Snapshot summary of my current financial/work situation:
Expenses:
Shelter/Utilities/Household Consumables: Zero cash outlay covered by domestic contract
Food/Dining Out: Zero cash outlay covered by domestic contract
Transportation: Mostly business expense/ Personal use $40/mo
Cell Phone: Mostly business expense/ Personal use $20/mo
Health Insurance: $115/mo
Health/Dental Expenses: $25/mo (variable, no ongoing)
Personal Care/Clothing: $22/mo (fairly consistent)
Entertainment/Social/Gifts: $9/mo (would be somewhat more if not in domestic contract)
Study/Skills/Gear/Tools: $19/mo (fairly consistent)
Treats: $30/mo (fairly consistent, could/should be reduced)
Handouts to Young Adult Children: $0/mo (Because I have recently cut them off. Previously large portion of my budget. However, I likely will buy my son a safe propane heater if he ends up living in his van and I will cook food for however many people my daughter invites to the wedding and sew a dress if she marries the boy she is living with, etc.)
Work I Have To Do (mostly very rough estimated, I could and probably should actually attempt to measure):
Physical Exercise: 3.5 hours/week (core, not including leisurely bike rides etc.)
Other Personal Care: 5 hours/week
Caring for Things Used by Me: 5 hours/week
Caring for Things Used by Other People: 5 hours/week (or less because significant overlap with caring for my own stuff due to efficiency of domestic contract)
Procuring and Preparing Food for Myself and Other People: 5 hours/week (varies widely at my discretion since I like to cook and entertain)
Running My Business (scouting/trading rare books and end lot toys and household goods): 7 hours/week (to cover expenses listed above and all other business expenses/overhead)
So, in theory, I should have plenty of free time to engage in Work That I Want to Do, which is a sort of endless and ever-changing list for me since I am a die-hard generalist who craves novelty. Some items on the current list of the moment would be:
Work I Want to Do (goals/projects I have assigned myself):
1) Expand garden and turn yard into edible landscape.
2) Become fluent in conversational Farsi.
3) Learn to read Arabic.
4) Knit a dog.
5) Build a dollhouse.
6) Build an electric bike.
7) Learn how to do copyright-mining.
8) Learn how to fish.
9) Make a model of the house and yard using Sketch-Up with neat little lists attached
10) Read the rest of the 1001 books I should read before I die.
11) Lift 3600 lbs over my head in 10 minutes or less (I got this one from the ERE book!!)
12) Learn how to carry a tune well enough to at least be able to do one karaoke number.
13) Import something.
14) Start a baby-walking business.
However, my problem is that I am either too undisciplined or too nervous to buckle down and really make progress on my Work I Want to Do projects/goals and I can't figure out which is true. The things that make me nervous are that virtually all my assets ($80,000 net value in rare books automatically re-priced to match competition) are stored in the Amazon distribution network AND I may be too dependent on my domestic contract (all the middle-class, middle-aged, mainline feminist females in my acquaintance believe this to be true and torment me with dire predictions of the likely outcome.)
So, I don't really have any problem with reducing my expenses but I really need help with figuring out what direction to head in terms of improving/diversifying income and savings and generally either securing my position or changing my perspective on it.
7Wannabe5's Journal
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
One of the many models in the book that interests me is the graph showing the Renaissance Man having the best of all worlds because he is in the quadrant of loosely-coupled, non-linear dependence. I think this is a very good model and a valid way of defining independence but I am not sure where to place myself on it from the get-go since I would describe myself as currently making my living as a "scout-trader-scavenger" and a "home-maker." I think of both of these "professions" as consisting of sets of knowledge/skills and good practices which theoretically could be applied in any context. For instance, a knowledgeable scout might know something about the value of early 20th century costume jewelry and might have the good practice of prior planning to stop at garage sales along her route to the market and the combination of this piece of knowledge and this practice could lead to a profitable trade. Home-making, like gardening, is largely a matter of deciding what you want to kill (or not allow to live/exist) and and what you wish to help to thrive/maintain within a defined area. So, knowing when food is likely to support the growth of harmful microbes if not eaten/processed within the next 24 hours and developing the good practice of daily updating a list (or simply making mental note) of what should be next processed/served will lead to savings through avoidance of waste whether you are alone at a campsite or running a youth hostel. It is my belief that in the socio-economic environment we inhabit there is currently too much house and not enough home-making and some level of guerilla action in this realm is warranted especially in any situation in which the basic human pattern module of "establishment of the cooking circle" has not been accomplished (shockingly prevalent these days unless you accept neighborhood McDonald's as the cooking circle towards which you will direct your path each evening.)
Anyways, even though these are both generalist professions, they do not quite add up to being a Renaissance Person through their practice or, at least, it is the case that my own level of skill and good practice within these professions does not quite add up to the level of loosely coupled, non-linear freedom I desire. For instance, I would feel more free if I could cross a set of monkey bars which is a skill that has nothing to do with trade or home-making and I would feel more free if I didn't have any business debt which is something that does have to do with improving my current practice.
Anyways, even though these are both generalist professions, they do not quite add up to being a Renaissance Person through their practice or, at least, it is the case that my own level of skill and good practice within these professions does not quite add up to the level of loosely coupled, non-linear freedom I desire. For instance, I would feel more free if I could cross a set of monkey bars which is a skill that has nothing to do with trade or home-making and I would feel more free if I didn't have any business debt which is something that does have to do with improving my current practice.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
The above quote from the book is my problem in a nutshell. After being self-employed for a dozen years, I have gone feral. I can't go back to salary work. I have made a couple of attempts in the last several years and I can't stand the feeling of being trapped in a box with zombies.Since nonsalaried work is compensated per effort, it may be possible to put in supreme amounts of effort and end up with very high compensation by working around the clock. This could significantly speed up the accumulation of savings. Conversely, it may be difficult to find sufficient work or sufficient energy to put in that much effort, since measurable work is often directly taxing of physical or mental energy.
Now that I have cut-off my young adult children supporting myself on $600-$800 a month is pretty much a no-brainer. Therefore, I figure my worst-case scenario is self-employed scavenger work that requires little skill or start-up capital such as walking about gathering returnable bottles. I do not know because I have never actually attempted it but I would estimate that finding 20 cans/hr might be reasonably accomplished. Therefore, a 10 hour work day would yield a $600/month income.
Since, I do and likely can continue to do much better than this scenario, hopefully I will never have to do salary work again.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
I figured out what my goal will be. I am not so much interested in achieving total financial independence in the manner of most of the members of this forum. What I want is to remain self-employed with less anxiety. The two things I need to do to feel less anxious are diversify/de-link and increase my liquid emergency/savings fund in the direction of the nth degree total financial independence state.
I have decided that my personal plan/goal will be to pay for each expense category in my life with self-employment (products or services or skills which I offer in a way that I define/control) in sensibly related category. For instance, my goal will be to cover my food expenses through doing gardening and cooking,my learning expenses through teaching,my shelter expenses through doing home-making/clutter-control/childcare, my gift-giving expenses through making crafts, my transportation/travel/communication expenses through engaging in trade, my entertainment expenses through providing entertainment, my health expenses through helping others be more healthy or an activity that will improve my health, my "things" expenses through scavenging and anti-scavenging, my charitable giving through volunteer work etc. etc. My emergency fund will be my savings fund which will be my investment fund and eventually I would hope to think of it less as an emergency fund and more like a time-to-creatively-retool-in-any-given-category fund or something like that. All extra funds earned in any category will be dumped into emergency/investment fund.
In addition to emergency/time to re-tool fund, I will try to have a back-up plan for next-best-option in each category. For instance, let's say I am currently covering my health expense by offering a water aerobics for senior women class through community education, I would need to have a couple reasonable back-up plans (in case community ed loses funding or I get bored with teaching class etc.) such as I will write/publish a pamphlet on making fruit preserves without sugar and/or I will offer to push neighborhood babies about in a stroller in the fresh air for an hourly rate and enough funds to provide time for necessary re-tool for next-best-option.
Now I am feeling highly motivated. Ready, set, go...!!!
I have decided that my personal plan/goal will be to pay for each expense category in my life with self-employment (products or services or skills which I offer in a way that I define/control) in sensibly related category. For instance, my goal will be to cover my food expenses through doing gardening and cooking,my learning expenses through teaching,my shelter expenses through doing home-making/clutter-control/childcare, my gift-giving expenses through making crafts, my transportation/travel/communication expenses through engaging in trade, my entertainment expenses through providing entertainment, my health expenses through helping others be more healthy or an activity that will improve my health, my "things" expenses through scavenging and anti-scavenging, my charitable giving through volunteer work etc. etc. My emergency fund will be my savings fund which will be my investment fund and eventually I would hope to think of it less as an emergency fund and more like a time-to-creatively-retool-in-any-given-category fund or something like that. All extra funds earned in any category will be dumped into emergency/investment fund.
In addition to emergency/time to re-tool fund, I will try to have a back-up plan for next-best-option in each category. For instance, let's say I am currently covering my health expense by offering a water aerobics for senior women class through community education, I would need to have a couple reasonable back-up plans (in case community ed loses funding or I get bored with teaching class etc.) such as I will write/publish a pamphlet on making fruit preserves without sugar and/or I will offer to push neighborhood babies about in a stroller in the fresh air for an hourly rate and enough funds to provide time for necessary re-tool for next-best-option.
Now I am feeling highly motivated. Ready, set, go...!!!
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
Okay, end of Week1. What have I accomplished?
I decided that getting a grip on my self-employed time management was first priority so I declared Thursday 7 am to be the official start of my work week. Then I proceeded to attempt to do all The Work I Need To Do as efficiently as possible. I am extremely absent-minded so I use one application to keep track of my one time scheduled events/obligations, my one time or unique To Do list items or Next project steps and another application for routine tasks I should do on a Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly basis. Most of The Work I Need To Do lives on the routine tasks lists. So, really what I was trying to determine was how quickly I could catch/finish up with my routine tasks down to the level of Weekly because, obviously, some of The Work I Need To Do such as brushing my teeth, sweeping the kitchen floor and exercising should be done more than once a week. However, I am including personal care tasks such as doing laundry, filling fluids on car and putting garden to bed for the winter (which most 9-5 ers would have to do on evenings and weekends) as The Work I Need to Do. IOW, at the point of the week when I am done with this work I should feel absolutely free to do whatever I want beyond a few needed daily routine tasks. Further note would be that I decided that the sub-category of The Work I Need To Do which is The Work I Need To Do for Cash Money would only be needful up to paying my bills plus $50 week margin.
Anyways, I wasn't done until 1 PM on Monday but even that felt like a delicious relief from my usual nagging sensation that I constantly have more work I could/should be doing. Also, I should note that it wasn't exactly like I was working like a dog from Thursday until Monday. Most of the work I did for money involved treasure hunting at estate sales with my husband. He mostly looks for tools and I mostly look for books. I scored one book on the topic of hunting whitetail for 25 cents that is priced by my competitors at $4000 or more on the internet (will never, ever, ever actually sell for that much) and a pile of books from the collection of a recently deceased hobbyist on the topics of nude photography and model railroad construction for $20 (will sell for over $500.) I would have paid $33 for the pile but my husband did the negotiation. I'm a very good finder but I suck at negotiation. But my husband also bought a pool table ($75) for one of my stepdaughter's 18th birthday present so I spent much of Saturday helping with that. Most of the work I do for barter-for-needs with my mostly retired Millionaire-Next-Door economic model husband is the necessary home-making for a modest sized house (less than 1300 sq. ft. I would never contract to vacuum a McMansion) and yard and an average of 4 people showing up for dinner 5X a week. I also help him with his rental properties but that is outside of the realm of our basic domestic contract and in the realm of barter-for-wants although it does get a bit mushy sometimes because maybe I will sit through a mediation with a tenant with him and then he will buy me new tires for my car. I try to maintain a realistic appraisal of my situation my double-entry of this kind of thing in my expense log but it can get rather convoluted. Also, the best I can do to predict my future income from book-dealing and retail arbitrage is to estimate my future profits as 1/5 of my current listings. So, estimating my hourly wage is really difficult especially since I do have some overhead so past covering that I make more at the margin until I start running out of good sources for inventory and then I make less and less at them margin and there is so much getting lucky involved in the process.
So, conclusion would be that I need to figure out to what extent my goal should be to buy myself more free time in the future by using my current free time to save/invest money vs. (not to imply mutual exclusivity)further increasing my efficiency and/or effective hourly wage to directly obtain more free time. Also, one financial concept I need to figure out is what is the difference between trading and investing.
I decided that getting a grip on my self-employed time management was first priority so I declared Thursday 7 am to be the official start of my work week. Then I proceeded to attempt to do all The Work I Need To Do as efficiently as possible. I am extremely absent-minded so I use one application to keep track of my one time scheduled events/obligations, my one time or unique To Do list items or Next project steps and another application for routine tasks I should do on a Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly basis. Most of The Work I Need To Do lives on the routine tasks lists. So, really what I was trying to determine was how quickly I could catch/finish up with my routine tasks down to the level of Weekly because, obviously, some of The Work I Need To Do such as brushing my teeth, sweeping the kitchen floor and exercising should be done more than once a week. However, I am including personal care tasks such as doing laundry, filling fluids on car and putting garden to bed for the winter (which most 9-5 ers would have to do on evenings and weekends) as The Work I Need to Do. IOW, at the point of the week when I am done with this work I should feel absolutely free to do whatever I want beyond a few needed daily routine tasks. Further note would be that I decided that the sub-category of The Work I Need To Do which is The Work I Need To Do for Cash Money would only be needful up to paying my bills plus $50 week margin.
Anyways, I wasn't done until 1 PM on Monday but even that felt like a delicious relief from my usual nagging sensation that I constantly have more work I could/should be doing. Also, I should note that it wasn't exactly like I was working like a dog from Thursday until Monday. Most of the work I did for money involved treasure hunting at estate sales with my husband. He mostly looks for tools and I mostly look for books. I scored one book on the topic of hunting whitetail for 25 cents that is priced by my competitors at $4000 or more on the internet (will never, ever, ever actually sell for that much) and a pile of books from the collection of a recently deceased hobbyist on the topics of nude photography and model railroad construction for $20 (will sell for over $500.) I would have paid $33 for the pile but my husband did the negotiation. I'm a very good finder but I suck at negotiation. But my husband also bought a pool table ($75) for one of my stepdaughter's 18th birthday present so I spent much of Saturday helping with that. Most of the work I do for barter-for-needs with my mostly retired Millionaire-Next-Door economic model husband is the necessary home-making for a modest sized house (less than 1300 sq. ft. I would never contract to vacuum a McMansion) and yard and an average of 4 people showing up for dinner 5X a week. I also help him with his rental properties but that is outside of the realm of our basic domestic contract and in the realm of barter-for-wants although it does get a bit mushy sometimes because maybe I will sit through a mediation with a tenant with him and then he will buy me new tires for my car. I try to maintain a realistic appraisal of my situation my double-entry of this kind of thing in my expense log but it can get rather convoluted. Also, the best I can do to predict my future income from book-dealing and retail arbitrage is to estimate my future profits as 1/5 of my current listings. So, estimating my hourly wage is really difficult especially since I do have some overhead so past covering that I make more at the margin until I start running out of good sources for inventory and then I make less and less at them margin and there is so much getting lucky involved in the process.
So, conclusion would be that I need to figure out to what extent my goal should be to buy myself more free time in the future by using my current free time to save/invest money vs. (not to imply mutual exclusivity)further increasing my efficiency and/or effective hourly wage to directly obtain more free time. Also, one financial concept I need to figure out is what is the difference between trading and investing.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
End Week 2.
This week I started working at 6 AM on Thursday and managed to complete TWINTD (the work I need to do) by 2:30 PM on Saturday. This huge improvement over last week was mostly due to getting caught up on tasks I had put off and partially due to having an unusually lucky week of scouting.
I did my best to make some accurate, current and conservative estimates of my ROI and hourly wage for my business. My ROI is around 175% and my hourly wage is somewhere in the realm of $20-$30/hr. I do not work very much so there is room for improvement in both these numbers if I work more because I do have some fixed expenses overhead. So, except for the fact that maybe I do not want to work more or desire to diversify, it makes more sense for me to roll my profits/savings back into my business rather than buying stocks or timber or anything else I know less about than used books or end lot toys and household goods. I should note that there are a couple other services I could offer on the market that would render me a similar hourly wage (such as tutoring high school students in mathematics) but that would not be my preference.
My total personal expenses other than food and shelter remain pretty constant at around $200/month. I have in the past been readily able to feed myself for $2/day (given some cooking facilities) and I have and could rent a room inclusive of utilities for $350-400/month. OTOH, I am currently part of a household that spends around $3600/month on household expenses of which it could be argued (my husband has half custody of two teenage children) that 1/3 are my share. However, since I have very little control over such matters as what temperature to set the thermostat at and it is highly unlikely that my husband would sell his house or offer to rent out half his bedroom on Craigslist if I were not in residence etc. etc., other arguments could and have been offered. So, it is very difficult for me to determine what my effective hourly wage for bartering homemaking for food/shelter would be. Probably I mostly do it for motivations that transcend the strictly monetary such as love and higher sanitation standards. Therefore, I have decided to use the lower number and throw in an extra $200 for slush/savings and calculate my baseline monthly expenses as between $800-$900.
So, I currently would only have to work at my business for about 10 hours a week with a rolling capital fund of around $15,000 to support myself even if I didn't have a barter for food/shelter contract/arrangement. OTOH, if I believe that I will live into my 90s and I will never collect any social security, I would need to save up about $270,000 in order to support myself with stock market investments given a 4% withdrawal rate but I would only have to work maybe a couple hours a month minding my investments and I wouldn't have to maybe still be hauling 30 lb. boxes full of books when I am 94. Decisions, decisions, decisions...
This week I started working at 6 AM on Thursday and managed to complete TWINTD (the work I need to do) by 2:30 PM on Saturday. This huge improvement over last week was mostly due to getting caught up on tasks I had put off and partially due to having an unusually lucky week of scouting.
I did my best to make some accurate, current and conservative estimates of my ROI and hourly wage for my business. My ROI is around 175% and my hourly wage is somewhere in the realm of $20-$30/hr. I do not work very much so there is room for improvement in both these numbers if I work more because I do have some fixed expenses overhead. So, except for the fact that maybe I do not want to work more or desire to diversify, it makes more sense for me to roll my profits/savings back into my business rather than buying stocks or timber or anything else I know less about than used books or end lot toys and household goods. I should note that there are a couple other services I could offer on the market that would render me a similar hourly wage (such as tutoring high school students in mathematics) but that would not be my preference.
My total personal expenses other than food and shelter remain pretty constant at around $200/month. I have in the past been readily able to feed myself for $2/day (given some cooking facilities) and I have and could rent a room inclusive of utilities for $350-400/month. OTOH, I am currently part of a household that spends around $3600/month on household expenses of which it could be argued (my husband has half custody of two teenage children) that 1/3 are my share. However, since I have very little control over such matters as what temperature to set the thermostat at and it is highly unlikely that my husband would sell his house or offer to rent out half his bedroom on Craigslist if I were not in residence etc. etc., other arguments could and have been offered. So, it is very difficult for me to determine what my effective hourly wage for bartering homemaking for food/shelter would be. Probably I mostly do it for motivations that transcend the strictly monetary such as love and higher sanitation standards. Therefore, I have decided to use the lower number and throw in an extra $200 for slush/savings and calculate my baseline monthly expenses as between $800-$900.
So, I currently would only have to work at my business for about 10 hours a week with a rolling capital fund of around $15,000 to support myself even if I didn't have a barter for food/shelter contract/arrangement. OTOH, if I believe that I will live into my 90s and I will never collect any social security, I would need to save up about $270,000 in order to support myself with stock market investments given a 4% withdrawal rate but I would only have to work maybe a couple hours a month minding my investments and I wouldn't have to maybe still be hauling 30 lb. boxes full of books when I am 94. Decisions, decisions, decisions...
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
My thanksgiving week reflection is that it does not matter how much money I save because there is no freedom for "the Mom." Freedom is the province of the juvenile masculine to which the adult feminine can never again hope to journey.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
What a whiner. (Lol at self)
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
So, I pulled up my lifelong earnings statement from the Social Security Administration website. Apparently, in my 31 years of adult life I have only earned approximately $251,000. Therefore, I pretty clearly have a substantiated record of being able to live on around $8000/year. Since my first husband was the depressive starving musician type (ISFJ?) and maybe contributed twice as much income as me while we were married and we had two kids pretty much from the get-go and I financially supported our kids on my own after we were separated (I didn't try to get child support from him), I am going to consider his contribution as a wash.
Of course, the other side of this equation is that I have a pretty clearly substantiated record of only earning around $8000 a year (sigh.) Also, I would say that my general lifelong tendency with being mostly happy with my lot in life is mostly genetic because fairly consistent. Crappy things happen to me for a variety of reasons (including my many faults and repeated mistakes) and maybe I fall asleep in tears but usually I wake up in a good mood again. Not always kid-on-xmas-morning-or-first-day-of-summer-vacation good mood but usually at least an all-I-need-is-a-cup-of-coffee-and-a-pile-of-library-books-and-a-new-plan good mood. So, this is one of the reasons why I lack motivation to make more money.
Another reason why I lack motivation to make more money is due to my family of origin. My father had a Masters Degree in Taxation and ruled on corporate appeals for the IRS. His father was a City Attorney who argued a case concerning taxation in the Supreme Court. His father was the Treasurer of a very large city which is now bankrupt. My mother is a manic shopaholic. I had a good relationship with my father and a poor relationship with my mother. I have a quite deep-rooted fear that if I do attempt to earn and save more money it will be taken from me by a powerful crazy person so there is no point in making the effort. OTOH, I'm not really too keen on Freud so maybe this is just a cop-out. Dunno.
Of course, the other side of this equation is that I have a pretty clearly substantiated record of only earning around $8000 a year (sigh.) Also, I would say that my general lifelong tendency with being mostly happy with my lot in life is mostly genetic because fairly consistent. Crappy things happen to me for a variety of reasons (including my many faults and repeated mistakes) and maybe I fall asleep in tears but usually I wake up in a good mood again. Not always kid-on-xmas-morning-or-first-day-of-summer-vacation good mood but usually at least an all-I-need-is-a-cup-of-coffee-and-a-pile-of-library-books-and-a-new-plan good mood. So, this is one of the reasons why I lack motivation to make more money.
Another reason why I lack motivation to make more money is due to my family of origin. My father had a Masters Degree in Taxation and ruled on corporate appeals for the IRS. His father was a City Attorney who argued a case concerning taxation in the Supreme Court. His father was the Treasurer of a very large city which is now bankrupt. My mother is a manic shopaholic. I had a good relationship with my father and a poor relationship with my mother. I have a quite deep-rooted fear that if I do attempt to earn and save more money it will be taken from me by a powerful crazy person so there is no point in making the effort. OTOH, I'm not really too keen on Freud so maybe this is just a cop-out. Dunno.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
Even if someone takes away your higher earnings, you will still use it to qualify for a higher social security monthly.
It isn't too hard to become a Ren. (Wo)Man. Just learn one thing at a time, master it, then go on to the next. Five years from now your friends will wonder how you learned so many things "at once". Trying to learn many things at once will get you nowhere.
Right now you are healthy and able to do a lot. With age, to your dismay, the joints will start to fail, balance will become a problem, etc., and there is nothing you can do about it. So, stay on good terms with your children. (Ha-ha!)
The $4,000 book on Amazon is probably just being used as a placeholder.
With your income, you can probably qualify for some free training in spread-sheets and Quickbooks -- good tools you can use to see if bookselling is as profitable as you believe. I had to raise my book prices and wait for the cheaper books to sell out; otherwise I frequently netted 50 cents per sale (oh, to sell enough each day to qualify for bulk rates.)
It isn't too hard to become a Ren. (Wo)Man. Just learn one thing at a time, master it, then go on to the next. Five years from now your friends will wonder how you learned so many things "at once". Trying to learn many things at once will get you nowhere.
Right now you are healthy and able to do a lot. With age, to your dismay, the joints will start to fail, balance will become a problem, etc., and there is nothing you can do about it. So, stay on good terms with your children. (Ha-ha!)
The $4,000 book on Amazon is probably just being used as a placeholder.
With your income, you can probably qualify for some free training in spread-sheets and Quickbooks -- good tools you can use to see if bookselling is as profitable as you believe. I had to raise my book prices and wait for the cheaper books to sell out; otherwise I frequently netted 50 cents per sale (oh, to sell enough each day to qualify for bulk rates.)
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
Point. Does anybody know the secret formula/equation?Pete said: Even if someone takes away your higher earnings, you will still use it to qualify for a higher social security monthly.
Makes sense. Good practice for me in particular because I tend towards being scattered.It isn't too hard to become a Ren. (Wo)Man. Just learn one thing at a time, master it, then go on to the next. Five years from now your friends will wonder how you learned so many things "at once". Trying to learn many things at once will get you nowhere.
Ha-ha, indeed. Now that they have grown taller and wiser than me, they tend towards patting me fondly and referring to me as the Cabbagehead like I have become some cute creature out of Beatrix Potter. My S25 has said that he will buy me a cottage and some colorful chickens I can name after Jane Austen characters if he ever makes any money but since he currently spends much of his time smoking cigarettes and reading the essays of Montaigne, I am quite literally not counting on any of those chickens before they are hatched.Right now you are healthy and able to do a lot. With age, to your dismay, the joints will start to fail, balance will become a problem, etc., and there is nothing you can do about it. So, stay on good terms with your children. (Ha-ha!)
I recently met a 96 year old neighbor who still lives by herself and gardens and cooks in slow motion. She was telling me about meeting the Dalai Lama back in the 1960s and she said "There I was, an old woman, surrounded by all these children with their long hair and beads..." I did a quick calculation and determined that she must have been about my current age of 48 at the time and she was already thinking of herself as an "old woman" even though she was less than halfway done with her life.
Yeah, I threw that book out at $899 and don't expect it to sell unless/until some rabid collector desperately wants to complete his set. Never know. The internet is a pretty big market and Amazon only charges me about 3 cents a month to store a book in their warehouses. I've been dealing books on the internet for 12 years so I am well aware that the days of making a decent profit most categories of books are gone. Especially since everything pre-copyright is now being printed on demand on the cheap. That's why I now also deal in toys and housewares. Making high profits as a rare book scout/dealer is like making high profits as a mushroom hunter. The field is too small.The $4,000 book on Amazon is probably just being used as a placeholder.
With your income, you can probably qualify for some free training in spread-sheets and Quickbooks -- good tools you can use to see if bookselling is as profitable as you believe. I had to raise my book prices and wait for the cheaper books to sell out; otherwise I frequently netted 50 cents per sale (oh, to sell enough each day to qualify for bulk rates.)
Anyways, I used to use Money to do my books but now I do everything on Excel spreadsheets I devised myself. I have a degree in Mathematics with a concentration in Actuarial Studies and I received a score of 2370 on the GRE so theoretically I don't have problems with learning technical stuff that would pay me more money per hour. I just don't do it very much or use it when I do do it.
Also, I am currently non-legally married (we do have legal domestic contract and we wear rings and have pictures of ourselves and all our children hanging in living room etc.) to an early retired moderately-thrifty-millionaire-next-door-type who is rationally hesitant to legally marry me because he was once sued for divorce by two women at the same time and he lost a lot of money and other worldly goods in the process. He is more worried about me in my old age than I am because he does not believe that I can survive on $8000/year even though the evidence is that I have but it is not in alignment with his self-interest for me to work full time away from home because I am such a delightful companion. I don't think it is in alignment with my self-interest for me to work full time away from home either because I don't like doing that. So we are in happy agreement. However, this situation does tend towards making my overall personal financial situation rather schizophrenic. Can I well afford an occasional Triple Americano at Starbucks? Depends on how you look at it.
Also, I am partners in my business with one of my sisters and it sometimes ends up getting as messy as the room we shared as girls. For just one instance, her ex-husband-she-is-maybe-getting-back-together-with and one of my kids and one of my husband's kids are currently on what is theoretically our business cell phone plan. My problem isn't in my ability to use accounting software but in my ability to account for a bajillion different varieties of this kind of thing and/or keep them from happening.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
Hi 7Wannabe5,
Just read through your journal,and really enjoyed it.
It's kind of frenetic and muddled but a delight to read.
There is so much information in each post, that even though it's hard to follow your actual train of thought ... you end up at the end of reading it,smiling and feeling good.
The objective seems to be an alternative source of income other than full-time work.Have you tried blogging?
Just a thought because you have a lovely style of writing that made me laugh even though I couldn't really understand what was going on.I think your niche audience could be middle aged women and older.I loved the reference to the "baby walking business",that's definetly a new one on me.
Just read through your journal,and really enjoyed it.
It's kind of frenetic and muddled but a delight to read.
There is so much information in each post, that even though it's hard to follow your actual train of thought ... you end up at the end of reading it,smiling and feeling good.
The objective seems to be an alternative source of income other than full-time work.Have you tried blogging?
Just a thought because you have a lovely style of writing that made me laugh even though I couldn't really understand what was going on.I think your niche audience could be middle aged women and older.I loved the reference to the "baby walking business",that's definetly a new one on me.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
Thank you. What a nice compliment! Interesting suggestion. I have considered becoming a Garden Essayist because I greatly admire many of the practitioners of that art/craft and it would form a perfect triangle with my other two generalist professions of creative-thrifty-home-maker and rare-book-and-endlot-toy-housewares-scout-dealer. I doubt I could make any money just blogging but maybe if I made it something like an extremely verbose catalogue with essays attached to various garden related goods for sale through my dealer account. For instance, another project I have been wanting to undertake is re-publishing some very rare books on lost arts and crafts in my collection including one that is on the topic of designs for picket fence posts and another on pickling. Or I could find a source for attractive adult women size overalls at a decent price and retail them. It is so difficult to find these I was recently approached by a stranger in a parking lot because she wanted to know where I bought mine. Or I could retail some kind of skin cream for very pale people like me who love to garden but suffer from rosacea and do not want to end up with a nose like Bill Clinton or Andy Capp.1Taskaday said: The objective seems to be an alternative source of income other than full-time work.Have you tried blogging?
Just a thought because you have a lovely style of writing that made me laugh even though I couldn't really understand what was going on.I think your niche audience could be middle aged women and older.I loved the reference to the "baby walking business",that's definetly a new one on me.
However, it is a problem that I am a very fast messy writer (thinker)and I hate self-editing.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
I do believe I am making some progress on getting things organized towards creating a better foundation for my ideal Renaissance person lifestyle. I am cleaning up my business books and my personal project files.
I took another version of the test and I once again confirmed that I am an ENTP (the Inventor) with the E being very marginal, the N being extremely strong, the T being somewhat strong and the P being moderately strong. So, my closest alternate types would be INTP (the Architect) or ENFP (the Champion.) The description of the Inventor does rather resemble me if the concept of "gadget" isn't taken very literally. The description of the Architect does not click very well except for the fact that doing something like designing a garden with colored pencils on graph paper would be one of my favorite activities I would indulge in if I ever had a truly relaxed chunk of free time to myself. The description of the Champion does resemble how I behave in relationship(s) if/where my feelings are engaged.
Apparently, according to this model, if I wish to be more like an INTJ (the Mastermind) and, therefore, better able to save some money and otherwise provide better underpinnings for my lifestyle, I need to spend more time by myself making more detailed plans with more steps of my plans thought through thoroughly. I actually love making plans but usually my plans are more like long exuberant lists of goals I would like to achieve or things I would like to do or learn about with very few Next Steps attached (I have tried GTD method.) (Lightbulb moment!) I DON"T love making plans. I love making lists. If I wish to better achieve Mastery, I need to focus on one item on one of my lists and make it into a plan and then actually do it. Otherwise, my inventiveness is going to be ever limited to spur of the moment needful activities/problems such as "What can I make for dinner if all I have is a pomegranate, some leftover pie crust and 79 cents?"
Another tendency I have (which may or may not be a problem but is certainly related) would be that I have a craving for pure novelty in my mental pursuits. For instance, when I was a child I would spin myself around in the aisle of the library and then pick a book at random and make myself read it. That's my idea of the ultimate luxury; having (or, really, granting myself) enough free time to do something like that at the margin. But, it's really quite analogous to not being able to have my candy if I don't eat my protein and vegetables. I can't enjoy taking on anything new if I have all these other projects I have started and abandoned lying about. For me, I think the challenge presented in the ERE book is more about achieving freedom through mastery rather than achieving freedom through saving money. However, it may very well be the case that the two concepts are somehow inexplicably intertwined.
I took another version of the test and I once again confirmed that I am an ENTP (the Inventor) with the E being very marginal, the N being extremely strong, the T being somewhat strong and the P being moderately strong. So, my closest alternate types would be INTP (the Architect) or ENFP (the Champion.) The description of the Inventor does rather resemble me if the concept of "gadget" isn't taken very literally. The description of the Architect does not click very well except for the fact that doing something like designing a garden with colored pencils on graph paper would be one of my favorite activities I would indulge in if I ever had a truly relaxed chunk of free time to myself. The description of the Champion does resemble how I behave in relationship(s) if/where my feelings are engaged.
Apparently, according to this model, if I wish to be more like an INTJ (the Mastermind) and, therefore, better able to save some money and otherwise provide better underpinnings for my lifestyle, I need to spend more time by myself making more detailed plans with more steps of my plans thought through thoroughly. I actually love making plans but usually my plans are more like long exuberant lists of goals I would like to achieve or things I would like to do or learn about with very few Next Steps attached (I have tried GTD method.) (Lightbulb moment!) I DON"T love making plans. I love making lists. If I wish to better achieve Mastery, I need to focus on one item on one of my lists and make it into a plan and then actually do it. Otherwise, my inventiveness is going to be ever limited to spur of the moment needful activities/problems such as "What can I make for dinner if all I have is a pomegranate, some leftover pie crust and 79 cents?"
Another tendency I have (which may or may not be a problem but is certainly related) would be that I have a craving for pure novelty in my mental pursuits. For instance, when I was a child I would spin myself around in the aisle of the library and then pick a book at random and make myself read it. That's my idea of the ultimate luxury; having (or, really, granting myself) enough free time to do something like that at the margin. But, it's really quite analogous to not being able to have my candy if I don't eat my protein and vegetables. I can't enjoy taking on anything new if I have all these other projects I have started and abandoned lying about. For me, I think the challenge presented in the ERE book is more about achieving freedom through mastery rather than achieving freedom through saving money. However, it may very well be the case that the two concepts are somehow inexplicably intertwined.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
Okay, so yesterday was the solstice and only 10 days until the new year, therefore time to create my new list of goals. My list of Renaissance person categories which I created several years ago is kind of like Jacob's list in the book but, obviously, more reflective of my personality/perspective. They are:
Category #1-Knowledge and Skill Attainment
Category #2-Spiritual and Social Practice
Category #3- Health and Fitness
Category #4-Beauty, Style and Charm
Category #5-Home, Hearth, Garden
Category #6-Travel and Novel Experience
Category #7-Financial Practice
Category #8-Trade and Entrepreneurial Activities
Category #9- Creative Projects
Category #10- Meta-planning and Organizational Projects
So, for instance, my Goal from last year's list which was "Put on 5 lbs of muscle mass" went under the category of "Health and Fitness" whereas if Jacob had that goal, I assume he would have put it under "Physiological." OTOH, two years ago I had the goal "Start/acquire or sketch/identify one new species/variety of plant each week." and I put that goal under "Travel and Novel Experience" because the adjective "new" was most relevant for me whereas Jacob filed a similar goal under the category of "Ecological."
Anyways, looking back I would grade my overall success in achieving my goals or completing my projects as fair to middling and highly erratic. Total failure mixed with success only achieved by methods analogous to slacking all term and then cramming for the final or robbing Peter to pay Paul or even worse. For instance, on my 2012 list I had the goal "Acquire the agricultural rights to 180 square ft. of dirt (inclusive of pots.)" and I had in my mind some sensible method for achieving this goal. What I actually ended up doing was acquiring the agricultural rights to my husband's yard and some cash towards seeds as non-legal-contractual dowry payment. The fact that nobody-cares-what-I-do-anymore-and-just-thinks-it-is-funny only partially serves to mitigate this kind of thing.
So, I was feeling kind of down on myself due to my overall lack of success and tendency towards cuckoo-bananas behavior and I was thinking that maybe I should abandon all other categories this year and focus just on one goal under the category of "Financial Practice" which would be something like "Try to make as much money as possible." This goal does have the attractive quality of being something I have never even vaguely attempted. My negative thought pattern continued along the lines of considering that trying to have a Renaissance lifestyle without adequate financial back is kind of like trying to be fashionable when you are thirty pounds overweight. But then I woke up in a better mood and had the opposing but also true thought that it is never highly productive to do something like punish yourself for being overweight by making no attempts at being fashionable. For instance, I continued to wear hideous appliqued maternity sweat shirt/pants outfits (gifted to me by my mother) for a year after my D22 was born, even as they became limp, worn and stained with baby vomit. Far better, in my experience, to plan on making a trip to the thrift store once a month to buy some cast-off designer wear and then trade it in again when you lose the next 8 lbs.
I am still working out what this means by analogy for my plans/goals for 2014 but I am sure it is relevant.
Category #1-Knowledge and Skill Attainment
Category #2-Spiritual and Social Practice
Category #3- Health and Fitness
Category #4-Beauty, Style and Charm
Category #5-Home, Hearth, Garden
Category #6-Travel and Novel Experience
Category #7-Financial Practice
Category #8-Trade and Entrepreneurial Activities
Category #9- Creative Projects
Category #10- Meta-planning and Organizational Projects
So, for instance, my Goal from last year's list which was "Put on 5 lbs of muscle mass" went under the category of "Health and Fitness" whereas if Jacob had that goal, I assume he would have put it under "Physiological." OTOH, two years ago I had the goal "Start/acquire or sketch/identify one new species/variety of plant each week." and I put that goal under "Travel and Novel Experience" because the adjective "new" was most relevant for me whereas Jacob filed a similar goal under the category of "Ecological."
Anyways, looking back I would grade my overall success in achieving my goals or completing my projects as fair to middling and highly erratic. Total failure mixed with success only achieved by methods analogous to slacking all term and then cramming for the final or robbing Peter to pay Paul or even worse. For instance, on my 2012 list I had the goal "Acquire the agricultural rights to 180 square ft. of dirt (inclusive of pots.)" and I had in my mind some sensible method for achieving this goal. What I actually ended up doing was acquiring the agricultural rights to my husband's yard and some cash towards seeds as non-legal-contractual dowry payment. The fact that nobody-cares-what-I-do-anymore-and-just-thinks-it-is-funny only partially serves to mitigate this kind of thing.
So, I was feeling kind of down on myself due to my overall lack of success and tendency towards cuckoo-bananas behavior and I was thinking that maybe I should abandon all other categories this year and focus just on one goal under the category of "Financial Practice" which would be something like "Try to make as much money as possible." This goal does have the attractive quality of being something I have never even vaguely attempted. My negative thought pattern continued along the lines of considering that trying to have a Renaissance lifestyle without adequate financial back is kind of like trying to be fashionable when you are thirty pounds overweight. But then I woke up in a better mood and had the opposing but also true thought that it is never highly productive to do something like punish yourself for being overweight by making no attempts at being fashionable. For instance, I continued to wear hideous appliqued maternity sweat shirt/pants outfits (gifted to me by my mother) for a year after my D22 was born, even as they became limp, worn and stained with baby vomit. Far better, in my experience, to plan on making a trip to the thrift store once a month to buy some cast-off designer wear and then trade it in again when you lose the next 8 lbs.
I am still working out what this means by analogy for my plans/goals for 2014 but I am sure it is relevant.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
My advice to you is - simplify everything.
My overriding goal at all times is not to spend money unless it is really necessary.
Now to some people who read this, it means that I'm just another "tight-wad”, but this is absolutely not the case. I totally believe in the whole ERE ethos and principles. Money actually means nothing to me but freedom means everything.
I think if you simplified everything down to it's most basic level - it would help you immensely.
What do you need,(money or work wise), to live the life you want to live?
Maybe you are already completely happy with your life the way it is ??
Often the journey getting into this position can be just as enjoyable as reaching the end-point or "getting there”. Jacob is forever telling people on this forum that there is no deadline or race.Just enjoy the journey. The journey is where the real benefit and gain is to be found.You change and become the "real you".
I think the journey has been the most amazing thing about this whole ERE goal for me.In the beginning I was like a dictator trying to reach the goal at all costs and sticking to my financial plan.Now I have lightened up,this is all of our lives that we are living, RIGHT NOW - we have to be able to smell the roses along the way.
I have gotten to love my simple way of living and the financial plan just works away in the background without any effort.
Just keep it simple,live your life true to your own values and the rest will fall into place.
My overriding goal at all times is not to spend money unless it is really necessary.
Now to some people who read this, it means that I'm just another "tight-wad”, but this is absolutely not the case. I totally believe in the whole ERE ethos and principles. Money actually means nothing to me but freedom means everything.
I think if you simplified everything down to it's most basic level - it would help you immensely.
What do you need,(money or work wise), to live the life you want to live?
Maybe you are already completely happy with your life the way it is ??
Often the journey getting into this position can be just as enjoyable as reaching the end-point or "getting there”. Jacob is forever telling people on this forum that there is no deadline or race.Just enjoy the journey. The journey is where the real benefit and gain is to be found.You change and become the "real you".
I think the journey has been the most amazing thing about this whole ERE goal for me.In the beginning I was like a dictator trying to reach the goal at all costs and sticking to my financial plan.Now I have lightened up,this is all of our lives that we are living, RIGHT NOW - we have to be able to smell the roses along the way.
I have gotten to love my simple way of living and the financial plan just works away in the background without any effort.
Just keep it simple,live your life true to your own values and the rest will fall into place.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
I am 90 something percent happy with my life the way it is and that is a good part of my frustration. Like I can not name the reason why I can't just wake up tomorrow and allow myself to pretty much do what I want to do. Can I live on less than $10,000 a year? Not a problem. Can I make more than $10,000 a year spending not too much time doing something I rather enjoy? Not a problem.1Taskaday said: I think if you simplified everything down to it's most basic level - it would help you immensely.
What do you need,(money or work wise), to live the life you want to live?
Maybe you are already completely happy with your life the way it is ??
So, I went back over my various project lists covering the last 4 or 5 years and the absolute maximum amount of money I would have to spend to complete all of these projects would be $3000 and some of them might even generate some income. However, I estimate it would take me at least 4400 hours of fairly concentrated effort to complete them. Therefore, money is not my limiting factor. The fact that these same projects keep showing up on my lists over and over in only slightly modified or commingled forms leads me to believe that I really do want to do these things.
Maybe, I need to follow the suggestion to tackle them one at a time. I certainly have at least 20 hours of free time each week to spend so I could complete them all in around 4 years at a cost of less than $10/week on average.
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Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
I tend to follow a multi-pronged approach (web of goals) and while doing it and usually looking back even several months it looks like I've accomplished nothing. Yet I would have made, e.g., 20-40% progress on several goals and after a few years, looking back, it's actually surprising how much got done. If you prefer more instant and continuous gratification, i.e., milestones, the "SMART goals" approach is better.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
Thank you for the suggestion. I do understand the value of the web of goals approach. One of the great things about being self-employed is that when I run out of "working on a spreadsheet" energy, I can switch right over to a project that requires different energy such as "making a pot of soup." When I was reading a description of my type (ENTP) on Keirsey.com recently I was struck by this line
Another thing that struck me reading what you wrote above is that maybe part of my problem is in framing all my projects in one year goal chunks. For instance, one of my goals for 2013 was to achieve second grade literacy in reading Arabic but that really wouldn't be a satisfying endpoint for me. It would just be a milestone. What would be satisfying would be something like "do a decent job translating something from Arabic to English then self-publish it" but I might realistically have to frame that as a 20 year goal. I did manage to achieve pre-school level literacy in written Arabic and conversational Farsi this year and I do think it was good brain exercise to learn a new alphabet at my age but I guess I was just giving myself a D- on my efforts because it was so very 3 steps forward, 2.5 steps back because I never could manage to get far enough up the S-curve or something like that and then I would go back to my books and once again not be able to recognize the letter that sounds like you are gagging on a K if it appeared in the middle of a word etc. etc. ( I should note that the S-curve is a new concept to me and I keep pondering it because I do not really understand it. It seems to go against advice in alignment with establishing regular good habits. For instance, if I attempt to put on 5 lbs of muscle mass as quickly as possible, I will be engaging in practice that will not be the same practice which would be the habit that would allow me to maintain the extra 5 lbs of muscle mass. Right?) IOW, maybe it would be more fun AND more productive to focus on achieving a milestone as quickly as possible so that I do get over the hump rather than plugging a practice such as "I will study Farsi for half an hour every day" into my repeating routine app?
Maybe that's my problem. I know that I suck at sticking to routine but I keep turning what should be fun, interesting, creative projects into boring routines.
End babble. I will figure it out.
So, I'm thinking it's not so much milestones that I need but more of what is reaching what is satisfying endgame for "me" by taking it to the level of tangible product on at least some of my projects. I should note that I don't really care very much about the possibility of making money by taking my projects to the market-product level although that might happen and I don't care if the "market" only amounts to something like "people who happen to visit my garden". I just want them to be out there where I can see them.Inventors are filled with ideas, but value ideas only when they make possible actions and objects. Thus they see product design not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, as a way of devising the prototype that works and that can be brought to market.
Another thing that struck me reading what you wrote above is that maybe part of my problem is in framing all my projects in one year goal chunks. For instance, one of my goals for 2013 was to achieve second grade literacy in reading Arabic but that really wouldn't be a satisfying endpoint for me. It would just be a milestone. What would be satisfying would be something like "do a decent job translating something from Arabic to English then self-publish it" but I might realistically have to frame that as a 20 year goal. I did manage to achieve pre-school level literacy in written Arabic and conversational Farsi this year and I do think it was good brain exercise to learn a new alphabet at my age but I guess I was just giving myself a D- on my efforts because it was so very 3 steps forward, 2.5 steps back because I never could manage to get far enough up the S-curve or something like that and then I would go back to my books and once again not be able to recognize the letter that sounds like you are gagging on a K if it appeared in the middle of a word etc. etc. ( I should note that the S-curve is a new concept to me and I keep pondering it because I do not really understand it. It seems to go against advice in alignment with establishing regular good habits. For instance, if I attempt to put on 5 lbs of muscle mass as quickly as possible, I will be engaging in practice that will not be the same practice which would be the habit that would allow me to maintain the extra 5 lbs of muscle mass. Right?) IOW, maybe it would be more fun AND more productive to focus on achieving a milestone as quickly as possible so that I do get over the hump rather than plugging a practice such as "I will study Farsi for half an hour every day" into my repeating routine app?
Maybe that's my problem. I know that I suck at sticking to routine but I keep turning what should be fun, interesting, creative projects into boring routines.
End babble. I will figure it out.
Re: 7Wannabe5's Journal
It has become increasingly clear upon focused inspection that I suffer from some sort of financial anorexia which is the opposite of over-consumption. I will never be able to save very much money because the less I spend, the less I earn.
I gave my car to my DD23 a couple weeks ago so now my monthly expenses will be less than $300/month due to the fact that my domestic contract with my DH covers my shelter/utilities/food. I currently have a passive but declining net income of around $550/month from the sale of my inventory of very rare used books on Amazon. My quite conservative estimate of NRV (net realizable value) of this inventory is about $40,000 total. Previous to my current domestic contract, I was readily able to secure shelter/utilities for $350/month and feed myself for around $60/month.
Helping my DH take care of all his (too much!!) stuff is work that I do. He has a retirement post-tax income of around $50,000 and outright owns a home in a very nice neighborhood, so it is kind of debatable whether I am bartering my services for $410/month or the cost of the middle-class lifestyle I share in his company. He definitely is not complaining about the deal and likely would give me more money or stuff if I wanted/asked for it. However, he is pretty millionaire-next-door thrifty himself so the kind of conversation that happens in our household is:
Me: Do we need anything from the Salvation Army? Should I clip the 50% off coupon?
DH: (barely looking up from what he is reading) Yes, I noticed that you keep wearing the same dress, poor baby. Take $50 from my wallet.
Then what happened was that we went to the Salvation Army and I bought 5 things for $6.99.
It seems to me that in our affluent society when you reach a certain level of thrift you just start floating.
I gave my car to my DD23 a couple weeks ago so now my monthly expenses will be less than $300/month due to the fact that my domestic contract with my DH covers my shelter/utilities/food. I currently have a passive but declining net income of around $550/month from the sale of my inventory of very rare used books on Amazon. My quite conservative estimate of NRV (net realizable value) of this inventory is about $40,000 total. Previous to my current domestic contract, I was readily able to secure shelter/utilities for $350/month and feed myself for around $60/month.
Helping my DH take care of all his (too much!!) stuff is work that I do. He has a retirement post-tax income of around $50,000 and outright owns a home in a very nice neighborhood, so it is kind of debatable whether I am bartering my services for $410/month or the cost of the middle-class lifestyle I share in his company. He definitely is not complaining about the deal and likely would give me more money or stuff if I wanted/asked for it. However, he is pretty millionaire-next-door thrifty himself so the kind of conversation that happens in our household is:
Me: Do we need anything from the Salvation Army? Should I clip the 50% off coupon?
DH: (barely looking up from what he is reading) Yes, I noticed that you keep wearing the same dress, poor baby. Take $50 from my wallet.
Then what happened was that we went to the Salvation Army and I bought 5 things for $6.99.
It seems to me that in our affluent society when you reach a certain level of thrift you just start floating.