mooretrees journal

[classical_Liberal]

Many here are rather indifferent or even slightly opposed to tax shelters. This is mainly due to the short time frame of savings required to ERE and the fact that most retire so early they need "good" money. I'm of the opposite opinion. I think any money we can tax shelter we should. There are plenty of inventive ways to pull the money out, while in the meantime save on taxes now and allow the deferred amount to grow, particularly if needs/spending are low. One of my larger mistakes early in accumulation was not maxing out my 401K, when I could have, but instead elected to pay off very low interest, tax deductible, student loan debt first. I could have sheltered and invested an extra 20K or so back in 2014-2015. That mistake costs me about 15K in present $ between lost capital gains and taxes (that's almost a year of spending!). I won't lie, the paid off debt was a huge psychological advantage, but it wasn't the best way to go.

Good job on measuring the expenses! I can't remember, have you taken a look at the "Makeover" post on the ERE homepage?

[mooretrees]

@classical_liberal
I have looked at the ERE makeover, first time I rejected it outta hand as unreasonable. That was some time ago and I've looked again recently. I will go back to it and see what I can glean from it, I can see eventually giving up the cell phone? And we're wildly excited to convert a schoolbus and get rid of the mortgage.

In other news, we sold another phone and that $350 plus another maybe $700 will go to loans. I'm two payments away from finishing my last federal loan and for both of the federal loans, our interest paid last month was $12.00. That's still too much, but a far cry from the days when it was several hundred dollars.
Living with one car has been a pretty seamless transition. We are on the bikes all the time and it's so fun. I love that bikes are super economical, but really, they're just so fun to ride. I literally have ridden hundreds of miles and every single ride was enjoyable. Not every second was amazing, but I've never regretted a ride. I can't wait to bike cross country in the next 10 or so years. ERE will be essential to making that dream happen.

I'm cleaning out our basement and getting ready for a yard sale Saturday. Sunday we will go cut our first firewood of the season, we spotted a few tamaracks on a recent hike and they are the best. Nice uniform trunks, very little branching and excellent burning.

And last but not least, I added an extra $100 to our mortgage. Should knock off around six years off of the mortgage, which is if we didn't make any extra payments. I plan on upping the extra principle payments once the last two federal loans are paid off, so in the next three to four months. That is exciting!

And I will leave all two of you reading, with my cold brew coffee recipe. It's warm out here and I'm making cold brew for the farmers market as I think we'll sell more of it than hot coffee.

The recipe is ridiculously simple and works equally well with good to mediocre beans.

4 parts water to one part coarsely ground coffee
Stir a little and put the container into the fridge for 24 hours
Filter ground out with (initially) coarse, I use a french press, and then if you really want to get the sediment out you can pour through pour over filters-this can take a long time, or use a cheese cloth folded over several times. I don't mind the sediment so I don't bother with the pour over filter step. Word of caution, this is STRONG!! as in a LOT of caffeine. It keeps really well for a long time so I make it for market and then keep it in the fridge until I drink it all.

[Frita]

@moretrees
Kudos, you are settling in to ERE and making some pretty big shifts.

Thank you for your cold brew coffee recipe. I can’t wait to try it. Do you drink it straight or mix with milk or something?

[mooretrees]

@frita
I drink it straight, it’s usually very smooth and sometimes chocolatey (spelling?) so it doesn’t need anything added in my opinion.

Another benefit is that cold brew is not as acidic as hot brewed coffee and easier on the stomach. I hope you enjoy it!

[Frita]

@moretrees
Interesting, I love chocolate undertones. Later this week I am visiting scoffers plantation so I will get some coffee to try it. For some reason, Guatemalans drink mostly instant.

[mooretrees]

I've been thinking quite a bit about status. I was raised solidly middle class and my mother especially, is very class conscious. She recently told me that my in-laws are lower class. It was a statement out of the blue with no real relevance to what we were talking about. I was surprised and somewhat disturbed. It fits in with my moms lifestyle now of country club living, expensive travel, show-offy jewelery, etc.

I've felt like the black sheep of the family since college as I wasn't interested in getting a career, lived with roommates and did bicycle tours for vacation. But, I think there must be some residual to deal with being raised by someone who cares so much about class and status. We have friends coming in for the Fourth of July and I found myself making a plan to fix up our upstairs bathroom and get the garden in a much nicer state to impress them. It's silly as I know these friends would not care at all.

Six years ago DH and I sat down to seriously decided if we would try to live in a tiny house or a bus, and I remember clearly thinking that it would be harder for me to transition to that coming from my upbringing. Nowadays, I have all the appearance of middle class living, house, truck, career and I can tell that I don't have that same concern about moving into a school bus. Maybe it is because I've tried out the trappings of middle class living so it is easier to reject them? Maybe my son helped me shift my thinking? I don't know, but I'm sure I have more work to deal with regarding this. I found Alain de Botton's book Status Anxiety and I couldn't get it at the library so I finally just bought a used book.
It will be interesting to see what he writes, if it is helpful at all. I think what will help me the most with recovering from my upbringing is sticking with ERE and deeply absorbing the fundamentals of the philosophy.

Also, any advice is welcome on this and how much I should put into our HSA, I'm considering upping the amount to lower the taxes and sneakily save some more money. Thanks all!

[classical_Liberal]

But, I think there must be some residual to deal with being raised by someone who cares so much about class and status.

I absolutely relate to this. My folks both grew up lower middle class, worked hard to show they were middle class. It was important in our household to maintain the appearance. This definitely leaked into my early adult thinking and career choices. Luckily, by the time I was late 20's, I began to realize how much I hated suburban, middle class lifestyle. The whole thing was exhausting to me. I'm not as bright as most of the people on this forum, so I didn't have much of a solution. However, I did have a breaking point and eventually just said F-it!. I gave up an upper middle class income/career path, got rid of my house, and started slumming it up. I worked on an assembly line for awhile, a halfway house, even delivered newspapers to make ends meets. At first I felt humiliated... like, what had I done to myself? What was wrong with me? My parent's were separated by that point and both of them, individually, made it quite clear I had done wrong. The interesting thing was, despite all of this, I began to grow much happier. Social relationships were more meaningful because I just hung out with people instead of "networking". It was very much a cold turkey, learn not o give a s**t year or so, but afterwards I felt free.

Edit: Interestingly enough, I now take a ton of pride in my frugality and lifestyle. So it's almost opposite as before.

[mooretrees]

Edit: Interestingly enough, I now take a ton of pride in my frugality and lifestyle. So it's almost opposite as before.

Thanks c_l, I really appreciate your thoughtful responses in my journal and elsewhere. I can tell I'm sorta between paradigms. I'm moving towards ERE, frugality and a less wasteful life, and away from consumerism. I look forward to frugality being deeply ingrained, but I'm not totally there yet. I know continuing this path we've started on will take us there, but it's sometimes difficult to leave the consumerist habits behind. I've read about how to deal with friends and family when you've changed and they're still the same. It helps to hear how others navigate those relationships.

Since c_l threw down the 21 day makeover gauntlet recently, I decided to look into it more. It certainly won't be 21 days, but maybe 21 weeks/months? Here goes: day one: Housing:

We are going to have a short term renter starting in Sept, so that means we will actually be able to make some money off of our house and reduce our portion of the mortgage from $891 to $541, in line with $200-$300/month/person. This renter will leave in mid-December but that also means the basement renovation will be complete and ready to rent to the next person. I can see us trying airb-n-b for the holidays as it could be 'easy' money and give us a break from a constant renter. A neighbor rented a room last year and had many travelers use it just for a spot to sleep while on the road.

Our house is a three bedroom, two bath with a full basement and a one and a half garage. The basement rarely gets used except for laundry and when we had the coffee roaster down there. We have toyed with the idea of making it a separate apartment altogether with its own entrance. That idea is not super attractive as we would be sharing the outside space with someone, but it would be a solution to the high housing costs.

The other idea we've seriously considered is renovating a school bus. The attraction of that idea is that it has been one of DH's dreams to build his own home, it would be VERY cheap to live in as we'd hardly have any rent (I assume we'd stay on someone's land nearby and pay minimal rent), we'd be mostly off grid, and it would be a a way to minimize our stuff, minimize the time cleaning and maintaining a house. Now, people do these skoolie (as the cool kids say) conversions for beaucoup bucks, 20-40K. Now, that would not make sense as a solution, so we would have to get it done for less than 20K. And since we're thinking of renting the house, we'd also need to rent the house for more than the mortgage as again, it wouldn't make sense any other way. Once we pay off the last of the federal student loans, we'l start saving for buying a school bus. So, in summary, coming soon we'll have a brief stint with reduced housing costs and in the next year or two, a solid exit strategy for getting into much lower housing costs.

This is a school bus conversion we really love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svMsXj0W5N8

[mooretrees]

Day 4 of Makeover: drop the cell phone.

I think I’ve given up my cell phone, sorta. I was on a prepaid phone plan and it was due yesterday. It annoyed me to pay it, so I didn’t. I'd looked into using the phone only on wifi, and well, I'm going for it. I have had no problems with texts so far at home. For now, it’s relaxing to not have the phone on while I’m away from home or work. While I am an extrovert, I really dislike the interruptions of cell phones. Now, with a phone that is only wifi, I'll not bother taking it anywhere so it will be more like an old landline than a cell phone.

Jacob had a comment in @Lemur's journal that really struck me. How people with high savings rates haven't just figured out how to reduce spending, but totally eliminate certain areas. As opposed to folks like me, who have a dozen and a half categories and a low savings rate. Maybe that contributed to getting rid of the cell phone plan? It's a drop in the bucket cost-wise, but likely a big gain quality of life-wise. I'm also thinking that DH's phone plan should be paid for by our coffee business as it is the business phone number. So, I'll move that bill to the business and that will shift the savings rate up a teensy bit. Baby steps.

[Sclass]

I really liked the car story. I’ve bought and sold a lot of used vehicles. Having somebody come back and complain about things they should have noticed about an “as is” sale is not unusual. What was unusual was the apology. Wow. That person was pretty big to come back and realize how messed up she was. That seemed a bit out of the ordinary.

Most people feel it’s their god given right to gripe. Those who have remorse are usually too embarrassed to come back and apologize.

That was an interesting interaction. Buying and Selling cars is stressful. You get better at the “dance” the more you do it. It is kind of like dating in some ways.

[mooretrees]

@Sclass Yah, it was big of her to apologize, fairly surprising too. We've bought and sold a fair number of cars too, but always pretty obviously junker cars. This was my first experience trying to sell a decent car. The buyer was an interesting lady, she has a business of tying glitter strands into peoples hair. Fairy strands is what she calls it. It's hard to believe she can make a living that way, but she evidently has a lot of demand.

I'll post numbers soon, but we didn't do so well in the food and eating out category. I've put some thought into it and realized that while I made some goals here, I wasn't tracking them in real time. So I put a piece of butcher block paper with several goals in the kitchen and I'll update them as needed. This, I hope, will help give me daily exposure to the goals and real time ideas of where I am with them. So far, the goals are:
1. <$400 on food at home
2, < $50 on eating out
3. three runs (one down already)
4. < $100 fuel for truck - we did a lot of trips to the woods last month to haul firewood and that added up.

I've been reading Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. I've enjoyed it so far, and likely will reread it again. My big take away has been that so much of status anxiety comes from who you compare yourself to. I haven't finished it yet to see how he suggests solving it, but he has talked about using art and humor to try and gain perspective.

Over the last few months, I've reread Jacob's post http://earlyretirementextreme.com/why-s ... cceed.html

I reread it yesterday to see what else I could gleam from it. "I would say it takes an extreme level of independence, confidence and leadership to go against the stream." I realize in my situation I haven't been providing the leadership I need to get to early retirement. DH is willing to be led and as long as I make sure he gets some of his dreams realized (Alaska motorcycle trip, build own house), he is flexible about the day to day life. I've long been fascinated with him, he is so different from me. He has very little agency, sorta just accepts where ever he is at, and in general, might be a happier, kinder person than me. He is exactly like his mother. I've heard them both say at separate occasions "we'll see what the day brings." I don't understand that on any level. I have plans, things to cross off, and I believe I can make it happen. So, knowing that he'll just accept where ever he is at, I realized I need to lead more with this journey. He is a much kinder person than me. More patient too.

I've been reading journals with married folks who struggle with their spouses spending or unwillingness to commit fully to ERE, and I don't have that problem. My problem has been that I was treating him like how I wanted to be treated, but it isn't how he wants to be treated. He doesn't want to talk about money or goals or investing. He wants to talk about motorcycles, building things, trees and our son. So, going forward, I need to act like the leader in the family. Also, I need to do the food shopping.

[Frita]

@moretrees
Relationships change over time so your spouse may surprise you! DH is not as frugal as I am but he’s a saver too. He was able to quit working easily and just turned off his love of status items in the process.

[mooretrees]

Goal check week one:
groceries: $121.88 pretty high due to visitors with teenage boys, they didn't bring any food and we went food shopping, they spent three times as much as I did, and then left a bunch of food. Also, made a yummy glass noodle dish with a peanut butter/lime juice sauce that hubby loved - good one for later as I have some leftover glass noodles from an old roommate
food out - $0
Run three times: 1 run down (might go tonight with son...)
sell stuff: I've got a buyer lined up for our cloth diapers, will be seeing her hopefully in two weeks, need to list our highchair locally.
fuel: $30 was pretty bummed that for our recent visitors we couldn't combine all of our stuff (camping gear, paddle boards, etc) into our big truck, and share fuel costs. Too many people and if we had a roof rack we might have been able to do it...

So, other than the really high expenses for food so far, we are on target. As far as food goes, I'm trying to eat down the misc items in the pantry and clean out the freezer.

[mooretrees]

Goal check week two:
groceries: $174 halfway through the month and the fridge feels packed. On target here and eating well
Food out: 0
Runs: three! Now I'll have to add three more as I have the time.
Sell: same as last week
Fuel: $50

I had sort of a down day. Paid off my last federal loan, it was only $30 so it wasn't super thrilling. But we are hovering around $6000 in student loans, I might have to make an extra payment (on top of the extra I already made) to get it under 6k. Just cuz.

DH made some more progress on the basement renovation, getting closer to moving on to the electrical. It's getting hot here, but we haven't installed our small window ac unit, instead I think we'll sleep on the extra bed in the basement. Darker, cooler and cheaper.

This is week two of no cell phone. I really like it. I am so NOT an INJT, or whatever the predominant type is here. I hardly researched the wifi calling/texting and so, not surprisingly, it didn't work too well. The problem was the each app wanted to confirm set up with a text or a call, but I had already stopped paying the bill so I couldn't do it.

It was kind of a relief to not have a phone. I think going forward, I'll pay for one more month and get the apps working and then give it a real whirl. I might also pause and do more research on the voice over internet phones, primarily because I don't want to have the temptation to carry a phone around. That was the most relaxing part of the last two weeks, I didn't have to deal with other people's timeframes and the ever present confusion about how quickly I need to respond to someone. I found a way to contact people every time I needed to, either email, computer texting and in once case, I went to a friends house. DH doesn't want to share his phone, which is understandable, nor does he want to play middle person. I also spent more time alone in my head, which might not be a good thing, but I realized over and over again how often I turn to a phone to distract myself. Interesting to see patterns I wasn't aware of become apparent.

I think about ERE all the time. It is tiring, exciting, frustrating, and I want MORE progress!!!! NOW. We've made progress, but the mortgage is still there, extra money is still going to debt, and I don't have a clear exit strategy, and obviously, patience is not a strength of mine.

As a last note, my son has his first shiner. It's turning a nice purple and he looks super tough and sad at the same time. Two year old boxer mid-fight.

[classical_Liberal]

I think about ERE all the time. It is tiring, exciting, frustrating, and I want MORE progress!!!! NOW. We've made progress, but the mortgage is still there, extra money is still going to debt, and I don't have a clear exit strategy, and obviously, patience is not a strength of mine.

I get this. IMO the part I highlighted is actually a good thing. When I started this, I focused too much on the end game. FI seemed too far away and true ERE spending was outside my grasp. So I started with debt free, then I wanted to save enough for an eventual retirement (ie debt to future me), then that plus a 100K nonretirement safety net. I basically just kept moving the goal posts, which did me little good because i got frustrated. If I had focused on the path instead of the destination, I think I would have solved a bunch more problems by now, and probably be FI as a side-effect. Instead, I just reached one financial goal after another, and each time I felt it wasn't enough to adjust my lifestyle... so new goal. Now don't get me wrong, I'm glad i have the level of financial assets I have. I just think i could have reached this amount anyway, if I had simply focused on ERE lifestyle and be a much better person today as well.


Keep up the great work!!!

[mooretrees]

Interesting to hear your thoughts c_l. I sometimes feel like I'm not focusing on the money aspect enough, at least in my journal, but this world of ERE is so varied. Looking again at the 21 day makeover, it's so interesting that Jacob spends time dealing with the STUFF of our lives. I've certainly been able to get rid of clutter in the last few months, with more to go. This way of designing your lifestyle to avoid waste takes time, especially for me as I have a lot to learn. I guess what I mean is that money, for once, is just a part of my life, and clutter, my health, my social connections are all important. In a way, this is such a relief. I can't get out of this mortgage quickly, but I'm still working on some other aspect of ERE while I am living in my house.

Right now, actually, I'm trying to create a list of local parents that have small children so we can turn to each other if we want to go on a date, get rid of some clothes or toys, have a playdate, etc. It's both a way to save money on babysitters, and also a way to be more connected to my community. I can't express enough how grateful I am that Jacob wrote his blog and book, it's changing our lives.

[classical_Liberal]

Sounds like a great plan! I DEEPLY neglected the social aspects of ERE initially.

I used to be a pretty big extrovert, but around the time I can across FIRE, I was very introverted. Hence didn't want to put in effort, nor did I understand the importance of this stuff in a good lifestyle design. For about three years, I just thought my personality changed. It wasn't until I opened up a bit about this problem with other nurses & found out; every-single-one I spoke too had similar experiences after a couple years of hospital nursing. What a relief! I thought there was something wrong with me. I've had some pretty deep discussions about this now, won't bore you with the details, as it's not applicable to most. The important part is, at least now, I'm beginning to address the social stuff. I mean, I knew how great social capital was from previous experience, I read how folks like Ego and 7WB5 create amazing interdependent networks, yet I wasn't able to make a move on it until I got my psychological house back in order(My GF has helped with this too). Anyway, my point is that your thought processes are ahead of me in many ways.

[Frita]

Agreed, the social aspects of ERE are important. When we moved, we did not give it enough thought. You’re doing it on the front end.

Where we live, wages are low. The main employers pay 25-50% lower than places an hour away (In the case of my former employer, even more.). Many people cobble together several minimum-wage jobs. Housing, utilities, etc. cost more. Most people are in one of three camps: making decent money and overextended, scraping by and really busy, or really old and traditionally retired. We don’t fit in.

DH is introverted and could give a hoot. I am extroverted and struggle like hell. DS14 has friends whose parents are in the first category. Some give their kids what I would consider too much spending money. We give him $2/week, sometimes a little extra, and buy his clothing, school supplies, recreational sports, etc. The rest of his spending money comes from odd jobs and gifts. He has learned to make frappes at home instead of Starbucks, to go to matinees or half-price Tuesday’s to see movies, and to swim in the river rather than pay for the pool. He also saves (voluntarily) about half of his earned/gifted money. Our bank gives him a cowboy buck for each deposit which he can save up and trade for movie, ice cream, etc. gift cards. They also deposit $2 per A (The only grade he seems to get, though that is another story to explain our philosophy.) each semester when he takes in his report card. This has been a good learning for him.

Anyway, I look forward to learning more how you build social capital and find like-minded people in your ERE journey.

[mooretrees]

@Frita, I'm sorta amazed at $2/week! It seems low and like it gives him serious incentive to figure out great habits. I don't have a lot of examples of people raising children frugally around me. I would love more details, our son is only two but any suggestions are welcome! Mainly it seems like a lot of parents of teenagers feel a lot of social pressure to make sure their child isn't excluded, have you experienced that pressure to consume or provide more for your kiddo?

DH is also a strong introvert and is fine with only hanging with me most days. He doesn't mind hanging with other people, especially smaller groups but he hasn't seem to need any friends since we moved here four years ago. I have struggled with building deeper friendships. I've been pretty aggressive about pursuing people, women primarily, when it seemed like there might be a potential friendship. I started volunteering at the farmers market which has led to us becoming vendors and starting our own business. Becoming vendors at the market exposed us to a lot of people, and I've got a few new friends from there. But, they are all fairly new friends and it deeper friendships take time. Now that we are parents, we connect with other families, but I'm still working on those connections. I've found that assumptions I had about it being hard to meet people in a small town wildly untrue. Here people are really ready to meet new folks, especially liberal people. My friend in a bigger town has more trouble meeting people than I do!

I hope we can work on more than just the social aspect soon. I got an email from a coworker that they are hiring a traveling PT and are passing my name and contact information on to the traveler. We don't have the basement room ready, but hopefully that can be bumped up and serious progress made.

I have an appliance questions I'd like advice from folks. We have old kitchen and laundry appliances. Like 80's old. The dishwasher doesn't work, and we just use it as a giant drying rack. I can rent a kill-a-watt from the local power company to see if the refrigerator is a giant energy suck. I don't mind living with the old appliances, but if we start renting to people, should we start looking for newer ones? Like, is it easier to pay good money to rent from people when there is nicer stuff around? I feel confident that we can find good appliances on Craigslist and DH would install them. But, we are still paying down debt and it seems like a slightly off course action to buy one or more appliances, even if they are used. Any opinions out there?

[Frita]

@moretrees
Basicly, DS14 has had the same allowance since he was five. In grade school, he sold garden produce and has developed his side hustles from there. Any school item he has saved from the previous year or rescued from the trash, I pay him the amount saved. Ditto for sales.

I don’t think that he’s excluded, no. He has decent clothes, nice gear, and we take amazing trips (very frugally though). I think some kids are jealous of the cool things he gets to do. I do provide snacks and meals for many of these kids kids though. (Yesterday he took a box of granola bars, purchased on sale and with a coupon, to the river swimming and shared. That cost me a buck but that would have been the price for each bar at the Mini Mart.). He does a lot of inviting to our house (Tonight we’re doing homemade pizza.). I enjoy knowing his friends too. His buddies seem to be learning some things from him too.

No one I know is raising kids this way. Many ERE folks remain childless.