C40's Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
patrickza
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by patrickza »

Your Mexico pictures are stunning. Any reason you didn't stay longer? How about heading further south? My wife and I spent a short time in a campervan in central Chile and Argentina, stunning mountain and lake area. That's what made me want to move into a van when I pull the plug in a couple of years time.

7Wannabe5
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think Bryan means that you maybe should try to think of something that almost nobody has attempted before, since you have the freedom to make such an attempt. Some suggestions off the top of my head:

1) Buy or build a personal submarine and attempt to make a profit from harvesting teeny pearls from the mollusks invading Lake Huron.

2) Recreate the 1897 solar steam engine design of Frank Shuman.

3) Invest in maple syrup leases and spend next spring on northward hike with the season, tapping and boiling over campground fires as you go.

RealPerson
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by RealPerson »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Mar 19, 2018 9:04 am

1) Buy or build a personal submarine and attempt to make a profit from harvesting teeny pearls from the mollusks invading Lake Huron.
I don't know about the Lake Huron part, but a personal submarine has been done. Some Danish guy built a personal submarine, invited a female reporter on board for an interview and then she disappeared. Turned out her killed her, cut her in pieces and tossed her overboard or something. Living underwater apparently does funny things to a person's mind. Maybe Jacob can chime in with the Danish connection. Hopefully not a family member!

7Wannabe5
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@RealPerson:

Egads! Still, I don't think personal submarine dwellers have as bad a rep to overcome as solo van dwellers.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

I definitely like getting suggestions...

I think ~'doing something no one else has done' has no particular appeal to me. I don't have much desire to be special or a trailblazer. I think I have fully accepted that in the grand scheme of humanity my life will be meaningless. Uniqueness and progress are cool, but I don't currently value them enough to spend a large chunk of my life trying to obtain/create it.

Of course, that could change. If I pinpointed some specific opportunity within a realm I'm already focusing on, that could be interesting to pursue. But... in many cases I may actually prefer to learn things that are already well understood and documented, so I can learn them quickly and learn/do a wider variety of things over my life. Also, in general I think I'm more interested in working on the puzzle of how to create the 'best' life for myself (of which, in my current priorities, does not need to include pieces of uniqueness or progress for humanity)

....

People in vans have also recently tarred the vandweller reputation slightly. Remember that guy that went to a baseball field in Washington to shoot up a team of republican congressmen? Yeah, that guy lived in a van.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

Also, if any of you young lone-wolf type single men want a motivational 'day in the life' ERE story, here's what I've done so far:

- Woke up naturally at 7am.
- Made lattes for my room mates before they go to work, wish them a good day, and make one for myself
- Watched a video of a sporting event I missed live this weekend. Had a big breakfast.
- Drove into the trendiest part of the city to spend four hours in the bedroom of a 25 year old woman (who works evenings). Have wonderful sex, lay around in bed talking about life... more sex.... Ask her about a book on her shelf with a particularly interesting title, hear her say it's her favorite book, and accept her offer to borrow it.
- On the way back to my van, stop by the Levi's store to try on jackets. Figure out which style and color I like and make a mental note to buy one online when they are 50% off.
- Go to a park on a hill overlooking the city and spend a couple hours sitting in the sun and reading the book. Look up out at the city, hearing it's continual hum of traffic and whatever, and think to myself "god damn, I'm glad I didn't have to go to work today". Get a text from the girl, thanking me, telling me she has a strong post-sex high and is dancing around her apartment listening to Madonna.
- Duck into a coffee shop for a couple hours to wait out the rush hour traffic before going home.

sky
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by sky »

I am going to move back into my van so that my life might be more like C40's.

George the original one
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by George the original one »

You better tell us what the book is and whether you like it. ;-)

RealPerson
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by RealPerson »

George the original one wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:03 pm
You better tell us what the book is and whether you like it. ;-)
I was thinking the exact same thing. Then I thought maybe I need a van. But after that I assumed it has more to do with C40 than a van. Then my wife told me to wipe that smile off my face and take the trash out. ;) Back to reality.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

How are things going with making money off Instagram and your blog (if you don't mind saying)?

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

George the original one wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:03 pm
You better tell us what the book is and whether you like it. ;-)
It's called "The Second Sex". By some french philosopher feminist lady. I've just read like the first 60 pages (of 600!). Some of the early stuff was written in a way that took me a long time to read (philosophical terms, annoyingly long and complicated sentences). But then I think it gets easier to read as it goes on. It seems good, but, I'd say, fairly outdated now related to my own current personal views on men and women, gender roles, and so on. (By outdated, I just mean very little ideas that are new for me). I think it will get more interesting later in the book where she applies her principles/ideas to specific roles, jobs, relationships, etc.


Gilberto de Piento wrote:
Fri Mar 23, 2018 12:33 pm
How are things going with making money off Instagram and your blog (if you don't mind saying)?
Horribly. I haven't really been trying to though. I've gotten some product placement deals for Instagram. One of them was for a whiskey ad, which I got the whiskey plus money for (like $130), but all the others are just product in exchange for making the ad. It is definitely nice at times, like when I wanted to get sunscreen, and wanted nice fancy stuff that doesn't have shit ingredients, but didn't want to pay $15 per bottle, so I pitched a few companies making very nice sunblock and got a supply that will last me over a year.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »


-------------------------------------------
MARCH 2018
-------------------------------------------


Spending: $674

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WORDS

Been having a nice time up here in Portland. Got a hot little sort of girlfriend that I spend a day or two per week with. Been teaching my friends’ dog how to behave and taking him to play fetch most days. Been making a lot of coffee for me and my friends. I’ve been going to the gym regularly and have made huge progress. I was maybe 140lbs when I arrived. I wanted to get my muscles bigger so I was lifting and eating a lot. I got up to ~163 lbs, and then cut back down to ~153, and was as lean as I had been at 140. So that was a really nice improvement over just like 2 months. I’ve started gaining again in my last couple weeks here in Portland.

. . . . . . .

My mom is going through some life changes. She’s bought a van and asked for my help outfitting the inside. She plans to still have a normal home, and use the van for trips here and there.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be driving 1,700+ miles to Oklahoma where she lives and then doing the van conversion for her. If I had known I’d be doing this, I would not have driven up to Portland. These two long drives have resulted in many miles and a lot of extra gas used. But, it has been nice spending time with my friends and being inside a house and it didn’t cost a ton.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what type of long-term home I’d like to establish. more on this later, but one thing I’ll be doing during this drive to Oklahoma is stopping for maybe a week in Wichita, KS. Houses there are very cheap, so I want to go see if there are enough of the kind of people I like there.

. . . . . . .

I really fucked up on my taxes. I didn’t balance out my capital gains, and ended the year with +$11,000. I didn’t have to pay any capital gains tax, but this bumped up my income from ~$18k to ~$28k, thus reducing the amount of health insurance subsidy I was eligible for. I had to pay back $750 of the subsidy. If I hadn’t messed that up, things would’ve been perfect and my only taxes would’ve been refunds of foreign taxes on dividends, but instead I had to pay back the $750 minus the foreign tax refund.

I know that before I went to Mexico, I looked at my investing stuff, and I don’t know why I didn’t even out the capital gains. Maybe I thought that those would not count towards my income for subsidies.






MEXICO PICTURES

I’ve finished all the pictures from Mexico. I haven’t made a blog post yet, but here are some more of the pictures:

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jacob
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by jacob »

Be careful about the foreign tax credit. Once your taxable income becomes low enough (mileage varies), you will no longer get full credit. This surprised me last year, so I had to make some changes as holding international stuff got too expensive, relatively speaking. Our actual income all things included is higher than median but due to maxing as many tax-deferred accounts as possible and having almost all capital income being qualified, our taxable income is pretty low => foreign tax credit -> 0.

RealPerson
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by RealPerson »

Beautiful photos. What were your favorite towns in Baja? Would help me plan our next visit to BCS.

How is van life feeling for you? I hear that many slow travelers start to tire of the travel after a year or so. I am curious if you are experiencing the same thing. Your talk of building a permanent place to live makes me think that you are looking for more permanency and less vagabonding.

wheatstate
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by wheatstate »

Great pics. Fun travels. Thanks for sharing.

I will be curious how you like Wichita, the people you meet and your review of outdoor opportunities. The lakes are great. Cheney is about 40 minutes west with a cool sailing club, http://www.ninnescah.org/ There is a fun group of kiteboarders there as well. The town has a good riverwalk and Old Town trendy area with some bike path options.

Quick rundown on biking:
Gravel has exploded and is big. Lots of gravel roads to explore. Flint hills are nice. We climb mountains of wind; into the wind to start with a tailwind home. Dirty Kanza 200 in early June in Emporia, KS, about 2 hours from Wichita.
Road has some options, but not huge.
Mountain Biking at Lake Wilson is awesome. It is a couple hours north of Wichita, just off I-70 and worth a camp stop on your travels. I enjoyed this biker/vanlifer's shoutout to the IMBA epic trails at Wilson. He has good perspective and enjoys his biking and travels.
https://freehubmag.com/articles/home-wa ... aig-bierly

Congrats on your mom getting a van and moving your family on the ERE/adventure path.

bryan
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by bryan »

I didn't mean my "boring" comment to be an affront (though it wasn't a joke). It was more like something that BRUTE would say, and you touch on it ("fully accepted that in the grand scheme of humanity my life will be meaningless"). I suppose I was just trying to understand you better. Everyone hooked on and into "the Matrix" seems like an inevitable future, I guess.

I suppose I also admit everything is meaningless (yet nothing is meaningless). So better to treat it with value? One motivation for me is that our forebearers got us here, with a lot of sacrifice, so it would be a pity to "squander" it (whatever that means.. maybe they actually did it all so I could eat and drink all day while watching Netflix? :D).

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPhIW3EF8iU&t=2m07s

BRUTE
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by BRUTE »

bryan wrote:
Sat Apr 07, 2018 5:52 pm
I also admit everything is meaningless (yet nothing is meaningless).
welcome

nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »

wheatstate wrote:
Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:43 pm

I will be curious how you like Wichita, the people you meet and your review of outdoor opportunities......

Quick rundown on biking
Gravel has exploded and is big. Lots of gravel roads to explore. Flint hills are nice......
I'm in Wichita now. :-)

Main focus is checking out the people here. I do have a cyclocross bike along and I'll research Flint Hills. I may do a bit of biking here, but not much, as it isn't all that warm this week and I decided to bring along very little cold-weather riding gear.

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C40
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by C40 »


--------------------------------------
APRIL-MAY 2018
---------------------------------------


APRIL SPENDING: $1053
  • Spent $490 on gas - driving from Portland to Oklahoma City

MAY SPENDING: $217
  • Sold a pen for $300
    Bought hobby stuff: $200
    Food low because mom. (she renounced cooking, but was wanting to eat keto/paleo to lose weight. So she buys most of the food and I do most of the cooking)
I expect to be here with my mom for at least two more months, and my spending should stay low while here.




CHARTS


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My income has been growing pretty nicely. I want to convert more of my mutual funds to higher yielding dividend stocks. I also want to sell more options.

At some point I may take the cash from my pension (like $58k) and invest that all in stocks, which would bump my income some. I’d be all-in on stocks, which I think I’ll be ok with because I’ll be earning other money over the years. If prices seemed low, I’d convert the pension now. But I think I may wait. The pension grows at 3% per year which I believe is better than any other cash-type investments available. One of the reasons I’d like to convert it is for the money to feel more in my control/possession.



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Things are looking pretty good here at C40 industries. Profit! 44% savings rate YTD.




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PROJECT MOM VAN

My mom bought an empty Dodge Promaster cargo van, and I’m converting it into a camper/RV for her. So far, I’ve been doing the design work. There are a lot of decisions to be made and things to think about to get everything to fit right and all that. I’ve been buying most of the parts/materials needed and filling up her spare bedroom and garage with them. I’ll get started out in the van physically this month.

If you want to see what I’ve done so far (not much), it can be found here on my Instagram Story highlight: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highl ... 066174684/

This van is going to turn out a lot nicer than mine but cost about the same for the comparable materials and parts.




WICHITA

I spent 4 or so days looking around Wichita to assess it as a potential place to live. What I would probably do in a city like that is buy a project house, fix it up and live there, and sell it after 2+ years. Since I would/could be there a limited time, the city I choose doesn’t need to be totally perfect.

Wichita seems like it would work fairly well. The house prices are low. The city is ok. Most of it was built in the 50’s or so, after the war, when the flight industry was booming there. So there are a lot of small-ish houses. It’s like 600,000 people, so I believe I would be able to find a fair amount people that I want to make friends with.

It would be a cheap place to get a project house, though the potential profit would be limited because of those low prices. Could be a pretty safe place for a first house project because the house prices there wont go down (much), even in a crash situation.





OKLAHOMA CITY
I’ve been here for over a month. I’m having a pretty good time. Mom lives out in the suburbs on the very edge of the metro area. It’s very Americana here. All spread out.

Dating has gone surprisingly well. My stock is high because of my travel, outdoors stuff, retirement, since I’m so cool and good-looking :-D, because I have many more interests than watching sports, and because my pictures are good (on dating apps.).

I was thinking the pool of single women here, especially over age 25 or 30 would be a lot of christian divorced single mothers. To a large extent, that is the case. But, I’ve been having good results dating so far.

One reason is that I stand out in the sea of men here around my age. Most are very plain, boring, conservative, close-minded, out of shape, and disheveled. I stand out particularly to the more liberal and sex-positive women. Right away after getting here I met a surprising amount of polyamorous, bisexual, open-minded women.

So, I’ve been meeting a lot of women and having a lot of sex. I haven’t found the right one (or two) to be my Oklahoma City girlfriend(s). Dating a lot of new people can be draining, and I’m starting to slow that down and focus more on waiting/looking for the better ones.

Anyways… OKC would also be a candidate city for a 2 year project house.




FITNESS

I’ve done a good job with my body since I started living in these houses. While in Portland, I gained muscle (went from 140lbs to 163lbs). Here in Oklahoma, I’ve been cutting my fat and have gotten quite lean (at the moment, down to 147lbs and leaner than I had been at 140 when I got to Portland).

I’m going to join a gym here in Oklahoma and bulk up again, maybe up to 170 lbs this time. The largest I’d like to get is about 160 when lean (10% bodyfat or so). For me (light bone structure) that is pretty big/muscular and as strong as I have any reason to be.






STATIC LIVING

I’ve been continuing to think about buying/making a static home. I still feel I have some more van-traveling in me while/before I figure out exactly what I want to do. But I’d like to getting it set up, especially if I do an ongoing home/travel mixture.


Here are some of what I’m thinking at the moment:

LOCATION:
  • * Prefer in/near a city of at least 200,000 people. A million or so would make it easier to find my kind of people.
    * For a long-term home base, prefer it to be in the western half of the US
    * For a short-term project, other areas are ok, probably including the south, where homes are generally cheaper


TRANSPORTATION:
* In a larger city, most of the people I’d make friends with, especially the women I date, tend to live near the city center in the trendy/expensive areas. So, if I live out in a cheap part of the city, efficient transportation will be important. (Which is why I’ve been thinking about motorcycles lately - along with that I’d enjoy it much more than driving - especially driving something like my van, which is big and pretty heavy and has a huge 5.9 liter engine that when I press the gas on I am very aware of the comparatively huge amount of gas shooting into it’s engine.)
* If I live outside of the city, transportation is again big. I’d want to not live far away unless I were to set up some kind of multiple location home (like, say, sometimes living in a shed in my brother or mom’s back yard, sometimes living in a shack/tent/dirtbag home out sort of in the middle of nowhere near earth stuff I really enjoy.)
* If I were to live in a city center type area, then transportation would be pared down to a minimum, and I’d strongly consider selling the van.



HOBBIES/SYSTEM/CONNECTED GOALS
Along with the people/relationship stuff, these are what is appealing to me about static living right now. The long-tern travel allows some of these things, but only a portion of the things I’d like to do.
  • * Gardening for food, maybe selling some of it
    * Entrepreneurial/small business things
    * Getting (part-time or short-term) jobs in order to learn things I’m interested in / meet people
    * Having a workshop. Doing things like motorcycle repair/improvements, bicycle stuff, other types of building/fixing/tinkering
    * Fixing up a house
    * Doing some type(s) of photography for money and to improve my skills
Traveling and outdoors stuff does have an appeal for me, but it’s a bit limited in that it’s more on the experiential side, and there are limitations on what types of skills I can learn., hobbies I can pursue, and incomes I can earn.

If I get a home out in the western U.S., especially if I get a really inexpensive, long-term one, I could still use the van to go out on trips of days/weeks/months. If I get into motorcycles, I could have one that I use for going out exploring and camping in a more pared-down way.




Right now, my family’s plans are:
  • * Brother moving to Phoenix (from NC)
    * Mom moving to Phoenix
    * Sister moving back to Denver (from NC)
    * Dad - ? (he’d been planning to move to TN, partly to be close to my siblings.)
Brother and sister both did not like NC, for, I think, maybe picky reasons.

If my brother and mom do move to Phoenix and they like it, they’d be there long term. My sister is always changing her mind, but she may have decided to just go back to Denver and stay there.

I’m still hoping for some kind of family compound. (Separate houses on one piece of land). Brother and mom are the likely candidates for this because they both want to travel a lot in the future but would keep their homes, so, us being together would allow the others to watch/maintain/rent out the vacant home while they’re gone. Phoenix would be pretty good for this, location wise, just since it’s out in the west and Arizona is fun.

….. I think that’s enough of my rambling for now.

BRUTE
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Re: C40's Journal

Post by BRUTE »

how does C40 like the Promaster? a lot of old school van dwellers seemed skeptical at first because it seems to be a FIAT rebranded to Dodge. but the idea of a more affordable Sprinter format seems appealing, obviously.

brute has heard that Las Vegas still has tons of houses <$50k, and is only a short flight away from Phoenix. apparently pretty well-connected airport in general, for a more part-time home base.

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