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APRIL-MAY 2018
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APRIL SPENDING: $1053
- Spent $490 on gas - driving from Portland to Oklahoma City
MAY SPENDING: $217
- Sold a pen for $300
- Bought hobby stuff: $200
- Food low because mom. (she renounced cooking, but was wanting to eat keto/paleo to lose weight. So she buys most of the food and I do most of the cooking)
I expect to be here with my mom for at least two more months, and my spending should stay low while here.
CHARTS
My income has been growing pretty nicely. I want to convert more of my mutual funds to higher yielding dividend stocks. I also want to sell more options.
At some point I may take the cash from my pension (like $58k) and invest that all in stocks, which would bump my income some. I’d be all-in on stocks, which I think I’ll be ok with because I’ll be earning other money over the years. If prices seemed low, I’d convert the pension now. But I think I may wait. The pension grows at 3% per year which I believe is better than any other cash-type investments available. One of the reasons I’d like to convert it is for the money to feel more in my control/possession.
Things are looking pretty good here at C40 industries. Profit! 44% savings rate YTD.
PROJECT MOM VAN
My mom bought an empty Dodge Promaster cargo van, and I’m converting it into a camper/RV for her. So far, I’ve been doing the design work. There are a lot of decisions to be made and things to think about to get everything to fit right and all that. I’ve been buying most of the parts/materials needed and filling up her spare bedroom and garage with them. I’ll get started out in the van physically this month.
If you want to see what I’ve done so far (not much), it can be found here on my Instagram Story highlight:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highl ... 066174684/
This van is going to turn out a lot nicer than mine but cost about the same for the comparable materials and parts.
WICHITA
I spent 4 or so days looking around Wichita to assess it as a potential place to live. What I would probably do in a city like that is buy a project house, fix it up and live there, and sell it after 2+ years. Since I would/could be there a limited time, the city I choose doesn’t need to be totally perfect.
Wichita seems like it would work fairly well. The house prices are low. The city is ok. Most of it was built in the 50’s or so, after the war, when the flight industry was booming there. So there are a lot of small-ish houses. It’s like 600,000 people, so I believe I would be able to find a fair amount people that I want to make friends with.
It would be a cheap place to get a project house, though the potential profit would be limited because of those low prices. Could be a pretty safe place for a first house project because the house prices there wont go down (much), even in a crash situation.
OKLAHOMA CITY
I’ve been here for over a month. I’m having a pretty good time. Mom lives out in the suburbs on the very edge of the metro area. It’s very Americana here. All spread out.
Dating has gone surprisingly well. My stock is high because of my travel, outdoors stuff, retirement, since I’m so cool and good-looking
, because I have many more interests than watching sports, and because my pictures are good (on dating apps.).
I was thinking the pool of single women here, especially over age 25 or 30 would be a lot of christian divorced single mothers. To a large extent, that is the case. But, I’ve been having good results dating so far.
One reason is that I stand out in the sea of men here around my age. Most are very plain, boring, conservative, close-minded, out of shape, and disheveled. I stand out particularly to the more liberal and sex-positive women. Right away after getting here I met a surprising amount of polyamorous, bisexual, open-minded women.
So, I’ve been meeting a lot of women and having a lot of sex. I haven’t found the right one (or two) to be my Oklahoma City girlfriend(s). Dating a lot of new people can be draining, and I’m starting to slow that down and focus more on waiting/looking for the better ones.
Anyways… OKC would also be a candidate city for a 2 year project house.
FITNESS
I’ve done a good job with my body since I started living in these houses. While in Portland, I gained muscle (went from 140lbs to 163lbs). Here in Oklahoma, I’ve been cutting my fat and have gotten quite lean (at the moment, down to 147lbs and leaner than I had been at 140 when I got to Portland).
I’m going to join a gym here in Oklahoma and bulk up again, maybe up to 170 lbs this time. The largest I’d like to get is about 160 when lean (10% bodyfat or so). For me (light bone structure) that is pretty big/muscular and as strong as I have any reason to be.
STATIC LIVING
I’ve been continuing to think about buying/making a static home. I still feel I have some more van-traveling in me while/before I figure out exactly what I want to do. But I’d like to getting it set up, especially if I do an ongoing home/travel mixture.
Here are some of what I’m thinking at the moment:
LOCATION:
- Prefer in/near a city of at least 200,000 people. A million or so would make it easier to find my kind of people.
- For a long-term home base, prefer it to be in the western half of the US
- For a short-term project, other areas are ok, probably including the south, where homes are generally cheaper
TRANSPORTATION:
- In a larger city, most of the people I’d make friends with, especially the women I date, tend to live near the city center in the trendy/expensive areas. So, if I live out in a cheap part of the city, efficient transportation will be important. (Which is why I’ve been thinking about motorcycles lately - along with that I’d enjoy it much more than driving - especially driving something like my van, which is big and pretty heavy and has a huge 5.9 liter engine that when I press the gas on I am very aware of the comparatively huge amount of gas shooting into it’s engine.)
- If I live outside of the city, transportation is again big. I’d want to not live far away unless I were to set up some kind of multiple location home (like, say, sometimes living in a shed in my brother or mom’s back yard, sometimes living in a shack/tent/dirtbag home out sort of in the middle of nowhere near earth stuff I really enjoy.)
- If I were to live in a city center type area, then transportation would be pared down to a minimum, and I’d strongly consider selling the van.
HOBBIES/SYSTEM/CONNECTED GOALS
Along with the people/relationship stuff, these are what is appealing to me about static living right now. The long-tern travel allows some of these things, but only a portion of the things I’d like to do.
- Gardening for food, maybe selling some of it
- Entrepreneurial/small business things
- Getting (part-time or short-term) jobs in order to learn things I’m interested in / meet people
- Having a workshop. Doing things like motorcycle repair/improvements, bicycle stuff, other types of building/fixing/tinkering
- Fixing up a house
- Doing some type(s) of photography for money and to improve my skills
Traveling and outdoors stuff does have an appeal for me, but it’s a bit limited in that it’s more on the experiential side, and there are limitations on what types of skills I can learn., hobbies I can pursue, and incomes I can earn.
If I get a home out in the western U.S., especially if I get a really inexpensive, long-term one, I could still use the van to go out on trips of days/weeks/months. If I get into motorcycles, I could have one that I use for going out exploring and camping in a more pared-down way.
Right now, my family’s plans are:
- Brother moving to Phoenix (from NC)
- Mom moving to Phoenix
- Sister moving back to Denver (from NC)
- Dad - ? (he’d been planning to move to TN, partly to be close to my siblings.)
Brother and sister both did not like NC, for, I think, maybe picky reasons.
If my brother and mom do move to Phoenix and they like it, they’d be there long term. My sister is always changing her mind, but she may have decided to just go back to Denver and stay there.
I’m still hoping for some kind of family compound. (Separate houses on one piece of land). Brother and mom are the likely candidates for this because they both want to travel a lot in the future but would keep their homes, so, us being together would allow the others to watch/maintain/rent out the vacant home while they’re gone. Phoenix would be pretty good for this, location wise, just since it’s out in the west and Arizona is fun.
….. I think that’s enough of my rambling for now.