cmonkey's journal

[Riggerjack]

It astounds me how a certain form of management enjoys tracking, to such an extent. And then I think of how the time and expense of tracking is never broken out in the tracking. Then, it all makes a kind of sense.

Now, when that form of stupid comes up, I wait until such morons boss is around, and ask how they want to break out the cost of tracking. This usually results in "I'll get back to you on that". And then steadfast avoidance of me, and my team.

For me, that's a win.

[jacob]

It's the management version of investing (long) in PFE and MCD at the same time. The foundation of the US economy.

(This Thursday must be "cynical day")

[cmonkey]

I brought this up when we were introduced to the project planning agenda. I pointed out how we're going to be logging 1-2 hours per day of admin time due to all this. The response I got was to log the time under the actual project that I'm planning.

I will be in fact logging at least 2 hours per day admin. They hate that.

There has been a tremendous amount of procrastination on the part of our team but now we are practically being dragged kicking and screaming to actually implement this efficiency model. The guy running it for us brought up 3 times during our first stand up meeting how we all hate this but we are being forced to do this by { insert manager 3 levels up } and so just need to deal with it. It's a really poor excuse for an initiative.

I have to add stress, but re-read that 200 page pension document. Pay particular attention to early retirement discounts and early severance. Pensions are usually geared towards a Early retirement of age 55, with many years of service. In my case, even when I get my "points" leaving before age 55 means leaving about 3%/year under 55, and even though I will FI before I have my points, leaving only 1 day before is a 60% reduction, and 2.5 year delay of benefits.

Just read carefully. Good luck.

I also wanted to bring up I looked through the pension document more. My company has 3 different plans depending on when you were hired. The cash out early option is only available to new hires after 2014. I was hired in 2008. The earliest I can get anything from my pension is age 55 and then only as an annuity. No cash out at all. So that is just the cherry on top of a pretty bad week.


Thankfully I have therapy in the form of renovation work. It really helps getting your mind off your troubles.

I have bedroom 2 fully drywalled. I ran out of drywall on Tuesday so it took a couple days longer than it should have. Now a week of mudding. DW is painting bedroom 1. She should be done by the weekend, so this weekend we'll be moving everything we packed into our living room into the bedroom. Then more tearout!

I also have the wall built for our laundry alcove and have it nearly finished and ready to paint. Probably 2 more days.

[cmonkey]

(This Thursday must be "cynical day")

You might blame the full moon for this. Both DW and I have noticed that full moons make us crankier and I tend to not sleep as well. Who knows if there's anything to it.

[jennypenny]

(This Thursday must be "cynical day")

You might blame the full moon for this. Both DW and I have noticed that full moons make us crankier and I tend to not sleep as well. Who knows if there's anything to it.

LOL ... my posts yesterday (especially in the pre-nup thread) would definitely qualify as cynical.

You've piqued my curiosity about the full moon and moods. I'll have to pay more attention. I never sleep well during a full moon anyway, mostly because I have a glass ceiling over half of my bedroom so moonlight floods the room if skies are clear.

[FBeyer]

...I have a glass ceiling over half of my bedroom so moonlight floods the room if skies are clear.

I don't think I've ever heard a #firstworldproblem as gross as this on the ERE forums!

Cmonkey: With regard to kanban optimization.
As far as I know, plenty of software teams have great success with it. Are you all such unique snowflakes that you could not gain anything from it, or is it actually a sound system, if only some of the administrative things relating to the system were toned down? Do you know the psychological idea behind it, do you know if any interaction between your team and administration higher up will go more smoothly now that you can all document what you're actually working on? Have you read about kanban yourself or has it been imposed on you and now you're resisting out of instinct?

One of the things I've heard, maybe wrongly so I don't know yet, is that systems like Kanban actually address in some manner(citation needed) work overloads/worker deficiencies and so it becomes incredibly visible to management when a team of kanban developers are overworked/understaffed.

'just trying on my yes-hat here

[cmonkey]

I don't work on a development team, so there is that. I work in infrastructure support, so we manage/maintain and also upgrade software/hardware for users higher up the business.

I am fully aware of what kanban boards are supposed to do. I used to be a developer. They do work great for developers, where works is constantly progressing/changing. Server work is completely different. The goal of managing an infrastructure environment is to get it as stable as possible....and not change! This is easier said than done when you have weekly deploys going on by your development team. Despite this we have managed greater than 99.5% uptime since I started on the team. We are regarded as one of the best teams in the entire infra org.

The biggest problem that I (and we actually) have with this is that our team functioned well before these changes. No delays in any projects going on. We are hella hard workers. This is just change for the sake of change "because....progress!!".

[FBeyer]

Then, can you gather actual evidence, hard, cold, analytical evidence that the asymptotic effect (not just results during the teething stage) is adversely affecting you? Can you PROVE that uptime has fallen? Or whatever tickets you deal with are unresolved for longer than they used to?

[cmonkey]

Nah, we only started the meetings this week. I doubt that will change as a result of this.

I also doubt that this will enhance throughput of tasks either. It's mostly about visibility of the work we are doing to upper management. Under the guise of actually increasing productivity.

This is also coming from a guy (and a team) that throws a hissy at any/all change. So there's that too. One of the main reason I moved into infrastructure.

[cmonkey]

Bedroom 1 is fully painted and is complete for now. I still need to do the trim work and put outlet covers on but that will come later. For the time being we are now moving everything from our living room into this room. We'll work on this tonight and start tearing apart the livingroom tomorrow I'd guess.

Bedroom 2 has coat 1 of mudding on which takes a couple days to dry. I think tomorrow it should be ready for coat 2. We should have it painted by Sept 1.

If our renovation was a 3 act play, we are beginning act 3 now! Act 1 was the stairs/bathroom, act 2 was the two bedrooms and act 3 is livingroom and dining room. Act 3 will go a bit quicker because we are not changing the layout of either room, and there is no plumbing or tiling to do.

We are really excited to be moving on to the living room and dining room because these two rooms are the most in need of a revamp.

[cmonkey]

Ruminations on Expenses


Lately I have begun shifting my creative energies into my next obsession, which will replace my mental obsession with renovating our home. We are entering the last phase of it now and it's basically just a sprint to the finish line over the next 2 months. I don't need to think about it much more.

My next obsession will be focused on our expenses, namely lifestyle expenses, or the things we do routinely/regularly. Monthly bills are a good example (internet, energy, etc...) but also things like chicken feed and cat food. Neither of us has a problem with impulse spending. I really don't remember the last thing I bought on impulse. Over 95% of what we spend on is lifestyle. So the lifestyle must change, but not to the detriment of comfort.

I made a list in a previous update of things I can do and have started doing them already. I called up our internet provider and got our bill set at 37 per month. It was previous 52 dollars per month and was set to go to 62 per month. Now we are not on contract so it will stay 37 indefinitely. Unfortunately this is as low as we can go without going back to dial up internet, or just going without.

This might not seem like a lot per month, but it means a whole heck of a lot in terms of how much money we need to save to fund that expense. Rather than 62*12/.03 = $24,800, we only need to save 37*12/.03 = $14,800.

A whole 10K knocked off our goal simply for making a phone call !


I have made a up a 'sample' budget based on what our expenses would be if we did implement my entire list. It suggests that we can get close to 10K annually, which knocks over 100K off of the amount of money we need to save.



Taking some stuff off my list, here is how much we are going to save annually and how much less we need to save in total because of these changes.

Cheaper cat food - 300 annual / 10,000 total
Eliminate Garbage - 296 annual / 9867 total
Cheaper Internet - 300 annual / 10,000 total
Eliminate TracPhone - 224 annual / 7437 total
Takeout 1/Month - 514 annual / 17133 total
Grocery 180/month - 737 annual / 24587 total
Drive less - 300 annual / 10,000 total
Eliminate Garden Expenses - 1200 annual / 40000 total
Use less energy - 300 annual / 10,000 annual

Total - 4171 annual / 112,024 total


This is all well and good, but actions speak louder than words. Many of these can be done straight up. Others take lifestyle changes, particularly energy usage.

Our largest expense change will be in the 'garden' category. The plan here is not buy anything for our gardens unless it comes from money we make by selling seeds in our etsy account. We currently make about $200 annually without lifting a finger other than to process the order. When I can put more effort into this, we'll make more.

The most ambiguous change will be using less electricity. I suspect that cooking is taking a large portion of this and I have some ideas for reducing our cooking electricity. Other things include disconnecting our attic fan (which isn't beneficial at all) and unplugging our basement fridge.

The 'drive less' is going to be accomplished by not running to the home store for renovation stuff anymore. Cheaper cat food will be accomplished by not buying premium food anymore ( a relic from our 'nothing but organic' days ). Garbage will be eliminated next year once our renovation debris is gone. We are just going to burn our garbage. This will also serve to motivate a more garbage free life. We already recycle more than we throw away. I am also going to eliminate my tracfone plan and just use it as a data device on wifi. DW is going to pay for her own with her craft money.

There are a couple other things we can do as well - reduce chicken feed costs by letting our chickens free range and also eliminating my metro costs once I am not working.

[Gilberto de Piento]

I like the way you've priced out the changes by the total amount you will have to save to fund the difference. I've been finding this helpful too.

Cheaper cat food - 300 annual / 10,000 total

I think really cheap cat food can cause stones/crystals in the cat's urinary tract. This can be dangerous for the cat and will cause large vet bills.

Eliminate TracPhone - 224 annual / 7437 total

If you decide you still want a phone Republic is $10 per month plus tax (Maybe $144 per year). You will probably have to buy a new phone though. I've had TracFone and Republic and Republic is much better.

[cmonkey]

@Gilberto thank you. I really like seeing it that way too, you realize the full impact of even small changes.

Ugh, urinary crystals. That brings back bad memories. We buy 'holistic' cat food for 40 bucks for 20 pounds so it is really expensive. Despite this, Monty did get urinary crystals like you brought up, so it's not just cheap food that causes it. I bet really cheap food would make it worse. I'll have to do some research...

The problem with Monty though is that he never drank water even when we put it out for him. We now force him to drink by putting his food into water and letting it soak. He loves it and hasn't had issues since. It's a better alternative than the prescription food the vet tried to sell us. I actually did a ton of research on the issue when this happened and the consensus is that it's feeding mostly dry food as opposed to wet food that causes it. So we tried that and it's worked.

For the phone, I never use it to make calls. I have a work phone so just use that. Even that is rare. Very introverted here.

[BRUTE]

brute wasn't happy with Republic. their phones only work on their network, and the service was kind of crappy.

very impressive chart/savings work!

for energy, is cmonkey still using the dryer? hanging clothes up to air dry takes only a minute or two when taking it out of the machine, and is much easier on the fibers, too. it merely requires an area that has enough air circulation. outdoors is great if there's sunlight. cmonkey can put up a string to hang the clothes from and just keep some clothes hangers on there. shirts keep their form very well when air dried on hangers.

[cmonkey]

@brute, thank you! I am rather chart obsessive. I've made another one recently as well.

Yes cmonkey is still using the dryer albeit not as often as the average I'd say. Thanks for adding another item to my 'to do' list. Lifestyle changes are where it counts!

[GandK]

Awesome spreadsheet.

+1 to air drying clothes. We have two of those collapsible drying racks. One washed load of clothes fills up two racks. With a household averaging 4.5 folks, we wash about one load per day. Everything is dry by the following morning. We seem to be saving about $25/month doing this. Assume you'll save about half that per month since you have half as much laundry, which means your roughly $12 each drying racks will pay for themselves in 2 months. Only down side is the racks sitting out (absence of Feng Shui feeling). Well, and in your case, the cats may play with the dangling clothes.

Another energy idea: aim for a smaller fridge in your kitchen. This is one of our goals now. Pare down our refrigerator needs by tweaking our food choices until it makes sense to get a used, smaller, needs-way-less-energy model.

And can you drop trash service and dispose of it yourself? We did this when we had a house. That doesn't make sense for everyone but it was great for us. Not only did we save money, but we became way more mindful of our waste disposal habits.

[cmonkey]

@GandK, thank you I think making spreadsheets is super fun. I think I have over 20 tabs in my excel book.

The fridge idea is a great one and one that I had thought of. My idea is to sell the dishwasher, buy a mini fridge with freezer and put the fridge there. Benefits include - less food waste, less energy usage, money in pocket from selling the old fridge and the dishwasher, space for a pantry where the large fridge was.

That idea has been vetoed. For now... If (no actually 'when') the fridge breaks, I will insist on getting a small one.

For now we are keeping trash service because of 'trash mountain' in our garage. I thought of renting a large dumpster for the renovation debris, but its cheaper to just keep service for another 6 months and remove it weekly. Once it's gone though, we'll burn our garbage and non-burnable (batteries, etc...) will be disposed of at work I think. A small bag here and there won't be noticed.

[GandK]

My idea is to sell the dishwasher...

You only get to promote that idea if you're volunteering to wash the dishes instead.

[BRUTE]

washing dishes really isn't that big of a deal. brute has always done his dishes by hand, even when having a dishwashing machine. it takes about a minute per meal at most.

[jennypenny]

FYI ... dishwashers set on air dry use less energy than hand washing.

I use a portable clothes line (this one but only paid $45) so I can use it outside in nice weather and put in the sunroom in bad weather. It doesn't fit a sheet. I use a curtain rod for that.