Seppia's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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Seppia
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Post by Seppia »

Yesterday I cried again for the first time after the day my son was born and I almost lost my wife.
I woke up to a video of my son crawling and just couldn't help it.
I am so thankful for all that life has given me.

@theanimal

Quarantine went by much easier than I anticipated.
I was very surprised how some planning made what should have been a terrible experience fairly bearable.

First, I planned travel arrangements so that I would start quarantine on a Saturday. This meant the first day went by at the airport, and Sunday was used for planning the two weeks ahead.
So I only had one weekend with way too much time on my hands, and as I cleared quarantine on a friday, I had my "freedom" weekend to look forward to.

I got a Nintendo Switch and bought Zelda, was a LONG time I hadn't been playing video games and it was a good way to burn some time (Breath Of The Wild really is a beautiful game by the way).
I'll probably sell both the console and the game after I'll be done with my next quarantine.

I've now been a week out, and it was a very busy one, as I was both working and getting ready on a number of things.
Found another temporary apartment for when I'll be back with DW and kid (probably late november/early december), did my HK ID card meeting, opened a bank account, set up all the admin stuff (phone number, health insurance registration, 401k equivalent etc).
Now I'll stay here in HK till I retrieve my ID card (next friday) and immediately fly back to italy.

We'll then get organized with the family (my wife is unboxing all our stuff and transferring it to te small apartment we own, while at the same time looking to see if we can get rid of some shit), and I'll fly back here again, clear quarantine and then, as soon as we finish the vaccination cycle for the son, get ready to receive DW and kid in HK.

We're planning it so that I leave italy again to come back here about 10 days before the day of the last vaccine, and have them fly so that I clear quarantine the same day they arrive. This way I'm free to go in/out of the apartment should they need anything, plus we won't be staying ALL the time together in 70mq (770sqf).
I have also identified three areas of the city that I like (Tin Hau, Happy Valley and Quarry Bay / Taikoo Shing), plus a wild card farther out (Tseung Kwan O) where I'll tell my wife to pick our "final" apartment.

Tin Hau, Happy Valley and Quarry Bay are more or less all areas of town that are considered premium but not the absolute top. They also have (to a varying degree) a good mix of locals and expats, as I would not like to be in an expat only area.
They are close to the office and with our budget (company money) we should be able to get a decent apartment by local standards (around 800sqf).

Tseung Kwan O is further out, but very well connected with the subway, is clearly an area that's going to grow nicely in the future (lots of new buildings, the first expats are starting to come etc) and we could get a much bigger space with the same money (1200-1300 sqf in a new building)

We'll see, but as we've always done I select potential areas, then my wife makes the call.

classical_Liberal
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

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Last edited by classical_Liberal on Fri Feb 05, 2021 2:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Rags2Freedom
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Rags2Freedom »

@seppia devoured your jornal today following the news your a HK'er.

Great read, amazing background and positive attitude.

As most have said in the previous comments your life has been fantastic to date (minus the crazy travel) and i hope HK brings to you what it has to me and my family. It's a great country....... and who knows for how long? (their coming in!!!!!!!)

Look forward to meeting up and discussing all things ERE. Stay safe

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

What a crazy last two months!

Plans for an orderly move to HK went completely out the door due to the new spikes occurring in November.
HK announced in late November that they would be tightening entry requirements starting December 12th, so we rushed and made it there by the 11th.
Arriving a couple days later would have meant mandatory quarantine in a hotel room (instead of at home), which would have been a nightmare with an 11 month old.
Rushing created a lot of enthropy but we made it in one piece.

We finally dediced to settle in the area of Tseung Kwan O, which is outside of the island. It will make for a slightly longer commute for me (35 mins door to door, so not bad) but life for the kid is going to be so much better, with more open space, better air quality, no traffic and a bigger apartment.
It's only been a week we're settled there but we know we made the right choice.

It was great meeting Rags2Freedom, if there's someone else here on the forum which resides in the SAR, we could plan for a meetup.

In general, we are loving Hong Kong, the vibes, the weather, the food, COVID being under control etc.
Sure it's not a perfect democracy, but seeing how bad the situation is in Europe + the USA turning into a banana republic, with bare chested men in fuzzy viking hats storming the Capitol, makes me see the glass half full overall.

Tangent:
One of the things I like to repeat over and over to people is: never underestimate the destructive power of idiots.
One single idiot can make enough damage to compensate the good done by three great, competent people.
This is something I usually reiterate at work, but it works also with politicians.
"what do we have to lose?" is a recurring justification for voting for/electing clowns.
The answer is: a lot.
/Tangent

Money wise, we are closing 2020 with a 70% savings rate, lower than 2019's 76%.
This was due to a combination of:
- extra costs incurred during our move to HK.
- some lack of diligence during the first lockdown (bought some expensive food/wine)
- gift for the wife's 40th BD

Our NW is now around 29 years of expenses, 26 if I exclude the liquidation value of our small apartment in italy.
From March lows in the markets, our NW was up an incredible 6 years of expenses at end of December.

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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by jacob »

Seppia wrote:
Thu Jan 07, 2021 10:36 pm
Tangent:
One of the things I like to repeat over and over to people is: never underestimate the destructive power of idiots.
This reminded me of this analysis from another Italian. I think that this should really be a field of study.
Cipolla wrote:
  1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
  2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
  3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
  4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
  5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
These are very good rules for any individual, company, or country. Noting rule 3 that stupidity has a technical definition and that it comes in degrees. It doesn't refer to disagreement, lack of overall comprehension, or imply lack of intelligence (rule 2).

ThriftyRob
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by ThriftyRob »

I love the Cipolla quote. So useful – I wish I'd seen it about 40 years ago! It's a resource that reinforces the power to make tough decisions.

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

February Update

We are settling in great in HK.
We absolutely love the area where we decided to live and, so far, we've only experienced the best weather of the year. So life has been good.
The kid is growing nicely, we can tell he really wants to walk soon. Some of the kids his age already do walk (he's 1y 2 months) but most don't. He'll get there.
I'm super happy because he seems to be picking up english with his first words. We know he'll get to learn italian sooner or later so no biggie.
His favorite words are Car and Dark (when he gets into his room to go to bed).

We were coming from a very stressful 12 month period (child, pandemic, move overseas, bigger role at work etc) and it had an impact on my phisical health.
I have been placing close attention to the number of steps I take per day, with 2021 avg daily so far being above 16500, how much I eat and how much I drink.
I have lost a few pounds in the process and overall feel much much better, but still have a long way to go to get back in good shape. I need to shed another 15lbs to be in good form.

On the money side, I am targeting a SR of around 50% for the year, compared to 65% when we were back in italy. The gap is all due to the crazy rental costs here, and to the way I make my accounting.
I do not pay for rent (the company does), but I calculate my salary as salary+housing allowance and I include the rent in my expenses.
In absolute terms, I plan on saving around 1.5x monthly what I was saving before (that's what really counts).

For the first time ever, my WR on assumed post-work costs dipped below 4% at 3.92%.

I am amazed by the run up in stocks, and I am happy how defensively I am positioned.
I am not sure if what I own is the absolute best choice (most certainly not), but most times it's what you DON'T do/own that matters.
Aside from some small amount in my emerging markets ETF, I don't own any of the shit stocks that do nothing but burn money that will get completely obliterated sometime in the future (think Uber,Tesla, Doordash, Beyond Meat etc).

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Seppia wrote:
Fri Feb 26, 2021 12:44 am
For the first time ever, my WR on assumed post-work costs dipped below 4% at 3.92%.
Talk about jinxing it :lol:
With today's move in the stock market it went up to 4.01%

McTrex
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by McTrex »

Everything ok in Hong Kong, Seppia?

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Well, I haven't been updating in a while, it has been quite an eventful few months.

Work could be a bit better but I could not have hoped for a better last three years on balance, so I cannot really complain.
Life is good, as we're spoiled expats.
We have a bigger apartment than normal (paid for by work), we love the area we picked and we made good connections with a few people living in the area (interestingly, mostly French people which is cool since we hadn't been speaking French for a while).
Only thing we miss is travel, in HK if you leave you have to undergo 14 days quarantine in a hotel when you come back, but it's 21 days if you're not fully vaccinated.
Now we are fully vaccinated (thanks HK for providing this for free), but our son is not (he cannot, he's 1.5 YO), and there's no way we would do 21 days in a hotel room without any chance to get out just to travel.
I guess travel will have to wait :)

We had a big health scare in the family, but luckily it looks like it wasn't as bad as initially thought. So while it's still bad news, the fact that it's not so bad weirdly made us happy.

Health wise things are progressing well, I'm now down to 9 pounds to go to what I consider to be "good shape", shedding 6 lbs since late feb mostly by going to the gym and hitting the stationary bike a lot (it's now almost impossible to walk around a lot as it's hot&humid season).

In terms of money things are great, I got my yearly bonus in late May and we saved 1 year of expenses just thanks to that.
In the last three months I have been adding money into consumer staples (Clorox, Kimberly Clark, 3M) and even added a bit of precious metals (Barrick Gold).
I am not feeling great about investing into anything at this time, so I'm throwing money into the most defensive stuff I know of (suggestions and opinions on the stocks above are welcome, especially GOLD which I picked only because they're the biggest and have no debt).

The issue when saving a high % of our salaries like most do here is that past a certain point of cash allocation I feel like I have to invest into something.
I have 5.5 years of expenses in cash now, bonds are negative and I am NOT putting a single penny in crypto (I just learned through Elon Musk that there's a thing called "cumrocket"? what an effing clown).
So I'm just picking the "least bad" investments I can think of.

Rags2Freedom
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Rags2Freedom »

Good to hear your well Seppia.

Not to detract from your journal but would like to thank you again for your time earlier this year. Glad all is well (and health scare isn't as bad as feared)

Great to speak to another liked minded person who is more than happy to discuss the subject of money, life and Hong Kong. Alot of wise advice and discussions i'm grateful for.

Unfortunately i cant add value to your defensive stock request, i'm sure you recall I was sitting at 80% cash in fear of the market when we spoke. (well thats now at 20% - not great timing but im finally in!)

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Mid July Update

Yesterday I put my wife and my son on the plane back to Italy, where they will spend somewhere between 2 (if quarantine for unvaccinated kids gets eased from the insane "21 day in a hotel" we have now) and 5 months (should quarantine stay the same).
I'll reunite with them in 10 days so that we can spend my vacations together.
In case they remain for 5 months, I will do a couple back/forth on my own, as I still have 2 flight tickets paid for by the company.

It's incredible how strong of a force "comparing with others" is on our brains: travel restrictions and social distancing rules were extremely easy for me to stand while the whole world was going through the pandemic (even, being in a quasi-COVID free place proved to be a morale booster).
Now that I am watching the West reopen, it's really taking a toll.

Doing whatever it takes to stop the spread of COVID was something I understood and mostly supported when we had no alternative, but now that we have safe and incredibly effective vaccines I cannot comprehend what the endgame is.
I mean: if everybody is reopening, COVID-zero strategy will NEVER work unless Country X is ok with having their borders closed indefinitely.
We have the vaccines, they work amazing (essentially bringing down COVID to the famous "bad cold" status), let's vaccinate as much as possible and move on.

Sorry for the rant.

In any case, I plan to live my vacations as if life was (almost) back to normal. I will not be walking around licking door knobs, going to concerts etc, but everybody in our families and close friends are fully vaccinated, so we will take advantage of it: it will be awesome to have barbecues, relatively large dinners etc.
Can't wait to be back in Italy for a while.

In general, it's clear for me that I don't want to live in this state of things for much longer: we will reassess in early 2022, but should HK still have heavy restrictions in place and the rest of the West be fully open, I may channel the power of my semi-FI situation to put life quality over earnings.

I went through a period of relatively high stress at work, and obviously it resulted in me gaining back half the 8lbs I had lost. To me stress = more eating and more drinking unfortunately; nothing really bad but enough to gain weight.
I have this tendency to grow stressed when I sense we are taking what I consider to be bad decisions, so I try as hard as I can to convince the higher ups that we are making a mistake. When nobody seems to listen, I grow frustrated as I know that when SHTF, it will ultimately come back on me.
I've already had a few "told you so" moments this year, but instead of being liberating, being proven right does nothing but add to the frustration.

The good thing is I have mostly put the stress behind me, and the last couple weeks have been good. It's not the work situation that changed, but my attitude towards it did.
It takes me a while, but there is a moment when I internalize nobody cares: at that point I move on and the stress goes away. I call this post-realization state "God Mode", and it usually leads to my best quality of life segments of my career.

Money-wise, I am entering the stage where I almost don't care anymore.
If I bring my current financial situation to Italian expenses (which I think is more relevant as I do not plan to live in HK post-work):
- Sto(N)ks value: 27 years of expenses
- Cash stash: 5.5 years of expenses
- Monthly savings: 3.5 months of expenses

My tentative outlook is to work till 2025, hope there's a stock crash sometime before that timeframe, and then just remove work from the things I need to consider when planning my next steps in life.
2025 is an obviously arbitrary timeline, that I am eyeing mostly because:
a/ I like what I do in the aggregate, so there's no pressure to quit my job.
b/ I would like to have 2/3 years of travel around Asia (mostly paid for by work*) so that I can enjoy the region with my family.
c/ it kinda works with my son's timeline with school (he was born in 2020) as I'd like to be "settled" somewhere when he starts.

But again, being essentially already FI, this is subject to change should we stop enjoying our current life.

Lastly, I signed up for life insurance, so that should anything happen to me, wife and kid's life will be financially covered a couple times over.
For some reason life insurance premiums are constant, and set at the start.
Factors influencing the yearly premium are:
1/ age/other risk factors (the younger, the cheaper)
2/ length of coverage (the shorter, the cheaper)

It was fun talking to the insurer. It went something like this
Insurer: "so you're 41, retirement age around 67... You want to do 25 or 30 years?"
Seppia: "well actually I was more thing somewhere between 5 and 10 years max"
I: "uh? but you'll only be 51"
S: "or 46. Can you show me a simulation?"
I: "but why would you cover yourself just for 10 years! What if -god forbid- something happened to you when you're 52?"
S: "well, I am expecting that if I reach age 51, my family will not need any protection against my death"
It went back/forth another couple times like that, the guy was simply refusing to understand. It looked like he genuinely thought I was doing something crazy and seemed like he was trying to help me make the best decision.
He only stopped when I finally said: "Trust me, I'm not crazy. I just think that by age 51 I will have enough saved that my family won't need the payout any more".
In a way he was smart, because he coaxed me into buying the 10 year one :lol:
Still, IIRC the yearly premium was less than half that of a 20 year insurance. Another proof that financial soundness helps you live a cheaper life.

*ie: most of my hotel nights in vacation are purchased via points accumulated while working, flights are paid with miles.

Bonde
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Bonde »

Thank you for an interesting journal.

Do you plan longer vacations/time off before your son starts school?
We don't have children yet but my thoughts are that I would like to spend more time with them before they start school and will spend 6-8h there during weekdays. When they are in school, I think that I will use some of that time to work part time. But I guess it also depends on how easy it is to get part time work and have well paid it is compared to one's current job.

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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Solvent »

After doing well in 2020, large parts of this region are now really struggling. Thailand has now lost the fight to contain COVID, and Viet Nam is also looking poorly just now. Australia is on edge, it could very well lose its chance to get back to near-zero COVID in this current outbreak. And vaccination rates, for obvious reasons, are nowhere near high enough in these countries to allow any kind of normalcy.

I was really looking forward to getting here to Thailand, with the hope that I'd be able to do some travel in this region. But those hopes are remote now. 2022 I'd say will still be mostly a write-off as far as travel is concerned (I may be able to make a family visit trip... Maybe).

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

@Bonde:
I did not ask myself the question. Due to the pandemic, I have been doing a lot of WFH and little to zero travel, so I've had plenty of time to be with my son.
But I do imagine I'd like to be with him more often that I would be able to compared to my "old" schedule of 50% travel

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Seppia
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Post by Seppia »

Early August Update

I sent DW and kid back to Italy in mid July, and I followed them 10 days later.
The plan is I spend three weeks vacation + 2 weeks working from home in Italy, then, what we do will depend on the quarantine rules in Hong Kong.

Originally the idea was that I would come back to HK mid-september or so, leaving DW and my son back in Italy, and I would come back late November for Christmas, and then we would all go back to HK in December/January.
The idea of being separated for two+ months was making me sad already, but the problem is kids (as all unvaccinated) still had to do 21 days of quarantine in a hotel, which was something I would not have subjected my wife and him to do.

Luckily two days ago the government indicated that kids would be allowed to also do 7 days "only", like their vaccinated+with antibody parents. Then they'd have to do two extra weeks of monitoring at home but, while still hard, it's a lot more bearable.
So if it stays that way, we'd be able to all come back to HK together in early-mid September.

It feels good to be back in Italy after 10 months, seeing our parents and getting back to having great tasting, cheap pizza almost everywhere.
I am already overweight, but I will not hold back during these 5 remaining weeks :)

Most probably, we will vacation somewhere in the mountains, away from crowds.
Then I'll probably do my yearly trip to visit one of my best friends in Sweden, for a few days of camping.

While WFH, I'm extremely proud of my ERE-proof workstation (jn the back, you can see some baby stuff I have to sell):

Image

In unrelated news, my son loves making fun of me:

Image

Image

And of course he's already very good and coordinated at soccer:
Image

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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Frugalchicos »

Congrats on Italy winning the Euro!

Hey, perhaps your kid becomes the new Pirlo or Vieri... then you can buy the Ferraris.

Enjoy your time back home and have a pizza for me!

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Frugalchicos wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:28 pm
Congrats on Italy winning the Euro!

Hey, perhaps your kid becomes the new Pirlo or Vieri... then you can buy the Ferraris.

Enjoy your time back home and have a pizza for me!
Fun fact: I’m probably the only Italian who didn’t watch a single game of the euro: I was in HK and all the Euro games were at 3am or so, which is 200% incompatible with a 1.5yo as you probably know :lol:

I’ll toast a pizza to you and your family only if you agree to toast some cider next time you’re in the paìs bascos!
Last edited by Seppia on Sun Oct 31, 2021 2:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Frugalchicos
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Post by Frugalchicos »

Hell yeah! Sounds like a plan buddy

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

October Update.

Covid restrictions here in HK have been quite a rollercoaster. While we were in Italy, the government changed course again, going from 7 days to 21 days for most countries.
Luckily, Italy was among the few upped to "only" 14 days.
The issue is that the number of rooms in hotels for quarantine did not change, so we experienced a massive availability shortage.

I was able to find a small room to come back on my own quickly in mid September , but the first available two connecting rooms (to have a minimum of space for the baby to roam, he's almost 2yo now and needs to move) was November 15th.
I miss DW and son terribly. It's very, very bad.

There is a lot of frustration within the expat community here, and many are leaving or planning to. I have to say that the draconian restrictions are much, much harder to swallow now that the rest of the world has moved on.
I sometimes watch NBA/NFL games and I can't avoid noticing how great it is to be back to normal.
We will probably hang tight for this winter (it's marvellous in HK), then we will assess.
On one hand, we would really love to have a few years to travel across Asia, but on the other hand I fear this BS is here to stay for longer than we hope.

Luckily, the company seems to be flexible in this regard, meaning I'll be allowed to spend relative large parts of the year in Italy if I wanted to.

We'll see.

On the plus side, being alone frees up a lot of time, so with the weather gradually shifting towards awesome I have been hiking a fair bit.

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