Internationalist

Where are you and where are you going?
Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Savings rate for December: 37.1%.

Books read: Confederacy of Dunces (Toole, definitely a funny book. Described in the blurb as laugh-out-loud funny, but I wouldn’t say that, for me I just really liked the cleverness of it and the absurdity of its protagonist), The Honorary Consul (Greene, ending a bit unsatisfying, but otherwise I really liked this one – struck me as a bit of a male fantasy book though, with lack of meaningful female characters and its preoccupation with whoring, mistresses, and ‘possessing’ women).

“It took him more than a few years of life in Buenos Aires before he began to realize that the existence of an exile did not make for simplicity – so many documents, so many visits to government offices. Simplicity belonged by right to those who were native-born, those who could take the conditions of life, however bizarre, for granted.”

I was in Dakar for a week, working. One of the benefits of work travel is the per diem, of which I managed to save a considerable amount.

We managed to keep spending largely in check for the month, until the final week. I won’t go into it here, but let’s just say some of our money will help someone out and will probably return to us medium term. Looks likely that DW will be returning to work, although the pay will be low and there will be some startup costs (visas). I made a neat little profit (realized profit, not hypothetical value profit) by making a good judgement on bitcoin, but that effectively just paid for the Christmas presents I ordered to be delivered to family back home.

One of the things that is perhaps good and bad about being an expat is the experience of the holiday season. It tends not to be stressful, there’s no build-up, there’s no expectation, at least here in Ethiopia I’m not bombarded with advertising. At the same time, though, spending Christmas with family is nice, so missing out on that is a downer. It’s easy to let Christmas turn into just another day – regular breakfast, lunch and dinner, wash dishes, read a book. I think this is not a good development – it’s nice to have rituals and festivals to give shape to the year, even as an atheist I recognize this.

I’m currently trialing fasting. I decided that for two days a week I will fast until the evening meal (the 5:2 kind of idea). During the fasting days, I haven’t been eating nothing, but restricted myself to say, some olives, a boiled egg, maybe a small piece of cheese. I have been surprised by how little the sensation of ‘hunger’ appears (that is, a growly stomach). Still, for the first four days of fasting I did feel pretty weird. Most noticeable was a slight feeling of clumsiness in my extremities – not severe, but a bit of an odd feeling. I also feel like maybe I had more difficulty concentrating, but my work is not particularly engaging, so when I’m fasting at work it’s difficult to say if I’m really concentrating less effectively than usual… Anyway, I seem to be mostly getting over these negative effects now, I think, but I’ll continue to evaluate the plan. Why fast? Well, I don’t need to lose weight, if anything I would like to regain some of the muscle I once had (yeah right, when TH settles down enough for me to consider an exercise plan again). It’s just something I figured I’d try after I’ve read numerous people advocating it – a ‘go with the crowd’ kind of thing. The warrior diet is in the ERE book, after all.

Net worth has been rising rapidly for the last few months. Part of this must be illusory though – when we moved into our current place we paid six months’ rent in advance. Absent rental payments, much of the paycheck has been socked into savings. I need to make another payment this month, although it’ll now be three months’ in advance. So absent market moves, NW will likely not increase in January. With my new and improved wealth-tracking spreadsheet, in a few months’ time I might be able to tack some pretty graphs into this journal.

Meanwhile, in Australia: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ol-sandpit

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Savings rate for January: 42.6%.

Major events this month were a trip to Zanzibar. This served dual purposes – as holiday, and also for the change in visa status of DW so that she can work. It wasn’t a cheap holiday, but it was nice. DW needed to at least fly out of the country and back, so the additional cost to turn it into a vacation was nothing to lose sleep over. Being by the beach and eating some fresh seafood was nice.

Actually, being there seemed to clear up my throat a bit. The pollution and dust here is really getting to me, I feel like I’ve been struggling with a sore and phlegmy throat for a few months now. Now that DW is on a work contract, though, I doubt there will be any travel abroad, unless I have a work event, for the next six months or so.

Assuming DW gets paid on time, hopefully the savings rate can be boosted 6% or so for the next few months. Yeah, the pay is terrible but after a substantial career break it’s all about getting back into the workforce.

After seven months in this country I finally feel as though we’re pretty much through with the ‘setting up’ expenditures, so hopefully next month I can post a more impressive savings rate. That said, February is one of the two leanest dividend months for the year for my holdings, but I still don’t think that’ll affect anything much. My net worth (not including retirement accounts) did actually decay a little, having to pay three months’ rent in advance. Another significant factor is also that I track my NW in AUD – since the AUD has risen remarkably against the USD at the start of this year, my totals look worse overall (my international investments all went down in AUD terms).

I’ve been thinking about a few ERE, FI-type things this month, complicated issues I won’t discuss at length right now. The first is franking credits. Being abroad, I don’t get the advantage of these, and it’s something I’ve not considered in my analysis of the required amount invested in order to produce a retirement income in Australia. Basically, with franking credits (dividend imputation), my FI number (for an Australian retirement) should be lower than I have been considering to date, because of the significant tax advantages.

The second is tradable versus non-tradable inflation (https://www.rba.gov.au/chart-pack/aus-inflation.html). Sure, headline inflation has been low for some time in Aus – it looks like around 2% at the moment. But when you decompose this into tradables vs non-tradables it tells a more detailed story. Basically, tradables have been deflating considerably but non-tradables have experienced an inflation rate worthy of consideration. This makes me wonder – as an EREer, does one typically consume more goods that are tradable, or more non-tradable? I’d be inclined to say non-tradables…* Meaning inflation is a more serious concern.

*Basically, tradables are those things that go out to and come in from the world market, and as such prices are set in a fairly global manner. Non-tradables are things that are domestic in nature, perhaps think of many aspects of healthcare, housing, etc. A big story of the past perhaps twenty years is that electronics and technological things have been massively dropping in price for a variety of reasons. These are all tradables. But as an EREer, I think many of these things would make up only a little of your consumption basket.

Meanwhile, in Australia: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... tures-rise

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

February Update

Savings rate for February: 57.2%.

First time since arriving in Addis that my savings rate has breached the 50% barrier! Awesome! Payments started rolling in from DW’s contract, so that contributes to the push. I hope that in the next four months, in which I don’t foresee any major expenditures, I can continue to stay above the 50% mark.

Books read: Adapt (Harford – very readable. I like Harford as a journalist. This book is not amazing, but certainly interesting throughout and gave me recommendations for more books to add to my reading list), Metamorphosis (Kafka).

I have decided to be less strict with myself on bringing packed lunch to work. Dining costs here are so cheap that I’ve begun to resent the extra effort of grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning up on the weekends. I’ve still wound up bringing leftovers for about three days of the week, but the other two I can eat at work for around $2-3 per lunch. Now that DW and I are both working, it’s more important for us to spend more time with TH on weekends rather than cooking up the week’s lunches. So we just try to increase weeknight cooking slightly more to ensure there are some leftovers around. We’re bumping up against the constraint of pot size now, so I think we may shop for a bigger soup pot.

Pretty calm month, no extraordinary expenditures. The jumps up and down in the market didn’t faze me too much, which was reassuring – but equities seem to have returned to their upward progress. This has been a long bull market, for sure, and I’m starting to wonder how long it can possibly continue. Whenever I daydream and project out what my net worth could be in two, three, or five years, I need to remind myself that we’re probably ‘due’ for a pretty significant correction, and perhaps a few years of negative returns, soonish.

I’ve just calculated my rolling 6-month average monthly passive income for the first time – this is solely dividends and interest payments: $691. Hey, this is not money I can live on just yet* but it’s certainly a noticeable chunk each month. Nice!

Meanwhile, in Australia: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/sout ... 59839cf864


*Although, annually, that is about 1 jacob, isn’t it?

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

March Update

Savings rate for March: 58.3%.

That’s as high a savings rate as I can remember ever having. I foresee April being fairly high as well, maybe not quite as high. After that, I think I’ll be running into some more expenses, but the first half of this year has been good for savings.

I’d felt a little unwell through January and February, so I ceased fasting. I tried again in March. Generally, on Mondays and Thursdays I would fast for roughly 24 hours, from the evening meal of the previous night through to the evening meal on Monday/Thursday. I don’t think I will continue with it. I was feeling totally spacy, I really couldn’t concentrate well. I hoped the feeling would go away after several fasts as my body adapted but it didn’t seem to improve.

I haven’t previously discussed my asset allocation in my journal. I haven’t commented in any other threads on this topic because I feel pretty comfortable with it myself, and I’m not necessarily looking for advice. Nevertheless, in case anyone is curious, or in case anyone wants to comment on it, I will present it now.

Target allocation:

75% equities, of which:
- 35% Australian equities (25% in a LIC, broad market, and 10% in Vanguard ASX300 index fund)
- 10% in international ex-USA (Vanguard)
- 30% in US total market (Vanguard)
10% in bonds (Vanguard, Australian Bonds)
5% in gold (ETF, not physical)
10% in cash.

My current allocation is not quite in alignment with this, but it’s getting there over time. I currently have no gold – my next remittance of salary will probably go largely to buying into a gold fund. I currently am heavier on cash than this target allocation, and lighter on bonds. Also, while this target allocation has only 6 financial products (not including cash), my current allocation has a few more products/stocks. This is due to gradually building my position over time, and I didn’t necessarily start with a goal as clear as what I outline above. I will gradually rebalance. The international/commodity products are unhedged to the Australian dollar. Oh, and this doesn’t include my retirement account – rules around superannuation in Australia are very strict, and retirement money can’t be withdrawn until you’re at least 60 yrs old. I still pay attention to my retirement account, but I think treatment of this money is different enough to be considered separately, given the timeframes involved.

Taking into account the actual products I can access through my broker, this allocation has a weighted expense ratio of 0.12%.

Other ways of looking at this split:
75% growth, 25% defensive.
55% Australian (home country), 45% international.

Perhaps the one thing I feel like I might tweak, at the moment, is an allocation to emerging markets. I am wondering if the demographic headwinds facing developed markets mean I should place some funds in emerging markets. In the allocation above, the Vanguard international ex-USA product only includes developed markets. What holds be back is that while I think there’s definitely good arguments to be made about how Asia (not just China, but SE and S Asia) will be the more dynamic markets across the next 50 years there’s also plenty of arguments against. In terms of demographics, many Asian countries are also seeing the same decline in fertility rates that Western countries have seen, and in fact, before they’ve reached the same level of economic development.

Edit: I've been reading less news this past month so didn't stumble on any good 'meanwhile in Australia' bits until just now... so ninja edit: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -operation

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Savings rate for April: 59.2%.

Continuing on with a strong savings rate. Still attributing it to DW being at work – this works from both ends: since she’s working we don’t do any travelling (reduces expenses) and of course it also earns income.

Books read: Island Home (Winton. Dreadful. How is it that this guy is held up as an icon of Australian literature? My wife laughed at my incredibly obvious eye-rolling and exasperated sighs as I read this book in bed. It was a gift! I didn’t buy it… Admittedly it got a little better at the end but the first few chapters – cringe-worthy is not strong enough. It’s remarkable that someone who has lived abroad (in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece according to Wiki) can still be so apparently dumb to the fact that many of the experiences of which he writes are actually common aspects of the human experience and not uniquely Australian).

I have had some very mild success with reducing social media use. I deleted the facebook app (I used a 3rd party app) from my phone, and now I only check fb about once a week or so when I have my laptop hooked up to a net connection. I have realized that I don’t at all miss the daily checks. When I check it on a weekly basis, I don’t think I miss anything – the algorithm seems good enough to pull whatever was relevant from the last week, and generally there’s nothing of note anyway. I also moved the Instagram app off my home screen. Again, now I only use Instagram maybe twice weekly rather than daily.

I call this only a very mild success because I have probably used that freed-up time to spend more time looking through Reddit. So… of all the time I was wasting unproductively before, I probably still waste 90%. Reddit tends to make me laugh more, though, so I guess there’s that?

In terms of net wealth, I am a bit disappointed that besides my high savings rate I still feel like my progress towards FI is only crawling along. In terms of ‘liquid’ net wealth I’m up to a multiple of 12.5 times estimated yearly expenses (that is, estimated expenses for a relatively low-cost Aus location, certainly not here…). Once retirement accounts are included, this bumps up to 17 years of expenses, which I guess is not so bad. I suppose despite hanging out here my savings rate is not usually quite at 50% plus, so really I should not get ahead of myself. If I can manage several years of 50% plus SR I would see more progress, rather than only several months’ worth…

Let's try to post some graphs for the first time...
Image
A pretty basic net wealth chart, showing asset classes. I've put years of expenditure on the y-axis here.

Image
This one shows expenditure categories. I've removed units from the y-axis to preserve at least a little mystery... But you know I'm probably orders of magnitude above most of the participants of this forum in terms of expenditure. What is particularly clear from this chart, I think, is the absurd cost of rent for my shitty house here, relative to the rest of my expenditure categories. The spike in green in November and January relates to travel expenses, hotels, flights etc.

Meanwhile, in Australia: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -junk-food

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Viktor K
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Viktor K »

Good job identifying and eliminating a major distractor for you. I did the same thing recently, and while things that used to not distract me do moreso now than before, the impact is much less significant.

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Savings rate for May: 53.7%.

Books read: Antifragile (Taleb. Liked it. Still going to say it didn’t have the same effect on me as Black Swan, the first time around. Certainly found a number of things to disagree with in the book but hey, I like his style. Don’t we all wish we had the flair and courage to be able to insult whomever we wanted?)

Undertook two weeks in a row of work travel, which was tough. One week in Yaoundé followed by a week in Maputo, with a mere twelve-hour stop back in Addis to see DW in between. I think I owe DW something for being a single parent on that stretch. I certainly missed the Tiny Human a lot and felt guilty for leaving her dadless for so long. I know there are a ton of people out there with far rougher travel schedules than me (the higher-ups in my own organization being prime examples), but I’ve known for a long time I’m not cut out for that kind of work. I frequently get sick after travel – while I would say I kinda like work travel (that is, of course, depending on the frequency and duration), I still find it stressful. I haven’t mastered the knack of sleeping on planes. Frequently, two days after I arrive home I come down with some kind of malady probably as a result of the lack of sleep, intense work effort, and unfamiliar food eaten in tropical locales. Not sick yet, this time around, but we’ll see…

I had to spend some money on the car – four new tires and new brake pads. I guess the timing worked out OK in a way – I saved, as usual, a fair bit of the per diem from my travel so it actually pretty neatly offset the expenditure on car stuff. I was surprised I still managed a >50% SR this month due to the car expenditures but I seem to be on a roll.

Wanted to just note a few positive aspects of living in Addis Ababa, since I’ve probably not been as vocal on those as I have been on the negative parts. Firstly, I’m no longer supervised by a ridiculous micromanager who treats me like a juvenile. For all the problems my organization has, at least the team I work with here has a culture that is a little better than the one I left behind in Geneva. Secondly, the ease with which I found a social life here. In Geneva, it took more than eighteen months for me to find people I felt comfortable socializing with, and only very few people at that. Here, I was able to ‘lock in’ with people almost right away. I think greater than 50% of my weekends have social engagements now. This feels like a lot to me, but I guess it depends where your preferences and habits fall along that scale. I don’t really know what it is that makes socializing here so much easier. Maybe it’s easier to bond with other expats bitching about the manifold difficulties of living in Addis rather than just complaining about the ridiculous cost of living in Geneva?

Meanwhile, in Australia: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -bank-boom

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Savings rate for June: 6.9%.

Books read: Free Culture (Lessig. Really good, a little outdated now), Virtual Light (Gibson. I keep reading more of Gibson’s work because I love Neuromancer so much, but I’ve not really liked anything else he’s done. Virtual Light is better than Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, but nevertheless I don’t feel like it was time well spent. I still have Idoru on my Kindle ready to go but if that doesn’t do something for me I feel I’ll give up on the rest of Gibson’s oeuvre, unless someone wants to try to convince me…).

I installed Habitica on my phone, a productivity app that uses RPG-like elements to motivate you. One more attempt to get a little closer to some of my goals. I like the way the app breaks out habits as distinct from daily tasks, as distinct from to-do items. So far it seems to function pretty well. We’ll see if I keep up the use of the app.

I took the family to Dubai for a weekend. Spent lots of money – nice hotel, and also purchased some items like new phones that are difficult to get here. DW and I had been using our old smartphones for 3.5 years, and they were not new models when we got them, so while I think I beat the average it’s still not exactly high-level ERE/Mustachian skills. Very pleasant trip, a bit of culture shock after being in Africa for the last year.

We had guests visit, as well. So a combination of the trip to Dubai, plus showing guests around, dining out, and increased food costs explain the low savings rate.

I repatriated some savings, and I made my first investment into gold – a financial instrument, not bullion. I believe this will decrease the correlation of the asset classes in my portfolio a little. I hope I’m decently hedged against a variety of calamities now, but I guess we’ll see. My entire investing career has pretty much been bull market (I should specify international market here – I’m home biased in Australia, and actually the ASX300 has not performed very well over the last decade, although it still counts as a bull market I suppose), so I have no idea what my brain will do to me once the bear eventually comes.

I’ve been doing this ‘meanwhile, in Australia’ thing, but there was recently a crazy animal story from Ethiopia I couldn’t resist, so This Month in Ethiopia: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/0 ... -ethiopia/

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Kriegsspiel »

I'm assuming no native-African religion involves spending a lot of time waist deep in crocodile habitat?

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

@Kriegsspiel - Ethiopians may be offended if you intimate that Christianity is not their native religion. It has the next-oldest state-sponsored Christian church after the Armenian.

2-for-1 update July and August

Savings rate for July: 50.3%, for August: 45.0%.

Books read: Haven’t completed any, but working through a few – and working is apt. I’ve not been making great choices in books recently, and reading is becoming a bit of a chore.

Back up over 50% saving rate for July, great! Net worth has really going nuts. The AUD has been declining, and since I’m earning in USD, and have a substantial all-world allocation, that’s translated in to outsize gains in NW. Every now and then I’m tempted to think the Aussie will continue to decline, the overvalued house market there will finally correct, and I’ll be able to saunter back in and pick up a nice house for cash… But you know all about markets and remaining irrational. I’m not really keen on owning housing in a country I’m not living in anyway, so it’s really just daydreaming. That said, if there could be a slow melt in house prices over the next two years… Well, that’d be grand.

I went to Uganda for a long weekend holiday. Probably a bad move. Things really didn’t go to plan, and we ended up hanging around Kampala rather than heading out into the West of the country as intended. Fortunately we weren’t in the city centre during the unrest, it apparently got pretty nasty. Travelling in this continent seems to require a lot of patience and energy, in addition to more money than you would expect. It’ll take a little while for the travel desire to build up again, I think.

I have been encouraged to rejoin the gym – a few friends are getting me guest passes at their (large) hotel gym pretty often, and I’ve decided to maintain the momentum of this by rejoining the cheap-as-chips work gym as well, so I don’t have to rely on getting an invitation multiple times per week.

Vacation to Australia coming up to reconnect with family, I’m pretty much counting down the days…

Meanwhile, in Australia: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-29/s ... ed/9924002 <- this chap was trying to be too frugal and inventive for his own good.

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

So… no journal entries for a while. I think I ought to try to keep up the habit.

Rather than report the savings rates for all the months I’ve missed, let me just say that my savings rate for 2018 overall was a shade under 40%. Could be better, could be a lot worse… I suspect 2019 will be lower.

At the risk of upsetting the antinatalists on the forum, I announce that my family will be expanding with child no. 2 in mid-2019. DW will prefer not go through with the birth here in Ethiopia, so I’ll probably be shuttling back and forth across continents a fair bit, which will have a detrimental effect on my wealth.

This year has the potential to be pretty disruptive. As well as family matters, I have a lot of applications for advancement in my organization open at the moment, so I am optimistic that I’ll be able to move on and up. As always, everywhere, advancement is highly competitive so I try to keep my hopes reined in but it still plays around my mind.

I’ve been travelling a lot and getting quite sick of airports. I took leave back to Australia, I’ve taken some work trips (including to the Seychelles – nice!), some medical trips, and went to see the in-laws in Vietnam as well.

One of my 2019 goals is to release an EP of music. I spent a long time away from the hobby, but over the last 18 months have been producing some very amateurish stuff on my laptop. Independent digital distribution is easier than ever now, so I feel like it’s within my reach to release something I’m proud of. My aim is to put out a 5-track EP, roughly 20 minutes or so of music. I already have three tracks I’m happy with, although the mixing and mastering is rough, given that that’s an area completely new to me. Writing two more tracks I can be happy with is proving very difficult, but I hope I can get them done before the newborn arrives.

Taking inspiration from some of the other journals on this forum (particularly @singvestor), I’m toying with the idea of setting up a few simple quantifiable goals to reach for each month. For example: visit the gym at least 10 times, drink alcohol only on 10 days or fewer in the month, meditate for 240 minutes in total each month, do a 20-hour fast at least twice a month, etc.

I’ve been making some more time for reading:
Invisible Armies (Evans) – Not great, actually the first 30% is bad but it did get better.
The Personal MBA (Kaufman) – Also not great. Ummm… I studied economics (no PhD or Masters), I work in economics, and I tend to resent people saying that the study of economics and the study of business are the same thing, but I don’t think that this book presented much that’s new to me. I certainly don’t consider myself a businessman, entrepreneur, or anything. So… obviously there’s some crossover, but is there considerably more crossover than I think? This book goes super broad but there’s no depth in it at all. As a saving grace I took a few notes on other books the author recommends for more depth on particular subjects.
Accelerando (Stross) – Yeah, not great… This actually had a lot of fascinating ideas in it (sci-fi) but the book isn’t written all that well. It’s hard to follow, the narrative is all over the place. But yeah, a number of interesting ideas touched on.
How Asia Works (Studwell) – Fantastic, and I highly recommend it. A perspective on the success or not of various East and South-East Asian countries, and the development paths they took. Takes an approach both steeped in economic history and packed with local detail. Broad lines of analysis I would say quite similar to Ha-Joon Chang. Gates’ Notes also gives the book high praise.

Did you miss this in Australia? - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-24/ ... n/10745220

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Savings rate for February: 40.1%.

Books read: The Rosie Project (Simsion) – a good read, quite funny. I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to recommend it, necessarily: while highly enjoyable I don’t think it necessarily has much to teach the reader.

Years of expenditure saved is now at around 14.3, getting me back to where I was prior to the market’s little tantrum late last year. I’m thinking I’ll need to adjust upwards my estimate of the dollar cost of my retired lifestyle, though. Being away from my home country for a number of years now, I have no recent data I can mine for what my personal expenditures would look like. Also, I’ll have two kids. Reading around in the online FIRE community, and reading Australian examples, I’m getting the feeling I’m probably underestimating what my expenses would look like, maybe considerably.

I’ve been a bit more disciplined with actually going to the gym. It’d be great if I could muster up a little more mental inspiration to go with the physical inspiration I’ve felt recently. I haven’t made any progress on my musical project.

Definitely feeling restless at work. While the colleagues I have here I would rate more highly than my previous spot in Geneva, I’ve been moved to an area which I don’t see as suiting my longer-term aspirations. I’ve been talking it over with DW and we’re basically in agreement that we need to move next year, or before (if one of the many applications I’ve sent off comes through). Even after that, I may potentially look to exit this organization in 2021, if things don’t look up. And despite the golden handcuffs they offer. By that time I wouldn’t be FI, not with two kids, but depending on market events I could be reasonably close. Certainly my cushion would be solid enough for multi-year sabbatical, pivot to a new industry, retraining… I won’t make concrete plans yet for two years down the track, but that’s current thinking.

For those of you thinking about reducing the amount of time you have your mobile phone in hand, check out: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... row-attack.

prognastat
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Re: Internationalist

Post by prognastat »

Wow, he actually had someone brandishing a bow and arrow and instead of getting the hell away he ended up grabbing his phone to capture the moment -_-' He is lucky it worked out in his favour in this case, but his sense of self preservation isn't the greatest.

Congrats on recovering from the dip.

wolf
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Re: Internationalist

Post by wolf »

For estimating your cost in Australia you could use this tool:
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/estimator_main

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Savings rate for March: 18.6%.

Books read: A Voyage to Abyssinia (Lobo) – Really fascinating, but perhaps just because I’m living in the region. Also fascinating for the fact that it was originally written in Portuguese in the 17th century, and was then translated into French, then English, and yet it remains readable. I particularly liked this line:
“They are possessed with a strange notion that they are the only true Christians in the world; as for us, they shunned us as heretics…”
This coming from a Jesuit who was sent to convert the people of this country away from their chosen religion and to the church of Rome, I think it rather artfully demonstrates how incredibly un-self-aware religious people often are.

Also:
“No country in the world is so full of churches, monasteries, and ecclesiastics as Abyssinia; it is not possible to sing in one church or monastery without being heard by another, and perhaps by several.”
So it seems like things haven’t changed so much – these days it may be less due to the minimal separation of the churches and something to do with the custom of placing high-powered speakers on top of all the churches and blasting out prayers at top volume for most of the day. As far as I can tell this is to perhaps buttress the habits of believers and to annoy nonbelievers as much as possible.

I’ve just sent DW and TH off, back to Vietnam, where they will remain for several months. I hope to make it back there in time for the delivery of child no. 2. So, with a new baby, will I need to update Tiny Human’s moniker? Perhaps she ought to become SH – Small Human, and the previous title can be passed down. Her language skills have really been advancing quickly recently, it’s amazing to see. I will miss them both this year: with the current plans, we’ll be spending roughly four months apart over the course of this year. We don’t plan to make this a regular feature of our lives, so I think this is bearable, even if it’s not desirable.

As well as the expense of sending the family on an intercontinental flight for the impending birth, we also went to Lalibela this month, just for a few nights. We’re perhaps considering it the last ‘tourist’ holiday we will take part in for some time, excluding family visits of course. The rock-carved churches there are definitely impressive, and as far as travel in Africa goes, this experience was definitely easy and stress-free. There’s a nice lodge there, and while we didn’t spend our nights there we made good use of the bar which overlooks a valley for beautiful sunset views.

I have now finished production on my music EP, and will release it shortly. I’ll drop a link here when it goes live. I didn’t manage to get to 5 songs, as I wanted, but decided to put out the 4 that I have. This close to the birth of baby no. 2 I didn’t want to delay further.

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Savings rate for April: 26.7%.

Books read: Idoru (Gibson) - so I liked this one more than the last few of his that I read. I think it got a lot closer to Neuromancer’s feel. It’s probably due to the sense of detachment from events and depression experienced by the main character.

The Emperor (Kapuscinski)- Very interesting, and quite a short read. It only took me a week or so to get through this one. Quite skillful in the way it paints such a vivid portrait of Selassie through only the accounts of people who dealt with him. Again, it’s probably especially interesting to me because I’m currently in Ethiopia. I highlighted a lot of passages in this book, it has a great many quotable insights on power and maintaining a kingdom. Example:
“Governments in Europe, not just in Africa, insinuate that traditions and routines have existed since time out of mind, when in reality they were invented a generation ago. In this, Selassie and his court were not so different from other autocracies. While affecting to preserve the past, they were constantly devising new “traditional” institutions to strengthen their control.”

“Experience confirms it. A man starved all his life will never rebel. Up north there was no rebellion. No one raised his voice or his hand there. But just let the subject start to eat his fill and then try to take the bowl away, and immediately he rises in rebellion. The usefulness of going hungry is that a hungry man thinks only of bread.”

I’m heading back to Vietnam in less than a week now, hopefully I can arrive in time for the delivery of child no. 2.

Getting a little frustrated with expenses and market movements. I know it’s just a psychological trick, but my net worth has just been scraping the edge of a nice, even multiple of 100k recently. It got very close in October last year just before some market ructions threw it backwards. Now, for the last three months, it’s been bumping up to the edge of that figure again but I just can’t see it tipping over and it’s annoying me. Particularly given that my savings rate has been positive for all but one of the last six months, I start to wonder where that money is going…

I released some music! Please go over to Bandcamp or CDBaby and buy it! Well, if you’re content just to listen to a compressed stream I guess you can also listen on Spotify or your chosen platform. Let me know what you think.
https://newnations.bandcamp.com

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5x6nQeL ... dHanyvK0Yg

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

Hi everyone. The journal has been abandoned for a while but I’m still around. I’ve now relocated to Thailand. This was a pretty massive challenge during the COVID pandemic, but I’m very glad for the opportunity. Looking forward to better access to some of society’s more advanced technologies and goods, and hopefully a more secure environment.

I won’t go into all the minutiae, but I’m still working towards the FI/RE thing, although for a while now my work has been more bearable that it was in the past. I think I may gradually be getting institutionalized, or just older and more adapted to the life of a working stiff. With my move, I will have another new role to learn and new people to work with, and I’m feeling that rush of motivation to make my mark in a new place.

Family is fine. Although obviously extensive travel is off the cards for now, when the world gets a grip on this pandemic it will be great to be closer to extended family. Already, in terms of the time zone and the internet speed/access required for Skype or WhatsApp calling, it feels very different to be closer to parents and parents-in-law.

We were in dreadful limbo in Addis Ababa for quite some time, because while my movement had been approved earlier in the year COVID came along and derailed everything. Thailand’s borders are hugely restricted at the moment, so that was troublesome to work through. For several months we were caught in the situation of having all our stuff pretty much packed up to move, car sold, and our lives on hold, but then for a while the move was receding from view – it was miserable.

We’re now optimistic we can settle in here for several years, and try to make a nice space for ourselves. I’ve had a bunch of projects in mind that I didn’t want to start in Addis while feeling like a temporary resident, so now I have a new lease on life.

Financially, the pandemic has not worried me much. Which is perhaps a bit surprising. Yes, our net wealth took a huge hit but I had some allocations to defensive assets that worked as intended in stabilising the portfolio. It turns out this has shown me that I’m very comfortable with my current asset allocation. My employment is very secure so I don’t have to worry on that front. As I think quite a few EREers are finding, with the need to isolate quite a bit, some temptations have been removed. Some of our biggest expenditures are travel and we do dine out fairly regularly, so our expenditures dropped for a few months. Saving continues on...

Oh, and looking back, my last post was in May 2019. So - my second child was born. There were the usual issues of paperwork caused by life as an expatriate. We weren't able to get him dual citizenship, unfortunately, and even getting him one was a royal pain. But anyway, he's here now. Single-income family of four striving for FI - yep, this'll still take a while.

JollyScot
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Re: Internationalist

Post by JollyScot »

Congrats on getting the move sorted and on navigating the world of paperwork with your child.

Most normal people just disregard the potential of damage to peoples lives due to lockdown. Life is ok in my bubble so life is fine for everyone type of blinker vision.

I'm glad the limbo ended and you can progress with your plans. I understand the being sort of feeling stuck when other plans have been made.

Hope the new life in Thailand works out.

Solvent
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Re: Internationalist

Post by Solvent »

So here we are in February 2021, and I make another of my intermittent updates.

Thailand is turning out to be more expensive than I’d anticipated. In terms of not-predicted expenses, it’s the preschool my daughter attends and also groceries. Yes, the rent is pretty expensive, but I’m not remarking on that because it was quite easy to know in advance what those costs would be, and also the apartment I have is great. On the other hand, I didn’t quite believe the preschool costs would be so high, and each week we’re spending more on food than I’d have thought. Our expenditure probably hasn’t ‘settled’ since the move, yet, so I’m not sure what our savings rate will be going forward.

I’ve made a good start to the new year in improving some habits. Despite having to work around some COVID restrictions my apartment building has a very decent gym, so I’m now going regularly again. I didn’t succeed in keeping January dry, but I did manage to cut down my alcohol intake a reasonable amount, and I figure since January wasn’t successful I’m going to try to keep sober for a few weeks of February, too. Going well on that so far. I promised myself that after the move, considering we’re planning to stay here a few years, I would buy myself a few nice musical instruments. I got myself a bass guitar I’m very happy with and an electric guitar which is just OK. They have definitely not sat unused in the corner: I’ve been finding the time in the evening after the kids go to bed to play usually a few times a week or even more often. I’m having a lot of fun with it and I’m actually surprised how quickly I’m managing to teach myself songs by ear. I’m also planning on getting an audio interface so I can put together some music with actual instruments rather than just all VSTs.

I haven’t commented on my reading list for ages so perhaps I could drop some short reviews of what I’ve worked through in the last 18 months or so:
The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin) – Possibly overrated, I didn’t find the central conceit of the book quite so interesting as most seem to, and it kind of dragged.
Legend (Gemmell) – Not recommended. I wanted something light and I have very much enjoyed some of Gemmell’s later works, so I went back to his first, but this is really simple. All the characters and plots feel like templates with different names subbed in.
The Fifth Head of Cerberus (Wolfe) – Wow, this really was a mind bender. I thought the second of the three novellas was pretty daft, but I get how it informs the other two. The first and third were really sinister and thought-provoking. I will definitely seek out further of his work but suspect it could possibly cause nightmares.
Another Day of Life (Kapuscinski) – This is fine. I’d recommend other books of his before this one, but yes, the scenes of people in the cities discussing rumours of the ‘native’ war outside ring accurate.
Boomerang (Lewis) – From the author of Big Short, Moneyball, etc. I expected to like this one much more. In fact, the style really struck me as weird. I didn’t even know publishers would let you get away with insulting stereotypes of the type he uses, but I guess it’s journalism not scholarship.
The Power and the Glory (Greene) – Again, I like very much some of Greene’s other books, and apparently this is one of his most-studied works, but I didn’t quite like it as much as some others by him. I guess I found the characters not terribly sympathetic.
Waiting for the Barbarians (Coetzee) – Played to my natural inclinations, dealing with differing interpretations of duty, limitations of power working through bureaucracy, etc.
The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam (Goscha) – This is good, sure, but also massive. Not something to read unless you’re specifically interested in the country. Very good for understanding the situation of the French and Vietnamese prior to and at the start of American involvement, which is something not very well dealt with in popular English-language media.
Chop Wood Carry Water (Medcalf) – Ehhh, pretty basic self-help stuff, I don’t think the message of this one needed book-length treatment.
Ringworld (Niven) – Been on my reading list for a long time, but no this wasn’t for me. The characters weren’t compelling enough to make it interesting, and it is overlong. I guess it’s a sign of my millennial attention span.
One Day I Will Write About This Place (Wainaina) – Loved it, highly recommended. I think the style of writing is not for everyone (it can veer into stream-of-consciousness), but it’s lyrical, it’s personal, it made me feel the author’s emotions and the ups and downs of his life.
Distraction (Young) – This guy used to write (online) columns that I would read and enjoy, but I don’t think it translated well to book form. It’s a bit too dry, which is fine for a bite-size newspaper column but gets dull trying to slog through a book of it.

Phew, I intended to keep that short but once I got going just thought I may as well be comprehensive. Out of the list above, if one were to ask me recommendations, I’d say One Day I Will Write About This Place, and Fifth Head of Cerberus.

Now having been out of Addis Ababa for six months, I guess I have a little distance and can appreciate a few things more lucidly. Importantly, although we were finding things very rough in Addis, we made the right choice not to split our family up at the start of the pandemic. This was something a lot of people questioned me on. And many people I know did split up – the not-employed half of the couple repatriated, with kids, while the worker stayed with their duties in Addis. I’m not going to say this would be a wrong choice for every family, but we’re sure glad we didn’t do it. I won’t bother to link to stories of families being divided for significantly longer than expected by the implementation of hard borders during the pandemic: you can find them almost anywhere except the US and UK. If we had split, it’s possible we’d still be separated, as even now stranded Australians cannot get home. Also, we were already separated for about 1/3rd of 2019 when my family went back to VN for the birth of child no. 2. Looking back, at that period in Addis with the country sliding into civil war, and with a lot of expats deserting the country or at least sending their families home, it felt very low-key apocalyptic. I didn’t mention in my journal, but for those who were unaware, while trying to plan my relocation the Ethiopian government knocked out the internet for nearly a month to quell riots. My office regained internet (after the initial few days), but due to COVID they were actually extremely strict with allowing access, so I’d be having near-daily fights with our security team about getting access to find out if my Thai visa had been approved or if flight bookings were possible. My wife in particular was extremely isolated, because not only were friends vacating the country but she couldn’t contact family, as well. I’d have nights out drinking with guys who hadn’t seen their wives or kids for months and didn’t know when they would be able to next. It was definitely a strange part of my life, but then, everyone’s 2020 has been weird.

Meanwhile, in Australia: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... in-her-bed. Yeeesh.

ertyu
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Re: Internationalist

Post by ertyu »

It was interesting to hear about your life in Thailand. As I'm sure you've noticed in Addis, too, there's a weird thing that happens in developing countries - you end up paying a premium for expat-level goods and services. Local daycare might be cheap - hell, a local nanny might be cheap, but if you want your kid in an english-speaking montessori kindergarden, you'll pay. Local housing might be cheap, but if you want the air-conditioned building with the landscaping and the gym, it'll cost you. As another professional gastarbeiter, this has been something to always be mindful of. I don't have children, but I have grown progressively more demanding about housing and things like "a good mattress" as I've aged and have definitely experienced this effect. Interestingly, mainland China is one of the places where a person without children can get some of the best bang for their buck when it comes to consumerist amenities - that is, if the level of polution and government control are acceptable to you. What city are you in in Thailand, if you don't mind sharing? If you'd rather not, no worries.

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