Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Ah! Whoops. I have mobile apps on the brain. That makes sense. There seem to be some really good opportunities with Shopify plugins and that kind of thing.

Ha ha ha. Way to water all the plants, man. Congrats. Always heartening to read of life's little successes while working towards what are sometimes considered bigger goals.

But yes Augustus you forgot to mention ‘what’s wrong’!

Congrats on finding your zen.

Given various circumstances, 2 years seems like a long way out to find the forever home. But regardless what happens, we'll all be aboard the train. How long do you expect to b in the forever home - 10/20/30 years? It seems that if prices go down interest rates may go up. Maybe you can limit to a few areas / neighborhoods and be ready to buy if a house that fits comes on market.

Good thoughts on compassion/ charity - while you don't want to "reward" bad decisions, helping people in need is worthwhile.

Kids and morals/religion are tough as hell, which is why I don't have any kids . My path regarding religiousity is very similar to yours. I have very fond memories of church and youth activities until teenaged years, when it turned to angst and bitterness. Now I'm a very mild agnostic, but the morals those childhood social activities instilled remained present.

If you are interested in monetary donations I've found Kiva to be a great option, although it's very nonlocal. It's great because it provides loans to people to help themselves. That is very much my mentality and yours, at least it reads that way. The other benefit is the majority of donations are paid back. So with ERE being a goal, one could make larger donations while accumulating, then much smaller ones once FI to maintain the principle as an ongoing fund for charity. Just a suggestion, this type of thing is very personal.

I have contemplated how to imbue hypothetical children with a moral compass.

Having them go to Church and take confession like I did seems like it would be valuable on the face of it. But the other children did not ask questions, they were unconcerned with moral dilemmas, and they never took voluntary confessions like me. What compass I had was within me, whether genetically or because my father employed corporal punishment and insisted on honesty as a virtue. I think the Church is better at terrifying those who might otherwise not have the compass, with dogma.

I would probably give them the Bible, along with the classics, and a good portion of the Western canon, and let them choose belief or apostasy. I would not hide the truth. No one gave me the classics, I had to seek them out. So they would have an advantage.

It would seem particularly important not allowing life on Earth to be deemphasized for the sake of a hereafter. We are indeed lucky to be alive.

Now that you are a rich semi-ERE bastard I would say your primary concern is that your wife spoils them.

Congrats on the cash! It makes a big difference in mentality. With semi-ERE I tend to think of it in a savings vs investment standpoint. While my investments can cover X% of my income, savings allows me X# of years off to take a breather. For some reason the second feels more freeing in a context of not being FI.

Augustus wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 21, 2018 6:14 pm

I'd rather her have christian morals installed than a void.

What void? You wouldn't teach her anything? Unlikely.

I dunno. They appear to listen to us a lot. But we are very very open about what the rules are (and they are few) and about WHY the rules are the way they are. The most important lesson in my view is to teach the kids to think for themselves. When it comes to a more general sense of morality, they do go to church with the wife and get "instruction" there, and then at home she talks about her values and I'm always talking about my values which float somewhere in the atheistic, buddhist, stoic, "poetic naturalist" and this-cool-idea-from-the-latest-thing-I've-read arena. I'm not a purist. I dunno. Even if your kids rebel, I think you might be surprised how much of you they absorb. In any case, it certainly won't be a void.

Augustus wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 22, 2018 1:41 am

How much do your kids listen to you vs their peer group? It's one thing to hear it from you, it's another to hear it from other people they respect.

It's possible to respect one's parents. Allegedly.

Good point about the importance of peer groups. I'd say that's more important than religion. Compare (1) a church-going kid with thuggish friends to (2) an atheist kid invested in competitive extracurriculars. I say the atheist kid gets in less trouble.

I don't read journals, much. But I just read all the way through this one.

Agustus, earlier, you didn't know if you would like to work 2 months per year in retirement, or six. You wanted to make a software AP. And throughout, you have obsessed about how much work was right for you.

How much do you think you would pull in, working 2 months per year? If you subtract that amount from your annual expenses, are you FI, yet? If so, why not cut back to 2 months per year, to see if you like it? If not, how many months income (estimated average) would it take? Cut back to that. Act FI to see if you like it. Use some of the time to try your AP. Maybe you can close the FI gap with your own project.

Working harder, to save, to work less in the future, is reasonable in the beginning of accumulation, but accurate forecasting is more important near the end. You seem to be in need of some quality data on what you really want, and maybe you are too good at distracting yourself with work. Or maybe I am just projecting...

In any case, it was a good read, and good luck to you.

Since you asked...two thoughts:

1) Complexity does not scale linearly with the number of family members, does it?
2) Without re-reading your whole journal, my recollection is that you're in a pretty sweet situation right now - you work on or near the beach some/much of the time, you work for yourself (well, third party clients), you can work flexibly...what exactly are you trying to achieve? A short sabbatical? Instead of framing it as a sabbatical, can't you frame it as part of the business plan and/or reduce your work load once the current set of contracts terminate?
3) Instead of the all-or-nothing approach, where you might hit a "fuck this isn't what I thought it would be like" moment like financial samurai's full-time parenting moment, can't you engineer a smoother glidepath from call it 40 hours/week worth of work to 20 or 10 or 0 and try it out and have a back-up emergency on-ramp if you decide you need some work in your life (for reasons other than money)?

I guess this is sort of the same reaction as @riggerjack from above - if you have the flexibility to just do it (turn down work), do you really have to announce it or label it as anything? I'm probably not understanding the nature of your work.

I think he means that going from single to married adds a decent bit of complexity to your life. Then adding a kid adds some more, but not as much. Adding another kid again adds some more, but less again etc. Thus making it non-linear.

When I said non-linear, I meant in the other direction. A two person family isn't twice as complex as a one person family - it's more than twice as complex. Adding a third isn't 3x as complex, it's more than 3x complex, etc. Like this from a hetero male perspective (change pronouns for others):

1 person:
- Man considers man. The end. 1 thing.*

2 person:
- Man considers man. Man considers wife. Man considers marriage. Man considers what wife thinks of man, of herself, of marriage. 6 things.

3 person:
- Man considers man. Man considers wife. Man considers marriage. Man considers child. Man considers father-child relationship. Man considers mother-child relationship. Man considers parent-child relationship. Man considers family. Man considers what wife thinks of man, of herself, of marriage, of child, of mother-child relationship, of father-child relationship, of parent-child relationship, of family. Man considers what child thinks of man, of mother, of parents together, of itself, of mother-child relationship, of father-child relationship, of parents-child relationship, of family. 24 things.

4 person:
- Man considers man. Man considers wife. Man considers marriage. Man considers child A. Man considers child B. Man considers children together. Man considers mother-child A. Man considers mother-child B. Man considers mother-children. Man considers parents-children. Man considers family. Man considers what wife thinks of man, of herself, of marriage, of child A, of child B, of mother-child A relationship, of mother-child B relationship, of mother-children relationship, of father-child A relationship, of father-child B relationship, of father-children relationship, of parents-child A relationship, of parents-child B relationship, of parents-children relationship, of family. Etc. I dunno, it's like 55 things.

Etc.

If you don't believe me, remove any one person from my family of five for an afternoon, a day, a week and the dynamics are TOTALLY different, depending on who you remove. And this complexity only really kicks in to full gear in middle school, in my experience. Babies, toddlers, elementary school aged kids are EASY by comparison, in my experience - you still consider their needs, but you just sorta make a decision and do it and they just sorta go along with it (although even still some kids are harder than others).

* Man is happy.

edit: concrete recent example:

Me: I'm going to go visit my parents and bring DS2.
Wife: NOOOOO, not the easy one!
Me: What? It's his turn.
Wife: I know, but don't leave me with the other two. They'll just fight the whole time. I need my DS2 buffer.
Me: [muttering] I shoulda stayed single.

Also see https://www.amazon.com/Over-Our-Heads-M ... 674445880/ The levels described above roughly map out 1-1. Note that @soumalainen's description of all (1-4 person) was from a Kegan5 perspective and Kegan estimates that ~1% of humans habitually engage(*) with other people at that level. 56% of humans operate at the "2 person" level, 14% operate at the "1 person" level, and 29% at the "3 person level". There's also a 0 person level which is before "man considers man", that is, before man develops an ego, so pre-teen age and these are quite easy to deal with... almost mechanical.

(*) It's of course a lot easier to intellectually understand a model than it is to internalize it and apply it in daily interactions.

Similar to Wheaton levels, it's really hard to see the next level until you're at it---at which point it's hard to go back.

If the number of vertices is labeled n (people in network) and the graph is complete (all relationships considered), then the number of edges/relations is n(n-1)/2.

In a four-person family, the number of relationships is 4(4-1)/2 = 6. This is just how many groups of 2 there are. There are also 4 groups of 1 (considering self), 4 groups of 3, and 1 group of 4. Now we are at 6+4+4+1 = 15.

This is an objective, birds eye view of the network. For a subjective view each group must be considered by all people, so 15×4 = 45.

Probably not helpful, but it was interesting to think about.

You have to admit that the idea of becoming “Emperor Augustus” is intriguing.

So, what's the app do?

Congrats on submitting your first app. I hope it does well.

Congrats on the app! Much better option to try and generate cashflow than part-time nursing! Of course my opinion is currently tainted .

I reread your last several entries and it seems two things are on your mind. The first is you need more alone time (I love thinking walks as well BTW). The second seems like you are trying to figure out "enough". You seem to be in a similar circumstance as me (trying to figure out enough and a big want lying in wait) in that if you just stick to the status quo for a couple more years both will probably iron themselves out.

You are definitely one up on me in that you're actively throwing a couple new things against the wall, income generation wise, to see if they will stick. Maybe just actively trying, whether they work out or not, is enough to keep your head in the game to handle the next couple of years? I'm certainly not offering any advice, other than maybe just encouragement to stay active in your pursuits. I started to realized I was in this situation awhile ago and have done nothing but try to "stick it out" and that strategy is not working at all. My lazy ass can't find the motivation to do anything other than read or play video games in my off time from work, and I don't have a toddler running around, so props to you!