LuxVenture's Journal
Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:26 pm
Howdy y'all!
Procrastination is a fiendish habit. I told myself I’d start a journal here late in spring. Here we are well into the fall time and the other shoe is finally dropping. Better late than never, eh?
I’m LuxVenture. I discovered Jacob’s ERE website late in January 2017 while visiting my girlfriend in D.C. I had the afternoon to myself while she was on a train-harried day-trip meeting to NYC for her non-profit. I was contemplating what I wanted out of life and realized I didn’t really have a strategy--I hadn’t thought things through much.
I was (still am) a self-employed music teacher living in Houston, TX, USA. After a freak car accident left me with a lemon of a car that ended up needing over $3k in car replacements the prior summer, I had finally sat down to try and figure out my finances. I realized how much I had been living by the seat of my pants all through my twenties, coasting through ups and downs thoughtlessly. I’d gotten engaged, then had that engagement broken, and consequently went through a couple years of hard depression. I’d played more hours of online video gaming than I care to admit. Around the time that car repair bill came due in the summer of 2016, I realized how much I had settled for in life. Willful blindness toward my own well-being had resulted in me building up $10,000 in debt.
I decided I needed some drastic changes in my life. I began working hard again, expanding my music studio thrice-fold. While visiting my best friend in D.C. last September, I met my lovely girlfriend (we just reached one year together!). I slowly began paying off bills I owed and set aside the money for my self-employment taxes that would come due in April 2017. Through the support of my friends, family, and wonderful girlfriend, my life really came around. I was truly happy again.
Then I discovered ERE this past January. I was smitten by the idea of it. In the course of re-discovering happiness and its cousin, purpose, I realized how badly I want to do different things with my life. I want to learn and engage in car maintenance and sewing, the guitar and writing, astrophysics (I live down the street from NASA) and environmentalism. For this, time is of the essence. I feel my own mortality acutely for the first time in my life--it feels so short. I want to do something with myself before I’m old and tired.
I have now grown my studio to around 80 students, or a solid 40 hours of teaching every week. This equates to making $2000 a week, though in truth, I am presently making closer to $1700 a week due to inefficiencies like illness, unplanned schedule changes (football season and marching band, ahoy!), logistics issues of commuting all over the southeast side of the city, holidays, testing days, hurricanes named Harvey, and the like.
I am now free of debt and currently have close to $20,000 saved/invested. I’ve read a couple dozen books this year on investing, taxes, and accounting, retirement funding, and general strategies. I’ve been very lucky on my returns this year but remain very bearish about a market correction looming in the next few years.
My goal is to optimize my business so that I can keep at it at the present pace of summer 2019. At that point, I’m hoping through savvy use of solo 401(k), solid accounting, and the like to have $200,000 saved up and enter semi-ERE, though I think that may be a long-shot. Still, I’ll try. I’m currently working long hours--some days I start teaching in the schools at 7 am and finish at 8 pm. I get home, have a little time with my girlfriend (she’s now in Houston), and then go to bed. Rinse and repeat the next day. I’m living fairly frugally, especially now that our relationship is no longer long-distance, but need to get better about food and eating out. It’s a give and take--I like treating her to tasty food and experiences. It’s the least I can do for her… She’s wonderful to me and has been so supportive of my goals and dreams, including ERE. I love her.
Once summer 2019 arrives, I plan on shuttering music teaching--or at least winding it down significantly--and pursuing the rest of life. I recently began writing a bunch in my free time and self-published a 15k-word story. The numbers are still coming in, but it seems to have sold decently! I’d very much like to have more time to write. I’m a natural introvert and teaching 40 hours a week is very draining for me--but I make sure to do the best job I can for my kids, no matter what (I do my best to be the teacher I wish I’d had when I was a teenager). Writing has acted as a salve for unwinding the mind as of late.
In early retirement, I want to buy an R/V at the end and go see the world. I’d also like to hike the Appalachian trail. I want to bone up on science and math once more and get involved in the space program somehow. I want to help solve environmental issues and aid the human race in finding a balance with the world--and avoid the specter of humanity going extinct from ignorance-inflicted suicide in the not-so-distant future.
I also want to stay involved in my community. Working with children has opened my eyes to what matters to people, their hopes and dreams and fears and potential and astoundingness. It would be wonderful to continue making a difference in educating children and adults in matters that are important, especially learning how to navigate and work through feelings about oneself and relations with one another. As I age, I want to remain responsible for myself and my role as a member of the community from the micro-to-macro-level. I want to do good and enjoy life in the process.
In the meantime, I need to stay the course as far as ERE is concerned. Most current goals include:
-Setting up a solo 401(k) and switching over investments from my brokerage before the tax year ends (I still need to learn more about solos)
-Continuing to write and publish regularly
-Continuing education to be the best music teacher I can be before I retire
-Streamlining the business side of teaching, aka figuring out how to automate some aspects of communicating logistics with 80 kids and their parents
-Making quality time for my girlfriend, along with my friends and family
-Sticking to a training program for a half-marathon (feeling sufficiently recovered for right knee surgery two years ago, but left calf compartment syndrome has been acting up for over a year... bleh, lol)
-Staying somewhat accountable about it all here. Need to come up with graphics or something.
Cheers <3
Procrastination is a fiendish habit. I told myself I’d start a journal here late in spring. Here we are well into the fall time and the other shoe is finally dropping. Better late than never, eh?
I’m LuxVenture. I discovered Jacob’s ERE website late in January 2017 while visiting my girlfriend in D.C. I had the afternoon to myself while she was on a train-harried day-trip meeting to NYC for her non-profit. I was contemplating what I wanted out of life and realized I didn’t really have a strategy--I hadn’t thought things through much.
I was (still am) a self-employed music teacher living in Houston, TX, USA. After a freak car accident left me with a lemon of a car that ended up needing over $3k in car replacements the prior summer, I had finally sat down to try and figure out my finances. I realized how much I had been living by the seat of my pants all through my twenties, coasting through ups and downs thoughtlessly. I’d gotten engaged, then had that engagement broken, and consequently went through a couple years of hard depression. I’d played more hours of online video gaming than I care to admit. Around the time that car repair bill came due in the summer of 2016, I realized how much I had settled for in life. Willful blindness toward my own well-being had resulted in me building up $10,000 in debt.
I decided I needed some drastic changes in my life. I began working hard again, expanding my music studio thrice-fold. While visiting my best friend in D.C. last September, I met my lovely girlfriend (we just reached one year together!). I slowly began paying off bills I owed and set aside the money for my self-employment taxes that would come due in April 2017. Through the support of my friends, family, and wonderful girlfriend, my life really came around. I was truly happy again.
Then I discovered ERE this past January. I was smitten by the idea of it. In the course of re-discovering happiness and its cousin, purpose, I realized how badly I want to do different things with my life. I want to learn and engage in car maintenance and sewing, the guitar and writing, astrophysics (I live down the street from NASA) and environmentalism. For this, time is of the essence. I feel my own mortality acutely for the first time in my life--it feels so short. I want to do something with myself before I’m old and tired.
I have now grown my studio to around 80 students, or a solid 40 hours of teaching every week. This equates to making $2000 a week, though in truth, I am presently making closer to $1700 a week due to inefficiencies like illness, unplanned schedule changes (football season and marching band, ahoy!), logistics issues of commuting all over the southeast side of the city, holidays, testing days, hurricanes named Harvey, and the like.
I am now free of debt and currently have close to $20,000 saved/invested. I’ve read a couple dozen books this year on investing, taxes, and accounting, retirement funding, and general strategies. I’ve been very lucky on my returns this year but remain very bearish about a market correction looming in the next few years.
My goal is to optimize my business so that I can keep at it at the present pace of summer 2019. At that point, I’m hoping through savvy use of solo 401(k), solid accounting, and the like to have $200,000 saved up and enter semi-ERE, though I think that may be a long-shot. Still, I’ll try. I’m currently working long hours--some days I start teaching in the schools at 7 am and finish at 8 pm. I get home, have a little time with my girlfriend (she’s now in Houston), and then go to bed. Rinse and repeat the next day. I’m living fairly frugally, especially now that our relationship is no longer long-distance, but need to get better about food and eating out. It’s a give and take--I like treating her to tasty food and experiences. It’s the least I can do for her… She’s wonderful to me and has been so supportive of my goals and dreams, including ERE. I love her.
Once summer 2019 arrives, I plan on shuttering music teaching--or at least winding it down significantly--and pursuing the rest of life. I recently began writing a bunch in my free time and self-published a 15k-word story. The numbers are still coming in, but it seems to have sold decently! I’d very much like to have more time to write. I’m a natural introvert and teaching 40 hours a week is very draining for me--but I make sure to do the best job I can for my kids, no matter what (I do my best to be the teacher I wish I’d had when I was a teenager). Writing has acted as a salve for unwinding the mind as of late.
In early retirement, I want to buy an R/V at the end and go see the world. I’d also like to hike the Appalachian trail. I want to bone up on science and math once more and get involved in the space program somehow. I want to help solve environmental issues and aid the human race in finding a balance with the world--and avoid the specter of humanity going extinct from ignorance-inflicted suicide in the not-so-distant future.
I also want to stay involved in my community. Working with children has opened my eyes to what matters to people, their hopes and dreams and fears and potential and astoundingness. It would be wonderful to continue making a difference in educating children and adults in matters that are important, especially learning how to navigate and work through feelings about oneself and relations with one another. As I age, I want to remain responsible for myself and my role as a member of the community from the micro-to-macro-level. I want to do good and enjoy life in the process.
In the meantime, I need to stay the course as far as ERE is concerned. Most current goals include:
-Setting up a solo 401(k) and switching over investments from my brokerage before the tax year ends (I still need to learn more about solos)
-Continuing to write and publish regularly
-Continuing education to be the best music teacher I can be before I retire
-Streamlining the business side of teaching, aka figuring out how to automate some aspects of communicating logistics with 80 kids and their parents
-Making quality time for my girlfriend, along with my friends and family
-Sticking to a training program for a half-marathon (feeling sufficiently recovered for right knee surgery two years ago, but left calf compartment syndrome has been acting up for over a year... bleh, lol)
-Staying somewhat accountable about it all here. Need to come up with graphics or something.
Cheers <3