Early Retirement Extreme Forums

My ERE Motivations

I have been pondering the motivations I have for EREing for the last month or so and have come up with a couple that really stick out in my mind. They are not healthy motivations, so beware.

1. A desire to beat the system and to let the system know that I have beaten it. I want the economists to know that I don't buy into infinite growth paradigms. The truth is, though, the system doesn't care if you've beaten it. One less person working for money? That makes no difference to the system. I try to justify it by thinking of what my boss will think when I tell him I'm done working or what my in-laws will think when I tell them I am done working for money (they think money making is the highest calling in life). The strange thing is that thinking about their reactions gives me pleasure, knowing they will be confused, the in-laws even angry possibly. Then I realize how fleeting that feeling is. As soon as the can is opened the feeling goes away. The feeling is only there before the actual retirement. Life will move on - the boss will hire someone else, the in-laws will probably forget about it. What motivation then?

2. This is something I haven't shared with anyone but the DW but I have a pretty strong case of driving anxiety. Just thinking about the afternoon commute makes me a little nervous. Mornings are much better, less traffic, but afternoons can be hell. I end up taking side roads and taking "long-cuts" to avoid traffic. Its not so much speed that makes me nervous, its traffic driving behind me. When someone is behind you they are looking at you and can see your mistakes. So ultimately I think I have a fear of judgement. This is a very strong ERE motivation for me. I have noticed that its only afternoon commutes that are the problem. Weekends are fine for the most part, even driving during non-rush hour is good. So my thinking is that upon ERE, I can time my trips during non-rush hour and that will work. But will it? What kind of healthy motivation is rooted in anxiety and fear? The answer is none in my mind. I am just running from something. I have visions of EREing and then spending weeks or even months at a time whiling away my time on passions and hobbies that require no travel, watching the world whiz around me while I am content as a clam. Maybe I won't be? Its a valid concern.

3. A desire to opt out and just watch. Watch the world with its infinite problems and see what happens. Watch our civilization muddle along, thinking its on the right track, all the while I "know" they are not on the right track, and taking great pleasure from that. In fact, I think this motivation goes a little further than that, I feel that I am waiting for problems that will absolutely show up "someday" (economic & energy) and that I need to get to a point where I can sit quietly and wait for them. The question that crops up in my mind is "what then"? I feel a bit of "I told you so" in that and it's clearly not good to use as motivation. I also think that finding John Michael Greer really contributed to this motivation as there are strong overtones of his type of thinking in it. I honestly think this is probably the most unhealthy of my motivations because it allows one to take pleasure in suffering and economic destruction and desperation. Thinking that I can sit all that out is clearly delusional and I need to work on this one.


I really think that healthy motivations should be the basis for EREing and they can consist of fostering your own creativity, learning to live without a clock in the house, learning to downsize how much you expect from this life and even how much you want to accomplish while taking even more pleasure from those activities. Unhealthy motivations can lead you to make irrational decisions and even taking risks that you shouldn't, such as EREing too early.

It hit me while I was typing this up that another strong healthy motivation for me is reducing the amount of information that is constantly flowing in and out of my life. I don't do social media but still feel like I need to downsize, particularly with regards to financial news and energy news. I track these things on a daily basis. This is clearly something I can work on right now. Last year I spent the better part of 2 months not staying up to date on news, weather, etc... and the world did not end. It gave me great pleasure and just thinking about it calms me quite a bit.

I also have motivations rooted in plant breeding, preserving rare varieties of plant and livestock, machine shopping, and meditation/spiritual growth. This is what I hope to shift to in the coming year or two.

Broken Circles

It hit me as I was responding to my Salmon post that all our environmental, cultural, economic problems might be fixed by simply changing our geometric orientation to ourselves and the world.

Modern culture is obsessed with lines. Linearity dominates everything from our cultural narrative of cavemen rising from the dust to explore the stars, to the accumulation of stuff and money (transferring from person/point A to person/point B), to simply our survival (stormwater runoff, industrial farming/sea food harvesting, energy extraction, etc....). We live in little boxes (made of lines). A lot of us work in cubicles (made with lines). All of these things are very linear.

Changing to a circular mentality seems to provide solutions to all these problems. Rather than working to accumulate (linear) I would be giving away (circular). Ecological circles would include planting more trees than I cut down (closing the lumber circle), providing conditions to keep wildlife flourishing (closing the food circle), building swales to collect storm runoff (closing the water circle). Composting is a perfect example of a circular construct. All of these things close the broken circles that dominate our lives. Another example I gave in the Salmon post was planting food stands and building a pond so that deer would be attracted to your land and could flourish. This would allow sustainable harvesting. A perfect circle.

Could it really be as simple as changing from a line to a circle?

I like that and I think so. Nature is full of circles. That's what's so great about things like ERE and permaculture. There's minimal to zero waste. The loops are closed.

Yeah, we've removed ourselves from the overall natural circle and that's what's screwing up the planet. Must of us humans think that we are above and removed from the natural circle. I think there's hope, though. More people are realizing that sustainability is the way forward.

Monthly update, March 2015 -

Balance - 4072.08 (+41.88)
Deposits - 0
Principle Payments - 77.82 (-30.02)
Interest Payments - 42.97 (+13.01)
Reinvested - 88.56 (-26.77)
Income Withdrawal - 32.23 (+9.76) (Right now this is still being re-invested, this would be our income if we were FIRE)

NAR - 13.78%
Total Charge Offs - 0

Monthly Nut
Skype/Tracphone = 15
Garbage - 19
Sewer - 20
Car Insurance - 29
Mediacom - 55
Property Taxes/Insurance - 150

Total - 288

Variable Expenses (things I can directly control) - Actual (of Budgeted Amount)
Gas - 103.66 (of 100)
Food - 279.32 (of 200)
Energy - 148.78 (of 100)
Misc - 1128.93 (of 500)

Total - 1660.69 (of 900)

Total Expenses - 1948.69

Truck Loan - 9,494.85 (-212.84) We just made a normal payment, this loan will be gone at the end of June after about 8 paychecks. (revised from end of May after 6 paychecks). This month I decided to contribute more to liquid savings accounts rather than paying off the loans, and boosting our checking balance a bit. It will begin dropping like a rock in April.

Expense-wise this was a horrible month, however, I was fully expecting it. We had a number of supplies to get for maintaining our orchard going forward (we have about 2 dozen fruit and nut trees) and also had some supplies to get for our chickens which are arriving just after Easter. Most of these expenses were one timers for things like a backpack sprayer, pole saw, heat lamp and other material for building the brooder. I am fully expecting this to reverse in April and May, and to be able to help offset the budget overage from March.

I blame the food budget overage on the annoying fact that a few times per year I go just over 2 weeks per paycheck and we do all our grocery shopping every other Wednesday to catch the best deal on organic food.

Lending Club is still coasting, although I now have one loan which has entered collections activity so I can expect my first charge off in April. I am very interested to see how this affects the FIRE withdrawal amount going forward.

In other news, I made one major lifestyle change in March. I decided to reduce the amount of commuting stress in my life by riding the metro bus to work instead of braving all the insane drivers around here. There is an accident at least once per DAY on our highway ( I am not joking ). We hear the sirens from our house and since we are always outside they are louder. Two days ago, I actually heard the screeching of tires and crunching of about 3 cars just 1/4 mile from our house. Anyway, I digress...

The walk to the bus stop is the only "treacherous" part of my commute. About 1/4 mile in the dark along that dangerous highway. The raccoons make me more nervous than the traffic, however, so I now carry a large walking stick and flashlight. I am finding I enjoy it a lot now! The walk home is very fun actually. The combination of my newly growing beard (going for a JMG type) and walking stick makes me look like a wizard and the drivers give me funny looks and plenty of breathing room. I find it therapeutic to slowly meander down the road while they all jockey for a better position and whiz about. Its not as dangerous as I make it seem. I strategically choose my walking route so as to minimize traffic danger.

The end result is significantly less stress in my life and a much happier mood! I am also much more productive when I get home in the evenings now because I am not fatigued from the drive and can plan my evenings while on the bus. Even the DW has noticed the difference.

Speaking of working in the evenings, I want to start sharing with the ERE community (for anyone that wants to see) some of the things we are doing on our homestead.

To start things off here is a photo of some of our backyard from 2014. I say some because we have 1.5 acres and its hard to show it all.

BEFORE (in 2011)



AFTER (in 2014)

The Crocus in the orchard blooming.







And finally, this is what our largest veg bed looks like currently. It was covered by winter rye all winter and I used a spade to turn it all over by hand about a week ago. Tiring!

Nice gardening space!

The Chickens Have Arrived!

I have mentioned a few times on here that the DW and I are getting chickens and now we can actually call ourselves chicken farmers! They are peeping away right now down in the basement.







The are the most adorable things we have ever had in our lives! As first time chicken owners we are quite proud to say that all 16 of them have survived since we received them Saturday morning at the post office. They were born on Good Friday and are growing very fast. They have tons of energy because we put a bit of sugar in their water.

For anyone who is interested we got some uncommon varieties.

5 Blue Andalusians - https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/blue_andalusians.html

These are the black, gray and white chicks.

5 Cuckoo Marans - https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/cuckoo_maran.html

These are the black with yellow spot on the head. They lay super dark brown eggs.

5 Easter Egg Chickens - https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/arauca ... canas.html

These are the tan/brown with stripes. They will lay pastel blue and green eggs (hence the name).

1 Dark Brahmas - https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/dark_brahmas.html

Murray McMurray always sends on free exotic chick with each order and this is the one we got!

We got the straight run and so about half of them should be roosters. All but the most exciting one will end up in the freezer this fall.

Wow, they look super cute. I like the one photo where they're looking straight into the camera.

For a second there, I took your last comment seriously =).

Chicks just in time for Easter, they are too cute! Can't wait to have my own land for chickens!

spoonman wrote:For a second there, I took your last comment seriously =).

We will actually be butchering some of them, but only the extra roosters. I can't even stand the thought right now, but when we have half a dozen roosters squawking over territory I'm sure it'll be easier.

We want to keep one rooster and it will be a hard toss up between a Blue Andalusian rooster (since they are so beautiful and the bird is actually threatened) and the Dark Brahmas if that turns out to be a male.

The hens will be safe!

Monthly update, April 2015 -

Lending Club

Balance - 4124.42 (+52.34)
Deposits - 0
Principle Payments - 98.24 (+20.42)
Interest Payments - 53.52 (+10.55)
Reinvested - 111.62 (+23.06)
Income Withdrawal - 40.14 (+7.91) (Right now this is still being re-invested, this would be our income if we were FIRE)

NAR - 14.23%
Total Charge Offs - 0

Dividend Fund

Balance - 74.65
Deposits - 100
Dividends - 0
Dividend Increase - 0



Monthly Nut

Skype/Tracphone = 15
Garbage - 19
Sewer - 20
Car Insurance - 29
Mediacom - 55
Property Taxes/Insurance - 150

Total - 288

Variable Expenses (things I can directly control) - Actual (of Budgeted Amount)

Transportation- 69.00 (of 100)
Food - 263.17 (of 300)
Energy - 116.68 (of 100)
Misc - 1142.21 (of 500)

Total - 1591.06 (of 1000)

Total Expenses - 1879.06.69

Truck Loan - 8,663.98(-830.37) Made a larger payment this month, but was lower due to higher expenses.

While expenses weren't as high as last month, they were higher than they should have been. About 400-500 of that was one time things that won't happen again. Half of that amount was probably not too wise (130 bucks for a vet bill and 100 bucks for a completely useless visit from Culligan), but hey what can you do. The other half was mostly chicken coop infrastructure such as 200 feet of outdoor rated copper wiring. I did save some money on that by not buying conduit, using old metal pipes instead.

Note - this also includes the costs of non-GMO chicken feed, so that accounts for another 100 or so. It is not cheap in the slightest. I may have found a local source so I can hopefully get this cost down. I am also getting fodder crops growing for them and have plans for more free-ranging. The most important thing I did was to build a non-waste feeder. More on this later.

I am completely committed to keeping May in check. Feel free to call me out next month if I don't go UNDER budget for May. So far for the year, I am currently eating into July's second paycheck for variable expenses.

We also decided to increase our food budget by 100 a month from 200. We buy about 75% organic food and we were really beginning to feel stretched toward the end of the cycle. We would end up just going out to eat and making the leftovers stretch for a day or two. So we committed to purchasing a bit more and using it wiser. I am making up plans for a lot of slow cooker meals mainly because we can throw a lot of garden produce in and they last a long time. Plus there is no greater feeling than spending 5-6 hours outside and knowing you don't have to make supper! Cooking in the evening just sucks when you are tired.

Transportation expenses were lower than they have been in a LONG time mainly due to riding the metro to work. As spoonman said, I have become a bus riding ninja. I ride about 24 miles a day so that is about a gallon of gas I'd be using. To ride the metro is 0.76 per ride, so I am effectively getting to work for $1.52 a gallon gas, minus all the maintenance costs.

We filled up the truck 1 time and the car has been sitting for over a month with half a tank in it. Its looking like we will be spending less than 100 a month, on average, for transportation going forward.

Lending Club is still cruising right along. I have 2 loans that are in the 31-120 day late category and advanced collections are underway. My return will drop to about 12.5% if they are charged off.

It also hit me that my monthly cash flow has already been hit by these loans and that I really won't see a noticeable difference in the event that they are charged off. The minute they didn't make their payments is when my cash flow dropped. After the charge off, I'll simply have less balance (which sucks) but since I'm after cash flow it doesn't seem as negative.

One other note, I have decided to change up my investment plans starting in July/August when I start blasting money into the accounts. Instead of committing to Lending Club full time, I am doing a half and half strategy of Lending Club and dividend growth investing (*). I am paid bi-monthly, so one check will go to LC, the second to DGI. Doing the numbers this will likely push of FIRE by about a year, but I am the kind of person that like robustness in anything I do. Do it right or don't do it. Originally I had planned to do Lending Club 100% until we FIRE and then put some money into stocks, but the more I learned about DGI the more I liked the sound of it.

So I would essentially be invested in 3 areas - my paid off homestead (non-liquid), Lending Club (semi-liquid) and DGI (fully liquid).

I am pretty hesitant to put anything into stocks this year though, so I might sit on the cash for a while. From what I see most of the stocks I have picked out so far are fairly pricey. I did end up purchasing 2 stocks of AT&T simply because I wanted something earning dividends in the time until I start investing and they seem pretty fairly priced. I did get paid .94 in dividends on May 1, so I was elated at that!

Here's my list I have compiled over the last month. I like healthcare, tech & energy mainly along with a slew of proven companies that have been paying for a long time. I am still learning though and this list might change going forward. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!


GSK PFE BAX UNH HUM AET STJ UNP LOW GAS T DIS AFL OHI PG WFM FDX DE VZ MA UPS PEP XOM KMB UNM IBM JNJ COP CPK NI RY MMM PM BA LMT GE NUE EMR AAPL DPS KO ORCL APD PX INTC HPQ

*Originally I had stated I would not be investing in the markets for ethical reasons. However, it hit me as I was pondering my thought on closing the circles in my life that I could force all these massive corporations (that I frankly view as horrendous monstrosities) to pay for my healthcare insurance upon FIRE. My goal is to generate 500 per month from dividend stocks, which I feel will pay for insurance and provide a small amount for the HSA account. My small attempt at closing the circle on that expense! At that point, it would just be a task I take care of. I wouldn't even consider it part of my budget.

Chicken Update

Our chickens have been doing great and are 7 weeks old today. They are growing fast! We moved them from the basement brooder to the chicken coop back on April 28 or so at 4 weeks old simply because the basement was starting to smell and they were beginning to squabble in their tiny brooder. We started letting them outside on nice days right away. They quickly learned to go into the coop at night and now this week have started roosting on the small roost I built for them.

I also planted a bunch of fodder beets for them to eat this winter and will be planting the golden amaranth I bought as well. This is more of a test run to see how they grow and how long they last. I planted 3 different kinds of beets interspersed in our newly planted lilac hedge, due to a lack of space in my gardens. We have over 3,000 square feet of veg beds and not one spot to plant! Guess we are utilizing our space well.

We ended up getting 10 hens and 6 roosters out of the straight run batch we bought. We were only expecting 7 or 8 hens, so we got lucky and will hopefully be rolling in eggs! Optimistically we can expect 8-10 eggs per day during the summer and about half that in winter and so our food budget will hopefully be reduced significantly. Not only will we not have to buy eggs, we can replace many meals with egg-based dinners/herbs. This is where the true savings come I think. Our costs will transition from buying food to buying food for our chickens instead. Similar costs, much fresher food.

I have been monitoring their food usage, and right now a 30 LB bag of organic, non-gmo lasts about 3 weeks. At a cost of 30 bucks a bag, that's not too bad. Costs of 40 bucks a month. If I can reduce the food budget by that much by utilizing the egg dinners (combined with home grown produce) I am not looking at an increase in costs at all. I am tracking everything and will be giving updates.



We have also named all of them (except for a couple of the roosters we are culling).

Easter Egger Hens - Mabel, Hazel, Myrtle & Rosie. These are all the sandy/brown hens. They are very beautiful and remind us of wild game birds.

Andalusian Hens - Opal (white), Gem (Blue) & Lucy (Black). We got super lucky and managed to get one hen of each possible color for this variety. We couldn't believe it!

Cuckoo Maron Hens - Penelope, Gertrude & Delila. These hens are turning out to be the big fat/squat type and remind us of old fat grannies.

Here are some photos from the past month or so. I will try to get a picture of each this summer and label it with the name.


Stanley - Our true blue andalusian rooster. He is the leader of the pack and we are thinking we'll keep him and one other roo.


Humphrey - Our only Easter egger rooster. He is quite a plump bird, this photo doesn't do justice. He also has dark feathers all down his chin/neck making it look like he has a beard!


Myrtle


Gem & Gertrude hanging in the shade.


Half of them roosting at night. From top left to bottom right - Gem, Stanley, Myrtle, Bee, Hazel, Lucy, Mabel, Cristo


Stay tuned for updates.

Loving these chicken pictures! Are Roosters happy living together?

Loving the maths on the $40 reduction in food budget substituted with eggs, but wondering how long it will take til you get sick of eggs and start selling them to neighbors.

Admittedly I have never been able to taste the difference between free range eggs from the supermarket and from local farm.

Yep, they are getting along for now. They don't really start forming the pecking order until 6-8 weeks (which is now) so we are expecting them to start bickering in the coming weeks. Once in a while they will square up and jump around so I think its starting.

The Dark Brahmas (Bee) is clearly the underdog and is subservient to even the hens. We think its because he is all alone in his breed.

Ha! I will have to get clever with the egg meals, its true. We are growing lots of herbs and veggies so that will help. And lots of angel food cake! The neighbors and even the boss at work have expressed interest in the eggs too. I am going to use the small amount we get from that for food budget expenses.

I have never had a farm fresh egg that was laid the day I eat it, so I am excited to try!

Great pics of the chickens. What a neat project.

*Pastured* organic eggs are very popular these days. From what I understand the chickens have fed on bugs and as a result the nutrition of the yolks is denser and more varied than even cage-free/free range/organic eggs.

The differences between certain types of eggs are very apparent in my experience. Actually the first time I paid attention to eggs was in England when I noticed the yolks were orange rather than the pale yellow I was used to in the U.S. They tasted a lot better than what I was used to also. Later I found pastured eggs being sold here that had these orange yolks. In a small Southern town local natural grocer they cost $6.50/dozen, in my present large urban Whole Foods they cost $8/dozen. Same source farm, actually, some place called Vital Farms in Texas. WF can't even keep these eggs in stock they are so popular.

Long story short, if you can break into this market it might be pretty lucrative, even in a non-urban area.

I got a real kick out of the name Gertrude, I think there is a correlation between that name and short, chubby old ladies. I knew at least one Gertrude in our neighborhood that fit that description.

Looks like your project is progressing along quite nicely, congratulations!

@Peanut, thanks for stopping by! That is an incredible price for a dozen eggs! I have never seen anything over about 4.99 here, all pasture raised. Living in the midwest probably makes it a bit cheaper.

@Spoonman, ha yea! She is a fat little hen so that's why we named her that. She also likes to fluff up her feathers a lot which makes her even larger! I will try to get some good pictures up.

Here are some more photos we took this weekend.

Lucy, our black female Andalusian


Mabel, by far the most beautiful of the easter eggers, possibly the entire flock.


Plump little Humphrey. He reminds me of an owl with a 5 o`clock shadow. He is my favorite roo


One of the unnamed twin Cuckoo males. Could call him chicken dinner #1


Hazel (front), Gem (middle), Lucy (back)



They are becoming quite happy to be by us now and are not as skiddish as they used to be. A couple of them, including my favorite (Gem) are content to jump on our laps when we sit down in the run and will settle in like they are nesting. It is quite a fun passtime and a great way to wind down after a long work day/bus ride home. We have a great routine of sitting with them for an hour or so each evening hand feeding them all sorts of garden produce.

Spoiled Rotten Brats

I normally have a great time at work and have a wonderful team, but this week has been like hell and I just had to write out something about it. Why do business people/users act like spoiled rotten brats when their systems don't perform the way they expect? Our team has a great track record, having an uptime of greater than 99.9% (yes we track it) and we never have performance problems. Ever. We are reputed to be one of the best teams in our organization.

Yet this past weekend we had a major upgrade go in and it didn't go as smoothly as it could have. We ran way ahead of schedule (about 12 hours). Everything upgraded and passed inspection. However, we started having performance problems with caching and some database caching issues that required various restarts of the system during lunch hours and evening hours. The system was up during all business hours.

And the best we can get is that the business was "really ticked" with the performance of the upgraded system.

Less than 2 days after the issues started, they are now fixed through tremendous efforts by our team.

Maybe its our incredible track record, but it seems like if even a hiccup happens in the day to day life of a DFU (dumb fucking user - my first boss coined this term and for good reason) they throw hissy fits. I'm pretty sure that all the spoiled rotten brats that ruined everything for all the good mannered kids just migrated into business suits....because that's all they do. Demand demand demand and make life difficult for everyone.

Alright rant over. Thankfully I have been shielded from it, while our more senior team member take the full on assault. I can see a day (after they retire) when I will be taking these assaults. I just wanted to get this down so I can remember my real motivations for this journal.

For a little post rant humor - The Web Server is Down