seanconn's journal

[seanconn256]

@cam nice, growing herbs and spices seems to be a good idea

monthly update; savings rate is 79%.

I was supposed to have finished the economics book by now, I have not finished yet, but I am on the last section. I have to admit, I have not enjoyed reading it, and am looking forward to reading about something more practical next. I am considering reading an investments textbook, but I will be doing some research before choosing.

Other than that; no notable updates.

[seanconn256]

actually @cam , do you have any recommendations for partial shade herbs/vegetables? I am getting a list together for when I start sprouting things soon.

I also just finished the economics textbook, specifically I read "ECONOMICS: PRINCIPLES, PROBLEMS, AND POLICIES, TWENTY-FIRST EDITION" isbn 978-1-259-72322-3, and wanted to give a retrospective on it.

I think I learned important things from it, but also large portions of it either didn't capture my interest or didn't seem believable. I think it may be easiest to list/comment on the parts I liked, and didn't like/get value out of. Some of this is a re-tread of what I said earlier about the book.

(This will probably only be interesting if you intend to read the book, there is a tl;dr at the bottom.)

• PART ONE Introduction to Economics and the Economy
  Summary of the basic concepts, and assumptions made in the book.
  It also had this quote:

  "Society learned long ago that self-sufficiency breeds inefficiency. The jack-of-all-trades may be a very colorful individual but is certainly not an efficient producer."

  As an aspiring colorful individual, it's interesting to hear basically the anithesis of what I'm going for in a book that is supposed to help me get there.
• PART TWO Price, Quantity, and Efficiency
  Lots of supply/demand curves, which made a lot of sense to me. Basically explaining how markets set prices.
• PART THREE Consumer Behavior
  Really liked this part, specifically about price elasticity and demand schedules.
• PART FOUR Microeconomics of Product Markets
  Also good, about how single buisnesses make decisions to respond to the market in the short/intermediate/long term.
  It goes through pure competition/monopoly/monopolistic competition/oligopolies. I liked the parts on monopolistic competition and oligopolies, that seems much close to how most product markets, that I am familiar with, seem to work.
• PART FIVE Microeconomics of Resource Markets and Government
  I didn't find this one very interesting. It seemed to be a re-tread of the models in previous chapters with new context (resources instead of goods).
• PART SIX Microeconomic Issues and Policies
  I liked the parts on Agriculture and Healthcare. The book uses all pre-2015 data, so it talked about the state/history/reasoning for agriculture subsidies and the Affordable Care Act.
• PART SEVEN GDP, Growth, and Instability
  Good, learned about how we measure the macro economy. I found myself not liking lots of how lots of things worked, like how CPI doesn't seem to account for shrinkflation. I can see why measuring inflation is not really possible, but I don't know why this metric is used so much, surely there are better ways to do that.
  I have a lot of notes from this chapter to look into how these metrics have changed over time.
• PART EIGHT Macroeconomic Models and Fiscal Policy
  I found the stuff on macroeconomics to be a re-tread of basic supply and demand, not sure if I didn't understand it or what, but I did not find it useful.
  The fiscal policy stuff seems outdated now, considering we are not capable of running budget surpluses anymore.
• PART NINE Money, Banking, and Monetary Policy
  Really liked these chapters, they were extremely informative. It's technically about banking in general, but really is about the federal reserve system. I can see why people talk endlessly about the federal funds rate, however I am curious why they don't talk about the amount of assets the fed is holds, that seems just as important than the funds rate, with respect to inflation.
  An earlier comment said this book didn't go over the post-2008 methods of monetary policy, however this edition definitely does. They may have read another edition. The monetary policy chapters are basically half about how things changed after 2008.
• PART TEN Extensions and Issues
  I skipped this one. It was more about macreconomics, which I didn't think was that useful earlier.
• PART ELEVEN International Economics
  I found the part on exchange rates/trade deficits fascinating. Definitely something that requires more study.

tl;dr I liked most of it, but some parts really dragged on. The whole book I was thinking "do I find this simplified model useful" and for some chapters found myself answering "not really".

Next for investment studying I'm going to be researching stuff independently. I may not be ready for it, but I'm going to do it anyways.

[AxelHeyst]

As an aspiring colorful individual, it's interesting to hear basically the anithesis of what I'm going for in a book that is supposed to help me get there.

Well put. That quote jumped out at me as well. It feels like studying the tools of systematized oppression in order to weaponize them for the purposes of securing our own freedom. Badass, in other words.

[ertyu]

[*] PART NINE Money, Banking, and Monetary Policy
Really liked these chapters, they were extremely informative. It's technically about banking in general, but really is about the federal reserve system. I can see why people talk endlessly about the federal funds rate, however I am curious why they don't talk about the amount of assets the fed is holds, that seems just as important than the funds rate, with respect to inflation.
An earlier comment said this book didn't go over the post-2008 methods of monetary policy, however this edition definitely does. They may have read another edition. The monetary policy chapters are basically half about how things changed after 2008.

I'll look up the edition. For the longest time, the post-2008 policy was considered to be temporary and something to be "normalized back to normal" but the trouble was normal never came. E.g. the St Louis Fed didn't put out education materials about the way current monetary policy works until 2019:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/publica ... e-reserves

Edit: that edition appears to be from 2017, I found it

edit to the edit: I looked at it and that's still the old stuff. E.g. the reserve requirements across a number of economies are 0 (US, China, Australia, Canada ...) and if what's in the textbook held, the money multiplier and M1 should be infinite and they're not. They've shunted the graphs to the end, but the graphs are also obsolete. See the link I gave above for the current interest rate determination mechanism.

[seanconn256]

edit to the edit: I looked at it and that's still the old stuff.

Noted! It looked updated to me, but if there's been more changes since then, good to know. Also thanks for the links, I will check them out.

[seanconn256]

Well put. That quote jumped out at me as well. It feels like studying the tools of systematized oppression in order to weaponize them for the purposes of securing our own freedom. Badass, in other words.

I like that way of framing it, when I first read it I just had a feeling I was in the wrong place lol.

[seanconn256]

April update, savings rate: 79%

I have been doing a lot of car maintenance lately, I bought a repair manual for my specific car that has a maintenance schedule that I am behind on. It's a lot of work and the cost of doing something wrong, either from needing to replace something after breaking it, or from getting in an accident, is quite high. It's a little similar to bike maintenance, but everything is more expensive and harder to access. Also the cost of paying someone to work on your car is insane. Oil changes are priced okay but anything else is extremely expensive. Getting rid of the car is something I think about often.

I am possibly moving soon, depending on what I can find. I'll be leaving a midsize town to near or in a larger city, to be closer to my family. The mastermind group recently re-read the chapter on avoiding getting stuff/moving/living smaller, and it's framed some of my thinking on it. Overall, I have noticed that a lot of my ERE lifestyle work has put me in a better position.

I got a lot of my furniture for free or cheap, so getting rid of some of it has few mental blocks. To get the same price near the city, I will have to go down to one bedroom. I have mapped it out, and I can do that with relative ease. The main issue with going one bedroom is that I want a different area for work, as I work from home, so I can mentally separate it from the rest of my day. I could possibly do this with a dining room area.

I will say, the apartments I have been able to find for cheap are either in really bad areas or seem to have serious management issues. I don't want to deal with either of those, so it limits my options. Currently, rent is 60% of what I spend (Pareto principle), so reductions here are seriously important, but I would work an extra couple years to live somewhere safe and clean.

Investing research has been interesting. I realize that I don't have enough skills yet to act on any of this information, but looking at the data has been helpful. So far I've looked into the components of GDP data, fed activity/balance sheets, listing P/E ratios of companies I am familiar with, credit card delinquency/charge off rates, and activities of retail investors. I also did a quick and dirty ERE/my-personal-lifestyle inflation metric by messing with the proportions in the CPI, and sadly the rate was higher. I was disappointed by this, and haven't delved into the details yet.

[seanconn256]

also; another ERE advantage: My work is having some difficulties recently, there have been layoffs and some uncertainty about the company.
I personally haven't been bothered by this all that much, likely because I could go without a job for years at this point. Sometimes I think getting fired would be a good thing for me.

[seanconn256]

Update:
My energy issues have gotten quite severe recently, so I'm taking a break from the mastermind group and ERE in general.
I will update when I am able to get stuff back to normal.

[Slevin]

Best wishes Seanconn, hope you feel better soon.