The Education of Axel Heyst

[Stasher]

A very good month in keeping your COL low and helping bump up the stash for a strong SR in March Axel. The investment the previous month in the fatbike will pay mental and physical health dividends for years to come so for my world always a good way to spend $$. I'll be sure to do an update on my journal with how we are doing last month after being back on a bit of an ERE renaissance these past 3 months. Cheers

[AxelHeyst]

What made me ask, is seeing $38 spent on new books this month. Given Axel's approach to money, that's a significant statement on perceived value.

Fair observation and thanks for sharing your relationship with books. I'd like my book spend to be lower but right now I don't have access to a library (a circumstance I'm often in over the past five years) and my tastes in books are eccentric enough that the library I am associated with often doesn't have the title in physical or ebook anyways. And I don't pirate books. So that leaves paying for ebooks or used physical books. There's certainly room for creativity to drop that cost lower but, yeah, reading what I want to read when I want to read it is such a high perceived value to me that I'm not willing to throttle/crowbar it.

ETA: This is turning into an ERE confessional, but along similar lines: one of last month's line items was buying a $30 sports bluetooth earbud set so I can listen to podcasts, books, and TTS blogs/articles/etc while riding, working out, doing chores, etc. I wasn't sure I was going to wind up thinking the $ was worth it but so far I'm a solid yes on it. A major reason is that by stacking 'education'/reading on top of riding I'm *increasing* the hours of zone 2/wk.

[Scott 2]

Bluetooth earbuds are my favorite purchase from last year, for that very reason. The noise cancelling saves me so much sensory load too. Takes the edge off gyms, grocery stores, waiting rooms, etc.

[AxelHeyst]

Heh, yeah, if you ever see me stalking through a grocery store like I'm invading Cumbria, now you know why.

---

I'm riding ebbs and flows of energy, stoke, and focus. As I've been journaling I've said "no" and shelved a lot of things in order to focus on my business and get to FI+* as quickly as possible. Also, my business *is* related to me freedom-to post-FI schemes, both in terms of some of the general skills I'm developing and the access/people I'm coming into contact with.

The reverse fishbone diagram of my business looks like:
Zeroth Aim (I define the zeroth aim as that which, if it weren't for, I wouldn't be doing this thing): Accumulate to FI quickly.
1st Positive Yields:
- Gain business skills (and rep) which I intend to deploy in future endeavors.
- Gain skills in digital design for high performance buildings.
- Gain access to people in the high performance buildings world (practitioners as well as clients/developers).

1st Negative Yields:
- I'm spending a lot of time staring at my computer.
- Opportunity cost of all the ERE solarpunk dirtbag adventures I'm currently not having and projects I'm not executing.

The shape of my freedom-to is very clear to me, although the particulars are up in the air. I heard someone say on a podcast: "My goal in life is to work on worthwhile projects with interesting people, and then die." That resonated. FI is a strong goal because I don't want "make money" to be a *required* attribute of the projects I work on, and my mind isn't such that I can easily turn off such questions as financial 'security' when I "know" I'll need to earn more at some point. (ETA: This isn't a guess. I did semi/slowERE from mid 2020 through 2023 in various formats. It's not for me. I crave more cognitive and behavioral open-endedness.)

(I'm not so sure my "FI" stash will indeed last for the rest of my life considering the perturbations to the world system coming at us. I do believe that "being FI" according to ERE-ish math with help me to not think about it long enough to spin up such a bomber WoG/WoRgame that 'my stash' truly becomes a non-critical backup system to my infinite game).



*The hell does the FI"+" stand for? That's pointing at seed funding for my first freedom-to venture, thinking along the lines of a Loomis/Voscovo-except-ERE Venture/endeavor approach to what I want to build next.

The primary question here is one of quantity. How *much* seed capital, how much surplus in excess of FI stash?

I don't think I have enough information to judge at this point. Since I have determined that I enjoy/do best single single task focusing as much as I can, my plan is to focus on RevX/my business in as concentrated a manner as possible until the first check-in milestone which is FI. When I cross that milestone, I have a decision, and that decision will be based on the situation at that point:

• - What's my current profit/personal income?
• - If I ramped down to a few hours a week or a few weeks a year, what would be my steady-state cashflow?
• - Is the business at a saleable point?
• - Could I just hire someone to do my job and be an owner?
• - If I kept my foot on the gas for another year, or two, would the extra seed funding be significant potentially, or just middlin' six figures?
• - Do I actually have a clear vision of what I'd *do* with seed funding, or do I just like the idea generally? (I have lots of general ideas *now*, the question is, at this point in the future, am I sitting at a consistent and ready-to-committ yes with resources lined up on a specific project to execute?).
• - Am I falling into the consumerist trap of trying to solve problems with money? Would I actually be better off with*out* capital to burn, forcing myself to bootstrap or non-financial-capital my aims? (The main reason I think getting money is a good idea for my WoG is that my interests lie in the built environment, in 'radical infrastructure' as the solarpunks put it). Absent a present clear next step or burning project to deploy the capital on it's going to be a hard sell to myself to keep the hammer down for another year or so.

In years past I would have attempted to get concrete answers to these questions now. I now know enough to give space for serendipity to play her hand.

---

ETA: A reflection on "singular focus" and the Slow Productivity 'work at a natural pace' idea. A pattern I want to avoid is putting too many "primary focuses" on my plate. As of a month ago I had at least 5 projects/initiatives that I was vaguelly trying to give primary energy, which was way too much/too fractured. Hence my shelving a bunch of stuff.

But this week is a good example of why it's good to have non-primary nodes of secondary/tertiary priority that I can pick up when my energy, focus, or stoke for The Primary is ebbing. Sometimes I just need to not think about or do The Thing, and it's excellent to have other nodes that are cruise-mode-tolerant that I can pick up. Like right now I'm just mentally checked out and tired of staring at this computer, so I'm going to finish the loft railing project. I cut and sanded the balusters yesterday. I need to drill the pocket holes, mark the railing plates, and affix them. The necessary tools are (tidily) already here to hand, project startup will take <2.5min.

[7Wannabe5]

Opportunity cost of all the ERE solarpunk dirtbag adventures I'm currently not having and projects I'm not executing.

I'm curious about to what extent you feel this opportunity cost as an active pull while you are focused on current project? Also, to what extent do you feel active pull towards social relationships and/or emotional engagement? Obviously, the reason why I am asking is that I feel the first quite strongly due to personality type being towards generalist (or primary Ne), and the second fairly strongly due to core identification as feminine (and/or tertiary Fe.) I can spend all day in front of a computer working on "math" (secondary Ti), but eventually I start to feel "narrow" and "cold."

[AxelHeyst]

I'm curious about to what extent you feel this opportunity cost as an active pull while you are focused on current project?

I do feel it, but current project is so saliently connected to fulfillment/realization of my freedom-to process goals that it isn't very distracting. The felt opportunity cost is extra fuel to be efficient and execute current project well.

In particular, since I've had a few years of attempting other projects without the support/resources of "FI-mind", seed funding, abundant surplus time, etc, and so I've experienced how those go where I hit resource constraints and get frustrated with my inability to go full-send on them, that it would be disheartening to switch to them now because I already know how they'd go.

I already know that I get antsy, bored, and want to start building stuff ~1mo into a dirtbag trip [ETA: I also know it's worth it to push through these feelings and drop further into the experience.]. I know that when I work on other people's #solarpunk builds, like during my workaways, I chafe under having to conform to someone else's creative control of the project (and, likely, I chafe under having to be sub-ordinate to their organizational, emotional, and social incompetencies). And I restrict the scope of my own builds when I don't have $X allocated to the project in a "the purpose of this money is to spend on project Y, you aren't allowed to spend this money on anything other than Project Y".

My current project is (among other things) directly solving for these known issues, so it's easy to stay the course.

Also, to what extent do you feel active pull towards social relationships and/or emotional engagement?

My current WoG is operating at sufficient social and emotional engagement levels, although I look forward to certain changes in it in the future. I get fulfilling emotional engagement with my gf, and adequate social engagement via IRL here and online (business partners, the ERE darknet, @theanimal, etc), so I'm not under a lack, so no 'pull' is felt.

I do look forward to more working on projects IRL with cool people in the future and visiting cool people on trips (and going on trips with them as partners like my trip last year with @b7). I'm a social camel in that regard - I can have a few solid intense social engagements a year and go multiple months seeing very few people on a weekly basis in between. My ideal social engagement is collaborating on creative endeavors - I tolerate a lot of 'social' time per week if it's in that context, much less if it's less directed at endeavor.

[7Wannabe5]

Gotcha. I especially grok your take on "seed funding" or "venture capital beyond core FI." That has always been my take due to coming at ERE from place of running my own small business for over a decade prior AND coming at permaculture just a bit prior to ERE. Also the experiences of spending a couple years focused on renovating a big old decrepit house prior to first being full-time employed by other and working on a number of other renovations/projects with my second "husband." In fact, my motivation for becoming full-time employed by other for the first time at age 29/30 was that I ran out of money for my big, old house renovation project. So, it makes no sense to me to limit projects post-FI to only projects that require no seed money, especially if FI income stream is based on investment in other people's projects/businesses.

I chafe under having to conform to someone else's creative control of the project (and, likely, I chafe under having to be sub-ordinate to their organizational, emotional, and social incompetencies).

Hear you. Why it is highly unlikely I will ever get married or similar again. I've been interacting with my second "husband" again lately since I moved back to my hometown, and he has already tried to suck/bribe me back under his sphere of control under semi-false pretenses. But I have been hanging tough even though it was kind of pathetic the way he said, "I guess I'll see you again when you are available." the last time I F&F'd.

[AxelHeyst]

April Update

My days look like:

• Wake up to a retired sled dog howling for breakfast between 0445 and 0500.
• Coffee with gf.
• Work.
• Work out, lunch, walk a dog.
• Work.
• Make dinner, eat and hang out with gf, bed by 2000 or so.

Friday variation: car shuffle, grocery shop, TGI Sufferfest workout with @theanimal.

Weekends are domestic projects, hanging out with gf, roast coffee, maybe some work. Mellow, simple.

We're currently a 7 dog household, 6 of them sled dogs. Normally it's a 4 dog household, but there's an extra 3 for a couple months.

Work is very exciting for me right now. We're prepping for a product launch, spinning up some marketing stuff, figuring out fulfilment and operations sops, dealing with risk and client expectations... I'm loving all of it. Even the parts that suck. I feel really fortunate to have somewhat serendipitously fallen into a cool opportunity to learn all these skills and get all these experiences. I definitely feel like I'm in a window of opportunity that I'm doing my best to take full advantage of. Having a compelling freedom-to is nice, but I'm also inherently enjoying the process and the individual details involved.

I'm also really enjoying letting go of most of my other projects and just doubling down on one thing.

A few weeks ago I noticed I was really overstimulated and feeling overwhelmed and like my cognitive bandwidth nose-dived after about midday. I thought about my days. I listened to EDM or death metal all day while working, and listened to hustle-culture podcasts at 1.5x while cooking, walking the dog, etc. Hmm. No wonder. I switched to "rain noises" while working, dialed the podcast speed back, and often won't listen to anything while cooking/walking/etc. Immediate improvement, solid cognitive capacity throughout the day and not feeling fried at the end.

I built a recumbent desk and mostly finished the loft railing.

I started tracking my Collins Score - every day I record my state from -2 to +2, with 0 being "languishing". I also record how many hours I spent in focused attention/creative state (deep work, flow, focus, etc), and a sentence about what was going on that day.

Money

• Expenses Total: $568
• Food: 147
• Shelter: 348 (water, elec, internet, prop tax, HOI).
• Transportation: 38 (gas)
• Education: 21 (ebooks)
• Random: 14 (website hosting)

YTD Expenses Annualized: $9,874
TTM Expenses: $17,663

YTD SR: 78%
Stash at YTD Expenses: 19x.
Stash at TTM Expenses: 11x

Reading:
Still loving Samuel Alexander's SMPLCTY essays on aesthetics. Working through it slowly.
A bunch of entrepreneur podcasts.
Reading volume is down because I'm spending most of my time on the business.

[sodatrain]

1) How and What sort of EDM to you groove to?
2) How's the coffee roasting going? I really want to learn this (says the guy who has green beans from his land and a small batch roaster just sitting there....)
3) Dude, nice work on the $ stats. Wicked.
4) What is Collins Score all about? My quick search yielded search results for athletes... and two (Very different) things that didn't sound quite right:

The "Collins Score" refers to two distinct rating systems: one developed by Dr. Nancy Collins for assessing attachment styles in adults, and another used by the International Axe Throwing Federation (IATF) for ranking competitors.

[jacob]

I really want to learn this (says the guy who has green beans from his land and a small batch roaster just sitting there....)

1) Put beans on dry pan. Apply any heat you want.
2) Use a lid because some beans will jump when the heat cracks the shell.
3) For an even roast on all sides of all beans, stir very often.
4) Stop when desired darkness is achieved.

Learning achievement unlocked!

[AxelHeyst]

1) How and What sort of EDM to you groove to?
2) How's the coffee roasting going? I really want to learn this (says the guy who has green beans from his land and a small batch roaster just sitting there....)
3) Dude, nice work on the $ stats. Wicked.
4) What is Collins Score all about? My quick search yielded search results for athletes... and two (Very different) things that didn't sound quite right:

1. Youtube on brave browser. dubstep, phonk, industrial bass, deadmau5, miss monique, random stuff the algo recommends that is aggressive/erotic/intense. I don't listen to EDM or any music while working as of a few weeks ago, and 9/10 if I'm going to listen to music to *listen to music* I'll listen to prog/tech death metal. I will get the fuck DOWN to any live EDM though. EDM shows, sober or otherwise, are always going to be a "plus two" day for me (see (4)).

2. Man it's so easy, wtf you've got the gear? Roast your own! I used to roast on my cast iron skillet like jacob said (my beans have never jumped so no lid). E uses a small batch roaster for more even roast. It's great. The coffee is fresh and delicious. If you're going to drink coffee and aren't living out of a suitcase, roasting your own beans is a no-brainer.

3. Thx!

4. Jim Collins mentioned it on a Tim Ferriss episode (I heard about it from Can Newport podcast). https://tim.blog/2020/12/04/jim-collins ... ranscript/ ctrl-F "score" on that page and you'll find him talking about it.

Edit: actually it's discussed in more depth on the first interview, go here https://tim.blog/2019/02/20/the-tim-fer ... llins-361/ and ctrl-F for "Creative Hours" and start reading from there.

[AxelHeyst]

Connecting a couple of dots here, on the topic of grand unified theories, solutions, problems, predicaments, and responses.

@AH, I'm surprised you're reacting strongly here: iirc the basic starting point of Deep Response was, screw making grand plans and theories about saving the world or fixing "society," sort. your. own. ass. out -- the grand unified theories of how we're gonna fix "society" are a psychologically motivated fantasy, and ultimately, a derail.**

**In case it needs to be said: I'm very much for grass-roots community level solutions; the ideal "fix the world" mix probably oscillates between making fixes inside and making fixes outside through collective action.

My response was that I think the first thing to do is get your own house in order. Even IF you had the RIGHT grand theory, if such a thing even exists, you'd be unable to execute it if your life is a chaotic dysfunctional shambles like mine was.

The closest thing I have at present moment to a grand theory is that "consumerism is self-terminating ideology, humanity will pass out of our consumerist ideology phase inevitability because limits to growth and stuff, and so might as well get ahead of the curve and internalize post-consumer praxis now while we can play it on easy mode because of availability of surplus resource flows from industrial civilization. Plus, if "help build stuff relevant to the post-consumer future successor societies" is a value one holds, then I theorize that it is not possible to build good post-consumerist work while still having consumerism internalized in one's personal life. Thus, for lots of reasons, internalizing post-consumer praxis is The Next Thing To Do."

What comes after internalizing post-consumer praxis is an open question that I don't have strong opinions on (yet). I'm still stamping out the smoldering detritus of consumer ideology from the inside of my own skull. something something dissensus something Free Em All and Let Gaia Sort Em Out?

That said, I've abandoned the idea of "solutions" so thoroughly that I sometimes miss it in conversation. Re-reading ertyu's post, I'd rephrase my response like so: Correct, I no longer believe in solutions at all to the problem of fixing the world, regardless of scale of proposed solution, because I don't think we're facing a problem, I think we're facing a predicament. As such we're better served considering strategic responses, not solutions.

So the question granulates to: are we talking about solutions or responses? And how do we feel about scale?

I'm down on solutions, up on responses, and undecided as it relates to scale. Certainly we all have to start at the household/personal level, so solid yes for the small scale. But is there a scale beyond which we ought not attempt to go? Maybe! But I'm not sure. I can fuzzily imagine a post-consumer-praxis-internalized WL10+ individual or group operating at an emergent high WL spinning up some cool stuff at a "large" scale. I'm not ready to close that idea out of my Overton window just because I read a review of Schumacher once. I then wonder if "yay grass-roots responses, boo large-scale responses" is not a grand unified theory in and of itself? And then I wonder if I'm on to something or just being pedantic and thinking myself in a circle again?

Anyway, I was reading more Samuel Alexander and came across this in one of the essays, and liked it:

I do not believe there is any single right way to view the cosmos and our place in it. Rather, there are only perspectives and interpretations that can both reveal and conceal certain insights about our complex situation and condition. This makes discourse and humility key features in philosophical and spiritual exploration – such that any answers to life’s deepest mysteries lie only in the questioning itself. As I have noted before, I am offering the Will to Art as a grand narrative, but I acknowledge its narrativity – its roots in story. My motivation is not to arrive at a final truth of things. Instead, I am attempting a redescription of aspects of existence in ways that I hope reveal insights or provide useful tools for living.

[Stasher]

As someone who went to raves in the early 90s it puts a smile on my face seeing the gaining popularity and associated good energy of the EDM scene lately. The genre is massively wide and diverse as easily seen by what you described for what you listen to.

The big change of live experiences that is crazy when technology gets it's fingers into the mix is easily seen from what a show looked like in 1994 to now what is seen at something like Anyma is doing at his shows.
https://youtu.be/USTFO6gUXEA?si=EsVqpATscFmotQOB&t=98

[AxelHeyst]

May 2025
I can't tell precisely if I'm whiteknuckling towards my #goals or On The Path / Cultivating the Systems that will Inevitably Lead to the Sorts of Places I Want to Go.

The business is in an intense phase where we're finishing the v1 of our main offering while doing existing client fulfillment which involves assisting with project deadline hustle in certain ways, as well as onboarding new clients. It's a lot, an unsustainable schedule, but it's also necessary to keep the wheels on the bus at the moment.

Once the V1 package is done, that will be a big load shed. As we continue to operationalize and automate our fulfillment services, the load will steadily come down. As the necessary load comes down, I'll have a choice to add more initiatives to increase revenue, or take a more gardener approach of fine tuning the automation of business operations. It'll be an interesting balance because my partners need a revenue of $X/mo in order to quit their full-time jobs. Part of the reason I'm putting so many hours in is because I'm spotting them. Once they can quit their day jobs there will be less pressure on me AND their areas of the business will improve operationally. So I'm motivated for the business to hit that magic number if for no other reason than to get more support from my partners.

Point is, one way or another, I see my load being able to decrease over the next several months with a stabilizing cashflow. As that happens I'll start spinning back up other nodes that I've had on ice for a while: writing, personal builds, Fest planning, and more hours/wk on my bff's design work (passivhaus/offgrid-ready mechanical design).

It's that last one that's interesting: my business and 'professional' skillset opened the door for me to get involved with her work, and our relationship that's allowing me to explore skill acquisition in that role in a way that's both chasing stoke as well as really aligned with my WoG/values/vision and almost certainly tied into my ventureERE goals. That's the part where it feels like I'm not just trying to crush a goal and then dip, it's all kind of flowing together into The System -- the daily/weekly/monthly activities and behaviors that I'd like to be doing for the rest of my life.

On a related note, I've been noodling on different ways to look at the stash for about six months now. I think I was too fixated on the conventional approach to FI. If one is seriously committed to some form of ventureERE, or building skills with supplemental income, or cutting expenses with new opportunities and creative lifestyle design, then the 25-33x COL starts to become irrelevant.

This is a good comment, it's been on my mind as well. I agree with it almost entirely on paper, but when I reflect on my own experiences I'm not ready to totally go there. For me I think that having a more or less fire-walled stash that is "the FI stash" in case all else fails will be an important component of feeling free to take creative risks with the ventures I have in mind.

I attempted "as-if-FI" for a while, where I tried to only chase stoke and $ yield was incidental. I couldn't do it: concern for my financial well-being over the long term influenced my decisions regardless of what I consciously set as my decision-making variables. I also struggled with "feeling like a loser" -- like I was making excuses for myself because I was unable to hack it in the real world. Having a FI-stash and being able to tell people, when necessary, that I'm financially independent due to intentional strategic decisions around frugality and earned income, and that's why I can do whatever I want now, feels important if only from a status perspective. I want to be able to say "I won your stupid game, now I'm playing my own."

However, since I do expect to generate $-flow from post-FI activities, I am not treating my stash the way I would if I had a more conventional-FI "This bucket of money needs to support my lifestyle for the rest of my life" mindset, which is really what I think WRC is driving at and I agree with. What this means for me is that I'm not exactly putting in a lot of effort to figure out a post-RE withdrawal strategy. I'm not going to RE really, and I'm unlikely to need to be "withdrawing" from my "stash" anytime soon.

Numbers
Total Expenses: $762

• Food: $348*
• Shelter: $334
• Transportation (gas): $28
• Random (website, flowers for mom): $52

*E and I’s grocery split system is she buys the Costco stuff and I buy the normal store stuff, and maybe that’ll work out roughly even. It looks like it didn’t for May, might have to tweak the system.

YTD Expenses Annualized: $9.729
TTM Expenses: $16,866 (one more month before my moto purchase last year drops off this and I can stop tracking YTD expenses to keep my spirits up lol)

YTD SR: 86%
Stash at YTD Expenses: 20.7
Stash at TTM Expenses: 11.9

We get water delivered in a truck ~once a month to E’s 1,000g tank. It’s a flat 100$ fee which we split. We use about 600g/mo, which is 10g/day/per. That includes water use for laundry (and showers, and kitchen sink). The cabin has a normal toilet and septic tank but that’s more trouble than it’s worth (because -20-40F and the ground moves and…) so we use the outhouse exclusively. Flushing toilets are dumb. Fight me.

Builds:
-Mostly finished my recumbent desk
-Built a raised bed for E
-Finished loft railing




Reading:
Good to Great by Jim Collins (intending to cross-reference this with Reinventing Organizations by Laloux as part of my ventures homework)
SMPLCTY by Samuel Alexander (still)
Reading has really slowed down.

[Stasher]

I think we are all subject to being harsh ourselves and over-analyzing the crap out of things to the verge of never taking bold less travelled paths. If one thing has shown me from being on MMM and ERE forums for over 12 years is that making big life changes often work out better than expected. I would venture to say that by the time one is in a mental space looking to make those bold changes into the unknown they have build such a solid MMM/ERE foundation that failure would only be a result of actually self sabotaging intentionally.

Stay the course, have fun and enjoy life.

[Scott 2]

When sharing relatively small expenses like food, with someone who's met you as an equal, I'd encourage letting imbalances go. Even if they don't wash out, does $1000 over the year really matter? Other than a more optimal number on your spreadsheet, what would chasing perfect balance change?

My wife and I used to balance to the dollar. In hindsight, it placed unnecessary overhead our partnership.


It's interesting you find FI to offer a status indicator. IRL - that's not something I tend to share, or even discuss. If anything, I'm a little embarrassed by the inequity our economic system enables. Not so much that I'm rushing out to work, but it feels obviously unfair. I'm far more impressed with someone's non-financial actions or achievements.

[theanimal]

@Scott, what do you say when people ask you what you do? If you give an answer that talks about something non-work related, what do you say when they ask what you do for work?

I resonate with what @AH wrote in that section. I have found I don't feel much of a status boost in saying that I'm building my house and a stay at home dad (when not working). I also have some status hang ups with the type of work. Most people in my circles/locales work in outdoor and non-traditional fields. Saying I work in insurance is a conversation killer. As a result, in the past I have often ended up just talking about what I do (not what I do for work) and/or tailor my response depending on who I'm talking to (ie to someone working with wildlife or in forestry: "Oh I used to work in forestry...")

[Scott 2]

@Scott, what do you say when people ask you what you do?

It generally doesn't come up. When it does, my go to answer is "I'm not working right now. I was in tech / insurance last. I'm living simply and not sure what's next."

I think it was around 3 years before my in-laws realized I had retired. I'm not sure if my BIL's family has fully made the connection.

My parents and a handful of close friends know what's up. I don't think it offers me any positive status. Probably seen as an amusing novelty, if anything. Possibly a boon for my health, as I'm obviously better in every non career dimension.

The stuff you're doing - caring for others, building things, heading adventures, would garner far more interest and respect. I think I got some of the biggest status boost when I was volunteering at the food pantry once a week, for a couple hours. I even had a neighbor notice and comment on that.

We're likely running in different social circles. I'm probably too boring/soft for the people you peer with in Alaska. Maybe a couple people I worked with cared? But I'd guess even that was more of a "wish I could" thing.

[AxelHeyst]

When sharing relatively small expenses like food, with someone who's met you as an equal, I'd encourage letting imbalances go. Even if they don't wash out, does $1000 over the year really matter? Other than a more optimal number on your spreadsheet, what would chasing perfect balance change?

My wife and I used to balance to the dollar. In hindsight, it placed unnecessary overhead our partnership.


It's interesting you find FI to offer a status indicator. IRL - that's not something I tend to share, or even discuss. If anything, I'm a little embarrassed by the inequity our economic system enables. Not so much that I'm rushing out to work, but it feels obviously unfair. I'm far more impressed with someone's non-financial actions or achievements.

“Roughly split” is the intent. Plus or minus fifty percent is within spec. Plus or minus 100% is not. If the current system doesn’t work, the next iteration will be an equally automatic heuristic aimed at “within 50% or so.”

I’ve spent more time composing this reply than I have thinking about balancing our grocery bill.


Regarding FI as status: I don’t own a home, or a car, and I got laid off from my one real job. I poop in a bucket and either live on my parents property in a small metal box or at my successful girlfriend’s house… or off a bicycle. You and I are in different positions wrt social signals.

That said, the status thing is something I’ve noticed, it isn’t a goal/something I feel compelled to resolve. I *noticed* that I felt a certain kind of way sometimes regarding my economic status when I’m conversation with certain kinds of people. I’d prefer that I didn’t give a shit, but oh hm, I kind of do. I look forward to not feeling that way ever. This is something I’ve spent about five minutes thinking about in total.

Anyway, for a few reasons, status being the least of them, I’m more convinced than ever that in the absence of specific and compelling reasons not to (impending mental health emergencies for example, or Ego’s ‘stay hungry’ personal philosophy), getting FI over with is generally speaking The Move. A lot of the effort some people put into to coming up with a strategy for their lives that avoids the discipline/effort/etc necessary to hit FI could have just been put towards hitting FI and the whole issue would be done with. A lot of the reasons people give for FI being not that great once you get it have to do with internal dysfunctions that exist either way. The answer isn’t to not become FI, the answer is to face those dysfunctions head on. (Which you’ll have more personal resources to deploy towards if… you’re FI.)

We’ll see how my thinking changes once I actually am FI. I’ll be interested to see if I still agree with myself on this.

[OutOfTheBlue]

I’ve noticed a recurring tendency in the personal and iterative journey you’ve been sharing: as situations shift and perspectives evolve (as they naturally do), there’s often a leap from the relative to the universal—from something felt and true in the moment to a broader, almost absolute conclusion.

Take the latest FI move as an example. Not long ago, before that opportunity even emerged, the “ne plus ultra” looked quite different. Now, it’s The Move—and, it seems, one that everyone (exceptions aside) should make. I’m exaggerating slightly, pushing into caricature just to highlight the pattern.

My feedback? If you string together all the “ne plus ultras” you’ve endorsed along the way… the resulting necklace of absolutes starts to resemble something more like humble pie. For me, what’s truly valuable isn’t the proclaimed final answer—it’s the process of iteration and refinement itself. That’s where the beauty lies, not in the “ne plus ultra du jour.”

Of course, who wouldn’t want FI? Stated in those terms, it’s undeniably appealing. But…

My current discovery leans almost in the opposite direction. Not toward a fixed goal to reach, but toward a way of being that blends doing and being—one that integrates work, play, and service into something I’d rather be doing, regardless of whether I was FI or not. I wouldn’t claim this is the move for everyone. But I’m enjoying it. And I see clearly how each prior iteration led here—knowing full well that my own “ne plus ultra” may yet change again.

NOTE: What I'm sharing above is not an exact description, just an impression. Such impressions, when shared, are often imprecise and can fail miserably when it comes to the specifics. But they might also be precise in their own quirky way, in the general outline they draw or convey. Still they might miss the mark completely. Taking the risk of being off by many yards here. If it somehow lands/resonates, good, if not, also good!