all posts. Good luck on your path fellow German :D

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

So end of another 4-week block, and this challenge was a bit of a disaster :lol:

First to the things that went well.
Savings are growing steadily, I stuck to the 10 ideas a day thing, and I'll continue doing this for the next 4 weeks, I also more or less kept reading Seneca every day (sometimes I didn't get to it and then did 2 chapters the next day).

The writing on the other hand went pretty much nowhere. It feels like when I set myself the goal to write I just won't do it. I journaled a bit and wrote a giant rant, but I didn't really write anything I could post anywhere, and even if I count the stuff I wrote, it wouldn't be 4 pieces of text.

This kinda made me go down another rabbit hole this week, I had a deep dive into motivational stuff, habits, etc.
After watching the probably 20th video about motivation, I had an odd realization. If the techniques of those motivational speakers work so well, how is it that their conferences, talks, ... are always so full. I mean, if it would work like they say it does (and I think it does for some people) nobody would need them anymore. So I kept searching for some alternatives and found a more eastern approach that resonated with me a lot more than all the western ideas.
This Harvard psychiatrist talked about different styles of people and how they have different styles of motivation. In short, there are people who get motivated quickly but lose interest as rapidly as it shows up, there are others who have a more steady motivation that holds for a medium length, and there are some who take a while to get going, but then continue for ages once they hit their threshold. I'm definitely in group one. I want to do something, start doing it for a couple of days and then drop it again. I always beat myself up for that, because everyone just says things along the line of "Just work on it consistently and you will get good". Now the simple solution to my problem is just a rotation. If I have 4-5 ongoing projects, I will most likely be motivated for one of them, once I lose interest I rotate to another of those projects. But instead of doing something new, I just simply switch between the same projects all the time until one of them is done. That way I should be able to keep my motivation up and get stuff done. In the long run, I'm probably a bit slower as if I would focus on one project after the other, but as I don't get anything done with the old system this might actually get me to get some things done.
I used this concept, my notes from Atomic Habits, some notes on Gamification, and a bunch of notes and journal entries to create a rough motivational system focused on myself, what might work for me and what worked in the past.

The main focus of this system consisting of a wall full of papers right now:
-Multiple varied projects that I started but never finished, right now this includes:
*Editing some short stories I wrote.
*Finishing a mobile app I stopped working on once I had a prototype
*Learning some songs on the guitar (I played regularly in middle school, but haven't played much the last years)
*Some odd random small "projects" that I need to get done, like resetting an old PC and selling it etc.
-My long term goals, like ERE and some other more personal goals, short/mid-term goals are connected to the long term goals to show me why I want to do them.
-A couple of quotes I like that usually get me going.
-A habit tracker for something things I want to do daily, like reading at least 30min every day, the 10 idea challenge, etc.
-A list of regular chores and markers which one I have to do, this just makes it easier to keep track of than a to-do list.
-A "book" of ideas, here I collect ideas for future projects, once I finished one of my ongoing projects I can take an idea from there and replace the finished one.
-A "book" of done project, what I did, what I learned etc.
-A "Quest log", just a list of done tasks, helped me a lot in the past to see that I actually make progress.

Things I want to add:
-A bunch of mood board like images of how I want my life to look in the future.
-Some pictures of the people I'm doing things for (I realized that I am way more motivated to get things done if it is "for others" and not for myself)
-A tracker for some of the long term goals, maybe with milestones and things like that.
-A reward system and some other gamification ideas.

I just finished putting everything up yesterday, but already today I see a change. Just the visibility of the tasks, projects and so on makes me want to get going. Seeing how the wall changes if I finished a task and crossing things out, sticking up new papers, and writing down done tasks feels great. So I'll see if this works for the long term, if not I might adjust things, remove and add some stuff and tinker with it until it works.

This also leads to the next 4-week block.
I will continue doing the 10 ideas per day thing and reading Seneca.
I don't want to add something like "Write 4 pieces of text" because this just doesn't work. So I'm changing that to "Work 1h on projects every day, 2h on the weekends." This leaves me room to switch between things, but I also should make some progress in that time.
Other than that I also want to get out a bit, things are opening up again here and I got my second vaccine this week, so I also added "Go outside at least once at the weekend" :lol:
That might sound stupid, but for someone who loves to be alone and in front of a PC or book, I really don't get outside enough. I mostly just want to read in parks for a bit or check out some of the libraries and attractions in the area, and meet up with friends a bit more regularly. So putting this on my ToDo makes me actually go through with it.

Anyways, this post is getting pretty long again. I'll keep you guys update on how the whole thing with the motivation system works and probably be posting general updates soon

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Not much of an update for last week.
Work was pretty busy and the motivational system seems to work, I made pretty good progress on some smaller projects and also keep up with other random tasks like chores and organizational stuff.
I think the journaling exercises also made me think more about my future and I realized more and more that I would like to try out some other areas of computer science. I would like to find out if academia is something for me and am currently thinking about applying for a PhD position.
Other than the probable down-grade in work-life-balance, I don't really see a reason not to go for it. Here PhD students get paid pretty well and overall it would only mean losing out on about 600-1000€ per year in net salary, which seems to be fine considering that I would also get an PhD in 3 years.
I did some research on open positions and different universities I would be interested in and I'll probably just apply to some and see what they say.
Worst case I'll just stick with what I'm doing right now

shelob
Posts: 86
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:04 am

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by shelob »

Hey, that’s also on my (maybe-one-day) bucket list :-)
Do you have friends or family in academia, or some other way to gather information before you decide?

I wouldn't be the first person in my family to get a PhD, so I can share some thoughts.
Keep in mind that my perspective is limited by observing second-hand and by a very small sample size :) And also, the people close to me who have a PhD didn’t exactly have a great experience in academia, so that definitely colors my view.
Unless you want a pretty name plate for your fancy office at whatever, writing a PhD thesis means that you should become an expert in your field. The expert, if it’s obscure enough. That is either a major reason for getting a PhD in the first place… or it’s an expectation you struggle to live up to. Also, politics. The academic world has its politics just like the normal world.

Like you say, your work-life-balance will get worse. That would make you more dependent on your job, since you have less time for diversification of income streams and using alternate methods of capital. Of course, it’s time-limited, but according to second-hand experience, having a PhD does not automatically mean you have more job options. In fact, you get overqualified for a whole lot of interesting jobs in your field. And the jobs you could get as a post-doc might not be so great (akademisches Präkariat). Of course, you know your field better than I do, so take this with a grain of salt :)

OTOH, it while it closes doors, it probably also opens some, perhaps a lot. I wouldn't know, like I said, my family members didn’t have a particularly good experience in academia. Worst case scenario, could you go back to something like you're currently doing after you complete your thesis?

Having a title is also usually a major external sign of accomplishment. That can be quite useful, since it sorta... increases the social leeway you're granted? Things you do, for frugality or other reasons, that seem otherwise low-status might get seen as simply eccentric. So, social capital might be a reason to go for it :)

If you want to try out different sub-fields of computer science, why not get involved with some open source projects (if there are any relevant ones, I have no idea)? Or start your own show :-)
That might actually not be a bad idea if you do decide to go for the PhD.


Lastly, there’s a high chance you already know it, but the mention is obligatory: http://phdcomics.com/comics/most_popular.php

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

shelob wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:03 pm
Hey, that’s also on my (maybe-one-day) bucket list :-)
Do you have friends or family in academia, or some other way to gather information before you decide?

I wouldn't be the first person in my family to get a PhD, so I can share some thoughts.
Keep in mind that my perspective is limited by observing second-hand and by a very small sample size :) And also, the people close to me who have a PhD didn’t exactly have a great experience in academia, so that definitely colors my view.
Unless you want a pretty name plate for your fancy office at whatever, writing a PhD thesis means that you should become an expert in your field. The expert, if it’s obscure enough. That is either a major reason for getting a PhD in the first place… or it’s an expectation you struggle to live up to. Also, politics. The academic world has its politics just like the normal world.

Like you say, your work-life-balance will get worse. That would make you more dependent on your job, since you have less time for diversification of income streams and using alternate methods of capital. Of course, it’s time-limited, but according to second-hand experience, having a PhD does not automatically mean you have more job options. In fact, you get overqualified for a whole lot of interesting jobs in your field. And the jobs you could get as a post-doc might not be so great (akademisches Präkariat). Of course, you know your field better than I do, so take this with a grain of salt :)

OTOH, it while it closes doors, it probably also opens some, perhaps a lot. I wouldn't know, like I said, my family members didn’t have a particularly good experience in academia. Worst case scenario, could you go back to something like you're currently doing after you complete your thesis?

Having a title is also usually a major external sign of accomplishment. That can be quite useful, since it sorta... increases the social leeway you're granted? Things you do, for frugality or other reasons, that seem otherwise low-status might get seen as simply eccentric. So, social capital might be a reason to go for it :)

If you want to try out different sub-fields of computer science, why not get involved with some open source projects (if there are any relevant ones, I have no idea)? Or start your own show :-)
That might actually not be a bad idea if you do decide to go for the PhD.


Lastly, there’s a high chance you already know it, but the mention is obligatory: http://phdcomics.com/comics/most_popular.php
Hey, thanks for the detailed answer.
I'm the first person in my family to even go to university, so my parents would love it if I decided to go for the PhD :lol: But that also means that I have nobody super close who is/was working in academia. But I might be able to ask around a bit and find someone.

I totally agree with becoming an expert, I think my main problem right now is that I can't find a topic I would be interested in enough to see myself spending 3 years on, and possibly even more in the future.

I feel like a PhD wouldn't give me any more job/career advantages in the industry, I might be able to squeeze out a little more pay, but nothing worth the time I would spend on the PhD. But on the other hand it would open up doors for jobs in academia, which is something I always wanted to explore.

Worst case I could definitely go back to my current job, most likely even the exact same company and position, probably even with a little pay raise, so I don't think I would lose too much.

So yeah, my biggest problem seems to be finding something I'm interested in and with that I could also look for some people to talk to, that might also give me some ideas about topics

User avatar
mountainFrugal
Posts: 1125
Joined: Fri May 07, 2021 2:26 pm

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by mountainFrugal »

I am also the first person in my family to go to college and have a PhD. I pursued the academic track through postdoc and interviewed for faculty positions at large R1 institutions (research focused). I interviewed many mid-career scientists a few steps ahead in the US and Europe to determine that this path was not for me. Most of the day to day work was competing for a ever shrinking pools of grant money against other top talent. Academia is about writing grants and papers and doing ever increasing amounts of administrative work for your department or professional society etc. As with everything there is also a huge luck component for tenure track or semi-permanent positions for which you are competing against people who know exactly what interests them and have been working towards it often at the expense of everything else in their lives. This is specialist central and is not kind to generalists. If you are thinking about industry having a PhD can open many doors if you study something really in demand like ML/AI/statistics or working with big data sets. If you already have a job coding you might be able to just find a sub-specialty in CS and work on open-source projects for 3 years like @shelob suggested and come up way further ahead than having a PhD. I am all for people furthering their education and following interests, but I want to give a more realistic picture of academia.

shelob
Posts: 86
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:04 am

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by shelob »

No problem! :D
And I totally get the lure of academia. I do. I feel like there’s this (idealized) image in our culture of the Life of the Mind. Of a community working to further the frontier of human knowledge, from within these ancient buildings with beautiful architecture, from within a very old and great tradition. Decoupled from the lives and policies of ordinary people, maintaining collaborations even during wartime. Working for the progress of the human race.
And there are reasons this image came about, it’s just like always… There’s more to it, and what we don’t hear about is what we most need to hear.
What was described to me is pretty much like @mountainFrugal describes. The person who talked to me about this said that academia is like a business. Instead of maximizing for profit on the free market, it’s grant money etc. With very fierce competition among academics, hundreds aiming for the same tenure track position, like @mountainFrugal said.
I’ve also listened to rants about the “lack of scientific integrity [of a supervisor]”. Just sayin’.

If you are really confident you could go back to what you would otherwise be doing, you could just go for it. It sounds like it wouldn't be a loss in FI terms, but you would be quite a few experiences richer.

My (current, subject to change) personal solution is to become semi-ERE’d before going to university, so that if/when I decide to pursue something within academia, I won’t be plagued by the money/career concerns keeping the others up at night. (Those who do not have family wealth behind them…)

I also have some nagging doubts about the extent of the ability of the ivory towers to further the frontier of human knowledge, but I’m holding back on formulating an opinion until after I’ve actually seen their inside.

With the search for topics, these come to mind :lol: :
http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1436
http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1056
http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=991
http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=864
Edit:
http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=967

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Thanks for the answers, I'll keep all of that in mind. I think I was also a bit frustrated with work last week, which made me consider other options.
For now, I'm keeping an eye out for topics that would interest me and if I find something I'll see if I can find someone who would take me with that topic. Because it doesn't mean that much for my career I think I can leave this on the back burner for now. I can always go back and get it later if I still want to.

On a good note, my motivational system seems to be working. I got back into reading more and currated a giant list of books I want to read. I also finished reading Seneca, and read Zero to One by Peter Thiel on the weekend (pretty interesting read on startups).

Other than reading I spend a good chunck of time on an app idea I had ages ago. I made a prototype last year which got pretty good feedback, but then life hit and I had other things to do. I dug out my old code and started polishing and fixing bugs for a little bit every day. I'll see if I can finish a release worthy version in the near future.
Due to not forcing me to stick with one project, I made more progress on this than usual, and made some progress on some other things.
One of them is a plan on creating more sources of income, giving me a detailed plan for the future on what to focus on. This should still let me switch between different projects, but keep me from starting too many at once.

So yeah, for the next weeks I'll work myself through the pile of books I want to read, and try to finish up that app.

SchnitzelEngineer
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Jun 10, 2019 1:53 pm

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by SchnitzelEngineer »

Hello fellow German,

reading your thoughts about your immediate future, especially the possibility of joining a PhD programme made me logging in and writing here. A few years ago after I did join such a programme myself, right after finishing the master studies. Now, a few years later, I'm working in the industry as an engineer. The topic of the programme is not my daily work.

A PhD programme has different aspects:
- you become an expert in a very narrow field. If you dont join the academia or a the indsutrial research company, the fame fades quickly. This depends on the on the specific field.
- if you have the chance, consider the pro's and con's of the different PhD-programmes: university faculties, public funded research societies (Fraunhofer, Max Planck, ...), private funded programmes (IBM, VW, Mercedes, ...)
- you spend the "best years of your life", a period from age 25...35. Possible, that you meet your future wife in these years.
- no matter in which field your programme is located, you learn a bunch of knew skills, such as presenting, speaking to large audiences.
- you become more confident after accomplishing the thesis.
- depending on the sort of working group you can gain insights in very different topics. A "computer scientist" is a good addition to many different fields: biology, chemistry, engineering, ... .

All of these aspects can be very valuable, not only for a company career but for your individual development.

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Hey, yeah you're points make a lot of sense. I think the whole "fame" part doesn't really matter for me. I really don't care about the title, that part would only be for my family, and make my parents stop asking if I consider doing a PhD :lol:

All about it being my "best years of life" was actually something that made me think more about the whole thing in the first place. Because I moved around a lot between my studies (Austria to Germany, back to Austria, to the UK, and now back to Germany in about 5 years), I don't really have a close group of friends I socialize with. The friends I made in the last years all came through university and I think my brain just takes that as a base solution - if you want to make friends, go get a degree. My current hobbies don't really get me to socialize and that I enjoy spending a lot of time alone doesn't really help either. I kinda need an external reason to go outside and university provided that.
I guess my job would be the logical replacement for university, but the company is tiny and there isn't really anyone in my age.
So all in all, I think a PhD would scratch that itch, although there are probably better ways. I just need a reason to make me socialize more.

The other points are nice add-ons but nothing super important to me, I could learn most skills without a PhD if I wanted to and confidence isn't a big problem for me either, as long as I actually know the topic I am talking about.

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

On another note, another month is over and I thought I did terrible when it came to my spendings.
Lot's of work meant that I cooked less and ressorted to buying food at the office more than I would have liked to.
But somehow I still managed to only spend ~515€ in the last month.
With this and my salary coming in yesterday I invested another 1800€ in my portfolio, which brings my current situation to:

Emergency Fund: 5000€
Investments: 16.500€

That's a total of 21.500€. Just seeing the stash grow every month is incredible. I'm setting my goals a bit higher now and I'd like to see it rise to a total of 30k until the end of September. That would mean that I managed to go from almost no savings in October 2020 to 30k a year later, and might also be a good comparison for a year over year progress in the future.

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Small update on the PhD front.
My current job is closely related to the - quite big - university in the city, and my boss offered me to do a PhD at my current job. So once I have an interesting topic he would help me get a professor to be my supervisor and also be on the board of supervisors in general. That would kinda solve my problem, I could keep working where I am right now, and do the PhD.
This seems to be a good middleground between moving and going for a university position and not doing a PhD at all. If I see myself in academia in the future I could easily switch and if not I still have my old job I could simply keep working at.
I'm not super pressed on this path right now, but I'll keep it in mind and take the offer if I stumble across a topic I can see myself studying for 3 years.

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Late update, but I was on vacation last week so there isn't much to add.
I'm not super into traveling for the sake of seeing new places, so vacation meant visiting my parents for a week, which also has the advantage of being pretty cheap (about 50€ for the train and other than about 20€ for food I didn't really spend anything).
Much of the time went to visiting different family members and helping out my parents (large horse stable = a lot of work), but I also manage to work on my app for about 2h a day, and read a lot.
The progress on the app was incredible and made me realize even more that working on my own projects is something I would love to do full time as soon as possible. This also kicked me out of the PhD mindset, although I'm still keeping that as a potential goal, but way in the future. Thinking about how it would lock me down into one thing for at least 3 years seems way to limiting for my current situation.

Other than that there isn't much to add, I'm still sticking to my routine and the motivational systems works fine. I'll probably have a more interesting update next time, but I guess no news is good news.

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

So somehow the week of vacation and a lot of work before that made me forget about my own 4 week challenge.
Here is the late update and what I plan to do for the next 4 weeks.

Last challenge:
- Write down 10 ideas everyday
This is now implemented in my daily todos and I'm slowly filling a little notebook with hundreds of ideas.
- Read one chapter of Seneca every day
I finished Seneca's letters from a stoic a while ago, this now turned into "Read at least 30min of non-fiction every day".
- 1h of work on side projects / 2h on days I'm not working
This is also now in my daily todos and something I'll keep up in the future. The progress on my projects is giant and I am close to finally finishing some things I started ages ago.
- Get outside at least once a week.
This worked ok, I usually used sunday to get out and visit some parks or meet up with friends. But after socializing with family members for a whole week I needed this weekend for myself. I created a list of places I want to visit in the city and for the future I want to try to work through it.

Updates on the "Wall of Motivation":
- Used the photo-printer at my parents place to print out some pictures to add, mostly of places I want to visit, family, pets, and all the things that motivate me.
- Added long term goals and a way to track monthly progress, this seems to work better than keeping it in an excel sheet like I had it before, simply because it is more visible.
- One problem I had was that after finishing the goal of 1h/2h a day, I just didn't have anything to do, but I couldn't represent doing extra work. So I added a little reward system where I get a point for every hour of work and can use those points to get "rewards" like pizza, books, and so on. Every item I would like to buy that isn't necessary get's a point value and I can work to get it. This has also the advantage of putting time between desire and purchase, if I realize that I don't really need something a week later, I won't have bought it yet, similar of the wishlist system some people implement.

For the next 4 weeks:
- I want to add 30min of "movement" to my daily todos.
This is mostly meant to get me to go for walks or something like that whenever I am working from home. When I have to be in the office I walk to the office and back (~20min one direction)
- Track expenses on a budget as detailed as possible.
I used to only track my expenses, but after reading You Need A Budget, I wanted to try out their system. Because I'm curious on what exactly I spend my money, I want to do this as detailed as possible. I'll start tracking in more detail in August and then decide if I'll stick with the budget approach or not.

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Another month is over so here's a quick update on my savings.

Emergency Fund: 5000€
Investments: 18.300€

Last week I took some time to skip through the books recommended for each Wheaton level, I got through everything recommended for levels 1 to 3.
I skip through most of it because I couldn't find anything I could implement/haven't implemented yet. However I read through most of "You need a budget", I'm doing a really good job with sticking to a low level of expenses, but I always only tracked expenses and didn't really have a budget. I liked the idea of "having a job for every dollar", and thought why not try out a budget for the next month and see if it helps or not.
Here's the current setup of the budget using "assumed expenses" from July. I also marked areas where I think I might be able to improve, and I'll add some comments to every category.

Rent: 293,37€
Fixed, nothing I can do about this, I won't get a better deal anywhere near this city, so for now I won't change anything here.
Phone: 14,85€
Can go down a couple more euros, I need to keep reminding myself to call my parents over WhatsApp so I don't pay extra for calling abroad.
Internet: 15,57€
It's a pretty good deal, so that's a fixed cost.
TV/Radio-Tax: 17,50€
Fixed, I can't get rid of that except if I go blind and deaf :lol:
Groceries: 150,00€
This is one category I'm not super sure about, if possible I might want to reduce it, for this month I will track literally everything I buy to see where there is room for improvement.
Eating Out: 25,00€
It's not too bad, but definitely, something to keep an eye on, this mostly comes from buying food when I am in the office or grabbing a coffee with coworkers at lunch break. I value the "social aspect" of getting coffee together over the cost of the coffee itself, but I want to get rid of buying lunch every now and then. So I might be able to cut this in half in the future.
Birthday Fund: 15,00€
I called it birthday fund, but this would also include stuff like Christmas presents and the like. Instead of having all that money spend in December, I have a monthly amount that goes into a mental piggybank I can take from whenever I need to buy a gift.
Holidays: 20,00€
Same as the birthday fund, my holidays usually just consist of visiting family and train tickets are pretty cheap, so I think 20€ a month are fine.
Clothing: 10,00€
Again a fund for larger expenses. Right now I have loads of clothes so even if some start to fall apart I don't need to buy new ones. The fund is kinda a backup for larger expenses if one of my more expensive one-off items break, like my winter jacket or boots. I don't think I will need to tap into this that soon though.
Savings: 1902,02€
That is literally everything that's left from my salary.

Hobby/Entertainment: 0,00€
I use a separate system for this, everything I want to buy for entertainment or my hobbies needs to come from money that wasn't generated by my job. Lately, this has come from selling loads of stuff I still had at my parents' place and doing the occasional odd job. I usually spend the money on either non-fiction books, (I love to write into them, re-read, mark sections, and so on, so libraries don't really work for me, though I often buy second-hand so that helps) rewards for my motivational system, random project expenses, website hosting, etc.
Currently, I don't have any projects that generate reoccurring revenue, so a simple income/expense sheet handles the hobby budget.
If there is reoccurring revenue in the future, I might have to put a system in place to put part of it into savings or put money aside for taxes. But that's planned for the near future.
The Hobby fund is also the first fund to take from if I go over in any other categories because it is the most "unnecessary" part of my budget from my point of view.

Anyways, those are just the numbers I came up with when looking at the last month, so there probably will be a lot of adjustments in the future, but I'll keep you up to date if I have to change anything

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Update on the 4-week "challenge"
I kinda had the same problem as the last time, work and a quick "emergency vacation" (My uncle got married and I thought it was a month later than it actually was :D) made me forget about posting here.

In general, the 30min of moving around every day went pretty well. I'm now spreading out some of my chores over the week to get out of the house every day. It's pretty easy to keep this up, so I will continue doing it. Although I will give myself some slack because some days I just have a bunch of stuff to do and don't want/have time for a walk.

Tracking my expenses is going well too, but I will give a better update on this at the end of the month. I'm going over budget in some areas (travel expenses and eating out) and am well under the budget in some others (groceries).

Some other small things towards ERE that happened in the last weeks:
- Canceled my yearly subscription for public transport. Since I moved closer to my job I don't need public transport too often anymore, it will be cheaper to just buy a ticket whenever I need one.
- Sold some stuff I had laying around at my parent's place. Mostly trading cards and some other random things.
- Registered for an archery course. I'm still looking for a hobby I like to do regularly, archery looked like fun and a nearby club is having a one-day beginners course. This will be on Saturday, so let's wait and see if I like it or not.
- Did a LOT of journaling. I realized that journaling or just writing down my thoughts helps my brain to focus and just make sense out of the mess of thoughts.

For the next weeks I'm not setting any really specific goals, but I want to focus more on trying out hobbies, and making progress in some of my projects.
I also want to look a bit into different job options. I really enjoy my current job, but my boss doesn't like the idea of people working part-time, so I'd like to know what my options are for the future. I don't plan to change jobs that soon, but I like to have an eye out for any positions that might interest me.

sky
Posts: 1726
Joined: Tue Jan 04, 2011 2:20 am

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by sky »

I like your focus on month by month goals. Enough time to be able to work on a goal, and just the right amount of time to assess your success on making progress with the goal, and whether the goal is actually worth the effort.

My general advice, which is not in response to anything you have written, but more general to everyone: Try to develop a lifestyle which is satisfying but also has the outcome of living below your financial means. In other words, the type of lifestyle you create is more important than the specific financial goal. The financial accomplishments should be a result (side effect?) of creating a satisfying lifestyle. Jacob's blog is full of excellent advice on how to create a lifestyle which meets the financial criteria and low cost criteria. You, and every person will have to fill in the details of what makes that person happy and satisfied. So learn from examples, but know thyself and develop a lifestyle that fits your needs.

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

Thanks for stopping by sky!

For now, I am pretty happy with my lifestyle, I don't really restrict myself much, most of the things just come naturally to me.
With the budgeting and tracking, it is more for me to have a "tripwire" to see if something goes completely out of hands, but I won't leave out the occasional things that improve my life, like travelling to see my family, just to hit my budget.
The budget is more of a work-in-progress expense sheet to see how much I need to live a fulfilling life.

My main problem with my lifestyle is that I don't really know what to do with my free time, that's also why I like to try out more things, like archery. Even if that isn't super aligned with ERE (it costs money regularly and isn't that helpful in life outside of the sport). But my life is missing something that I can do whenever I have nothing else to do, and that might get me out of the house and maybe throw me in a new social group.

I'll look a bit further into Jacobs blog and maybe I find some ideas

MeloTheMelon
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

Post by MeloTheMelon »

I guess it's time for another financial update.

With the salary for august coming in, I was able to put anohter ~1950€ into my portfolio. That brings me to a total of:
- 5000€ Emergency Fund
- 20.500€ Investments

Total: 25.500€

The budget approach was more or less a success.
Success in the sense that I stuck to my overall budget, even with quite large expenses from my hobby fund (mostly for the archery course).
Failure because my estimates where completely skewed. My expenses in Eating out, Holidays, and Clothing was a lot higher this month, but my expenses for food was a lot lower, and after making some small adjustments I also managed to get my phone bill down 4€ (pretty much just using whatsapp to call my parents to not pay fees for calling to another country).
Holiday was a bit over budget because I had an unexpected visit to my parents (35€ train ride) and clothing because my jacket fell apart and I need a new one (70€). Overall, I think that's fine though, in theory those expenses don't happen regulary and are the reason why I put money aside every month. For this month, I just moved around the left over money from the food budget and some from my hobby fund to get the whole budget to a zero, without reducing my estimated savings.

Other small things I saw by tracking exactly what I spend my money on where:
- Just buy groceries at the supermarket across the street instead of the one on my way to work, the later one is in general just more expensive for the same quality of stuff.
- Pack some fruits of vegetables to snack on whenever I'm in the office. Whenever I did that I didn't buy lunch, most of the time I didn't eat the food I brought anyways, but if I got hungry I didn't have to spend a lot for something for the nearby restaurants or foodtrucks.

In the end I still ended up with a 77% savings rate!

For September I'm trying to get this up to 80%
Just adjusting the budget for food should get me there, as long as I don't have any other unexpected high expenses.

Side note on the archery course:

I really enjoyed it, the 3h felt like 10 minutes and the trainers and other students were great. We all signed up for the next two sessions, by completing those we would be able to shoot on any shooting range on our own.
Only downside is that the club is in a neighboring city, meaning I have to buy train tickets for every session. It's not too bad for once a week, but anything more could get pretty expensive.
On the other hand, I found out that I could use the shooting range of the university in my town for a pretty low fee (around 40€ per year), due to me being kinda an employee of the university.

All in all, I really enjoy archery and am thinking about picking it up as something to dump my free time into. Which would come with a pretty high amount of expenses at the beginning. Bows aren't that cheap and especially in the beginning you go through a lot of stuff as you progress.
Anyways, that's something to think about this month.

Post Reply