m741's ERE Journal

[m741]

I don't log in that often anymore and didn't realize there were so many responses. I'll respond before giving my latest update!

@Gilberto de Piento - my company is actually offering coaching courses to managers and I signed up. I'll probably start in December/January. It was a good idea .

@DutchGirl - My boss is smart. She's sometimes got some strange ideas but overall I think she's very capable. So it's a good confirmation. And I recognize that I do good work - if only because I have a fairly objective sense of what good work looks like (having seen both management and non-management sides). You're right that mental/physical health are more important than work. But it's so *easy* to focus on work... Getting health stuff lined up should be my top priority (but as you'll see in the update - it's not so straightforward).

I'll think about that hard reset. My sleep is more on track than before, though still not great. I should spend less time looking at screens in general.

@pd22 - These are some great observations, maybe more obvious from the outside. One thing I've learned from journalling is how often my mood cycles - probably every 2-3 months I'll go from being very invested in things (work particularly) to being pretty bummed out.

I'll get into goals and exit plan in the regularly scheduled update.

@avanishk - You're right. I need to be more physically active. I've put your book recommendation on hold at the library and will check it out!

[m741]

October & November

Work
Work is going well. I'd expected based on some hints to see some additional responsibilities headed my way. And that's happened - I'm going to be absorbing another team, taking the number of people on my team from ~13 to ~20. It's an exciting team and although I don't like its current manager much (who will be reporting to me), I think that the other people on the team are very strong, engaged people.

Even better, perhaps, I've found two strong leads for other areas of my team. Which means I've delegated some more responsibilities (so I don't need to stay as on top of thing as befores). Sometimes I almost find that I don't have anything to do!

I'm still kinda burned out, though. What's clear is that except for occasional recreational opportunities I just won't be able to program. It's too hard to context-switch, I'm sure it'll get harder. This makes me sad - I loved programming. Right now I mostly sit in meetings and write docs and slideshows - which is interesting in its own way. What's really sad is that I think I *could* actually program, even with ~20 reports, except that there's extremely heavyweight planning and performance review bureaucracies.

Finances
Savings are up a moderate amount since the start of October, mostly due to market recovery (but down since start of November). Given what appears to be some consistent inflation (though I'm slightly skeptical this isn't just COVID-related supply/demand kinks), I've been moving some money out of money market funds and into index funds and gold.

I also learned about my new salary/compensation for 2022. It's very generous - it's a lot of money, honestly. Enough that I feel silly complaining about any of the problems, but here we are.

I think I'm still on track to retire in ~2-3 years and be very comfortable with where I'm at (my plan once taking the management position was to retire at 35 - that's now 1.5 years away - I may push that out .5 to 1.5 years, but I need to set some hard deadline). As some of the comments suggested, I need to keep this in mind. The most important thing is maintaining my physical and mental health over this timespan, so that I can do the things I want to in retirement. I need to write this above my computer monitor or something and take it as seriously as possible. The worst case scenario is that I retire with a lot of money and in poor health.

Life
It's fine. I got the CPAP machine I mentioned previously. I can't really tell if it works. I can only sleep with it about half the night; I think I need to try some different masks. On the plus side, my sleep schedule is more regular than in my last update (which was notably bad), but I still feel tired all the time. I'm at least out of the habit of taking naps in the evening.

I got a fish tank (actually two small tanks) with a few fish, snails, and shrimp. It's a lot of fun to watch, though I'm sorta a hypochondriac on behalf of the animals. I don't know if it was a good idea - it's another thing to worry about (what if there's a long power outage?? heat wave?!) and some additional small expenses, but it's been a fun hobby for the past few weeks.

I haven't made any moves to buy land or anything, though I still daydream and check Zillow. The problem is that, in spite of the raise, all the land
near Seattle is still expensive enough that I can't exactly make an "impulse" buy, and I don't want to buy land that's more than 2-3 hours drive away. So this remains a daydream. On the other hand, there are some great options available once I retire (if I wanted to spend some time somewhere like Vermont).

Number one on my set of to-do list priorities next year is to initiate the visa process with Portugal (most likely) so I could potentially emigrate to the EU as a backup plan.

---

At the end of the month I'll try to do a more in-depth/insightful roundup of my year and where I am on the ERE process right now.

[DutchGirl]

I'm looking forward to that roundup

As for the income vs work problems. Yes, I'd say they pay you a lot to make you deal with the work problems, but that doesn't mean that you are not allowed to complain. But please do keep this in mind for if you ever doubt about quitting: don't let the golden handcuffs hold you back from walking away from work problems when you can. Someone else will step in and enjoy the high salary and solve the problems to the best of their abilities...

Happy holidays!

[m741]

2021 End of Year Roundup

Work
Work is going well. At the start of the year I was managing about 9 people. I'm now managing 13 and by the end of January will be managing 19.

I don't mind managing but I don't enjoy it as much as programming. I think it was a good career move for me and I don't regret trying it. I suppose this recap gives me some space to dig into things.

Programming vs Managing

What I enjoyed about programming was the tangible sense of accomplishment and the very tight feedback loop. It was easy to make a change, and then understand the impact in anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 hours (depending on the system and scale). The problems were interesting and I could easily get into a flow state where I was able to do a huge amount of work.

I enjoyed analyzing overall problems (how to make system X do Y, how to leverage data A to make B happen), digging deeply into details until I understood 100%, and finding solutions. Or, on some systems, thinking about useful features and then going out and building them.

As a programmer I was not very meticulous. I would write clean-ish code, tests, etc. But I generally preferred seeing quick impact and protecting downside risk (ie, accept that results might not be 100% good as long as they didn't cause major negative impacts). I was never deeply technical in the way I see other people on tech sites. So I wouldn't have enjoyed writing airline code, or code for embedded devices or something. But there's a lot of different types of code.

The downside for programming was that I often disagreed with the direction my team was going, and I didn't have much opportunity to change that. I also was hitting limits of technical ability, and I really enjoyed *programming*, not system architecture. So although I could have been promoted one more time, anything further would have required giving up programming (mostly) and mostly writing design documents - at which point I'd rather manage.

---

Managing is a lot more challenging for me. I do think I have a knack for it - if I had been the embedded device-type programmer I think it would have been a harder jump to make. But pushing for pragmatism is a good fit for management.

The rewards of management are great - seeing the growth of people on my team, helping them get promoted and to solve problems that past managers have struggled with. But the feedback loop is terrible - in fact it can be hard to see if you have an impact at all. I write a lot of docs and most of them don't go anywhere. When I'm cynical I wonder if there's any value to what I'm doing at all - or if things would basically be just the same if I wasn't there (I'm not being negative about myself here, but about the value of the role). I don't actually think that's true - you really do need management for each group of 7-10 people. But at least half of what I do is basically a waste of time.

As a manager I do have more control over what we do - particularly when I can get the ear of my own management. But we're still subject to bad leadership at a higher level that we don't have control over. This can be really frustrating as I need to communicate with care - I may disagree with initiatives but I need to keep discussion positive on the team.

From a career perspective, it's absolutely easier to progress as a manager. Although my company is a true tech company, and you can progress in your career without managing, it's probably 3x easier in a management role. I think this may be because of scaling. If we assume that the lowest-level manager must manage ~7 people, a purely technical person at the same level could solve system design problems impacting 15-20 people. So as a simple numbers game you'd expect 2-3x more managers.

Future of work
I've done some thinking and have a pretty hard deadline. I want to retire in March 2024. That gives me a bit over two more years to be a manager before embarking on something new.

Why not sooner? I'd be able to save a substantial amount of money between now and then, which I could devote to some of the big changes I want to make. I'll have some time to grow as a manager and see what it's like managing managers - if it's something I ever wanted to return to. It's enough time to make a mark on my organization and to see my initial cohort of reports (who I feel responsible for) grow and be promoted 1-2 times. I would like to travel again after retiring and I expect that ~2 years will sort out the COVID situation for good.

Why not later? Well, I have enough saved already, and I don't want to postpone life indefinitely. I'd be retiring around my 36th birthday. Managing is interesting but it's not great for health (physical or mental) and I'd like to do physically challenging tasks while I'm in my 30s, and I'd like to have the energy and time to develop key skills while I'm young. If I worked longer I'd probably get even more cynical.

Why March specifically? I made a similar choice when I left my company in 2018 - it allows me to max out 401k matches, donation matches, etc, and is right after a quarterly vesting event.

What could make me change my mind? I'm not 100% set. If there were major political/social changes in the intervening time and I wanted stability or the support of a large company (eg, to help emigrating or something), I might stay. If myself or family had major financial or health challenges, I'd also consider staying (again, for stability). Finally, if both I and my girlfriend found we really enjoyed our jobs in 18 months and didn't want to leave, I wouldn't.

Finances
A very good year financially. I saw my net worth rise by 32%, mostly driven by market moves. Likewise, due to my promotion in the spring, my total compensation will be 20% higher in 2022.

I've continued to donate (though admittedly less than I really ough to, given my financial situation - about 4-4.5% of my income). I've also continued to loan via Kiva, which I view as a sort of bank account that I can lend from. By putting money into the account in 2017 and adding more over time, I've been able to loan about $200k since 2010. For a while I wasn't reloaning on Kiva so I need to be better about that and check in monthly.

I need to do two things:
1. Track my spending, which I've not done in a very long time. January is as good a month as any, so that's my first task.
2. Rebalance my portfolio - I've been moving out of money market funds, but need to put in some work to figure out where money should go and look at my risk tolerance.

Life
This was a very steady-state year for me. Overall I would say that life got a little worse, in spite of job and financial progress. I didn't really do much of anything outside of work - it's not that work-life balance was terrible, but rather that I had little energy and had a rhythm of life that involved a lot of wasting time. Consequently, I didn't get better at any of the skills I'd hoped to develop. I also didn't develop friendships, or build connections, and got kind of lazy in general. Of course, COVID didn't help things here.

It's not all terrible (I'd say life got like 5% worse for me, not 25% or something). I enjoyed camping and will be doing more this year. I did a bunch of projects around the house and developed some handiwork and gardening skills. I did some basic woodworking and enjoyed that - probably the thing closest to a 'flow' state that I experienced in a very long time.

So unfortunately there's not a lot to say here about 2021. But clearly if I recognize there's a problem, it would be crazy not to change things! What do I want to do differently in 2022?

1. I need to set aside dedicated time and develop better habits around physical fitness. I think this is the lynchpin of the whole thing. I need to make a lot of changes here, to be honest: I need to move more, I need to eat healthier, drink less, and sleep better.
2. I need to have some concrete goals for things I care about - that just require some mental focus(visual arts, music), and I need to set aside time to accomplish those goals.
3. I need to find local connections and make a conscious effort to develop friendships. Top of mind for me is playing ultimate frisbee or some other team sport with pickup opportunities.
4. I need to deliberately build relationships with friends and family, many of whom I haven't checked in with at all in a very long time.
5. I need to step away from screens. I spend all day looking at a screen, or looking at a screen with my gf, and I have no inertia when I'm not looking at a screen. So much so that I'm not sure what to do when I'm not at my computer.

So, that's it for the year, and for what I'm hoping to change in 2022. I'll check in at the end of January, hopefully with spending results.

[Smashter]

Nice work with the donations! It's always easy to say you could be doing more, but 4-4.5% of your income is still quite a lot. My wife and I donated 2.5% of our after tax earnings for the first time and it felt like a huge amount.

I have a lot more respect for the people who make the "giving what we can" pledge and donate 10%. It's easy to say you could do that but quite a different feeling to see the thousands and thousands of dollars leave your account. But I have no regrets and I hope to increase the amount over time.

[m741]

Life
LIfe is... fine. There's really not a lot of updates. I got into fishkeeping in November and it's not the best hobby from an ERE perspective. If I could snap my fingers, get a refund, and move on, I probably would. I do really enjoy the hobby, but I worry about the little guys, and it makes travel a little trickier.

I've bought a grand total of 12 fish, 4 large snails, and 3 shrimp. I also bought a pre-set up tank of shrimp on craiglist (maybe 30 shrimp) and another larger tank with some plants already in it. Now I probably have 40 fish, 50 shrimp, 2 large snails, and endless tiny bladder snails. One fish (plecostomus) was a free surprise with the craigslist tank, and the guppys and shrimp have been breeding. I'm going to see if I can sell some back to the fish store as the tank will probably be over capacity when they grow larger.

In a month, I'm traveling back to NY for the first time since the pandemic started, which I'm looking forward to. It'll be good to revisit NYC, see some old friends, and visit family.

Work
Work has been very stressful recently. Three months ago I was managing 13 people. Now I'm managing 19, and we're hiring 8 more, with the potential for *even more* in the summer. I have one manager reporting to me, and we're looking to hire another. I don't get along particularly well with the manager (she has alienated a few people before she reported to me). She's quite good technically, but exceptionally brittle and pedantic, and at her level of seniority, we need people who can be flexible. Also, she's not receptive to feedback - not a great combination. So that's been stressful, particularly because many of the new hires will be reporting to her, and because her existing reports are quite talented and I want to retain them.

I think this is a passing phase of frustration; the past week has just been particularly bad because I interviewed about 20 candidates for team fit, which filled up just about every gap in my schedule.

Finance
I finally tracked my spending for a month - very illuminating. My expenses have almost doubled since I last tracked anything in NYC in June 2017 - my mortgage+insurance+property tax alone is more than I was spending in Jersey City. This was a somewhat worse month than normal; I spent almost $500 of various fish-related things (food, plants, medicine), but would anticipate these expenses to be under $100 this month. Likewise, I had to spend $600 on a sewer cleanout... homeowner expenses!

Still, for all that, expenses were just 2.5% of accessible savings (I ignore 401k, IRA, and house equity for this calculation), which is honestly better than I expected.

Aside from that - lots of income this month from bonus and stock options, but net worth went down a little with the stock market. I've been buying more stock on the dip and to move money out of my money market fund (at inflation risk), so I guess I view this as a good thing, even though I like to see my numbers go up!

[MBBboy]

Glad to see you've come up with a rational deadline for pulling the plug. 2 years is a great time period to start gliding into your "post job" life. Given the surprises when tracking your spending, have you thought about being more meticulous on tracking this going forward to build confidence in your exit plan?

Like the goals as well. Not sure if you've realized it, but progress on goals 1-4 help solve for #5.

[mmoyborgen]

Wow I haven't been on here in years, so great to see your progress. I've heard a lot of friends really enjoy fish keeping. Just be careful about getting into koi if you're not planning to sell them.

[m741]

2022 End of Year Roundup

Looking back at my journal, I see that I disappeared for 8 months So rather than an monthly update, I'll do an annual one. I'm still around, but ERE has not been a focus since a lot of things are on "auto-pilot."

This year was much of the same. It was busy - mostly with work - but I learned a lot. I'll start with a breakdown of work, since that was busiest.

Work

This was the most intense work year I've had in probably 10 years. I started they year formally managing 13 people, and ended it managing about double that, with probably more on the horizon. At one point I was directly managing about 20 people, which was unsustainable. Now I'm firmly in "middle management," with three managers reporting to me.

I've learned a lot, and this year, my third as a manager, was the first where I felt like I was a good one.

In addition to expanding my own and the team's scope, this was a busy year because I was also hiring (I interviewed 75-100 people) and traveled (I was traveling about a month and a half during the year, mostly for work). I also had to manage a challenging project directly. So this certainly kept me occupied. There were 3-4 months during the summer that were absolute chaos.

In my last update, I mentioned that March 2024 was my target end date, and that's still true. There are some days where I just want to quit, and some days where I really enjoy the work. So, this may be a more challenging decision than I thought (albeit a year out). Here's where I'm at:

Pros of continuing work:
* Very good salary, and likely to increase this year.
* Learning a lot and on strong trajectory to learn more and increase responsibility.
* Good relationship with my boss.
* Good/Excellent peers and overall strong team.
* Interesting work overall, on extremely popular software.
* Security if market stagnates.
* Starting to have influence to steer some decisions.

Cons of continuing work:
* Time- and energy-consuming. Few opportunities to focus on life and interests outside work.
* Work is bad for my health, high stress levels.
* Organization/product is very poorly run (bad senior leadership).
* Starting to be exposed to organizational politics.

So there's a world where I may continue to work in 2024, but take a sabbatical.

My top goal overall this year is to make my team more self-sufficient - meaning that I wouldn't feel guilty leaving (since hopefully things would continue to function well), and also that I could perhaps disengage a little bit.

Life

As I mentioned, a relatively slow year personally. We got a second cat. I didn't focus too much on deliberately improving in my skills (Spanish, guitar, etc) as in the past.

On the other hand, I cooked, gardened, and woodworked more this year than before. So I did still learn stuff. I'm excited about all three as next year starts - really I would like it to be nice out already so I can actively garden - and woodwork more consistently (my house is small, so I need to do carpentry outside). The garden is set up most of the way I'd like it; I have a few large projects on my mind, but a lot of next year is seeing the plants and trees fill in more.

I have two big expensive goals, where I'm really not pursuing an "ERE-savvy" approach. The first is to get citizenship in another country (likely Portugal), and the second is to find land where I can start to set up a homestead or cabin.

If I wanted to go the ERE route, there's plenty of ways to get citizenship through work in another country, etc - but they take time and they're not comfortable. Likewise, I could move to a low CoL area to homestead, including another country or state, but I want something within a reasonable drive from Seattle, and of course that means paying a premium (though I feel prices have dropped recently and I'm keeping an eye on things).

I'm in a position where I can "brute force" things if I want, which is what I'm doing now - though the homesteading is mostly me day-dreaming, surfing Zillow, and reading books. It's given me ideas about changes in our current house, but the yard is just too small to do more than modest gardening.

So that's it. I'd like to make some tweaks to my habits and focus more on personal things (including exercise) as we head into the new year, but I've said that in the past... so I'll be thinking about how to be more structured about it.

Finance

Also a quiet year - I continue to auto-invest, and to max out 401k, IRA, etc. I ended the year down 13% in net worth - not great, but not bad considering the market. As the year ended I sold off some losses, donated some gains, etc. I need to set aside a few hours at some point to revisit my investments, review expenses, reset and figure out my new financial goals.

[DutchGirl]

Work is bad for your health and stress levels, but you're learning a lot.

I scaled down my work hours (and switched jobs) and my stress levels are way down right now. That is good. It's maybe at its lowest during my whole working career. A few years ago I thought I was going to be a statistic: yup, she sacrificed everything for work. I did not want that. Things are so much better now, but I do know that if I were to increase my work hours or responsibilities (which could be something I would want to do if I felt called to a specific job), the stress levels would rise again and I would again have no idea how to handle it.

So I do struggle with this, too. And I still don't have the solution. I could not find the balance when I was working so hard. I have balance now, but I know I'd lose it again if I were to start working hard again.

Maybe, maybe in your situation you can try to find ways to handle the stress in a better way while still working? Maybe you can reduce some work stress and some stress from your personal life while you are still working hard? Maybe that could be one of the things to focus on in 2023, one of the things to learn in 2023 - a "meta" skill so to speak. It could also involve switching to a different job, perhaps?

[m741]

January-June 2023

It's hard to believe that it's already June - I thought I'd just skipped one or two months. Well, the infrequent updates at least mean that each update is meaningful.

Work

My team has continued to grow - I'm managing a bit over 30 people at this point. That's something I really wouldn't have expected - at a different point in my career I'd really be pushing. Instead I'm trying to scale back and maintain a sane balance and working schedule.

Even in the past month I started to realize that my previous approach (managing 5-20 people) wasn't going to scale. So going from an engineer to a manager of 5-10 is basically changing jobs, and going from 5-20 to >30 is also changing jobs. With 20 people it was possible (though tough) for me to be familiar with what everyone was doing. With 30, I can't keep tabs on everything. But also it can be challenging to train people up - there's just a few people on my team that I really trust to run things, and they aren't necessarily the managers.

In spite of the additional reports, it's not all rosy. It's been a challenging year in the tech indusutry and we've had to deal with layoffs, promo caps, and so on. This comes with the territory but it's still taken people by surprise, and also impacted our team culture.

Many of the immediate challenges I was facing - especially with some difficult collaborators - have disappeared for now, although I imagine they'll return at some point.

I'm still anticipating taking leave next spring (or potentially quitting). If I continue to work after leave, though, I'll have a very specific rationale.

Life

It's been a fairly eventful year, even outside work. First, most of the paperwork I'd started to apply for citizenship in Portugal is in - now it's a matter of waiting for 5+ years. Well, it's something that I wanted and I just need to cross my fingers that things work out. At the same time that I was filing paperwork, the Portuguese government announced an end to the golden visa program - so there was a big rush for a while. That's still working its way through the Portuguese government.

I can totally understand ending the program - I think that while it brought investment to Portugal, it's also something that's hard to look at and say it doesn't raise the cost of living (although the number of participants is really quite tiny). Well, if things work out I can only hope to be a good citizen and contribute what I can. There's a great video series on YouTube about a sorta hippie restoration/construction project in Portugal (Project Kamp) that I've been watching. Maybe someday.

The other major project for me has been buying land in Washington. It'd been on my radar for a while, but over the dreary winter I started looking more closely at land and even decided to visit some sites. One of them really stuck and we're in the process of buying it (out on the islands about an hour and a half from Seattle). Our offer was accepted but we're doing due diligence. It's about 10 acres, good topology, and I'd be able to putter around, build a shed and workshop, plant trees, garden, and eventually maybe build a house - something that's high on my list of things to do. Or worst case, I could just sell the land and probably make out ok.

So that's been a lot of fun - reading about permaculture, construction, etc, and daydreaming.

I've also been getting more into gardening. The adventure this year has been starting seeds. I tried a bit last year with little success, but this year has been ok. I still have a lot to learn. Many of the plants I put in, in 2020 when we moved into our current house have finally grown in and together, forming the sort of green background I'd been picturing. That's fun - now there's enough that's grown that I can wander around the property and find some little thing to do with 5 minutes time - trimming, weeding, building raised beds or trellises, propagating plants, watering, etc. I really like this, it's low-pressure and I can do some little meaningful thing that doesn't take hours of time but that I can feel proud of. Of course, I've also spent hours on things like building swing chairs or a little free library.

The only other hobby for my girlfriend and I has been making cocktails. We've probably made 200 different types of cocktails, and we're working our way through all different kinds of unusual liqueurs, sweeteners, etc (probably the top two finds have been Salers and Creme de Violette). All of this with very cheap base liquors (just Trader Joes), so while it's expensive it's not like I've become a wine snob. It's not my favorite hobby to be honest - it's more drinking than I particularly want to do - but it's a nice way to pass time and decompress on a lazy weekend afternoon.

Finance

The year has been rough in the market, but as of the start of June, I'm ahead compared to January, and that includes various expenses related to the above projects.

Unfortunately, the golden visa process locks up investments in areas I wouldn't typically choose to invest, and likewise while I've capped the expenses on the land, they still also mean that things are slightly tighter than I'd like; I'd feel less comfortable retiring right now. I suppose these are the golden handcuffs speaking, but most of the life I'd anticipated and planned over the past few years is now within reach and working a little bit longer will make everything a lot easier. I really don't have any other anticipated big expenses - I don't want to buy a boat or a fancy car or become a pilot or any of other truly expensive hobbies. Maybe the biggest "risk" is that contiguous land goes on sale and I want to buy it... but we'll cross that bridge when we get there - after all, the purchase of first ten acres is not final; long-term we might sell (or rent) the house in Seattle and move to the property full-time and this would free up a lot of capital.

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@DutchGirl - Things have gotten better. I've instituted much stricter limits and boundaries between work and outside work. I don't have a work account on my phone, and I try to work from 8/8:30-5:30 - reasonable hours for me (before I was working 8-6:30 or so and randomly responding to emails on my phone). As a result I get less done, but so be it - nobody's complained so far and it's a lot healthier. I've been able to maintain this for ~2 months and I've found that my emotions around work are much more stable.

But I know my natural tendencies to work more or push harder and this is something I'll need to always bear in mind and adjust for.

[m741]

2023 in Review
I'm not updating as much as I used to, but I figure it's worth taking stock of things at least a few times a year!

Life
We ended up buying the land that I mentioned in my last update. It's on an island near Seattle that's pretty accessible, and as I said it's 10 acres - about 300 feet across and a quarter-mile long. It's been an interesting experience; I wasn't sure what to expect both when buying land and in terms of owning it. When we finally settled and got onto the land, the first step was to try to survey it, and that was really quite hard. I'd estimate that about 1.5 acres of the land is forested - -the rest was clear-cut about 2 years ago now. The clear-cut land is covered in invasive weeds - thistle, blackberry, and some holly. Basically it feels like everything on the land has thorns or spines, so it's hard to walk on much of the land.

I started out clearing land with a machete - a good workout but really slow going. It was hard to even touch anything, even with rose gloves (thistle spikes would just penetrate straight through. I bought a brush cutter attachment for my weed whacker and found that double-layering gloves works well to be able to grab anything. All told, I think we've put in about 2 miles of trails on the land - not really leveling the ground or anything, but just clearing vegetation and debris. We also leveled part of the land (by hand, just using a shovel to flatten big lumps left by tractors and trucks), so we could set some stuff up.

I built a set of furniture out of cheap wood (2x4s up to 2x10s - the price of wood is reasonable now). So we have a picnic table, two cooking stands, two benches, and so on. Finally, with the winter rain here in the PNW, I ordered tree saplings from the WA Department of Natural Resources. They're about $1.50 per sapling, including delivery. We spent a looong weekend planting 420 saplings. I've also propagated a number of plants from my yard (currant, strawberries, elderberry) and planted those - all told we've probably planted about 650 plants and have another 50-60 to go this winter.

We've gone out to the land about 10 times so far - and probably slept ~15 days on the land total - basically backwoods camping. It's been a good experience although sometimes it's a bit tiring. The only expense has been installing a gravel driveway (~$8k) to be able to get into the center of the land, into a more private/convenient location. My big plan for 2024 is to set up a small shed that we can sleep in (off the books) - this will make packing less work - since we can leave stuff there - and allow me to try setting up solar and other systems. It would be a fun adventure and I'd like to build the shed myself from scratch; I'm hoping with about a week of work in late summer or early fall, I can frame it out and get a roof on.

Otherwise, life has been pretty stable. Honestly I didn't do much this year besides on the land. I feel that a number of things are limiting my freedom - notably, our older cat has been fairly sick and required some medication, and I still have shrimp and fish to take care of. With these challenges, I feel more uncomfortable traveling. I donated all my guppies to a pet store and I'm trying to consolidate aquariums (hoping to donate a few more fish). It's an interesting hobby, but ultimately more stressful and more work than I really wanted and I haven't been passionate about it for a while. But it's still hard to consider traveling in the same way as I did for my round-the-world trip five years ago (6 months of steady travel).

Work
This was a big year for me, work-wise. I was promoted to a relatively senior level, managed to handle a large number of stressors/challenges, and made changes within my team that I think are setting it up for success next year. A peer of mine is leaving and I believe my team will grow again to absorb some of their reports (to somewhere between 40 and 45 people). And I am growing a lot as a person, learning how to handle this many reports, the new challenges of a larger team, etc.

I believe I am well-respected within my organization, and also somewhat underpaid, so I requested a salary increase about a month and a half ago. It's a tough time in the industry, so I'm still trying to work through this, and I need to push more aggressively for an answer. With that request, I also said I was planning on taking a 3 month leave this year (thinking it would be in the spring - now fall seems more reasonable), and that I wouldn't return without the salary increase. This was my negotiating position without a counter-offer, and I tried to balance things such that I'd be happy staying or leaving. I'm not getting any younger. Sometimes I look around - at concerts or in team meetings - and realize I'm no longer _young_ (I'm mid-30s). At some point early retirement will just be... retirement. Still a privilege, but not quite the same.

2024 will be a year of big changes at work, one way or another. Either I'll leave, or I'll take a small sabbatical, see an increase in scope and salary and stick around for a bit longer.

Finance
A pretty straightforward year. I max out IRAs, 401ks, HSAs, keep my investments flowing regularly. I haven't rebalanced. I did streamline, finally selling off some legacy individual stocks I'd held onto. My only individual stocks are NVDA and my employer at this point - NVDA has been a superstar (I'd have long retired if I'd just invested more in NVDA when I bought 10 years ago...).

Although the market has been wonky, it finished the year strong and my net worth increased by about 1/3 this year. However, in the middle of the year I felt a small liquidity crunch - between the Portugal citizenship investment requiring and investment in EUR and the land/house purchase in 2020 and this year. Also about 1/4 of my assets are in retirement funds. It was the first time in a while where I felt that I'd have to make some big changes if I did want to retire (likely selling the house we currently live in, in Seattle), although things have loosened up a little bit.

So - all told a relatively boring year finance-wise, which is not something to complain about!

---

I'll try to make some smaller updates soon, covering some of my plans for 2024, as well as some more targeted updates.

[DutchGirl]

I cheered a little bit: yeah, an update by m741!

It sounds to me like you've taken on some nice adventures and challenges, that's fun and interesting.

You're still really really young, I'd say. If you would quit work in two years, you'd have about three decades more of retirement than the average person, I think. So: no rush.

I'm looking forward to more updates

[m741]

2024 in review
I went an entire year without posting an update. I'd say 2024 was a crap year for me, and this dissuaded me from updating. But here goes.

Work

I'll start with a work update. I think about a week after my last update in January 2024, I was laid off from my job. It's a long story, but I was middle management, tech companies have been targeting middle management, and I had just reorganized my team in a way that made me a target (I had few direct reports, so from an algorithmic/explainability point of view I was a redundant layer).

So, I got generous severance, had a few months where I remained employed to "find a new role at the company" (with all my access locked down) and that was that. And as you can see from my previous update, I was planning on leaving anyway. In fact, I had kinda hoped that if there were layoffs, I would be targeted. Someone who was thinking of leaving... would get severance. Great for me, and great for the team, who have more junior folks that might be less secure.

Well the funny thing is that my manager fought really hard to get me back. I didn't particularly want to return, didn't ask for it, but she really wanted me to still be on the team. As I might have said, I think I'm one of the 3-4 people she trusts most in her organization. And it turns out she was successful. I got an offer to return, but not as a manager. Instead, I'd be a senior "technical lead" without reports and a somewhat different mandate. So I returned. My girlfriend jokes that she doesn't know anyone else who "survived" a layoff, so I'm flattered I guess...

The whole thing is bizarre, and I probably made the wrong decision overall... since I had been thinking of leaving shortly anyway, and what better way to leave the company than with severance! But I didn't really want to leave in cold dark January as a surprise, without some additional planning, and I figured I could play things by ear and see what happened after I returned. Now it's 9 months later.

You might be asking - well, why hasn't m741 quit yet?! Laid off, good savings, limited lifestyle inflation, thinking about it for a while. I suppose part of it is change aversion, part of it is golden handcuffs. Part of it is the tech industry, where the employment situation is hard currently and I'm starting to get old. I mean, I'm old for the tech industry. The tech employment situation right now is probably just cyclical, but everyone is pretty doom-and-gloom currently. Hiring is very slow. If I left, it would probably be much harder to find a job should I need to return to work for medical or life reasons. Of course, these are all just excuses, and I think the simple fact is that this is a big bridge to cross and it's been a lot easier recently not to.

In the end, the layoff situation worked out ok. Mostly. I effectively got a 2-month paid vacation, and returned to a much less demanding role, and I picked an interesting project to work on. That's all good stuff.

On the other hand, the responsibilities of the role are less clear to me - I don't know quite what constitutes success. And I'm not particularly motivated to work for the company (and VPs) that just laid me off. So it's not the healthiest psychological situation at work, because I really don't like half-assing things.

I'm planning, after compensation conversations at work in a few months, to see if I can move to a 4-day workweek, and then re-evaluate at the start of 2026.

Life
With the work update out of the way, let's move on to life updates.

The biggest update was that my older cat passed away. It was a really tough situation, she got an ear infection in November 2023, which got progressively worse. We tried all kinds of medications, which she hated. And finally in February 2024, we found out that the infection was not some bacterial or fungal thing. It was cancer. We had her euthanized in March, shortly before I returned to work. It was so tough figuring out what the right thing to do was. And even having made a decision to euthanize, the right time. We wanted to do a home euthanasia but that also requires timing it right. She mostly looked ok, besides her ear. But she became more scared of us, and she started peeing on the bed when she had been fastidiously clean before. One day, we woke up and she couldn't walk straight. I think the cancer interfered with her balance. I knew it was time then, or maybe it had been too long, so we went to the vet. She was 14 years old - oldish for a cat, but she had otherwise been healthy, so I thought we had another 5 years. I got her a few years before my girlfriend and I started dating, and she was with us through our whole relationship - it was always the three of us, and we moved together from the east coast to the west. So it was really difficult for all of us to adjust. I still miss her.

In this way, being laid off was also a blessing. I was able to spend the final two difficult months with her, when I otherwise would have been working 10-11 hours/day.

With all this happening in my life, it was tough to stay focused on other things. I feel like I got a lot more insular last year. Didn't want to go out much, or travel as much. I started feeling a sort of mental pressure, maybe depression. We didn't go out to the island property as much as I'd hoped. It's a 90-minute drive but on weekends I didn't really want to make the effort.

But I had more spare time overall, both during the time I was laid off, and after returning to work, because the work was less demanding. I started playing guitar more, and then I got into guitar pedals. I'd avoided guitar pedals for a while, both because they seemed complicated to hook up, and also because I recognized they were the kind of thing that would draw me in, but was a big money pit. I bought a few cheap Chinese pedals, liked them. Started looking at fancier pedals. I made a deal with myself. I wouldn't buy any pedals that I didn't make myself, and I've stuck to it.

Starting in May, I tried assembling a few guitar pedal kits. Just some simple hand-soldering. I liked it, so I tried assembling some pedals using just PCBs and custom orders of parts, and I liked that. I got into designing artwork for the pedals - opening Photoshop and Illustrator for the first time in years. I started getting better at the artwork, going from tolerable to "I'm proud of this design". Then I got curious about laying out PCBs myself and getting them fabricated, so I tried that. Laying out a PCB is like playing a game - maybe a citybuilder like City Skylines. I ended up building about 100 pedals last year, about 40 with custom artwork. Laid out about 20 PCBs. I'm planning on doing more.

It's been a fun hobby - I can bounce between playing guitar, designing visual artwork, building and soldering a pedal, or laying out PCBs - depending on what I feel like each day. Each of them is interesting, and each is different. What I've only skimmed is actually understanding the circuits I'm working with. I want to get more into circuit design this year. Pedalbuilding is a somewhat expensive hobby, though not that extreme. I might also be able to sell some of my pedals for a bit over cost on Craigslist or Reverb. I think the amount that I focused on pedals was probably unhealthy. It was a bit like a video game addiction, but I was also dealing with a lot so I cut myself some slack. I can feel my interest now approaching a healthier zone. I can step away from the soldering iron or Photoshop more easily.

That was my main focus outside work. The only other focus I've really had has been trying to walk all the streets in Seattle. There's a website (CityStrides) which will track all your walks/runs and your progress on covering some designated geographical area. The bounds of Seattle cover 1700 miles of streets, and many of these you need to walk twice (deadends, etc). I walked 10% of the streets in Seattle last year. I also took one international trip (Mexico and Panama) with my girlfriend.

Finance

I still record my net worth monthly. I've done this pretty consistently since the beginning of 2011, just chugging along. I didn't make big financial moves in 2024. I prune NVidia stock regularly, whenever it gets over a certain threshold in my portfolio (this is far and away my most successful investment and the only individual stock I've held onto beyond my company's stock). I've sold some vested stock.

My net worth grew in 2024 by 35%. I hadn't run that particular calculation until just now. It's mostly market movement, but it still feels shocking!

I divide my net worth in my spreadsheet based on how accessible the money is to me right now. I have "early retirement" savings and "total" savings. Things that don't qualify as "early retirement savings" include real estate, IRA, 401K - things like that. Obviously I could sell my house, or withdraw from a 401K, but they're also things that I don't particularly want to do. About 40% of my assets are not in the "early retirement" bucket. The early retirement savings alone grew by 75% over the past year. That's even more shocking!

Roughly speaking... at a 4% rate of return, the returns from my "non ERE" savings are about equal to the take-home salary that hits my bank account each month (so: ignoring stock compensation and bonuses, which are the majority of my compensation). In turn, this number is about half my current expenses (in a HCOL area).

I suppose I hadn't considered until just now, how much my financial situation changed over the last year. Or, I suppose, how much it could change this year if the markets reversed. In ~October, just based on raw numbers, I'd started to feel that I should move more of my money into bonds and other asset classes that are less volatile than stocks (suggestions for Vanguard bond-focused funds are welcome here, I need to do more research). I'm now in a situation where total returns are less interesting than stability. So I'm slowly making moves. And if I'm serious about retirement in the next year, I need to read up again, run more numbers, and be smart about it.

---

That's my update. A year of life summarized in a few pages. I hope I'll be more active on this forum than last year, but I can't make any promises .

[rube]

Thanks for your annual update.

[delay]

Thanks for sharing your year! I worked with someone who was laid off and rehired, and he told he did the least amount possible to retain work. He did well financially and was looking happy the few times he showed up for work.

Sorry for the loss of your cat. She is not alone in hating medicine. When I visited a care home I noticed many old people hated their medicine. According to the nurse, they would hide the pills beneath their tongues, and later spit them out. The nurses had instructions on how to force them to swallow but were reluctant to do so.

I read your ERE savings grew 75% and that you think that is shocking. It sure is, those are the kind of returns I would expect from gambling rather than a boring investment! The recent market returns make me wonder: what's going on?

[m741]

Sorry for the loss of your cat. She is not alone in hating medicine. When I visited a care home I noticed many old people hated their medicine. According to the nurse, they would hide the pills beneath their tongues, and later spit them out. The nurses had instructions on how to force them to swallow but were reluctant to do so.

First, thanks for the kind words. It's sad to hear about this in nursing homes as well. I hadn't really made the connection between my cat's behavior and humans, but I guess it's universal not to like some of these bitter pills. For some reason they tried to make some of her meds palatable... by making them taste like marshmallow!

I read your ERE savings grew 75% and that you think that is shocking. It sure is, those are the kind of returns I would expect from gambling rather than a boring investment! The recent market returns make me wonder: what's going on?

Yes, I couldn't believe it. My total savings went up by 35% somehow. I'm not gonna complain, but it I wasn't expecting it at all is weird!

---

I suppose this year I'll try to post to my journal more regularly, and less formally (ie, not via regular monthly updates). I have two things on my mind right now:

1. I'm realizing that I'm now very much in a phase of "protect savings and moderate my risks." After all, a 35% run-up last year and having a few multiples of the bare minimum for me to retire, means that I can place a premium on wealth preservation rather than maximizing returns. And frankly, while in recent years I continued to mostly be frugal, I also wasn't being careful where it matters most financially: asset allocation.
2. Given everything that's happening in the US politically, I'm also favoring caution. That means keeping options open, reducing risk, hedging bets, and planning for the worst.

So I've made a few changes already, and will continue moving forward. I feel bad as many of these are very dumb things I should have done before. Here they are:
* I opened up a high yield savings account (at CIT bank, it has 4.3% returns). I hadn't noticed that savings accounts started offering such high returns! Also, while I'd prefer to keep all my money in one place, I also want to be aware of FDIC insurance limits. I am starting the process of shifting a chunk of my cash assets into this account. 4.3% is nothing to sneeze at!
* I am pruning some holdings. First, I'd bought some NVDA in 2010. Smartest investment I ever made, though I know it amounted to a poorly-informed rolling of the dice. Wish I'd bought waaaay more than I did. I basically held it until now, making occasional charitable donations. Then a year ago I set a (very high) cap and would sell when it went significantly over that cap... but now it's the biggest single asset in my portfolio! That's dumb. I don't think the recent DeepSeek-induced dip is that permanent - it's already made back much of its value from that loss - but it's foolish to have so much money in such a speculative stock that saw such a huge run-up recently. So over the next few months, I will be gradually paring back to more reasonable levels. Basically setting a target investment amount each month and selling to hit that target.
* Likewise, I received stock as part of my compensation. Since returning from my trip in 2018, I haven't really sold it regularly. More than NVDA... but not that often. It's gone up as well, so I don't regret holding onto it. But it's probably the next largest asset in my portfolio after NVDA. I don't really understand why it's going up, I think the company is poorly run. It's also a tech company, so it correlates with NVDA. That's also dumb. I can only trade in certain windows (between corporate earnings announcements), so I'm going to be slowly unwinding my investment when those windows open, basically trying to revert 2-3 years of past stock grants, and not accumulate more.
* I had some money sitting in settlement funds (for example, where I receive my stock grants). I didn't realize they didn't all work like Vanguard where it goes into a money market fund with reasonable returns. Ouch! Mistake being rectified now...
* It's small beans compared to the above, but I pruned a few recurring expenses. Now I really want to cancel my Amazon Prime account (consolidating with my girlfriend). The big sticking point is it offers cheaper photo backup than I can find elsewhere.

---

A few questions if you've read this far!
1. Any recommendations for cheap/secure/reliable digital backups? Let's say I have about 500GB of content I want to keep safely backed up.
2. Any recommendations for light bedtime reading that analyzes different asset classes, or about asset allocation? While I'm pruning stocks, I think I do need to diversify a bit in terms of my fund holdings, which are mostly stocks (with a little gold, cash and my home as real estate). I'm not looking for any day trading kind of thing, but more for good durable articles looking at major investment classes and fund options with Vanguard/Fidelity/etc. The last reading I did is the Early Retirement Now blog. But I'm curious if there are other suggestions.

[loutfard]

For online backups, have a look at backblaze.

[delay]

1. Any recommendations for cheap/secure/reliable digital backups? Let's say I have about 500GB of content I want to keep safely backed up.
2. Any recommendations for light bedtime reading that analyzes different asset classes, or about asset allocation? While I'm pruning stocks, I think I do need to diversify a bit in terms of my fund holdings, which are mostly stocks (with a little gold, cash and my home as real estate). I'm not looking for any day trading kind of thing, but more for good durable articles looking at major investment classes and fund options with Vanguard/Fidelity/etc. The last reading I did is the Early Retirement Now blog. But I'm curious if there are other suggestions.

1. I've used Dropbox for around 15 years now, and it's always been reasonable. It can restore any file to 30 days back.
2. A Random Walk Down Wall Street is a fun read. Where Are the Customers' Yachts? sounds like fun (I haven't read it myself.)

[m741]

@loutfard - Backblaze looks promising! Pretty cheap, $6 per TB per month is reasonable, and it seems like I get charged less if I use less storage?

@delay - Dropbox is on the pricier side, otherwise I'd have gone with them.

I've read most of the classic books (though not "Where Are the Customers' Yachts?"). I was looking more for recommendations for articles about specific funds and asset allocation strategies, that are up-to-date in the last 2-3 years. Let's say, comparing various indices (everyone is into indexing... but what indexes?), various bond classes, asset allocation etc.