CDR's Journal

[CDR]

March 2021 Results

12.06% Spending Rate
87.94% Savings Rate

April 2021 Results

1.40% Spending Rate
98.60% Savings Rate

The April savings rate is cheating, because I got a significant amount of money back in my tax return. I've saved this money separately from the other money I have been saving. I haven't decided what I will use it for yet.

In March I read Time Management for System Administrators. One of the exercises was to write down all the goals you wanted to accomplish in the next month, year, 5 years. Then you had to get specific and prioritize them. I did this exercise, and it led to my most productive month (April) since 2019 at least. Certainly this year.

Another factor was this was my first full month at the IT job. The new job breathed some fresh energy into my life. It makes a huge difference mentally to know that what you spend 8 hours a day doing it helping you move towards your goals. Everyday at the job is another day of experience in IT, and that is exactly what I need.

I can confirm April being the most productive month this year because I use Rescuetime to track everything I do on my computers and phone. I had forgotten I used this, and was horrified with my stats for 2021 so far. This also motivated me to get stuff done. There are some goals on my Rescuetime account that I created a long time ago, so I thought I would share these here.

March

31h 48m of Very Productive Time (Goal is more than 60h)

55h 14m on Very Distracting Time (Goal is less than 22h 30m)

51h 18m on Entertainment (Goal is less than 30h)

April

65h 38m of Very Productive Time (Goal is more than 60h) +34h (ish) from March

28h 41m on Very Distracting Time (Goal is less than 22h 30m) -27h (ish) from March

26h 37m on Entertainment (Goal is less than 30h) -25h (ish) from March

I lost steam the last few days of April. Kind of sucks, but considering I wiped out all but three goals I had set for the month, I'm fine with it.

As promised, I am starting to take my health and exercise more seriously. April saw me work on push-ups and go for walks, May is bringing a variety of changes to my day-to-day schedule to involve a lot more exercises and stretching. This is the first time I am trying to bring a variety of exercises into my life all at once. Instead of focusing on getting on the treadmill 3 times a week, I am mixing up my month between treadmill, stair walking/running, and cycling. Push ups, body weight squats and jumping jacks are also in the mix as well.

I also realized I've never read a book on fitness in my life, so my goal is to read three books on fitness this month. My books of choice are:

Never Gymless by Ross Enamait
Complete Calisthenics by Ashley Kalym
Building the Gymnastics Body: The Science of Gymnastics Strength by Christopher Sommer

So far, Never Gymless has been a good read. I am very interested in workouts and exercise that require no equipment, or equipment that can be DIYed. As someone who has spent all of my life uninterested in the gym bro mentality, Ross' focus on body weight exercise, or exercise with inexpensive or DIYable equipment is a better fit with my personality and interests.

[CDR]

Re-reading my post - I suppose my April savings rate is not 'cheating', as I could have blown the return on any number of things, and instead I am choosing to save it, so I should include that as a win!

Obligatory plug for Tiddlywiki - it's organized in a wiki style format so it is incredibly easy to crosslink notes to link shared concepts, alternative interpretations, hierarchies of concepts, sources, reference quotes, etc.

A throw back to thank @basuragomi for mentioning Tiddly Wiki, I've been using it at my new job to document processes and procedures I need to do.

What kind of sewing machine do you have and what are you trying to make?...

For some reason, I never answered @Western Red Cedar's second question here. Sorry! When I purchased the sewing machine from the thrift shop, it was simply a general interest in the skill that made me want to pick it up. I had no particular goals or projects in mind. I guess I was ignoring the ERE book's advice on sewing . Since then, I've used the machine to make a few fixes for products DW's online thrift store. I also made a few bad practice patches on clothing with holes. I thrifted a Star Wars bed sheet, which ONE DAY I plan to make pj bottoms out of. I also thrifted some pj pants I planned to turn into pj shorts. However, I got too gung ho on trying to repair the waist band, and ruined the stretch on the elastic itself. It seems that while the machine has a zig-zag stitch option, it doesn't seem to work. I will have to revisit that to confirm. The machine might need some TLC.

Ah, I also made a pin cuhsion, using foam from shoulder pads I removed from a 'thrift flip' for DW's store.

I only have one project that I think I can complete at the moment, which is to sew a cover for the sewing machine (it didn't come with one). Otherwise in the future I would like to get good at repairs, alterations, curtains, upholstery, and utilitarian stuff like covers for items, machines, etc.

Future Sewing Projects:
Drawstring Backpack ( I use to have one, it broke . Looking to recreate, but bigger, stronger, made out of synthetic material so it is water resistant)
Improve the Moneybelt I already own so it doesn't fall apart mid travel
Clothing for DW
Learn to make items that would make good gifts
Face masks
Edit 5/4/2021 - basuragomi's ideas
DIY Sandbags and medicine balls

My main concern with taking on sewing projects is that many of the projects I can find online, or think of, seem like projects for the sake of projects. Practice makes perfect, but much like with electronics, I don't want to create a bunch of things I will not use. I was hoping to practice a bunch of different stitches on scrap, do a few projects above, and then volunteer for a local theatre. Would get to meet new people, practice sewing, and etc. COVID ruined that last year, and maybe this year as well.

[basuragomi]

Tiddlywiki is pretty great, I've been using it for over a year now and it's become indispensable for me.

The most productive use case for sewing is IMO tailoring good-quality thrifted clothes. Making from scratch is crazy expensive and time-intensive, and as you said anything else of equivalent complexity tends to be of no practical use. Maybe you could also make canvas sandbags/medicine balls for exercising?

A really great bodyweight technique is to use someone else's bodyweight - e.g. pick up your partner and walk a hundred metres with them or have them sit on your shoulders while you do push-ups. Not sure if that's covered in many books.

[ertyu]

Not just thrifted clothes. One could reupholster old furniture with thrifted curtains, make house slippers from an old coat (someone on the forum made this!), make pillows and pillowcases, resize/adapt bedsheets that are of nice material but wrong size (e.g. convert a too-small duvet case into a flat or fitted sheet).

A new zipper is 3-5 euro; an otherwise crap item of clothing you can gut for zippers and buttons can be as cheap as 0.25 euro on final sale day at my second hand store. Quality shirt that's missing buttons and is now cheap? Excellent, buy another shirt and change the buttons. Etc.

Thrifted/trashed textile is a very cheap raw material. I have made toiletry bags, a laptop case, a water bottle sleeve so my water bottle won't get scratched. A pouch for my earphones whose cord always gets tangled up if they're just dropped in a pocket or my backpack. And so on. Sewing can be an excellent skill when it comes to creating household items from scratch. Now considering a phone sleeve, let's see how that turns out.

[How-DoesThisSound]

Tiddlywiki is pretty great, I've been using it for over a year now and it's become indispensable for me.

The most productive use case for sewing is IMO tailoring good-quality thrifted clothes. Making from scratch is crazy expensive and time-intensive, and as you said anything else of equivalent complexity tends to be of no practical use. Maybe you could also make canvas sandbags/medicine balls for exercising?

A really great bodyweight technique is to use someone else's bodyweight - e.g. pick up your partner and walk a hundred metres with them or have them sit on your shoulders while you do push-ups. Not sure if that's covered in many books.

Great idea basuragomi, I'll have to do that once I get my machine in. I did a cost-benefit analysis on new sewing machines and settled on the Janome HD3000. My use case is manufacturing hand-made sandals but I very much like the idea of learning to be my own tailor for thrift garments.

[CDR]

Really like the DIY sandbag/medicine ball idea, thank you @basuragomi. Good idea about using some one else's bodyweight. I will keep it in mind for when I can actual lift my own body weight . Part of the reason I want to learn alterations is to alter thrifted clothing .

@ertyu It never occurred to me to thrift clothes for their buttons and/or zippers, but this is excellent. People talk about $1 clothes all the time, but the thrift stores DW and I went to before lockdown never had those kind of deals. Your comment about .25 euro shirts reminded me. I did a little internet sleuthing and found a place just a few minutes from my house with a $1 rack. So you know where I'll be heading once we're free again!

(In fact, I don't think we are still in lockdown, however, the # of cases is much higher than it was when we use to go thrifting, so we are waiting for it to return to those levels before going again. We might get vaccinated before that happens though it just doesn't seem worth it to do physical side hustles right now)

[ertyu]

My second hand store is one of a couple of chains that buy donated clothes from western europe (Germans or Austrians donate clothes to charity, charity bales them up and resells them for cash). Our local chains restock completely once a month, and prices go down as the month progresses. Brand new items or items of good quality obviously go first. Then on "final sale day" their only goal is to clear out inventory. Apart from me and a bunch of retired ladies, on final sale day you get many resellers who want inventory for cheap - e.g. guys with vans who then drive around the countryside setting up temporary stalls in various villages and sleeping in their vans. It's an interesting ecosystem.

[CDR]

Not really related but,

Pretty sure our thrift stores bale up clothes and send to West Africa when they don't sell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elU32XNj8PM

Some argue (can't remember if they talk about this in the linked program) this system suppresses West Africa's domestic clothing industry from developing, because it cannot compete (on price) with the overwhelming amount of clothing from the US and Canada.

[How-DoesThisSound]

Really like the DIY sandbag/medicine ball idea, thank you @basuragomi. Good idea about using some one else's bodyweight. I will keep it in mind for when I can actual lift my own body weight . Part of the reason I want to learn alterations is to alter thrifted clothing .

@ertyu It never occurred to me to thrift clothes for their buttons and/or zippers, but this is excellent. People talk about $1 clothes all the time, but the thrift stores DW and I went to before lockdown never had those kind of deals. Your comment about .25 euro shirts reminded me. I did a little internet sleuthing and found a place just a few minutes from my house with a $1 rack. So you know where I'll be heading once we're free again!

(In fact, I don't think we are still in lockdown, however, the # of cases is much higher than it was when we use to go thrifting, so we are waiting for it to return to those levels before going again. We might get vaccinated before that happens though it just doesn't seem worth it to do physical side hustles right now)

Keep an eye out for any garments with YKK zippers. I find that not only are YKK zippers very sturdy and hard-wearing but that the clothes they end up on tend to be higher quality as well. You should be able to find images of what they look like online : )

[CDR]

Thanks for the note about YKK Zippers @How-DoesThisSound.

In May, I did a poor job following the goals set for that month, yet I passed another certification at the request of my boss. They covered the cost, so it was great.

June was more of the same. I thought it might be because I set too many goals. My to-do list for the month had more hours of tasks then I had free hours. All-in-all, I passed another certificate at the end of June. This time covered by Microsoft via a program with work.

So for July, I've targeted my goals/tasks based on estimated time of completion and the amount of solo free hours I have in the month. This took no time at all to figure out. But, the benefits haven't panned out. I am still not on task as often as I would like. My main focus for July and August is another Microsoft Certification.

In August, a side-goal is to organize my comic books and list on eBay. The goal is to list and see what happens. If it works out, I thought I could turn it into an eBay store for geek things. Comics would be the initial stock, and I would supplement with geek related items found via thrifting.

Something else I intend to finish is an online course for the certificate I wrote in May. I've created a detailed outline, and wrote scripts for a few of the videos. Before September, I intend to finish all the scripts and slide shows. Then, I've dedicated September to recording and editing the videos and releasing it online.

The course + the eBay store will be my first intentional attempts to create income streams outside my job. I intended 2021 to be a year of output. So, I need to stop theorizing.

Mentioning output, 4 certificates was not my goal this year but it is what is happening. So October will be Execution Month. I will take everything I've learned in my certificates this year and finish off my goal of releasing 5 small open source software projects. I've released three so far, and I've selected 3 more to push out during October. I also intend to make 2-3 small contributions to open source projects. Finally, I will attend 1 or 2 tech related meetups to start meeting people. I will try to keep attending meetups for the rest of the year.

Then, it will be head down until April 2022 to do:

• Two more IT Certificates

• 2 Cybersecurity courses with 'certificates of participation'

• And a set of free cybersecurity courses that people have strung together into a curriculum

Writing it all down, this makes the rest of the year (until April 2022, I started my year late hehe) seem stuffed . I can already imagine a few probable events happening that will interrupt these goals. Oh well, I'll continue with my lofty aspirations. At least there is enough that if I only complete 25%-50%, I still got a lot done.

[Salathor]

People talk about $1 clothes all the time, but the thrift stores DW and I went to before lockdown never had those kind of deals.

I don't know if you're still looking, but the place to go in the US is the Goodwill Outlet centers (these are different from regular goodwills). Everything in the store is listed for $1.79 a pound (at least in the super HCOL area where I live), so you can regularly get kids' clothing for under a quarter, and grown up shirts for a buck or less. Heavy things are usually sold for a low, flat rate. I bought a beat up old card table and fabric to refinish it for I think $6 total, compared to $55 for a new one at the store, and it came out perfectly.

[CDR]

I don't know if you're still looking, but the place to go in the US is the Goodwill Outlet centers (these are different from regular goodwills). Everything in the store is listed for $1.79 a pound (at least in the super HCOL area where I live), so you can regularly get kids' clothing for under a quarter, and grown up shirts for a buck or less. Heavy things are usually sold for a low, flat rate. I bought a beat up old card table and fabric to refinish it for I think $6 total, compared to $55 for a new one at the store, and it came out perfectly.

Had no idea these existed! It seems there is exactly one in Ontario, so we might have to make the trek out one day to check it out. There are a few 'close by' across the boarder as well, but it's a much longer drive. Thanks for letting me know about this!

[Salathor]

Hope it works out for you! It's quite the experience. Everything is dumped in bins, roughly sorted between clothes and home goods. It's kind of like a treasure hunt.

You will probably want to bring gloves and a mask though (even before COVID it was a wear-gloves kind of place, at least the ones near us).

[CDR]

I am still alive and kicking. I put the journal on pause because living at home, saving most of my money, and spending most of my time studying IT and programming is a boring log.

But that is going to change. DW got a new job in a new city, so we're moving out. Free from the constraints of living with parents, but free from an easy 90% savings rate. The next few months will test how much I learned from reading PF/FIRE/ERE literature and posts. We are searching for a place close to the essentials like work, the grocery store, etc.

My work is temporarily remote, but the office is located in another city. I would love to stay another year or two, but I have no interest in getting a car for a commute. So, I applied for a job at the local university in the new town.

If I get it, the benefits are:
1. Much better pay and benefits, a union job
2. Able to bike to work - exercise is done!
3. If I take public transit instead - free time to read, listen to audiobooks, do flashcards
4. The uni library = free access to academic books, and I will always be on campus, so it won't be an extra stop
5. It's my alma mater, so I would be taking the money back I paid in tuition

The new city, which we both have lots of previous experience with, is better for ERE in many ways. Good public transit, lots of bike lanes, and the people are generally pro-bike, pro-environment and a bit more hippy in general. You meet many more people supportive of ERE-like lifestyles.

My focus will be to establish PF/MMM/ERE systems and enhance relevant skills. Some systems I would like to focus on:

A system that handles money management seamlessly with little effort.
I want to have a system that makes it as frictionless as possible to see "solving my problems with money" issues, so I can investigate and then learn the relevant skills/find alternatives to keep costs down. (At the simplest level, this would just be looking at the monthly budget and thinking "what do I currently pay for that I could learn to do myself?" and similar questions "how could I reduce my grocery cost next month? What is the most expensive item on my grocery bill, can I remove it, can I find a cheaper substitute, can I get it another way" I am thinking that creating a system that forces me to stop and reflect will over time lead to significant improvements)

2+ systems that handle my physical health:
1. Cost and time-efficient grocery shopping, cooking, and healthy eating
2. Embedding exercise into my lifestyle (biking to work, groceries etc).

A system that embeds Portuguese into my daily life.
My level is sufficient that I should just consume content in the language. Some areas of my life I could do in Portuguese include:
Talking to DW (She is a native speaker and the reason I am learning in the first place)
Learning IT/Programming Skills
Daily news consumption
Planning/Goal Setting can be written in PT
Learning cooking (recipes, cookbooks, cooking videos all in PT with some English supplements to find locally available alternatives)
Budgeting (my spreadsheets, goals, etc)
Going forward, I will take a "Portuguese First" attitude to learn new skills. I will only fall back into English if I cannot find the information I need.

A system that utilizes as much spare time as possible to study Japanese & embedding Japanese into my day as well
My Japanese abilities are modest. I started studying again in the middle of January. I have squeezed an average of 2.4h/day of studying. When I move out, this will be hard to keep up. I will need to make it a priority to keep up the work.

Other than moving, my focus for the month is Japanese. I want to put in as many hours as I can. I hope to bump my abilities up enough to start struggling through native content in April. We'll see what the month brings.

[CDR]

Where does the time go?

It is very amusing to read back this journal and remember the times. It's funny, because I can barely recall writing any of these entries, but I definitely recall the things I was writing about. I don't think my writing captured how depressed I was about my particular job at the time, and the little details of life, but I can remember it now.

Very happy to have gotten out of that job and into a new field.

It's been a year out my of parent's house. I haven't been keeping track of my spending and savings rates since we moved out, or really budgeted at all. The main reason is of course, laziness. The second is that my savings continues to go up, so it was very hard to motivate myself to budget. Also, every week or month my wife and I sit down and total up everything we've spent on shared items and split it up, so I would often get an idea of what I am spending stuff on and make adjustments the next month.

There is a lot of room for improvement.

I am not sure if I mentioned it here, but in 2022 I dropped almost all of my other ambitions to focus on studying Japanese. I got a lot of study hours in and made some new friends. I wrote an in-person test for Japanese at the end of the year for the intermediate level and failed it, so that about sums up my 2022. We could talk about why, but it's kind of a long story.

The goal as I saw it in Jan 2022 was to study Japanese intensely for two years, and then in 2024 take a trip to Japan. I've recently purchased my tickets to Japan, I'm going in April 2024 for a month, very exciting times.

In this new edition of CDR's Journal, I am going to try to control the amount of future thinking and planning I do, as there is a lot of it in this journal, and little of it amounted to much.

"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done."
- Bruce Lee

I will only speak about things in the future that I am certain about.

I thought I would pull a bunch of things I spoke about in my log and update ya'll.

As of September 2020, my net worth is around $23k. Given my working patterns, this might be the highest my net worth has ever been.

My own savings is now ~$90k, although it will probably drop down below 90 again as my wife and I have not divided the expenses of our trip to Brazil to visit the family. This is all in a savings account as much of it is supposed to be a down payment for a place, but we are not able to purchase a place at the moment because my wife is on contract, additionally, housing prices are still out of reach.

But, I also have PowerShell on my list [to learn] for Windows System Admin...

Not sure if I ever mentioned, I did learn PowerShell and use it often at work now.

As for the other skills that were often mentioned in my log, not much progress has been made. The skills that have improved the most are:

Japanese Language Ability (from 0 to something)
Portuguese Language Ability (from something to something more)
Catch-All for IT/System Admin Skills
Cooking

...Instead, I've closed a contract to do some freelance web development...

...The product possibilities for IT Training material seem to be numerous, although dangerous...

This was the only contract I closed for freelance web development work, I recently got a contract for some data science work. The money I made from the quoted contract is still sitting saved in my bank account .

About IT Training material, I did attempt to put together course. I wrote out all the scripts required to record a video course for a particular IT certs. Then Microsoft changed the topics required for that cert and left me in the dust. I shelved the idea at that point.

My work is temporarily remote, but the office is located in another city. I would love to stay another year or two, but I have no interest in getting a car for a commute. So, I applied for a job at the local university in the new town...

The new city, which we both have lots of previous experience with, is better for ERE in many ways. Good public transit, lots of bike lanes, and the people are generally pro-bike, pro-environment and a bit more hippy in general. You meet many more people supportive of ERE-like lifestyles.

I didn't get the job, I remain in my old one, which appears to be fully remote, they have never asked us to return to the office and my boss knows I no longer have a car, so could not make it to the office even if they asked me to.

Public transit and my feet have worked well. I took my bike out a handful of times last year for emergency grocery runs. I spent most of my time last year trying to (and sometimes winning at) making friends with Japanese people so I could practice my Japanese. So, my friend circle and/or social capital in this city is very low.

[CDR]

Where does the time ago, again!

Work
I've been promoted to a new position, also in IT. I work a lot more with Linux servers now, which is fantastic.

The new position means I am no longer on a two week rotating schedule, it has been nice being able to go to bed around the same time each day, wake up around the same time, and not have to switch to overnights every two weeks. I also work regular hours 5 days a week, instead of 12 hour shifts 3-4 days a week.

There is lots to learn, the company is working on transition to a modern IT environment with SRE roles and etc, so not only do I need to learn how to be a System Administrator, I will then also need to pivot into SRE stuff eventually.

I purchased a voucher for an IT exam last year that I still need to take (RHCE). It was $500 USD, but if I pass (when I pass?) work will cover it. It expires in August, so I am taking it near the end of June. If I fail, I get a free retake which is valid for a year from the day I failed, so either way it will be fine.

Visiting Japan
Between my old position and new position, I took all my vacation and went to Japan for about a month.

ERE related things, I stayed in a homestay for the first week (Homestay.com, be careful if the person doesn't have a lot of reviews, I saw people with no reviews, and eventually people went to stay with them and had a bad experience. In the end, I could only fine 1 homestay for the entire month I bounced around Japan), saving enormous amounts of money compared to a hotel and I got to practice a bit of Japanese with my host family. I tried to stay in hostels and cheap hotels or airbnbs otherwise.

Couchsurfing is kind of a dead platform, at least in Japan. I joined and was forced to pay $100 for the year to use it, and then I wasn't able to drum up anything from it.

I booked an airbnb that was more like an apartment in Osaka, with a kitchen, as I had planned to make some meals while there. In the end though, I discovered that they didn't really stock the kitchen with enough dishes, pots, and pans to do real cooking. And then, I was just a few minutes walk from 3 different vegan restaurants in Osaka, so the kitchen didn't see much use. The bigger fridge meant I could enjoy fruits and soy milk for breakfast though.

Most of the things I wanted to do were cheap. Museums and Temples were cheap or free, eating out was pretty inexpensive, although I eventually got into the habit of going to a discount grocery store and picking up things for breakfast and and on-the-go snacks. Because of the weak yen, things seem very cheap at corner stores. Don't let it fool you though, discount grocery stores were hard to find in Tokyo, but outside of Tokyo it was much easier and everything was even less expensive.

Given that I don't drink or go to night clubs, my evenings were inexpensive, I would go for walks/wander the streets, watch TV in the hotel to practice Japanese, read books, plan my trip for the next day, etc.
On Thrifting in Japan
Books

In general, used books are very cheap in Japan and are almost always in very good condition. They are, of course, mostly in Japanese. I saw the peculiar scenario of people rating a particular location of BOOK-OFF (a chain of second hand book stores) as 1 star because there were no English books for sale. I am not sure what they expected in Japan.

One plan I had was to purchase used children's books and manga at BOOK-OFF and read while on the move and then sell the books back to BOOK-OFF and get more. I also brought some Japanese books that I had already read, or was never going to read and had picked up thrifting here in Canada.

My plan was wrenched because they would not let me sell books to them, because I did not have a resident card. I read online (after getting rejected) that sometimes the particular store doesn't care or ask, but I tried one and didn't want to waste more time bouncing around to different stores and getting rejected. So, I donated the books I brought to a local library, a bit of a difficult conversation to have in Japanese . I didn't want to have this same difficult conversation over and over again, and they told me if they didn't need the books they would dispose of them, so it wasn't what I wanted.

The obvious way around this is to take a Japanese friend, but it's easier to plan that if you know that ahead of time.

So, instead I waited until the trip was almost over, and headed to a BOOK-OFF or two and stocked up on second hand textbooks, children's books, and manga for cheap. I also got two boxsets of DVDs for cheap that I will use to study Japanese as well. The textbooks are unused. The manga looks unread. I will probably destroy these things in the process of studying with them.

Clothing

Everything I saw before going to Japan was that Japan was an excellent place to thrift for clothing.

After going, I strongly disagree. Thrifting for clothing in Japan is very expensive. I bought a second hand pair of jeans for $60! Sure, they were Levi's, but I could get second hand Levi's here for $15. Almost every thrift store I went to was what we might call a boutique thrift store here in Canada. Everything was brand names, well organized and very expensive for my taste.

Aside about the jeans
(At the time, I thought I was really going to need more jeans, because I had packed two pairs of jeans, but the one I was going to wear ripped before I got to Japan, so I had to switch out one of the packed pairs and arrive in Japan with just two pairs of jeans (the one I transited there in, and the other packed). What ended up happening is that I bought another two pairs of jeans used, and then the weather proceed to be unseasonably warm for almost my entire trip, and so I mostly used shorts...)

I wanted that Value Village/Savers/Goodwill/Salvation Army experience and prices. The closest I could come was BOOK-OFF SUPER BAZAAR. The problem was the clothing was still a bit expensive, and the secondary problem was that most of the clothing was too small for me .

If/When I go back to Japan, I would not bother with thrifting clothing.

The only thing I managed was that my 6 year old shoes had worn through at the heel and was letting water wick up into my shoe when it rained. So at the Super Bazaar I managed to find some used Nikes that were in decent shape. They were $30 CAD. This was near the end of my trip, so I could have waited until I returned to Canada, but I thought it would be fun to have something that I thrifted from Japan be something I use everyday for the next X years.

My previous pair of shoes were $40 CAD new, hopefully these Nikes last a long time . I had been searching the entire trip for shoes. Most places had brand name shoes for like $200 CAD a pair. At a discount sports store in Akashi, I found a very cheap pair of shoes that seemed like a good match, but the line up for cash was so long that I gave up. Similarly, they had cheap shoes at Donki, but I didn't want to wait in the long lines at Donki just for shoes at the beginning of my trip.

Donki

Officially called Don Quijote, it is a popular discount store chain in Japan. You see many people making a big fuss about this store online and how cheap it is. For everything I was looking at, to me it seemed about the same price as you would find in Canada at Wal-Mart or Old Navy, or for things like make up and skin care products, I saw the same products and prices at drug stores in Japan. Additionally, their suitcases are expensive, just go to Ginza Karen.

Similarly, any discount grocery store will have lots of cheap snacks and junk food like Donki does, with maybe a bit more selection.

I think what actually makes Donki popular is that everything is in one store and they have Tax Free counters for tourists.

Tax Free
By Law, you are supposed to bring your passport with you where ever you go in Japan, a police officer can request to look at your passport and entry stamp. It seems most people do not know this, because the amount of reviews I see that comment "bring your passport for tax free shopping".

Anyways, some stores have the option for you to purchase items without tax, if you spend over 5000 yen. If those items are consumable in some way (food, make up, skin care products, etc) though, they put them in a special plastic bag that you are not allowed to open until you leave Japan. The government has an electronic system where they connect your passport to everything you purchase tax free, and when you are leaving Japan, they might pull you aside and as to review your tax free purchases.

The downside is that typically, there is only tax free shopping in stores/locations in busy tourist areas, where I suspect prices are higher anyways.

Misc Tips
Luggage and Packing
I brought my wife's carry on suitcase and a travel backpack she bought for me for xmas on Amazon that opens like a suitcase. This was more than enough for the month, and the size of the suitcase and nature of the backpack meant I didn't need a luggage forwarding service (more below).

At the end of the trip though, I went to Ginza Karen (name of the store) and bought my own luggage for cheap, maybe $70 CAD. (Tax free, bring your passport ) It was cheaper than what I could find in Canada, and my plan is mainly to use it for our trips to Brazil to see my wife's family. Every time we go there, my wife brings lots of gifts for our nieces and nephew, and my wife's grandmother showers us in linens and other things she sews. And of course, clothing and books are cheap there because of the currency exchange. I tend to just buy my clothing in Brazil, although since I won't go this year, I bought some essentials in Japan.

If you are only going for a week or two and staying in Tokyo/Osaka with some day trips and you plan on doing lots of shopping, if you already own two suitcases, just pack the smaller one with your stuff, and then pack it into the larger suitcase.

If you are staying for longer, pack light and use laundromats. I found the ones I went to were very clean and the machines were huge and worked well.

IC Cards
IC Cards are used to pay for public transit in Japan. This includes tickets for the shinkansen. You can also use them to pay for things at some corner stores and other places.

You might discover that Suica no longer has tourist IC cards available for purchase at Narita (the budget airport for Tokyo). Pasmo however, still offers their tourist IC card there, and they have waived the setup fee of the card.

I used the Pasmo card the entire trip and I had no problems. My card expired the day I left, but the day it expires on, it is still active. I ran it on a low balance the last few days of my trip, and when I got to the airport (by train) I went to the fare adjustment machine and it told me exactly how much more money I needed to pay for the journey, so I dumped in all the coins I had and was able to 0 out my card.

Narita Airport
Narita is the budget airport for Tokyo, but it is also very far away from Tokyo.

Many sources online put up a big stink at how inconvenient it is to take one of the express trains (and then regular trains there after to get to your hotel) and notes there might not be a lot of room. They often recommend taking a highway bus, which is more expense.

I took the express train both from and to the airport, no issues, the express train was basically empty both times (around 9PM leaving and 9-10AM going).

However, if the difference in price between a flight to Narita and Haneda is like $100-$200, you might save money by going to Haneda instead, double check the costs of transit from both airports before buying.

Luggage Forwarding Services and Trains
Online, they generally make a big fuss about how difficult it is to bring your luggage on the train, that you should just pay for a luggage forwarding service instead.

In this human's opinion, if you pack light and bring the smallest suitcase/backpack combo you can manage, it is very easy to take a local or express train with your luggage. You might have to pay more for an oversized luggage seat on the Shinkansen, but in my experience almost all the trains I took were empty and there was lots of overhead room. I had my wife's carry on sized luggage and a backpack designed to pack clothing.

If you had a giant suitcase, well I guess then it wouldn't fit.

When I was leaving, with now my own suitcase + the carry on suitcase + my backpack, that was a bit more annoying, but still, nothing you can't handle.

Airplane v. Train
Flights between cities in Japan are cheap, often cheaper than the bullet train. I ended up taking the bullet train anyways, because once you factor in the cost of getting to the airport and the time spent waiting for security and etc, the train is cheaper and better use of your time. (Besides, if you use a domestic flight, you will be forced to use a luggage forwarding service )

If you can get a flight between two cities where the airport is very close to downtown, it might be worth it, but between Tokyo and Osaka, for example, all the budget airlines are at Nartia, so that is already quite a distance and expense on top of your plane ticket.

It takes a while to get used to train travel this way though. A few times I was in a train station buying a ticket and the next train was leaving in 10 minutes, but I wasn't sure if I would make it, and so get tickets for the train after. Then I would stand at the platform and watch the train I thought I wouldn't make it to sit there for 7 minutes before leaving.

The bullet trains I rode, the amount of space you get is shocking, compared to a plane. It is very easy to do actual work on a bullet train, in my opinion. It's like being in a coffee shop for a few hours.

That was longer than expected, I'll post about other things another day , I will try to become more regular in my postings

[delay]

Thanks for your journal update! RHCE seems like a good certification to get. The Linux command line, git and Ansible will be around for a while.

I visited Japan a few years ago and I'd like to go back. The "IC Card" sounds interesting. I don't remember how I paid for public transit. I assume with cash, because it turned out my MasterCard only worked at a very few select ATMs.

[CDR]

Thanks for the comment @delay. Yeah, the internet often mentioned that many merchants don't take CC (at all) in Japan. I found that almost all the places I went in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and even smaller cities took Visa. Temples, museums, and just two restaurants I visited didn't take any credit cards at all and I had to pay cash.

Finances
Well, I guess we'll catch up here:

• Jan 2024 - Savings Rate: 30.27%
• Feb 2024 - Savings Rate: 3.37% (the expenses for Japan started, I saved up enough money for the trip, but in the end I was able to pay for most expenses, excluding the cash I took out in March, in cash flow instead of touching the earmarked travel savings)
• March 2024 - Savings Rate: -38.84% (this is because I pulled out money to change to JYP, it had been previously saved for, without this it was a 6.99% savings rate)

I was in Japan for half of April and half of May. So far, before any shared expenses my wife paid for my savings rates are:

• April 2024 - Savings Rate: 31.61%
• May 2024 - Savings Rate 46.81%

I don't think there is too much from my wife, but I did offer to cover half her grocery costs while I was away.

I updated our shared expenses spreadsheet to be more helpful in calculating how much we owe each other and now it tracks expenses by category, hopefully it will help us reduce spending.

I also created a budget sheet for myself, as I've had no idea about my savings rate per month since we moved out of my parent's house. I figured it wasn't too bad, because my accounts were still going up, just not as fast as before. So I spent the day figuring it out for this year, not sure if I will bother with 2023 and 2022.

I drew up a target budget for myself that results in a %37 savings rate per month, once I manage to start hitting this consistently, I will readjust the budget to spend less.

The biggest rooms for improvement are (not) eating out, groceries, and not using Uber. in February, I spent a lot of money on language tutors to practice speaking Portuguese and Japanese, I also managed to arrange a number of language exchanges for Portuguese (that is free, we speak 30 min in English and 30 min in Portuguese).

I was considering using iTalki regularly, but I am thinking now I will not use it at the volume I was planning. I have at least two reliable Brazilian exchange partners, and I can probably figure out a way to get my wife to help me more actively as well. So, I will probably just use two italki tutors, for now once a week each while I try to find more reliable exchange partners.

For Japanese, I have not found any reliable language exchange partners, but the tutor I prefer doesn't have a consistent schedule. My listening is also awful, so paying for a conversation tutor is kind of questionable, I should be focusing on improving my listening skills first.

[CDR]

I've wanted to keep this journal more grounded, but it seems that in my mind, I often live in the future and so when I come to write something here, it is about the future and I promised to write less about it (because, I want to get better at living where I actually live... In the present).

So, it is hard to find things to write about sometimes.

I updated our shared expenses spreadsheet to be more helpful in calculating how much we owe each other, and now it tracks expenses by category, hopefully it will help us reduce spending.

...

The biggest rooms for improvement are (not) eating out, groceries, and not using Uber.

I have been making an effort to reduce "my half" of the grocery bill, after doing the sheet and going shopping once, I realized I am too inelastic with my purchases at the grocery store. I was already aware that in general, I should be shopping loss-leaders and whatever, but being able to say to myself "my demand is inelastic" really got me moving for some reason...

So, I started looking at the flyer and using online ordering to "shop ahead" and get an estimate of what everything I would buy, then cancel the online order and go in person. I try to keep it below $40, but it went to $50 anyway sometimes because of wanting to get flour and other things that last way longer than one shopping trip.

I had been using my Instant Pot, mostly to make rice. A week or two ago now, I finally cooked the dried lentils I bought. It worked well. I guess that got my confidence up, because this week (or last week?) I made chili for the first time using my Instant Pot. I had it solo, or with rice, and then at some point I got the flour, so I could make corn bread. Corn meal was on sale .

This is the first full meal I've made in the Instant Pot since I got it. I got it at the thrift store, maybe a year ago now, it looked like it was never used because it was still in the box and wrapped in a clear plastic bag. But, I thought it had a nick in the plastic keypad. Not a big deal though, it is their largest model, and it was maybe $20. While I was cooking rice a few days later for the chili, I realized that the rip in the plastic keypad wasn't actual damage, it was a rip in the plastic they put on at the factory that you can peel off. I peeled it off... So there is nothing wrong with this Instant Pot at all. Maybe it was just "too big" but I've been putting it to good use to bulk make rice for a year now.

So, I made chili, corn bread, and Saturday I made blueberry muffins. The muffins came to mind because by far my most expensive meal is breakfast, cereal, normally Shreddies on sale. I know most people go to oatmeal, and I used to eat it for a long time, but I found oats made my stomach upset. The muffins were good. Unfortunately, I ate all of them the same day I cooked them . But, if I can constrain myself, 3 a day would be around the same as my bowls of cereal in the morning for breakfast.

I am vegan, but also try to eat whole food and oil free. Obviously, most food at restaurants doesn't normally meet the "whole food, oil free" standard, 99% of the time, and so this is another reason I want to both cook more and get better at it.

I will repeat my chili next week, since my experience cooking dry lentils went well, and I used canned beans for my chili last time, I will try cooking dry beans in the Instant Pot first, then doing the chili. This brings down the cost of the chili further. I am also paring that with salad, potatoes and corn bread, so probably the chili will last all week this time.

My wife doesn't like beans. She tried the muffins, she said it was okay but doesn't like muffins in general, which is true. I do want to start making things she would eat as well, but I'll take it one step at a time for now.

A problem previously was that I felt I was eating mostly rice, because it was easy to cook, and I did not want to spend time cooking. After taking the time to look at the flyer and price things out, most veggies and fruits are not that expensive, compared to the other aisles in the grocery store at least. And, about taking time, it does take time, but I suspect after making the chili, cornbread, and muffins a few more times, I will get much faster at it.

Not only that, but actually, I cooked the cornbread during my lunch break at work (I work from home), and it did relive some stress. It is new to me, so I really do have to think about it, and so I cannot think about other things.

Another "problem" previously in my mind was that vegan, whole food, oil free cooking often calls for weird one off ingredients that you never use again. The solution of course was to keep googling, and to just look at the recipe and sub for more regular things and see what happens. For everything I've made so far, I have done that, and it was still fine. Mostly, I am trying to use the recipes for ideas or inspiration, not as hard instructions.

On the health side, I had a challenge to walk 500,000 steps in about a month, but I fell short. My idea was that if I made it, I would get myself some "barefoot" shoes, but about 3/4 of the way through the challenge I lost interest in the shoes and thought that getting a food scale would probably be more practical to my goal of losing weight, but with the RHCE and trying to juggle the new job and new schedule I eventually fell off.

That being said, I did get in a lot of steps, so it isn't an L.

[CDR]

June 2024 Results
Savings Rate: 37.82%

Could have been at 41% if we had eaten out just once. Groceries went down a bit, but not much. Currently, my wife doesn't care about reducing our grocery budget. Her co-worker told her we are good, and they spend $900 or more grocery shopping. My wife also invoked my parents, who spend probably $200 a week on groceries. I am not sure how much I want to push the issue, I think it will be better to push for restaurant/ordering food spending to go down first.

I was hoping to do $50/each a week, which is still $400/month.

It is unfortunate the other examples of people spending on groceries is poor. I should probably have pointed out that the financial situation of her co-worker doesn't sound particularly envious. As for my parents, they never go anywhere or do much of anything, so their grocery budget can be inflated.