@George -
Yes all of my latest calculations include $75,000 for 1/2 of equity in a $150,000 house. I guess I never was very clear on that. Unfortunately the house is no longer worth $150,000, but if I'm buying equity in this house, it's because my husband owns the other half so his underwater house, at that point, would also be my problem.
@akratic -
I read previously about your passive income via t-shirts, in fact, I have been thinking about that ever since I read that about you so I really really appreciate your insights here. That's good to know... yeah I was kinda expecting to be able to design a shirt and assume the design would be somewhat timeless (I was thinking of designing somewhat geeky/quirky shirts rather than shirts based on current events). Maybe that's not the case. I also know nothing about graphic design, so there would be a learning curve for me. I am not at all entrepreneurial so yes, finding side income streams that don't involve paid employment is a huge challenge for me but one I'll try to take on, anyway. Thanks for the warning though, perhaps 100% passive is just not realistic.
LiquidSapphire's Journal
Liquid Sapphire, if you find an answer to the equation that lets you semi-ERE in a year, I say try and find a solution to that!
And/or, would you be able to get a side job, even just a seasonal one to earn you a "quick" (over 8 months) $20k?
That and an epiphany about what to do for an internet business have led be to realize that if my own perfect storm happened, with all the pieces falling into place, I could and would semi-ere summer 2012 (less than a year).
That is, retire with $100k banked*, a little internet business, and a mortgage that's paying for itself through tenants.
*ahem, I happen to be a dual citizen of a country where the bank's interest rates hover around 9% (cough, tax haven, cough) per annum...
And/or, would you be able to get a side job, even just a seasonal one to earn you a "quick" (over 8 months) $20k?
That and an epiphany about what to do for an internet business have led be to realize that if my own perfect storm happened, with all the pieces falling into place, I could and would semi-ere summer 2012 (less than a year).
That is, retire with $100k banked*, a little internet business, and a mortgage that's paying for itself through tenants.
*ahem, I happen to be a dual citizen of a country where the bank's interest rates hover around 9% (cough, tax haven, cough) per annum...
-
LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
@palmera -
BTW you said something to me a few weeks ago somewhere, about how I should make a bucket list of stuff I want to do when I retire, and just start doing them. I have done two of those things already and I'm working on a third and fourth that are more long term goals. So thanks. I have heard the sentiment before but sometimes it just takes hearing something at a time when you are most receptive, or having it said in just a certain way and you were able to do that for me so thanks!
I thought about a side job...I know you tend bar, not sure that is for me (I'm very introverted) but I thought of it. I think the number of hours I'd have to put in to get anywhere near 20K are just not worth it to me... I really like my evenings mainly free
I actually have every other Friday off from my job, so I have been trying to think of something relatively productive to put there. I might volunteer at a local thrift store actually. It's walking distance, it's a cause I care about, I'd learn about the "used goods" market (could help me open an Ebay arbitrage business in the future) and maybe I'd meet some cool people, maybe they'd let me work in the back on their accounting stuff after a while. You know what, maybe I will.
BTW you said something to me a few weeks ago somewhere, about how I should make a bucket list of stuff I want to do when I retire, and just start doing them. I have done two of those things already and I'm working on a third and fourth that are more long term goals. So thanks. I have heard the sentiment before but sometimes it just takes hearing something at a time when you are most receptive, or having it said in just a certain way and you were able to do that for me so thanks!
I thought about a side job...I know you tend bar, not sure that is for me (I'm very introverted) but I thought of it. I think the number of hours I'd have to put in to get anywhere near 20K are just not worth it to me... I really like my evenings mainly free
I actually have every other Friday off from my job, so I have been trying to think of something relatively productive to put there. I might volunteer at a local thrift store actually. It's walking distance, it's a cause I care about, I'd learn about the "used goods" market (could help me open an Ebay arbitrage business in the future) and maybe I'd meet some cool people, maybe they'd let me work in the back on their accounting stuff after a while. You know what, maybe I will.
I've been cycling between high and low expense months. Not ideal for lowing weight but it works as a financial tool. As long as each low-expense month is lower than the previous low-expense month, and each high-expense month is lower than the previous high-expense month I'm happy. I wasn't following this schedule consciously but sort of fell into it.
Last month was my low-expense month. I felt a bit burned out by the end. This month I took a step back. I found myself on Amazon in a 'buying mood,' but there wasn't anything I could think of buying! So, I spend a bit more on food, pick up a few luxuries, and buy anything I've been delaying. After a month of that, I'm ready to jump back to low expenses.
Also, as Surio suggested, if you're interested in contributing to the SkillsFIRE blog, PM me
Last month was my low-expense month. I felt a bit burned out by the end. This month I took a step back. I found myself on Amazon in a 'buying mood,' but there wasn't anything I could think of buying! So, I spend a bit more on food, pick up a few luxuries, and buy anything I've been delaying. After a month of that, I'm ready to jump back to low expenses.
Also, as Surio suggested, if you're interested in contributing to the SkillsFIRE blog, PM me
-
LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
That is probably going to be my experience too; some low months coupled with some high months. I feel good though that my high month still resulted in 70% savings though. I had a similar experience on Black Friday - I was in a buying mood, in the middle of our local shopping district.... all these stores and I couldn't really think of much I wanted! I did find a couple things but all in all the damage was all of like $40.
But you're right, now I am pretty OK about having another reasonably low expense month again, though I think I am going to have to watch restaurants; that one is starting to creep up a touch higher than planned.
But you're right, now I am pretty OK about having another reasonably low expense month again, though I think I am going to have to watch restaurants; that one is starting to creep up a touch higher than planned.
-
LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
I am posting some general musings mid-month to avoid a novel long update at year end. No specific spending wins/losses/strategies discussed today, more 30,000ft level philosophy kind of stuff.
This month is my first conscious attempt of living the Mustachian way, I guess, at least, how I interpret it. To me it means living a life of abundance and luxury but being super keen on how you spend your money to make that happen. So I did not spend with abandon, but the things I did spend on, while not necessary, did make me feel pretty happy and like I was living luxuriously. I did not track expenses and fret. I lived budget less. I spent what I spent and it cost what it cost! I went to the bar once. I went to Starbucks with a friend once! I spent $5.15 on a big cup of espresso and egg nog! Ridiculous! BUT... when I did these things, it felt awesome. If I did it every week (like I did a few years back), it wouldn’t feel awesome anymore. It would just be run of the mill kinda stuff. So that makes it so I really appreciate it and live in the moment when I do this kind of thing. I guess this means I can save about 75-80% ish, but still live a relatively frugal life that feels luxurious to me.
My coworker told me this morning that I have inspired her to spend less and she has made a lot of great changes in her life. She stopped eating out as much. She turned off her cable. She’s lost some weight and now instead of retiring in 7 years she wants to retire in August. She can too, with her pension! She looks so much better and happier! I am happy for her.
I am doing my best to stop just mentally checking out of work but it has been damn hard. Thankfully, my boss’s response, instead of holding my feet to the fire like any decent manager would do (honestly, even just a “Honey, you need to start doing better” would have been sufficient motivation for at least a while), instead, she took the most annoying, pain in the ass work away, and gave it to the brown noser! She’s actually rewarding my piss poor performance. While the reward for hard work is more work... the reward for slacking off is apparently less work in this world. Go figure. I read an article on burn out... I realized OMG I am SO BURNED OUT.
Supposedly here are the six areas of burnout to watch out for:
1) Working too much (not in my case)
2) Working in an unjust environment (OMG yes.)
3) Working with little social support (We live in a real life Dilbert cartoon)
4) Working with little agency or control (OMG yes)
5) Working in the service of values we loathe (yes! Civil service rules are so cumbersome and arbitrary)
6) Working for insufficient reward (I make plenty, but I have never gotten positive feedback or recognition what so ever, and neither do my very worthy coworkers.)
To cope I have been picking a few things off of my bucket list to accomplish. The fact is, life is short! I read a couple things this month that really hit home.
1) A couple had recently finished a huge project for their home business and told someone else “Finally! Now for the first time in months we are going to have a quiet evening at home as a family.” Well 45 minutes later they had a car accident where the woman was killed instantly and the man was in critical condition.
2) A couple had recently retired, they were fairly young, perhaps late 50s. On a walking trip of Europe, the woman developed serious hip problems (one hip was bone on bone and the other was very close to that, got there within weeks). She had never previously had any indication of hip problems.
3) A man reported reading in a company pamphlet that if you make the mistake of retiring too early, you have to go back to work. If you make the mistake of retiring too late... there is no recovery! Time, not money, is our most valuable resource.
Life is short! There is no guarantee of tomorrow and there is no guarantee that you can do all you want to do - later. There may never be a later, or life may change so much that even when later comes, your dream is no longer possible. Take my coworker who dreamed of running a local 10K race (The Bolder Boulder)... but is no longer able to even dream of accomplishing this, because of her health. She could have done it in her 20s though, easily, no sweat! For whatever reason, she did not. Moral of the story: Seize the day! and all that.
Of course one has to balance the future with living for today. So, I intend to obviously continue on the ERE journey but at the same time I have been working through my bucket list, instead of waiting for “when I retire”. I made it about a year ago actually. It is surprisingly short, maybe 30 items. So far I have accomplished the following:
1) I took an introductory class on how to throw on a pottery wheel, something I have always wanted to do. That was fun, but I am not at all a collector of pottery. I made one little cup/vase thing, I will paint it sometime here soon and that will be that. check.
2) I finished an oil painting class. I have dabbled with painting but I have never officially taken a class. It was OK, I learned some new techniques, but I am not buying any more oil paint. It takes a month to dry! I just don’t have that kind of space to let stuff sit out that long. I may or may not take future classes, but definitely no more oil and probably not watercolor. I might try to check out some YouTube videos or books and see how far I can get with those and my Acrylics.
3) I am working up to running a 5K in under 30 minutes. There is a 5K I walked in last year and it took me 42 minutes to finish it at a fast walk and that took some effort. I hope to compete in the same 5K but as a runner. It’s in May so I am thinking I might be able to achieve this level of fitness by then. I have never been a runner though so honestly have no idea. That would require about a 6mph pace which to me seems high at the moment, but that is why I am setting a goal 6 months out. I am using the Couch 2 5K running plan and I am going to try to get to a full 5K at a 4.5mph pace (running this time, not walking), then I will repeat the program, but with slow runs at my 4.5mph pace and fast 6.0mph pace, no walking. The end goal is a 5K in under 30 minutes. So far I am in week 3 of my training and it is going swell.
4) I checked out a Knife Skills book from the library (http://www.amazon.com/Zwilling-Henckels ... 0778802566) something I have been meaning to do for MONTHS...I have already read it (it has lots of pictures). I already have some tips I can apply to food prep.
The government decided I owe them an additional $6,000. This is the fifth time they have decided to spring some random debt on me with little to no documentation. All of these letters now add up to over $10,000. I actually got four letters in one day from them this month. I can't get anyone on the phone to explain this to me, no one knows how this debt came to be. It's just crazy. I hope to at least get some peace and understanding about why I owe this much, or a partial waiver if not. Guess we'll see.
This month is my first conscious attempt of living the Mustachian way, I guess, at least, how I interpret it. To me it means living a life of abundance and luxury but being super keen on how you spend your money to make that happen. So I did not spend with abandon, but the things I did spend on, while not necessary, did make me feel pretty happy and like I was living luxuriously. I did not track expenses and fret. I lived budget less. I spent what I spent and it cost what it cost! I went to the bar once. I went to Starbucks with a friend once! I spent $5.15 on a big cup of espresso and egg nog! Ridiculous! BUT... when I did these things, it felt awesome. If I did it every week (like I did a few years back), it wouldn’t feel awesome anymore. It would just be run of the mill kinda stuff. So that makes it so I really appreciate it and live in the moment when I do this kind of thing. I guess this means I can save about 75-80% ish, but still live a relatively frugal life that feels luxurious to me.
My coworker told me this morning that I have inspired her to spend less and she has made a lot of great changes in her life. She stopped eating out as much. She turned off her cable. She’s lost some weight and now instead of retiring in 7 years she wants to retire in August. She can too, with her pension! She looks so much better and happier! I am happy for her.
I am doing my best to stop just mentally checking out of work but it has been damn hard. Thankfully, my boss’s response, instead of holding my feet to the fire like any decent manager would do (honestly, even just a “Honey, you need to start doing better” would have been sufficient motivation for at least a while), instead, she took the most annoying, pain in the ass work away, and gave it to the brown noser! She’s actually rewarding my piss poor performance. While the reward for hard work is more work... the reward for slacking off is apparently less work in this world. Go figure. I read an article on burn out... I realized OMG I am SO BURNED OUT.
Supposedly here are the six areas of burnout to watch out for:
1) Working too much (not in my case)
2) Working in an unjust environment (OMG yes.)
3) Working with little social support (We live in a real life Dilbert cartoon)
4) Working with little agency or control (OMG yes)
5) Working in the service of values we loathe (yes! Civil service rules are so cumbersome and arbitrary)
6) Working for insufficient reward (I make plenty, but I have never gotten positive feedback or recognition what so ever, and neither do my very worthy coworkers.)
To cope I have been picking a few things off of my bucket list to accomplish. The fact is, life is short! I read a couple things this month that really hit home.
1) A couple had recently finished a huge project for their home business and told someone else “Finally! Now for the first time in months we are going to have a quiet evening at home as a family.” Well 45 minutes later they had a car accident where the woman was killed instantly and the man was in critical condition.
2) A couple had recently retired, they were fairly young, perhaps late 50s. On a walking trip of Europe, the woman developed serious hip problems (one hip was bone on bone and the other was very close to that, got there within weeks). She had never previously had any indication of hip problems.
3) A man reported reading in a company pamphlet that if you make the mistake of retiring too early, you have to go back to work. If you make the mistake of retiring too late... there is no recovery! Time, not money, is our most valuable resource.
Life is short! There is no guarantee of tomorrow and there is no guarantee that you can do all you want to do - later. There may never be a later, or life may change so much that even when later comes, your dream is no longer possible. Take my coworker who dreamed of running a local 10K race (The Bolder Boulder)... but is no longer able to even dream of accomplishing this, because of her health. She could have done it in her 20s though, easily, no sweat! For whatever reason, she did not. Moral of the story: Seize the day! and all that.
Of course one has to balance the future with living for today. So, I intend to obviously continue on the ERE journey but at the same time I have been working through my bucket list, instead of waiting for “when I retire”. I made it about a year ago actually. It is surprisingly short, maybe 30 items. So far I have accomplished the following:
1) I took an introductory class on how to throw on a pottery wheel, something I have always wanted to do. That was fun, but I am not at all a collector of pottery. I made one little cup/vase thing, I will paint it sometime here soon and that will be that. check.
2) I finished an oil painting class. I have dabbled with painting but I have never officially taken a class. It was OK, I learned some new techniques, but I am not buying any more oil paint. It takes a month to dry! I just don’t have that kind of space to let stuff sit out that long. I may or may not take future classes, but definitely no more oil and probably not watercolor. I might try to check out some YouTube videos or books and see how far I can get with those and my Acrylics.
3) I am working up to running a 5K in under 30 minutes. There is a 5K I walked in last year and it took me 42 minutes to finish it at a fast walk and that took some effort. I hope to compete in the same 5K but as a runner. It’s in May so I am thinking I might be able to achieve this level of fitness by then. I have never been a runner though so honestly have no idea. That would require about a 6mph pace which to me seems high at the moment, but that is why I am setting a goal 6 months out. I am using the Couch 2 5K running plan and I am going to try to get to a full 5K at a 4.5mph pace (running this time, not walking), then I will repeat the program, but with slow runs at my 4.5mph pace and fast 6.0mph pace, no walking. The end goal is a 5K in under 30 minutes. So far I am in week 3 of my training and it is going swell.
4) I checked out a Knife Skills book from the library (http://www.amazon.com/Zwilling-Henckels ... 0778802566) something I have been meaning to do for MONTHS...I have already read it (it has lots of pictures). I already have some tips I can apply to food prep.
The government decided I owe them an additional $6,000. This is the fifth time they have decided to spring some random debt on me with little to no documentation. All of these letters now add up to over $10,000. I actually got four letters in one day from them this month. I can't get anyone on the phone to explain this to me, no one knows how this debt came to be. It's just crazy. I hope to at least get some peace and understanding about why I owe this much, or a partial waiver if not. Guess we'll see.
-
George the original one
- Posts: 5406
- Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
- Location: Wettest corner of Orygun
> While the reward for hard work is more work...
> the reward for slacking off is apparently less
> work in this world.
At 28, you've figured this out at a key time in your life. Enjoy the knowledge and remember that changing positions often (every couple of years) within a government career is your most valuable skill.
It's tempting to say that being rewarded for slacking off is entirely the result of being a government employee, but I think the employees of any large organization will have the same experience.
> the reward for slacking off is apparently less
> work in this world.
At 28, you've figured this out at a key time in your life. Enjoy the knowledge and remember that changing positions often (every couple of years) within a government career is your most valuable skill.
It's tempting to say that being rewarded for slacking off is entirely the result of being a government employee, but I think the employees of any large organization will have the same experience.
from LS:
> While the reward for hard work is more work...
> the reward for slacking off is apparently less
> work in this world.
Do you have a link to that burnout article?
You've come along way LS
*
From George original:
>At 28, you've figured this out at a key time in your life.
I just figured this out now, at almost 30.
I'm currently recovering from having having covered 2 other people's vacations in one week, plus my own schedule. A couple years ago, I made the mistake of feeling that I had to "prove myself" at this new company by taking on huge projects, beyond my level and mastering them in addition to my actual duties. That, combined with my unique skillset (I'm one of 2 or 3 people in a company of 300 that can do a couple specific things), make me the team workhorse.
I feel like a sucker. This is the first time in 4 years I've actually cried at work.
ERE OR BUST.
> While the reward for hard work is more work...
> the reward for slacking off is apparently less
> work in this world.
Do you have a link to that burnout article?
You've come along way LS
*
From George original:
>At 28, you've figured this out at a key time in your life.
I just figured this out now, at almost 30.
I'm currently recovering from having having covered 2 other people's vacations in one week, plus my own schedule. A couple years ago, I made the mistake of feeling that I had to "prove myself" at this new company by taking on huge projects, beyond my level and mastering them in addition to my actual duties. That, combined with my unique skillset (I'm one of 2 or 3 people in a company of 300 that can do a couple specific things), make me the team workhorse.
I feel like a sucker. This is the first time in 4 years I've actually cried at work.
ERE OR BUST.
I second this. I used to work for a company where hard work was very rewarded. Large bonuses, huge raises. I moved companies to attain a better work life balance 80 hour weeks to 35 (and a small raise). Now I find nobody cares. Nobody does anything really. It was a huge struggle for the first year. The second year I just automated everything and am learning to take advantage of the time. (e-learning at work, surveys at work, shopping at work, etc..)
-
LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
http://nymag.com/news/features/24757/?imw=Y <--actual article, quite long
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/12/0 ... -the-test/ <--concise summary
@george - cannot agree more, no way I'd be where I am today without my hopping around!
@phayen - I am planning to take advantage next year! I am even considering starting some kind of online business.
@palmera - I am still mentally getting off the treadmill. It's taking a while. I used to be the hard driving over achiever. I was valedictorian of my high school. 3.8 GPA in college. Always working part time or in internships. Always working toward that "extra" raise at salary time. Extra projects. Eye on the prize. If anyone was that high performer, it was me. For two years I got that high performance rating and a corresponding extra salary bump of a couple extra K. woot woot.
Then in 2010 I was going through a divorce and beginning stages of burnout at the same time... and I realized that I could literally do nothing for days, and virtually nothing would happen to me. This was a very bad and dangerous realization for me, career wise. I thought I needed a big life change. I moved back "home" to the states.
I took this job in 2011... and miraculously... WEEKS would go by and I would accomplish almost nothing.... no one said ANYTHING. (This I think is sheer incompetence of my manager though, as the clients sure are complaining.) In fact, my awesome, shining, perfect performance coworkers, were hanging around, bored, because they didn't have enough work to do, complaining about the lack of work to do, being general thorns in my boss's side... so I could fly even more under the radar. Anyway, they just got ignored, because they aren't the golden children this year. No offense against them, they are GREAT! they are capable of great things. They have so much experience and they are smart! Our management is just horrific and it is a sad horrific waste of talent, time, and money to just let them sit idle. Anyway it just goes to show me that there is absolutely no point in producing at this point. I feel horrible, personally! trust me! If I were reading my journal I would look at my salary and read this journal and be seriously pissed off at the waste of tax dollars. But it can't be helped. I just need to do just enough to not get fired. Unfortunately that doesn't light my fire too well so it is a mental struggle.
So this last month things come to a head, I'm psychologically ready for a talking to and a write up and.... "ohhh... you have so much work piled up... here... let me take those two big pain in the ass projects away from you... that will let you focus on that easy stuff." Wha? really? These are the projects that have been invading my dreams, and instead of being forced to do them, you will just make them go away?...? ?
And I find out this week that future pain in the ass projects are going to continue to go to the brown noser. AWESOME. She can have them. She can now earn her peedly little few K raise.
It's kind of a mental change, getting off the treadmill... not applying for leadership training... not caring if my skills are up to date... not competing for points or pats on the head... there are rumors of a transfer... I don't care, let them transfer my function and lay me off. It would solve a lot of my problems. It would have totally freaked me out a couple years ago. It takes a while to mentally let my old way of operating go.
Oh and @palmera - it helps that I have a rare skillset that is very difficult to find, not just in my agency but throughout the entire federal government. Most of HR should be able to perform in my program area at a journeyman level, they simply cannot due to skill erosion. So... sounds to me like you have some leverage. Use it.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/12/0 ... -the-test/ <--concise summary
@george - cannot agree more, no way I'd be where I am today without my hopping around!
@phayen - I am planning to take advantage next year! I am even considering starting some kind of online business.
@palmera - I am still mentally getting off the treadmill. It's taking a while. I used to be the hard driving over achiever. I was valedictorian of my high school. 3.8 GPA in college. Always working part time or in internships. Always working toward that "extra" raise at salary time. Extra projects. Eye on the prize. If anyone was that high performer, it was me. For two years I got that high performance rating and a corresponding extra salary bump of a couple extra K. woot woot.
Then in 2010 I was going through a divorce and beginning stages of burnout at the same time... and I realized that I could literally do nothing for days, and virtually nothing would happen to me. This was a very bad and dangerous realization for me, career wise. I thought I needed a big life change. I moved back "home" to the states.
I took this job in 2011... and miraculously... WEEKS would go by and I would accomplish almost nothing.... no one said ANYTHING. (This I think is sheer incompetence of my manager though, as the clients sure are complaining.) In fact, my awesome, shining, perfect performance coworkers, were hanging around, bored, because they didn't have enough work to do, complaining about the lack of work to do, being general thorns in my boss's side... so I could fly even more under the radar. Anyway, they just got ignored, because they aren't the golden children this year. No offense against them, they are GREAT! they are capable of great things. They have so much experience and they are smart! Our management is just horrific and it is a sad horrific waste of talent, time, and money to just let them sit idle. Anyway it just goes to show me that there is absolutely no point in producing at this point. I feel horrible, personally! trust me! If I were reading my journal I would look at my salary and read this journal and be seriously pissed off at the waste of tax dollars. But it can't be helped. I just need to do just enough to not get fired. Unfortunately that doesn't light my fire too well so it is a mental struggle.
So this last month things come to a head, I'm psychologically ready for a talking to and a write up and.... "ohhh... you have so much work piled up... here... let me take those two big pain in the ass projects away from you... that will let you focus on that easy stuff." Wha? really? These are the projects that have been invading my dreams, and instead of being forced to do them, you will just make them go away?...? ?
And I find out this week that future pain in the ass projects are going to continue to go to the brown noser. AWESOME. She can have them. She can now earn her peedly little few K raise.
It's kind of a mental change, getting off the treadmill... not applying for leadership training... not caring if my skills are up to date... not competing for points or pats on the head... there are rumors of a transfer... I don't care, let them transfer my function and lay me off. It would solve a lot of my problems. It would have totally freaked me out a couple years ago. It takes a while to mentally let my old way of operating go.
Oh and @palmera - it helps that I have a rare skillset that is very difficult to find, not just in my agency but throughout the entire federal government. Most of HR should be able to perform in my program area at a journeyman level, they simply cannot due to skill erosion. So... sounds to me like you have some leverage. Use it.
I'm seeing things more and more as you are. Especially with the view point of ERE. These things just don't matter any more. There is no point in playing all the games and jumping through all the hoops so that maybe in 15 years I can be a mid level manager. In 15 years, I'm not going to be working. That's the new mindset. I plan for that instead.
-
Spartan_Warrior
- Posts: 1659
- Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:24 am
@LS: "I am planning to take advantage next year! I am even considering starting some kind of online business."
Careful. Everything you do on a government-issued computer is monitored. You're permitted "reasonable personal use" but not use for your own profit. Personally, I don't even visit sites like this one while at work.
I'm also realizing the whole "good work = more work" thing, but I have the same struggle as you in actually letting go of the "need" to do my best, since I have a strong work ethic naturally. My workload is so ridiculous though, I would fail to do a good job either way unless I sacrificed my life beyond the 40 hours I'm paid for (don't worry, we can't pay overtime, but you can have more "credit hours"; what a laugh). Unfortunately for me, my management doesn't seem to care whether the crap I'm working on fails or not, so I doubt my steadily increasing apathy will save me from my tedious assignments. But it will save me from wasting so much time on them.
@Phayen: "There is no point in playing all the games and jumping through all the hoops so that maybe in 15 years I can be a mid level manager. In 15 years, I'm not going to be working."
My thoughts exactly!
Careful. Everything you do on a government-issued computer is monitored. You're permitted "reasonable personal use" but not use for your own profit. Personally, I don't even visit sites like this one while at work.
I'm also realizing the whole "good work = more work" thing, but I have the same struggle as you in actually letting go of the "need" to do my best, since I have a strong work ethic naturally. My workload is so ridiculous though, I would fail to do a good job either way unless I sacrificed my life beyond the 40 hours I'm paid for (don't worry, we can't pay overtime, but you can have more "credit hours"; what a laugh). Unfortunately for me, my management doesn't seem to care whether the crap I'm working on fails or not, so I doubt my steadily increasing apathy will save me from my tedious assignments. But it will save me from wasting so much time on them.
@Phayen: "There is no point in playing all the games and jumping through all the hoops so that maybe in 15 years I can be a mid level manager. In 15 years, I'm not going to be working."
My thoughts exactly!
@LS
Thanks for such depth of sharing. I totally empathize with you, as I am well into a burnout talespin myself. Your organization could describe my non-profit to a T: much worthless and inefficient striving about secondary or tertiary concerns and a great deal of reactive response to primary ones. And always the constant drone about funding challenges as a pretext for decreasing benefits and forestalling COL raises. It feels like treading water constantly, and the fact that I'm not more grateful simply to have a paycheck in this economy tells me how corrosive my workplace has become to my sense of well being.
I am also working on a downshifting strategy that will allow me to preserve health insurance benefits whilst drastically reducing my hours. It will probably result in surrending my role as a director, but the ERE goal has helped me realize how illusory clinging to that is. While I may do client-oriented legal work again some day, I don't expect to manage any employees in the future.
I especially like your focus on finding "bucket list" activities to displace your work-related emotional drivers. I'm going to try and find two new things to experiment with in 2012. When I've made my decision, I'll post in my journal.
Thanks again for a very thought-provoking post.
Thanks for such depth of sharing. I totally empathize with you, as I am well into a burnout talespin myself. Your organization could describe my non-profit to a T: much worthless and inefficient striving about secondary or tertiary concerns and a great deal of reactive response to primary ones. And always the constant drone about funding challenges as a pretext for decreasing benefits and forestalling COL raises. It feels like treading water constantly, and the fact that I'm not more grateful simply to have a paycheck in this economy tells me how corrosive my workplace has become to my sense of well being.
I am also working on a downshifting strategy that will allow me to preserve health insurance benefits whilst drastically reducing my hours. It will probably result in surrending my role as a director, but the ERE goal has helped me realize how illusory clinging to that is. While I may do client-oriented legal work again some day, I don't expect to manage any employees in the future.
I especially like your focus on finding "bucket list" activities to displace your work-related emotional drivers. I'm going to try and find two new things to experiment with in 2012. When I've made my decision, I'll post in my journal.
Thanks again for a very thought-provoking post.
-
LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
@spartanwarrior - true, there are case studies of people being removed for not doing their job and doing side jobs instead on the clock. My favorite was this one guy contracting with the country of Australia for some software instead of doing his job. for YEARS. He was eventually found out and removed... YEARS later. haha. I love that story. Anyway you are correct there is a line that should not be crossed.
Know what you mean about the credit hours... we have those... we have comp time too... you'll find once you become a GS-11 and higher you don't even want the OT, it is capped at the GS-10 Step 10 level pay. No time and a half anymore. Sounds like you are where I was last year, apathy just increasing... yuck... just try to stick to those deadlines... part of my huge problem is I have absolutely no deadlines... making up deadlines is not helping me, at all, as I know I just made them up, naturally!
@maus - Thanks for your kind words Yes just seeing mgmt constantly misstepping would be comical if not so damn sad! I would be laughing if I wasn't in the middle of it. My coworker says the only reason he still shows up is to see how much worse it can get. It's like a bad car accident or train wreck, you just can't look away! Your downshift plan sounds fabulous. I definitely recommend working on the bucket list, rather than just "waiting" for ERE, you at least feel like you are somewhat slowly transitioning to it and have more things to experience and think about then how much waiting sucks.
Know what you mean about the credit hours... we have those... we have comp time too... you'll find once you become a GS-11 and higher you don't even want the OT, it is capped at the GS-10 Step 10 level pay. No time and a half anymore. Sounds like you are where I was last year, apathy just increasing... yuck... just try to stick to those deadlines... part of my huge problem is I have absolutely no deadlines... making up deadlines is not helping me, at all, as I know I just made them up, naturally!
@maus - Thanks for your kind words
Yes just seeing mgmt constantly misstepping would be comical if not so damn sad! I would be laughing if I wasn't in the middle of it. My coworker says the only reason he still shows up is to see how much worse it can get. It's like a bad car accident or train wreck, you just can't look away! Your downshift plan sounds fabulous. I definitely recommend working on the bucket list, rather than just "waiting" for ERE, you at least feel like you are somewhat slowly transitioning to it and have more things to experience and think about then how much waiting sucks.-
LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
December Journal
===NUMBERS===
**Expenses**
Rent- 500
Electricity - 22
Trash/Storm Drainage/Parks- 10
Water/Sewer - 9
Natural Gas - 34
Internet - 25
Netflix - 10
Groceries - 183
Cell Phone - 12
Liquor - 12
Recreation/Restaurants - 171
Untracked Cash (unknown) - 3
Gifts - 30
Stuff - 51
Cat - 19
Transportation - 40
Medical - 78
Total: 1209
**Income**
Day Job: (6976 -1584 taxes) = 5392
Interest: 4.35
Dividends: 456.17
Credit Card Rewards: 54.82
Side Hustle: $5.25 (mturk residuals)
Selling Stuff on Ebay: 80
TSP Employer Match: 348.8
Total: 6341.39
Savings% = 80.9%
Net Worth = 181302.26
===NUMBERS===
**Expenses**
Rent- 500
Electricity - 22
Trash/Storm Drainage/Parks- 10
Water/Sewer - 9
Natural Gas - 34
Internet - 25
Netflix - 10
Groceries - 183
Cell Phone - 12
Liquor - 12
Recreation/Restaurants - 171
Untracked Cash (unknown) - 3
Gifts - 30
Stuff - 51
Cat - 19
Transportation - 40
Medical - 78
Total: 1209
**Income**
Day Job: (6976 -1584 taxes) = 5392
Interest: 4.35
Dividends: 456.17
Credit Card Rewards: 54.82
Side Hustle: $5.25 (mturk residuals)
Selling Stuff on Ebay: 80
TSP Employer Match: 348.8
Total: 6341.39
Savings% = 80.9%
Net Worth = 181302.26
-
LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
Well, this is my first month of living budgetless and I sort of went a little out of bounds with Restaurants but I am largely OK with how the month went otherwise. I am happy to see I squeaked out an 80% Savings Rate. I will try the budgetless living some more and if that category is still high maybe I will just have a budget for Restaurants.
I was hoping to have most all cost cutting done and out in 2011 but I still see that I will have some trickle into January and February. And in a way I will probably never be done.
===CATEGORY BREAKDOWN===
Rent: I am OK with this expense for now. I am saving money toward some kind of housing purchase in 2013.
Electricity: I got a Smart Strip for Christmas, and then later calculated it will take 1.5 years to make up the cost of the Smart Strip... at least I didn’t buy it I plugged it in to our entertainment center. Also, I changed the sleep settings on my desktop computer. In November it was only used 0.5-5 hours a day yet it was on all the time. Now after a certain period of inactivity, it goes to “sleep”, and all I have to do is shake the mouse to wake it up. It takes about 30 seconds for it to completely come back (reconnect internet) but it’s no big deal, you get used to it. I think I'd get annoyed by having to shut it down and turn it on every time I wanted to use it, just to check email or google something, but I can live with "sleep". I unplugged stuff I never/rarely used (this is embarrassing, computer speakers that haven’t been hooked up to a computer for MONTHS, still plugged in, due to sheer laziness of having to reach under the desk). Our local library carries Kill a Watt monitors! I checked one out and zoomed around checking everything. Turns out we have almost no vampire power drains, much to my disappointment! (I wanted so badly to point at a random appliance/charger and say “AHA! YOU ARE A CULPRIT!” alas...) The worst is our newish TV at 10W. This costs us 1 cent for every 10 hours it is on standby. My guess is that, for the whole house, we might have 30W of vampire power draining right now. It's basically $2/month for us. No big deal for the convenience of not having to unplug everything all the time. I suspect modern appliances have improved a lot in this area. It seems most items use 50W to 100W when in actual use, unless it's a huge appliance. I don't think I own anything that isn't worth the electricity it uses, even when in actual use (I hope that makes sense. aka it's worth 100W to watch my TV, that is how much it uses while on.) I still need to check the monitors/printer hooked up in BF's office, but beyond that, not much more I can do here.
Trash: Not much to say here. I checked a few months ago and we are already on their lowest plan which is 11.27 a month for weekly pickup of a smallish container and 2x/month recycle pickup. I don’t think it will ever be cost effective to do my own trash disposal. If I become a composting ninja AND somehow severely decrease the volume of our recycling, then Maybe someday I might make friends with a single neighbor, so we could share, but nowhere near that yet. Oh, I did start an experimental compost pile, anyway, just to help with a garden in the Spring. It is in our former tomato patch. Lots of small branches on the bottom for aeration, then some shredded paper, then tomato plant scraps on top, then leaves on top, then snow and the latest food scraps on top. We’ll see how that goes. So far it’s just a pile of yuck, and it has a layer of constant snow on it. I am still working through some “bad dog” issues...and the subsequent puking in the house. I really don’t want to have to buy something to keep them out if I can avoid it. We'll see how it all goes.
Water/Sewer: BF turned down the flow on the showerhead. I would have bought a 1.5gpm showerhead but I didn’t see any I liked for a price I liked. I measured the flow and it is now roughly 1.6gpm. Good enough. My first impression was that it takes a longer time for my long hair to rinse clean and to a smaller degree my body also, but now I rinse my hair consciously while soaping up so the time factor doesn’t matter as much. I tried turning the water off after getting wet and turning it on again to rinse but I didn’t care for that. I get too cold in the meantime! I also attempted cold showers. HAHA! I’m sorry, but no. Maybe if it was the difference between working/eating this month or not, I’d give it the good ol’ girl scout try, but not today. We already employ traditional water saving advice like running full dishwasher loads, etc.
Natural Gas: I bought curtains on Craigslist for our main picture window (regular heavy curtains) and our sliding glass door (blackout curtains). $10 per set. Unfortunately, after we bought them, BF told me he didn't like the heavy normal set, so I hope to flip these for the $10 paid, and hopefully buy something more suitable later. We bought a water heater insulating blanket, outlet gaskets, and window film also, luckily BF won a $50 Home Depot gift card at work so they were free! I wanted to get these all on in 2011 but I just didn't get motivated. Though I did weatherstrip the doors. I should be able to finish up weatherproofing in January. I checked, our water heater is already set on the lowest setting possible.
Internet: We are reluctant to change companies because through some kind of snafu we actually get free partial basic cable and Comcast has no idea. We never watch it except on Football Sundays, but still. Maybe we will someday! So we are afraid to give Comcast a chance to discover their error. I need to contact CenturyLink to see if they'll give us a promo rate.
Netflix: This is a compromise. Not likely to go lower soon. We do use it enough to make it worth it to me. We don't watch the latest greatest, we like the large selection and convenience of Netflix. I do love Netflix. Amazon Prime/HuluPlus are not sufficient substitutes right now.
Groceries: Twice, I attempted coming up with a weekly meal plan that costs less than $100, to try to spend less than $100/week. Twice, I have been stymied. Mainly by stocking up on loss leaders, once, and the second time, by a holiday clearance of all things holiday. (I don't mind Christmas Tree shaped treats!) Hopefully January will be better. I will be working on this. Right now, I just can't wrap my head around an arbirary limit of $100 a week when there is a kickass sale happening that should ultimately lower our costs overall. I guess if it happens all the time, I will reevaluate.
Cell Phone: I changed cell phone plans, again. I signed up for the $12/month plan from Page Plus which is 250 minutes, 250 texts, and 10mb of data. I think the plan is awesome and should save me even more bux! But the $80 standard plan is nice too if you use more lightly than I do, you just buy an $80 card and you get $0.04/min, $0.05/texts, $1/mb for 365 days. It works out to $6.67/month. I'll likely give my old crappy phone to my dad, he is pretty interested in the $80 plan. You can re-up any time. Anyway, I spent $24.75 of credit in November, and about $10 of credit prior to the change to the $12 Plan for December. I have $50 something of credit remaining, so hoping for $0 in cell phone bills through May.
Liquor: We tried making our own Amaretto from Vodka. It was quite nice! I recommend. Too nice, now I am drinking way more OJ and Sweet & Sour Mix. I am going to back off next month.
Recreation/Restaurants: I'm currently budgeting $75/mo on these in ERE. I went Waaaaay over budget here. I just went out way more than normal. Will try to dial back next month.
Gifts: I did OK this year but could have done better. I think overall I spent $140 on Christmas gifts. Maybe next year BF and I will work out something like a limit or we will buy something jointly; I spent $110 of that $140 on him.
Stuff: Half of this was investments in stuff for weatherproofing.
Cat: Replacements for lost or destroyed toys. It's Christmas even for my kitty.
Transportation: Work is springing for another year long pass for the bus. YES So all bus trips are free for me again next year. I should be able to stay car free for next year. Car sharing is working out great. It's sort of morphed into... I pay for my own trips (which occur sparingly) and BF covers all joint trips, but we split basic maintenance items purchased at Walmart like oil, windshield washer fluid, etc. It's been working for us. I just do most of my shopping online, walk to the store, or I wait for a joint trip. I am fortunate that BF's house is very close to a major shopping area, and the library.
Medical: All 78 to premiums this month. I set up a paycheck allocation to fund my HSA to the max (3100 this year, employer will chip in $750 toward that.) This should help me save a lot on taxes, as every dollar I put there is 25 cents I save, and I plan to set aside $7500 ish for copays, etc anyway in ER. HDHPs are great...for me, my share of annual premium is $1129, I get $750 in “free money” bringing the cost down to $379 for the year, and then contributing the HSA Max saves me $588 on my tax bill for the year so... they are paying ME next year for insurance. Rock on. Thank you, I accept the free monies.
Side Hustle: Apparently bing.com is running a rewards program that pays you 1 point per two searches, and 525 points get you a $5 Amazon gift card. *shrugs* So they are my default at work and I do 10 searches a day with them most days. Well Google pays me nothing so I might as well use them. If you guys want to sign up for it, feel free to use this link: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9778718 ... 3C1BA8CC31 - it gives me 125 points if you do. If not then by all means go forth and prosper elsewhere This isn't a December item since I did it today, but I bought $7 of stuff on Amazon and turned around and earned about that much on Mturk.com. Maybe I will do this for all future small impulse purchases. It's a food scale, something to help me with counting calories at work. Measuring everything at home and packing into little containers to haul to work on the bus is getting pretty cumbersome. I don't want people to think I am a bag lady on Mondays I might try this methodology out, all non-necessary purchases have to be funded with some kind of side hustle of some sort.
===STUFF I’M WORKING ON===
1) Save up money to buy property outright in 2013 or 2014, when interest rates start going up.
2) Finish up checking appliances with the Kill-A-Watt
3) Follow up on the Composting Experiment
4) Flip unfavorable curtains for favorable ones on CL
5) I am watching what I am eating much more closely, less processed food, less artificial food, more healthy stuff. I hope this translates to lower costs. Also I will be sticking to a weekly meal plan like white on rice, but that won't stop stocking up on sales for groceries. I intend to try batch cooking. Drink mostly only water or coffee. Cut Waaaay back on alcohol and Crystal Light.
6) Finish weatherproofing our home
7) Contact Century Link in an attempt to lower our internet ala tips via Getrichslowly.org
8) Read How I became free in an unfree world by Harry Browne
9) I am seriously going to look into developing some side business. I am going to do some research into Ebay/CL Arbitrage.
10) Complete a 5K on May 19 in under 30 minutes.
11) Complete a 10K on May 28 (no goal time).
12) Watch my restaurants spending more closely.
I was hoping to have most all cost cutting done and out in 2011 but I still see that I will have some trickle into January and February. And in a way I will probably never be done.
===CATEGORY BREAKDOWN===
Rent: I am OK with this expense for now. I am saving money toward some kind of housing purchase in 2013.
Electricity: I got a Smart Strip for Christmas, and then later calculated it will take 1.5 years to make up the cost of the Smart Strip... at least I didn’t buy it
I plugged it in to our entertainment center. Also, I changed the sleep settings on my desktop computer. In November it was only used 0.5-5 hours a day yet it was on all the time. Now after a certain period of inactivity, it goes to “sleep”, and all I have to do is shake the mouse to wake it up. It takes about 30 seconds for it to completely come back (reconnect internet) but it’s no big deal, you get used to it. I think I'd get annoyed by having to shut it down and turn it on every time I wanted to use it, just to check email or google something, but I can live with "sleep". I unplugged stuff I never/rarely used (this is embarrassing, computer speakers that haven’t been hooked up to a computer for MONTHS, still plugged in, due to sheer laziness of having to reach under the desk). Our local library carries Kill a Watt monitors! I checked one out and zoomed around checking everything. Turns out we have almost no vampire power drains, much to my disappointment! (I wanted so badly to point at a random appliance/charger and say “AHA! YOU ARE A CULPRIT!” alas...) The worst is our newish TV at 10W. This costs us 1 cent for every 10 hours it is on standby. My guess is that, for the whole house, we might have 30W of vampire power draining right now. It's basically $2/month for us. No big deal for the convenience of not having to unplug everything all the time. I suspect modern appliances have improved a lot in this area. It seems most items use 50W to 100W when in actual use, unless it's a huge appliance. I don't think I own anything that isn't worth the electricity it uses, even when in actual use (I hope that makes sense. aka it's worth 100W to watch my TV, that is how much it uses while on.) I still need to check the monitors/printer hooked up in BF's office, but beyond that, not much more I can do here.Trash: Not much to say here. I checked a few months ago and we are already on their lowest plan which is 11.27 a month for weekly pickup of a smallish container and 2x/month recycle pickup. I don’t think it will ever be cost effective to do my own trash disposal. If I become a composting ninja AND somehow severely decrease the volume of our recycling, then Maybe someday I might make friends with a single neighbor, so we could share, but nowhere near that yet. Oh, I did start an experimental compost pile, anyway, just to help with a garden in the Spring. It is in our former tomato patch. Lots of small branches on the bottom for aeration, then some shredded paper, then tomato plant scraps on top, then leaves on top, then snow and the latest food scraps on top. We’ll see how that goes. So far it’s just a pile of yuck, and it has a layer of constant snow on it. I am still working through some “bad dog” issues...and the subsequent puking in the house. I really don’t want to have to buy something to keep them out if I can avoid it. We'll see how it all goes.
Water/Sewer: BF turned down the flow on the showerhead. I would have bought a 1.5gpm showerhead but I didn’t see any I liked for a price I liked. I measured the flow and it is now roughly 1.6gpm. Good enough. My first impression was that it takes a longer time for my long hair to rinse clean and to a smaller degree my body also, but now I rinse my hair consciously while soaping up so the time factor doesn’t matter as much. I tried turning the water off after getting wet and turning it on again to rinse but I didn’t care for that. I get too cold in the meantime! I also attempted cold showers. HAHA! I’m sorry, but no. Maybe if it was the difference between working/eating this month or not, I’d give it the good ol’ girl scout try, but not today. We already employ traditional water saving advice like running full dishwasher loads, etc.
Natural Gas: I bought curtains on Craigslist for our main picture window (regular heavy curtains) and our sliding glass door (blackout curtains). $10 per set. Unfortunately, after we bought them, BF told me he didn't like the heavy normal set, so I hope to flip these for the $10 paid, and hopefully buy something more suitable later. We bought a water heater insulating blanket, outlet gaskets, and window film also, luckily BF won a $50 Home Depot gift card at work so they were free! I wanted to get these all on in 2011 but I just didn't get motivated. Though I did weatherstrip the doors. I should be able to finish up weatherproofing in January. I checked, our water heater is already set on the lowest setting possible.
Internet: We are reluctant to change companies because through some kind of snafu we actually get free partial basic cable and Comcast has no idea. We never watch it except on Football Sundays, but still. Maybe we will someday! So we are afraid to give Comcast a chance to discover their error. I need to contact CenturyLink to see if they'll give us a promo rate.
Netflix: This is a compromise. Not likely to go lower soon. We do use it enough to make it worth it to me. We don't watch the latest greatest, we like the large selection and convenience of Netflix. I do love Netflix. Amazon Prime/HuluPlus are not sufficient substitutes right now.
Groceries: Twice, I attempted coming up with a weekly meal plan that costs less than $100, to try to spend less than $100/week. Twice, I have been stymied. Mainly by stocking up on loss leaders, once, and the second time, by a holiday clearance of all things holiday. (I don't mind Christmas Tree shaped treats!) Hopefully January will be better. I will be working on this. Right now, I just can't wrap my head around an arbirary limit of $100 a week when there is a kickass sale happening that should ultimately lower our costs overall. I guess if it happens all the time, I will reevaluate.
Cell Phone: I changed cell phone plans, again. I signed up for the $12/month plan from Page Plus which is 250 minutes, 250 texts, and 10mb of data. I think the plan is awesome and should save me even more bux! But the $80 standard plan is nice too if you use more lightly than I do, you just buy an $80 card and you get $0.04/min, $0.05/texts, $1/mb for 365 days. It works out to $6.67/month. I'll likely give my old crappy phone to my dad, he is pretty interested in the $80 plan. You can re-up any time. Anyway, I spent $24.75 of credit in November, and about $10 of credit prior to the change to the $12 Plan for December. I have $50 something of credit remaining, so hoping for $0 in cell phone bills through May.
Liquor: We tried making our own Amaretto from Vodka. It was quite nice! I recommend. Too nice, now I am drinking way more OJ and Sweet & Sour Mix. I am going to back off next month.
Recreation/Restaurants: I'm currently budgeting $75/mo on these in ERE. I went Waaaaay over budget here. I just went out way more than normal. Will try to dial back next month.
Gifts: I did OK this year but could have done better. I think overall I spent $140 on Christmas gifts. Maybe next year BF and I will work out something like a limit or we will buy something jointly; I spent $110 of that $140 on him.
Stuff: Half of this was investments in stuff for weatherproofing.
Cat: Replacements for lost or destroyed toys. It's Christmas even for my kitty.
Transportation: Work is springing for another year long pass for the bus. YES
So all bus trips are free for me again next year. I should be able to stay car free for next year. Car sharing is working out great. It's sort of morphed into... I pay for my own trips (which occur sparingly) and BF covers all joint trips, but we split basic maintenance items purchased at Walmart like oil, windshield washer fluid, etc. It's been working for us. I just do most of my shopping online, walk to the store, or I wait for a joint trip. I am fortunate that BF's house is very close to a major shopping area, and the library.Medical: All 78 to premiums this month. I set up a paycheck allocation to fund my HSA to the max (3100 this year, employer will chip in $750 toward that.) This should help me save a lot on taxes, as every dollar I put there is 25 cents I save, and I plan to set aside $7500 ish for copays, etc anyway in ER. HDHPs are great...for me, my share of annual premium is $1129, I get $750 in “free money” bringing the cost down to $379 for the year, and then contributing the HSA Max saves me $588 on my tax bill for the year so... they are paying ME next year for insurance. Rock on. Thank you, I accept the free monies.
Side Hustle: Apparently bing.com is running a rewards program that pays you 1 point per two searches, and 525 points get you a $5 Amazon gift card. *shrugs* So they are my default at work and I do 10 searches a day with them most days. Well Google pays me nothing so I might as well use them. If you guys want to sign up for it, feel free to use this link: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9778718 ... 3C1BA8CC31 - it gives me 125 points if you do. If not then by all means go forth and prosper elsewhere
This isn't a December item since I did it today, but I bought $7 of stuff on Amazon and turned around and earned about that much on Mturk.com. Maybe I will do this for all future small impulse purchases. It's a food scale, something to help me with counting calories at work. Measuring everything at home and packing into little containers to haul to work on the bus is getting pretty cumbersome. I don't want people to think I am a bag lady on Mondays I might try this methodology out, all non-necessary purchases have to be funded with some kind of side hustle of some sort.===STUFF I’M WORKING ON===
1) Save up money to buy property outright in 2013 or 2014, when interest rates start going up.
2) Finish up checking appliances with the Kill-A-Watt
3) Follow up on the Composting Experiment
4) Flip unfavorable curtains for favorable ones on CL
5) I am watching what I am eating much more closely, less processed food, less artificial food, more healthy stuff. I hope this translates to lower costs. Also I will be sticking to a weekly meal plan like white on rice, but that won't stop stocking up on sales for groceries. I intend to try batch cooking. Drink mostly only water or coffee. Cut Waaaay back on alcohol and Crystal Light.
6) Finish weatherproofing our home
7) Contact Century Link in an attempt to lower our internet ala tips via Getrichslowly.org
8) Read How I became free in an unfree world by Harry Browne
9) I am seriously going to look into developing some side business. I am going to do some research into Ebay/CL Arbitrage.
10) Complete a 5K on May 19 in under 30 minutes.
11) Complete a 10K on May 28 (no goal time).
12) Watch my restaurants spending more closely.
Hey LS.
Nice. A few things/questions:
1. Turning off shower to shampoo: I had two Swiss roommates in college that did this! The shower was next to my room and every night when they showered I'd hear them turn off the shower to lather, then turn it back on to rinse off. The crazy thing is, that it wasn't even our property -- we were just renters! It goes to show how much environmentalism is ingrained in certain cultures.
I tried to do this but didn't last long at all. Heh.
2. Thanks for the bing tip! I'll sign up with your link.
3. Were you always planning on buying a house? How will this factor into your ERE, as in, will you have to extend your date till ERE to pay for this house, or do you plan on renting out parts of the house to cover the mortgage?
That's it. Happy New Year, hun!
Nice. A few things/questions:
1. Turning off shower to shampoo: I had two Swiss roommates in college that did this! The shower was next to my room and every night when they showered I'd hear them turn off the shower to lather, then turn it back on to rinse off. The crazy thing is, that it wasn't even our property -- we were just renters! It goes to show how much environmentalism is ingrained in certain cultures.
I tried to do this but didn't last long at all. Heh.
2. Thanks for the bing tip! I'll sign up with your link.
3. Were you always planning on buying a house? How will this factor into your ERE, as in, will you have to extend your date till ERE to pay for this house, or do you plan on renting out parts of the house to cover the mortgage?
That's it. Happy New Year, hun!
-
LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
@ bigato - You're right that bulk buying makes sense... I just lack the discipline to monitor how much we use each month and count that toward groceries. It's easier just to look at our debit card and count up all of the trips to the Grocery Store Maybe at the end of 2012 or midway through the year I will take an average of all categories. That would probably be some good info to have, and a 6 month average should be pretty telling. Thanks 
@sshawn - Thanks! I am SO tempted to take a picture of the compost pile and post it here, just because of how ridiculous it looks. I basically have taken stuff around the house and yard and barracaded our tomato patch like Fort Knox, but after a nuclear apocalypse or something! I don't know if it is more funny than pathetic or vice versa I am using two pitch forks, a couple 5 gallon buckets, about 30 bricks, lots of twine, some scrap wood, surrounding the bottom of the patch, and we also have about 4 ft tall cattle fence (I think that's what it's called) on the longer of the two sides. That was originally for the tomatoes to latch onto, but it's helpful to keep the larger dogs out. Right now I'm mainly struggling with our Pomeranian, she's just so small so it's hardest to keep her out. Our Bernese Mtn Dog has always been too big and our Polish Sheepdog, well, he got in through a bunch of twine criss crossed between the two short ends of the patch... stacks of bricks fixed that problem thankfully. Now just to outthink the little dog. Discipline is not working well. The lure of garbage is too strong. (We don't feed them any people food at all.) If you're gonna try the worm thing, maybe you can get it up high off the ground?
@palmera - Well, I don't know, I sort of waffle on this. It's because my living situation now is only intermediate term at best. Right now I am living in a house my BF owns, and I pay him $500 in rent each month. So if we break up, obviously that arrangement would end, and if I couldn't find some ultra cheap place to rent I'd likely buy something on my own. If in the end we decide to get married, I would like to either purchase 50% of an interest in his home to get out of paying rent or just buy my own house and he can pay me rent, or we can jointly buy another house and he can rent his out. It's kind of weird, we have been working it out and talking it over in fits and spurts over the past two-three months. He would love for me to pay rent until eternity but I am not willing to do that so we are slowly looking for a compromise. I'm sure we'll come up with something. Anyway, to maintain a rent/utilities cost at 4% SWR would require 180,000 in savings on my part, but taxes/insurance are cheap here, so buying something for $100,000 or less would require $140,000 or less, for purchase and maintenance/taxes/insurance/utilities. So purchasing something would actually decrease time to ERE. But now is not the right time. I think I will be a cash buyer so I don't care that interest rates are low now. In fact I hope they go sky high, that will drive prices into the ground even more. Happy new year to you too and let me know if there are any books on Paperbackswap.com you want.
@expat - thanks! I enjoy your journal also. Best of luck to us both!
Maybe at the end of 2012 or midway through the year I will take an average of all categories. That would probably be some good info to have, and a 6 month average should be pretty telling. Thanks @sshawn - Thanks! I am SO tempted to take a picture of the compost pile and post it here, just because of how ridiculous it looks. I basically have taken stuff around the house and yard and barracaded our tomato patch like Fort Knox, but after a nuclear apocalypse or something! I don't know if it is more funny than pathetic or vice versa
I am using two pitch forks, a couple 5 gallon buckets, about 30 bricks, lots of twine, some scrap wood, surrounding the bottom of the patch, and we also have about 4 ft tall cattle fence (I think that's what it's called) on the longer of the two sides. That was originally for the tomatoes to latch onto, but it's helpful to keep the larger dogs out. Right now I'm mainly struggling with our Pomeranian, she's just so small so it's hardest to keep her out. Our Bernese Mtn Dog has always been too big and our Polish Sheepdog, well, he got in through a bunch of twine criss crossed between the two short ends of the patch... stacks of bricks fixed that problem thankfully. Now just to outthink the little dog. Discipline is not working well. The lure of garbage is too strong. (We don't feed them any people food at all.) If you're gonna try the worm thing, maybe you can get it up high off the ground? @palmera - Well, I don't know, I sort of waffle on this. It's because my living situation now is only intermediate term at best. Right now I am living in a house my BF owns, and I pay him $500 in rent each month. So if we break up, obviously that arrangement would end, and if I couldn't find some ultra cheap place to rent I'd likely buy something on my own. If in the end we decide to get married, I would like to either purchase 50% of an interest in his home to get out of paying rent or just buy my own house and he can pay me rent, or we can jointly buy another house and he can rent his out. It's kind of weird, we have been working it out and talking it over in fits and spurts over the past two-three months. He would love for me to pay rent until eternity but I am not willing to do that so we are slowly looking for a compromise. I'm sure we'll come up with something. Anyway, to maintain a rent/utilities cost at 4% SWR would require 180,000 in savings on my part, but taxes/insurance are cheap here, so buying something for $100,000 or less would require $140,000 or less, for purchase and maintenance/taxes/insurance/utilities. So purchasing something would actually decrease time to ERE. But now is not the right time. I think I will be a cash buyer so I don't care that interest rates are low now. In fact I hope they go sky high, that will drive prices into the ground even more. Happy new year to you too and let me know if there are any books on Paperbackswap.com you want.
@expat - thanks!
I enjoy your journal also. Best of luck to us both!