ERE is Path to Meaningful Life - MMM style FI year 4

[Stasher]

Not an overly eventful week this past 7 days on the budgeting and finances aspect of things other than a irregular bill of $500. I decided to have the very large Douglas Fir tree in my yard trimmed up and thinned to allow more light into my garden. I had it cleaned up some 4 years ago and still didn't do the trick so I had my friend who is an arborist come give it another haircut. Hopefully this helps the garden be more productive.

I stuck to my usual weekday training runs, rides & workouts finishing the week off with an awesome Trail Run Race. I went with the 13km shorter distance as it fits in my training schedule better as I ramp up to my 50k trail ultra in July.

Then on Sunday instead of an easy short recovery ride, I opted for a big mountain loop on the gravel bike I had planned earlier in the week with some friends. We headed off on to the remote logging roads going between to river watersheds and through a mountain pass connecting the two. A solid 68km effort with 845m of elevation gain on the climbs.

Makes for a nice recovery day today doing no workouts as I catch up on the journal and record my minimalism challenge decluttering for last week.
For Week 18 on May 4 - May 11 the following following 18 items were collected
4 - old art canvases my daughter created and she no longer wanted (thrift store)
6 - dead solar patio garden lights (electronics recycling at waste depot)
1 - cell phone Pelican Case (sell consignment)
1 - mixmaster beaters (thrift store)
1 - auto pet watering bowl (thrift store)
3 - kids old DVD movies (thrift store)
1 - old running cap (thrift store)
1 - mountain zine magazine (gave to a friend)


Racers briefing and course review


Hidden gems only found on bike or foot


Beautiful section of forest in second growth douglas fir, hemlock and western red cedar

[birding]

@Stasher just stopping by to say I’ve been following along. The big mountain bike loop sounds amazing. Great photos too. Keep it up with the minimalist challenge - cool!

[Stasher]

Cheers Birding
Late spring and summer season is just getting ramped up here and will be non stop forests and mountains via bike, hike and running. It is the time of year I live for, absolutely love the outdoors and it brings me so much good mental & physical health.

I forgot to add in my update yesterday that as I turned 50 last year I finally got my first dose of the shingles vaccine. Our provincial health authority has been promoting awareness very heavily the last year as well as the word of mouth on how devastating the illness is so I jumped on it. My wife and close friends my age got theirs as well. I got the Shingrix variant of vaccine and read some reports yesterday that large studies are now showing that it is accounting for a 17% reduction in occurrence of Dementia/Alzheimer's plus some cardiovascular events. No side effects other than a slight raised overnight resting hear rate from 41bpm to 53bpm as well as increased respiratory rate and the typical sore arm. Feeling great today.

[Stasher]

Nothing really to share on the finance/spending/saving/budgeting side of things this week, which to me is a good thing. A good thing so far as meaning that after a decade of MMM/ERE everything is on auto-pilot and good money/lifestyle habits are just so engrained that they become second nature.

That means I wasn't spendy or wasteful and really my only excess would be the gas to drive to the mountain trailhead for my big run this past weekend. As I reflect on my future timeline it looks like I will shift from my coast FI status back to full RE in 16 months so it is nice to see the markets remain solid this past week. I believe I mentioned it before but all my index funds are now all EX-UnitedStates and my only North American is Canada as this is where I live.

The only small money subject worth mentioning is I got my 2025 property bill last week. I will be needing to update my budget from $312/month to the new $341/month that I set aside in my savings account for the annual bill.

I chatted with the wife yesterday and I was trying to remember anything I bought this year with at least trying to get close to a Buy Nothing Year. So far all I have purchased is an original water color a friend painted of a beautiful outdoor location nearby we both love. Then was a set of front tires for our Hyundai and then the only other thing was a Salomon running storage hip belt. So far so good for 5 months of the year gone when you compare to the average North American consumer.

I need to make a mad scramble around the house today as I realized I didn't put the work in on the weekly minimalist challenge, I only have 2 items so far of the 19 needed to be decluttered to stay on track for this weeks goal.

Other than that a low key week as I was in recovery training mode after last weekends trail run race and big gravel bike ride in the mountains. I did a shorter run, my kettlebell workout, a 50km ebike commute for a meeting, a couple short spins on the gravelbike to keep the legs loose and then had enough mojo to tackle a trail run on Sunday.

I called a friend who trail runs and we did a big alpine ridge that is pretty damn beastly with 1300 feet gain in less than a mile to start. We finished the day running/trotting/grinding out over 16km (10 miles) distance and 1170m (3833 feet) of elevation gain. It was much harder an effort than my race the weekend before, great training and beautiful day in the books. My upcoming race in June is 24km distance @ 1593m elevation gain so runs like this are perfect training. I will be doing around a 17km distance next week again.








To round out the week I did an easy bike ride again, no impact and perfect for flushing out the legs for some active recovery.




****Update edit addition

Mad scramble as I forgot to go through the house last week but still managed to get my list complete for this week.

For Week 19 on May 12 - May 18 the following following 19 items were collected
2 - bottles of fabric protector DWR (thrift store)
11 - various dog coats, leashes and bandanas (thrift store)
1 - reusable squeeze bottle (thrift store)
1 - ziploc of old safety pins and elastics (thrift store)
1 - crochet organizer storage travel pouch (thrift store)
3 - wife's unwanted bathing suits (thrift store)

[Stasher]

The ERE is a great community. Years back I did a couple of regional MMM meetups and have also connected IRL building friendships with a couple MMM members who are now FIRE. It has been a strong support network of MMM mindset friends who I can chat with on topics only they would understand compared to the regular community.

That brings me to ERE, a quick moment of gratitude this morning to thank Axel Hyst and the Mastermind Group for having me in the chat this morning. So wonderful to connect with you all. We chatted about finances of course but I mentioned that aside from the grasping of an alternative way of spending/living was that discovering Stoicism philosophy has been key in my ability to live an ERE MMM lifestyle. It has been key to take the Ego out of how we look at our jobs as well as the status projection that spending/ownership has been so engrained into our current capitalist societies. It has also helped me feel the freedom and calmness to make bold choices on changing my financial course and that if things don't work out it will be ok, you just move onto the next thing.

I think it was around 2015 a friend gave me a copy of Marcus Aurelius Meditations and I have read it a couple times now which helped this evolution but of course Pete's post on MMM in 2011 had an impact. Here are a couple of stand-out quotes that I have really tried to employ into my lifestyle as core to how I conduct myself. Hope you can extract some value out of this like I have.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10 ... olid-gold/

Stoicism, in short, is a series of mental techniques and ways of life that allow you to decrease and then virtually eliminate all negative emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, and dissatisfaction, while simultaneously building up a tide of pure Joy inside you that eventually starts to make you jump around and boogie at unexpected moments, and occasionally shout out “AHH YEAH!!” as discreetly as possible to yourself when the Joy overflows.

Rewarding social interactions are a specialty of the Stoic. They believe that humans are social animals at the core, and thus we must exercise this part of our personality to maintain a balanced happiness. But at the same time, it is not rational to have any interest in fame or social status, since these are fleeting indulgences rather than sources of true happiness.

[Henry]

I think it was around 2015 a friend gave me a copy of Marcus Aeuralias Meditations

So stoics believe it's irrational to be famous because they read it in a book written by a famous stoic philosopher.

[chenda]

So stoics believe it's irrational to be famous because they read it in a book written by a famous stoic philosopher.

Marcus asked that his diary was to be destroyed on his death. Fortunately for posterity it wasn't.

[Henry]

Ok. So it was Marcus' followers who decided Marcus was being irrational for wanting to destroy his own writings that included statements that it was irrational to want to be famous.

[chenda]

Ok. So it was Marcus' followers who decided Marcus was being irrational for wanting to destroy his own writings that included statements that it was irrational to want to be famous.

More likely a long forgotten bureaucrat.

This rather brilliant lecture from the 1980s mentions about its survival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auuk1y4DRgk

[Henry]

2 million views. Not Jordan Peterson numbers but not too shabby for a guy dead for two milleniums who warned against the perils of fame.

[delay]

Marcus asked that his diary was to be destroyed on his death. Fortunately for posterity it wasn't.

So Marcus wrote a diary containing advice for others. Then he did not destroy it himself but asked someone to destroy it after his death. It sounds rather implausible.

Perhaps it's classical marketing, "read the thing the Emperor didn't want you to know"

[chenda]

So Marcus wrote a diary containing advice for others.

No he wrote it for himself. At least according to yer man in the video.

[Stasher]

Always nice to keep things entertaining, maybe the thing to focus on is we don't need to analyze or critique everything. If something makes us become a better person, carry more empathy & compassion in our daily lives as well as not add to the divisive discourse that seems to be entertaining into all the corners of our daily lives then I am all for it.

Okey dokey, on to the simpler things in life. Another week and more work on clearing out clutter for the minimalist game challenge. Thanks goodness this week I decided to tackle completely cleaning and organizing our small metal back yard shed, reaching these large weekly numbers now is more challenging. It was becoming a bit unkept and because its the old beat up decades old shed in the yard it becomes a bit of a catch all for garden tools and other yard crap. I still have my main tool shed to go through which will help me get rid of a lot more little items I've been hoarding lol

For Week 20 on May 19 - May 25 the following following 20 items were collected
2 - garden hand tools (curbside free)
1 - 5 gallon water cooler (curbside free)
1 - caulking tube gun (curbside free)
1 - outdoor extension cord (curbside free)
1 - broken metal wall cabinet (metal recycling depot store)
1 - garden hose water nozzle (curbside free)
1 - set of truck mud flaps (curbside free)
1 - metal rusted cookie storage tin (metal recycling depot)
3 - rusted old hand tools (metal recycling depot)
2 - cat harnesses (gave away)
1 - crew sweater (consignment sold)
2 - pillow sham covers (thrift store)
2 - ballpoint pens (thrift store)
1 - bike lock (thrift store)

In our region we have basic curbside recyling but things like glass, styrofoam, flexible plastics(bags), electronics, light bulbs etc we take them to the many recycling depots. There are large municipal ones that take our garbage, yard waste and construction debris etc but also smaller ones that are bottle return depots as well. https://www.return-it.ca is the non-profit recycling depots and then the provincial main program is https://recyclebc.ca while our local government collection facility is here https://www.cvrd.ca/recycling

As I try to make the depot facility loads as big as possible to make a driving the car worth it, I prefer to use my bike. I will use my ebike which is my car replacement weapon of choice most days, and for last weeks recycling and minimalist purge I made the 20km round trip. Best part is we have a wonderful rail by trail route through the forest and countryside to get there. Spring wildflowers are making the ride more enjoyable too.





I did a bunch of trail running this week as I continue to train for my next race and also longer bike commutes including the recycling ride above. No fun photo ops to share with everyone other than a beautiful gravel bike ride I did to a nice ocean estuary near our local river which also had the bonus of one of the many roadside farm stands in our region. This one I loaded up on sausage rolls as well as apple galettes to take home and enjoy post ride with my wife.





In the finance realm, budgets/spending continue to be in autopilot with nothing new and no surprises. With the good work of the minimalist challenge, we did end up buying a couple of things. I bought some velcro straps to secure my extension cords and then a couple of peg board hooks for garden tools after we did the big garden shed clean up yesterday.

I mentioned last week that our property tax bill is due and is the reality of the liability that comes with home ownership. That will be due at the end of the month an always puts a big dent in the savings account. Renewed our car insurance and it thankfully stayed the same as last year, $68 per month. By making the conscious choice to keep and older high mileage vehicle it also helps by not needing collision coverage which is always the most expensive part of car insurance.

The wife had a bunch of dividend funds sitting in her brokerage account that we forgot to get reinvested so checked that off the to do list and the money is back to work again in our chosen global index fund. I never try to time markets and have stuck to my Asset Allocation for our index funds for the last 10 years. My only change as mentioned many times now in the forums was the divesting from XAW which held mostly the US stock market and Facebook/X/Amazon, I did so for personal reasons and will adhere to the no politics of ERE forums policy.

I moved all those funds to VIU which is global Ex-NorthAmerica. https://www.vanguard.ca/en/product/etf/ ... -index-etf Again, I was willing to have poor or flat results for my beliefs but have been pleasantly surprised. VCN (US index) is down 5.49% for the last 3 months while VIU (EU, South Asia, etc) is up 3.36% over the last 3 months. The next dividend fund drop is end of Q2 so in July I will get to see how things have shook out in the dividend department after my changes to asset allocation.

Lastly, rounding out this past week a thanks again to AH and the MMG for having me in a Sunday morning google meetup chat, it was nice to talk with you all IRL.

[chenda]

Always nice to keep things entertaining, maybe the thing to focus on is we don't need to analyze or critique everything. If something makes us become a better person, carry more empathy & compassion in our daily lives as well as not add to the divisive discourse that seems to be entertaining into all the corners of our daily lives then I am all for it.

Very true, over intellectualising can be counter productive. I was thinking this afternoon that I have a tendency to look for the one perfect solution to every problem, whereas usually a multi-pronged approach is better. A sort of polycentric solution system.

Love the photos as ever

[jacob]

OTOH, prioritizing empathy over critique tends to either directly or indirectly enable the bad outcomes of bad thinking and lack of analysis. Although, I do admit that when things predictably go wrong, saying "That sounds so hard for you" usually plays better than saying "I told you so". Some people prefer to use their mistakes as a bonding exercise rather than an opportunity to learn how to avoid them.

[Stasher]

My reply to that would be one needs to have empathy, compassion and respect for others so that you can "meet them where they are" as a starting point of which then you can provide direction, support, critique or engage in meaningful discourse. Thanks for both providing your thoughts on the commentary.

Another week update always kicked off with Jacob's Minimalist game

It is surprising how much stuff finds its way into the corners of your house, sheds, yard and so on. This has been a great exercise on going through the accumulation of things that we build up without realizing. Also had my daughter visit and she went through a few things she left behind when she moved out a few years back. Since my last big purge years ago, I managed to get rid of a few items that I didn't get rid of at that time that had the nostalgia or emotion attached to them. In the end it is just an object and the memories should be sufficient rather than something that gets forgotten or put on a shelf or in a box. Next week is going to be tough as I am officially down to zero items with no surplus carrying forward to the following weeks challenge items.

Anyhow, scrambled around to find one last item to make this weeks Minimalist Game Quota

For Week 21 on May 26 - June 01 the following following 21 items were collected
1 - manual push mower (curbside free)
1 - storage tote (gave to daughter)
2 - rubbermaid storage tubs (curbside free)
2 - pizza spatula (thrift store)
2 - 3lb dumbells (thrift store)
1 - kids camp chair (gave to friend)
5 - miscellaneous wall decor art pieces (thrift store)
2 - keychains (thrift store)
2 - end table ornaments (thrift store)
1 - fabric facemask (thrift store)
1 - box asstd nail polish (thrift store)
1 - cardboard shelf organizer box (thrift store)
1 - usb charger (thrift store)

As I look for efficiencies in my monthly budget I don't see many major changes I can accomplish as they are mostly tied to cost of owning a home. This was mentioned as a "head tax" somewhere in the forum as I recall. Property taxes, insurance, utilities etc are all pretty locked in and only disappear if I don't own a home. Compared to so many we have a LCOL but nowhere near the VLCOL numbers recently chatted about in Axel Hyst journal recently. The way for us to drop any lower would be to downsize our home drastically, we may very well do this and have chatted that we will review our feelings on this in about 2-3 years and see what we think at that time.

That being said I tend to not acknowledge my consumer spending over the last few years of things like my ebike, mtb, roadbike and dirtbike all while pretending that I am frugal. We don't travel to fancy places, we don't spend on fancy things, we drive an old high mileage car between the 2 of us, we don't drink or indulge in anything other than buying good groceries. I justify my 2-wheel passion spending as my FIRE stash is growing faster than my current lifestyle and this is the outlet for mental and physical health. I don't go to the gym (workout at home) and don't have medical costs plus I race so these items are also "event" spending, so it seems like a great investment to me. Although for an ERE perspective this may be frowned up and fits more in an MMM lifestyle than it does here.

I don't see any big upcoming purchases or major changes to our monthly budget anytime soon which is reassuring for my peace of mind. We are at a comfortable spot of at about 3.75% SWR saved up right now if we had to cover our lifestyle from investments. Knowing this with also having at least a runway of about 2 more years with good multiple streams of income from p/t work of mine to my wife's full time income and a couple semi-passive flows we are in a good spot. We plan to keep helping out our daughter and son as they build their own families as well, I want to support them now when they are establishing their finances as adults rather than an inheritance when we pass which will be decades after they could have actually benefitted from assistance.

Got out for a bunch or rides, bike rides, a nice hike with friends as well as some single track enduro moto in the nearby mountains last week. It is a beautiful spring on the west coast thus far but I am getting worried again as summer forecast is above normal heat and below normal rain. We have 2 provinces already in state of emergency with wildfires and then our neighbouring province is exploding with fires and we have started here in BC as well. https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/maps/fw

[Stasher]

I forgot to add that this week is my 8 Year FIRE Anniversary !!

I posted in a friends journal on the MMM forums as he just hit his Fireversary as well. I saved my extensive journal I was keeping over on MMM and here is my entry from March 2017

I received my documents from work that lay out my transition and I am beyond nervous for the future but at the same time can't wait to disconnect from a world that has help me captive on 24/7/365 call for 21 years WOW can't believe it has been that long.
I am getting my 2016 commission which is awesome (not 100% of it but enough that I'm happy.
Fly back to the Prairies on Monday for my last week of work and to meet my clients to tell them I am leaving. Then go on holidays March 13th until May 5th to use up all my remaining holidays.
Return to work on May5th and company gives me 2 weeks notice for lay-off and I am done.
So my FIRE date is May 19th 2017, final paycheque and last career income will be first week of June.

I wasn't fully FI at the time and had only built up a FU stash. A friend wrote this in my MMM journal prior to me leaving work to help with my decision and falls in line with Axel Heyst's recent journal discussions and this great thread he shared recently viewtopic.php?t=12663

Hey Stasher,
As an alternative to FIRE in one year busting your butt and making yourself miserable here are some thoughts:

1. quit the long distance job and find something PT on the island. Maybe that's helping your wife at her business. Maybe that's amping up the photog/blog/location finder side gig. Stop worrying about savings/FIRE and enjoy your friends/family/interests more.

2. quit the main gig and live off your stash at a low WR just chilling for a bit. You've got over $600K as I recall so you can pull out $24K/yr and most likely your stash will just get bigger. This will buy you time to figure out your next move with zero pressure. When you are ready maybe you find some PT work that covers expenses like option #1 above.

Although people on this forum mostly want to talk about FIRE failure as eating cat food when you are 90 the real risk in my mind is fucking yourself up so badly physically or mentally getting to your target $$ that no matter how much free time you have later you're a wreck and don't get to enjoy the full potential of your life.

To close out, the MMM journal and the close friends that I made from there IRL and having a journal here on ERE and like minded people to chat with creates an irreplaceable financial educational feedback loop that is truly amazing.

From a recent blog post I read > https://josephthacker.com/personal/2025 ... iends.html

"The friend flywheel is similar. It’s a positive feedback loop where you root for your friends, building them up and sharing info with them which creates good will and levels them up, and now they’re slightly more successful and informed and they often share info and deals back with you due to feeling closer with you. Then you level up and get access to more info and better deals and you share with them, and the flywheel keeps going."

[AxelHeyst]

Happy FIREversary!

And I can't +1 that friend flywheel comment enough. This community and the IRL friendships I've developed as as result of it has had an incalculable positive impact on my life.

[Henry]

I forgot to add that this week is my 8 Year FIRE Anniversary !!

You should splurge on a cake. As they say, eating ain't cheating.

[Stasher]

Thanks AH, great communities that have helped me immensely.

I splurged on a bike ride to Dairy Queen Henry

Reinvested the last two months of dividend distributions this week from my Canadian bond index (ZAG), I put the money to work by buying as many units as possible of my Canadian equity index (VCN).

I have my 3 funds in an excel spreadsheet that has my asset allocation in percentage tied to the market value of each fund. I keep it updated and it shows me what i need to buy or sell of each index to achieve that allocation. Right now I have a bit too much bond so hence the purchasing of VCN. I did VCN to keep my home bias higher and the rest of my investments are in VIU (World EX-NA) equity index which is doing very well since I sold all my US stock market index funds after inauguration of the new leadership and moved them there.

Next big disbursement is the Q2 and bi-annual disbursement of my equity index funds, those will be re-allocated based on my AA spreadsheet at that time. Based on where it is sitting on the above noted trade I just did, I suspect it will be the same again. I may also lower my bonds back down again as it is sitting pretty high with a 35/65 split right now as I moved a few things around to be a bit safer with the tarif war and uncertainty. Canadian, Mexican and EU as well as Pan Pacific global markets are re-aligning trade routes reducing US dependancy with good results so I am feeling good to up my VCN and VIU allocations to a 70/30. I was a 90/10 in late 2024 so didn't miss out on the big run up.

I am seeing a runway of guaranteed P/T income for another 15 months so will I will keep reinvesting those dividends until I am back being "retired" once again if I don't decide to enjoy the part time work I am doing currently since leaving my old career. I've been slowly building up a cash savings account as well to have ready to use for living expenses at that time. Building up all the same transition contingencies as I did when I originally left my job in 2017 when reaching FI.