Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Recent reflections of mine:

- Avoidance is always negative, and something that I should be vigilant about identifying. The brief relief I receive always ends up costing me dearly. I can either make the proper sacrifice when the universe demands it, or suffer the consequences.
- Self-help (or let us call it “wisdom” to see past the connotations) has become like caffeine for me, jolts of energy to help me stumble through the day, that leave me restless in shallow sleep at night. That need for motivation speaks of a broken system. Channeling my current read 4000 Weeks, it’s not new productivity systems that I need, but better ways of relating to myself and the world.
- I was brought up feeling that one should be competent at practical skills (like car maintenance or carpentry) without really being taught the skills. This has been a source of much negative emotion as I have attempted to self-study for my ERE journey, and I haven’t handled my failures well. Also something to be mindful of as a father.
- I am not very well suited to the current instagram-maximizing hustle culture. That means that I need more work clarifying my own path for myself, so that it isn’t buried under the debris of the wider culture. I’d be more comfortable as a monk than as a startup founder or youtube persona, and that’s fine. Should that path leave me thoroughly mediocre in the eyes of the world I’ll accept it. Not being aligned with the world presents me with greater opportunities to cultivate self-awareness than if I’d been born to thrive in it.
- Also channeling 4000 Weeks, not everything needs to serve some other goal. Actions can be ends in themselves. If there is any point to all of this, it’s more likely to be chasing my daughter around the playground rather than “delivering” at work.
- I’m often tempted to ignore very real personal constraints, like the time and energy commitment my family demands or the contours of my personality, and strive to fit my life into the Procrustean box of other people’s life stories. Where I’ve thrived I’ve acknowledged them and built systems around them. In other areas there’s a lot of guilt for failing the guru and very little progress.
- I’ll never have every aspect of my life under complete control. If I attempt perfection, I’ll drown in chores and never get around to the work I value highly.
- We always frame reality. To take a mundane example, my parental leave and part-time work can either be framed as a form of semi-ERE or as a major detour on the road to FIRE. Since I get to choose, I should choose wisely.
- I have agency and can choose what actions to take, but there is a lot of inertia in my systems, habits and commitments. I’ve gained a lot of meaning and stability, but there are trade-offs. I can’t expect to be as agile as I was at twenty.
- I want to respect my energy levels and find a sustainable pace. That being said, I won’t fit long stretches of idleness into my life at this stage so I will have to be discerning in what I choose to pursue. There are better forms of leisure for me, and worse ones. TV or scrolling my phone are also choices, only poor ones. They are completely optional and not prescribed by any authority, even if I’ve made a habit out of them.

Spending so far this year is in line with last year. We’ve had a few major purchases, so I’d expect expenses to decrease a bit for the rest of the year.

Per month:

Housing 1200
Groceries 860
Insurance/services 320
Transportation 200
Health/beauty 180
Stuff 450
Eating out 160
Fun 120

In total 3490


We’ve met our son now, and as usual it’s hard to describe the beauty and tenderness with mere words. In a more practical sense, that means one of us will be on parental leave for the next couple of years. This year that’ll be my wife, while I work 90% of full time. We should be able to break even, which would mean a positive savings rate given that our SR is 35% YTD. Even so, savings will be modest for the next couple of years.

After that savings will increase. A rough estimate gives 20 years to FI (30 with continued part time work), and 10x expenses i roughly half that time. That might sound a bit depressing, but there is a bit more to the story:

- Expenses will decrease when our children leave home.
- We can decide on cheaper housing (apartment, cheaper locale, unconventional solutions).
- Moving house would also unlock housing equity that could be deployed in the portfolio.
- A relatively long career will give us non-trivial pension benefits.
- Most likely income will increase faster than expenses.
- At 10x expenses (or some substantial amount of capital) semi-ERE will be viable.
- Continued skill increases might mean lower expenses going forward.

I’m not sure what path we’ll take. Given what I’ve learned about myself, I think I might need some externally imposed structure. Combined with FI being a ways off I am leaning more towards some form of semi-ERE. Perhaps that is also due to it feeling less abstract than FI now that I’ve worked part-time and spent time in parental leave.

If I am to daydream a bit, I’d like to split my days between writing in some capacity and some form of gardening/permaculture project. I enjoy both activities in themselves, they give me a sense of meaning, and they complement each other (mental - practical, inside - outside, abstract - concrete). I am far from a realistic design but at least it’s a direction to move in. And to avoid conditional living, I should strive to incorporate some of those activities into my days, even if it’s merely a few lines of writing in the morning and some weeding in the garden in the evening.

I’ve spent less time on here this year. Busyness, but also feeling that the habit had morphed into a negative influence on my life. I abused ERE as a form of escapism early on and even though I banished the worst of it years ago, there are still negative energies involved in how I relate to it. I’ve continued my inner work this year and taking a hiatus from ERE/FIRE et al was a wise move.

The moments of insight I had this year concerned my lack of self-love and the emptiness avoidance brings me. These issues, along with my desire to see my loved ones thrive are what is really salient for me at the moment. Sort of dropping the constant rumination about personal finance did allow me to focus more on them. They are not fixed of course, but I have been showing up somewhat differently in the world. There have been glimpses of a higher self, split seconds where a higher form if order made itself apparent through me. Most of life has followed the routine, though.

I don’t think I’m in danger of neglecting the material realm. It’s sort of idling right now, robust systems keeping on due to inertia. Expenses and savings rate were basically the same as last year - 43k/16%, living on one income for two thirds of the year. We spent less on stuff, eating out, transportation and health, but more on groceries. I still struggle a bit with running in place, but I’m confident that prioritizing time with the kids is the right move. I had a phase where I was spending a lot of time on a local WL2/3 forum and sort of obsessing over others income and net worth. Not having a clear sense of my north star, I attached a lot of weight to money. My hiatus has also helped in processing that.

Expenses per month:

Housing - 1138
Groceries - 965
Insurance, daycare - 304
Transportation - 195
Health - 191
Stuff - 576
Eating out - 100
Fun - 120

I feel a bit out of place on here. I also don’t feel like I fit in with my peers. We do quite a few things that are quite ERE - my wife gets her haircuts from her sister, I get my clothes used for a few dollars a piece (and still look sharper than my colleagues), I bike to work and our beater car clocks 10% of the median mileage. We also obviously do some not very ERE things - we live in mortgaged house in a HCOL area, get 1k of groceries delivered every month and usually get big ticket items new (this year lawn chairs, a new bed and new sofa coverings where the biggest purchases). There are two major aspects to it - strategically having chosen to be near family (and accepted the higher cost structure that brings) and tactically opting for buying solutions when time and energy are constrained enough. Not having a social support network in our immediate vicinity (they’re reasonably close but not in the neighborhood, and also quite often preoccupied elsewhere) in a culture heavily influenced by consumerism makes the second one a classic failure mode. I don’t think I have it in me to push our patterns much more into the DIY realm right now. I try to accept the choices I have made, our limits and focus on small wins while staying afloat during these toddler years.

Small wins: Eating out and shopping has trended lower. I’ve gotten better at buying smaller items used and finding/waiting for deals. We started cooking bigger batches once or so during the week, reducing processed foods further, and we regularly bake bread now. We learned new skills in the garden as well as some carpentry.

Despite only working out a handful of times and eating freely of my by now quite decent cooking (supplemented with junk in the evenings far too often), the walking, biking, playing, carrying and chores I do seem to keep me in shape. Bodyweight/body fat/waistline are all low and stable, and the company mandated health checkup showed almost perfect values for blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides. vo2max was good if not great, as to strength I can do 8-10 pull ups and 10-12 pushups with elevated feet. I’m not very fit by gym rat/runner standards, but I look good, feel fine and likely reap most of the benefits I’ll get in terms of health/longevity. I’ve reached a decent baseline and now have to ask myself what else I want to achieve. I’d like to be a bit stronger to be more resilient in case of injury/sickness and improve cardio some to max out the statistical health benefits. Mostly I’d like to exercise more to improve my mood, mental toughness and confidence. I’ve been out trail running a few times since November, I have a bodyweight routine to pick up and I got a free gym membership for a gym in our office building through work. Ideally I’d like to run for say 30 min once per week, do deadlifts/leg press at the gym once per week and and then do pull ups/pushups/ military press at home once per week.

I’ve pushed pretty hard for a new role at work and hope to be granted it at my performance review in February. It has made work a bit more stressful, but also more exciting and rewarding. At times I have doubted the wisdom of these ambitions, but in the end I’m happier doing qualified work and learning a lot, while being more in control of my days. There is some status anxiety and fantasies of recognition intertwined with the healthier ambitions and considerations, though, that I’ll try to untangle. I am quite fatigued by the lack of proper sleep and family commitments but I hope to be able to engineer a few less stressful periods during the spring for recovery. Come summer I’ll be on parental leave again, so there is relief in the distance at least.

I haven’t written much this year. I’ve read some, but less than I’d like. If this is indeed important to me, I should express it through my actions. Reading only really happens in bed before sleep, and that’s also the only time I’ll really have to write. I will only write or read books in bed. Social media, forums etc is possible in stolen moments during the day, reading and writing is not. As long as I do that, I’ll put no further pressure on myself.