C40's Journal

[C40]

Yeah. I travel more weeks than I work in the office, so during those travel weeks I leave the van at the airport and fly somewhere. When I work at the office in St Louis, I've started parking and staying in a neighborhood close to work, and not going home again until the weekend if it works out. I do my laundry at home still, and when I'm near the house, I use the toilet and shower.

I like living in the van. It's not as comfortable as a house, of course. It's not really missing anything compared to a house except a toilet and shower. I sometimes spend a few days in a row in a certain neighborhood. St Louis has a lot of different unique and interesting neighborhoods so it's been cool spending time in those. I've been learning about the city much quicker than I ever did while in the house. When there was a big all-day festival for Cinco De Mayo, I just parked the van nearby and then I could come back to it when I needed a break from all the weirdness or when a big rain storm came.

I am definitely looking forward to being rid of the house so I can head out of St Louis though. Not that I don't like being in the van in this city, but just that I'm pretty certain I'll like being out of the city some and being out in Colorado with my family there and all the mountains. And -- with NO WORK!

[cmonkey]

Seems you're living the new American Dream.

[C40]

heh, yeah, the Vice news "American Dream", which is probably similar to the Portland hipsters American Dream. As long as I'm living my own dream, life is good

[C40]

----------------------------------------
MAY 2016
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TOTAL SPENDING: $1,624

• * House sale prep: $239
  * Dentist: $370
  * Sold stuff: ($376) (Couch, desk, watch, plants)
  * All other spending: $1,389

HOUSE IS SOLD

There is one ongoing thing that has a few thousand dollar tied up. I expect to get all of that back. The sale price was $20,000 more than I bought the house for. After taking out commission, repairs negotiated with the buyer, closing costs, and the money I spent on home upgrades and repairs, the net profit is just over $3,000. This is about a 2.5% yearly return on the money I had into the house principle. Considering all the time I spent on the house, it’s a really poor return as an investment. I didn’t buy this house as an investment though.

Overall, I’m glad I bought the house. It took a lot of work to maintain and improve it, and it was stressful and a burden once I was ready to leave. But it was nice having my own separate building to live in, and having the yard for a garden and the porch to relax on, and having the basement to store stuff in and make a home gym in. It was also great having the room and driveway to work on the van.

I do feel a weight has been lifted from my shoulders now. I feel lighter and freer. Now I need to decide what stocks to buy with the proceeds. That will take me a while.



NET WORTH!

Well, check it out folks, I’m rich now.



Some of the increase was from more money being in my H.S.A. than I had estimated. Some was from selling my house for more than I expected, and the rest was savings from income.

When I added up the numbers and saw the total, I jumped up on the bed in the hotel room and swung my arms around. But overall I feel pretty much the same. When it’s such a long time coming and was a sure thing, it feels good the whole way coming and good when I hit this goal, but no extreme elation.



WORK? QUIT?

You may have seen the other threads where I was considering whether I should quit now, and how to negotiate part-time work with my employer. I tried for part time – working 2 weeks a month and having 2 weeks off. They have been very accepting and seem cool with me doing that for the rest of the year.

Right now, I need to decide between a couple options (one where my work hours and salary are reduced by 50%, and the other where they are reduced by 25% and I use my vacation time for the other 25% and work the same 50% of time). There are small difference with benefits. I think the later option gets me a little bit more money.

There would be flexibility in which weeks I actually work. My schedule would probably look like one of these:
- Work every other week
- Work two weeks in a row and have two weeks off

There could be other combinations that all net out to 50% working. These will be nice as they would allow me to have to get back to airports less often than working every week. After working 2 weeks, I could leave the airport and go pretty far and not have to worry about coming back until 2 weeks later.

The transition will be a little awkward – figuring out when it starts and how that changes the factory visits I already have planned, and figuring out where to book my flights from (knowing where I’ll be a couple weeks in advance). I think once it gets going, it won’t feel very complicated. But I do ask myself almost daily “why don’t you just quit now? You can probably only do this part time thing for 6 months. What’s the point?” Well, the two good things would be: another ~$25k+ added to my net worth, and tapering into retirement.

I expect that when I have this much more free time, I’ll get used to not working, and I’ll be thinking about hobby income a lot more – and ramping some of it up. That may cause me to quit after just a couple months of part time work. I do feel daring and adventurous right now but I also think a couple months of “am I sure?” time will help. Over the last year I was just thinking about the van and the house and wasn’t getting ready mentally to quit.


CHARTS



Got almost $800 in dividends in May. Average monthly dividends are at $516/month (with 30% of my NW in dividend stocks). Once I invest the house sale proceeds, dividends will bump up to about $715 per month (with 42% of net worth in dividend stocks)









Hopefully that special spending will be out of the way for a while now..

[Egg]

Awesome work C40. I've been following along your journal now and again since I joined this site, so I feel excited for you to see you hit a milestone like that. Great work on the graphs too!

[C40]

Thank you Egg

[C40]

Oh yeah, and another thing: (that I forgot to include in my monthly post)

I've completed many of 2016 goals recently:



That includes hitting my June YTD savings goal already at the end of May:

Woo HOOO, Yeah buddy!!

I did a quick update to the expected savings amounts for the rest of the year. It was a very quick guess trying to consider the reduced income of working part time along with (I hope) reduced spending from living in the van now.

Those goals were mainly for the first half of 2016. Now I need to set new ones. I don't really need a savings goal anymore. Here are some off the top of my head:

- Invest the house sale proceed money
- Decide a strategy for how to invest my retirement account money once I quit and convert it to an IRA
- Start a fitness regimen; both cardiovascular and strength training. (I need to find/refine some bodyweight strength training exercises)
- Ramp up my current hobby income method (?)
- Start seriously learning Spanish? (So I'm comfortable going into Mexico/Central America) (I probably wouldn't start until I quit entirely)
- Develop new Bushcraft/Survival skills(?)

[Standard Staples]

So what ultimately made you opt out of the vasectomy? Do you think you may want kids in the future? Or did you just not feel like going in for the snip? I know you had discussed this a little bit previously in the journal, and you seemed pretty locked in, so I'm curious about the change of course.

Love the charts. You're killing it and on the final push toward living your dream.

[C40]

I'd say I'm even more certain now that I don't want to have kids. I do still want to get a vasectomy. I haven't done so yet mainly out of laziness and that getting it done hasn't been a high enough priority for me to actually do it. I haven't opted out of doing it. I'm hoping that I check on it and maybe get it done while I'm still working part time and have my insurance. I need to check if my insurance even covers any of the cost

[BRUTE]

everybody wants to be FI but nobody wants to lift them heavy weights!

[C40]

Huh? I am FI. Yeeeeah buddyyyyyyy

[zarathustra]

congratulations, @c40!!! you made it! finalement!

the part time gig sounds nice. i wish you could take a year off and THEN do the part time gig. can you do that? however, i know you are not like me, and just want the "working" part of your life to be in one big chunk and be over. if that's the case and it doesn't bug you that much to keep working a little, then stay until you know for sure you are done!

as far as coming up with the fitness regime goes . . . you could do bodyweight-type crossfit-y things (HIIT), get some rings. cycling. hiking. parkour! lol. sorry about your squat goal. man, it would be hard for me to give up powerlifting now that it is a serious hobby of mine that i get immense pleasure and relief from, and i think that's important for consistency. i don't enjoy other "exercise-y" things other than hiking and cycling and oly lifting. when i was traveling in asia it was tough to be consistent about the lifting so i had to let go of strength goals and just try to maintain when i could.

[BRUTE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1AjtX3C5j8

[mfi]

A copycat in La Jolla, CA with solar setup and tinted windows. Regularly spends nights in my neighborhood on city streets. Great weather year-round. Walking distance (less than a mile) to 3 grocery stores, UCSD libraries and shower facilities, mass transit, and the beach.....

[C40]

I've quit my job.

So I had set up a part-time working arrangement with my employer. I was going to work 2 weeks per month. Last week was my first week off. As I had time to slow down and think more, and to do more research on locations I want to spend time, and to assess the current situation, it felt clear that now is the time to quit. I just sent my boss a resignation letter saying my last day will be July 15.

I don't have much time to write now, but I will write pretty soon about my thoughts and plans. I'm excited!!

[George the original one]

Woot!

[Dragline]

+1

[7Wannabe5]

Yay! Go have some fun!!!

[sky]

Congrats!

[rube]

Excellent! Let the next chapter start soon.