A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

Where are you and where are you going?
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jennypenny
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by jennypenny »

IlliniDave wrote: The more rustic option would be around $3400 per year, roughly.
Sorry, I think I had the options mixed up. This is the one I was trying to price out per year. I thought it might be easier to look at it as a straight expense and not an investment or real estate, if that makes sense. I think most people could fit $3400 into their annual budgets if they really wanted to.

The other option of $9-11K is basically running two ERE-sized households. You might be able to sell it someday, so it's more of an investment. OTOH, the investment would probably benefit your heirs, not you, since you'd sell it at such an advanced age.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a vacation home. I was just trying to give you another way to look at the numbers.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

jennypenny wrote:
IlliniDave wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a vacation home. I was just trying to give you another way to look at the numbers.
Oh, I understand and appreciate it. You know, the funny thing is once ER hits I'll probably start to think of the Northwoods place as real home and the place near my family as the vacation home, even though I'll probably spend a little less time there each year (a month or so less).

Only half the $12K would actually be out of pocket. The other half is in consideration of the 3% withdrawal rate I'll be forgoing. Still nearly an ERE annual living allowance, but I've never figured I'd do better than ERE-lite. And now with all these new plans, maybe Jacob should tear off my stripes, break my sword, and take away my second "E" (i.e., my E-lite).

I've thought about working the sale into the plan by way of doing SEPP withdrawals from my 401 and backfilling (figuratively) in my early 70s with the sale proceeds. I probably won't, but it's something I thought about. Most of my assets will probably benefit my heirs rather than me anyway. I'm not one of those guys who wants to give away his last dollar at a strip club an instant before falling over dead. At least not yet.

sky
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by sky »

I am constantly tempted by a second home. Beaver Island, Drummond Island, Ontonagon-Porcupine Mountains, Allegan Woods, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Detroit (sorry, childe of the ghettoe here). All pretty low cost areas.

I'd kinda like to be a hermit. Luckily, my better half is making the location decisions, so we live in the best Lake Michigan beach town, only 2.5 hrs from da LOOP (So Haven). Sometimes I'd like to leave the vice and pain of the Michigan Industrial Complex, but then, I don't really fit in anyplace else.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

Hi Sky,

I have a bit of the "wrong side of the tracks" in my origins as well, although in my case it was wrong side of the river. Not a ghetto unless you wanted to call it a working-class ghetto. But it was a time of a lot of change as it was the flowering of the rust belt and a lot of us watched the quite viable way of life of our parents and grandparents begin to crumble.

I know what you mean about not fitting. I moved to the Southeast a couple years after school and never have felt at home here (that's no reflection on the people or communities where I've lived). So my plans are going back to where I grew up as a base, and spend my summers in the one other environment I've felt a connection with. The turtle retreats in his shell, I suppose.

Refinement

The process of corralling a lifelong whimsical dream and trying to funnel it through the present and into the past is an interesting one. In a way it's like what some sculptors and banzai practitioners do. To them the art is inherent to the media, and their job is to remove what is not necessary and draw forth the natural, desired form.

So I have this jumbled lump of memories and dreams from which I want to draw the key essence into the present (in other words, make real). It may be preposterous, but I want to make it a work of art as well. I didn't realize this until the last couple days, but much of my subconscious motivation to dispense with clutter and complication I now appreciate as an attempt to sculpt and prune my life into something if not beautiful, then at least not a first cousin to a landfill.

Back to my lump. In a crude sense it's like a crap-filled closet. Old stuff and unused new stuff tossed in a precarious heap. It must now be converted from a liability to an asset.

This whole line of thinking was kicked off by the mundane process of talking to the real estate agent. It became clear fairly quickly that while she intuitively grasped some of what I was after, much of it she just didn't get. I decided to spell it out in more detail to help her hone in on suitable properties and found that I could not come up with a specific unified description, only a list of disjoint thoughts, like I was digging through that crap-filled closet and tossing random items over my shoulder.

I determined I've got to step back, peer into my lump, identify its essence, then begin the process of pruning away the rest. I'm coming to see that ust having a piece of ground on the Canadian Shield where water laps the edge is not all there is to it. Then the aftereffects of my mindfulness quest kicks in. Really, my future life in Illinois and my future life in the Northwoods are not separate things--both must be cultivated together. That may be the subject of a ramble some other day.

All this has added some uncertainly to my quest while at the same time strengthening my conviction of its necessity for me. I also don't think I have the vision and wordsmith skills to capture this ex-ante and bring it into conscious thought. I'm planning to visit Illinois in August and will take a northward jaunt from there for a couple days to get boots on the ground and view some properties. I'll be relying on intuition to tell me what is right when I see it. Maybe a dangerous way to go about it. I'm expanding search parameters to compensate for some of the uncertainty, as well as searching for potential alternate solutions.

In the meantime I'll keep worrying the lump to see if I can't expose a masterpiece. I can't remember a time when intuition has grossly failed me, but the rational side of me still demands a say in this, and it wants to "see" what it is evaluating.

Also in the meantime I can now approach my moments with the encouragement of knowing the right path is to take the ho-hum of every day and bring out the humble, but beautiful, hidden qualities. That puts a bit of bounce into my step.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

Reinforcing Conservatism

I made it right to the cusp of having June be my lowest month for expenses since I started keeping track in 2008, and by a robust margin. I felt so good about it I almost jumped the gun and took credit for it early on here; it seemed like a shoe-in.

Well, in the last 36 hours a couple things arose to blow that possibility right out of the water.

Every now and again I let my imagination get away from me in terms of envisioning what I can pull off in the future. Then life promptly knocks on my door with a special delivery nut-punch.

I sometimes wonder if I'm not wasting a lot of time trying to move against the flow. There are days when it seems easier to just join the herd, work until I'm old, then go play shuffleboard in Florida and be like everyone else. I could wind up with quite a lot of money if I just stay quiet and get with the program, and dutifully show up at work day after day until I'm too old to even notice, much less care, that I've got giant white hairs growing out of my ears.

I guess I've got a lot of things to rethink.
Last edited by IlliniDave on Wed Jun 25, 2014 7:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hankaroundtheworld
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by Hankaroundtheworld »

Hi, what is stopping you to do what you like to do? You only have to follow your own principles, anything else could just be a guideline, like ERE guideline or the "old work till 65" guideline, but in the end, you need to create your own version of this, something that is close to what you want.
In your last comments, you mention "moving against the flow", but that assumes there is a dominant flow, and I do not think that is true (perhaps in the past), the world is already transforming, there are no guarantees anymore, many people need to adapt and become much more flexible. You see it at the young generation, they do not have a standard career path anymore like the baby-boom generation had, etc..

Bottom-line, define what you want, and surround you with the people that fit in that world, I am sure, things will look good!

Chad
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by Chad »

I agree with Hank. This needs to be your sweet spot, not someone else's.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

Hey guys,

The point I started off intending to make (which I never got around to, it seems) is that I guess it's a good thing that by nature I tend to be a bit over-conservative in my planning--even as I try sharpening the pencil on an experimental basis there just seems to be a wall there--to the point that if I get close to exceeding some threshold the universe manifests some random setback out of the ether. Or that's how it seems--the systematic nature of the occurrences seems to belie that they could be simple vagaries.

Finding my "sweet spot" is what the exercise is all about. On a visceral level I can identify it, but just can't achieve it, which leaves a residual tension.

The usual things are obstacles at present, the main one being that I'm not sufficiently FI at this time to move on to the next phase. I've got a lot of momentum to overcome (in many domains) and sometimes it seems like a guy just can't get a break. :)

Chad
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by Chad »

Makes sense.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

Robbing the Croupier of $750/Year

I'm sort of borrowing/modifying a turn of phrase from John Bogle even though this has nothing to do with investments. But I believe his CMH (Cost Matters Hypothesis) exyends beyond investing.

I currently pay about $84 a month for phone service, $41 for a landline, $44 for a cell phone. I guess I'm soft but I like the land line as a "front", a number to give people whom I really don't ever want to talk to. I don't answer that phone, just have it attached to an answering machine so I can screen out undesirable calls (i.e., people trying to dip their beaks into my wallet). I can then return calls that are of merit. That keeps my cell largely confined to people I do want to talk to.

So I want to keep that basic arrangement but just at lower cost. The experiment I'm going to try is a combination of MagicJack and Republic Wireless. If my DSL proves up to the task, I'll have an up-front cost of about $200-$220 and ongoing bills of $140-$145/year. My conservative estimate for annual savings is $750, and if there are no unanticipated associated costs it will be closer to $850/year. Not a huge deal at this stage of the game for me, but timely because I could use something to feel good about.

I intend to research this plan for a few more days and take the plunge at the beginning of July. My June budget is already stretched to the breaking point.

George the original one
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by George the original one »

Seems like replacing the landline for the lowest cost prepaid cellphone plan ($6-$12/mo) for a second cellphone would be less hassle and cheaper?

Dragline
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by Dragline »

Would something like Google Voice work for you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Voice

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

Hey George, I'm not familiar with the most cost effective prepaid plans out there. But magicJack has a $49 cost for the jack, then is $1.67/mo from there after 6 months free. I did look into the cheapest Republic Wireless plan which is $5/mo but you have to buy one of their phones, the cheapest of which is $149. So magicJack beats it.

Could you suggest any prepaid service providers I could research? I'm a pretty light cell user ... < 200 min/month voice, maybe 300 txt msg/month, 0 data.

Dragline, I'll check out Google voice too. Thanks.

RealPerson
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by RealPerson »

Since Google Voice stopped regular phone service on May 15, I switched to CallCentric. You can check them out at callcentric.com. I believe this is a free service if you only receive calls. You can also sign up for 911 service, which costs a little per month. I use this with an Obi 100 device to hook the phone into. The phone quality is good in my house.

riparian
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by riparian »

I use google voice, it's free. But I guess I haven't used it since may 15th...

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

2014 Q2 Summary

Second quarter is in the books. Spending for the quarter finished up at $11,629. If I subtract expenses related to ongoing home renovations I get $6,384 regular ongoing expenses for the quarter. Both those are a little weak and I'd like to do better. On the plus side of the ledger net worth grew by $40,994 for the quarter and invested assets grew by $46,400 for the quarter ($116/month FI/ER income). Those are decent numbers, just shy of average over the last couple of years.

In summary, nothing remarkable--just another leg of the tortoise race.

I'm still struggling with what to do about my future summer hideout in the Northwoods. At the beginning of August I'm planning to head up to NE Minnesota to check out a couple candidates in one of the A-list locations with my dad. I've concluded though that aside from getting married, if this comes to pass, it will rank as the most blatantly imprudent financial decision I have ever made. In keeping with traditional midlife crises, I find that somewhat appealing.

I ordered my magicJack yesterday to give it a 30-day spin. If I get a chance I'll order my phone from Republic Wireless over lunch today to likewise give it a test. If all this works out, aside from the $200-$250 one-time startup costs, I should be able to save $800 annually according to my more refined estimates. I guess it says a lot about a guy that shaving a bunch off the monthly phone bill is a highlight. :)

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

My new magicJack showed up yesterday in the mail. I don't know what's going on with the post office, but the last two parcels I've received have made it to my house 2-3 days faster than anticipated. I guess they decided to try to offer competitive services after all.

So far I've been able to leave myself a voice message over the magicJack. I'm going to do a few more things to test it out, and if it goes good, next week I'll port my old number over. I dunno why, but it's going to cost me $10/year to keep that number, and it's not looking like my all-in ongoing costs are going to be around $34/year, versus around $484 per year to maintain the land line it will be replacing. The up-front costs came in a $61, so I should be ahead by September.

On Friday I changed changed the oil/filter in my vehicle myself for the first time. It was sort of slow going, but I managed to get it done in about 2.5 hours without making too big of a mess. After driving around a couple days all the oil is still in it. Next time it should go much faster. My net savings were about $8, and while I can't say it was "fun", it wasn't painful, and I did get a bit of DIY satisfaction out of the project.

Next up is ordering my republic wireless phone, which I haven't got around to yet. After that I'll have to start looking around for the next cost savings measure. The obvious one is to be a little more careful at the grocery store, but that's one measure I can't seem to sustain for any length of time.

My guess is I'm pretty well dialed into the ongoing regular expense floor that I can easily live with--somewhere in the vicinity of $1700-$2100/month (while working). Of course things happen on top of that according to the law of vagaries. I think once I guarantee myself $2700/month in income without depleting my long-term reserves (401k and Roth IRA)--meaning I only tap them at <3%--I should be good. Down the road SS should cover those basic expenses, or at least most of them, giving me plenty of margin to compensate for growing old in the out years.

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

Waning Momentum

I feel like I should be adding to this journal on a fairly regular basis, but of late I've got little to say.

I had a few days in the last few weeks where I really felt like I didn't want to be at work in a sense that goes beyond the routine Friday afternoon looking forward to the weekend sort of sentiment. I've been with my current employer for over 27 years now, and this is something new. I'm starting to grow tired in my bones is maybe the best way to describe it. Its still fleeting and far from acute, but intuitively I know it's going to stick around. It reinforces my conviction that sprinting towards ER is the correct decision for me. I did have some good news that I'll have the opportunity to work a little overtime during the 4th quarter of the calendar year. If I'm lucky that could mean another $7-10K net of taxes available for the cause.

It's not lost on me that this new flavor of wanting to get beyond work appeared coincidentally with the resurfacing of my long-shelved yearning for a heavy dose of the cabin-in-the-woods lifestyle. I've had a lot of heart/mind-driven vacillation on the subject. Overall, I'm still in restrained pursuit mode, and beginning to widen my criteria hoping to increase the odds of finding a workable solution. In 24 days I'll be up scouting around some properties in NE Minnesota. I found it amusing that one I was looking at a listing for could have been dropped into that Tiny House documentary discussed in a different thread/forum.

Despite the introduction of risk into my plan, it's looking now like I'm heading in that direction one way or the other. Maintaining two abodes is certainly not the most lean, mean, and efficient approach--but life is not a mathematical problem demanding an optimal solution with respect to cost. I guess that's the non-physicist in me coming out. :)

IlliniDave
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by IlliniDave »

Well, So It Looks Like Maybe I'm Too Late

I shared early on that one of the prime motivators for me to aggressively pursue ER was to free myself to move back "home" and spend some years there while my parents are still alive and be there for them as they age.

I learned today that mom has developed cancer. At this point the prognosis is not excessively dire, but I've been knocking around long enough to know that a relatively moderate situation can turn severe in a hurry, and once the diagnosis is made all too often the moments that pass are borrowed time.

The only relevance here is that when one delays getting serious about what it is they wish to accomplish, they are accepting a risk, and sometimes the risks do indeed arrive and reveal themselves.

More than once I've wished I could go back in time and begin my efforts to free myself at a younger age. Tonight I'm wishing so again, perhaps a bit stronger. Nothing for me to do at this point but hope this does not manifest itself in the worst way.

To all you young people out there: stay the course. Better to have freedom before its needed because getting the past back is a trick I haven't figured out.
Last edited by IlliniDave on Fri Jul 25, 2014 8:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

EdithKeeler
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Re: A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstr

Post by EdithKeeler »

I'm sorry about your mom. A lot of people can go on a long time with a cancer diagnosis, so here's hoping that your mom is one of the lucky ones.

I moved to be close to my mom 2 years ago, "sacrificing" a job I didn't like very much. While I've had occasional negative thoughts--miss the job sometimes, don't love the city, and sometimes my mom makes me crazy--I have no significant regrets about the decision.

Even though you're not physically close right now, don't hesitate to use your FMLA to take time to spend with your mom when you can and need to.

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