The main danger is deciding to become successful at something completely pointless like League of Legends.
akratic's ERE journal
FWIW, if I were going to make a game right now with the goal of wide portability to mobile devices, I'd use HTML5/JavaScript. It can be embedded in practically every platform, and you don't have to use JavaScript syntax if you don't want to: http://altjs.org/ .
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NorthernIrelandERE
- Posts: 10
- Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 5:31 pm
I just want to say, that out of all the journals on ERE, I have found yours to be one of the best. Seeing you start from scratch has been a real inspiration for me to get up off my ass! Best of luck with the move abroad. I lived abroad for two years and while it's a scary prospect, you will find it invaluable in broadening your horizons and perspective on things.
@KevinW I want a more immersive experience than can be easily created in HTML5/Javascript right now. I'm excited for the future of that technology though.
@Rest thank you!
Surprise $800 electric bill
My electric company has been undercharging me for the last two years. Instead of reading my meter, they've just been billing me $16-18/mo "estimates".
To my surprise, they recently started reading my meter and took two readings, one in December and the other in January. It turns out I used $80 worth of electricity in that one month period (mostly because I cranked the electric space heater to save money on gas heat).
The insane part is the company decided to backbill me for the past 12 months based on that single reading of $80/mo. So they sent me a bill for 12 * $80!! (minus what I'd already paid)
I tried to explain to them on the phone how unfair it is to base my entire year bill on the month of January, but their customer service people are stupid.
I'm not sure whether to just let this one go, or try to fight it. Normally I'm a fighter, but I'm a bit overwhelmed right now with everything I need to do to get ready to leave the country. The plan is:
- Feb 1 drive from Chicago to New York
- Feb 4 fly from New York to Atlanta
- Feb 7 fly from Atlanta to Quito, Ecuador
My todo list to get ready for this is approximately infinite.
@Rest thank you!
Surprise $800 electric bill
My electric company has been undercharging me for the last two years. Instead of reading my meter, they've just been billing me $16-18/mo "estimates".
To my surprise, they recently started reading my meter and took two readings, one in December and the other in January. It turns out I used $80 worth of electricity in that one month period (mostly because I cranked the electric space heater to save money on gas heat).
The insane part is the company decided to backbill me for the past 12 months based on that single reading of $80/mo. So they sent me a bill for 12 * $80!! (minus what I'd already paid)
I tried to explain to them on the phone how unfair it is to base my entire year bill on the month of January, but their customer service people are stupid.
I'm not sure whether to just let this one go, or try to fight it. Normally I'm a fighter, but I'm a bit overwhelmed right now with everything I need to do to get ready to leave the country. The plan is:
- Feb 1 drive from Chicago to New York
- Feb 4 fly from New York to Atlanta
- Feb 7 fly from Atlanta to Quito, Ecuador
My todo list to get ready for this is approximately infinite.
Akratic,
I've had this experience with a utility company. It's been a while, but I think the situation was that they did not have an actual reading from the start of service. I fought them, and won the complete amount off my bill but, I had to go through the public utilities commission and it took quite a bit of fighting. If you are trying to leave town, it might not be worth the hassle.
Perhaps refuse, make a formal complaint through the commission and see if they counter offer afterwards. I refused to negotiate at all, but I had lots of time to deal with them and I was pissed!
I've had this experience with a utility company. It's been a while, but I think the situation was that they did not have an actual reading from the start of service. I fought them, and won the complete amount off my bill but, I had to go through the public utilities commission and it took quite a bit of fighting. If you are trying to leave town, it might not be worth the hassle.
Perhaps refuse, make a formal complaint through the commission and see if they counter offer afterwards. I refused to negotiate at all, but I had lots of time to deal with them and I was pissed!
They know what they are doing is wrong and they are intentionally doing it to rip off everyone who's not willing to put up a certain amount of resistance.
There's a limit to how long they can back charge you and if I recall correctly it is two years. Or maybe one?
I'm all but certain they cannot extrapolate like this. (They can probably only back charge using actual meter readings at the start and end of the period in question
If your conversations with them have been over the phone so far, going to talk to them in person might get it fixed much faster. This happened for me when a cable/internet company tried to screw me when I cancelled service. I spoke to idiots on the phone 3-4 times with no result. When I went to their office, the lady at the front desk fixed it in a minute.
There's a limit to how long they can back charge you and if I recall correctly it is two years. Or maybe one?
I'm all but certain they cannot extrapolate like this. (They can probably only back charge using actual meter readings at the start and end of the period in question
If your conversations with them have been over the phone so far, going to talk to them in person might get it fixed much faster. This happened for me when a cable/internet company tried to screw me when I cancelled service. I spoke to idiots on the phone 3-4 times with no result. When I went to their office, the lady at the front desk fixed it in a minute.
Hello from Ecuador!
Since y'all seem to like numbers almost as much as I do, here are some numbers for you:
- 2 blizzards caught driving from Chicago to New York on Jan 31
- 1 backpack, 2 duffle bags, and 2 plastic bins contain all of my possessions -- the rest I gave away. The backpack is with me, the duffles and bins are in my girlfriend's parent's basement.
- $100 flight from New York to Atlanta
- $410 round trip flight from Atlanta to Quito (I can fly standby using social capital)
- $80/mo US health insurance in case I get cancer on the trip
- $10 for a six hour bus ride from Quito to the coast
- $8/person/night to live in a hostel on the beach of Ecuador
- $0.25 for the trolley in Quito, $0.50 for the bus in smaller towns
- 70-80 degrees: the temperature in Fahrenheit, maybe dropping to 60 at night
- 60-90% humidity -- worse than we expected
- 0.40 mbps up/down *if you're lucky*. It took me two tries and two hours total to download a 90mb file. We're staying in a rich person's condo right now just because it was the only place we could find with internet fast enough to Skype video chat.
- $80/month for one person or $120/month for two people to rent a crappy room with a local Ecuadorian. Loud, terrible bed, private bathroom, dirty, thin walls. In the US I'm always searching for the cheapest crappiest thing I can find, because it's all too nice for me. In Ecuador, these rooms aren't nice enough. Perhaps I belong in the 2nd world…
- 5 unsolicited job offers so far, all declined. 4 were programming jobs, but I'd rather work on my own programming projects. The one job I almost took was running a hostel for a month while the owners traveled. We would have lived for free and had a really interesting experience. We turned it down because of how many hard drugs went down at the hostel (cocaine etc).*
- $1 beers at restaurants/hostels
- $1.50 the best deal on lunch I've found: a big plate of rice, and three small bowls to eat with it: flavored beef, flavored beans, and a fried plantain.
- $4.50 for my favorite breakfast, $5 for my favorite dinner. You're supposed to be able to eat pretty well for $2-3/meal, but I got food poisoning once from a $2 lunch, and we seem to have more success with one big $4-5 meal a day.
- $1.50 for a 20L jug of drinkable water (these are heavy if you don't own a car). $1 for a gallon (4L) jug. $0.30-$1.00 for a bottle with a meal.
- $318/mo minimum wage in Ecuador
~ 4 days incapacitated by food poisoning or severe sunburn (coming straight here from winter in Chicago was hard on my skin)
~ 10 spanish words learned. I'm hoping for many orders of magnitude more than that.
~ 4 clients for my girlfriend's business of teaching English over Skype. This makes us both financially independent, since four clients easily covers her monthly expenses. When she gets up to 6-8 clients, which I think will happen soon, she'll be living the life and saving over 50%. She started the business in January with my help. She'd been teaching English full-time for three years, and the business enables her to keep making money while we travel.
- 3 months total in Ecuador is the plan, then on to the next place
- 4 year anniversary with my girlfriend in March
- 30. I'm 30 now. Blah. But I'm happy with where I'm at and what I've accomplished so far.
* The gringos running tourist-oriented businesses in the small up-and-coming Ecuadorian towns are making an absolute killing based on my back-of-the-envelope calculations. I think they're blowing most of it on drugs and alcohol though.
I didn't track my expenses the month of January, too much was going on. My expenses were probably an extra $1k that month, with a bunch of random stuff going wrong. However, I got an unanticipated $1300 check not related to my job, so I'm calling it a wash.
I haven't been tracking very well in February either, since we pay cash for everything in Ecuador, and I don't have a system for tracking cash. I do know approximately how much I can spend per day with my 3% SWR, and in Ecuador at least, it's pretty much impossible to spend that much. I've gone to the ATM once and withdrawn $200. Maybe I'll just track my withdrawals and that's it.
Since y'all seem to like numbers almost as much as I do, here are some numbers for you:
- 2 blizzards caught driving from Chicago to New York on Jan 31
- 1 backpack, 2 duffle bags, and 2 plastic bins contain all of my possessions -- the rest I gave away. The backpack is with me, the duffles and bins are in my girlfriend's parent's basement.
- $100 flight from New York to Atlanta
- $410 round trip flight from Atlanta to Quito (I can fly standby using social capital)
- $80/mo US health insurance in case I get cancer on the trip
- $10 for a six hour bus ride from Quito to the coast
- $8/person/night to live in a hostel on the beach of Ecuador
- $0.25 for the trolley in Quito, $0.50 for the bus in smaller towns
- 70-80 degrees: the temperature in Fahrenheit, maybe dropping to 60 at night
- 60-90% humidity -- worse than we expected
- 0.40 mbps up/down *if you're lucky*. It took me two tries and two hours total to download a 90mb file. We're staying in a rich person's condo right now just because it was the only place we could find with internet fast enough to Skype video chat.
- $80/month for one person or $120/month for two people to rent a crappy room with a local Ecuadorian. Loud, terrible bed, private bathroom, dirty, thin walls. In the US I'm always searching for the cheapest crappiest thing I can find, because it's all too nice for me. In Ecuador, these rooms aren't nice enough. Perhaps I belong in the 2nd world…
- 5 unsolicited job offers so far, all declined. 4 were programming jobs, but I'd rather work on my own programming projects. The one job I almost took was running a hostel for a month while the owners traveled. We would have lived for free and had a really interesting experience. We turned it down because of how many hard drugs went down at the hostel (cocaine etc).*
- $1 beers at restaurants/hostels
- $1.50 the best deal on lunch I've found: a big plate of rice, and three small bowls to eat with it: flavored beef, flavored beans, and a fried plantain.
- $4.50 for my favorite breakfast, $5 for my favorite dinner. You're supposed to be able to eat pretty well for $2-3/meal, but I got food poisoning once from a $2 lunch, and we seem to have more success with one big $4-5 meal a day.
- $1.50 for a 20L jug of drinkable water (these are heavy if you don't own a car). $1 for a gallon (4L) jug. $0.30-$1.00 for a bottle with a meal.
- $318/mo minimum wage in Ecuador
~ 4 days incapacitated by food poisoning or severe sunburn (coming straight here from winter in Chicago was hard on my skin)
~ 10 spanish words learned. I'm hoping for many orders of magnitude more than that.
~ 4 clients for my girlfriend's business of teaching English over Skype. This makes us both financially independent, since four clients easily covers her monthly expenses. When she gets up to 6-8 clients, which I think will happen soon, she'll be living the life and saving over 50%. She started the business in January with my help. She'd been teaching English full-time for three years, and the business enables her to keep making money while we travel.
- 3 months total in Ecuador is the plan, then on to the next place
- 4 year anniversary with my girlfriend in March
- 30. I'm 30 now. Blah. But I'm happy with where I'm at and what I've accomplished so far.
* The gringos running tourist-oriented businesses in the small up-and-coming Ecuadorian towns are making an absolute killing based on my back-of-the-envelope calculations. I think they're blowing most of it on drugs and alcohol though.
I didn't track my expenses the month of January, too much was going on. My expenses were probably an extra $1k that month, with a bunch of random stuff going wrong. However, I got an unanticipated $1300 check not related to my job, so I'm calling it a wash.
I haven't been tracking very well in February either, since we pay cash for everything in Ecuador, and I don't have a system for tracking cash. I do know approximately how much I can spend per day with my 3% SWR, and in Ecuador at least, it's pretty much impossible to spend that much. I've gone to the ATM once and withdrawn $200. Maybe I'll just track my withdrawals and that's it.
@sshawn, Yeah, I love duolingo! My Spanish learning is from that and from when I talk to locals to like buy dinner or ride the bus. There is a huge chasm between what Spanish I know and the speed that people talk at though, as well as their vocabularies. I need to buckle down and get serious about my study, as well as probably pay for lessons.
@MadHermit, thanks. The Chicago weather was really getting to me honestly. But then it's too humid here, so maybe I'm just picky/slow-at-adapting.
@jacob, yeah Panama hats are pretty sweet, actually. Because I could be doing freelance programming at like $50-100/hr or whatever it is that super qualified software engineers make, it's kind of inefficient for me to do anything income related besides programming (especially considering I still actually like programming). I don't need more money though.
The real business opportunity I'm excited about is finding a destination that only locals travel to, then buying a business there for cheap like a restaurant or bar or hotel, then growing the town and attracting international travelers, and suddenly you're charging first-world rates and paying third-world expenses...
I'm so impressed by this business model that I like want to convince a friend to go try this, but none of my friends have the skill-set for it. Honestly anyone with the skills to run a bar or restaurant, and also the skills to travel the third-world looking for not-yet-popular locations.... should be doing this. INTJs need not apply. Maybe like an ESxP?
@MadHermit, thanks. The Chicago weather was really getting to me honestly. But then it's too humid here, so maybe I'm just picky/slow-at-adapting.
@jacob, yeah Panama hats are pretty sweet, actually. Because I could be doing freelance programming at like $50-100/hr or whatever it is that super qualified software engineers make, it's kind of inefficient for me to do anything income related besides programming (especially considering I still actually like programming). I don't need more money though.
The real business opportunity I'm excited about is finding a destination that only locals travel to, then buying a business there for cheap like a restaurant or bar or hotel, then growing the town and attracting international travelers, and suddenly you're charging first-world rates and paying third-world expenses...
I'm so impressed by this business model that I like want to convince a friend to go try this, but none of my friends have the skill-set for it. Honestly anyone with the skills to run a bar or restaurant, and also the skills to travel the third-world looking for not-yet-popular locations.... should be doing this. INTJs need not apply. Maybe like an ESxP?
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LiquidSapphire
- Posts: 510
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:40 pm
After spending the first few weeks in Ecuador on the coast, we spent the entire month of March in Cuenca. Cuenca is one of the top expat retirement destinations in the world due to a combination of good weather, low cost of living, and safety. I've seen estimates that there are about 5,000 retired expats here of about 500,000 people total. The main reasons we moved to Cuenca were to get a better internet connection by being in a bigger city, and because we have a good friend who has lived here for the past two years teaching English.
I made this breakdown of my budget for another thread
and the only question now at the end of the month is what my discretionary spending ends up being. I'll calculate that tomorrow or Monday by counting how much cash I have and comparing it to all checking account withdrawals. (I'm used to tracking my spending via credit cards, but Ecuador is 100% cash, so this is the new system.)
A typical day in Cuenca:
- 8am wake up (to the sound of my girlfriend giving an English lesson over Skype in the living room), grab my laptop, stay in bed
- 9am breakfast: granola and yogurt (both locally made and tastier and cheaper than in the US)
- 9:30am leave for the gym, walk to the bus
- 10am - 11am CrossFit workout, totally exhausting due to being out of shape + being at 8,000ft of altitude + CrossFit being hard
- 11:30am get home after showering at the gym
- 12pm - 1pm eat out for lunch ($1.50 - $3.50)
- 6pm - 7pm eat out for dinner ($1.50 - $3.50)
- 11pm go to bed
In the unstructured time I either browse the internet aimlessly, learn spanish, work on a freelance ipad app I agreed to do for a friend, play video games, read, watch TV (I like Parks and Rec now) or play bridge (I've found some retirees to play with! and I learned that you can play online as well). I'm waiting until I become a little less lazy and a little more relaxed, and then I may start a business in this spare time.
We also see our good friend a few times a week, sometimes just the three of us, and other times with his social network of English teachers. I like the English teachers; they are "life smart" as my girlfriend would say. They have low-paying (~$400/mo) low-stress (~18 hrs/wk) jobs that help other people and let them pursue adventures and their dreams. They are decidely not caught up in materialism and other aspects of the rat race. On their salaries they simply break even here, but they live a good life.
It's strange for me to have higher monthly expenses than my peers, after spending considerably less than my peers my entire adult life.
My girlfriend's business is continuing to take off. She's up to around eight paying clients now, which makes her filthy rich here in Ecuador, and probably gives her more spending money per month than I have, although she's mostly saving it. I've enjoyed working on the business with her, doing just the tech stuff and high level strategy. Apparently she's already nearly a top result in Saudia Arabia for English Teacher, which is fantastic. To support her growing business we had to pay up for top-of-the-line internet. We are paying $125/mo for a corporate tier plan! Residential tier plans start at $25/mo and Business tier plans start at $70/mo, but they're not very good. We agreed to split that expenses 40% her business, 30% me, 30% her.
The major obstacle right now is visa related. We are about 2/3s through our 90 day tourist visa, but we would like to stay in Cuenca for 4 more months. There are a number of options available, but they're all pretty bad:
- apply for an official visa, but it's expensive and can take months to get through all the red tape, and we only have 38 days left
- try a visa run where we leave the country and come back, but apparently that no longer works in Ecuador (for getting an extra 90 days), unless you bribe the border guards AND get lucky
- stay here illegally, in which case we'll be fined later when we eventually leave, and we'll be illegal
In other news, I still need to do my taxes (ugh), and rebalance my portfolio (buy bonds, buy gold, sell cash). My portfolio does have quite a lot more money in it than when I started this trip, but it's too early for that to mean much.
I made this breakdown of my budget for another thread
and the only question now at the end of the month is what my discretionary spending ends up being. I'll calculate that tomorrow or Monday by counting how much cash I have and comparing it to all checking account withdrawals. (I'm used to tracking my spending via credit cards, but Ecuador is 100% cash, so this is the new system.)
A typical day in Cuenca:
- 8am wake up (to the sound of my girlfriend giving an English lesson over Skype in the living room), grab my laptop, stay in bed
- 9am breakfast: granola and yogurt (both locally made and tastier and cheaper than in the US)
- 9:30am leave for the gym, walk to the bus
- 10am - 11am CrossFit workout, totally exhausting due to being out of shape + being at 8,000ft of altitude + CrossFit being hard
- 11:30am get home after showering at the gym
- 12pm - 1pm eat out for lunch ($1.50 - $3.50)
- 6pm - 7pm eat out for dinner ($1.50 - $3.50)
- 11pm go to bed
In the unstructured time I either browse the internet aimlessly, learn spanish, work on a freelance ipad app I agreed to do for a friend, play video games, read, watch TV (I like Parks and Rec now) or play bridge (I've found some retirees to play with! and I learned that you can play online as well). I'm waiting until I become a little less lazy and a little more relaxed, and then I may start a business in this spare time.
We also see our good friend a few times a week, sometimes just the three of us, and other times with his social network of English teachers. I like the English teachers; they are "life smart" as my girlfriend would say. They have low-paying (~$400/mo) low-stress (~18 hrs/wk) jobs that help other people and let them pursue adventures and their dreams. They are decidely not caught up in materialism and other aspects of the rat race. On their salaries they simply break even here, but they live a good life.
It's strange for me to have higher monthly expenses than my peers, after spending considerably less than my peers my entire adult life.
My girlfriend's business is continuing to take off. She's up to around eight paying clients now, which makes her filthy rich here in Ecuador, and probably gives her more spending money per month than I have, although she's mostly saving it. I've enjoyed working on the business with her, doing just the tech stuff and high level strategy. Apparently she's already nearly a top result in Saudia Arabia for English Teacher, which is fantastic. To support her growing business we had to pay up for top-of-the-line internet. We are paying $125/mo for a corporate tier plan! Residential tier plans start at $25/mo and Business tier plans start at $70/mo, but they're not very good. We agreed to split that expenses 40% her business, 30% me, 30% her.
The major obstacle right now is visa related. We are about 2/3s through our 90 day tourist visa, but we would like to stay in Cuenca for 4 more months. There are a number of options available, but they're all pretty bad:
- apply for an official visa, but it's expensive and can take months to get through all the red tape, and we only have 38 days left
- try a visa run where we leave the country and come back, but apparently that no longer works in Ecuador (for getting an extra 90 days), unless you bribe the border guards AND get lucky
- stay here illegally, in which case we'll be fined later when we eventually leave, and we'll be illegal
In other news, I still need to do my taxes (ugh), and rebalance my portfolio (buy bonds, buy gold, sell cash). My portfolio does have quite a lot more money in it than when I started this trip, but it's too early for that to mean much.
I'm not too sure what to journal about anymore. I'm not tracking my actual expenses, just my cash withdrawals, since everything is cash-based here. I withdrew $800 in March and $300 in April. May will probably be $600. These numbers are a little noisy with the big, infrequent cash withdrawals. They're also so comfortably under my theoretical investment income (on average) that it's not really worth worrying about them.
Things I've been doing, in rough order of usefulness:
- crossfit 4-5 times per week
- creating a flash based video game
- sleeping in
- seeing our one friend and making small efforts at becoming friends with his friends
- learning Spanish (so slowly that I'll never be fluent in time)
- started and finished a freelance iPad app
- reading
- playing bridge
- browsing the internet
- occasional touristy stuff like visiting famous places
- watching TV and bad movies
- playing video games
I dunno. One ERE related observation is that I've noticed some pushback from my girlfriend when I "waste" a day. An example day might consist of crossfit in the morning, meals with my girlfriend, lots of internet browsing and video game playing, and say 30 minutes of Spanish learning. In my girlfriend's eyes it's somehow not cool to spend a day like this, but I don't see the problem with it. I could be doing more useful stuff, but I don't see that I really need to. It's not a major problem though, more just like a difference of opinion or perspective I guess.
Things I've been doing, in rough order of usefulness:
- crossfit 4-5 times per week
- creating a flash based video game
- sleeping in
- seeing our one friend and making small efforts at becoming friends with his friends
- learning Spanish (so slowly that I'll never be fluent in time)
- started and finished a freelance iPad app
- reading
- playing bridge
- browsing the internet
- occasional touristy stuff like visiting famous places
- watching TV and bad movies
- playing video games
I dunno. One ERE related observation is that I've noticed some pushback from my girlfriend when I "waste" a day. An example day might consist of crossfit in the morning, meals with my girlfriend, lots of internet browsing and video game playing, and say 30 minutes of Spanish learning. In my girlfriend's eyes it's somehow not cool to spend a day like this, but I don't see the problem with it. I could be doing more useful stuff, but I don't see that I really need to. It's not a major problem though, more just like a difference of opinion or perspective I guess.
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George the original one
- Posts: 5406
- Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
- Location: Wettest corner of Orygun
I'm with Bertrand Russel, "Time you enjoy wasting, isn't wasted."
I'm on your side but I think there are a lot of people around here who are going to side with your girlfriend. There seems to be this pervasive belief that if you aren't always striving to better and perfect yourself, or the world around you, then you're somehow on a road to ruin, or you're wasting something. I think the real waste would be to force yourself to do something you don't want to do just because it will make you "feel productive". Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.
I'm on your side but I think there are a lot of people around here who are going to side with your girlfriend. There seems to be this pervasive belief that if you aren't always striving to better and perfect yourself, or the world around you, then you're somehow on a road to ruin, or you're wasting something. I think the real waste would be to force yourself to do something you don't want to do just because it will make you "feel productive". Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.