Small and winding road to freedom

[delay]

Thanks for your journal! Just 20% of your expenses is on house maintenance/repayment/interest, that is relatively low. The 150 for travel seems low if you plan to visit the US with a family of four.

You'll eventually have to replace your car, how do you budget for that?

[Aspirant]

@delay

Guilty on all accounts

House maintenance includes the mandatory fees and not much actual maintenance. We replaced water pipes last year and are paying that off on the loans section. During next 2-4 years we will fix drainage pipes and that's another 10 k. I have that in the common expenses category (joint account transfer) for the budgeting. But as previously I am not expecting DW to pay her part, so loans it is...

I am planning to drive the car another 5 years or so. Electric cars are still too much for my budget so I have to wait. I have to squeeze the car replacement cost from the current budget. Maybe less fishing gear shopping and more car shopping?

Yea, the travel budget is way too low. But it is lot more than previous years. Bro is visiting this year so maybe US trip is 2025.

[Aspirant]

Holy crap, what a January.

Car maintenance was planned and expected. I didn´t expect the fly shop sale. * Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the search engine optimization, and nice red uniforms *. But as I mentioned before, maybe I will categorize it to the mental health section from now on so it doesn´t look so bad. I need to have some kind of a light in the end of a tunnel.

I had so much activities during weekends, that I didn´t have time to worry about not drinking beer.

Income 3698,18
Joint account transfer -1250
Travel account transfer
Savings account transfer 1000 From savings account :/
Broker account transfer
Food -532,84
Lunches -99,1
Gasoline -175,35
Car -517,23 Car maintenance + inspection
Health -358,44 Mostly dental
Electricity
Phone
Hardware store
Shopping & sport -1009,26 Of which 700 fishing gear and 250 swim camp
Beer & restaurants -182,8 No beer, just restaurants
Travel
Misc -94,22
Credit card payments -477,91 I don´t even know Clearing out all accrued the online payments which require a credit card.

[Aspirant]

Expenses for Feb-Apr 24.
No, my income hasn´t risen, but I got some bonus money... Shopping has been horrible this year. Something every month.
I got totally frivolous stuff such as fishing stuff and wrist watches (notice plural)

I broke and dislocated my shoulder so I thought that this is going to save some serous bucks, because I can´t do anything. Well, you can participate on online auctions and buy fly-tying stuff online... Health expenses were a little up and DW started to buy more groceries. Transfers to savings account look pretty good, but the money will flow to other direction during summer. I had a swimming training course during december and bought fins and other swim stuff. That was a good idea, because swimming is pretty much the only exercise I can do with a broken hand. Now I am trying to rehabilitate the shoulder to get full range of movement. It seems that this will take longer than expected and will be painful...

I had some unspent parental leave so I have to take 8 weeks off during the summer. I think when I have more time on my hands, the spending will increase. And even though we haven´t planned anything big, there will be holiday expenses.

Income 4 289
Joint account transfer -1 250
Travel account transfer -267
Savings account transfer -1 467
Broker account transfer
Food -397
Lunches -153
Gasoline -192
Car -69
Health -97
Electricity
Phone
Hardware store
Shopping & sport -606
Beer & restaurants -218
Travel
Misc -35
CC payments

[delay]

Thanks for your journal update. Eight weeks off in the summer sounds great! Your purchase of watches reminds me of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

[ertyu]

And of world war two soldiers, for some reason -- who are on pictures raising or taking down or whatever the flag over berlin with 6 watches from dead bodies on their arms

[Aspirant]

@ertyu

Exactly. Except the watches are mechanical so they are pretty neat Decent wristwatch should be added to the Guide as neccessity along with a towel.

The photoes just show realistically of adventurers. Any true conqueror will have auto-loot on while fighting their way to Berlin.

I have been trying to get in shape. Broken humerus and dislocated shoulder while fatbiking. I can´t raise my arm properly and the trajectory is not fully recovered. Trajectory might be a wrong word, but "the range of movement in my arm". I try to work on it every day, but maybe I am doing something wrong. I have self-diagnozed it as adhesive capsulitis (frozen shoulder). So basically when the fracture was healing in humerus, all the other parts got stiff and hence lack of proper movement range. Now I have to gradually push against the pain to "free up" the range back to normal. Normal pain I can live with, but the nerve pain is a killer for me. This seriously hampers my holiday plans, especially fishing trips if I can´t make it better. Oh, and don´t worry; I haven´t been just self diagnozing. I have consulted 2 doctors and 3 physiotherapists and had x-rays taken 3 times.

Over the years I have tried to hang in these forums every attempt of web of goals I have health as priority. In practice it hasn´t been a priority. Now this forces me to take exercise seriously and maybe after this is settled the routines stick? In all the life advice/self help/ life hack books or websites they advocate taking care of your health. If you are young and fit, it really doesn´t resonate. Now that I am old and frail the wisdom becomes more apparent

[zbigi]

The photoes just show realistically of adventurers. Any true conqueror will have auto-loot on while fighting their way to Berlin.

I wouldn't call these people adventurers or conquerers. They were people living in oppresive totalitarian regime and often in unimaginable poverty that was much closer to 1930s India than Western Europe. On top of that, they were thrust into the war as a part of the brutal Stalin war machine (for whom losing less than 100k people in a battle was a rounding error). So, they figured, that, in case they somehow survive, they should take home whatever loot was available and easy to carry (high commanders had entire train carts of their personal loot going home, regular grunts could only take what they could carry), to help themselves and their families back home in their misery. It's a far cry from an image of a Viking ship raiding European coasts.