Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Looks like things are going great for you! Congratulations.

If one is going to have a relationship problem, I think "do we continue this great thing or not" is probably the best one to have.

How much more work do you have planned on the van? I cant tell by looking how much more there would be. And other than the van expenses, are you pleased with your financial trajectory?

Shawnee National Forest over the entire Labor Day weekend

I was there - Jackson Falls and Bell Smith Springs - at the same time! It would have been really weird if we had run into each other and figured it out.

Good luck with your decisions. I'm having something similar and I've found that relationship questions are much harder than financial questions.

Ah yes, the inevitable has happened. A woman has come along to undo all your hard made plans and work... a nice problem to have though

It was great meeting up and chatting for a bit! Its nice to meet someone that matches your personality well....its quite rare for me at least. I look forward to meeting again someday. And thank you for the mention of the podcasts with Jacob. I found 3 of them actually and listened for a few hours this weekend. They were great.


Those are some awesome photos, I particularly like the Milky Way photo. Was it that bright to the naked eye, or is that just really enhanced by the camera?

Those photos are incredible! Thank you for sharing them. Looks like the van is gonna work out just fine, it's looking very nice.

One of the challenges of being on the lam is that long term and deep relationships go on hold. You can meet nice people along the way, but it will definitely be hard to develop and enjoy a deep (not necessarily romantic) with other people.

Good job snatching cheap shares. There are some great deals to be had these days!

Fantastic scenery and good photography! Thanks for sharing!

George the original one wrote:Fantastic scenery and good photography! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks George! Thanks Spoonman!

cmonkey wrote:Those are some awesome photos, I particularly like the Milky Way photo. Was it that bright to the naked eye, or is that just really enhanced by the camera?

It wasn't quite that bright to the naked eye. You could see the milky way, but you couldn't see the stars quite as well as in the picture. And the light at the horizon was no where near that bright in person.

vexed87 wrote:Ah yes, the inevitable has happened. A woman has come along to undo all your hard made plans and work... a nice problem to have though

haha, yeah.

Gilberto de Piento wrote:

Shawnee National Forest over the entire Labor Day weekend

I was there - Jackson Falls and Bell Smith Springs - at the same time! It would have been really weird if we had run into each other and figured it out.

Good luck with your decisions. I'm having something similar and I've found that relationship questions are much harder than financial questions.

oh wow! We were thinking about going to Bell Smith Springs. We ended up camping at One Horse Lake (which is just a bit east of Bell Smith Springs), and going to Garden of the Gods, Rim Rock, and Pounds Hollow lake. And we hiked a bit along the main trail through the park. Do you live around this area? (PM me if you want to be more private)

GandK wrote:Looks like things are going great for you! Congratulations.

If one is going to have a relationship problem, I think "do we continue this great thing or not" is probably the best one to have.

How much more work do you have planned on the van? I cant tell by looking how much more there would be. And other than the van expenses, are you pleased with your financial trajectory?

yes, absolutely.

Here are the main things I have left:
- Electrical system. This is the biggest single job. It includes mounting solar panels, batteries, and a bunch of wires and components. I still have a lot of research and design to do first.
- Covers for the windows, the bike box, and to separate the front seats area from the rest of the van
- Some kitchen finalization (stove mounting, "sink" setup)
- Painting the rest of the interior wood
- Other small things like securing doors and drawers closed
- general organization inside

the rest are things I could do later on, like:
- If I end up having the need for it, adding additional storage along the top corners of the walls/ceiling
- Making a swivel/reversing platform for the front driver's seat


My financial trajectory is good. The one thing that is nagging at me right now is selling the house. The house is costing me a lot of money - basically $500 a month, plus another $450 going into the principal each month. Once I have it sold, I will be able to save more money. I'll also have my spending nice and low so I'll be ready to quit once I get up to whatever net worth I decide I must have. Spending the time with the girl is delaying this. It's not because I don't want to sell the house or because she dissuades me at all (she is encouraging), it's just because I'm choosing to spend a lot of time with her. I feel like I really need to have the house sold before I quit my job. And I would like to be ready to quit by the beginning of next summer. That could end up not working out, in which case I would probably keep working until the house sells. I could still allow room for a pretty big summer van trip by taking all my vacation in one straight block, and trying to get a sabbatical also.

Do you live around this area? (PM me if you want to be more private)

No, it was a road trip for me.

C40 wrote:I feel like I really need to have the house sold before I quit my job.

That's how I felt until I realized work was actually preventing me from doing the work necessary to sell. I just wasn't devoting enough time unless I suspended other things I considered important, so the employer loses out on my sparkling wit & wisdom.

Congrats on all the new developments. I have read your journal for years with great interest. Your excel graph skills make your journal esthetically pleasing and easier to read. It is terrific to see your plans unfold and come to fruition. The years of work and planning are paying off!

Curious about the sale of the house. As I understand it, selling through a realtor will cost 6% in commissions. Are you considering FSBO? If so, how would you market the house and complete all the steps of the transaction? I would like to sell my house to downsize, but we have a lot of work to do before that point. My neighbors sold their house themselves, for an outstanding price. I am just not sure how they did it. I am concerned about trying FSBO and then later having to go to a realtor. It is my understanding that a house gets "stale" when it has been on the market for a while.

I am not sure if how to get your house listed on MLS without using the realtor. Anybody know how you do that?

RealPerson wrote:Congrats on all the new developments. I have read your journal for years with great interest. Your excel graph skills make your journal esthetically pleasing and easier to read. It is terrific to see your plans unfold and come to fruition. The years of work and planning are paying off!

Curious about the sale of the house. As I understand it, selling through a realtor will cost 6% in commissions. Are you considering FSBO? If so, how would you market the house and complete all the steps of the transaction? I would like to sell my house to downsize, but we have a lot of work to do before that point. My neighbors sold their house themselves, for an outstanding price. I am just not sure how they did it. I am concerned about trying FSBO and then later having to go to a realtor. It is my understanding that a house gets "stale" when it has been on the market for a while.

I am not sure if how to get your house listed on MLS without using the realtor. Anybody know how you do that?

Thank you!! I haven't been doing much with the charts lately, lots of focus on other stuff.

I will probably use a full-service realtor. My travel for work, and potentially in the van, keeps me away from my home a lot of the time. So I think having an agent in the city and ready to deal with paperwork may be worth the extra cost. That 6% is generally split between the buying and selling agent, and if I understand correctly, if I sell to someone using a buyer's agent, the general practice is to pay their agent the 3% they would normally get. I'd much rather just get the damn thing sold as quick as I can than save an extra $3,000 or so. Theoretically, a seller's agent should help me do what is needed to ensure I can get a high sales price, which, theoretically, might make up for the 3% commission.

If I was in St Louis full time, and didn't have the urgency that I feel to sell, I would probably sell by owner or using a discount broker.

On the MLS - I've read that it is possible and easy to get your house on the MLS without using a normal (full-service) Selling agent. I haven't read about this in detail. I think there is a blog post about it on the MMM blog and/or forums. I believe you can use a discount or fee-based agent/broker - and essentially pay them to put it in the MLS.

C40 wrote:Theoretically, a seller's agent should help me do what is needed to ensure I can get a high sales price, which, theoretically, might make up for the 3% commission.

Since you already qualified your statement with "theoretically"...

Before plunging into the data, it helps to ask a question: what is the real-estate agent's incentive when she is selling her own home? Simple: to make the best deal possible. Presumably this is also your incentive when you are selling your home. And so your incentive and the real-estate agent's incentive would seem to be nicely aligned. Her commission, after all, is based on the sale price. But as incentives go, commissions are tricky. First of all, a 6 percent real-estate commission is typically split between the seller's agent and the buyer's. Each agent then kicks back roughly half of her take to the agency. Which means that only 1.5 percent of the purchase price goes directly into your agent's pocket. So on the sale of your $300,000 house, her personal take of $18,000 of commission os $4,500. Still not bad, you say. But what if the house was actually worth more than $300,000? What if, with a little more effort and patience and a few more newspaper ads, she could have sold it for $310,000? After the commission, that puts an additional $9,400 while she earns only $150, maybe your incentives aren't aligned after all. (Especially when she's the one paying for the ads and doing all the work.) Is the agent willing to put out all the extra time, money, and energy for just $150? There's only one way to find out: measure the difference between the sales data for houses that belong to real-estate agents themselves and the houses they sold on behalf of clients. Using the data from the sales of those 100,000 Chicago homes, and controlling for any number of variables---location, age and quality of the house, aesthetics, whether or not the property was an investment, and so on---it turns out that a real-estate agent keeps her own home on the market an average of ten days longer and sells it for an extra 3-plus percent, or $10,000 on a $300,000 house. When she sells her own house, an agent holds out for the best offer; when she sells yours, she encourages you to take the first decent offer that comes along. Like a stockbroker churning commissions, she wants to make deals and make them fast. Why not? Her share of a better offer---$150---is too puny an incentive to encourage her to do otherwise.

From Freakonomics, quoted longer here

you are making fabulous progress!

it's easier said than done, but seriously . . . just ENJOY this lovely lady in your life; just focus on that. If y'all continue to be a light in one another's life, and compatible, you'll keep the connection going.

but yes, never fear . . . we weirdo women do exist!

Nice work on the van, C40! Anything done to the engine or drivetrain to boost fuel economy? Is it not a bit cramped for you to sleep sideways? I'll be really interested to see how you work out the electrics with solar so please post the details!

Like the pictures, especially the double rainbow

@henrik - Yeah.. I know . I've actually heard/read that segment. I'm going to be more concerned about getting the house sold than I am about a few thousand here or there on the price. So our motivations would align on that one.

@ffj - It is totally real! The long exposure and picture editing does bring out the stars a bit more than in real life, but it was still an amazing view in real life!

@zarathustra - Thank you!! I've been focusing on just enjoying our times together, and not worrying about far off in the future, and reminding myself that we will likely be able to work it out however we decide (me having flexibility, if I wish, could be quite helpful). She seems to be doing a good job of this as well.

@El Duderino - Nope. I haven't done any modifications to help with mileage. Well, the rear locker may improve efficiency slightly, but that's probably not even noticeable. The bigger tires I put on definitely make the fuel economy worse. I may want to get a ScanGauge or something similar to get more fuel usage data (which would help me improve my driving technique). What other engine/drivetrain modifications are there to help with economy?

---------------------------------------------------
SEPTEMBER
---------------------------------------------------

TOTAL SPENDING: $1,415

NORMAL SPENDING: $1,400

• * Home - $564
  * Food - $333
  * Clothes/Hygeine/Gifts - $269
  * Entertainment - $149
  * Transportation - $85

VAN SPENDING: $15


CHARTS
The net worth has taken a real hit with the price drops. I keep reminding myself that this is exactly what I wanted. If my house sells while the prices are still “down”, I can buy more stocks with the $35k+ of house principle that I’ll get back. I also have another $35k cash in my 401k that I could dump into a stock fund.









If I take the van costs out of this year’s spending, 6 out of the 8 months so far this year were under the 3.5% line. That doesn’t really mean much, but it makes me feel better.


ADJUSTING 2015 GOALS
I bit the bullet and updated my 2015 goals with realistic end-of-year expectations. The net worth goal is still a stretch - it would need a 5% increase by the end of the year on top of what I will add myself. Most of the change in the Savings target is downward adjustment by the amount I’m sending on the van.

Original 2015 goals:


Updated 2015 goals:



And here are the goal tracking charts with updated targets:








HOUSE SALE
I’ve been reading books about house selling. I made an action plan for preparing the house before putting it on the market, and I’ve gotten a few of the actions done. I may take some time off work in October to get a lot done on the house. I’m not too thrilled about the timing here – I’d rather have listed the house in September.

I’ll probably wait to finish the van until I get all the house prep done and get it listed for sale.


VAN TRIPS
I went on two trips in September and took the girlfriend along on both. The first was to Shawnee National Forest over Labor Day weekend. It was HOT. The roof vent fan helps a lot. I hooked the fan up to batteries to I could use it during the trip. Just running it on low speed made a huge difference. This was the first time I made a trip with a second person living out of the van the entire time with me. It worked well! Sleeping with two people in the bed is pretty tight. There is enough room for two people, but just barely, so it will take a bit of getting used to. The bed does work ok for sex (I was thinking that the short length would be an issue, but in most cases it is not at all)

The second trip was shorter – just a one-night trip to another town for a concert on the girlfriend’s birthday. I tell you what – the dorky pens/calligraphy hobby finally came in handy – for making a birthday card and writing sort of a love letter. I should figure out how to compose good love letters.

The pictures are all from the Labor Day weekend.

Camping spot:

If I take the van costs out of this year’s spending, 6 out of the 8 months so far this year were under the 3.5% line. That doesn’t really mean much, but it makes me feel better.

I think a more accurate representation of post FIRE spending would not include your van spending, nor your home spending? That is sorta how I'm thinking with my current home remodel. That would mean you are super close if not already at at a 3% SWR. Factor in the home sale and I'd bet you are ready now. No need to work longer than needed.

@ Cmonkey - the number is not applicable to living in my current house, because the spending does not include money going to the house principle, but the money in the house principle is counted as part of the net worth being multiplied by 3.5%. The number is basically for considering that will happen when I sell my house and I am living in the van or wherever else. (So yes, not including the van spending would more accurately represent my post-retirement spending - at least in a short-term way. But the van will be a quick-wearing home that will need to be replaced after some years.)

@ffj - it was very cloudy Sunday night here in St Louis, so I couldn't see the moon at all

This chart will be a lot more important to me after quitting.



Notes:
- The Spending does not include van building costs.
- The spending does not include money going towards the house principle
- The "possible" dividends are a linear extrapolation (using my current dividend yield) of what I'd get if I invest 100% of my net worth in dividend growth stocks. (which includes some of my capital that's currently tied up in house principle)
- I expect to increase the hobby income after quitting my job, but it is from one source and this one will eventually dwindle to nothing or disappear all at once.

So the numbers don't mean much right now. But it still interesting comparing the "possible" dividends to what I expect/know my spending can look like in the future.

Good chart - the trend of dividend/expenses is heading in the correct direction !