White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Where are you and where are you going?
Post Reply
white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Housing
This is my 2nd largest expense at the moment and likely to be my largest in future months. I didn't cover it in this month's update but I'd like to highlight some of my analysis. The bottom line is I live in a high cost of living area (median home price is >$700k). RV living is not an option because the area is too built up and trailer parks are more expensive than my existing living arrangement. There are marinas but boat living would be more expensive than my current living arrangement. I scanned apartments in the area and I could move to a less desirable area that is a little further out, probably adding 5 minutes to my car commute each way in exchange for saving maybe $100 in a rent. I would also have a smaller room and to share a bathroom, which I'm not too keen on given that I work such odd hours.

Another option I've been considering is to see if I can negotiate with my elderly landlord to get some kind of rent discount in exchange for house maintenance and landscape work. The landlord seems to be under the impression that I am mechanically inclined due to the fact he's seen me fixing my car multiple times. When my landlord is living at the house, he does all of the landscaping which includes a small yard and lots of ornamental shrubs. However, he does leave for months at a time to stay with grandkids, so it might be possible to talk to him about taking over the maintenance during those times. He won't be back for another month so I'll have to wait until then to broach the subject. I'm unsure what the market rate would be for such landscaping labor but it'd be nice to get $100-200 off my rent.

Green Pimble
Posts: 51
Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:16 pm

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Green Pimble »

I sometimes feel this is my only response to many of life's questions but... Have you considered rock climbing as a sport? It may be a good fit for you. It's a physically involved activity with good mix of sexes; it also appeals to a group of people who are (generally) environmentally conscious, and has significant involvement in alternative lifestyles (dirtbagging in particular). I find the culture around rock climbing to be supportive, friendly, outdoor-focused, and a good way to meet people. If I were single, I could almost guarantee I'd find my next partner at a rock climbing gym.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Random Musings on Shiftwork
I now have had the chance to work 2 out of the 3 possible shifts, which gives me a rare opportunity to do an A/B comparison of how I like different schedules and lifestyles.

I'll start with working an afternoon shift (1PM-9PM). I found the transition to this relatively easy due to the fact that it closely aligns with my typical weekend sleep schedule which is something like going to bed at 11-12PM and waking up at 8-9AM. I liked the fact that my free time is in the morning, which means I can focus my highest energy/most productive hours on my own interests, rather than relegating them to after work when I'm fatigued from the long workday. I don't mind getting off work at 9PM because it still leaves ~2 hours to decompress before bed, which isn't all that much different form a typical work schedule.

The morning shift (5AM-1PM) was less great. Transitioning shifts doesn't feel good for about 2-3 days, especially with this idiotic backwards rotation. Getting my body used to waking up at 4AM just isn't at all natural and I don't get the benefit of morning daylight to help wake me up. The other downside is that it is difficult to maintain much of a social life when I have to go to bed at 8PM. Maybe if I had a family with children it would be different, but the modern world of single yuppies just isn't designed for 8PM bedtime. I had a couple gym sessions that just didn't feel very good because I was tired and the temptation is strong to take a nap as soon as I get home from my shift, but that just results in further destroying my sleep schedule. I might have to try melatonin for the first night or two when this shift rolls around again.

Apparently our boss is fighting for my office to be able to design our own schedule, which may result in slower rotating shifts at some point. I'm not getting my hopes up because that has been something that has apparently been attempted multiple times before with no success.

Random Musings on Cooking
For the past week I've been cooking and eating all of my meals. Now, in the past I would do this for all of my meals to be consumed during the workweek, so that's not that big of a change. The difference is now I'm also doing it for my more exciting/involved meals on weekends. This means I've had to find some new recipes and up my cooking skills a bit. So far I've made decent boneless wings, pancakes, a breakfast burrito, perfected my own chai tea recipe, and I'm attempting my first pan pizza tonight. My strategy thus far is to take meals that I used to enjoy eating out and trial making them at home. My current relatively low-fat and low-carb meal plan means that I have to do some tweaking of most recipes, but I'm getting better at it. I can't tell if this newfound interest in cooking is here to stay, or it's the fact that I'm currently in week 3 of a fat loss diet which means I find myself spending more time thinking about food. Probably a little of both. I'll have to wait until my Japanese American roommate gets back from a trip to give homemade sushi a try (she's made sushi at home for years).

Cooking more of my own meals makes me realize how often I was ordering (whether takeout or restaurant) as a form of entertainment or because I was just tired of eating the same meals. I originally thought it might be laziness, but I've found that I do enjoy making these more elaborate meals provided that I budget time appropriately (so even the elaborate recipes are still batched to give me 2-3 meal's worth).
Last edited by white belt on Mon Aug 09, 2021 8:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Pizza was a rousing success! No special equipment needed. I followed these instructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjUWnAK0cg

Image

I didn't have a 10 inch pan so I ended up cooking it in an 8 inch one. The crust came out a little thicker but the taste was still great. I had leftover mushrooms and some chicken breast that I topped it with. I did some tweaking to get it where half of the pizza comes out to around 35g protein, 25g fat, and 50g carbs which fits in my diet pretty well (admittedly a bit high in fat for a fat loss phase but I'm not worried since I'm ahead of schedule). I used all purpose flour because I didn't have bread flour, but I think next time I'd like to try bread flour to get the crust consistency dialed in even better. I also had to improvise a cooling rack which seemed to work ok, but I'm sure with an actual cooling rack I could get the crust even crispier. I sprinkled with basil and arugula right before eating.

I'd say the flavor was better than almost every cheap to moderately priced pizza place I've been to in recent memory. The flavor was definitely sufficient to wow a person if I were to serve it to them. I sent pictures to a few friends and romantic interests and all of them seemed to be impressed and wanted me to make them one. The next step is to see if I can score a cooling rack at goodwill and pick up bread flour for the 2nd iteration.

mooretrees
Posts: 762
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2019 1:21 pm

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by mooretrees »

That looks great! I've never had a cooling rack and usually can't wait for the pizza to cool tbh. I've always loved a collaborative approach to pizza making. I'll make the crust and have the sauce and cheese, and ask friends (or a date in your case?) to bring some toppings. Can be fun to see what people bring.

Keep up the good work with cooking!

Dave
Posts: 545
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:42 pm

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Dave »

Nice work on the pizza!

I made a lot of homemade pizza some years back and found using bread flour improved the crust quite a bit.

What do you use for sauce?

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

@Dave

I looked for the brand recommended in the video but couldn’t find it, so I chose a can of crushed tomatoes at the grocery store. I then added a sprinkle of Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and a splash of olive oil. I’m sure there is room for improvement on the sauce, but it tasted good to me. The recipe only called for 1/3 cup of sauce for a 10 inch pizza, so there’s just not a lot of sauce.

ETA: The thing I like about pizza, besides the delicious flavor, is that it’s quite flexible in that you can really just throw on whatever ingredients you have on hand. I know anyone growing their own vegetables already knows that. I’m trying to utilize versatile recipes that I could at some point scale to only use ingredients produced at the household level. For example, my pancake recipe uses a mashed banana and chicken eggs now, but it could just as easily use jam/jelly from pretty much any fruit grown at home and quail eggs.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Random Musings on Lifting
I'm inching closer to swapping my current online coach subscription (~$230 a month) for the more cookie-cutter "AI" programming ($32 a month). The online coaching has been great for the past year and a half because it took me from a complete beginner when it came to [olympic] weightlifting to at least understanding what the lifts should look like and the common technical errors I make. It also gave me a feel for what following a serious weightlifting program consistently entails, from exercise selection to feedback to fatigue management. It gave me the unique opportunity of working with a world class coach even though I lived in a town with no olympic weightlifting gyms, let alone coaches.

However, I feel like I'm getting to the point where I could continue following a more cookie cutter program while focusing on improving my common technical errors, without necessarily needing the constant feedback of a coach. It would be one thing if I had a shot at competing at an elite level, and although I would still like to do some competitions at some point, it's pretty clear that progress might be slower as long as I'm on this rotating shift schedule. I'm also slowly realizing that I most enjoy being big/strong and working progressively towards a goal, which is something that I could easily do by myself without a coach (now that I have the experience and discipline of managing my own nutrition and following a sophisticated program).

It's hard for me to justify that monthly cost from a systems perspective, especially given that it doesn't give me any social interaction or community benefits. It would be different if I was talking about spending $200 a month at a BJJ gym or Crossfit gym where I also got the social network that comes with such places, but really this is just me lifting alone in a commercial gym.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

I’ve been thinking a lot about Yields and Flows recently, especially after re-reading this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10897

In that thread, Jacob recommends a Buy Nothing Exercise as useful for forcing one to consider other forms of capital beyond financial. He also links a series of articles from someone participating in such an exercise.

On the one hand, I think that I could benefit from a buy nothing exercise, but on the other hand I already feel like I’m pretty strategic in how I allocate my financial capital. I’m not shopping out of boredom and I already DIY repair most of my stuff. If I look at my expenses the past few months, I spend the most on food and dating. I think I’m already on the path of resolving my food expenses since I haven’t eaten out in nearly 2 weeks and have instead upped my cooking game. I haven’t yet fully cracked the nut on my dating expenses.

I think if I did a buy nothing month, the following would happen:

-It would become very apparent that I have almost no social network in my new location. Certainly, this would probably force me to develop that, but right now it would definitely be a net negative to cut out any sort of spending on activities or bars. I could try to substitute free activities but I just don’t know enough people right now to do such a thing. I’ve been looking for more meetup groups with activities that interest me but haven’t had much success. I’m used to at least having some coworkers that I can socialize with outside of work, but so far that’s not an option with my weird schedule and the fact that the only people I see day to day are my subordinates.

-It would become very apparent that I don’t interact with any single women in my day-to-day life. Right now, I’m completely reliant on dating apps to meet women and due to my competitive dating market and/or my lackluster ability to translate my desirable traits to a dating profile (which is why I pay for premium features that get me more matches), I’d probably be spending a lot of time alone. On the one hand, maybe this would force me to be more extroverted and put myself out there, on the other hand maybe it would turn me into the creepy guy that hits on women everywhere he goes. I can come up with a million free date ideas, but the issue is that almost none of those free date ideas are viable as a first date and all of that is moot if I don’t interact with any women I can ask out on dates. IOW, my dating expenses are almost all going towards getting a first date, not going towards ongoing dates with the same girl (those are virtually free).

-For transportation, if I completely cut out any driving or public transportation, I’d be left with walking and biking. Right now, I use my car to commute to work, which although could be done by bicycle, would also likely negatively affect my sleep schedule due to the fact that it would require me to get up even earlier on shifts that start at 5AM. Additionally, the ~7 miles a day of extra LISS cardio might start to interfere with my strength and muscle building goals (need to do more research on that one). Technically, I could get a metro pass to cover my public transit costs to go to work, but I’d still have to bike commute at times when the metro isn’t running (so maybe that would cut my daily cycling down to one way). The other downside of bike/metro commuting is that I would turn a 20 minute door to door commute each way into a 40 minute commute, which means I’m losing 40 minutes of free time a day (I already listen to podcasts in the car during my commute). Besides commuting, I mostly use my car on days off for running errands like going grocery shopping. I could do this by bike, but it would mean I would be limited to going to the more expensive grocery stores near me instead of the cheaper Aldi which is a 10 minute drive away. My car also enables me to expand my dating circle quite a bit, so not using it would mean I’m further limited on who I can date. The biggest money savings would come from getting rid of my car, but I’m not sure I would want to do that while I’m still working and beholden to that schedule. If I was working a typical 9-5 then it would be an easier choice. I’ve already optimized my car expenses as much as possible since I do most of the repairs myself and it’s already an old car to begin with.

-In terms of my gym and health spending, I could utilize the gym at work which is free of charge. However, this would mean I’d have to adjust my program because it is not open on weekends and currently only allows 3 reservations per week due to COVID precautions. Night shift weeks would be problematic because the gym closes at 7:15PM and my shift doesn’t start until 9PM, so I’d have to either lift early in the day and sit around for 2 hours before the shift starts, or lift after work which would probably disrupt my sleep. My diet planning app costs me $15 a month, so without that I would have to whip out the pen and paper and do a lot of my own calculations for my meal planning. Certainly possible, but probably not worth it because it would make compliance even harder (maybe I could revisit this in the future).


I think it was useful writing all of this out. The conclusion I’ve largely come to is that if/when I start working on a normal office hour schedule, then I might revisit a lot of my expenses. I could easily cut out the car commute and gym costs, along with likely having many more options for free social activities since I would have every weekend off instead of working through half of the weekends in the month. Or maybe this is just me making a bunch of excuses because I don’t want to change.

My lack of social network continues to my biggest issue. I think I’m going to join a co-ed softball league with a friend which should be a good start and the games are at a time where I should be able to attend most of them. I heard there may be some kind of group at work which does fishing trips, so I’ll have to ask more about that and see if I can go on one of those.

Dave
Posts: 545
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:42 pm

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Dave »

white belt wrote:
Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:46 pm
I looked for the brand recommended in the video but couldn’t find it, so I chose a can of crushed tomatoes at the grocery store. I then added a sprinkle of Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and a splash of olive oil. I’m sure there is room for improvement on the sauce, but it tasted good to me.
Nice, yeah this is about as far as I've gone. At some point I'll try making from self-grown tomatoes.
white belt wrote:
Thu Aug 12, 2021 11:38 am
-It would become very apparent that I have almost no social network in my new location. Certainly, this would probably force me to develop that, but right now it would definitely be a net negative...
Isn't going through this process part of what drives success in the no-spend experiment, though? What is net negative in weeks 1-X, and that time sitting, bored, is what gives the time/energy towards creating moneyless solutions from X onwards. Right now there is less time, energy, and incentive to solve them.

IOW, net negative measured during the short-term, net positive in the long-term. Unpleasant, for sure.

I know what you're saying though, and especially given your work schedule and overall life structure it's not an easy situation to solve.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

I’m almost done reading Vicki Robin’s book about locavore eating. It’s been a good companion read for my current “challenge” of cooking all of my own food for the month of August. I’m reading this right after reading some of Boyle’s work, so it’s interesting to draw some parallels between the authors. I believe they are both extroverted activist types (ENFP?), which provides a different perspective than my typical temperament.

What I liked
She gave a nice overview of some of the difficulties of local eating and also demonstrated the transformation power of doing such challenges. The fact that she isn’t religious but still says grace before each meal as an act of gratitude struck me as a useful tool to remain both grateful and connected to the wider ecosystem. Her observation that eating locally forced her to improve her connections within the community made me realize how disconnected I am from the community around me in my current neighborhood. It’s like the consumerist culture of location hopping for school/jobs and paying for every service has destroyed any sort of community feeling for most people (myself included). We sit in our houses, go to work, go shopping or to restaurants, but I haven’t even talked to anyone in my neighborhood other than my roommates and I’ve lived here for 3 months.

What I didn’t like
It’s interesting that someone who spent her life preaching the gospel of frugality and low-consumption seemed to have such a disconnect with the food she eats. Reading this made me realize that my food habits are vastly different than the typical American, so a good chunk of the book was a bit unrelatable for me. I have been weighing all of my food and tracking macronutrients for almost 2 years, so I have a very good idea of the nutritional value of various foods and what I consume in a typical day. The idea of mindless snacking is completely foreign to me, as I generally don’t snack at all since all of my requirements are met by my planned-out meals. Even when I’m eating food I didn’t prepare, I can still eyeball it and get a pretty good estimate of the macronutrient content and the portion I need to eat to fit into my meal plan at the time. If I over or undereat one meal, then I can adjust a little bit in the next meal (a lot of this has almost become second nature. I’ve never had an issue with being overweight and in fact usually I am more concerned with getting enough protein to retain my lean body mass than gaining any weight.

Some of the book gets a little woo woo and lacks the analytical rigor that I would prefer, but Robin does make an attempt to incorporate some research data and interview experts. Nevertheless, I’m not so sure eating locally should be the first thing someone strives to do if trying to reduce climate change impacts. Robin has clearly spent a life living frugally with very low expenses, so she’s already taken care of the big steps, but it gets a little dubious when you start recommending a local diet as something that will improve community resilience and address climate change without first addressing the fact everyone will need to dramatically reduce overall consumption. Additionally, there is always the issue of whether a particular strategy is scalable. Robin admits that in her location it’s not scalable:
Vicki Robin wrote:As I’d learned even before beginning my diet, if everyone did it we’d quickly strip Whidbey of food. Even if just half of 1 percent of us ate exclusively from the island, we would use up all of the local supplies.
But then has a chapter dedicated to her community’s efforts to organize and improve local food production. Clearly she is an organizer/activist through and through, so her default to solve a problem is to get everyone together in a group and talk about the problem endlessly.* I guess I understand that both approaches are needed to address problems as complex as climate change, but I much prefer bottom-up approaches that build individual nodes of resilience before resorting to community organizing (hence why I like ERE). Another factor might be that I am more inward focused because I’m trying to get my own systems in place, so I don’t feel ready yet to turn my focus outwards.

* = Looks like Jacob has already pointed this out: viewtopic.php?p=215746#p215746


Anyhow, this brings me to my own thoughts about food in my current life system. I think there are focus areas to improving my system that may look something like this:

1. Prepare/cook all of my own food
2. Reduce meat consumption, increase plant based protein consumption
3. Optimize food purchasing by buying in bulk and on sale
4. Source foods locally
5. Forage foods
6. Grow/produce food
7. Exchange food for other things and vice versa

Right now I'm mainly focused on 1 with my cooking challenge while simultaneously doing some work on 2 with my tempeh experiments. I don't really have the bandwidth at the moment to work on any of the other steps. 3 will be a focus once I have my recipe rhythm firmly established. 6 is on the backburner, but I plan on getting my microgreens up and running again next month. I haven't really done any work with 5, but I would like to do some exploring of local waterways and am still on the hunt for hunting/fishing opportunities with others. I haven't figured out 7 yet, but I think I'll host some friends later this month for drinks and homemade pizza so we'll see where that goes.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Well I'm just about complete with my no (restaurant/takeout) food month. I purchased one meal out when I was at a friend's beach house because I got in a late and didn't know the group had already made plans to go to a restaurant. In the future I could mitigate that by asking beforehand about the meal plans and eating my own dinner on the ride up. I still call the month a huge success. I actually didn't buy any drinks at bars either, but I think that was more of an anomaly due to the fact the weather was bad so we didn't go to any bars at the beach and I worked through a couple of weekends.

A few observations from my "challenge":

-I thought I would be socially isolating myself by not eating restaurant meals, but the reality is I probably share at most a few meals a month with social groups that require me to eat at a restaurant. The other times I just bring my own food or invite friends over for meals. I eat most of my meals alone or at work.

-There are more logistics involved in planning out meals, especially when traveling. It was manageable, but definitely more work than just stopping somewhere on a roadtrip. I did get in the habit of projecting meals out a bit further than usual, so I haven't had any issues recently. I also have a few meals that I can eat which require no preparation if I'm caught unprepared (e.g. yogurt w/ honey, almonds, and a banana).

-I way overestimated the skill involved to make most restaurant food I was eating. Like I can usually get a 90% solution for a specific dish within 1-2 recipe attempts. I was actually disappointed with the one seafood meal I ate out with friends and think I could've whipped up something better.

white belt wrote:
Thu Aug 12, 2021 11:38 am
On the one hand, I think that I could benefit from a buy nothing exercise, but on the other hand I already feel like I’m pretty strategic in how I allocate my financial capital. I’m not shopping out of boredom and I already DIY repair most of my stuff. If I look at my expenses the past few months, I spend the most on food and dating. I think I’m already on the path of resolving my food expenses since I haven’t eaten out in nearly 2 weeks and have instead upped my cooking game. I haven’t yet fully cracked the nut on my dating expenses.
Reading the above comment from earlier this month (feels like forever ago), I can say that I definitely was eating restaurant food out of boredom. I was using it to add excitement to my routine utilitarian meals because I lacked the skill to whip up more elaborate weekend dishes. Well now I have a handful of recipes for more varied/elaborate dishes, so I find the urge to eat at a restaurant has almost completely disappeared. I will likely still eat at a restaurant occasionally as part of a social group, but 90% of my meals will be prepared at home for the foreseeable future I think.

The exercise has shown me that I'm clearly not nearly as strategic about spending money as I previously thought. I can get the same or better quality of life for much less money. I think I'm starting to get a feel for what Jacob was talking about in regards to sacred cows. One sacred cow that I gored this month was that I need to eat at restaurants to enjoy good food. More on other sacred cows that may get gored in a future post.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

I've been reading through some of my earliest journal posts and had a thought. On some thread, Jacob and others talked about how slack in the system is needed to learn the skills to move out of a current paradigm. As I read my infrequent posts up to about 2018, I can tell that I didn't really have the slack in my system to focus on any sort of ERE skills.

When I started my job in the Army, I was spending all my time and energy on just learning how to be a military officer, which in my specialty at the time was really all consuming since many nights were spent in the field conducting training. I tried to do what I thought was ERE at the time by just copying what I saw Jacob and MMM do. I had a bike that I customized for commuting. I lived with roommates in cheap housing close to work. I didn't own a car. But at some point the friction between my job requirements (also influenced by my peers) and my system at the time became to great. Jacob was able to grit this out at first which eventually lead to him developing new skills and transforming to a new paradigm. I didn't understand it at the time that such challenges would force me to grow and I didn't have the bandwidth to direct energy to them because all of my learning was happening at work. I had to buy a car because military bases are usually isolated from communities and I needed all the time-saving I could afford since my working hours were so long. I started eating out more as well. Nevertheless, I still kept with my frugal roots of living with roommates, not buying fancy toys, and so on. I'd say I was maybe WL3 at the time.

When I arrived in LA (the state), I spent another 2 years focused almost entirely on my job. Fortunately, my job required me to learn a lot of social and other skills which has transferred to other areas in life. Unfortunately it was such a time and energy consuming part of my life that I had really no interests or identity outside of work. Weekends were spent traveling to far away cities to chase girls and get a taste of normalcy after spending so long in austere conditions. I didn't spend much time thinking about ERE and didn't post in my journal for most of this time. Still WL3.

When I arrived back in GA, I spent another year in a whirlwind of learning about my new job and traveling a lot for work. It was really rewarding, but at the same time all-consuming and I again had no real identity outside of my work. There was constant excitement from new people, new projects, and new locations. I spent very little time at home. My posts were mostly about maximizing income, with the occasional attempt to reduce expenses that had been relatively consistent for the last few years. Probably WL3/4.

In February 2020 I could see a shift starting to happen. I had finally slowed down the whirlwind of work travel and I had settled into my work role, so I had bandwidth to dedicate to projects outside of work. Then COVID19 happened and everything came grinding to a halt. Suddenly I had a lot of time at home and started to question some of my assumptions in my paradigm at the time. You can see then I start to get more interested in macroeconomics, climate change, and systems thinking. WL4 but perhaps started working towards WL5.

I spent another year working from home with relatively light job requirements (halfday online classes), which gave me even more bandwidth to focus on ERE-related thinking. My boring/easy classes meant that I had to now look outside of my job for life satisfaction. I focused a lot on my lifting and nutrition to give me a sense of working towards a goal and making progress. I started reading about permaculture and tried a few small projects like worm composting, microgreens, and container gardening. I could start to understand from the permaculture projects the effect that yields and flows have on a system, but I still hadn't figured out how to translate it to my own life system. WL5?

That brings me to my current life at the location I've lived at for about 3 months now. I've just about maxed out learning at my current job (I can function at the job without much conscious effort), which means I have a lot of bandwidth to dedicate to ERE projects. I even have time during work hours on most days to read or pursue other projects. For once I'm in a densely populated location with lots of other young people, which means more social opportunities. I'm still wrestling with the transition from WL5->6, but I do feel as if some change is happening. Not sure yet where exactly it's leading but I have occasional flashes of what life on the other side might look like.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

August Report

Expense Total: 1988
Housing - 800
Food/Restaurant/Alcohol - 531
Car/Transportation/Insurance – 320
Other – 114
Dating – 102
Health/Fitness – 97
Cell Phone - 24

I'm under $2k spending at my current HCOL location for the first time! A big improvement over the last few months.

Food/Restaurants/Bars
First the good. With the exception of one social meal that I ate on a trip, I met my goal of not eating out at all for the month of August. I also didn't go to any bars either, although that was more of a coincidence and wasn't strictly part of my original goal. See earlier post for more reflections on the food challenge.

Now onto the bad. I still managed to spend $500 on food I prepared myself! For some reason I thought cooking all of my own food would lower my food expenses to $300-400 at most. I will note that I didn't really focus on optimizing my grocery purchases by buying on sale or in bulk since I was testing so many new recipes. Really the focus was just on cooking all my meals to meet my diet requirements. Now that I have a few more recipes in the rotation, I think I can standardize them and start stocking up on ingredients. I also ran to the more expensive nearby grocery store rather than Aldi a few times when I didn't properly plan out my meals.

My tempeh process is pretty much down pat (see thread), which should drop my expenses since it means I'll be buying a lot less meat. I'll still be buying eggs, milk, yogurt, and fish. I tried making the famous lentil soup recipe from the ERE blog (slightly modified with more cheese cubes to fit my macros), but after one meal I did not sit well in my digestive track. I eat a relatively high fiber diet so I didn't think the fiber would be a problem but maybe it is in combination with the all the compounds that produce gas. I still have 3 more servings so I'm going to give it another shot. Soy tempeh didn't give me any GI issues, so maybe I'll resort to making lentil tempeh as well. Another factor could be the DIY mac and cheese recipe I ate for lunch had just too much processed cheese for what I'm used to (2nd iteration of the recipe will sub in some tuna and sodium citrate instead of highly processed cheese).

Car/Transportation/Insurance
The big chunk of expenses was from my 2 year registration and some replacement parts I sourced myself. Also a little bit on gas and tolls since I drove to the beach for the weekend trip. For accounting purposes, I've decided to group my car insurance costs into this category ($45 a month).

I test rode the bike route to work to gauge feasibility. Unfortunately I somehow bent my back wheel, so I will need to attempt to true it. Other than that the ride was do-able. It's downhill the way there which I guess works better so I don't show up to work as sweaty and because I'm carrying more weight from food and water on the ride there than the ride home. The ride back was less fun, but some of that was because my tire was rubbing on the fender which definitely introduced some more friction. If I can get my bike fixed today or tomorrow then I may try bike commuting one of the days this week.

Other
A few common kitchen/household items that I required for all the cooking I'm doing. Haircut (may start to DIY again in the future at some point). Includes $10 in non-vehicle related insurance and $10 for Spotify subscription.

Dating
I only went on a couple of dates this month. Both of them were at our respective apartments so expenses were minimal. Most of the expenses were for premium features on dating apps that I was experimenting with and were probably not worth it. Still need to work on IRL connections to expand my dating pool without the total reliance on apps.

Health/Fitness
I finally stopped my online coaching membership and opted for the cheaper app based programming ($200 a month vs $32 a month). Well I thought it was app-based but it just seems to be a spreadsheet with a bunch of variables that I punch in to generate my program. So I may very well just start doing my own programming but I'll see how I like it because I already paid for the first month. I'm not going to the Olympics anytime soon, but I do want to keep getting stronger and more muscular. Still paying $11 a month for my food tracking app that I'm not willing to give up yet (I'd give up my lifting app first due to the 3x higher cost).

I plan on adjusting my lifting schedule to 4 days a week instead of 5 (a lot of weeks I was ending merging 2 days together so only lifting 4 days a week anyway). I was doing M-W then F-S, now I plan on doing M-T and TH-F. This gives me one more off day per a week, but more importantly gives me my entire Saturday and Sunday off from the gym. Although I do work a lot of weekends, having those days off maximizes my social interaction so that I can try to improve my social capital (and my dating life). For example, this weekend I am working in the mornings but in the afternoon I can still join some friends by the pool.


Financial Snapshot
Rolling 3 month expense average: $2840
Net Worth: $421k
Stock: 38%
CTF (currently long): 14%
Cash: 12%
Bonds: 15%
Gold: 17%
Crypto: 4%

Scott 2
Posts: 2824
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:34 pm

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Scott 2 »

I am assuming you are eating a relatively high protein diet. I don't think your spending is outrageous there.

Do you use a protein powder? I've been getting 10lb bags of unflavored whey isolate for years, typically in the $80-100 range. I mix a scoop with 1/4t cocoa, 1/2t sugar, and a little salt and cinnamon. It dissolves in warm water easily and sufficiently bland to have every day. Since I eat no meat, I typically get 50g of protein per day from the whey. The concentrate is even cheaper, but I don't digest it well.

Hristo Botev
Posts: 1732
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:42 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Hristo Botev »

Question for you @white_belt; what does a post-NLP program look like? I'm getting to the point where all the lifts are just too damn heavy to be any fun, and so I'm going to start mixing in some light days. But I'm not sure how much longer I can go before the dread I'm starting to feel for lift days results in me slacking and ultimately quitting. Is an online coach a good idea, to do the more customized programming once I ultimately throw in the towel on NLP? Or will reading Rippetoe's Practical Programming pretty much give enough info that I can figure out the programming on my own?

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Hristo Botev wrote:
Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:02 pm
Question for you @white_belt; what does a post-NLP program look like? I'm getting to the point where all the lifts are just too damn heavy to be any fun, and so I'm going to start mixing in some light days. But I'm not sure how much longer I can go before the dread I'm starting to feel for lift days results in me slacking and ultimately quitting. Is an online coach a good idea, to do the more customized programming once I ultimately throw in the towel on NLP? Or will reading Rippetoe's Practical Programming pretty much give enough info that I can figure out the programming on my own?
I haven't read Practical Programming, but I believe there are great resources available elsewhere (linked below).

Your next move will depend on your goals. The thing is, a beginner program like SS is really just to get a person into the habit of lifting with proper technique. It's likely to reach the end of your SS program and still be a beginner in terms of recovery and strength (the length of a beginner phase has many variables but it's common to consider anyone whose been lifting for less than 2-3 years as a beginner). You probably still have newbie gains to be made but are just feeling ground down from the structure of SS.

So the questions is, do you want to build more muscle? Do you want to get stronger? Do you want to try to focus just on the big 3 lifts? Do you want to train to improve sport performance? You don't have to decide these things right now, but it's something to consider where you want to go next.

First off, read this because it explains things much better than I can. Pay attention to the beginner parts and intermediate parts: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/compl ... ing-guide/

Next, this Youtube playlist will highlight the "Scientific Principles of Strength Training". Some of it may be review after reading SS, but know that these guys are a lot more well-versed in the modern science of strength training and coaching athletes (whereas some of Rip's knowledge is 20-30 years outdated). It's also available as a book under the same name for something like $40 if you prefer to read it all and really nerd out (for now the videos can give you a lot of the same info): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... uDGNrMJ092

Finally, this video series will give you the most practical tips for building a program, while the prior links can be thought as principles to understand the why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlZPCJJOUfQ


I understand all of this is still daunting for a relatively new trainee, so take your time and let me know when you have more questions. This process may result in having to gore some of Rippetoe's sacred cows, but that's to be expected since he had to keep things simple and direct for maximum beginner adoption. I watch the videos at 2x speed to mimic closer to reading speed.

But, I'll try to answer your question specifically. One common feature of programs today is periodization (also called phase potentiation). This means you will have different training blocks that are focusing on improving different attributes because it is more optimal than trying to develop multiple attributes at the same time. For a powerlifter, these are usually a hypertrophy block to build more muscle, a strength block to strengthen the muscle you just put on, a peaking/competition block, and finally a general physical preparation/recovery block before the cycle repeats. Each of these blocks could last anywhere from 4-12 weeks depending on the program.

In terms of your workouts, your exercise selection will likely lean towards starting with compound lifts followed by accessory exercises. Set and rep range will vary depending on where you are in the training block. You will likely split up the most taxing exercises (e.g. you won't be able to recover from squats and deadlifts on the same day). Just as an example, a typical powerlifting structure for a 5 day a week program is to squat day 1, bench day 2, deadlift day 3, rest day 4, squat day 5, deadlift/bench day 6, rest day 7. You will also vary the intensity of the workout so you're not going max effort on every lift every day because that's a great recipe for fatigue, injury, and burnout.

The other option if you don't want to bother with all this is to just google something like "programs to do after SS" and you'll find a list of cookie-cutter programs that you can follow along with, but you won't really get the understanding of the why without all of the other links.

Edit: In terms of online coaching, I'd say paying for individual coaching/programming probably isn't worth it* unless you're trying to compete at the elite level or trying to do something really technical like olympic weightlifting. You can get free feedback on your lifting technique from the SS forums or places like Reddit. Juggernaut Training System's AI app has pretty good reviews from what I've heard and will build your program based on a bajillion variables you input for about $30 a month. I'm in a transition period so I might finally bite the bullet of writing my own programs instead of shelling out the monthly fees, but I've also been doing this for a few years now so I'm feeling more and more comfortable DIYing.

* = At this point, I'd much rather shell out $200 monthly to get a community element in a physical gym like for BJJ or Crossfit than paying someone $200 to review my lifting videos I shoot by myself. Web of goals and such. But I did do the online coaching thing for the past 1.5 years because it was the only way I could learn olympic weightlifting in my geographic location at the time.
Last edited by white belt on Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:04 pm, edited 5 times in total.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Scott 2 wrote:
Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:18 pm
Do you use a protein powder? I've been getting 10lb bags of unflavored whey isolate for years, typically in the $80-100 range. I mix a scoop with 1/4t cocoa, 1/2t sugar, and a little salt and cinnamon. It dissolves in warm water easily and sufficiently bland to have every day. Since I eat no meat, I typically get 50g of protein per day from the whey. The concentrate is even cheaper, but I don't digest it well.
Yes. I get unflavored casein and whey powder from Bulk Supplements. A typical day will have about 1/3 of my protein needs coming from a whey protein shake during my workout and casein powder pudding before bed. The rest is usually eggs/yogurt with breakfast, fish/meat for a meal, and tempeh/lentils for a meal (the plant based stuff is a recent change that I only instituted within the past week).

Hristo Botev
Posts: 1732
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:42 am

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Hristo Botev »

Thanks @WB! I'll check out those resources and see if I can't cobble together a DIY program. Admittedly, one goal I've got is to hopefully not grow too much bigger, as I just had to buy new dress shirts because my neck size grew and the buttons around my chest were popping off on my old shirts and I had to keep sewing them back on (admittedly, the older shirts were from a trendier designer and were cut a little slimmer than the Brooks Brothers-type American standard). So I'm thinking I might go ahead and start on some sort of a "cut," and try not to lose too much muscle in the process.

SS has certainly gotten me in the habit of consistently training, which is no small feat. My concern now though is that the lifts are getting so heavy (obviously, relative; my numbers are pathetic compared to just about anyone else), across all lifts, that doing that 3x/week is becoming a real drag and I'm worried I'm going to start missing days if I can't figure out a way to make it a little more fun again, and less torturous. I'm not some high school football player who needs to "embrace the suck"; I'm a 43-year-old middle-aged bald man with, frankly, more important shit to worry about than my lifting numbers. But I also totally get how important strength is, and it's something I want to continue to work towards, just slowly.

Lots to take in; thanks for putting that all together!

Scott 2
Posts: 2824
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:34 pm

Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Scott 2 »

white belt wrote:
Tue Aug 31, 2021 7:51 pm
tempeh/lentils for a meal (the plant based stuff is a recent change that I only instituted within the past week).
Getting enough protein has been an ongoing struggle for me. I get tired of eating it. I'm guessing you know the plant based amino acid profile is inferior quality and requires more grams as a result.

You might come across the idea to enhance plant based proteins with Leucine. It is the foulest tasting product I have ever had in my mouth. And it mixes horribly. Never again. Do not recommend.

Post Reply