spoonman's Journal

[thrifty++]

Spoonman I dont quite understand what you mean by dealing with huge tax gains. I dont have capital gains tax where I live. Does that mean you get big tax bills from gains in share prices and you had to offset that liability by making some capital gains losses through selling?
If you dont mind my asking whats the biggest sort of share price losses during your grab and hold that you had? I have one stock sitting at minus 17% on purchase price urgh

[spoonman]

Does that mean you get big tax bills from gains in share prices and you had to offset that liability by making some capital gains losses through selling?

Since we expect to be below the 15% bracket, we won't have to pay cap gains taxes....however, we may have to pay back some of the healthcare subsidies we've received (don't want to get into it, but I believe when it comes to healthcare subsidies, the composition of your income doesn't matter, it's the total income). That's why I've tried to offset some forced cap gains.

About the size of share price loss, it depends how you view it. Since my -average- cost basis for all my stocks is very low, I virtually have no average loses right now. That's the benefit of having started back in 2010. But when you look at individual batches of shares (or tax lots), then I do have some sizeable paper loses on my energy holdings, most notably Chevron, which has one tax lot with a paper loss of about 22%. Although I'm watching the energy sector closely now, I am not sweating these paper losses so much right now because the dividends have been coming in.

[spoonman]

@thrifty++: Btw, I forget that you are not in the US! I should have crafted my response differently =(. But basically, the cap gains I realized this year are not tremendously big but I was still motivated to offset them a little.

Btw, -17% on purchase prize is not necessarily bad if they company fundamentals are intact. It just means you can keep buying that company at a lower price. That's what I was rooting for all along during my accumulation phase.

[thrifty++]

Thanks for your learned widsom Spoonman. Yesterday just as I was stressing about the stock price being down it unexpectedly suddenly paid out a massive dividend ! lol. Can't believe I got $150 dividend from $4k worth of stocks!

[spoonman]

#147 12/18/2015 -- Καλώς ήρθατε στο Κύπρος

You’re probably looking at the title and saying to yourself, “it’s all greek to me”, well, that’s because it is! It means Welcome to Cyprus. That’s right, we’re gonna be spending the winter months in the greek side of the island of Cyprus.

Since we entered Europe on a tourist visa, we could only stay there for three months. Furthermore, we are required to leave the Schengen area for 90 days before being eligible to come back for another limited period. Coming to Cyprus will kill two birds with one stone: we will spend 90 days out of the Schengen area while avoiding the cold European winter.

Additionally, we’ll get the chance to relax a bit...think of it as a vacation from our vacation =). Europe, especially Barcelona, was a high octane experience. In the coming months we’ll get to take it a little slow and reflect on all the awesome things we did in Paris and Barcelona.

Since it’s currently not the tourist season in Cyprus, apartments are very cheap. We’re renting a one bedroom apartment with a huge balcony and only a 5 minute walk to the beach for only $450/month. It’s the largest place we’ve rented outside of the US so far! All thanks to the miracle of geographic arbitrage.

We already hit the beach. The photo below shows a local beer I tried at a nearby beach bar.



I’m getting a real kick from all the greek words around us. I’ve been solving equations with greek letters for years, so it’s neat to see those letters being put to use in a real language =).

[cmonkey]

This is great! You guys really are scooting around the globe. Although you probably didn't pick the best winter to spend "away from the cold". It was over 60 degrees at my place in Illinois today. We had storms roll through and a tornado warning to boot! Of course, Europe might be completely different but I think El Nino has heated up the entire northern hemisphere this winter season.

That beer looks quite tasty.

[spoonman]

@cmonkey: Cyprus strikes a good balance between proximity to Europe and warm winter weather. Yesterday it got as high as 75 degrees and no humidity. Despite the high daytime temperatures, it does get cold at night. It feels like we're back in LA, can't complain!

[spoonman]

#148 12/31/2015 -- December Expense Blurb, Dividends, and 2016 Outlook

For the month of December we received $1885 in income. That amount includes $25 from credit card cash rewards.

We spent a total of $1865, so finally within our budget. The fact that our Cyprus rental is only $450/month is helping us deploy some dollars to the food category, which busted our budget in October and November. As promised in previous months, we’ve been able to address the budgetary sins committed in Paris and Barcelona. It feels great to finally catch up with our budget.

So, how ‘bout them dividends?

When we started 2015, our annual projected income from dividends (in our main brokerage account) was $16,576/year. I am pleased to announce that as of 12/31/2015 that number has increased by 6.6% to $17,673/year, so only a little bit short of a $1200 bump for the year. This will allow us to reward ourselves with a $100/month “pay increase” starting in January. That may not sound like much to working folk, but what matters here is the percentage increase, which is much higher than your typical annual raise at work (hell, you may even call it a promotion). Without dividend growth, we would have had to invest around $35K in order to see that kind of bump...so yeah, we’re happy to see that dividend growth is doing its thing as predicted.

Outlook for 2016

The coming year will bring its own set of challenges, namely the continued weakness in the energy sector. I will be more than happy to we see another $1200 bump for the year, but that amount may be lower if conditions in the energy sector deteriorate. However, I am confident that other great companies in our portfolio will more than pick up the slack.

We almost have 1.5 years of FI experience under our belts, we’re no longer n00bs. As always, the greatest weapon we have at our disposal is frugality, so as long as we have that I think we’ll be just fine in 2016.

[IlliniDave]

I was bypassed when the wanderlust gene was passed out during mid-1964, but still find your story enjoyable and encouraging. I hope 2016 is a rewarding year for you!

[GandK]

@spoonman I always enjoy your journal entries. I'm so glad you guys are enjoying your retirement. Your lifestyle looks a great deal like what my husband says he wants for us someday. Although I'm not convinced, I love sharing your words with him and I love the discussion that follows.

[spoonman]

@IlliniDave: Hah! Yeah, we're doing what we can to quench our wanderlust. I don't want to have any regrets after we settle down. Best wishes for 2016!

@GandK: I'm happy to hear you guys are enjoying our adventures. That's one of the benefits of sharing stories here, people can have a look and decide if its their cup of tea or not. Happy new year to you and your husband!

[cmonkey]

So the DW and I watched an episode of The Tick on youtube last night. I had never heard of it until the DW explained what your avatar was. I must say it was very fun to watch. We watched the uncommon cold episode and the brainchild episode. I picked out an anti-consumerist/anti-corporate line in each of them and really enjoyed that! I think I'll be watching the rest when I find the time. Ah, the 90's.

How is Cyprus treating you? It is gonna be 1F here tonight with -20F windchill.

[spoonman]

@cmonkey: Ahhhh, The Tick...one of the best things that came out of the 90's. There were a bunch of silly jokes and cool stuff in the show. You should watch the Chairman episode, it's just hilarious.

Cyprus is good, the daytime temperatures have been in the mid-60's. It does get cold at night, but it's not a biggie. We're just taking it easy and catching up with things.

[spoonman]

#149 01/13/2016 -- Fantastique! Exhibition at the Petit Palais

A while back I said something about writing a comprehensive post on all the cool museums we visited in Paris and Barcelona. Well, um...I’m not going to do it. It’s waaay too daunting a task given the high volume of awesome stuff we saw. Plus, most of it is stuff that people see when they go to Europe anyway. Instead, what I’ll do is highlight one temporary exhibition that we were very fortunate to see while in Paris, a type of collection that you don’t get to see very often.

The exhibition is called Fantastique! and was held at the Petit Palais, a museum of great renown and history. The Petit Palais has a free permanent collection that is free to the public, so I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Paris. I could write a whole post on the architecture of the building alone, it’s one of the most beautiful structures in the city.



The exhibition featured the art of the so-called fantastic in the 19th century from two separate sources: European lithography/etching and printed art from Japan. The latter was highly priced in the 19th century and was part of a wider artistic movement called Japonism.

The first part of the exhibition was called Kuniyoshi, Le Démon De L’Estampe. I think it’s fair to say that Utagawa Kuniyoshi was an original mangaka because his works are credited with influencing the development of modern Manga. Below are some shots of some really cool Kuniyoshi prints. It features badass samurais fighting demons and monsters.




The second part of the exhibition was titled L’Estampe Visionnaire, de Goya à Redon and featured a bevy of beautiful gothic-fantasy prints. As you may have gathered from previous posts, I’m all about the macabre and gothic. The print below is by a Spanish artist named Francisco de Goya, who got the ball rolling on the whole artistic movement with his awesome “El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos” (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters).



The prints shown below were produced by a number of renowned artists in the 19th century, namely Dore and Redon. I've stared at these prints (and many others) for hours at a time!






Right now I’m really getting off looking at the prints by Redon because he specifically made their interpretation ambiguous. I find that his style fits my personality well on many different levels.

One of the attractive aspects of print art is the small format, which makes it very portable and even viewable on a tablet in their native scale. I’ve been able to appreciate lots of prints on my tablet and not worry about the encumbrance of paper. Of course, nothing beats looking at real prints, but it’s a tradeoff I’m more than willing to make while on the lam.

If you like the images above, I really encourage you to visit the exhibition website, which has a bunch of images available to the public.

[cmonkey]

Chairface, ahaha! He actually has a chair for a head! This show is fantastic, it fits my personality very well.

Those are some interesting paintings by Redon. I'm not sure I could stare at them for hours...they make me a little uncomfortable actually especially the last haha.

I like El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos, that is really neat.

[spoonman]

I just remember than one scene when Chairface is calling out the letters that he's writing on the moon: "Gimme a 'C'"...."Gimme a 'H'", "Gimme an 'A'"

I got a little lazy while writing the post, I should have had a commentary along with each one. Redon's is the last one, the cyclops. Many of his etchings have creatures staring up at something.

The three above Redon's are by Dore. Two of those are scenes from Dante's Inferno.

[cmonkey]

Well that's explains why there was a 'CHA' on the moon when Brainchild starting pulling the moon into the earth. I should watch them in order!

That puts it in better context actually and more enjoyable. I read the Inferno back before college and enjoyed it.

That huge eyeball though....

[spoonman]

That huge eyeball though....

Ahahahaha! Yeah, Redon's got a thing for huge eyes, they appear in several of his prints.

[spoonman]

#150 01/19/2016 -- Life in Cyprus

We’ve been in Cyprus for about 7 weeks and we’ve achieved everything we came here to do: slow down, relax, and catch up with our budget.

Balancing the budget has been straightforward because our low rent has liberated lots of money, as our January financial numbers will show. Additionally, we haven’t been eating out all that much, so our food expenditures are way lower than in Europe. Well, our culinary adventures haven’t been all that exciting partly because the local restaurants serve mostly British and foreign cuisine (English breakfast is delicious, but there’s only so many of those I want to have). There's a couple of restaurants that we plan to check out soon, I think they will be more representative of true local stuff.

Groceries here are a bit on the expensive side, probably 20% higher than in Europe, but surprisingly the price of beef is like 50% lower, so in the end the amount we spend on groceries is about the same. Wine is still quite cheap and very good, their local red wines are a delight.

One of the chores that’s markedly different than Europe and North America is drying clothes. There aren’t any laundromats around here, so we have hang our clothes to dry in the sun. So far that hasn’t been too terrible because our balcony is huge and gets lots of direct sun in the morning and early afternoon. Sun dried clothes feel very different, however, but it’s alright.

Aside from the occasional walk to the beach and through town, we hang out mostly at home. I’ve been catching up with some videogames I’ve been meaning to play for years (Final Fantasy series, in case you were wondering). We’ve also watched quite a bit of Japanese Animation that has been sitting in our queue for months. So yeah, lots of indoorsy stuff.

With the coming of January the weather has been less predictable, but soon we will get some more sunny days, which will allow us to explore the town a bit more. We plan to visit an archeological museum and hit up some more ancient sites. It’s amazing the stuff they’ve dug up, so we very much look forward to that.

[cmonkey]

Sounds like a great time. The DW enjoys anime movies actually, we watched Howl's Floating Castle last week. I normally am not too into it but I really enjoyed this one.

Along those lines, have you ever played Eternal Sonata? If you have an old xbox 360 or PS3, its worth a play through!