bryan's journal (bay area, van dwelling, bitcoin, trusted computing, strategist, tightwad, and more)

[bryan]

I figured now may be a good time to take a stab at journaling.

Why now? When I've specifically said in the past blogging feels like a chore and I probably don't have that much to share? Well, I just recently got laid off and I am sitting in the spectrum of "being FI." I'm also open to any advice, feedback!

So I wonder how I should start? I'm don't write good, and I'm worried that I come across as a bit of an asshole/bore/ugh online. It'd be pretty neat if there were a self-editing mechanism built-in (somewhere) where you could read your own writing as if it were someone elses.

Feel free to comment and take the journal off the rails.

[bryan]

Maybe it's best to just begin touching on the current events. From there I could go backwards, forwards, or just share some interesting bits. Blogging is pretty low on my priorities so I imagine if I get busy with anything I will neglect posting here (though I would still have the reddit/ERE forum addiction).

So, currently:
At the beginning of July, girlfriend and I are happy enough with a 1BR we found in Berkeley and signed the lease.

Part of the reason for moving was that we had sort of committed to moving out by telling our roommate that we were thinking about it and agreeing that ta should look for a replacement roommate. Replacement roommate was found quickly and actually everyone was cool if ta moved in immediately and we all split the ~$1500 rent (with one person occupying the den). So for ~$400 I had a full kitchen, ~8m walk to BART (theoretical ~40m transit commute to SF), a backyard, parking space for the van, bedroom shared w/ girlfriend (who also paid ~$400), and generally some nice square footage. Well, anyway eventually the other roommates began asking how our search was going.. what search? So we started our search.

By all accounts, the place we were living in was pretty good (other than a dearth of social life, and slightly long commute for the GF) and I liked the month-to-month lease given that the GF and I were both approaching our own sort of life inflection points (her graduating and first career job and my approaching FIRE). If not for the other roommates (making less income and "needing" the place more than us), we would have stayed. We clearly didn't think it through before making our proclamation of intention to move out. In the end we felt okay about finding a new place since our inflection points were looking like they would be about a year out and we both wanted to be closer to some social life. The previous year I had become quite unsociable, by default.

The GF required we live by ourselves while I required adequate parking for the van. We both preferred being close to some social life and preferably to BART. Most of the search was focused on the Oakland BART stations. If not for the van, we would be living in downtown Oakland, near Lake Merrit, or back in SF.. I considered selling the van.

The spot we settled on in Berkeley has private parking, is very close to Ashby BART (from theoretical ~40m -> ~25m transit commute to SF), Berkeley Bowl groceries, and a library (with tool borrowing!!), and other stuff. The bicycling options look good. Price? $1650 + bills (from ~$450 -> ~$850 for the number junkies following along). So we signed the lease.

About five days later, I got a call and was informed my employer is downsizing and I would be part of that downsizing! Talk about bad timing..

[slowtraveler]

It sounds like your transportation costs will go down in your new location but not by $400 each.

You mention having to find a van friendly space. Living in a van is likely cheaper but it seems you prefer living in a rental. So what inspires you to keep the vandwelling van when you're not vandwelling?

[Kriegsspiel]

I figured now may be a good time to take a stab at journaling.

Why now? When I've specifically said in the past blogging feels like a chore and I probably don't have that much to share? Well, I just recently got laid off and I am sitting in the spectrum of "being FI." I'm also open to any advice, feedback!

So I wonder how I should start? I'm don't write good, and I'm worried that I come across as a bit of an asshole/bore/ugh online. It'd be pretty neat if there were a self-editing mechanism built-in (somewhere) where you could read your own writing as if it were someone elses.

Feel free to comment and take the journal off the rails.

[bryan]

Subsidizing my GF, basically. We've been dating some years. While vandwelling her place was a nice pit stop on my usual migratory loop for a shower, toilet, bed, and home cooked meal. I'm reminded of this verse. Granted, when I listen to music I don't really listen to lyrics. So I'm just learning this song may be about a mistress, muse

So for the last/next year I'm with her helping with rent and bills. She's still working on her degree while working part time. I've been trying to convince her to get her own van and we can live like a couple of vagrants (it's the hip thing these days, to live in a van). She seems more inclined to move into the van with me (she hasn't driven a car in like 10 years..), but essentially on the condition that it's Instagram-worthy (and if you've seen me post elsewhere, it is much more of a barebones affair).

She hasn't quite gotten to the point of being good with financial planning (e.g. opportunity costs of such a long time to get a degree), even if she is pretty frugal (and puts up with my extremities*).

[*]

She is happy to go with me van camping, but having the rental be van-friendly means (hypothetically) I will get it into a less embarrassing (to her, maybe some freaks here would be impressed w/ the Spartan-like conditions?) state within the next year..

Before deciding on this rental, we were also considering renting some commercial real estate (garage, warehouse, or lot) and living in the van there while also starting some van-centric business. I figured it was closer to another year off.. bad timing, I say again!

[slowtraveler]

You say Spartan, I say minimalist and functional.

[bryan]

About five days later, I got a call and was informed my employer is downsizing and I would be part of that downsizing! Talk about bad timing..

The Layoff

So, I am newly unemployed. I got the call after an all company call announced the layoff.

In some ways this news was expected. For at least the last year I have been under-utilized and my cost to the company is high given I am in CA (I was employee #1 in the USA for them four years ago; most of the company is in Europe). More than a year ago plenty of folks in the company have been skeptical about the probability of the company making any profit. There had been turnover of sales people and executives. From the very beginning the potential profit was at the end of the river, where anywhere up-river someone could put up a dam or divert the river. There were times during my employment where I was basically "engineering my layoff" instead of quitting.

Though, in other ways this was unexpected. I had been tactically involved directly in the majority of the company's important projects (subjective and depends on how you want to measure that.. but I can make an easy case with my performance reviews or colleagues'/CEO's opinion). Even during the periods of slacking; my raises were high enough that I didn't look too hard for other jobs. Even if the company planned on winding down, I figured I would be retained since I was a key person in the USA or perhaps our parent companies would absorb some employees.

While employed, this was really a great job in many ways. It was remote work most of the time with occasional tele-conferences with Europe. Occasional meetings with customers/partners in the Bay Area. Almost European levels of PTO. Pretty good insurance and employee contributions/matches. Some week long, month long business travel (a lot of time to Europe!) but never too much; I always took some PTO at the end of the business to enjoy the new places or visit my sister in Spain. Pretty nice paired with van-dwelling: not much pressure for commuting/anchoring or being overly presentable, didn't have to pay rent or bills while out of town. The actual work was hit or miss. Good industry (low level software for security i.e. trusted computing, like Apple's secure enclave or Intel SGX).

The major drawback was definitely a lack of local coworkers. I've been on an island for the most part. If it had been an American company I imagine I would have been put into a leadership position. After the layoff it has been radio silence other than a few close co-workers (no going out for beers with anyone..); you can't say everything you want to say over email/text.

Lots of memories made thanks to this job: moving me out to San Francisco, an amazing bicycle ride on the coast/mountains of France/Italy, exploring some underground nightlife in cities like Paris, Toronto, Antibes, Lisbon, Helsinki, or my sister showing me the very best of País Vasco/Euskadi (note to self, next post share some images!).

Anyway.. my PTO got cashed out and I got a bit of severance (less than expected; still waiting on it to hit my bank account..). I filed for unemployment but the last mail I got it looks like CA is willing to give me $0 (?? will have to look into that). I haven't yet rolled over the 401k to an IRA. I should probably start looking at COBRA.

[halfmoon]

I'm don't write good, and I'm worried that I come across as a bit of an asshole/bore/ugh online.

Plenty interesting so far. Keep it up!

[bryan]

Two Months Unemployed

The time since being laid off has gone by very quickly! I haven't noticed any significant change in my everyday routine since when I was employed. Interesting.. But I am definitely wanting to shift towards a more active and social life than the last two months, year. I'm open to suggestions.

As far as expenses post layoff, they have largely held constant (rent dominating). I've paid for my GF's tuition the last two semesters and we've put it on the expenses spreadsheet as an interest-free loan to be repaid completely. We split rent and bills evenly, but I tend to pay for things when we go out, unless she wants to pay for a round or insists on paying for some reason. She has a full-time (junior) job in her industry but has slowly been working towards getting the degree. She has a lot of debt. So far what we've agreed in regards to her repaying me/others is for her to firstly pay for any bills and then transfer some balance to me such that she always maintains a comfortable minimum amount of money in her savings.

I completed the 401k rollover and just initiated an HSA consolidation. I've noticed that the last six months I've been more lax with keeping my non-automated mint accounts in sync in mint. One reason is being conservative so that my networth does not take a dive in the graphs (e.g. if I update the value of my Bitcoin, I would have to update it again to be lower in the event of a crash..). I estimate my networth to be >$600k.

My cash allocation is very high now given that I had a lot of cash already in my brokerage accounts and had relied on my 401k to be always fully invested (and now that portion is sitting all in cash). My current portfolio allocation is probably closer to a sort of "Larry Portfolio" style which means I have a lot of conservative investments (mostly cash in Vanguard) and a bit of very risky assets like Bitcoin. I'm probably going to leave everything as-is until either next year or renewing some large income stream.

So what now?

I don't know. I've not even told many people I am out of work.

I told one of my friends (a bit of an older mentor to me) that is in the same profession and we met up a few days later. Ta more or less offered me a job (ta is fairly senior, with a team and reporting, on occasion, directly to execs) at a major tech company. Ta mentioned it would be above market compensation for my years of experience (in silicon valley, e.g. high) and the signing bonus would be between 50k-100k, half of which requires staying at least a year.

That would be my easiest path to continue working, but I also have some ins at other companies/people that I've worked with in the past (that I haven't mentioned the lay off to). One solid connection is similar to the first (just less of a personal friend) working at a different major tech company.

The main problem with the above options is that all these large corps are rather notorious for bad work-life balance (not to mention needing to live in SV unless I want to bus from SF).

I could also pursue consulting/contract type work using my connections and niche experience. I could even get some business from my former employer given they don't have any engineering in the US any longer and they were very happy with the way I worked with customers/partners (day after the layoff I received a soft offer to move and work for them in one of the European offices.. I thanked them and declined).

Or I could start off into a new direction, focusing on more interesting/enjoyable projects/fields: learning a musical instrument and singing (and join/start a band?), put my dancing skills to more use than just for fun (e.g. go to classes and get background dancing gigs?), get back into embedded systems or computer architecture, Bitcoin-based or influenced ventures, digital governance, male fashion, van influenced ventures, projects for learning e.g. probability, augmented reality, or machine learning, micro-projects that would make interesting blog posts, or find my life's purpose/passion or the answer to "to what can I devote my life? who will I become?"

Or I could get a semi-retirement job that has some usefulness to some web of goals or is otherwise good in a way other than just providing a bit of income.

After two months nothing has really pulled me actively in any specific direction. I think my default course of action will be to renew designing the van to accommodate two persons for full-time dwelling and complete building it before my GF and I reach a moment of increased location independence (next summer).

If I were single I would probably pull a C40 and move back into the van and tour around for a while, immediately. It's possible that the GF could get remote work next summer.

[BRUTE]

maybe commuting to SV and sleep in the van during the week, then drive back up to the GF over the weekend?

does bryan estimate $600k to be enough to live off in SF? brute would estimate that SF/SV in general would require a much higher FIRE number than most other places, just due to rent.

[bryan]

Commuting for the week (or some flexibility therein, e.g. additionally working from home a day or two per week) is an option but it's just a drag to think of paying the costs while not getting much of the benefits. A big tech company in SV would probably pay for some relocation (>40 miles?) or pay any fees for breaking lease.. It's not an unsolvable problem, just not ideal. Smaller companies (and not so well aligned to my career history) are in the East Bay or SF.

$600k would be plenty if you were single and living in a van for some years or otherwise hacking rent on occasion. ~24k/yr might even mean not having to hack rent _that_ much (probably plenty if you supplement it with a part time job).. Obviously not enough if you want a family or have expensive hobbies/tastes (like living alone).

[bryan]

Social Security tidbit

It might also be interesting to point out that I've hit this point without obtaining the minimum number of credits/quarters worked to receive any social security when I'm older. I can't be exactly sure because the SS site where you can check has identifying info questions to create your account that are too ambiguous (maybe regarding my address? I forget..) for me to answer correctly, apparently. Anyway, I'm not too worried as I have many years to have some earned income to hit the minimum.

[bryan]

I've noticed that the last six months I've been more lax with keeping my non-automated mint accounts in sync in mint. One reason is being conservative so that my networth does not take a dive in the graphs (e.g. if I update the value of my Bitcoin, I would have to update it again to be lower in the event of a crash..).

Well, I guess I've had the opposite "problem"!

Bitcoin

Been a big fan of Bitcoin from the moment I learned about it in 2013. It took a day or two to see the huge implications, and then another few weeks to see even more. After about a month you begin to see the flaws, limitations, and negative implications/drawbacks. Today all of that is still true (and pandora's box is most assuredly open), but the experiment has been a wild one. For instance, engineers in arms have rage quit or started their own competitors over a difference of opinion and direction (e.g. use cases); governance has been hairy featuring techno-tyrants vs the capitalists (and oh yeah, also the mob with flaccid pitchforks..).

Flash forward to current day.

I find it interesting that the doubters think Bitcoin is in a perpetual bubble (been at least 4 years now?) and haven't wanted to even bet $100 on it, whereas you have hedge funds willing to bet millions.. Again, cash-settled futures should be quite interesting.

The rise has been pretty crazy for the emotions. The first rise in 2013 was crazy as well.. losing sleep watching the ticker; but things really settled down after that crash. Hitting 7, 8, 9k was nice and expected and I mostly didn't mind (clearly I didn't go all in when it was pennies or a couple bucks..)*; but once it hit 10k, I started thinking about options to decrease my exposure. Especially since this rise in price has been exponential in the short term.. I started thinking about tax implications and how to optimize. Meanwhile the price is going up $1k each day ... flashbacks to 2013. Eventually I just realize that in the last X hours, the price has already gone up 15+% and basically paid for my taxes.. so I should just figure out how much to divest and get moving!

[*] funny how I had friends that went through this same thing in 2013, and if instead of being smart and taking some risk off the table ("I can retire and travel and do what I want") they had stayed in, they would be looking at insane amounts of money.. Wheaton Levels of Capital/Risk and all..

For now I've cashed out >$100k with not much thought to strategy, other than selling the coins that I bought at the highest prices (to avoid some tax)*. I've also looked into donating Bitcoins to my own Donor Advised Fund to avoid tax completely for my cheapest coins and to get a significant (~30% of my AGI) deduction**, but I'm not so happy with how the DAF provider's bitcoin donation process works (basically they treat it like some crazy complex foreign asset*** that takes a few days to handle, as opposed to a very liquid asset e.g. foreign check or a stock). Vanguard Charitable is still in the "actively looking into it" phase.

[*] apparently part of the tax bill is supposed to do away w/ Spec ID? Only allow FIFO or AvgCost?
[**] because this year may be the last foreseeable year where itemizing makes sense.. might as well
[***] the guy on the phone literally said it was an art.. cmon man! It's more liquid on GDAX than most stocks on NYSE! Shit's automated too (they use Coinbase, apparently)!

It looks like I won't be able to contribute BTC to the DAF until next week. I could donate BTC directly to a charity, but I don't feel confident that I want to do such a large donation in one year, you know? Then again maybe that would give me some nice perks w/ the charity? Also, you can name the DAF a fun or interesting name! At least CME got delayed a week (if my theory of a Dec futures price crash is correct).

I've been looking at the exchanges' trade views much too much the past few days.. the initial part of the sell I did was for a pretty good price (the procrastination worked in my favor!) but I didn't think to set some limit orders for overnight, in the event of a run-up (and of course BTC hit its all time high that night while I was sleeping..). I have a few limit orders in place in case it runs up again.. but I'm trying to now really fine-tune my plan of how much I should divest now (stay within 15% tax LTCG, at least?) versus next year (who knows what the price will be... at least to harvest some gains? Will I want to sell more than the 0% LTCG or have any other income?).

The common advise seems to be 1) get FIRE money completely out of BTC, 2) sell off 20%-50% of BTC, and my own advise: 3) if you were 5% allocated and now over-weight, shift to a ~10% allocation.

Opinions welcome.

[halfmoon]

Re bitcoin: I'd go with option 1, but I'm at a different stage of life (as discussed in the Greed thread). Is it possible that you're obsessing a bit on the bitcoin issue because of your uncertainty about career/retirement options right now?

Re employment/retirement/lifestyle options you're considering: it's pretty easy to be frozen by too many options and just drift along until something pushes you in one direction or another. Maybe it would help to list them with pros and cons; this sometimes helps me to clarify what matters and what is just societal chatter in my head. If you have one overwhelming desire/dream you want to fulfill (though I'm not seeing that in what you wrote above), this seems like a good time. Life tends to get more complicated as you age. The girlfriend who wouldn't mind living in a van now could well develop into the wife who wants children and stability (as could you). You're obviously a smart, resourceful guy who shouldn't have trouble doing something for money at a later point.

[giskard]

I have a feeling your journal is going to be very interesting. Looking forward to more.

[bryan]

Van Life

Are there particular bits about a van build that everyone here would like to see? Plenty out there already just showing pictures of the process.. A couple things that came to mind were measuring before/after sound and thermal insulation performance.

I recently spent the night in SF next to a small homeless encampment. Woke up to the sound of municipal workers clearing the sidewalks and a couple cops on escort duty. The folks in the tents got about a ten minute warning to clear out before the dismantling and trashing began. Tough luck if you were grabbing a cup of coffee/breakfast or already at work.. Luckily for van-dwellers, we mostly just have to watch out for height/length/residential/street sweeping parking restrictions. Pretty tough situation for everyone involved (couple pedestrians really gave the workers an earful about stealing from the homeless, etc). I figured I would wait out the cleaning crew, but after about 15m I said screw it and set off for breakfast nearby. The cops and crew saw me getting out but didn't seem to care.

I'm also reminded of one instance of a systematic prejudice against nomads: just about impossible to open bank accounts with only a POB or PMB. Other services don't do so much verifying of addresses.. I haven't tried forming an LLC yet. For the driver license, only South Dakota (from what I know) is nomad friendly by not requiring a residential address (you just sign an affidavit that you will live in SD after your travels, basically, and provide a SD mailing address to serve as your address on the license) and allowing registration renewal online. I suppose most folks just use an old, family, or friends' address?

Culture Shock
Adjusting to urban vanlife was pretty easy. You get a good routine to pee, poop, shower, wake up, avoid traffic, park easy, etc. Most of your life remains the same. One big difference was where you spend your free/down time. Instead of being at home on the couch, you will probably be out at bars, cafes, libraries, or events. It was net-positive for my social life (since I was always seeking things to do), with the big drawback being lacking any de facto community roots (like running into the neighbors or going to the same stores, bars and staying abreast of everything local). I considered parking in the same areas repeatedly to achieve a community feel, but in the end I preferred the flexibility.

Well, that's not much culture shock, is it? Not at all. It was the REVERSE culture shock that hit me hard. When I moved in with the GF (not in the city!), I don't think I left the house for at least a couple weeks. And even then, it was just for groceries. My life turned into a lot of Netflix, Reddit, and some occasional remote work. It felt like another few months before I even noticed (or probably the GF noticed) and obligated myself to get out. Even now, after we've moved closer to the city, the same sedentary patterns are holding (I only get out for certain scheduled obligations). On the other hand, the best part of stopping the vanlife was having a toilet 24/7 where no one might knock on the door right after you start.

GF and I will make a go of living in the single van together around July. We will definitely have a toilet in the van

Homemaking
Since I haven't been working for about six months, I've taken over most homemaker duties. We still do laundry together or seperate as needed, but I end up doing most of the dishes, straightening up, grocery shopping, and vacuuming. We take turns cooking but my meals are usually more involved.

We've had a frozen turkey since Thanksgiving taking up space in the freezer (pretty sure my dream home will have a walk-in or long chest freezer!). It was roughly 33¢ per pound. I baked it a couple weeks ago (and made a bunch of side dishes) for just the two of us and we are still eating turkey sandwiches! I have faith we will get our money's worth by the end of this week, though . Other than just turkey plates/sandwiches, we also like hot browns (it's just an open faced sandwich, isn't it?), curries, and turkey curry salad. Was thinking of doing turkey pot pie but probably won't happen. Have enough frozen turkey stock to last a few months and a little turkey fat.

Bitcoin
I've posted on other threads as far as my thoughts and observations on crypto-currencies go. For my PF, I cashed out a good deal in December and also cashed out some into my own Donor Advised Fund (aka a charitable deduction). So basically option #1 from before. I'm not sure if I want to do a fancy graph and analysis of my assets over time, etc, like others.. but for now I'll just say my capital gains tax bill was higher than most peoples' salaries! I paid Q4 estimated tax to get over the amount of income tax paid in 2016 (thus I should avoid an underpayment penalty for 2017) and plan on paying the rest in a month or two. I still hold some crypto-currencies and probably will hold unless there is another parabolic rise (not itching to sell if prices hold or fall). Main reason I cashed out some in 2017 was good sense learned from a similar parabolic rise (and then fall) like in 2013 and of course that it secures some level of FIRE for myself.

[BRUTE]

Are there particular bits about a van build that everyone here would like to see? Plenty out there already just showing pictures of the process.. A couple things that came to mind were measuring before/after sound and thermal insulation performance.

there is still a lot of variation in most van builds, so brute would be interested in a general overview.

[sky]

I question whether a van is big enough for two in an urban environment.

[bryan]

@sky, we'll try a month or so without giving up the apartment just in case. I think a his and her van would be better, but the GF hasn't driven in about 9 years. Either way I think she'll have to give it a go.

[bryan]

Vacation

I went skiing for the first time a couple weekends ago!

Another couple invited us to share expenses at a ski resort and we politely accepted. The lodging, gas, groceries, and meals would be about $150 each. The actual skiing would require some additional rentals/purchases, like a lift ticket, skis/boots, maybe a lesson, and snow gear. Deciding on this cost was a tougher choice, but ultimately we figured it'd be dumb to go and not ski..

The local sporting goods store already had their snow season stuff on 50% sale so we picked up a few things (gloves, socks, balaclavas, wool ski socks). The ski pants were quite expensive so I decided to try finding them at thrift stores. Luckily the last thrift store I tried for the day had two older nylon ski pants* for $5 each that fit. We already had other stuff like jackets, sweatshirts, under armour, leggings, head/ear bands, sunglasses.

[*] I hate ski pants! Too baggy for my tastes! I was close to buying some different nylon pants that were much more form fitting but was worried about snow getting into the boots and freezing my feet.

Before we found the ski pants, I was jokingly saying we could just duck tape ourselves up with some garbage bags or buy some sauna/sweat suits Before deciding to just wear our sunglasses and go without helmets (GF actually ended up renting a helmet and using friend's spare goggles), I was saying we could just wear our cheap painters safety goggles and bicycle helmets (GF was having none of that)!

We ended up buying the combination one day lift ticket, lesson, ski rentals for $180 each. The actual skiing was pretty fun, even if we didn't get to go on any decent hills. Our friends taught us some skiing bits and the lesson helped a bit (though for future reference, a more private lesson is probably better). The season has been dry, but it began snowing around lunch time to provide a little layer of snow to make things easier, more enjoyable. We ended the ski day by taking the main chairlift to the top and got a great view before leaving for the day. So total cost about $350 each. Next time will hopefully be a more frugal affair.

Outside of skiing we mostly hung out drinking and eating. We had a hot tub to enjoy during the evenings (one of which it snowed about an inch while we were soaking). The trip home was pretty interesting; watched a lot of cars failing to get traction on inclines.

Portfolio Check-up
I've mentioned elsewhere that I usually re-balance a handful of times a year (on a date chosen ahead of time at random). This worked pretty nicely while I was working/accumulating, but now that I don't have income, I need to figure out how strict I want to be with portfolio allocations. For now, Bitcoin gains, recent early retirement, and the "everything bubble" has thrown a wrench into my will to re-balance.

Below is a pretty rough breakdown of my portfolio, percentage-wise:

• 62% cash (vmfxx/banking/other)
• 15% international public equities (pretty even between emerging and developed)
• 5% US public equities (relative to S&P500, tilted Basic Materials and Industrials at the expense of Tech and Healthcare)
• 1% US bonds (mostly TIPS)
• 1% commodities
• 1% REITs
• 2% precious metals
• 11% cryptos (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, monero, zcash)

Having now done the math for the first time since losing the job (i.e. cashing out 401k which was mostly domestic public equity due to tax considerations) and realizing some Bitcoin gains.. I'm leaning towards implementing a DCA re-balance strategy over the next year or two, even with the "everything bubble". I'm fine with the cryptos and international equity, but should probably reduce the cash to like 30%-50%.