cmonkey's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

No, not quitting the job. We're about half way to FI. We want to move to MN, yes, but just not sure when. As of now, there isn't anything in the area we'd like within a good price range. We'll likely be FI before we find anything we actually like enough to buy, but who knows.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

Milestone!

As of today we have 200K in FI funds. Yahoo!

wolf
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by wolf »

Congratulations to you cmonkey! You are half way there. Keep on saving, (but celebrate a little ;-)

Jason

Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by Jason »

If I read things correctly you went up 10K in two months in a volatile market. Nice job.

cmonkey
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Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:56 am

Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

@Jason and @wolf, thanks guys. Of course, now we are back under 200K a few K. Thanks volatility! :D It's nice to have crossed it. Another couple months and we'll be over for good.

April 2018 Update

We spent 2 weeks in MN with family during April. We had a wedding to go to, but an historic April blizzard closed all of southern MN for that weekend, so we made the trip for almost nothing. It was nice being back up there though. We looked at one house, but it definitely wasn't for us.

Finances were very good, slightly lower than April 2017, so our TTM dropped slightly. This will drop more in the next 6 months.

We crossed 7K in FAI. Yay!

We are starting to have meaningful dividend growth contributions to our FAI. For the year we are at $190.23, which is about 3/4 of a month. April was $74.55

Our Expense to Income numbers are getting closer and closer to overlapping for the first time. I feel like this will happen in 2018, but not until December. My big dividend months are March, June, September and December and I have home insurance/tax payments in all those months except December, so my expenses are higher than the average. My "month 3" number is now $752, and will grow by a lot before December.

Garden Photos at the bottom!!!

Finally, both of us have been busy busy busy having fun outside. It was a very long winter/late spring here in the midwest. We didn't get regular temps above 40F until 2 weeks ago in mid-April. The greenhouse is packed! I built a second bench and have some more changes planned.



Expenses/Savings

Total Spend - $877.51
Total Savings - $7,251.58 ; 89%

Years Saved - 13.23
SWR - 7.56%

TTM Expenses - $15,062.26(- $44.84)
Total FAI - $7,275.02(+ $329.71)

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Chicken Mulch!!

The past couple of years I have thrown most of my grass clipping and oak leaves in my chicken run. Going forward, I'm putting ALL of it in there each year.

Well here is the result! They compost better than I do. I was able to cover 3 garden beds at 2-4 inches deep. Probably about 200 square feet. The soil in our beds is getting pretty good because I've put down organic matter on a lot of them.

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The mulchers! We still get but loads of eggs. We give them to family and sell them at our garden club. And eat a lot of them. :P

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DW has espaliered a couple of old variety apple trees in front of the coop. They are coming along nicely.

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Mulching Lessons

I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when it comes to mulching over the past year. We have huge VOLE problems where we live. Anywhere that is undisturbed and has ground cover quickly becomes infested. This past winter a large chunk of our largest hostas were 90% eaten because they were covered by leaf litter that I didn't clean up.

Last year, I mulched a lot with grass clippings and the voles moved right in as well. So this year all the grass clippings are being composted by the chickens, because they don't work well in the compost bin either.

Wood chips don't work in annual beds! Don't do it! I don't think they tie up nitrogen so much as people think but they make it IMPOSSIBLE to do anything with vegetables. So they are confined to the paths, the hedges, fruit trees and the fruit garden.

The ONLY thing that I will mulch with on flowers and veg beds is finished compost and finished leaf mould. Also, no deeper than 4 inches because then the voles cannot tunnel under the mulch. They have to make entry holes, at which point I can destroy their tunnels and they leave.

The key to vole management is -

1. NO ground cover
2. Keep everything 'disturbed', meaning work the beds from time to time. Vole hate being disturbed and leave very quickly.

I love the idea of no-dig, but it just doesn't work for us for the most part. I am not turning soil over anymore, but I do disturb the top 2-3 inches.


So here is what our beds look like now. I love them.

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I finally have our fruit garden cleaned up after about 3 years of always falling behind. It just needs some more free woodchips. Working from home has given me so much more time!

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I'm a bit behind on my composting operation. I bought a chipper/shredder on craiglist for $100 bucks and will be using it to shred this stuff.

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I have so many flowers in my orchard and I don't even need to tend them! They just keep coming back. :mrgreen:


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Greenhouse!

My second bench. It has helped tremendously and I need to get another built for the other side. I'm also going to build a small plywood cabinet for storing pots, labels, tools, etc...

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As you can see, we go overboard. But we find room for everything! Growing in the greenhouse is going extremely well compared to kitchen growing. No fungus gnat issues yet! We saw a few today and so set everything outside so the wind will blow them away.

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jennypenny
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by jennypenny »

Your garden pictures always make me jealous.

Jason

Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by Jason »

cmonkey wrote:
Thu May 03, 2018 2:47 pm



The mulchers! We still get but loads of eggs. We give them to family and sell them at our garden club. And eat a lot of them. :P

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I never realized how varied chickens can look. I am assuming the red head with the blow dry staring straight into the camera is the hen.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

jennypenny wrote:
Fri May 04, 2018 10:16 am
Your garden pictures always make me jealous.
:( They are supposed to inspire. ;) I don't think my gardens are so great most of the time but it's probably because I see them every day.

@Jason, I'm guessing you are talking about the one on the bottom right? I'm pretty sure he'd kick you for calling him a hen. ;)

After we came home from MN, he kicked me every time I went to get eggs. Gotta move sloooooow.

jacob
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by jacob »

At least he didn't call him a chicken! :lol: (Damn, they all look so young ...)

I strongly suspect I made a mistake by building 4x4 raised beds (still 10) on the lawn instead of just razing one big block of the lawn. Raised beds make it hard to weed (internally) and I have to weed whack around them (externally) because the lawnmower doesn't cut close enough.

PS: Dandelions mixed with old newspaper make for great worm compost food. I learned that worms produce a lot better if some effort is pent on the carbon/nitrogen balance.

Jason

Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by Jason »

So its a rooster?

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

Jason wrote:
Fri May 04, 2018 2:16 pm
So its a rooster?
Yep.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

jacob wrote:
Fri May 04, 2018 1:39 pm
I strongly suspect I made a mistake by building 4x4 raised beds (still 10) on the lawn instead of just razing one big block of the lawn. Raised beds make it hard to weed (internally) and I have to weed whack around them (externally) because the lawnmower doesn't cut close enough.

PS: Dandelions mixed with old newspaper make for great worm compost food. I learned that worms produce a lot better if some effort is pent on the carbon/nitrogen balance.
Dandelions are awesome. I love them. I let them seed on purpose so I will have more. Great for early bees and other pollinators.

Raised beds are alright, but I find the whole process of building them, filling with soil and eventually having to dig out some old soil and replace with new to be too much work. You also don't have native biologics in the trucked in soil (unless it's topsoil).

jacob
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by jacob »

You can always fill the pool with salsa and then .. okay, I haven't thought beyond this point. But it seems like a good initial step?!

A couple of years ago when our tomato+zucchini harvest was outproducing, I'd "perform" the following cooking:

2-4 pints of beans (black, kidney, .. whatever you like)
1 blender full of tomatoes + 5 cloves of garlic. Blend.
1 zucchini (size of a forearm, chopped into 1 cm^3 sizes).
1 large onion.

Proceed as follows: fry zuc cubes in oil in large pot until they start browning, then add onions and keep frying until they brown. Then pour already cooked beans on top (presuming you learned how to get the perfect chewiness) as well as the blended red/now pink tomato/garlic on tip. Spice up according to taste. Goes on top of carbs according to diet.

We ate this for several weeks. Monthly food budget was $50-70 for two adults at the time. Not entirely self-sufficient. I blame the evil cheese. Would have been less and healthier without the evil cheese.

light_bulb_moment
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by light_bulb_moment »

Mmmmm. Evil cheese...

Jason

Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by Jason »

ffj wrote:
Fri May 04, 2018 3:13 pm
@jason

In the chicken world, the roosters are the pretty ones unlike the human world where the pretty ones are females. They will also attack you from behind when you least expect it.
So it's like the 1980's.

Thank you.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

ffj wrote:
Fri May 04, 2018 3:13 pm
@cmonkey

Looking nice. I planted 55 tomato plants the other day, God help me if they all live. ;)
Thanks. Haha, that's a lot. I think we planted about that many a few years ago and have since scaled back a bit. I'm pretty sure we didn't waste any tomatoes either! Hence why we have several hundred quart jars scattered around our kitchen/attic.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

jacob wrote:
Fri May 04, 2018 3:37 pm
We ate this for several weeks. Monthly food budget was $50-70 for two adults at the time. Not entirely self-sufficient. I blame the evil cheese. Would have been less and healthier without the evil cheese.
I sometimes wonder why I cannot get my food budget down from where it is, when we eat so much from our garden. Then I remember this. The evil cheese.....mmmmm...

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

Thinking About Taxes

So it's a given that we'll never pay federal tax again after I retire.

I think I've ALSO figured out how I can retire and pay zero in Illinois State taxes if we stay here for a while, which might be the case.

Illinois gives you exemptions for each federal exemption you claim in the amount of 2K each, so we get 4K off our taxable income.

I can harvest capital losses of 3K in excess of gains and offset our dividend income/IRA withdrawls.

Illinois also gives you a credit equal to 5% of your property tax, which for us would be 2200 * .05 = 110 / .0495 = $2,222.22 in additional income that is tax free.

So we are up to $9,222 in tax free income for Illinois, which is ALSO the amount of taxable dividend income I'll have when I quit. The other 5K I can take from IRA withdrawals and/or capital gains and harvest losses in my taxable account to avoid taxes. When I retire, I'll have about 260K in our single taxable account, which would require (at a minimum) 8K/260K = 3% of the account in the red each year. This seems entirely plausible for an actively managed account invested in individual stocks.

When we have a kid, add another exemption into the mix for a total of $11,222 in tax free income and then I only need about 3K in gains/withdrawals. If we have a second kid, it will be very easy to not pay taxes here.


A Problem?

The only "problem" I think I'll have is that I would not be able to withdraw much from my IRA accounts at this point, since anything beyond my harvested loss amounts would get taxed. When I'm done working, I'll have about 212K in retirement accounts. At 3% this is already earning 6-7K a year. It's reasonable to assume the accounts will increase by more than this.

One strategy is to keep my dividend income from my taxable account sufficiently low enough so as to maximize IRA withdrawals while staying under the Illinois tax radar. When I retire, taxable dividend income will be about 9K, but if I cut my yield in half, I also add 4.5K to the amount I can withdraw.

Another strategy to get the money out is to simply fund my HSA with equivalent withdrawals, but this is still just 7K per year. The transaction should be tax free.

Is it bad that I might not be able to get the money out tax free? They might be in run-away mode!

If we move to another state, this likely won't be as big of a problem.

FBeyer
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by FBeyer »

jacob wrote:
Fri May 04, 2018 1:39 pm
...PS: Dandelions mixed with old newspaper make for great worm compost food. I learned that worms produce a lot better if some effort is pent on the carbon/nitrogen balance.
Are you feeding them only dandelions and newspapers while dandelions are available then? Or are you still adding kitchen scraps?
We've nicknamed our driveway the salad bowl becase we really can't be bothered razing all the weeds growing there. It would be great if we could actually turn it into actual worm food.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by Kriegsspiel »

Well, there are no more exemptions under the new tax code, right? I wonder if IL will take that as an opportunity to wring more taxes out of you?

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