5to9's journal

[5to9]

March 2015

Financial

Some backsliding this month, but the bulk of it was due to a long planned trip my wife took with some friends. Not too upset, but it was the first time in a while my TTM average spending ticked back up. Not the end of the world, but I'm motivated to try to get things back under control this month. It was a pretty nice dividend month, though!



Health

Making some real progress here on diet. I'm definitely the incremental improvement type, the slow habit building strategy seems to be working well. I made it through the last month with only two occasions where I ate things with added sugar. Next up this month is chips/pretzels, other junk food. I'm starting to reach a place mentally where the positive feeling I get from sticking to my plan when things like free cookies are in front of me almost surpasses the negative feelings. Definitely depends on the day, but it's getting easier.

I'm also getting better with my sleep habits (these things all seem to snowball together). Going to bed earlier helps me avoid the late night snacking, and getting more sleep puts me in such a better frame of mind the next morning. This has been yet another place where as silly as it seems, tracking my sleep on the FitBit really helps me stay motivated to maintain good habits.

Organization

Some small progress here, got rid of some old clothes, and I'm doing better at keeping a few key places (kitchen, my closet, front entry way) clean. I never finished the KonMari book, it just didn't click for me. I don't think I'm the target audience. I'll look around for a better system, but I think that incremental improvement might work for me. There are a few minimalist websites (becoming minimalist, and zenhabits) that seem more up my alley.

Mindfulness

After a few months of not feeling like I was sure what I was getting from my Journaling, I had a bit of a breakthrough. One day as I was filling out my three things to be grateful for at the end of the day, it struck me how out of balance my priorities are. Every day, at least 2 of my 3 things are related to my family, but I really hadn't been given them nearly the energy that I spend on everything else. I resolved to focus on being mindful and particularly trying to enjoy the 2 hours after work before my boys go to bed. It has made a real difference in my life. We have more fun, I am less stressed, and I can see the positive effects on everyone in the family. So I think I'm going to stick to the journaling, although I'm still thinking of some ideas to tweak it.

Between the Tony Robbins program I've been doing, and some recent threads here on the forum (Space between stories), I'm starting to realize how much work I have to do in terms of really understanding myself and my motivations. I like the idea of ERE, but I'm really starting to wonder if I'm giving it my full effort, and I think part of the reason I haven't committed to it is that I have no good idea of who I am outside of being a dad and a software engineer. Obviously one of those isn't going away, but it will only be a few years before the boys are in school, so if I'm going to do ERE, I need to figure that out. It's also tough because I do enjoy a lot of the parts of my job, but I can't honestly say I'd do it if I wasn't getting paid. Anyway, expect a little bit more navel gazing here, as it's probably more important than the money stuff for me.

TL;DR
I need to figure out who I am. I have started to make real progress with learning some discipline and improving my habits, but the savings rate continues it's up and down trends.

[5to9]

2015 Annual Report

I have fallen off maintaining my journal here, but have continued plugging away on my financial goals. I have consciously chosen that my path won’t be the extreme path, since I have a wife and family that get votes here as well, so I’ve tried to settle in for the long grind. Part of that means that while I still track my expenses, I have focused a little less on the month to month progress, to avoid it becoming a demotivating force instead of a positive one.

I have really transitioned to trying to live a happy life with as light of a footprint as I can manage. Financial Independence is still a main goal, but I think the bigger thing that I get from this community is reminders and encouragement to not accept the status. It will keep me coming back, even if I am not as actively participating as I once was.

Financial

Our savings rate for the year came in at 50%. This is down slightly from last year (52%), but this was mostly due to a slight decrease in some stock based compensation. Our spending was actually 9% less than the previous year, and under my spending target, so progress! Assuming we can keep income the same, I’d like to get over 55% this year.

We ended the year at 156 months of total savings, which exceeded my goal of 150. This puts us just over half way to a 4% SWR, which is both exciting and daunting. I’m not sure we can keep up the previous pace of improvement, but I will certainly try. Aiming for 175 months by the end of 2016.

I’ve tweaked my charts a bit, and I now track a few moving averages, interestingly I’ve hit the point where my theoretical max income from savings is about even with my theoretical bare minimum spending, which is pretty cool. The reasonable target line for FI is still a ways off (all current spending except for child care).



Personal Development

I have continued to keep my journal on a mostly daily basis. I no longer use the Five Minute Journal, but I still keep much of the same format, gratitude and goals in the morning, with a daily recap in the evening and some reflection. It has been a great tool for me, and keeps me centered on what matters in life. Almost everything can go terribly throughout the day, and if I have one good, present moment with my kids that I can write down, it feels like a pretty good day.

I fell off pretty sharply around mid year with my exercise regime and attempts to resume running. I mostly got frustrated and then started making excuses and rationalizing. I started to make some progress on this in November and December, mostly spurred by the purchase of a bike trailer. The boys love riding in it, and hauling 70lbs of kid up the hills around here is pretty strenuous. I’m trying to work in some regular exercise routines as well, and keep this going. I’m also experimenting a bit with Yoga and Pilates to see if either of those can help correct my postural problems that keep leading to the running injuries.

The other big focus for this year has been on building community in my new hometown. I think this one has gone pretty well, and we’ve found a great group of friends, and a good church. Getting to know some local farmers has been very eye opening and good for me as well. It is a very rich experience to really know where your food comes from. We had some hints at this when we were living in a big city participating in a CSA, but that was like a two dimensional version of this. Building real social capital will continue to be a big focus of mine throughout the coming year.

TL;DR
It was a good year. We made great progress on our financial goals, and made great progress on improving our lives to a point where the urgency of ERE is reduced.

[5to9]

2016 Mid-Year Update

I’m still working out what the right frequency is for Journaling here, but I felt like I at least needed to put in a mid-year update.

Financial

Our savings rate for the six months is around 46%. My goal for the year is 55%, so we have some catching up to do, but July is when bonuses and other extra payments come in, so I don’t think we are actually that far off pace. We are buying a house again, which might impact the numbers some, but I don’t think it makes a major impact to our trajectory, aside from tying up some capital. Interest rates are insanely low right now (thanks Brexit), so the mortgage will be very affordable.

My very simple calculations estimate that we are still about 6 years away from FI. The MMM chart has a 50% savings rate equating to 17 years of working, so I guess that puts us around 2/3 of the way there. I’d love to try to get up to 60% next year, but progress has been slow. The market has been good so far this year, giving some added boost.



Personal Development

I did an experiment with meditation for about 1.5 months this spring. I did mindfulness style meditation for around 15-20 minutes every morning. Contrary to everything I read beforehand, I saw almost no value in it. I am very willing to accept that maybe I was doing something wrong, or had the same mindset, but I’ve been happier since I let go of that experiment. One unintended benefit, though, is that I had to start waking up earlier, and I’ve kept that piece going.

Fitness has made some real progress. I have slowly been working back into running. I even was able to do a (very slow) 10 mile trail run to help pace a friend while he did an ultramarathon. I’m still trying to be very cautious in ramping up the training, but it’s promising. I have done a lot of cross-training with swimming and cycling, which helps. I’ve also maintained my Pilates regimen, which is really helping with core strength and stability. Current target is a 50 mile bike ride in late August, I picked up a used road bike and have been doing some long training rides.

Building social capital has gone very well too. As evidenced by our willingness to buy a house, we are really settling in as part of our small town community. We’ve also been slowly moving more of our food consumption to local products where we know the farmers.

TL;DR

Settling in and buying a house in our small town. Savings rate still around 50%, ER 6 years away.

[5to9]

October 2017 Update

Not quite the end of the year, but long past time for an update. I have consciously been spending less time on the forums here, but I think getting back to somewhat regular journalling would be good. I've gotten lazy on the ERE front.

Financials

Savings rate so far for this year has improved to around 56%, but that is mostly on the back of income increases, we've actually gotten worse on the spending front. Some of that has been necessary increases due to our return to homeownership, but certainly some of it has been of the lazy spending variety. I've been tracking expenses, but not all that carefully, and it's too easy to rationalize some of the purchases. I'm not concerned about getting to minimal spending levels, but I'd like to better optimize where the money is going. Overall it's been a positive year, but I find myself increasingly feeling like the stock market is a house of cards, and I'm struggling with how to divide up my assets. I've done some diversification, but I'm not sure I can buy into something as conservative as the Permanent Portfolio yet.



Personal Development

Fitness has improved a lot over the past year. I've gotten into a regular routine with Crossfit. I think it's the perfect mix of activities for me, and I've been able to stay mostly injury free for over a year, which has really made significant improvements in my fitness. I like that it requires minimal thinking or planning from me. I just show up 3 times a week, and work hard at whatever is planned. I've done some running, mostly shorter distances, and so far so good. I'd love to get back to more distance running at some point, but taking it carefully.

Other areas are good too. Continuing to get more involved in the community, especially around activities with the local elementary school. I could see that being an activity I cultivate for a post-ERE activity that could potentially even generate some minimal income. Teaching young kids about science and engineering is extremely rewarding.

I've also started playing more chess lately, and trying to substitute chess apps on my phone in place of mindless Facebook browsing. I think that has been a quality of life improver as well.

TL;DR

Finances are good by peer group standards, weak by ERE standards. Crossfit has improved my fitness, and I'm developing some good hobbies.

[wolf]

Hi 5to9. In between your last journal post and now, I have joined the ERE-Forum. I like surprises, like your updated journal.
Can you describe what the y-axis with 0 to 250 means regarding the different curves, e.g. the red one "Financial Independence"?

[5to9]

@MDFIRE2024 Nice to meet you! I had taken a bit of a break from the forums to avoid tunnel vision on the long term goal. I've got a wife and two kids, so I have to be sure to balance my ERE desires with more short term happiness goals.

The Y-axis on the chart is essentially dollars divided by a randomly selected number to avoid putting my explicit financials out on the internet

The different lines are:

Total spending (light gray) - How much I spent that month
TTM spending (dark gray) - 12 month average spending
TTM Estimated ERE expenses (bright red) - this one excludes a few expenses like child care and commuting that would go away if I quit working
Financial Security (light red) - Bare minimum expenses (home, food, utilities, medical). I think I got this one from the Tony Robbins book.
4% SWR Income (lime green) - Theoretical income from my savings if I used a 4% withdrawal rate.
Passive Income (pale green) - Mostly just dividend income right now. I have slowed my Dividend Growth investing lately for tax reasons, but did build up a decent portfolio of income producing stocks.
Average Estimated Income (dark green) - Monthly average for dividend income, since the quarterly cycles of stocks lead to a very choppy pattern of income.

I've played around with a few versions of the graph, but this one right now gives me a nice visual impression of how I'm making progress. I can see the expected bump from buying a house, and that I'm not getting the red line back down quickly enough

[5to9]

Long time since my last checkin. Haven't been spending too much time on these forums lately, although I do lurk from time to time.

Still tracking the expenses, but as noted previously, to keep the family on board, I am far from extreme with expense tracking. We have optimized the big items (home, car, food, location), and mostly just strive to keep the spending stable, or slightly trending down. Income has continued to grow, so last year worked out to a 70% savings rate. We now have both kids in school, so we should get some improvement by reduction of child care costs this year.

I have a new chart that is the primary one I'm tracking. About 3 years ago, I calculated out how many years till FI, and plotted that on a linear course. I then track a more real-time version of that, and see if I am keeping on track. You can see a big spike when we bought the house in 2016, which caused a period of increased spending, but that has mostly settled down and we are back on track, currently at a little less than 3 years to FI.



This might be heresy, but I like my job well enough that while we could probably squeeze some optimization out of the budget, I'm not sure that would be a good tradeoff to bring this in by a year. Also not sure my wife (an academic) has any interest in ER. So as of right now, the plan is to keep plugging away for a couple more years, trying to bring in a few optimizations.

In the non-financial arena, life has been pretty good. Health has been pretty good, almost 2 years now pretty consistent with Crossfit, and as mentioned before, work has been going quite well, with promotions, new challenges, and still working quite reasonable hours, acceptable amounts of travel, and with even some time where I am able to work from home.

[Bankai]

Good progress!

Also not sure my wife (an academic) has any interest in ER.

Speaking to her about it seems like a good idea. Is she OK with you retiring early once you hit your number?

[5to9]

Speaking to her about it seems like a good idea. Is she OK with you retiring early once you hit your number?

We've definitely talked about it, but to be honest, I vary day to day in my thoughts on what I will do at the FI point. I don't think she would be upset if that is what I wanted to do, although obviously if she wants to keep her academic job, that would rule out some lifestyle choices like nomadic travel. Sometimes I think I might keep working at the FI point, and just vastly increase my philanthropy. Given my high earning potential, it might be the best ROI on my time...

[wolf]

hi 5to9! Everything in progress, I guess? Just wanted to stop by and ask if everything is ok?