classical_Liberal's Semi-ERE

[Dave]

C_L,

I read through your journal over the past couple of days and have to say it was really cool watching your journey from the beginning to this point. Congrats on your recent decision and all of your success! To reiterate what others have said, it seems like you are in an incredibly strong position as a result of the combination of your financial assets, nursing skills, and ability to pick-up new income sources if necessary, relative to your cost structure.

Onward!

[classical_Liberal]

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[classical_Liberal]

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[7Wannabe5]

More importantly though, I’m concerned about the rest of my life. I have a blatantly obvious, and enormous, time and energy sink! I waste immense amounts of time and energy “recovering” from the previous activity, and/or “preparing” for the next. At present, I'll guesstimate I waste 25% or more of my waking time and energy stuck in this rut. I have this feeling that if set up correctly, life can be designed with complimentary activities, which be used together in such a way as to avoid this problem.

Well, IME, what works best is not so much complimentary activities, but rather having a "kit" that consists of solid core with modular flexibility. A good model is a well-appointed kindergarten classroom. Small children are very energetic and they have short attention spans, so in the course of a 7 hour school day, they might switch activity focus 14 times! Since children this age are also very frequently engaged in imaginative play that mimics adult activities in most simple form, the same basic modules would also serve for most adult activities. For simple instance, you must have something like a sturdy table at comfortable height for standing or sitting, and you must develop the habit of clearing it between activities. A spacious sink is also important, and the fact that the sink disappears from the standard classroom by late primary age, except for the art and science rooms, is one of the first steps towards the specialization inherent in our educational and career system. This is why some people are able to earn money by organizing events where adults drink wine and paint.

I think costuming is also very important in terms of motivational energy. Quite a few 5 year old girls will arrive at school in the morning dressed like a princess (fancy dress, fancy shoes, fancy bow in the hair), but they will also wear athletic shorts under the dress and pack a pair of gym shoes in their backpacks, so they are ready for action. I think it is not a good idea long run to always wear the same minimalist uniform, because this practice may subconsciously limit your sphere of activity, but strong core of some kind will likely improve flexibility. For instance, if your bottom layer is something you could wear to yoga class, then it is easy to throw anything from overalls to a flirty little dress on top. Just having to change clothing in between activities can consume a good deal of motivational energy. So, doing something like keeping your overalls hanging on a peg and your clogs on the floor in the room by the door to your garden will increase the ease with which you will transition from work to weeding.

One of the downsides of my recent foray into ultra-minimalism was that I found I was "wasting" a lot of time having to roughly create my "well appointed kindergarten room" from scratch in different locales.

[classical_Liberal]

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[FBeyer]

Fuck! If only there were other ENTJs around, who've been in a similar situation before, with an education that deals with sorting that kind of self destructive shit out, then you'd be in a much better spot.

Well, sucks to be you I guess...

[7Wannabe5]

Gotcha. You just need to think in terms of natural cycles rather than metric totals. For instance, the difference between "Drink 48 oz. of water each day" vs. "Rehydrate myself at least every few hours."

Two 12 hour shifts in 36 hours of work like unto contract nursing or substitute teaching is brutal. One compromise I made in order to be able to tolerate working more this spring is I am only accepting assignments in affluent districts. So, I get less of the altruistic feeling of "making a difference" and less of the adrenaline buzz of dealing with chaos, in exchange for better ability to intermittently meet my own self-care needs through the course of the day.

The plus side of a job which requires a good deal of hustle is that it can be relatively easy to intersperse healthy physical activity. For instance, I could easily choose to log 10,000 steps or do 15 minutes of yoga with a class of third graders or work on my arms by getting 5 year old children started on swing set.

If your GF's love language is Words of Affirmation, you could also keep "in touch" during brief break at work, thereby reducing necessity to engage right when you are desperate for solo down time, or if her love language is Physical Touch, you could physically engage on very basic level without need to mentally engage. I get a lot of mileage out of Floppy Doll mode in my relationships. Acts of Service can be readily combined with other frugal activities such as baking or bike repair. Gifts and Quality Time relationship needs are obviously the tougher ones to fulfill when simultaneously busy and frugal.

[Jin+Guice]

My first observation after I started consciously semi-EREing was how fucked up working actually is. At the time I was doing the rough equivalent of 3 12 hour shifts a week. I always lost the 4th day to recovery and spent a good portion of the day before I went back to work preparing for the week ahead. So 4 days off was actually 2.5 days off. That's when I decided to go from part-time in training to PRN after training.

I really can't tell you how different your life is when working for pay is not the major activity of your life, but simply an activity you engage in. It's really wonderful, but it takes some time to get used to actually having control of/ being responsible for something like 80% of you waking hours. It also takes practice to be able to anticipate when you're going to be tired and need a day of rest, what projects are worth doing, how often it's worth working (for and not for pay), when you need social time and when you need alone time. Working 24 of 36 hours more than ~twice a year is an insane way to live.

[classical_Liberal]

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[classical_Liberal]

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[2Birds1Stone]

I just reread your thread since the post on April 7th, and I want to encourage you to make those baby steps towards your semi-ERE goals. Even if you can't settle on the home base, knocking out some of those other things on the list (doctor, dentist, etc) can all slowly happen as you work through this final contract extension.

How far are you from that $310k?

[classical_Liberal]

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[classical_Liberal]

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[MidsizeLebowski]

Those 3 charts are fantastic C_L, your buckets approach/stop-loss point for the worst-case scenario seems to filter most of the risk inherent to the semi-ere strategy. It's hard to imagine you sitting idly by as things tank for 5 years straight without lifting a finger to sure up your position as well. Looking forward to seeing how things go for yourself and GF!

[classical_Liberal]

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[Seppia]

Great charts above. I'm always super prudent myself, but I think because of the echo camber here, we fail to realize how much better off we are VS "normal" people.
It's a mentally impossible thing to do for me, but whenever we feel it's a 50/50 call "should I pull the trigger or not" the answer should be FUCK YES!
Our overcautios nature serves us well when accumulating, but it makes us irrational when we're done with it

Yes, I am location independent to a large degree. However, I'm sick of moving around at this point. I want to find a place to call home for a year or two. I really think that will help ERE goals too. It's hard to buy bulk food when you move every 3-6 months, it's hard to make the connections that a good social network brings, etc.

Having moved around quite a bit, I would agree that while moving every 3-6 months is a stress, moving every 2-3 years is a life enriching experience

[Bankai]

whenever we feel it's a 50/50 call "should I pull the trigger or not" the answer should be FUCK YES!

Totally agree. I quit my first non-temporary job after being there for 15 months and feeling totally miserable. I had £400 in the bank and GF working part-time one day a week. I was oblivious to savings rates, SWR, 4% rule and all of that. I just felt I needed out so I quit. And the world didn't collapse. In fact, quitting that shitty job proved to be one of the best decisions. The crowd here is way, waaay too cautious. People quit jobs all the time with no savings or prospects at all and no one starves to death. Having even one year of expenses saved is more safety net than 95% of the population has. Also, the ability to save that much is all the proof one needs for one's industriousness and ability to find and do well in future jobs.

Having moved around quite a bit, I would agree that while moving every 3-6 months is a stress, moving every 2-3 years is a life enriching experience

I think one gets the most benefit from living in another country for longer term (5+ years). After that, diminishing returns start to kick in, but this can be minimalised to an extent by moving to different cultures/geographies. I also wonder after how many years/countries it starts to get old and one starts to yearn for a permanent base. Once ERE, I would like to spend a year or so slow travelling Spain and then make a base in north Italy for a couple of years while visiting all of north Italy and bits of France/Switzerland etc. But after that, will I still be tempted to move to other places for one-two years at the time? Hard to say now.

[Jin+Guice]

What qualities are you looking for in a home base location and why?

It seems to me like you get married to things/ ideas (not women though). Some level of commitment is good but commitment will limit optionality. Why not try out some homebases? It's important choose potential homebases wisely, in so much as choices are sticky, but there's nothing keeping you from moving around. On the other side, it's important to avoid FOMO and think about, am I satisfied doing this right now?

The challenges facing you are: you want to live somewhere for an extended period of time (more than 6 months at least), you have some list of qualities this place must meet, and your girlfriend will have trouble finding work in these places. Is that accurate?

Once you know what the problems are try to think of ways you can solve them that are different from how you've been solving them. We often ignore the actual issue once in favor of a default way to solve the problem. Everything I listed above is the most obvious solution constructed to solve underlying problems. If you can identify the problems and get away from the constructs you can be more creative in ways to solve them (don't despair about your dissatisfaction with your career, early retire). Seeing past the constructs is hard to do though.

[classical_Liberal]

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[jacob]

Like in video games, where folks like us tend to build a character, or ship, or civilization so well that is ruins the rest of the game. So too we can build our financial situation so well, that the end becomes a disappointment because we made it too easy.

Yes, but ... isn't the point mastering the "earning"-game to play a new game? Like, once you climb and reached the top of Mt Everest, you go climb or do something else instead of trying to make the initial climb so hard by walking backwards, naked, w/o oxygen that you'll never get to the peak out of concern that there are no more mountains or no more anything else in the world. That said, I do realize that the shelf with "things to do when earning is no longer an issue" is not as prominent and well-stacked as the "things to do for a living"-shelves. Also, the need for money can serve as an external structure insofar that is required, but so can other things.