C40's Journal

[workathome]

Your Networth Projection Graph is awesome. Would you ever considering sharing the Excel file?

[spoonman]

Congratulations on surpassing your FI goal! I know it's a notional line with lots of assumptions, but it's a milestone nonetheless!

Btw, that's prodigiously low spending for last month, congrats!

[C40]

Your Networth Projection Graph is awesome. Would you ever considering sharing the Excel file?

Yep - someone asked for it on the MMM forum a while back so I already have a template online:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1i8uT ... sp=sharing

[Tyler9000]

Congrats on the FI goal! I love it when a plan comes together.

[C40]

Oh, if only you had entertained yourself with a ukulele and a handplane or somesuch instead of $300, you could have beat me

Have you found a way to profit from the pens? How's eBay efficiency in the pen market? (It's very high in the mechanical watches department) Can fountain pens be considered inflation proof, like precision tools, or are they more like collectibles in that profit depends on identifying the next hot item?

PS: It sucks to be a leftie when it comes to fountain pens

There are some ways to profit from fountain pens, but I haven't explored it much so I can't answer your question very well - especially about ebay efficiency or inflation proof-ness. Some ways of monetizing the hobby are:
- Buying older pens, refurbishing and selling them. (often things like replacing an ink sack, cleaning, and slight nib adjustments like aligning the tines
- Just buying/selling.
- Nib work. People spend thousands of hours perfecting this craft. But I think you can learn to do it pretty well in a short period of time. I'm actually left-handed (I'll add a note about this below) so I use a lot of italic nibs. As far as these go, grinding an italic nib for yourself is pretty straightforward. I've made some for mself that work every bit as well as nibs that have been made by really good nibmeisters (and some that are better). There are a number of options here - you can have people send their pens for you to work on. You could just buy a bunch of cheap nibs and work on them to improve them or convert to italics, or buy cheap pens and improve the nibs and sell them.
- Making custom pens. I think this would take quite a bit of time to establish popularity and customers.


I'm left handed also. It's trickier than being right-handed and makes certain writing styles more difficult. A lot of people exaggerate how bad it is though - going as far as to say that fountain pens don't work for or are horrible for left-handers. That's not the case at all. It just makes it a little bit more complicated. Certain writing styles don't work as well left-handed, and you have to deal with your hand touching recently written ink. I've changed my writing style a bit to be more of an over-writer and that keeps my hand off what I've written recently. For ink selection, dry times are more important than for right-handers. But there are all kinds of combinations of ink, paper, and the pen/nib/feed (ink flow rate) hat work just fine - even if you're running your hand over your writing right away. I'm experimenting with some rollerball pens right now to use for certain work situations (so I don't drop another gold nib on a hard floor) and they are more limited - for example - the Pilot G2 writes nicely and had good ink. The flow is normally good except that it lets excess ink out at certain times. Then I smudge it. So it doesn't work. There's no other ink to try. There's no adjusting. It just plain won't work for me. With fountain pens, there's generally always a way to make it work for me.

[workathome]

Thank you!

[C40]

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NOVEMBER 2014
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SPENDING: $1,060
- Home - $500
- Entertainment - $300
- Food - $170
- Clothes - $50
- Transportation $30
- Travel $10



TRAVEL/FAMILY
I went to see my family for Thanksgiving. It was nice. Nothing big to note here. My mom and stepdad are moving along with their plan to live in the Airstream. There were some little things I noticed – difference between how I live or arrange my home vs. the way they all generally do. I’ve been living on my own from them for 10-15 years. My brother and sister have their homes set up in generally the same ways as my parents. I’ve made quite a few changes relating to simplicity, optimization, and minimalism. I’ve made those changes little by little over a long time and so now the way I have things just seems to be normal or how it should be. But then at my family’s homes, little things stand out. One example I found funny was when I went to take a shower in my Dad’s bathroom and I was standing there for a few seconds wondering what in the hell he did with so many towels. (He has about 10+ towels out in the open and which appear to be all the towels he uses regularly).



READING

Some books I recently finished:
- In Praise of Slowness (Carl Honore) - This was good. It was pretty simple though, didn’t get all that deep but I guess that may be needed to not be too extreme for more “normal” folks. It has some good parts about (not) working too much, spending your time well, eating well, living in an area that is walkable, etc.
- Vanabode (James Odom) – this has a lot of good info on living in a van. The author is a bit socially awkward and seems to feel that he has found the only one right way to do many things (and proclaims any other way is wrong), but still, good info
- The Vandweller’s Guide (Romona Starfield). Also a weird author. Pretty good book but not as helpful as the Odom book
- Drive Nacho Drive (from the blog authors of http://www.drivenachodrive.com/). It was a travel chronicle book more than it was about living in a van. Pretty good though
- Wide Eyed Wanderers (from our very own forum member Ego) – also a travel chronicle book – quite similar to Drive Nacho Drive (but written earlier)
- The Neon Bible (Fiction, from same author of Confederacy of Dunces – which I think I might like better)
- A random book about tea that was not good at all.

I was getting tired of receiving emails from paperbackswap.com so I figured I should close out my account. I had 17 credits there, so I spent them all on currently available books. Sadly, I didn’t get a copy of the ERE book from there – I was now #1 on the list but it’s a slow moving book there. I did got some good books though. I’m just starting to read The Overworked American by Juliet Schor. I’ve been wanting to read one of her books for quite a while (after reading a transcript of a discussion she did about one of her books). So far it looks good but I’m only in chapter 1.



CHARTS and FI Progress




I added something to my tracking file – a check of how far ahead/behind I am vs my plan. I’m currently about $30,000 or 6 months ahead of my plan. YAY!






A simpler version of the above:



I haven’t bought any new dividend stocks for a while now. I’m about due but I might wait until January so I can do it in my IRA

[spoonman]

One example I found funny was when I went to take a shower in my Dad’s bathroom and I was standing there for a few seconds wondering what in the hell he did with so many towels. (He has about 10+ towels out in the open and which appear to be all the towels he uses regularly).

LOL!

Btw, congrats on staying ahead of your projections! 6 months is a lot.

[C40]

I'm thanking the stock market for that. Nearly all of my beating the curve thus far is from that. And also, so far, the dividend stocks I picked are beating the market.

[C40]

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DECEMBER 2014
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(I'm calling it the end of the month a few days early so I can get on with my end of year number crunching)

SPENDING: $1,020
- Home - $471
- Health / Hygiene - $165 (Mostly vitamins & supplements)
- Food - $165
- Clothes - $134 (2 shirts. 3 pairs of pants for work)
- Travel - $71 (Parking for Thanksgiving trip, also a Christmas trip – free flight and parking)
- Gambling at Casino $70
- Small MP3 Player - $50 (pretty sweet how you can get a small 40gb MP3 player this inexpensively)
- Dating $52
- Transportation (Gas) - $24
- Sold some things – ($257) (PlayStation 3 and games, some DVDs)



WORK

I hit my 10 year anniversary at work.

Here’s a quote from my boss during my year-end performance review discussion. To preface this, it is very clear that my boss has made it to a position of incompetence. He’s not good at what he’s doing and I believe he knows it. It appears he’s pretty much stuck in that position (and my company is too make him switch to a role he can do well)

So he says: “Sometimes when I’m talking, I see your body language and it looks like you’re thinking ‘God damn it Frank*, what the hell are you talking about?' "

*Name changed

I have, at times, challenged him very directly on the major things he is messing up. After working for him for a year, I see it doesn’t make much difference. I continue doing it because it is my nature, and just to make sure he knows that I’m not happy with certain things. I also do some gentler guiding with him, and at times some forcing of his hand, and those work out sometimes. Overall, work is going ok. It looks like I will have a bit over 2 more years to go. I should be ok with that much.

I’ve been keeping my working hours pretty low. I don’t keep track but I’d guess many weeks I work 35 hours. I am tapering down my effort, since I’m pretty close to the finish line. I’m still able to perform well – well enough to receive good performance reviews and to be, by far, the most valuable member of our small team. I regularly see how much better I could be doing at work – and how much more difference I could make. But that is to be expected, and I’ve intentionally decided put that effort into my own life outside of work.




DATING

The search for a soul mate remains mostly fruitless so far. ("Soul mate" written with tongue in cheek) I’ve seen glimmers of hope here and there, but I’m not satisfied with the current state.

I still have quite a ways to go with:
- Transitioning my woman-finding skills/habits from finding women for good sex to finding women who are also relationship-compatible with me. I think I’m making progress, but I still have a ways to go. I may write more about this soon. (or I may just participate more in the How do ERE men attract women? thread.
- Juggling the initial stage of the relationship – I think there are times where I go to hard in a single direction – towards just sex, or too hard towards a serious relationship.

One friendship with a woman I dated in the spring has continued getting better – to the point where we’re now fairly close friends. Sometimes I do have to fend her off a bit from trying to start a physical or romantic relationship. I consider the friendship more valuable (and I’m pretty certain she’s ok with it this way. We talk about it). I like having a close platonic female friend – they are so much better than most men at discussing relationships and sex.


CHARTS







WHAT I'VE BEEN READING:

- A River Runs Through It - Wonderful book. I don't know much about fishing so I can't comment on the quality of the writing from a skilled perspective, but it is certainly good reading for a non-fisher like me. I like getting little peeks into hobbies that I may pursue later in life, and fishing is certainly one of them. The other part of the book - about trying to help someone close to you who has some inner deamons - is pretty good. Or at least interesting. The timing is right for me as I have a friend who is struggling with some issues (I'm not sure what exactly) and drinking too much. It's hard to see your friend not doing well. It's also hard to decide how to try to help them (I have questions I can't answer - As I suppose is normal in this situation - does he need a tough challenge from someone who knows him well? Is he depressed? Bored? Does he just need to kick a bad habit? Can I help him at all? Is there risk of my trying to help alienating him?).
- Pornland (Gail Dines) - An interesting subject, but this is a very poorly written book. It seems she didn't have any actual discussions with men about the subject while writing the book. Basically all the quotes from men come from internet forums dedicated to porn discussion. On the subject of why men want anal sex, she included a quote from a woman saying that men probably initially decide they want to have anal sex with their girlfriends/wives in a moment when they are angry with the woman and want to hurt them. Yes, really. Anyways, it's an interesting subject, but a horrible book. It seems to be aimed at people who do not actually watch any porn - with some kind of agenda for them. I'd assumed a book like this would be more focused porn viewers and their lovers - on how it impacts their expectations, sex-lives, sexual health/performance, etc.. But no, it's basically a book written by someone who doesn't know about porn for readers who don't know about porn. (To be fair, I've only read the first half of it)




Upcoming posts:
- 2014 year summary
- 2015 plans and goals

[Rural Kiwi]

Hey C40, very inspirational journal I consumed the entire thing in one late night and look forward to your monthly updates. Are you still cycling at all? I used to race also but am finding a one hour round trip to work each day and a Sunday bunch ride is suiting me well after leaving School and hence the cycling team.

In regards to your platonic friend, I think that identifying friendship is what you want from her and then talking to her about that is very well done. Communication is key!

[C40]

Hey C40, very inspirational journal I consumed the entire thing in one late night and look forward to your monthly updates. Are you still cycling at all?

Thank you! I ride some but not that much. Just a few hours per week. I've started running some.

[C40]

Alright - The year's done, and I'm winning on all fronts. My stock is rising!


2014 PLANS and RESULTS


FINANCE

• Spend - $16,000------------Actual: $15,870
• Net Worth - $340,000-------Actual: $375,000
• Save - $55,000-------------Actual: $63,000
• Invest all available Money----DONE
• Dividends – receive $2,500---Actual: $3,200
• Get Roommate-------------NOT DONE
• Hobby Income - $2,000------Actual $2,300

SKILLS

• Read 20+ Books------------22+
• Investing – Dividend stocks---Good
• Gardening-----------------Good
• Home renovation/repair-----Fair
• Image editing (Illustrator)----Good
• Lucid dreaming------------Nope
• Cooking------------------Fair
• Massage, Sexual Expertise---Fair

FITNESS

• Squat/Deadlift 250x10-----235x12
• Cardio – good shape-------Fair
• Weight/Fat (160#/10mm)---A bit too fat
• Limit drinking------------Good
• Eat well------------------Fair
• Yoga & Stretching---------Poor

SOCIAL

• Dating/Girlfriend--------Ok
• Explore St. Louis---------Fair
• Make local friends-------Fair – 1 good friend
• Get to know neighbors---Poor
• See family 3 times?------Yes!
• Get best friend to visit---Yes! Visited him (& all my other close friends)

HOME PROJECTS

• FAIR – 5 done.

Overall - good year. Great year on financial stuff. Fitness looks the worst but I'm close to satisfied. I made significant strength gains getting my body close to being balanced size-wise after having huge legs compared to a small upper body from so much bicycle racing. I'm going to be more intentional about managing my daily habits relating to fitness and health. More about that coming in a post soon. The other areas, as you can see, went pretty well.

Up next:
- Detailed yearly financial analysis
- Plans for 2,015

[henrik]

Impressively consistent plan execution!

[Dragline]

Yes, I'd be really happy with those results.

[C40]

2014 RESULTS - Financial


Note - these numbers are rounded

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SHORT SUMMARY
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• Total Income: $124,000*
• Total Spending: $16,000
• Investing Performance: 13%
• Net Worth increased from $270,000 to $375,000
• 3.5% SWR increased from $9,500 to $13,000
• Reached minimum FI target

*This includes pension increases, H.S.A contributions, unrealized stock/fund price increase, etc.. (it’s everything)



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INCOME DETAILS
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TOTAL - $124,000

WORK – $93,000

• Post-tax – Paychecks: $61,000
• 401k Contribution: $22,000
• Pension Increase: $6,700
• HSA Contributions: $1,000
• Hobby Income (Shirt sales): $2,300

INVESTING - $31,000 (13%)

• 401k Fund price growth: $15,000 (9% APR)
• Post-Tax stock price growth: $13,000 (17% APR)
• Post-Tax Dividends: $3,300 (4.2% APR)

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SPENDING DETAILS
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TOTAL - $15,870

• Home: $7,100
• Entertainment: $4,250
• Transportation: $2,500
• Travel: $700
• Other: $1,200

HOME: $7,100

• Utilities: $2,250
• Mortgage interest: $2,200
• Taxes: $1,365
• Insurance: $600
• Home goods: $500
• Improvement and maintenance: $210

(This doesn’t include mortgage principle of about $5k, which I’m counting as savings rather than spending)


ENTERTAINMENT: $4,150

• Writing stuff (Pens/paper/ink): $1,100
• Dating: $1,000
• Tea and Teaware: $450
• Internet: $400
• Camera lens: $360
• Computer parts: $210
• Booze: $130
• TV / Movies: $90
• Other: $430

Most of the writing cost was pens, which will last quite some time. So this spending may decrease. Most of the tea spending was tea itself. So tea spending could continue or increase as I get into it more. I’ve found that having tea is a good way to have women come over to my house instead of going out. Tea at home is way better than it can be at a coffee/tea shop, and it’s usually more disarming than inviting strictly for drinks.


FOOD: $2,500

• Groceries: $2,150
• Eating out (non-date): $350

TRANSPORTATION: $1,650

• Gas: $525
• Insurance & Registration: $500
• Car maintenance: $210
• Bicycle (for transportation): $205

OTHER: $1,950

• Travel: $700
• Hygiene/Health: $480
• Clothes: $360
• Other: $420

That travel cost was for a camping/hiking trip in CA, a trip to the PNW to visit friends, Thanksgiving trip to visit family, and Christmas trip to family. All of the flights were already existing work flights, or free with rewards points.





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NET WORTH INCREASE
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TOTAL - $105,000

• From work: $75,000
• Investment growth/income: $30,000

• Went from $271,000 to $376,000
• 3.5% SWR went from $9,500 to $13,200 (a $3,700/year increase)
• I’m not FI with my current home and spending, but I could be if I made some changes. It’d be a bare minimum type of FI.
• 6 months head of my net worth projection timeline. I’m on track to retire in the spring of 2,017. YAY!!

[/list]



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CHARTS. LOTS OF CHARTS
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A lot of these charts are basically the same thing shown in different ways. Sometimes I like to look at this data in different ways. Also I'm including a lot of different ones on the chance it may give ideas to people who are making their own.












NET WORTH CHARTS












FI CHECK CHARTS
















INVESTING CHARTS

[C40]

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2015 Plans/Goals
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Ok - I'm asking a favor here. Please give me input/feedback/suggestions on this.

I have most of these feeling pretty finalized. The ones in red are things that I need to define/clarify/quantify what I want to achieve. Any advice on this? For flexibility my initial gut feeling is to just measure how far I can bend over touching my toes/the floor (at a certain level of exertion/force). I'd have to hold myself to doing other stretches than just that, and I guess I would. I'm not going to just do one single stretch a lot and neglect others just because I put that one on my goal list.

As for posture - I have no idea what goal to set here. I feel like I catch myself in bad posture really often, and I want to make good posture normal for myself. Any advice?



Some background and baseline info:

FITNESS:

• Current deadlift: 235x12
• Current bodyfat: 18mm (this is using a caliper 1" above the front/top of my pelvis). I've probably been down to about 6mm.
• Current 1-mile run time: 6:55. I did my first one mile running rest in about 15 years for this. I wish I would have done that when I was in bike racing shape. Would've been a hell of a lot faster. I have my control of exertion down very well for tests like this (from doing a lot of power testing before), but my running technique needs improvement. So I could probably hit 6:30 just from fat reduction and running technique (if I work on it). So I wasn't sure how aggressive to set the target.
• As for the "sex stuff" details, I'll hold off on that for now. This could be a good topic for another post or a thread. (The "master of my domain" thing is related to this. I'm personalizing this term. For those familiar with Seinfeld - yes, it does have to do with masturbation, but in my personalization of it - that's only one part.)

FINANCIAL:

• The savings target includes all types - post-tax work income, 401k contributions and company match, the increase of my pension value, and HSA contributions.
• The net worth target includes additions from what I expect to save, plus 5% growth/income from the money I have invested.
• The dividends are becoming more and more important to me. As I approach retiring, I'm looking closer at how to get income from my capital. This $4,500 target is from post-tax investments only. Once I retire I'll start the process of pulling money out of the 401k through IRAs, and at this point I expect to buy more dividend stocks. So managing these investments

SOCIAL:
Of the three categories, this is the one where I have the most opportunity to improve.

• As for making new friends, I think I could find some from acquaintances of my current friend here, or from women that I date and I/we determine we should just be friends. Right now, there is nearly zero chance of me making new male friends on my own. I could end up with some through my current (female) friend or women that I date. I know I could make changes in my hobbies to do them more socially, but I probably won't. I don't see any obvious ways to make my hobbies more social that I would enjoy on their own (and have new male friends as a side benefit). I don't want new male friends enough to go out and bear doing things that I otherwise don't like.
• I should probably define more clearly what I want in the (romantic) relationship area. Primarily, I just want to get better at them (both at initiating and maintaining/developing).

Ok - so - any thoughts?

[jacob]

Flexibility is rather sports-specific in that it will be useful in some sports/movements where flexibility is required and detrimental in other sports/movements where flexibility is not required. Importantly, flexibility is NOT an absolute good thing to have (more and more research shows this). You might want to think of the opposite of flexibility as a quality called springiness as opposed to pliability. Whether flexibility is good depends on what your goals are. Your other fitness goals are running and heavy lifting. In that case flexibility will either not matter much (running) or work against you (lifting). You also put sex under fitness and for that I'd say flexibility would probably work for you, haha Generally flexibility is good for speed and range [of motion] activity and poor for strength and power activity.

[Tyler9000]

The times I've really noticed my flexibility (lack thereof, and gradual progress) is when I have done yoga. There's a specific P90x video that goes through a simple but strenuous yoga rotation. Maybe you can find a repeatable routine like that and measure your improvements along the way.

Measuring posture in absolute terms seems a little more difficult other than finding a neutral person to rate you. But there are certainly exercises to help improve posture, and you can commit to doing them a set number of times per week.

[GandK]

Unless you have a fear of heights, you might be able to hit several of your goals at once if you joined a climbing club. I don't know how to go about this in your area, as good outdoor rock climbing areas vary geographically (indoor is easier but more expensive). However, all the people I know that climb regularly are visibly fit, have great posture, and interact socially with lots of other people of both sexes through their climbing expeditions.