Early Retirement Extreme Forums

C40 wrote: My girlfriend knows that I track all my spending and make my charts and such. She did ask me if I keep track of how much money I spend with/on her, and she didn't like that I do. She suggested/told me that I should not track it... She wasn't too surprised about her suggestion not going anywhere.

Does your girlfriend get it, or does she just play along? Sorry if that's too personal. Just curious since there've been so many dating discussions here.

jennypenny wrote: Does your girlfriend get it, or does she just play along? Sorry if that's too personal. Just curious since there've been so many dating discussions here.

I think she mostly gets it. But she has a hard time with it, I believe for these two reasons:
1 - Reconciling my desire to spend little and not go out to eat with the common courting expectations of men taking their GF out to dinner and buying completely unnecessary gifts as a representation of them caring abut the woman. (I'm full-on INTJ in my non-acceptance of these kind of social norms, whereas she seems to be quite used to them)
2 - She doesn't like thinking about money.

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FEBRUARY 2014
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SPENDING: $1,511
- Home - $666
- Transportation - $258
- Entertainment - $215
- Food - $184
- Tax Prep / Other - $174
- Travel - $14

Had some non-monthly bills come up. Quarterly ones for water, sewer, etc. Plus 6 months of car insurance. Most of the Entertainment category is dating/girlfriend related.

TAXES
I paid a shit ton of taxes this year. I think it was related to the extra money I got for relocation.




DIVIDEND INVESTING

What I’ve purchased so far:




Yearly dividend income chart:



I took this chart style from Spoonman’s. I want to change the “Current” series format to a stacked bar chart to show the difference in the increases (new purchases vs. dividend increases). The "Possible" lines are what I could get if I invest my work pension and 401k (and house principle for the higher line) at 3.5% yield

Enjoyed reading your journal thx!

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MARCH 2014
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SPENDING: $1,900
- Entertainment - $700
- Home - $680
- Food - $370
- Gift - $80
- Transportation - $35


Entertainment spending included a new camera lens that I’ve been thinking about buying for years (a Nikkor 24mm), computer parts to wipe and repair a desktop I will sell soon, $60 of dating, and some notebooks for writing.

FOOD DETAILS:
- $220 – Groceries
- $130 – Garden stuff
- $13 – Eating out alone




NET WORTH MILESTONE

I passed $300k. YAY!

Something I’ve been thinking about a bit more is whether I should include all of my 401k, Pension, and house in my net worth. Each of those will require some loss in order for me to access the money. If I do things right it looks like those losses could be fairly minimal.






FI PROGRESS

Things are coming along as expected. I'm ahead of my plan right now but I think this has to do with high stock market over the last 6+ months.





OH BABY!!






DIVIDEND INVESTING

Dividends are flowing in. The AGNC dividend is dropping so I’m going to sell it. The yield is still high but maybe it will go lower and lower and I don’t want to worry about it. I can sell it right now and will have made money overall because I got one dividend and the stock price is only slightly down.

In April I might be buying three more companies, one in the IRA.

I updated the format of this chart. It will show how much of my current yearly dividend total is coming from initial stock purchases and how much was dividend growth. It’s very early now so the dividend growth is small so far (actually it is over-estimated in this chart because of a number I had in there for AGNC, which now I think was wrong.)




ROOMMATE
Getting a roommate would reduce my Home spending to around $250 per month (plus my mortgage principle payments) so that would be nice!

I've wanted to get a roommate ever since I bought my house last fall. This could be in the form a girlfriend, or someone living in the extra bedroom. A girlfriend would be ideal but I don't want to wait for that to happen. (I'm no longer with the girlfriend I'd had for the last 4 months... we got along well but she wanted to have children badly and pretty soon and I didn't, plus there were some other issues)

I don't have much to say other than I'm closer to getting started on this.. I think I'll start doing more research about finding roommates, tenant laws, etc.

Congrats on the milestone. Looking forward to hearing what you find out regarding roommates as I'm also giving that consideration (again).

I like how the net worth chart isn't damaged by the home purchase. There's a ~6 month recovery period in post-tax income and then it just chugs along as if nothing happened.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums is good for information on renting.

You didn't bring this up but my understanding is that you want to have a lease even if you just have roommates in the home that you also live in. In some states it can be very difficult to evict people if there is no lease even though that might not seem logical. You don't want it to turn into a renting horror story.

The book "Landlording" is very dated but might be helpful. It has a lot of practical information though a lot is for people who are buying rental property.

That's a really nice set of plots you maintain. If I was more motivated, I'd copy them As it is, I just keep lists of numbers in a lengthy Open Office spreadsheet.

@Gilberto de Piento: I actually have a copy of the Landlording book. I've been reading through applicable parts of it. I'll definitely want to try to protect myself and minimize potential problems/nightmares. I'm not one to jump in to this stuff willy-nilly.. there is a lot to learn though.

I was re-reading Akratic's journal about his difficulties trying to find good roommates through Craigslist. I was already hesitant and that adds to it a little bit. I'm getting cold feet now that it's time to act.. Not certain what I'll do.

@IlliniDave - Thanks

How do you put a value number on your pension?

It's a cash payout. I think it comes straight to me, or maybe into an IRA. I need to check if/how it will be taxed and reduce the value accordingly.

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APRIL 2014
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SPENDING: $1,200
- Home - $760
- Food - $340
- Transportation - $40
- Entertainment - $30
- Other / Hygiene - $20

This was my lowest spending in about a year (since moving). It could’ve been a lot lower since I sold a computer, but I also bought some shiny new things.

ENTERTAINMENT DETAILS:
There was a lot going on in the entertainment category. $1,030 of spending minus $1,000 from selling things.

Spending:
2 new fountain pens and some other writing stuff: ($640)
Dating ($135)

Sold:
Desktop computer ($700)
3 fountain pens ($300)


FOOD DETAILS:
- $145 – Groceries
- $140 – Garden stuff
- $55 – Eating out alone. (Way too much junk food ☹. Need to take better care of myself)


- The garden is coming along nicely. Pictures to come in future months.
- I’ve been dating but it’s been mostly first dates, and with women I wasn’t all that interested in going on first dates with in the first place. I’m going to be more selective. On a positive note, I had coffee (tea actually) with a woman who, when I told about my FI/ER plans, got jealous and self-reflective. She was doing math in her head, comparing her spending to mine, trying to figure out how she’s not progressing towards retirement as fast as I am. But she lives in Toronto (part of her higher spending. Expensive real estate).





FI PROGRESS
I’m ahead of my glide path. Some is due to income seasonality.





INVESTING

DIVIDEND INVESTING:


I sold my AGNC. The timing was not too bad I guess, as I got a dividend a month after selling. The drop in dividend income is all from selling AGNC. It had a disproportionately high yield compared to my other stocks so there’s a significant drop in dividends. But their dividends are going down anyways.

I didn’t do enough research to make any new purchases in April. So there may be some coming in May. I’d thought I could buy MLPs in my IRA, but it turns out I can’t. So I’ll probably just buy another REIT there(?).


ASSET ALLOCATION

I’m uncomfortable with my asset allocation…



Doesn’t look too bad, right? Well… some more details:



The problems:
1 – My stocks are all US. I think I’m over-exposed during a high valuation period. (http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/)
2 – I have too much cash. (30-40% depending on how I count)


I’ve had about $40k of cash sitting in my 401k from the sale of PRPFX a last spring. I’ve been meaning to invest it but haven’t been sure what to buy. My 401k fund choices are:
- US Stocks
- US Small CAP stocks
- Bonds (50% US Gov)
- Real Asset Fund (JRLRX, mostly bonds including TIPS)
- International Stock fund (similar to MSCI ACWI Ex USA NR USD)
- Conservative Income (like SHY)

One option is buying and/or contributing to the International Stock fund. I don’t have an opinion right now on whether it’s a good time to do that. (?)

I can also buy (any?) mutual funds in my 401k. I have to pay extra management fee for the money I do this with (around 0.3% per year)

Some ideas I’ve been starting to consider, in descending order of how much I’m thinking about them:
- International stock funds – specific countries. I read Marene Faber’s Global Value book and started looking at country ETF PEs. iShares has a bunch of country ETFs, but I can’t buy ETFs in the 401k. I would’ve bought some ERUS in there this week if I could. I’m guessing there are international (specific country) index Mutual Funds I can purchase but I haven’t done much research yet. Is anyone here familiar with this? I did check and see that I can buy Vanguard funds, but I don’t think they have specific country options.
- VDIGX or some other dividend fund
- Wait and see if there is a big drop in US Stock Market prices soon?
- Just buy the 401k International Stock fund?
- Buy some Sector stock funds such as Healthcare or Energy.
- Bonds?? I’m worried about rates increasing.

I’m going to do some research. If anyone wants to share their opinions, I’m all ears (eyes).


CHARTS

Good news – I had to fix this chart. My investment growth/income has exceeded spending YTD, so I had to change the chart to show the excess as negative.



My rate of return YTD has been around 8% (lots of US Stocks). Not FI yet though:

Some pictures from the garden this weekend. Had my first salad from this garden last night.





More in here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/65922034@ ... 4586540596

Those are strawberries along one of the walls (by the driveway). I'm pretty sure they'll fill up those sections entirely. The two sections with most of the stuff growing have spinach, two kinds of lettuce, kale, broccoli, cabbage, and carrots. The sections along the wall (closer to the house) have flowers and some herbs. I started everything from seed except the strawberries.

The last picture shows the bottom of the yard (closer to the house). I'm planning to lay a patio down there, probably covering half of that lower yard area.

Your garden looks great!

Love it!

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MAY 2014
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SPENDING: $1,200
- Home - $550
- Food - $270 ($170 Groceries, $10 eating out, $90 garden)
- Hobbies/Entertainment: $170
- Transportation $80
- Gift $75 (Books for a close/old friend)
- Clothes $55 (The style of Levis that fit me well were on sale online, 2 pairs)

This is about as low as my spending will get unless I add a roommate. I could have months this summer under $1,000 with low hobby spending and my food spending being around $100 and supplemented with a lot of garden food. With a roommate, my I could have a month as low as $500.



GARDEN:
Coming along well! Nearly all tomatoes from seed failed. Bought one plant from the store and I’ll probably buy two more. Peppers and cantaloupe took a long time to germinate and come up but they’re here now. I’m eating two salads per day from the garden whenever I’m home. For a few months my grocery buying could be reduced to only meat and condiments/special stuff here and there. Flowers and herbs are growing well also. One of the plants (lavender maybe) smells really good – and strong! In the evening, the scent fills up the entire back yard and I can even smell it inside my house at times.

I might post pictures again tomorrow. Lots of growth since the last ones.


DATING:
Continuing on. Nothing special so far. Found a couple women that may be good as friends. I need to stop having sex with women when I’m not interested in a relationship. I had been doing really well last fall but now I’ve fallen off that wagon. This is a good challenge for me in practicing Stoicism. Maybe I should make a chart for myself. HA!




INVESTING

This month I bought some KMI and OHI. Going to buy another company or two in June. I think these look pretty good:
- CLX (Clorox)
- JNJ (Johnson & Johnson) if the price goes down
- SJM (Smuckers)
- Maybe some VZ (Verizon) or T (AT&T) - but I don’t know, seems like in this sector, companies could fall off within a few years.

I do want to buy some healthcare and utility companies. Maybe PFE (Pfizer) or OKE (Oneok). If anyone has suggestions in these sectors, please share.






CHARTS

I enjoy seeing pictures of other peoples' garden setups - hope you'll keep us posted. Wishing I had planted strawberries this year.