Things are going well. An update is overdue. Well, let's start.
Work:
As I have written before there will be some changes at work, which will influence me. The company is restructuring its business. Unluckily the changes haven’t been announced yet. We, the employees, wait and wait and wait some more. Hopefully I am going to know more in the next few months. That means almost everything at work is as usual as it could be. I work full-time, but it feels like part-time, because I usually work two days at home per week. In addition to that I have flexible hours, meaning I start and end work as it suits me. Both (work from home, flexible hours) is great when it comes to go to work by bike, because I can manage to avoid bad weather. ERE helped me in the last two years to “craft” my job. A consequence was that I like to work at my current employer even more than two years ago. That makes it easy for me to earn and save money and be happy with it. It feels like “deliberately coasting to FI”.
Private Life:
In addition to work there will be changes to my private life. My parents will move further away in autumn this year. I am used to visit my parents on weekends. That will be a bit more difficult in the future. It affects my social life, but it will be manageable. I’ll have to ride my bike a longer distance, approximately 1 hour longer. The positive side of this is, that the change of my parents will get them in a very good and sustainable position for the next years/ hopefully decades. On the whole it is a win-win-effect for the whole family. And my parents won’t have an old, big, expensive house anymore, but instead a new, functional apartment. As you probably guess, that makes a big difference financially wise. So I am really happy about it, that my parents make this move. It means less work at the current house for me. And it is also easier for my parents because of less cleaning, more financial options, positive cash flow, etc.
Because of those two uncertainties in my circumstances within the next two years, I don’t want to make further changes to my life. I am going to wait and see how things will affect me and my web-of-goals. Therefore I don’t think of concrete plans/goals to semi-ERE, part-time work, sabbatical, etc. Being happy at my work helps also a lot also, and of course earning a good amount of money each month.
ERE:
I have a good momentum currently. I’m in the middle of the accumulation phase. I sense, that I’m in the middle of the S-curve, too. It feels like a runaway mode. That doesn’t mean that I don’t plan for the future of course.
Till now, I only invested in bonds (government and corporate, emerging and developed markets), in order to mitigate a rising inflation. I hold the rest of the money in cash. As you probably know I want to invest in a buy&hold ETF portfolio, diversified in developed / emerging markets and small/mid/big companies. My portfolio would have a TCO (total cost of ownership) of about 0.5%. I am not sure anymore if I want to pay that administration fees, which could be up to 2000 € per year. So I thought about managing a portfolio with individual stocks. But I am quite unsure, if I am able to achieve the same amount of total return in comparison with the market average. Do you invest in ETFs or in individual stocks? What are your experiences? I would be quite content with the market average, if I could avoid the 0.5% administration fees.
End of Support and Service of Windows 7 will be in January next year for private users. So I had to think about my current computer setup. First I thought about buying a computer parts and assembling it by myself. It would cost my about 800 Euros. Then I had the idea to try Linux und my current computer setup. I booted a live system from an USB stick and I was positively surprised that everything worked just fine. The system ran smoothly and was quite fast, faster than Windows 7. So I ordered a SSD and installed Linux on it. And I only have to say good things about it.
Linux on the new SSD runs so good that I didn’t switch back to Windows 7. For me, when I review that topic, it was quite ERE-like. I avoided buying an easy consumer product for the problem at hand. I planned for a multi-use, flexible computer. Then I thought lateral and tried Linux on a new SSD. And it was a success.
Financials:
As I wrote already, things are pretty good. Numbers tell sometimes more than words
Savings Rate = 91% (12 months rolling average)
Withdrawal Rate = 2,2% (based on actual yearly expenses without any margin of safety and without health insurance, which I had to pay additionally when RE) *
Milestone = 99% (accumulated money compared to milestone of 210k€ by end of 2019) **
JAFI = 0.95 (assuming I had to pay health insurance like I were RE)
** After achieving the milestone, I'd like to evaluate possibilities of DC2FI (deliberately coasting to FI) and semi-ERE
Another topic I investigated is the
mental mindset change from accumulating to withdrawing. In 2020 I like to try something new. Inspired by Jacob’s cash flow diagrams I visualised a possible version for the upcoming DC2FI / semi-ERE mode. What the picture basically tells is, that I want to save 100% of my income to my savings account. In the beginning of the year I budget for all of my fixed and variable expenses and withdraw it monthly from my savings account to my check account. I would like to change my mindset from accumulating towards withdrawing. The change should be gradually, because at some time in the future I have to withdraw all of my expenses from my invested assets and savings accounts. Do you know what I mean?
That’s it, quite some unusually long journal update. And last but not least, I follow almost all of the ongoing discussions and journals with great interest. I really appreciate all your responses and ideas. Thank you all for that. Jacob’s ERE blog and book and this forum improved my life in many great ways! And therefore I am thankful for that.