Good morning!

[loutfard]

Hello!

I'm Loutfard.

I work:
- I currently work two days a week plus a meeting here and there for money, for two employers.
- I volunteer for a very visible non-profit I helped start in my student days.

I have a fairly good overview of my finances:
- earnings: about 100k€ pretax together with my wife, or around 60k post tax. (We live in a world record taxation country.)
- real estate: over 500k€ conservative estimate between primary residence and holiday home
- debt: about 190k€, weighted average interest rate slightly above 1%, very limited call-in options
- retirement: generous defined benefits government pension from age 67
- liquid investments: low 5 figures
- non-liquid retirement investments: low 5 figures
- savings rate: ~20% excluding loan principal repayments, ~60% including loan principal repayments

I am very talented at:
- foreign languages and writing
- music

I love:
- jokes, both absurd and silly kindergarten level (my username!). Bonus points for the overlap area.
- minimalist solutions
- programming
- ecological construction
- free and open source software
- appropriate technology
- free culture
- working together on something to feel proud of
- nature and quiet
- foraging
- windmills
- functional cycling
- my wife. She's beautiful, smart, a lot younger than me and very much a trusted companion.

I think I'll mostly be lurking here, looking for ideas on how to get my wife further on board FIRE/ERE. She's relatively frugal, but not (yet?) on board with some big-item changes necessary for FIRE, let alone ERE. I'd rather not prostiture myself in tech anymore, so expenses side budget cuts look very attractive to me.

Housing is the big one. We both very much like our current home. I see room for improvement. I'd like us to be there for my aging parents and at the same time slash housing cost by moving to a free loft in their giant house. My wife absolutely loves my parents, but even with 100m², separate entrance and terrace, that's a bridge too far for her at the moment.

[candide]

Welcome aboard.

Some interests you listed that I share -- and would love to see more writing about -- are minimalist solutions, appropriate tech and free culture. I look forward to reading your journal, when you feel comfortable enough to start one.

[icefish]

Hi! All of the things in your 'love' section sounds fabulous-- the username took me a sec. What kind of music do you make?