Birding journal

[birding]

Hi all, following up on my intro (viewtopic.php?t=13310), I wanted to give a brief 2024 synopsis and hopefully get in a monthly update type routine. I found ERE towards the beginning of last year and started making some changes, but reviewing my finances (>$50k spent) I guess I have a long way to go in aligning my actions with the ERE mindset.

The biggest spend categories were mortgage, bought a cheaper car paying off the prior loan, a period of lots of eating out, and four international trips (my partner’s family is between Canada & England plus we went on two sightseeing Euro journeys). Last skiing a bunch of days with an injury on Mount Washington didn’t help the cause either. On the upside, I’ve been heavily utilizing the library cutting down on book buying, getting back into auto DIY maintenance, roasting coffee at home, and exercising at home or outdoors. Also, I downsized with my partner to a one bed apartment, and hit three years in my job which I’m proud of due to it being the longest tenure I’ve had in my career.

I’ll follow up with a January rundown and I’m looking forward to selling my condo, hopefully this month to get the mortgage off my balance sheet. Last, I want to improve my reading and will post another thread in the Technical Skills section. Thanks for reading.

EDIT: changed username to 'birding'. hehe

[Cam]

On the upside, I’ve been heavily utilizing the library cutting down on book buying, getting back into auto DIY maintenance, roasting coffee at home, and exercising at home or outdoors. Also, I downsized with my partner to a one bed apartment, and hit three years in my job which I’m proud of due to it being the longest tenure I’ve had in my career.

Looks like you've already made some significant changes, congrats! I can relate to the 3 years being the longest tenure at work. I've been at my current job for 1.5 years (it's a two year contract), and that's the longest I've stuck with one place. I'm interested to read about your progress as you go along.

[birding]

@Cam thx and congrats on your longest tenure as well.

So.. I’ve been procrastinating writing this! I mentioned I’d post about January and I guess I’ll add February at this point. I hope to get in a rhythm with the forums, but do find it intimidating putting my thoughts out on the web.

My expenses are below:
Category_______January__ February
HOUSING
Condo Fee_________452____452
GF Cost sharing_____30_____48
Mortgage_________1431___1431
Storage_____________0_____112
Utilities___________226_____167
Subtotal__________2139____2210

FOOD
Eating out_________124_____147
Groceries__________185_____16
Subtotal___________309____163

TRANSPORTATION
Car Repairs_________65______97
Excise Tax__________25_______0
Fuel_____________132_______92
Parking____________2________0
Tolls_______________0_______40
Subtotal__________221______229

MISC
12 step donation____20_______0
Antivirus software____0______93
Apple Music_________6_______6
Books_____________58______30
Medical___________83______60
Travel to Canada_____0_____172
Used furniture______62_______5
Subtotal__________229_____366

TOTAL___________2899____2967

Some context:
My condo is listed for sale to get the mortgage off my balance sheet. My GF and I moved in together and are sharing costs, but she’s covering more now due to carrying the condo currently which is obviously super nice of her. With the cost sharing, I’ve been picking up some more food and fuel to offset some of her cost. I got a storgage shed to clear some superfluous furninture for the staging pictures and still need to post these items for sale – there will be more storage and furniture offloading with the sale as I have a ton of belongings still there that I haven’t touched the past several months.

Food is lower in February partly due to having more groceries on hand from January and partly due to visiting with my GF’s parents in Canada where they covered most of the food. As a sidenote on the trip, they’re retired and it was very nice puttering about for a week reading and birding. I think I could get used to that, but I’m sure I’d pick up some producer type activities.

With transportation, I’ve been discussing with my GF to go down to one car between us. She’s open to it, so we’re going to do a trial leaving my car parked elsewhere for a few months and see how it goes. My work commute cost on the train will likely be even compared to driving, but the idea is to drive less otherwise reducing carbon footprint and costs overall. I’m hoping to thrive into this change, and it's the closest I’m able to negotiate towards crowbarring this expense at the moment.

I’m on a student version of Apple music. I keep agonizing about this cost, wanting to transition to CD’s/library, when clearly the housing segment is the worst to focus on currently. The books expense was an impulse – it’s been a guilty pleasure of mine. Though I've been using the library more, part of me just really likes having a collection of books to refer back to or take more time to read a variety of titles.

Last, medical. I’ve lived with depression in the past and have accepting that medication is a necessity for me. I’m not sure the talk therapy is as much of a necessity, but I’ve stuck with it ever 2-3 weeks for years and would worry to cut that out entirely. Considering this medical stuff, one of my biggest hangups with ERE is health insurance. I think if that were solved, and when the condo is gone, I’ll be FI (or at least very close to it).

[Chris]

I’ve been discussing with my GF to go down to one car between us. She’s open to it, so we’re going to do a trial leaving my car parked elsewhere for a few months and see how it goes.

Good idea to do a trial run, but for the sake of your car, maybe drive it every couple weeks. Cars degrade whether they're used or not. When left to sit, they can develop flat spots on the tires, rusted rotors, dead batteries, bad gas in the tank, rodents in the engine bay, etc. The simplest preventative maintenance for such problems is just driving it.

[chris580]

I’d be curious to know more about your switch from a condo to an apartment. How do the costs compare and how do you like it?

[birding]

I’d be curious to know more about your switch from a condo to an apartment. How do the costs compare and how do you like it?

I previously lived in a two bed condo where I rented one of the rooms to a roommate. I moved in with my GF into a one bed apartment (actually also a condo, which she owns and has lived in for years). I'm still waiting on the sale of the two bed condo, and with carrying the mortgage, etc. my cost is up. With the one bed, costs will definitely be going down splitting everything in half with my GF. Or I could pay off her mortgage and decrease the monthly cost even further. That's a bigger topic that I'll likely write about another time.

Anyways, I had wanted to try this smaller space to adapt to downsizing and also avoid filling a larger place with more stuff. Downsizing has been a challenging process and I'm not done yet because as I said before, the two bed condo is full of stuff. Despite the challenge, overall I really like the change and she's happy too.

[birding]

@Chris great point. Assuming the trial goes well, I still want to be able to sell it!

[bookworm]

Thanks for your update.

Last, medical. I’ve lived with depression in the past and have accepting that medication is a necessity for me. I’m not sure the talk therapy is as much of a necessity, but I’ve stuck with it ever 2-3 weeks for years and would worry to cut that out entirely. Considering this medical stuff, one of my biggest hangups with ERE is health insurance.

Health insurance through the exchanges can be surprisingly inexpensive with subsidies and a low income. The plans can be quite generous as well, although this likely varies based on your state. In my case, the deductible/OOP is lower than any standard plan at my previous jobs. Therapy is covered as well with a small copay.

If you haven't used something similar already, I found this useful when planning things out: https://www.kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

[birding]

@bookworm that's super helpful - thanks for stopping by.

[frugaldoc]

@bookworm: yes, that is a super helpful website. Even if one isn't eligible for a subsidy, it is a good tool for seeing the cost of insurance. I was shocked to see that a silver plan for an individual in VT would be $1277 while plans in CA and MT (places I've lived) are $669 and $645, respectively.

[birding]

skiing a bunch of days with an injury on Mount Washington didn’t help the cause either.

I decided at the end of last year to quit skiing, at least for now, due to this incident where I later found out I have a bone issue. Earlier today, I sold the first pair of touring skis I bought years back. It’s part of my effort to reduce the stuff from my condo. It was a bit emotional getting back inside with the feeling that this huge chapter of my life really is closing. A nice young girl picked them up and her mom overpaid me. I told her to get after it and she seemed really happy.

[thef0x]

Following, birding, and I get that feeling of loss/grief when closing certain doors in life. The beautiful thing is you're opening new ones -- possibly ones that enable you to be free in a way you have never been before.

And the great thing about skiing is that mountains move very slowly (or all at once, I guess), and that door is closed but not locked.

What are you going to do for fun outdoor play/activity instead?

[birding]

@thf0x you're right, mountains will still be there. My focus outdoors will be low key nature walks. Being in the woods or on the riverside really is so calming, right? Given my new username, I clearly like birdwatching too hehe. 27 species spotted YTD!

I'm toying with the idea of bicycling more on this journey of single car couple living with GF. It would have all the homeotelic effects described elsewhere (eg. exercise, cash saved, and environmentally sound commuting, whether to the trailhead or work.

I had two bikes, and have sold the first one that was a bit small, and have the second listed as it's heavy. With stuff sold to date, and a few cash expenses, I have $970 cash on hand - a BIFL bike could be in order funded from this pot. A lighter, more efficient ride, could provide additional motivation to ride this summer. Though I've wanted to live this lifestyle previously, and consistency hasn't followed.

[birding]

March / April 2025
Finance Update
I’ve been doing some creative finance spreadsheet work. I was considering the case of my housing expense being reduced from the mortgage of my property listed on the market, to the planned rent I’ll be paying my GF at her place. If that were the case, my spending for Q1 2025 extrapolated to a year would be around 1-2/3 JAFI. This is obviously hypothetical(!), but it’s an encouraging spending reduction towards a lowered footprint. And to continue the vague projections, I’d have reached 18-20x at this spending with current taxable invested assets or 24-26x by adding a low estimate of the real estate equity expected. After 60+ days on the market, I asked my broker if he’d consider updating the listing in the coming weeks when the trees leaf out. He said it was a good idea. TBD if he follows through. Our agreement is up in 90 days – here’s hoping it moves sooner than that.

Birding
Species sighted YTD: 47.
Highlights: Great Blue Heron (my spirit creature ; - ), Bufflehead, Loon, & Belted Kingfisher.
Other: I picked up a John Muir Laws book from the interlibrary loan after learning about it on the forum and though I’ve let it sit so far, in the coming weeks I’d like to work on sketching some birds!
Attending a local birding meetup/walk at my favorite conservation property was pretty neat. It was a pretty low stakes way of getting out of my social comfort zone since my best friend joined on the walk. I learned a new loop, and the people were nice enough, especially the walk host.

Single Car Household
Well, the single car household experiment was a failure. This is a loaded topic for me - I was bummed out to have tried and failed after only four weeks. I nearly went to a local bicycle community store for an exchange of fixing up a donated bike to own at a discount. Maybe I’ll still give that a shot at some point. I’m very happy I didn’t take it to the level of a BIFL bike as I contemplated up thread! I won’t close the door on trying again, but my current job location just takes too long to commute via public transit. With the length of the commute, it started feeling like a waste of time when I didn’t want reading on the bus or waiting for connections. I also felt some self-consciousness. Biking would only be feasible locally around home. Even around home there’s limited infrastructure, a few construction projects narrowing roadways further, and no one bikes so I felt stigma when I went out on my old bike.

So, I found lots of excuses and it felt like a sacrifice. Since picking up my car, it’s felt liberating to have the mobility back.

Professional
Burnout feelings have been overwhelming on and off for months. Mondays have been especially rough. I find myself overly pessimistic around the value of some of the projects I’m working on. Several of them are for climate adaptation, and are focused on an issue that IMHO is an unsolvable problem. As other types of jobs are scheduled to wrap up in the coming years, the climate adaptation ones are slated to become my focus. It’s already ramping up. I have trouble with this megaproject-like thinking of climate adaption without mitigation.
I’m considering leveraging my FU stash to negotiate a select project load steering away from these ones.

SemiERE
I’ve also been fantasizing SemiERE to learn skills that would further reduce my costs. Auto mechanics has particularly sparked my interest over the years, which I recognize isn’t the most future conscious skill to have. But my mind keeps returning to it (and looking up classic European car ads). At one point I researched several local community colleges that offer automotive tech training. Deterrents have been the cost and the assumption that all the students are direct out of high school. More recently I’ve been researching part time automotive tech opportunities and they’re available even with training offered to those with no experience. Yet, I suppose I have a good bit of experience: six months interning with a friendly mechanic (who's now retired!) in 2013 mainly shadowing him. Plus basic DIY projects, some of which the procedures I followed are hazy: oil changes, tire rotation, exhaust gasket replacement, brake pad/rotor replacement, stopped a brake dust shield rattle with a complete jerry-rigged fix.., and actually a complicated one years ago where I replaced a heater core (necessitated removing the whole dash).

Downsizing
I made nearly $2k selling stuff I no longer use! The first wave of stuff I was pushing to sell has finished moving. For the remaining stuff at my condo (furniture, clothes, etc.), I’m contemplating finding a weekend in May to tackle that task. In other news, my book collection is still growing despite utilizing the library heavily. As of now I’m accepting it as a way to live luxuriously on the cheap.

[birding]

Just a few brief rambles for today: My annual home and auto insurance premiums came up for renewal at the end of April, an expense which was not factored into some of my SemiERE thinking above.

I’ve been talking with trusted folks in my life and came up with coping strategies for the feelings with my job. I’m shooting for 6 months more in my current position to continue the consistency I’ve built. In the meantime, I’ll be putting some deep thought as to what way of making money will be palatable until FI. Additionally, I asked to be taken off certain projects that I was having difficulty getting behind, and am essentially turning down a promotion that I was told the projects would lead into. The conversation with my supervisor went surprisingly well and I feel a sense of relief.

Realistically, I’m not FI yet even with my silly hypothetical calcs I wrote about before. From those silly calcs another important takeaway with the idea of seeking a part time job now is it could take on the order of 5+ years to achieve FI (33x) versus say 2 years at FTE.

I think one of my challenges in determining how to earn until FI is that my current earnings to effort will be hard to match elsewhere. And I’m concerned that the challenges with my position will just be brought with me to the next role. ‘Wherever you go, there you are’, right.

[gradus]

I’m concerned that the challenges with my position will just be brought with me to the next role. ‘Wherever you go, there you are’, right.

This is something that I think about a lot. In my situation I consider how much my work is extensible to different jobs vs hyperspecific and not marketable, since at least in the former case you can move around more. I don't know if this consideration is applicable to your situation though. (I don't really have advice; I'm just in a similar boat.)

[birding]

@gradus thanks for stopping by!

I saw when you posted your Introduction: Welcome. Personally, I've only just dipped my toes into the forum, but have found it helpful to write my thoughts, reflect, etc. I'll be reading if you decide to write more. And no worries about advice. I appreciate just that you relate.

With my work, my skills could be transferrable depending on how well I can spin them in an application / interview. I likely won't be able to match my pay, but higher satisfaction has to be worth something. Plus with my lower expenses, I feel lower stress to maximize earnings.

[birding]

Agency

I was reflecting on the concept of agency as I’ve recently celebrated 15 years sober.

When I first read that section in the ERE book last year I realized that I was still under an external locus of control, even with my sobriety. And 15+ years ago I absolutely did not have agency. I was a belligerent black out drunk and lost the choice of whether to drink or not. My day to day life was in shambles: I could barely hold friendships and definitely not a SO; I was constantly butting heads with my family and causing them worry; my studies and employment were in jeopardy.

But today I do have stability. I’ve come to understand that I can solve a vast majority of my problems given “enough time, effort and determination”.

So I just wanted to share this tidbit of gratitude. Oh and I saw a Blue Heron on my work commute this morning. It was doing its typical lone meditative thing.

[birding]

Sharing some successes around the ERE, sustainability, personal development, learning themes.

For the remaining stuff at my condo (furniture, clothes, etc.), I’m contemplating finding a weekend in May to tackle that task.

I freecycled nearly my entire old apartment of stuff over Memorial Day weekend. My cleanout cost was about $40 for contractor bags and boxes from Home Depot, plus a few car trips back and forth to the current apartment. I looked around for a donation service that might pick up furniture and Habitat for Humanity quoted me nearly $700 to do a pick up.
I put the Marketplace ads up on Saturday night and was able to clear out by noon Monday. There were 13 pickups for ~37 items. It felt weird but good to freecycle. Most of the folks were quite grateful. It was certainly a hassle compared to call a cleanout service route, but my smartphone addiction helped in lining everyone up

Stuff freecycled:

1. tv,
2. tv stand,
3. dining table,
4. four dining chairs,
5. side table,
6. trash bin,
7. 40-50 engineering textbooks,
8. corner desk,
9. computer chair,
10. ikea desk,
11. file cabinet,
12. three bookcases,
13. fan,
14. document shredder,
15. exercise stuffs,
16. some pots,
17. some pans,
18. strainers,
19. mixing bowls,
20. two doormats,
21. hangers,
22. stand up lamp
23. silverware,
24. measuring cups,
25. cooking utensils
26. ikea shoe rack,
27. plates,
28. bowls,
29. cups,
30. mugs,
31. spices,
32. toaster,
33. cutting boards,
34. drying rack
35. bed frame,
36. mattress,
37. two oversized loveseat couches.

I’m shooting for 6 months more in my current position to continue the consistency I’ve built. In the meantime, I’ll be putting some deep thought as to what way of making money will be palatable until FI. From those silly calcs (I wrote about before) another important takeaway with the idea of seeking a part time job now is it could take on the order of 5+ years to achieve FI (33x) versus say 2 years at FTE.

I reread Deep Response and the ERE book Further Reading selections. I’m 80% decided that I’m shifting from engineering to seasonal tax accounting beginning in October. This is happening fast, which is freaking me out a bit. However, with a clear look it’s internally consistent.
My GF introduced me to a friend that’s in the business for an informational interview. I got a pretty nice offer within two weeks of the first chat. Accounting is in demand - US BLS stats don’t lie! We discussed part time to start in the Fall, full-time+ Jan-Apr, and off the summer. Even if it’s the 5+ years to 33x my sanity is more important. Maybe something else will come up 1-2 years down. And in the meantime, the earnings will work while still maintaining a larger than average consumer savings rate.

So, if I do pull the trigger on the career pivot, I’m considering leaving my current job with somewhere between 2 to 6 weeks’ notice. I have some summertime personal project ideas brewing.

I’ve been working through most of the other DR Further Reading as well. Maybe this is kind of weird, but they’ve been some great reads, @AxelHeyst. 11 down so far. Any who, Codependent No More was heavy – I had to put it down half way through. Maybe I'll write more another time. Thanks for stopping by.

[Stasher]

It must feel extremely freeing and a unique weight being lifted when purging so many belongings which often do more to tie us down then serve us. Well done and happy for you on working through the full time working path to a more free and loose working schedule. While it may stretch out your financial timeline goals it is easily outweighed by the mental health benefits and all around good mojo vibes.