Seppia's journal

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

Post by Seppia »

All the furniture inside is Ikea, so quality is average, but it is all new.
The kitchen design is well done (as you may imagine, I pay attention to that :) ).
I would love it to be gas based (cooking with modulable fire > every other option), but it's forbidden in new developments.
This is induction, which is the second best option.

jacob
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by jacob »

https://www.amazon.com/Decluttering-Spe ... 0718080602 is mainly about breaking the "fill every single space with clutter"-habit or as I call it "stuff-tetris".

TL;DR - For a given space, say a book shelf, there is a finite number of books it can hold. If you own more books than that you are not allowed to put them elsewhere. You have to get rid of the least desirables. In the book, she has basically resorted to donating everything rather than playing the "sell it on ebay"/"find someone who will really appreciate it"/... (to recover the cost or build stuff-connections) -game, even for expensive stuff. It's kinda goes against ERE fundamentals in that sense, but it's certainly moves clutter out a lot faster than setting up and administrating an "eBay"-room (alternatively closet or stack of boxes).

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

interesting thanks Jacob, I'll look for that book

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

+1 regarding the balcony on the first apartment.

My great-grandfather supposedly disembarked from Trieste.

Nice scooter, too, looks efficient. Makes me wonder.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Scooters are more fun than driving. I really like both places, looks like you can't go wrong =)

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

@MI: Trieste's beauty comes in part from it being so multicultural. Used to be the main port of the Austro Hungarian empire, then used to be part of Yugoslavia, then Italy etc.

Small engined scooters are the main mean of transportation in Asia, where there's lots of people and not too much money to waste in gas.

I actually wanted to get this thing, which is the number 1 most sold motorbike in the history of mankind:
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But it's not sold in Italy and has to be imported, which defeats part of its purpose (being stupid cheap), so I got the Nmax which was born to be a "premium" scooter for the Asian market (so cheaper, small engine, focus on fuel efficiency etc)

Frugalchicos
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Frugalchicos »

“For Italians, on the other hand, it's the exact opposite.
My recipes pale in comparison to the average grandma's, but even the little I understand about saving and investing is pure gold in my home country.”

I feel just the same buddy. I try to be quiet about what we are doing when I go back home. Nobody really understands investing or ERE or anything that is not an average life...

Astra
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Astra »

Seppia wrote:
Mon Jun 04, 2018 3:00 pm
Small engined scooters are the main mean of transportation in Asia, where there's lots of people and not too much money to waste in gas.
I was surprised to see so many electro-scooters in China. In many cities, motorcycles and moto-scooters were actually banned to relieve the smog problem, and you need a special license for cars, so the e-scooters have popped up like crazy. Not to be confused with the child-toys, the e-scooters I mean look something like this (and will seat a family of 4 if you really want to):
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And cheap too: new ones will cost you 400-600 US-$, used as low as 250$! Shame I could never find these in Europe...

Frugalchicos
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Frugalchicos »

I had one electric scooter like that when I lived in China. It reached 35km/h, not very prowerful. I guess the engines/speed have improved in the last decade?

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Kriegsspiel »

Electric scooters seem great. I was all psyched up to buy this one when I realized they aren't sold in the US. Taking the battery out of the bike and bringing it inside to charge, like a cell phone, is a great feature.

Astra
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Astra »

@Frugalchicos: True, they are not very strong, but I rarely found any chance or need to go over 35 km/h anyway in the city. You definitely notice a drop in power if you have groceries or a second person on the back. If I needed to go very far, I took the bus (they have electric buses in Shenzhen too!) I also think they got stronger recently, but people still ride the weak ones, because it's just enough to get to work or errands. Walking through Chinese cities, it seems Katie Melua has to adjust her song :D

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

Being a homeowner

Last Friday we finally completed the purchase of our apartment.

Since both DW and I have been pretty much always on the move, and we are about to leave again (first to eastern Italy in Trieste, then probably in a year or so to Asia), the idea was to purchase a small, low maintenance place in or around our hometown Como.

We ended up buying a newly built apartment, constructed in what used to be a farmhouse or something similar: they kept the outside shell, and re did everything inside.
It is located on the hills around the city, no more than 15 minutes by bus to the city center.

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Our apartment windows are the one with the small balcony and the one to its right.

We will not be living there, and while this may seem like an idiotic purchase, there are a few reasons for it.

First, both our families are there, my wife’s sister is there, and both my sisters aren’t far either: one lives in Milan, the other in Switzerland not far from the Italian border.
Wherever we end up in the future, this will be the one area where we will always have an attachment.

It was also a “wealth management” decision.
First of all, the italian real estate market is very low outside of the cities, so it’s not a bad time to buy.
Secondly, I am now in a phase where I also start to think in terms of downside minimization instead of upside maximization only.

Having a small, paid for in full, new apartment means that in case of an unfortunate event (job loss, terrible recession, etc), we would be able to survive* by moving there, without a job of any sorts, with approximately half of the current dividend income from my stock holdings.
I really wanted it to be new because it should mean a good decade or two without need for major maintenance.

*by survive I mean: putting food on the table every day, move around only with feet or a bicycle (close to zero travel), have all basic necessities covered but not much else.

Cool detail: since we purchased it while it was being built, we were able to customize it to our likes.

The apartment itself is simple but has everything that we need and more.

You get in and you find yourself in the main room.
Entrance door:
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From the entrance, turn to the right and there’s the place for the kitchen
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Turn to the left and you have a small corridor, and the stairs to the mezzanine
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The small corridor leads first to the bathroom
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And second to a small extra room
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If you go upstairs instead it leads you to where we will sleep
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Plus there is a sort of walk in closet
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Total square footage is around 550 (all rooms are very small), but it’s basically a two bedroom, so more than enough for us and eventual guests.

The apartment will have a big impact on my savings rate this year, but thanks to the fact that I’m plying the game in relatively easy mode I expect to still be able to save around 40% of my take home pay (if I don’t count the “equity” part of the house as a cost obviously, otherwise I would be negative).

classical_Liberal
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

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Last edited by classical_Liberal on Fri Feb 05, 2021 12:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

@ffj: this is how apartments are usually sold in Italy. Kitchen and lights are on you.
DW is along care of it while I’m out having fun in Japan for work :)

@cl: thanks! The only things that have to be paid are property taxes (very low in Italy on the 1st apartment you own, I should be paying around $800 per year tops) and the “condo fees”.
These fees are usually minimal: I should be paying maybe $50 per month, which will pay for cleaning of the common areas and basic maintenance.
There is nothing like the $1500 per month that one often sees in NYC or Miami, unless you own a gigantic and ultra luxurious apartment.

Jason

Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Jason »

That's very nice. I like how they kept the outside shell. Keeps the charm. Is that bell tower on your roof?

So you are not renting it out? Is that because in Italy they end up never leaving?

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Not going to lie.

Tempting to head back to America, work a few years, save up a couple hundred thousand, then move down to Southern Europe.

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Seppia
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Seppia »

@wanderingscholar
It’s more or less what DW and I did. We built our careers in France then NYC, made most of our money in the USA, and got back here in Italy.
In Italy, outside of the cities of Rome and Milan, one can live a comfortable life with $1500 per month.
Buy yourself a place and with $1500 per month you are living large

@jason
No lol the bell tower is from the church that sits a couple buildings behind ours.
It starts ringing at 7am so it’s ok for us (we are morning persons even on the weekends).

We will maybe rent it out via Airbnb or something, I have a friend that manages other people’s properties as a side gig* and he would do that for free for me, in exchange for me having helped him out setting up another side gig of his**
Absolutely no regular rent as it can be a complete nightmare in Europe.
Laws here protect the renter in absurd fashion, ie it took a friend of mine 1.5 years to evict a guy who wasn’t paying rent, plus he almost destroyed his apartment and could not do anything about it.
Shockingly, it’s very hard to rent an apartment in Italy unless you have great references.
That’s actually good for those who are honest/polite/clean, because landlords will do everything to keep a good renter happy. That’s why we always rent.


*quite a good side gig actually, he’s bringing in $7000 net per year without doing much

**he makes small batch craft beers, good ones actually (a rarity, I think 99% of microbrews suck), and once his business got a bit bigger than just friends and a few bars he needed structure.
I helped him run it more like a real business, with P&L for each product, found him a local distributor so he can focus on sales, etc

In unrelated news, I was in Kyoto recently for work and had a half day free so I visited a couple things.
Loved it.

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Dunkelheit
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Dunkelheit »

Hi Seppia, your new apartment looks great! The building's fachade gives it an historical appearance. I was also a little bit disappointed when you said the church bell doesn't belong to you :mrgreen:. Are you planning to live there in a more or less nearby future? If we visit northern Italy we would look for it in AirBnB.

It's a shame what you told about the problems with the tenants, although unfortunately I can understand it very well living in Spain. It must be some extended plague in the mediterranean countries where the tenants enjoy more rights than the landlords/ladies. Here someone can break your door's lock and you can't put kick him out if they are a family with children, they "own" your shelter.

Kyoto looks amazing, too! Never been there, I didn't imagine it would be so green. How often are you traveling to Japan? When are you coming to Spain, bro? :)

Have a nice week, master ;)

Jason

Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Jason »

When they build where I live, they deforestate and think later. In those pictures, they turn everything into a big garden. That picture where the structure in the background melds into the tree line, that's cool as Fonzie.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Seppia's journal

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Congratulations on the apartment Seppia, very charming.

I echo @TheWanderingScholar’s sentiment.

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