cmonkey's journal

[cmonkey]

I just need to say this out loud - raising a 2 year old is stupid hard. Way harder than any job I've ever worked. I am positive she is sucking energy from every living being around her, it's the only thing that explains my lack of it and her never ending supply. I need to do something to remedy the energy situation or I won't enjoy my time not working, especially now that I'm trying to cut caffeine.

So far, 45 min of cardio early in the morning is helping a lot.

I started reading again for the first time since December of 2019. The last book I read was Ishmael and it absolutely crushed me. I couldn't read anything again until now. I couldn't believe it, but the clerk at the library instantly recognized me when I walked in - after 19 months away....I was reading a lot back then, didn't think it was that much.

I'm about half way through this, and what a fantastic book it is -



Today, I spent an hour biking to the library and back again to pick this up -



I'm also working on refashioning the front of 3 compost bins which were here when we bought this place. Instead of a large slatted front which was only removable via some wing nuts, I'm going to install a slatted/stacking front. It'll make working it a lot easier.

[vexed87]

Long time no speak! Please report back on the Perlin's book, its been on my wish list for ages and haven't pulled the trigger! Hope the little one is well, if you think a 2 yo is bad, wait until she's 3

[cmonkey]

Long time no speak! Please report back on the Perlin's book, its been on my wish list for ages and haven't pulled the trigger! Hope the little one is well, if you think a 2 yo is bad, wait until she's 3

Great to hear from you! I'll write up some thoughts on the book when I am done.

She is about the size of a 3.5 to 4 year old already, so physically she already taxing me ahead of time. She also started waking at 6 am each morning almost exactly when I stopped working, which has also been taxing us too. She's my retirement alarm clock!

[Andy Dufresne]

Hi cmonkey,

Sorry to hear about the bowel - you could, of course, make shakes with the Kale and other potentially bowel dangerous veggies so that you get the nutrients minus the bowel issues. As for your savings/yield, I assume the Fed's taper will begin sometime next year, so yields should rise from the abyss; however, with a 2.7 SWR, I don't think you have much to worry about. Hope you managed to sell the house so u have less stress and please keep the pictures coming!

Andy

[cmonkey]

@Andy, The bowel issue is settling down a bit, albeit I don't know if it'll ever go away. I've been thinking about it and I don't even know if Kale is related as that's a small bowel thing and I'm having rectal bleeding. I've noticed a clear correlation between the amount of blood and the consistency of my stool. Constipation means lots of blood and normal stool means almost nothing.

As of now I've really focused on cleaning up my diet and increasing my fiber intake. I'm doing a lot better now and so hopefully this can heal up.

I did get the biopsy results back and it basically said ' we don't know what is cause the inflammation ; see your doctor '. So I don't have Crohns or UC as far as I can tell.

I have spent the past month or so pondering it and realized that this all started a couple months after I had a really bad bout of food poisoning back in January 2020. Sure enough that's a thing! I have my follow up in a couple weeks and we'll see what they say.

We are accepting an offer on the house today and it's 2% below our ask price with nothing but an inspection.

[cmonkey]

August 2021 Update

My first month of retirement was a pretty big whirlwind and went really fast. I spent the first week prepping for a colonoscopy. After that we started getting ready for a large 3 family garage sale. DW did most of the organizing and stuff but I helped a lot too. We didn't make as much as we had hoped, but this is a bad time of year to have a garage sale as people are busy with getting their kids back to school. Some stuff got donated, other stuff went back in storage and we'll try again in the spring.

I also spent some time collecting firewood from our city burn site. I don't have it all split quite yet as we have finally been getting some much needed rain and have been doing other stuff. I have about 1/3 of my haul split and stacked so far.

Here is part of city site -


3 trailer loads later -


Ready to split -



We didn't spend much money this month. Over half of our spending was to repair a window I broke while mowing earlier in the summer. It was a terribly unlucky thing as the window is up high and behind a deck rail and I was 50 feet away when it happened. Normally I have a bagger on my mower, but I took it off one time and this happened....

Our FAI jumped a lot this month because I got my 401K rolled into my IRA and have it fully invested now.


WR - 2.695%
Organic Dividend Growth - $22.60

Income - $699.46
Expenses - $775.76

FAI - $11,289.08
TTM Exepenses - $13,372.46

[Frugalchicos]

Hey, i second that raising a 2 year old girl is really hard. It consumes all your time and the little time left you have for yourself, you have no energy to do anything.

The approach I took a few months ago is very similar than yours. I picked up running again early in the mornings and I read a book every 2 weeks. It helps me having something else going on in my life other than following my kid’s routine. Especially with this covid times when everything is more monotonous than usual. Yoga and learning how to play the guitar will be next

[Andy Dufresne]

Can second this as well with a very hectic nearly 3-year old, however, each child is unique and YMMV ..

[cmonkey]

Long time no speak! Please report back on the Perlin's book, its been on my wish list for ages and haven't pulled the trigger! Hope the little one is well, if you think a 2 yo is bad, wait until she's 3

I finished the book before the 3 week return date but it was a bit of a slog TBH. The book wasn't quite what I expected and I didn't enjoy it until I got to the second half. The description of the interplay between Great Britain and her American colonies was pretty fascinating. Timber and forests played a huge part in the American revolution so I'd recommend reading it for that.

The first half was essentially -

1. We (insert civ) have lots of trees, yay!
2. Let's start cutting them down and never stop expanding our economy. The forest is forever.
3. Hmm, the forest seems like it's much farther away now, but if we work hard enough we can keep expanding.
4. Uh oh, we better start planting more trees closer to home because the forest is REALLY far now OR
5. We better move over there now, since there are no more forests here where we are.
6. Collapse, because we have no more energy and/or another civilization has way more timber than we do and has overtaken us.

As I struggle hauling small amounts of timber and brush from my own forest, the amount sheer work past civilizations had to do to clear out forests just amazes the hell out of me, but I supposed when a literal army of trained lumberjacks works together over decades and decades, it can be done.

Ironically enough, I finished the book and immediately began clearing an area of forest for a future orchard/food forest of my own. It is damn hard work!

Here is our backyard/garden, photo taken from the upper level of our house -



We are clearing the area behind our garden of all the brush and trees. It is mostly linden, elm and box elder trees which are very prolific around here. Also about 100 miles of wild grape which has been growing for decades. What a PITA that stuff is.


We have a wonderful Minnesota River Valley view and this will also open that up a bit. I have lots I want to clear out.

[davtheram12]

It's funny reading about your 2 year old being a source of energy consumption. My DW and I don't have kids of our own but whenever we visit family and friends who have kids (typically between ages 2-5) it can be draining. I'm always trying to match their energy level and after a few hours they always seem to get a second wind. I commend you and your wife.

I'm looking forward to updates on the property front as well.

[cmonkey]

So in Minnesota, homeowners get a tax credit toward their property taxes depending on income. With income of about 29K minus a deduction for the kid our 'income' will be about 21K I believe. This level of income will cut our property taxes which means instead of spending 2600 we'll spend about 1000.

I can't decided whether to count it as income or a reduction of expenses.

[C40]

reduction of expenses

[cmonkey]

reduction of expenses

So then does that open up the door to counting my 3600 in child tax credit as a reduction of expenses for bmonkey?

Somehow this feels like it would be cheating my WR lower.

[C40]

well, IDK. I counted my stimulus money as income.

for the most accurate WR projections, it might make sense to ignore odd irregular items like this (don't account for them at all)

[Salathor]

We count the credit as income since it's deposited in our account and we have discretion over its use. Tax-distribution deductions make sense as a reduction of expenses because they are not fungible dollars. Ie., you would not count an obamacare subsidy as income and log it against the expense of an unsubsidized plan, I don't think.

[cmonkey]

Yea I think it makes sense to count the CTC as income. The property tax credit I am on the fence about even though it is deposited in my account, it is specifically tied to that expense.


I feel like doing mid month updates on what I'm up to, so here goes.

Currently reading these which I picked up today -



I've been stacking wood for winter 2022-2023. I will have about 2 cords when I get finished with what I have to split. This storage is what I came up with with what I had on hand. I don't want to buy anything if I can help it, particularly with lumber prices the way they are. I used cut trees from our orchard project for the posts.



Clearing for our apple trees is coming along. It doesn't look like it but we have cleared a lot.






We have swallowtail and monarch caterpillars all over our garden! They are on our carrots, tomatoes and celery. How many can you spot?






DW even found a monarch chrysalis on our tomato plant.



I planted cover crops underneath our tomatoes and peppers. It's coming up well despite being 5 year old seed.

[cmonkey]

Exciting day today, the inspection contingency on our home sale has been removed with no repairs being requested! Closing is in 4 weeks.

We actually made about 9K in profit on the sale of this home, although it went right into our new home. If I include all of our utility bills in the cost of the home during the duration of ownership, then we still made 4K in profit. Not really worth the work I did, but it is what it is.

Also, I finished Into The Wild and found it to be a hard to put down book. Highly recommended.

[classical_Liberal]

Glad to see you posting, thanks for the updates!

[George the original one]

I hope you're putting a tarp over the wood. Your racks resemble mine, except mine are more formally built (and inside the polebarn).

Alas, the garden I didn't plant this year!

[cmonkey]

I hope you're putting a tarp over the wood. Your racks resemble mine, except mine are more formally built (and inside the polebarn).

Not planning to cover it and yea I didn't want to buy any lumber so I just cut some straightish trees down, sunk them in the ground and strapped them to the pallets. It should still season without being covered since I won't burn it for about 15 months.

Feeling a bit discouraged the past few days. I went to sweep our chimney and the liner completely separated when I pulled the brush back up. Before anyone asks, yes I sized the brush correctly. It's an 8 inch stainless steel liner so I got an 8 inch poly brush. It worked fine, but the liner doesn't appear to have been secured together so one of the elbows separated and it's all just lying in the middle of the chimney. There is no way to fix the existing liner without tearing the masonry apart. If I could even get the rigid liner out, there are flex liners out there that you feed from the top but they are expensive and the bigger issue is that the fireplace at the bottom is completely cemented to the masonry and there is no way to get up in there to attach it. This is a long term problem now.

The installers (from 7 years ago) were supposed to come yesterday to look but they never showed which is a trend with many local businesses around here lately.