LiquidSapphire's Journal

[dot_com_vet]

LiquidSapphire, I wouldn't want three luxury vehicles, just for the maintenance headache.
I remember carsitting a Mercedes and sitting at a gas station for 20 minutes trying to figure out how to open the gas cap.

[m741]

You might enjoy reading the free PDF here about building a small (ERE-supporting) business:
http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/9659

[LiquidSapphire]

Thx dot When I was a teenager I had a hard time figuring out why the most expensive car in the world was not something that sipped gas and required zero maintenance. Now I know. and thx m741 - downloaded the book and will read at some point.
April 1, 2013
Inflows:

CC Rewards: 76

Mystery Shopping: 4

Bing: 15

Pollbuzzer: 5

Swagbucks: 5

TOTAL: 105
Unemployment minus taxes: 765.50
Side Biz Revenue: 755.01

Advertising: 42.83

One-Time Reinvestments: 326.91

Estimated Social Security/Medicare/Income taxes: 59

Profit: 326.27
TOTAL INFLOWS: 1200.77
Outflows:

I had some unusual expenses this month. I am going to NYC next month (Never been, always wanted to go, so I’m going, damn it) and I am also going to New Hampshire this summer so travel was a big chunk. And I started getting electrolysis on my legs. I fucking hate shaving. I am practically blind and so in the shower with no glasses I cut myself all the damn time. Fuck it, that shit is gone, I don’t care if it’s financially stupid or not. It should only run like 2-3K and then I never ever have to shave again. Bye Bye stupid Intuition Razors that suck anyway. And I bought a sewing machine. I have been trying for a month to use a POS one and I’m sick of it. I bought a nice one and if I still hate sewing I’ll just return it. And if I like it well, then it’s a useful hobby/skill. And I bought my lawyers something to thank them for all of their hard work for $100.

Summary:

With extraneous expenses: 1889

Without them: 1067
Assets: 345575

Debts: 21272 (Deferred Student Loans, Monthly Float on CCs)

Net Worth: 324304

3.5% of Assets Divided by 12: $1008

3.5% of NW Divided by 12: $946
I think what I’ll try to do starting now is keep a running total of where I am in comparison to a 3.5% WR. And if by mid-November 2013 I am not even, I have to go get a temp job of some kind to make up the difference. And if I end up with extra money past a 3.5% WR I will save some (to achieve snowball effect) and maybe spend some if there is something I want that costs a lot. Unemployment allows good “Training wheels” for this exercise.
Sooo:

Allowed to spend in March 2013 (Inflows + $946) = 2146.77

Spent in March 2013: 1886.87

2013 Slush Fund Balance: 259.90
Gold 18.6%

LT Bonds 17.3%

Stocks 23.1%

Cash 40.9%
April To Dos:

1) My TAXES. SIGH.

2) REBALANCE. I need moar of everything.

3) Research how to pay LESS in 2013 taxes.

4) Build the business some more, need to write more ad copy

5) Recharacterize/Combine/Cancel CCs before their annual fees hit

[GPMagnus]

Awesome stuff LS - very happy to read that you are going to NYC - you'll love it!

[LiquidSapphire]

As of May 1:

Net Worth: 325427.725

Total Assets: 347574.465
I didn't calculate my spending yet but I know I spent $400 to go to NYC all inclusive and there may be an extra hundred or two in there so maybe $1700 or so. However, I cleared over $2000 after taxes in my side business, conservatively speaking (I am conservatively estimating my tax burden; it might be less than I anticipate.) So I'm not really too worried about money right now since I withdrew 0 from savings. We'll see how this month goes but I'm already on track for a similar income.
Building a business is a fun challenge. I'm learning again and it's nice to know that if I really blow my income goals out of the water I can not only withdraw nothing but also inflate my lifestyle a bit which is great peace of mind. I'm finding what's hard now is work/life balance in that, every minute I'm not working is a minute I could be making money and I've already lost business/money for not being around all the time. I've never had that feeling before so it's sort of odd. No matter how much or how little I worked, my paycheck wasn't going to change. Now they are very correlated which is different. So far what I've done is created a schedule and unless I have nothing better to do (rare), I don't work outside my schedule.
My cell phone experiment of living off $10 for 2 months failed when I needed to make a bunch of business calls unexpectedly so I reupped for $80 and I'm calling it a business expense. I am considering throwing $10 onto another phone just in case I get audited by the IRS, so I can keep the $80 deduction. But then I have a Google Voice number that I am thinking I can use as my "personal cell" on my iPhone so. More research needed to save all of like $10.
Has anyone come across any clever ways to shelter business income from taxes? Like a 501(c) where you take a small salary and give some of the profits to charity and keep the rest as the charity's asset? I haven't researched this much but thought it might work. I looked into an S Corp and the free accounting advice I got said it makes no sense to create it or tax your LLC like it until you gross $60K. In that structure you can pay yourself a "reasonable salary" and then the corporation retains earnings and etc, etc, Well... I'm not there yet so we'll see.
I'll probably open an LLC soon. It's cheap here, like 50 bucks. I might do Wyoming instead (it's only a couple hours drive if I really ever have to go there). I am not sure the benefits are worth the trouble so that's on my plate to research. I met with some accountants and I am not convinced they're worth the $. Maybe they are. I don't know. They want $500 to do my personal/LLC returns and $150-225 an hour for "tax advice" or whatever else outside of the return. Maybe I'll do it this year since my tax rate will be high and try to prepay them in advance or something in 2013 for 2014 work and see what they have to say regarding finding deductions for me. After that I will just probably get the business Turbo Tax. In fact I'm off to meet a third accountant right now for a consultation so maybe I'll learn something new.

[JohnnyH]

I've really enjoyed this journal, I wish you continuing success.

[LiquidSapphire]

Just a quick update. Not much to say at this point related to ERE. At the moment things in the forefront of my mind are building my business, time management (I spend a lot of time on urgent things but not "important" things like promotion in my business), creating more passive income streams in the business and getting healthier.

I have mainly been focusing on building my business and not savings, finances, or ERE. In a way I have sort of "solved" the ERE problem and my passion is shifting elsewhere. One bad thing about it is I am not really tracking my WR or anything like that at all. First, because I have so many bank accounts and CCs open in a bunch of places, it makes it a pain in the ass. Many of them provide a benefit of some kind or another and I hesitate to close them. So putting together my NW and spending each month is a real pain, even using Mint.com. Considering actually tracking expenses by hand next month. In a way it might actually be easier. I have an old copy of YNAB that would help. We'll see. I'm also reasonably sure I'm around 3% WR or less with my income but I'd like to be able to prove that to myself on paper.

Personal stuff going on in my life has quieted down a bit, thankfully. I thought I was going to have to move possibly in July but that is no longer the case. Right now I am thinking maybe in 6-18 months still. We'll see. I have never been one to make big decisions quickly.

I bought an electric conversion kit for my bicycle. http://www.electric-bike-kit.com/hill-topper.aspx - I bought the $499 kit. I know Jacob, MMM, and 90% of this board would say to save the $ and just suck it up with human power and in 2 months I won't need it. But I can't get over the mental hurdle of "hills" and the discomfort of what that means. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. LOVE LOVE LOVE. LOVE. If you're not biking everywhere because it's too "Hard" - buy this. It's a good crutch. I used to take the car for trips that were longer than 4 miles round trip. I now only take the car for really long trips (usually 80 miles RT) and use my bike for anything less than 10 miles round trip.

[riparian]

I was gone for a few months and your journal exploded with success! Yay!

[dot_com_vet]

There's no shame in an electric bike! Here, it's the only possible way to bike commute without showering at work.

[LiquidSapphire]

I recently passed my one year anniversary from leaving my job and shortly coming up on 6 months after my lawsuit settled.

Life's good. I think I have a 0% WR or still possibly some kind of savings rate because I easily earn 2-3K/month. It helps me mentally tremendously because I'm still following the Permanent Portfolio and the 7% drawdowns would have had me pretty freaked otherwise. But I've been busy building my business instead of crying over spilled gold coins so... overall I'm OK. I am cautiously optimistic that the PP is still a good strategy. I still believe in it. So I stay in it.

I think I have inflated my lifestyle maybe a little bit. I think instead of spending $1100 ish it might be $1200 or $1300 or something. I tend to go out to "trivia nights" at a local bar and spend about $15 there some weeks. Sometimes if I'm doing a business lunch I go out instead of brown bag it. My grocery bill has gone back down due to not eating much meat lately. I'm doing things like seeing an acupuncturist for $100/pop. Whatever. I make 2-3K a month and my NW is still over $300,000.

On Friday Boyfriend and I went down to Denver and did an $80 Mystery Shop at Benihana's (free fun dinner + $5 for my time) and then we went to see a free concert (tickets I got from fillaseat.com - which cost me $30 for a full year's membership to get 2 tickets to any show they have, ever, as many times as I want.) A good life does not have to cost a lot.

One of my good friends was down in the dumps and wanted to have a "fun night" and had his 5 kids for the weekend. I recommended that he get popping corn, make it on the stove, and do a popcorn feast of cheese popcorn (use the cheese from mac & cheese boxes), caramel popcorn (Melted caramel chews), kettle corn (sugar/splenda and salt) and obv butter and have family movie night where every time a character said something silly the whole family had to shout out a silly phrase. He's not ERE but he loved that idea and the kids had a blast. This ERE stuff works, ya'll.

I'm finding that I do the business thing not really for the money but more to have something to do. It's a challenge. Can I build it/grow it bigger/better? What business is worth cultivating and what should I cut? What clients are good and what clients suck? and when is it time to take "time off" work? Should I sleep in today? Will it destroy client relationships? I find myself driven to do well in my business and provide a good product - it's an inherent drive. I guess I'm just built that way. I met a new business contact that I am hoping in exchange for a noncompete agreement she will train me to work in her personal assistant/organizing business and eventually subcontract to me. It pays less per hour but I like the idea of multiple skills and having my hand in many pots.

[pemulis]

@LiquidSapphire

I just finished reading your journal and really enjoyed it. You are a few years older than me so I'm having trouble figuring out if you were really far ahead of "normal" people starting or if that is typical to be +100k in assets with purposely trying. Anyway I think you had a really good start compared to most people.

I was extremely impressed how you immediately altered your lifestyle to start meeting your goals. I mean holy crap you lost the car fast! And all of a sudden you were contemplating a moped. Dedication!

It seemed like as you got closer to your goal you really started to hate work. I dunno, you never mentioned how you felt about work initially. I'm a little worried, I actually like my job a fair amount and would miss it. I like the work and my co-workers, I have learned a lot. I wonder if I start meeting my goals, will I start to hate work? Its strange to think about.

Sorry, didn't mean to psychoanalyze there, it just was something that stood out sitting down and reading it all at once. I also read m741's journal so I just really wanted to study you guys that have succeeded with ERE. Congratulations also!

[LiquidSapphire]

Thanks for reading

I was always somewhat put out by my job but toward the end really hated it due to the politicking involved, more than anything. If you start meeting your goals, you won't start to hate work unless you already sort of hated it to begin with. Once doing something you hate starts to appear optional I think you hate it more. If you like it, then maybe you might like it more and continue on, even though the money isn't why you do it anymore. You'll be all right

I don't know, I started my career at age 22 and $27K of student loans so it's not like I inherited money or anything like that. I started putting in about 15-20% of my income into my 401K as soon as I was eligible for the match which was 6 months into my job. I started with an income of $32K or so. I got regular raises... I think I went to $37K, then $42K, I remember the first time I broke the $50K mark was around in 2008.

I got lucky with having free housing for 2 years overseas and I also got lucky because then I got two gigantic raises, one to $71K and another to $91K. It was very much luck meets opportunity because I moved to take advantage of the luck that fell into my lap. Don't be afraid to take big risks. I also made certain moves *because* of money - that $91K job was not a fun one. But I took it because, well, it was $91K and for other personal reasons.

[LiquidSapphire]

We had bad flooding here. We had to evacuate. Thankfully our house is fine, but many others are not so lucky.

So some lessons learned....
1) I had no power so I had to get a call from my dad telling me the local news was evacuating my neighborhood. You'd think they'd be going door to door? but we were right on the edge of the evacuation zone so perhaps they were hitting higher priority homes (closer to the flooding) first. So I guess in situations like that, one really needs to keep a hand crank radio.

2) You didn't have to have a car to evacuate, but OMG life would have been MUCH harder without one. Residents without cars were told to make their way to a local bus stop (for me about a half mile walk) where the bus would take them to the evacuation center. I would have had to walk 2 dogs, and carry a cat, and whatever I could fit into a backpack, which, after dog and cat food and emergency food, change of clothes... not much else would have fit. Not having a car limits your options severely. I also would have been stuck at the evacuation center for 48 hours... without a car. Which would also have totally sucked. Social capital could have overcome this, if you could find a neighbor at home, with a vehicle. Lots of people left pets behind. I can't even imagine the stress it would have caused me to do that.

3) I was lucky in that I called the call center # to get information and they told me various roads around me had already closed. It saved me a lot of time, aggravation, and gas to know what escape routes were still possible. I probably would have run out of gas trying all kinds of different routes trying to get out of here. A couple hours later, more roads closed and getting out was no longer possible for about 24 hours.

4) If you see national guard trucks speeding down your road, that means that things are not going well, at all. That was when I decided that I'd heed the evacuation order.

5) Potable water was an issue, several regions were under boil orders for quite some time - grocery stores sold out of bottled water quickly, if you could get to them with all the road closures. Not a bad idea to have a few gallons on hand at all times.

6) Thinking about creating one of those "evacuation" bags with change of clothes, food stuffs, and storing it with the valuables (cash stash, etc). because if you're evacuating, you're going to want to take your valuables too.

7) Store sentimental/valuable stuff up high off the ground so you don't waste time moving things around to prevent water damage - you can just leave.

But we're fine

[George the original one]

How many days were you out of the home? Did the cellular phone network stay up?

[LiquidSapphire]

2 days out of home - we were lucky. Some people are still out. Some homes destroyed. Cell network was spotty, but I was lucky that here it stayed up. I don't think it was up North of here. Land lines went out in places also. Some towns were completely out of communication with the outside world, either entirely or only had radio via emergency personnel.

[LiquidSapphire]

I have discovered that the Individual 401(k) is a strong option for me. You can input the first $17500 you earn every year as an "employee" even if you only earned $17500 that year. I am around that figure give or take some and so that was very attractive to me because my tax burden this year is going to be higher than it will be for the foreseeable future.

I opened one thru Vanguard which was more of a pain in the ass than expected but their phone support was actually very knowledgeable in answering these crazy questions on this 40 page application. Since I am a Voyager client, it is fee-free. I read good things about Fidelity also but I have almost all of my money with Vanguard so I just went with them.

I signed up for Obamacare and I'm paying the full premium - $160 ish/month starting in January. I may reapply for Medicaid, I haven't decided yet. The reason is that if I can continually defer all of my income, after the 0% bracket is exhausted, I should be able to stay on Medicaid and below the poverty line by their standards. If you're too poor for subsidies, you get no subsidies. Kinda bizarre to have such a huge hole but hey.

Not much new going on in my life other than just plodding along. My net worth for the year is down something like $5K which I consider pretty good considering the PP is down about 3% last time I checked, which means I basically have a WR of zero and I'm actually adding a little bit to savings which is nice to see.

I'm about to be more cash poor than I like due to my 401K election which is going to taken an awful lot of money out of my checking accounts but I guess that beats writing a check for 25% of everything I earned to Uncle Sam. I'll earn it back or cash out some Roth $ or something if absolutely necessary.

[LiquidSapphire]

Apparently I am only inspired to write in this quarterly.

I'm getting bored with my business. I mainly started it as a stop gap to have some income coming in but it's not work I'm very passionate about. It has its pluses. I'm my own boss, largely location independent, I mostly work when I want. But I still find myself driven to work even when I don't really feel like it because, clients, and because, relationships, and because, it hurts the business when you're not consistent. And it's burning me out. but I find myself working less and less the last few weeks. And it shows. I made the lowest # last month than I have in a year, about $1000. The weird thing is... I don't care (as much). I am a little scared that I don't care, but at the same time, of course I don't care, I'm ERE or Semi-ERE or something? I am still settling into this whole thing, 18 months later. I am still not feeling very much comfort from all the SWR math I did. A substantial portion of my portfolio is in tax advantaged vehicles and while I do have some things in taxable accounts, it would feel scary! to dive in to those funds unless the total balance of my accounts was increasing which, until recently, that was not happening since I was in PP. Maybe if I see PP doing better finally I will feel better about not working and hustling for that extra $$.

My NW is recovered to where it was a year ago before stocks took off and gold/bonds took their dive. It's reassuring to see. I haven't done all of the numbers but I am probably hovering around $350K or within 1% of it. So I think my WR is still around 0%. Good stuff. I should probably see if re-balancing is something I should be doing.

I don't track anything financial anymore, really, other than what Mint tells me. Mint says I spent an average of $1361 over the past two months. My Obamacare subsidy is about to kick in (I have been fronting the entire premium so far because, inept bureaucracy, it will hopefully go away permanently next month) though so that would drop it to the <$1200/mo I have been tracking all along. I am at $4800 for the year though in income so I'm cool with it. On the plus side if I have three shitty ass months in a row, I can apply for a free phone finally from Assurance Wireless. That'll save me like $100/yr. I take this to mean old habits die hard. I don't really see my lifestyle inflating very much at all unless I join an expensive gym (unlikely, have plenty of stuff here) or buy a car. If I move or otherwise change my housing situation that will likely just decrease my expenses as I don't see myself getting into a situation that would cost me more than I'm shelling out now.

I am considering getting a shit social job like waitress or something just to get out of the house one day per week and meet more people. But I can't get excited about it.

OMG if this entry does not scream ISTJ I do not know what does.

I have some Bucket List items; I suppose I'll put them down here.

1) If I am ever single again, I am so buying a Tiny House, with a car that can pull it around on a trailer, and I am going to live in it forever and ever.
2) I have a travel bucket list - I should go to at least one place every year. I should play FF miles/Credit Card games and go for cheap/free. I have about 25 places listed. I have always wanted to drive the full length of the Oregon Coast - I might do that this summer.
3) Lose 20 lbs
4) I need to meet more like-minded people, hopefully with the weather warming up and the days getting longer I will be able to bike to some meetups where I wasn't really willing to bike there before.
5) I watched this Ted Talk recently: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FBxfd7D ... 4&index=12) and it made me realize that of the 3 types of happiness I am rolling in the "pleasure" one and severely lacking in "flow" and in "meaning". I'd like to find more flow and meaning.

[chenda]

Good to hear from you Liquid, I miss your updates

[Ricky]

Just got through reading the majority. So interesting to see your general job satisfaction decay into a complete hatred and disgust. By that point, I agree, quitting or "engineering your layoff" was the best thing for you to do.

Did you ever mention what your side gig was or did you ever plan on it? I haven't found it.

I'm not sure how many female financial warriors there are like you but I assume very few since I haven't seen or heard from many. That is awesome.

I think your SWR is hindered by the PP. I know gold is apparently a staple of the PP but it's just not a good retirement asset to own. It is slow moving. I've never understood the PP myself because when stocks are up, gold is down and so are bonds, but the opposite happens when stocks are down. I get the hedging against all risk and it makes sense but it just doesn't seem the best for guaranteed income? I'm not sure. I'm still trying to pinpoint my investing style myself.

[riparian]

What are you passionate about?