Cumuru's Journal

[Cumuru]

About:
I'm a 31 year old male living in the SouthWestern corner of Canada. In January 2015 I was layed off from my job, which was economically catastrophic since I was so far specialized into one corner of one industry. But being specialized did allow me to earn a good wage without ever setting foot in a classroom, with on the job training. Another bad thing was that I had personal investments in the same sector, for example alot of stock in the company I worked at, that suffered alot when the industry slumped. I enjoy making things, and taking things apart, and learning, so stumbling on ERE was good.

Goals:
Be healthy mentally and physically
Learn new skills
Reach a point of financial freedom

Plan forward
Go to technical school and re-train for a new job starting January, 2016. Cut monthly costs dramatically and learn about investing smartly to have my net worth provide some income while I go to school.

Employment:
My employment has been on drilling rigs, since I was 18, starting in 2003. In the last 12 years I have earned $1,035,887 and payed $177,553 in taxes leaving $858,334 Net. I've worked and average of 8.5 months per year, with time off spent travelling the world, a semester of school, and 11 months this year of being layed off due to the downturn in oil prices. At year end in 2015 I have a net worth of $387k, which is 45% of my earnings. That means I have spent an average of $3273 dollars per month, but I suspect my net investment losses have been around 80k and I've averaged more like $2700/mo spending in the last 12 years.

[Cumuru]

December, 2015 Update
After going through my spending for the last 7 months and discovering I have spent and average of $3700/mo it was time to start pairing down my expenses drastically.

Spending December: $2828
Mortgage: 601
Strata Fee: 321
Hydro: 150
Groceries: 363
Gas: 223
Auto Repairs: 163
Provincial Health: 130
Sports/Outdoors: 127
Eating out: 111
Other: 104
Auto insurance: 103
Gifts: 86
Alcohol: 54
Storage unit: 46
Cell phone: 45
Internet 39.20
Clothes: 28
Home insurance: 22
Transit: 21
Homewares: 20
Laundry: 16
Haircut 16
Netflix: 9

Income: 1449
Contribution from SO: 680
Sold Shelf, faucet from storage: 100
Unused health ins. refund: 102
Mexican pesos from drawer converted: 52
Xmas gift from Family: 100
Sold 2 duffle bags from under bed: 70
Sold motorcycle tank bag and helmet : 345

Net Spending: 1379, 63% lower than average for the last 7 months.
Helped by a concious effort to reduce consumption, my SO obtaining a work visa and being able to contribute a share of rent, groceries, and health, and selling unused items.

Steps taken to reduce next months spending:
Parked vehicle at parents house 800km away, will eliminate gas, repairs, insurance, parking
Turned thermostat to 15-17.5C to reduce electrical consumption
Started making granola
Downgraded cell phone plan to no longer include US roaming, since haven't been to states in a year.
Splitting netflix with Brother and his wife now

Skills
Learned how to use a sewing machine, and how to make granola. Learned about index investing. Want to learn guitar, need to find one to borrow. Offered to fix a machine at the gym, will require electronic troubleshooting so will have to study up on that.

Net Worth: 387k

[Gilberto de Piento]

Welcome! Great job on the spending reduction.

YouTube has a lot of good videos for learning guitar. Don't be discouraged at first, it takes awhile to get the specific finger strength and muscle memory working. Try to find a guitar that has light strings that are close to the neck. Cheap guitars are often harder to play.

[Carlos]

Greetings,

I like how you summarized your income, spending and career up to now so succinctly. Welcome.

[thrifty++]

I am amazed that you have kept a record of your actual gross and net earnings for the last 12 years. I have only done so for the last 7 months. You have done so well and managed to bypass the whole university debt accumulation stage. Working on drilling rigs sounds to really have paid off.

[Cumuru]

YouTube has a lot of good videos for learning guitar. Don't be discouraged at first, it takes awhile to get the specific finger strength and muscle memory working. Try to find a guitar that has light strings that are close to the neck. Cheap guitars are often harder to play.

Thanks Gilberto, I wouldn't normally know what to look for in a guitar but strings that are close to the neck sounds like good advice. When you say "light" I can always change the strings to light ones right? Can I move them closer to the neck or is that set?

I like how you summarized your income, spending and career up to now so succinctly. Welcome.

Thanks Carlos, but I can't take much credit. Our Canadian government has a website, actually it's the taxation authority, where you can pull up past returns, mine went back to 2004. It was easy! Next step is to learn to do a table in HTML to break it down year by year.

I am amazed that you have kept a record of your actual gross and net earnings for the last 12 years. I have only done so for the last 7 months. You have done so well and managed to bypass the whole university debt accumulation stage. Working on drilling rigs sounds to really have paid off.

Hey Thrifty, yeah I have long advocated work on Drill Rigs as a way to bypass school and make good money. There are other consequences though, mostly social, ie. you are the 'guy/girl who's never home'. I guess the lifestyle fit me, or I fit the lifestyle. Cheers!

[Cumuru]

Quick Update:

I started school last night. I'm doing seven courses in an 'architectural and building science' program. The courses are mostly evening and I'm hoping to transfer into the full time two year program next September. The previous oil related job loss last January was catasrophic, being so far specialized into one corner of the industry. It's about time I pick myself back up, anyways the course is really interesting, stuff I really like.

It takes an hour by transit to and from school since I ditched my Jeep at my parents house at Christmas. I'm converting my condo into a rental starting Feb.1 and hunting for a new place to live, using strategies I learned in the ERE book about location. If all go's well I should be able to run or bike to school fairly easily and take mass transit into the city center. And be near a Costco

On the investment side I pulled nearly everything out of my stocks and ETF's about three weeks ago when I started reading about index investing. I was heavily weighted in Canadian resources which are down 30-40%, so yeah I did exactly what I'm not supposed to do, I started second guessing at the bottom and got emotional. I thought I had it all figured out and that I would just average the market through three Vangaurd index ETFs and let it grow stress free. But then at the end of the ETF book it talks about not shooting arrows where others have been and chasing things, and I'm not sure if I should put back into resources and wait 5 years or go with the indexes. Jacob talks about how learning about investments can net a larger return than averaging the indexes with no time invested in research. But I'm not sure how he can do better than mutual funds, where analysts spend 40-100 hours a week trying to beat the market averages and can't seem to do it. But like he mentions, it's not an investment book so I'll have to look elsewhere, maybe the forums.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Thanks Gilberto, I wouldn't normally know what to look for in a guitar but strings that are close to the neck sounds like good advice. When you say "light" I can always change the strings to light ones right? Can I move them closer to the neck or is that set?

Yes, you can change the strings to a point. The distance from the strings to the fretboard is sometimes adjustable, sometimes not. Even when it is adjustable it is a significant project even for someone who knows what they are doing and you can't always get them where you'd like them to be. It's best to get a guitar that plays well in the first place rather than hoping to adjust it.

The best way to see what I'm talking about is to go to a guitar store and try a $50 - $100 acoustic guitar. Then try a $500-$1000 electric guitar (Mexican or American made Fender Telecaster or Stratocaster is a good example). You will find it much easier to play, all the way up and down the neck. I'm not saying to get an electric if you want an acoustic, just that the contrast between the two will really show you the difference.

Used guitars are a good way to save money (they often hold their value or increase once they are old enough) but be careful that you get one that plays well. Some will have a warped neck that makes it hard to play because the strings will be too far away. This can sometimes be repaired but it's better to just find one that works right in the first place.

[Cumuru]

The best way to see what I'm talking about is to go to a guitar store and try a $50 - $100 acoustic guitar. Then try a $500-$1000 electric guitar (Mexican or American made Fender Telecaster or Stratocaster is a good example). You will find it much easier to play, all the way up and down the neck. I'm not saying to get an electric if you want an acoustic, just that the contrast between the two will really show you the difference.

Thanks for the advice Gilberto, I'm looking at getting a yamaha fd01 used, it looks like they usually sell for $100 around here.

[Cumuru]

I've been following this recipe but using whole wheat flour instead:
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

I bought 10kg(22lbs) of whole wheat flour for $6.49, so it works out to around 35 cents for a 1 pound loaf including the yeast. The cost of electricity is negligible since I heat my apartment with electricity anyways.

I'll add some images once I figure it out, but man is this bread good hot out of the oven with a bit of butter.

[Cumuru]

Ok, where was I...?

At the beginning of 2016 I had been layed off for a year, from a job on the oil rigs where my earning potential had skyrocketed to 170k/yr. It looked like the industry wouldn't bounce back so I had decided to take night classes at school. My spending habits were high, but improving drastically since reading the ERE book. My investments had tanked, since they were heavily allocated to Canadian oil, but I had decided to get into index investing. So here's how it went.

Night classes in January 2016 were part of an 'Architectural Technology' program at the local institute of technology. I thoroughly enjoyed the topic and absorbed the new information as much as I could. Trying to find a part time job was discouraging, I applied to a moving company and din't get a reply, but a week later they reposted their ad saying they still hadn't found someone. I almost accepted a job delivering crepe batter to a local franchise of restaurants. But then I responded to an ad from a cabinet installer who needed a helper. I showed up to the interview nicely dressed with a portfolio of all the woodworking and cabinetry projects I had done as a hobby though the years, and was hired the next day. My job was to unpack the boxes of cabinetry that were delivered to sites, so the installers could put them in.

In February 2016 I moved out of the apartment I owned to a small dungenous basement suite in the east end of the city, closer to my school. I leased the apartment to the building manager for her to live in for 1250/mo and rented the suite for 900/mo, so there was a bit of cashflow. I had bought that apartment and another one in the previous two years while the banks still loved me, I got good deals on them because they needed full renovations, which I did myself. So now my housing and spending were well under control, I was biking to work in the day and biking to school at night.

By March and April 2016 I was not only unpacking the cabinets that had arrived from high end shops in Europe and the States, but prepping the walls and flooring for they're install. Reading the install plans and checking the walls for obstacles like misplaced electrical boxes, plumbing, and window trim, allowed the company owner to get those problems fixed before the installers showed up, making the operation more efficient. I was able to maintain a high 80% average in my classes.

In May and June 2016 I wrapped up the semester of school and applied to the full time Diploma program, meaning if accepted I would take two years of intensive classes during the day. I planted a garden using the square foot method(look it up), and bought an old Honda Civic hatchback for $1100.

July and August 2016 were spent installing the cabinets. The owner and I got along pretty well, and he was happy to have me doing the install work. I played allot of beach volleyball that summer, it's a great free way to get exercise and socialize. I was also accepted into the full time school program, which was good news, 400 applicants for 120 seats, but taking the part time courses and showing good grades helped get in.

September 2016 was the start of school, and I moved out of the basement suite and rented the main and upper floor of a house for 1800/mo. It was on the bus route to school and I could take roomates to cover half to 2/3 of the rent. My mom was diagnosed with cancer, the bad type where it has already spread to other organs in the body. She took it like a trooper, never complaining once and going to chemo appointments like they were nothing. I flew home every chance I got to spend time with my parents, who were celebrating their 37th anniversary that year.

The rest of the school semester went by like a blur, the program has 8 courses per semester, 35 hours of class time and about the same amount of homework. My mom's condition had started to deteriorate after a surgery to remove her tumor. My brother was taking a trip to Costa Rica for Christmas and I decided to join him, my parents really encouraged me to go because there's nothing they enjoy more than seeing us have fun. On that trip I took kiteboarding lessons and discovered a new passion.

January and February 2017 were spent back at school, still grinding away and getting the best grades I could. By March my mom had become so week and frail. It was hard to focus on school. Spring break would be coming soon and I planned to spend two weeks with her. Our whole family would be around supporting her. She didn't make it. A week before spring break I got the call and flew up to be by her side, she passed away the next morning with us holding her hands. I was devastated. My mom was the most kind, caring and unselfish person anyone could be. She never complained once while battling cancer and instead counted her blessings each day. She was in the happiest time of her life, having raised her 5 children and then being overjoyed with the arrival of 4 grandchildren in the previous 3 years. Allot of people came to the memorial service, including her parents, she died too young.

I finished school that year with a high GPA, focusing on studies distracted from thinking about my mom too much. I was awarded a $2k scholarship. That summer I w.asn't sure what to do and hadn't applied for any summer jobs. I ended up getting lucky and landing a job in construction management, overseeing a project over the summer. It was great experience directly related to my schooling.

September 2017 to May 2018 were spent at school finishing off my diploma. The courses were so interesting; structures, autocad, materials, statistics, excel, contracts, scheduling, technical writing, all good stuff. I was awarded another scholarship and graduated with distinction. I hadn't applied for any jobs yet, even though many classmates had been hired already. After graduation a classmate and I drove down to Oregon to go kiteboarding on the Columbia river for a week, it was so good we ended up going to Vancouver Island for another week doing the same thing.

June and July I started applying for jobs. The response was mediocre. The cost of living in Vancouver had skyrocketed over the last few years and I knew I had to make good money to get ahead there. Living paycheck to paycheck, is fine in your early twenties, if you're having fun and experiencing new things. But in your thirties it's important to get ahead, as those are prime earning years(if you are an early retirer hopeful). So I went to interviews, lots of them, and everyone of them ended with no offer or at best 50-60k/yr. The summer job from the previous year offered 60k, but I declined knowing I wouldn't get ahead. I could use cashflow from the apartments I owned, or even live in one of them, but that's 'forcing' progress using other means, where a career should generate progress on its own. I sunk into depression for a month, which was frustrating because I knew exactly what was happening, and the steps to get out(exercise, socializing, meditation etc.) But I just couldn't shake it.

I figured I was worth 70-80k/year based on the fact that I graduated at the top of my class, I had years of career experience including being in a management role, and the construction industry was booming. It's tough to be confident when you are repeatedly told you're not worth that much, actually it's a bit harder each time you hear it and it wears you down. In August I accepted a job at an Architectural firm where I grew up, it would be a good chance to spend time with my dad, and reconnect with the town and people I had left 10 years earlier. The job payed 55k/yr, but it was a cool job, designing and drawing things on my own, and using exactly what I had learned in school.

In October 2018 I was hired by the public sector, to do work related to my schooling. Base salary a little over 70k, plus 10% in gainsharing and incentives, plus available overtime payed at 2x, plus phone, healthcare etc.. And a good work life balance, 6 weeks of vacation per year, and lots of perks. It was an enormous weight off my shoulders. It had been 3.5 years since I was layed off and decided to reinvent myself. At times I completely doubted what I was doing, but it's all about choosing something and staying on course.

I plan to update this journal with my finances. There will be some good things(the two apartments I bought rose alot in value) and some not so good ones(the author of ERE would shake his head at my new hobby of kitesurfing when he saw how much the kites and trips cost). But overall everything is good. Thanks for reading this post.

[2Birds1Stone]

Really happy to stumble upon this journal. Kitesurfing sounds/looks intriguing, how did you get into it?

[prognastat]

Sounds like a lot has happened since your last posts.

One thing that might be happening is that since you are just out of college, but due to your prior experience "overqualified" for entry level positions. They might be looking for someone that has less on their resume, because they want to pay 60k or less while someone with management experience etc and the degree would usually be getting a fair bit more. Meanwhile due to just finishing college you might not qualify for non entry level positions.

It sounds like your eventual decision was to go with the entry level position at the entry level pay. Hopefully after gaining some more experience on your resume you'll be able to move up quicker than others might have.

[Frugalchicos]

Awesome journal. Good luck on your journey!

[Cumuru]

Thanks for your replies guys, it's good to be back on this forum. Even though I didn't participate here in the last few years I was putting the ERE principles into practice and thinking about the community allot.

One thing that might be happening is that since you are just out of college, but due to your prior experience "overqualified" for entry level positions. They might be looking for someone that has less on their resume, because they want to pay 60k or less while someone with management experience etc and the degree would usually be getting a fair bit more. Meanwhile due to just finishing college you might not qualify for non entry level positions.

Yeah overqualified is an interesting concept, if one applies for a job it should mean they are willing to perform it even if they could take on more tasks and responsibility. I experimented with deleting and playing down experience on my resume which didn't help. In the employers' defense, I think they often got a better deal hiring someone young and impressionable.

One thing that created an immediate change in response from companies was reformatting my resume. I followed this thread from reddit:https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/ ... companies/
Allot of the advice that I incorporated made a huge difference in the amount of interest I got from employers.

The other thing to note is that there's nothing wrong with 50-55k/yr out of school. It's a good salary. The problem was the cost of living in the city had risen so much, and I just wasn't willing to fight it anymore. Not an employers fault. It just becomes a game of who'll leave the city first. A willingness and flexibility to move cities can be a big boon, and that's why I decided to move 800km North.

Really happy to stumble upon this journal. Kitesurfing sounds/looks intriguing, how did you get into it?

Hi 2Birds. Kitesurfing is the evolution of several sports that has become more accessible in the last 6-8 years with better and safer equipment design. The trick is to find a locale that has steady winds, usually caused by thermal gradients that suck air inland. A good way to start is to buy a trainer kite of 1 to 3 square meters in size. Once you get good at flying that it's important to take lessons with someone qualified. The larger kites of 7 to 15 square meters in size have lots of power, which can be controlled safely once you learn the technique.

Like any sport, there are people who buy new equipment every few years(maybe $5k for a setup). Then they sell that off used for 2-2.5K(thats where I entered the sport). There's also old equipment for cheaper, but as a beginner I wasn't confident to buy old equipment. An ERE approach would be to make friends in the community and help out, learn the sport slowly, and eventually become skilled enough to teach others the sport and make money at it. One could also learn to fix the equipment, by sewing and patching, and have access to rooms full of old kites that no one bothered to fix.

The equipment does wear out, UV rays slowly degrade the kite fabric, so maybe a few hundred days of use before it will tear easily. Also the fact they have an inflatable bladder means air pressure is fatiguing the fabric over time. Salt water and tension wear out the kites lines. Wetsuits last a few years. Still I find it a more economical sport than say sailing, or wakeboarding which is quite similar except you are using a gasoline engine to pull you around instead of the wind.

Anyways, there are places around the world where you can camp for free or almost nothing, and spend the days riding the wind around. Check out La Ventana if you're interested. Cheers!

[Cumuru]

October, 2018 Financial/Other Summary

Spending
$0 - Rent/Housing (living at parent's house, watching market for right opportunity to buy a house, better deals in winter)
$400 - Consumer goods (bought used desktop computer, set up CAD station)
$226 - Groceries
$181 - Automotive (drive a 2002 minivan, purchased March, 2018 for $2150)
$87 - Gifts
$80 - Charity
$52 - Eating/drinking out
$33 - Cell Phone(final month as will use work phone from now on.)
$6 - Clothing (new felt insoles for Redwing boots)
$5 - Entertainment.
Total = $1070

Income
$3788 - Salary. (72% savings)

Net Worth
Non-taxable accounts - $189k (index invested, 24% increase since January, 2016)
Taxable account - $28k (index invested, 44% decrease, funded school with this account and transfered 11k to non taxable)
Apartment 1 equity - $169k (generates $890/mo net rental income)
Apartment 2 equity - $165k (generates $516/mo net rental income)
Total = $551k(increase of 42% since last post in January, 2016)

Plan Forward

• Keep working 37.5 hours a week at current job
  Continue developing CAD skills in evening(working through a textbook for a program call Revit) with eventual goal of being able to draw house plans for people on the side, eventually transitioning away from paid employment to this.

Exercise
Currently doing P90x3 workout routine at home, 30 minutes per day, mostly bodyweight exercises. Playing badminton twice a week at drop in centre.

Diet
-Eat mostly nuts, seeds, vegetables, meat, some lentils and beans.
-Have been experimenting with eating one meal a day for last year. Allows greater concentration and focus during mid day while in a fasted state. Also much more convenient to not have to pack lunches or make breakfast in morning, easier to delay eating if out and about. Only downside is eating 2500 calories in one sitting at 5pm, means I need to lay down for a while, and makes it hard to exercise because I don't like breaking a sweat near bedtime. Have been bringing a lunch to work a few times the last two weeks, so I can exercise when arriving home with enough energy.

Books
Usually I only read one book at a time, but for some reason right now I'm reading four.
-Influence
-Homo Deus
-The Emperor of All Maladies
-Fooled by Randomness

Thanks for reading.