akratic's ERE journal

[halfmoon]

Selfishly, I'm posting on akratic's journal to try bumping it. This was one of the first journals to which I became addicted. Understood that people move on, but I can hope.

[McTrex]

Seconded. How are things going for you, Akratic?

[akratic]

Hi friends,

Gosh, it's been a while, huh? Every time I come back after a long hiatus I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that the forums are gonna be gone or dead, and it'll serve me right for not contributing anything to them for the past two years... but then here they are! Thanks everyone for keeping this place going.

So let's start with big updates:

We now have a two month old daughter to go with our 2.5 year old son. They are healthy and happy and full of joy and exhausting and draining and all-consuming.

We bought a house in a nice part of Boston with a yard and good schools and a nice kitchen and still close enough to work to bike there. The house cost so much money that an individual who had it paid off and sold it would have enough money to be FI for the rest of their lives in most parts of the world. But still, it's actually below the median price for our town, and our town is cheaper than all adjacent towns.

I have a 9-5 job as a senior software engineer that I've somehow been at for almost two years despite it only being an okay job. It pays a lot and is meaningful and has some great individual coworkers, but is also a stressful, grindy place where all teams have more work than they can handle, and we collectively don't have a shot in hell of hitting our company deadlines/aspirations. Every time I start thinking I should leave one of the senior leaders notices and makes my particular role even cushier to entice me to stay, so I've been kind of stuck. That said, they can't actually fix the underlying stressful/toxic parts of the company, they just insulate me more from it. Not sure how much longer this'll last, but I've been saying that for a while.

The recent coronavirus hasn't affected us much. It's enabled me to 100% WFH, which I like so far. And my wife was already part-time WFH combined with watching the kids. The big shock to our system is we've lost our daycare and all baby sitters, so the kids are becoming a bit much.

In terms of ERE lifestyle, some parts are on autopilot and others have decidedly slipped.

Our wins:
- Cooking is automatic - for years we've had our eating out / take out expenses down to just a few times a year when family/friends visit. And my wife's mastery over food just continues to grow. We eat healthy, cheap, hearty food, tweaked exactly to our spice preferences. It's awesome.
- I biked to work 70% of the year. I love it -- exercise built into the day, outside, no gas used, and half of it is on a bike trail with no cars.
- Car purchase - Our family car is a Prius we bought used but just two years old and almost no miles on it. This is basically the most practical car around and meets all our needs.
- House purchase - Our realtor assumed we were buying a "starter home" because it's only 1600 sqft and we pre-qual'd for twice as expensive of a house. But actually the house is perfect for us, has exactly as much space as we need for our family of four, and is walkable to so many outdoor things, which we regularly take advantage of. (That said, gosh is it expensive.)
- Right now income is high and the portfolio has always been diversified so I'm sure the numbers are good (although I haven't checked them).
- Every two weeks in the nice part of the year I go on a 3 mile hike from my door with a friend who is FI and 40 lbs on my back (son + backpack).
- I had a challenging time coming to terms with my dad's lack of interest in my kids, but I found a great win-win solution: when he comes to visit he and I do house projects together and leave my step-mom with the kids. So far we've done some major projects: adding a closet to a room, cutting a hole in the house and adding a sliding door, and ripping out a wood burning fireplace insert. He feels productive and involved and not guilty this way, I'm learning a lot, and our house is getting better and better.
- We found a Massachusetts gov't program that pays 75% of the bill for all insulation added to the house -- we added $3k of insulation, weather sealing, etc., for $750 cost to us that should pay back pretty quickly in reduced heating bills.
- We've spent less than $100 on clothes and toys for our two kids so far. So many hand-me-downs.
- My cousin does about 6 hours/week of childcare for our kids for free (we hook her up though), and she loves it, and it's such an amazing break for us. (But she's unavailable during the coronavirus thing.)

Our losses:
- The electric bill is high, $80/mo, and I don't know why. I even have a Kill-a-Watt that I can measure individual device usage and I haven't bothered.
- When we bought the new used Prius, we didn't deal with our old compact Prius, so now we have two cars. The compact one only sells for $6k and we figured I might want it to drive to my next job, but... but this means right now we're a two car family! And we're paying excise tax and insurance and all that on two friggin cars.
- I haven't looked at our numbers in years. I haven't tracked expenses. I haven't tracked net worth. I haven't rebalanced assets to match target asset allocation. I have no idea where my money is going and if my spending is still aligned with my values.
- Day care is expensive. Living in a nice town with good public schools is expensive. It feels like our ability to beat the system is dramatically reduced by having kids.
- We're becoming normal. Especially from the outside.
- Our house is unorganized, especially the garage.
- When I do get a chance to try a new activity like a board game night, there's so much pressure on it being "worth it". I know it's my only shot for weeks, I know my wife has to watch both kids to make it possible, etc.
- I am at the high end of my body weight: ~200 lbs. I want to lose the fat but have been unable to do so.
- I haven't made a new close friend since my son was born.
- It feels like my total amount of life energy is down... or rather, so much of it is going to kids and also work that not enough is left. This was my greatest fear as a teenager, that I would grow up and become a zombie that only worked and came home and watched TV, repeat forever. And my current life isn't that... but it's not 0% that either.

Upcoming plans:
- We want to build a garden in the backyard. We will start by building a raised bed.
- Maybe buy my first ever nice bicycle and home gym.
- More ERE forums
- Pay off the mortgage on the house, save enough for kids college, and become FI again. Right now, I can support myself passively with current assets but not my family.
- Get more life energy (how?!)
- Fix the entire above losses list.

One thing I loved about ERE was delaying gratification in pursuit of a better future. The stage we're at with kids right now feels similar: these early years of diapers and tantrums and sleep deprivation and non-stop supervision will hopefully pay off with smart, kind, curious people that we get to play games with and go hiking with and have deep conversation and incredible connection while we all navigate lifes ups and downs. We'll see though.

[theanimal]

Congratulations on your daughter! And glad to have you back around.

How does your life energy feel when you're working from home? Have you ever done or considered doing a martial art like jiu jitsu or something like boxing? It'd help with the health component, give you access to meeting more people and give you a practical skill. I started 6 months ago and really enjoy it. Unfortunately, it's not something that can be done easily in pandemic times but maybe something to consider once things open back up?

[C40]

- It feels like my total amount of life energy is down... or rather, so much of it is going to kids and also work that not enough is left. This was my greatest fear as a teenager, that I would grow up and become a zombie that only worked and came home and watched TV, repeat forever. And my current life isn't that... but it's not 0% that either.
....
.....
Get more life energy (how?!)

If that was a serious question, here's how:
- Draft out your life values
- Create some goals that support them (along with your wife)
- Also decide what regular habits/activities you want to change or start. Track them in some REALLY easy way. Or just find tricks to make yourself do them
- Keep track of your progress on your goals, at some frequency (doesn't have to be all that often, as long as you have some way of not forgetting them). This is so you manage - and importantly - recognize the improvement you're making and feel accomplishment.
- Exercise every day. (YES, build that home gym. They make it SO MUCH easier and better to work out. Do Some strength training, and some cardiovascular stuff. Include short duration (30-60 seconds) and really high effort exertions (this last part is important)
- Sleep as well as you can. Meditate before bed. Do some of the normal pre-sleep routine things if they help
- Focus on maintaining and building whatever kind of dynamic you have/had with your wife that is energizing or inspiring. Whether sexual, intellectual, whatever. (The book "Way of the Superior Man" might be useful for you on that)
- Eat a lot of vegetables and meat, and little grain/rice/corn/tubers/sugar
- Reduce your bodyfat
- Get rid of your TV or do something so you rarely consider it an option. Same with mindless stuff on the computer (god, I'm doing so much of this recently myself)

(A good deal of items on this list will increase your testosterone. If you're feeling super lazy and want an easy button in the American style of throwing money at problems and fixing things with pills, go to the doctor and check your testosterone, and when you see it's kind of low, get a prescription. Personally I don't think you should do this without doing the things above, but it's an option. The way you feel is 100% natural for how you (and most of us) live. As you get up near 40 years old, this is always what happens - low life energy. You can do the things listed above and get a lot more energy, potentially for another 20-30 years.. and you can also push that easy button to get a boost. There are trade-offs that you should research before supplementing - related to the impact on your your body's own testosterone production.)

[akratic]

@theanimal

WFH helps for sure. I've never been drawn to martial arts, but I could see it as something to try later.

@C40

It's a good list. I'll probably tackle it slowly, starting with home gym. (Not interested in easy button solution though.) I do notice that many of these life energy giving activities also cost a lot of life energy. More on this in the time section below.

------

I suspect I have three long term projects and one short term one:
long-term #1) pay off house
long-term #2) create a plan to pay for college for our kids
long-term #3) make more efficient use of my time (at work, with kids, and free time)
short-term) check in on net worth, asset allocation, and expenses

== house ==

When we bought our house last year rather than wipe out my FI fund to pay cash we put 20% down and have a mortgage for the remaining 80%. The mortgage is a 7/1 ARM which acts like a 30yr fixed loan for 7 years and then the interest rate floats for the remaining 23 years. I hope to pay it off in full before the floating starts. In particular, my plan for my income is to fully fund retirement accounts and then put everything else into the house (rather than accumulate more taxable investments).

I know that many people believe having equity in a house is a waste because it could be invested in the market and earning a higher rate of return. I personally think it only seems that way because of the rampant prosperity for the last 100 years. I look forward to the emotional and diversification benefits of a paid off primary residence, especially one customized to our needs and wants.

I will be creating a plan for paying off the house and some charts and all that. One thing I'm currently confused about is how to track numbers with the house involved. The mortgage is more than all my other expenses put together, and it seems wrong to base my long term spending on this number that will go away. Also once the house is paid off it would be double counting to both count the equity as positive net worth and also get the bonus of lower expenses because no rent. I'm sure someone has figured this out already but I'll need to as well.

== college ==

We have two kids now and have say a 30% chance of having a third later. We need a plan to help them with college, both to decide how much help we will give them and also to set aside that amount of assets. First of all, let me say that I don't think college is for everyone, and I will strongly encourage something like tradeschool or apprenticeship instead if it's better suited to the particular kid. Also, I kind of think the college bubble will burst in the next 16 years before my son starts applying. But still, it's not too early to be thinking about it, and I'm not sure I can consider myself FI without both the college plan and house sorted out.

My first thought here is to game the college financial aid system. I believe the following assets are exempt from consideration in FAFSA:
- retirement accounts
- primary residence
- small business owned and controlled by the family.

At first glance, this seems pretty beatable to me by moving all assets into the above three buckets and having a low income. I have some personal experience here. By happenstance, after paying full tuition my first year at MIT my dad lost his job the next two years and the university gave me grants (aka free money) for 75% of tuition.

As I looked into it more I found that some colleges do look at home equity and business ownership in their own private formula, but not all of them.

Let me also note that this path could be immoral. I will have to think more about that. One early thought is that the places with the most generous policies like Harvard, MIT and Stanford are also the places with ultra-mega-sized endowments.

There is some follow on work here:
- find someone who has been down this path intentionally and learn from them
- research ways to move taxable investments into retirement accounts more aggressively (would be nice for other reasons too)
- alternatively, look into small businesses that are low risk and passive

== time ==

Right now my time is split into these buckets: work, family time with kids and/or wife, sleep, and free time. Free time can be further divided into maintenance tasks like showering and eating; "low value" choices like TV, video games, and easy books; and "high value" choices like journaling, working out, working on projects, hard books, and connecting with friends. Specifically what I would like is to spend a greater percent of my free time in "high value" choices.

This is more complicated than it sounds though. You might think I could simply choose to spend my free time on "high value" tasks instead of "low value" ones, but you'd be wrong. This lifelong struggle is in fact at the root of my username that I've had for half my life.

The best model I currently have of my behavior is as follows: imagine a battery that is drained by work and family time (and some other stuff). In free time "high value" choices are net positive for the battery but cannot be chosen when the battery is low. In fact, when the battery is low only "low value" choices are available to recharge it.

I'm not saying this model fits all people. For example, my wife has little use for the "low value" bucket and will seemingly happily spend all her free time in "high value". I suspect she is simply more high functioning than I am in a way I cannot learn. Instead, my approach will be as follows:
- become more efficient at work in the following way: find ways to drain the battery less during work time while still meeting expectations. (Is this the Loser strategy from the Gervais Principle?)
- become more efficient at family time in the following way: find ways to drain the battery less during family time less while still being present and engaged with my family
- gain greater awareness and insight into the battery units gained and lost through the day (how? first pass answer is meditation but I personally find little development of awareness and insight on that path)
- I'm going to put this one on the list to make the list exhaustive, but I currently do not believe it works: learn to recharge the battery faster by becoming more efficient at "low value" recharge -- or skipping it altogether and going straight to "high value".

I will note that having two young kids (2.5yr & 2.5mo) along with a high-powered job means this is probably the most challenging year of my life, in a way that, forgive me, is kind of impossible to explain to non-parents. That said, even with this handicap, it's still worth working towards more efficient use of time.

== check in ==

I plan to collect some numbers and make some charts on net worth, assest allocation, and expenses, just to make sure things are generally on track.

[RFS]

Hey Akratic, I'm glad you're journaling again I have really enjoyed your journal.

I am not a parent, and I can't imagine how exhausting that is. Nonetheless, I think there are immense benefits from some of the "high value" activities you listed (especially vigorous exercise), even if you do them for an incredibly small amount of time.

For example, exercising can be 90 minutes lifting weights, or it can be a 5-10 minute run. I have noticed that, once you get your heart rate up and are feeling particularly strenuous for a couple of minutes, there's not a massive difference in how much better you feel. Maybe it would help to ask yourself "what is the absolute minimum viable version of a high-value activity I can do right now?" when your battery is low.

[C40]

There's a book you might find useful, called "Essentialism". My mom (and I think my brother) read it and said it helped her a lot with work - like sorting out what things she really needs to work hard on, and what things to just let go. I'd guess that the advice in the book would be useful outside of work too.

I never read the book because I felt like it was explaining things that I was already telling my mom and brother to do. So I'm not sure whether it's just obvious suggestions, or more in-depth stuff.

[jacob]

@akratic - IIRC, there's some ideas for accounting for home ownership in viewtopic.php?t=7870 ... There was no general agreement on the right way as everybody seemed to favor a method that didn't make their own choices look bad. The most fair to me is to count home equity as a 3-4% expense, since technically that could have been invested if one hadn't bought the home.

You're probably the one individual I've ever met that I think is most temperamentally aligned with my own. In terms of energy buckets, I can totally relate. Exercise may work as an energy booster, but I've generally found the opposite effect. It's true that some forms of exercise can provide stress relief IFF it takes the mind off the stressor. For example, for me, hockey or shinkendo is good while swimming or running is bad. However, in terms of energy levels I find them to be higher when I take a long break (weeks) from exercising. It simply costs both time and physical energy. OTOH, not exercising ever also has its costs. Perhaps the solution is "light exercise"... I've only done enough of that to finally understand what people mean when they say they feel good (endorphins) after working out. So maybe pick something light and "game-like" instead of an actual workout, like a pick-up game. Didn't you use to play soccer?

Also ... the energy thing is real. Look into eneagram type 5 descriptions which pretty much cover the INT* character. The so-called avarice manifests when stressed and will generally seek to hoard time and [life-]energy by trying to cut away things (minimalism) or frantically optimize inefficiencies away. This can lead to a bad spiral as the preserved energy gains are funneled directly back into trying to preserve even more energy resulting in no net gain. I'm not sure exactly what the solution is or rather what a practical solution is. Sabbaticals are a popular outlet in academia. Historical gurus (Musashi) run off into the mountains and hide there. These methods are not super practical from a modern/everyman perspective.

Add: I mostly blame it on the increasing amounts of tasks/responsibilities, especially maintenance stuff, taken on as one gets older or further along. Like stuff, they just seem to accrete slowly until there's little left. That's a big reason what Zuckerberg had his "no one older than 30yrs"-guideline. I think the "Simple Living" movement was an attempt at a solution. I'm not sure how well it works in practice.

[Gilberto de Piento]

The best model I currently have of my behavior is as follows: imagine a battery that is drained by work and family time (and some other stuff). In free time "high value" choices are net positive for the battery but cannot be chosen when the battery is low. In fact, when the battery is low only "low value" choices are available to recharge it.

I'm not saying this model fits all people.

This model fits me really well and is better than any explanation I've come up with. When my energy is run down I have no trouble continuing with manual labor type work but I have a hard time thinking. I can think when I am not feeling like it but it is difficult.

[Tyler9000]

Right now my time is split into these buckets: work, family time with kids and/or wife, sleep, and free time. Free time can be further divided into maintenance tasks like showering and eating; "low value" choices like TV, video games, and easy books; and "high value" choices like journaling, working out, working on projects, hard books, and connecting with friends. Specifically what I would like is to spend a greater percent of my free time in "high value" choices.

This is more complicated than it sounds though. You might think I could simply choose to spend my free time on "high value" tasks instead of "low value" ones, but you'd be wrong. This lifelong struggle is in fact at the root of my username that I've had for half my life.

The best model I currently have of my behavior is as follows: imagine a battery that is drained by work and family time (and some other stuff). In free time "high value" choices are net positive for the battery but cannot be chosen when the battery is low. In fact, when the battery is low only "low value" choices are available to recharge it.

I totally relate.

Even though high-value activities may be net positive for the battery, they usually have high startup costs. That's why they're impossible to do while the battery is low and you have nothing left to give. For example, journaling and hard books require focus you may not have, while projects and connecting with friends also require inspiration and setup that may be lacking.

One trick I've found is to cut yourself some slack and focus on simple incremental steps when your battery is low. Instead of journaling, just write down a list of topics you can journal about later. And instead of working on projects, just take a few minutes to set aside the tools and materials for easy access. Focus on the little things when the battery is low, and it reduces the startup costs for when the battery recovers a bit. That will make it easier to get back into the high value activities later on with less friction.

[Fiddle]

Hey Akratic, just chiming in here as I've 3 children similar ages as yours.
I find having a pull up bar in the door way of my utility room helps, no matter what is happening I can slip away a minute several times a day and feel better doing pull ups getting stronger and see the improvement.
I went part time at work and that helped big time with my time and energy but I did have to take the cut in money, status power etc but I feel valued there so was a good call for me.
Looking forward to reading how you progress things.

[jacob]

@Tyler9000 - Good point. I also think http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html can be part of the problem in terms of "productive" recreation. It's best not to choose something [productive] that requires too much "tooling" so to speak. Something that's easy and incremental, e.g. knitting a scarf, would be better than something that requires complex inspiration, e.g. CAD design. In the sense of the link, accreting maintenance tasks is like adding more and more "manager tasks" until at some point, it's impossible to keep a maker's schedule.

[akratic]

I’ll have more to say later but for now between the epic thread jacob linked and the responses in my journal let me just say this: I’ve missed you guys!

[Gilberto de Piento]

Another metaphor that is similar to the spoon metaphor is that of "burning matches." You hear this in places like bike racing. The racer only has so many matches in the matchbook and once they are burned they are gone for that race.

[CS]

A super simplified version is that you can do one thing a day in your major categories (work, family, health).

One.

Plan accordingly.

[niemand]

I relate too. I've only got one DD3, but also struggle to figure out how to get in more high value activities during my free time. My battery is usually half empty by the time free time begin, and more often than not there's just not enough energy left for high value in this stage. I'll be following with interest to see if/how you figure this out.

We need a jump start cable...

[C40]

Exercise when your battery is high. In the morning. Before work.

Don't have your home gym set up yet? No problem, do this. Might feel like it's totally impossible because you're not a morning person, or because you feel tired in the morning, but you'd only need to wake up 10-30 minutes earlier. You've got 10-30 minutes of fluff in your evening during your low battery time that you can eliminate and go to bet a little earlier. If you can bring yourself to start, you'll get used to it and then you won't wake up as tired.

[m741]

Hey akratic, glad to see you're back and doing well!

[akratic]

You guys have given me a lot to chew on, and I haven't been able to process most of it yet. Still, I'm going to try to stick to monthly updates again, so here's what I've got.

== Money ==

I created a few spreadsheets this month: net worth, rough expenses, and an analysis of how FI I'll be after the house is paid off. In short, assuming the college plan from my last post works, I just need to pay off the house and I'm good.

At the current pace, the house will be paid off in 2.57 years. However, I'm likely to change jobs before that and if my comp drops closer to market rate, the expected payoff is 5.18 years.

== Time ==

I've made good progress this month on retaining the battery charge while watching my son. Much of this progress is due to the weather and his own development, not something I'm doing. When it's nice out, we go outside and wander around the yard and he largely entertains himself, meaning I can do yard work or relax on my phone while keeping 20% attention on him. (He gets a lot of 100% attention time so I don't think this is hurting him.)

Another big win this month is from home gym improvements. I picked out a tiny gym worth of weight lifting equipment, but unfortunately the website I want to order from isn't taking new orders due to coronavirus (and craigslist is ravaged). What is taking new orders is Amazon, and from there I got this recumbent bike. This bike is pretty sweet because it's nearly silent and it's comfortable, so I can sit on it and play video games for 40 minutes while exercising (I play Slay the Spire on a Switch) and feel good about that.

The big loss this month is my job: I got "pivoted" from an interesting low-stress future architecture project to a meeting heavy on-fire high visibility project. This is decidely bad for me, but I've used up pretty much all of my requests for special treatment already, so I think I'm stuck on this project, and I'm not sure it's worth riding out.

What I'm trying to do is coast a little more: cap myself at 8 hours all WFH right now minus one hour for video games + shower + lunch, and minus another hour for things like browsing or writing this journal post. Coasting is pretty unnatural for me though, and I'm not sure I like it. It seems better to quit, relax for a few months, then do a full job search and use that next job to finish paying off the house. However, I'm only 2.5 weeks into this new project, so I'll give it a little more time to decide.

== Food ==

Also some energy building activities do not necessarily require spending more time than you already do on them, but rather spending this same amount of time wisely. The most obvious is diet. It may require some upfront payment in the form of time spent learning about it though.

Food is something I've given some thought to but haven't figured out. First of all, I agree with you that the actual meal prep time to eat healthy is negligible. I think where I get stuck, instead, is the other subconscious reasons I'm eating. I suspect my unhealthy eating serves as a crutch for other areas in my life like insufficient emotional support or as a patch to cover up too much stress or inadequate motivation. In other words, the challenge with food is not the time, but replacing all the other things I get from it.

Some random other thoughts on food: I still remember when I was 22 and I figured that getting more fit would help my dating prospects, and dating was my #1 goal. It was so easy to stick to my diets and exercise plans then! The reward was so tangible. It's not anymore.

I'm also struck by a comment my cousin made once, which is you can tell how she's really doing just by looking at her and seeing if she's at the high end of her weight range or the low end.