spoonman's Journal

[spoonman]

@Tyler9000: Hahaha. I guess you're right, it was a pretty big project, but my mind has already been thinking about something else that I can pursue no matter where I live. The task of looking for a project is a project in itself =).

[spoonman]

#090 11/15/2014 -- Movie-going Awesomeness

As you may have gathered from previous posts, we've been enjoying going to the movies in the middle of the week. The activity is enhancing the FI experience, it really feels like we're playing hooky while the world works.

From a financial standpoint, we haven't been spending that much money at all on movie theater tickets. We've been using movie passes that we either bought a long time ago at Costco or that were given to us as gifts. And get this: the other day we used our passes and as part of the theater’s rewards program we were immediately awarded a free movie ticket and a free soda! Muwaaahahahahaha!

A week ago we also saw a movie at a discount theater for only $3/ticket. The theater shows films that were released two or three months ago, so it's a perfect place to watch movies that would have otherwise been relegated to Netflix fodder.

It'll be a while before we pay full price for movie tickets. After we run out of movie passes we'll focus on catching matinees or try to take advantage of days when they show movies at a reduced price.

We've been skipping the super expensive candy and popcorn from the concession stands, instead bringing surplus Halloween candy that we got on the cheap.

[spoonman]

#091 11/20/2014 -- Bureaucracy

We’ve spent the last three days battling the Health Exchange bureaucracy. When you live in the US, acquiring health insurance is a necessary headache because if you don’t you will get financially decimated in the event of an accident or become afflicted with a serious condition. So dealing with the healthcare system is something that we just have to endure while we live here in order to avoid financial ruin.

A week ago we got a letter from the Exchange telling us that we need to renew our plan for 2015. I figured I would get a head start right away and apply for next year’s plan so that I would have plenty of time before the end of the year to mitigate any slowness in the system, it’s something I learned from dealing with the California health exchange. After we submitted our application the PNW health system unwittingly DISenrolled us from our current plan for the rest of the year as well as 2015...and we’ve spent the last three days trying to fix that glitch. Thankfully, after spending about 5 hours on hold and dealing with various agencies, I think we have the problem under control. We managed to make ourselves eligible for enrollment in December as well as all of 2015, but we might have to deal with more issues down the line.

I think our healthcare system is still very much on the mend and it will take a while for it to be comparable to that of other rich nations. For now, we are leveraging our ability to use our free time to relentlessly tackle the bureaucracy. It’s not a pleasant experience, but hopefully before the end of the year everything will be in place.

Right now I’m enjoying a well deserved beer.

[spoonman]

Mini Update

Spent another 1.5 hours on the phone with the Exchange people, we're now enrolled for December. Whew!

[batman]

#087 11/02/2014 -- Daylight What???

In most of the US states we go through a painful exercise twice a year called "Daylight Savings Time". In the Spring we offset our clocks forward by an hour. In essence, you lose an hour and it makes it harder to get up in the morning. In the Fall, we're supposed to gain that hour back by offsetting our clocks back an hour. Normally, I would be happy to gain that hour back but this time I am happy that I just have to humor the system by allowing my electronic devices to adjust automatically. Next Spring I'll be even happier because losing an hour won't be a big deal at all.

I'm wallowing in the luxury of not having to care about the clock all that much. It's one of the greatest freedoms FI gives us.

this is what it's about
---------
edit: because I think Daylight Savings is stupid

[spoonman]

@batman: you wanna know something interesting? Right now I prefer weekdays over weekends because the places we go to are less crowded. Our weekends are now reserved for staying in and/or avoiding crowds. I mean, on the weekend we can go to the mall and stuff, just to check it out, but not get too involved with the crowds.

[spoonman]

#092 11/22/2014 -- One Month in the PNW

Just a quick post: it’s been one full month since we moved to the PNW. Boy, what it month it has been. Feels more like 3 months!

I’ll be posting our budget for November soon. So far so good =).

[George the original one]

Right now I prefer weekdays over weekends because the places we go to are less crowded. Our weekends are now reserved for staying in and/or avoiding crowds.

When I exit the workforce, that's exactly how we'll live, too! Partly because, in a small tourist town, you can't get around on the weekends anyways.

[Legthorn Brownboat]

Going out on the weekdays, that's living the dream! I can't stand the bureaucracy you had to go through with health care. I know you have the time and patience to deal with it, but consider that on the time+effort front you're probably in the top 1% of Americans. How are the rest of us supposed to cope?

Sorry for the rant. On the topic of The Tick, do you prefer the comic, cartoon, or live-action TV show?

edit: grammar

[spoonman]

@GTOO: Since people are shopping in preparation for the holidays, not going out on the weekends is almost a necessity. I look forward to the post-black-friday lull.

@Legthorn: Yeah, I hear ya. I came close to tearing my hair out. I do believe there will be a day when the influx of new applications will subside and the current resources will better cope with new applicants. That's just the reality of anything run by the government: it's slow and easily confused.

About The Tick, I am a fan of the cartoon. I never caught up with the comic or the TV show. I just love the voice of The Tick, he's also great as Joe in Family Guy.

[Legthorn Brownboat]

Definitely watch the live-action TV show, it's excellent.

How're the dividends doing, still growing? I noticed you haven't touched on finances since moving. Are they becoming so entrenched in your mind that they mostly live in the realm of the subconscious? Are you finding your income sustainable and adequate?

One more random question, have you thought about a spoonbaby? Would you call him/her "lil'spooner"/"lil'spoonette"?

[spoonman]

@Legthorn: The dividends are still growing. I'll keep tracking dividend increases, but I think from this point forward I will do it on annual basis.

I will post our prototype income and expenses late next week. So far so good, especially in the food category. So yes, the income is sustainable and adequate to meet our needs and most of our wants.

We are not planning on having a baby. We've revisited the question many times, but both of us agree that we prefer not to have kids.

[spoonman]

#093 11/27/2014 -- Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the ERE/MMM world!

This is my favorite holiday of the year because it makes you think about all the good things in your life. I am thankful for health, wealth, and community! Especially this great community that has given us so much!

[spoonman]

#094 12/01/2014 -- (Prototype) Income and Expenses for November

In this post I’ll discuss our income and expenses for November, 2014. The reason why I have the word prototype in the title is because there are a couple of items that aren’t yet fully in place.

As you all know, we are funding our lives right now primarily through dividend income generated by our portfolio in a taxable account. In addition to the dividend income, we plan on accessing our rollover retirement accounts by establishing Substantially Equal Periodic Payments (SEPPs), which will be in place by January 1st, 2015 (so just a month from today). For the time being, I will be emulating income from SEPPs using money from a side fund that we’ve saved (it’s separate from the Escape Fund that I’ve discussed in the past). I haven’t initiated SEPPs this year because I want to keep things simple.

The other piece of the budget that isn’t yet in place is our monthly health insurance premium. Right now we are paying the full amount of the premium, but starting in January (or possibly February, depending on how we handle things with the health care Exchange) our insurance premium will be between $30 to $80 per month. For the time being I just budgeted $90 for the premium, the rest (around $460) of which we are paying with our side fund.

Those two big pieces of the budget will be fully in place next month, but nevertheless I figured I’d put together this report to illustrate that we are staying within budget in all other categories.



The image above is a snapshot from Mint of our income sources. The “Dividends” line is a flat amount that we pay ourselves from the pool of dividends in our taxable brokerage account. It represents a bit less than the average monthly amount we get every quarter. That amount will be bumped up as our dividends grow each year. The SEPP1 and SEPP2 lines are the simulated amounts from two IRAs (which, again, will be fully operational starting in January). The SEPP3 line is not really a SEPP but a simple distribution from a Roth IRA. By the way, all of those IRAs are invested in dividend paying companies that raise their dividends each year. In the case of SEPP1 and SEPP2, the payments will remain constant until we reach the age of 59 and a half. We don’t mind leaving those payments constant because it will allow the accounts to continue growing via capital appreciation and reinvestment of leftover dividends.



And now for the interesting part. The image above is a snapshot from Mint of our expenses for the month. Below is a detailed description of each component of our budget.

Auto & Transport: This budget is for maintaining and operating our car. Our car insurance is about $52/month and we expect to spend about $30 in gas each month. The budget is set to $100 to account for future maintenance expenses, namely oil changes. The car is an 8 year old Honda that looks and runs like new, so we don’t expect to spend too much money in repairs and maintenance. We are way underbudget this month because our first insurance payment isn’t due until next month. I configured Mint to overspill the remaining amount for next month’s budget, so we’ll probably stay ahead for a while.

Bills & Utilities: Electricity: We expect to spend around $80 in electricity each month throughout winter. This amount may appear kind of high for a one-bedroom apartment, but that’s because we don’t have gas. Our apartment’s heater, stove, and laundry machines are all powered by electricity, so you can think of this category as an amalgam of electricity and gas. Since our billing cycle started in October when we lived in our apartment for only 10 days, our electric bill appears artificially low.

Bills & Utilities: Internet: Our monthly bill is about $42/month. This will stay constant for the rest of our stay in the PNW.

Bills & Utilities: Mobile Phone: Spoongirl and I get cell phone service through PTEL. We expect to spend around $20/month for the two of us. We may revise this down a bit because we hardly use our phones.

Bills & Utilities: Water & Garbage: This is a fixed monthly amount set by our apartment complex. It’s fucking ridiculously high, but I guess we can use all the water we want.

Business Services: Shipping: This is the mail forwarding service. The base cost is only $18/month, but we also get charged for having items forwarded to our home address. Mainly though, we just have mail scanned and saved on our end. We may revise this down if we don’t forward too many pieces of mail.

Entertainment: Netflix & Hulu: We spend about $16 for Netflix and Hulu. This will likely stay constant for a while.

Financial: Dividend Tools: I pay around $10/month for Chuck Carnevale’s awesome FAST graphs service. I use it to monitor the health of my companies, it’s worth every penny.

Food and Dining: This is the highlight of our budget. The $400/month that I set for this category was only an educated guess. Before we quit our jobs, we regularly spent $600/month on groceries and restaurants, $200 of which went to social dinners and work lunches, so I thought it was reasonable to set a budget of $400/month that would require us to do a lot of home cooking. As you can see, our food expenditures came to $347 in the month of November! This is $53 under budget! This is a major fucking win for us. Of the $347, we spent $20 at a local Sushi restaurant (the kind that has plates on a rotating conveyor belt, it was great) on the 27th when we knew we were ahead of our budget. We’ve been enjoying a primal diet of vegetables, fruits, eggs, steak, chicken, and the occasional beer and glass of wine. Yup, we are practically living it up in FI! I haven’t eaten this well on a consistent basis in a very long time. Now that we are confident we can stay within budget, we plan on treating ourselves to a restaurant every so often and/or explore organic grocery options.

Health & Fitness: Health Insurance: I covered this topic in the beginning of the post. This is just a placeholder for our insurance premium. Depending on how things go with the Exchange, this will be between $30-$80 per month.

Home: Home Supplies: This is stuff like laundry detergent, dishwashing soap, etc. We came under budget this month and I don’t expect this to be much going forward.

Home: Mortgage and Rent: This is our monthly rent of $685/month. The biggest category in our entire budget, but quite predictable =).

Personal Care: This is stuff like body soap, TP, haircuts, etc. I got a haircut this month at a local barber shop for $23. This category is likely to be bumpy from month to month.

Shopping: Spoongirl Fun Money: This is Spoongirl’s discretionary money for each month. She only spent $3 on a movie and less than $4 on a coffee. She’ll probably spend more in the future =). Full disclosure, she did take advantage of great Black Friday deals, but this was paid from separate resources already earmarked for this purpose.

Shopping: Spoonman Fun Money: I spent $71 out of my $100 monthly allowance. Half of that was spent on music downloads, namely a new collection by Soundgarden.

So all in all, we did well this month, especially in the food category. These numbers will continue to stabilize as time goes on.

[George the original one]

What happens to the unspent fun money? Does it roll over to the next month's budget or do you "lose" it?

[Legthorn Brownboat]

I'm so happy to hear of your success!

As far as the leftovers from the fun budget, I'd prefer to re-invest them and treat it as increasing the fun account annuity. Thus, spoonman can now spend $100.10 every month in perpetuity! It would be a little more math each month to do, but I'd get a kick out of doing this for every category, and excesses could be treated as depleting it.

[spoonman]

@GTOO: It automatically rolls over to the next month. So in theory I could choose to save my fun money on a big purchase =).

@Legthorn: That's a neat idea, but the organic growth of our total spending budget due to dividend increases each year would far outpace reinvesting $100 here and there. Even a company like ED would give me more income increase than reinvesting all of my $1200 of fun money for the year. But who knows, I might reinvest some fun money if a company becomes significantly undervalued, which I can find very hard to resist.

[spoonman]

#095 12/09/2014 -- Portland Holiday Ale Festival

It's been a while since I've checked in with the forums. We've been, well, busy enjoying our lives =).

Last week we explored the lively Portland area and made our way to their annual Holiday Ale Festival, an epic event where many local brewers (and others from all over the world) feature exotic beers. I'm not sure if you are all aware, but Portland is the micro brewing capital of the US. The micro brewery scene there is amazing, it's a beer lover's Mecca.

We went to the festival on its opening weekday so it wasn't all that busy. The cost of attending the event is a steep $35/person giving you 14 tickets that you trade for beer tastings (1 ticket = 3 oz of beer). $35 is 1/3 of our individual discretionary budget, but it was well worth it.

I started by tasting Stone's experimental "New Desecrator", which has the following description: What happens when you take Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine and allow Liberty Station's Brewing Manager to play with the recipe? You get Old Guardian's arch nemesis born from the shadows, New Desecrator. To give this demon its own flair, Stone fed it generous portions of Herkules, Amarillo, Comet, El Dorado and Pacifica hops. Coming in at 100+ IBUs, the New Desecrator may just kill Santa Claus [and] end your holidays early. I loved it! I'm a huge fan of Stone, I've been drinking their Arrogant Bastard Ale for years.

We also traded some tickets for slices of artisanal cheese, my favorite was the Aged Cheddar.

The atmosphere of the festival was great. Some of the locals were sporting legendary beards, I was very jealous =). I mean, I can grow a good mustache, but not a great beard.

Later that afternoon we treated ourselves to some street food. We strolled to a popular location of Portland's Food Carts by 10th and Alder, which takes up an entire block. I had an awesome, juicy taco for only $1.50. It felt great to deviate from our primal diet a bit.

All in all, we love the city of Portland. It's an amazing town with lots of cool things happening and more for us to explore in better weather. We even got to see a drawbridge in action among Oregon's many bridges, it was really neat.

Below are some photos we took that day:

[jacob]

Where young people go to retire ...

[frihet]

Ah yes Portland is nice. Spent a few days there before a meditation retreat a few years ago. About this time of the year actually. Felt safe, just the right size and easy to get around with the buses. Almost like Scandinavia or should I say the best of Scandinavia and US in a mix

Have you guys checked out the zen garden? It had a lovely vibe and was located on a hill with a view of the volcano , Mt St Helens?

Well worth a visit. I don't remember if it was free though?