To start, an important mosquito update: I read that only about 3% of mosquito species transmit malaria. Maybe we can use gene drives to get rid of just those species without harming ecosystems too much? Who's with me?
Wheaton level musings
I have to accept that for the next couple years we are not getting past a Wheaton level ~3.5 as a family. We have had spurts of being higher, such as when we really buckled down to pay off my student loan. But lately, spending has been high. And with a new house to spruce up plus another round of IVF on the horizon, it probably won’t drop a ton in the near future, even despite the fact that we won’t be paying rent. I’m grateful that we make enough money to still save a lot in the face of it all. To our normie friends and family we still come across as eyebrow-raisingly frugal, which shows how far at the end of the bell curve this forum is
Sometimes I feel bad, like I should change the name of the journal from “Smashter’s great adventure” to “Smashter chugs along with a high income and no debt until he has the desire and courage to jump in to something new.” But I’m happy overall, and I know that we’re both smart and capable enough to be able to buckle down if we really need to.
Also, you know what, anything can be a great adventure with the right attitude. Figuring out how to navigate the ups and downs of startup life — great adventure. Same with changing careers and cities multiple times. Or creatively battling the demon of unexplained infertility with DW, which I just read can be as damaging psychologically to women as a cancer diagnosis. And through it all, learning new meditation practices, getting into the best shape of my life, writing essays that got millions of views, making new friends, raising happy dogs, saving money, donating money, and constantly trying to learn about myself and improve my happiness.
Okay, I’ve talked myself back into the title
Finances
Net worth ticked down a tiny bit with the stock market going down, but it’s still sitting comfortably above the $400k mark. I’m excited to max out my 401k on my next paycheck.
I do have to figure out why my employer randomly put $75 extra dollars into my HSA after I already maxed that out. We now have to fill out some annoying tax forms. But talk about first world problems — I am super grateful to even have an HSA and to be able to max it out, this is my first job that has allowed for that.
My job is showing some signs that it could turn into something far less enjoyable, so I’ll be monitoring that over the rest of the year. I am in a very strong position to semi-ERE and start something new should I choose to go that route.
Housing
We finally move into our house this week. We got out of our rental lease early with minimal penalty, which was very exciting. So, given we paid cash for the home, we are officially done paying rent forever if we so choose. Pretty cool.
That said, we’ll almost certainly be putting more into house updates over the next few months than we would have been putting into rent. But once those are done, NW should go up really quickly if we keep our same jobs.
Misc semi-depressing life stuff
I have not made much progress on what to do regarding helping my sister out financially. I keep sort of casually saying things to DW like “should we just pay off all her credit card debt, a one time jubilee situation?” and she basically laughs me off even though I’m only half kidding.
I carry around a bit of guilt for not helping her more when she was in a super vulnerable state after my parents had their violent split, and this feels like a good way to make amends. But it could also put me out $10k with nothing to show for it.
I read the “Invisible Child” NYT series from 2014 recently and found it riveting. A journalist follows a family living in free public housing for homeless people in Brooklyn for a period of years. One part that stood out to me was when the mother (of the 8 kids) got a $49,000 inheritance check. The family moved out of the homeless shelter and into an apartment. Within about a year they were all back in the homeless shelter, possibly worse off than before having thought they were done with it forever.
The parents had no good habits. The money went straight into buying a bunch of drugs.
If you’re not addressing the root problem, giving people money is just a bandaid. But bandaids are still important sometimes!
Dog spending
My dog spending is a little out of control, y’all. You do not want to see my Amazon bill over these past couple months. I’d get booted straight off the forum.
The first issue was with their digestion. They both started having GI issues and simultaneously started refusing their dog food. Instead of calmly waiting for the situation to blow over, we decided to buy every possible treat, topper, and fancy food to see if we could get them to eat. Like some kind of petulant toddlers disguised as dogs, they turned their noses up at pretty much anything besides hot dogs. And we had all kinds of food to either throw away or donate.
They are mercifully back to eating their regular kibble. We basically reached a point where we just said “it’s this or you starve” and once they got hungry enough they ate it. We still put a little fun stuff on top to jazz it up a little, but nothing too crazy. Lesson learned, we’ll do that from the beginning next time.
The other piece of the spending equation is on toys. I am a sucker for getting them new toys. It’s just so freaking satisfying. The sheer joy emanating from their puppy bodies could warm the heart of the surliest grinch.
But these dogs chew like they are part shark, and most toys don’t last long. If anyone has ideas for low cost or homemade toys that keep dogs entertained and can sustain a decent amount of very aggressive chewing, I would love to hear them.
The great ERE long walk
I know I posted in the thread about the walk with @Dave and @jacob in Chicago, but I’ll mention it here again as it was a highlight of my August. Spending hours going deep on interesting conversation topics while walking around in nature is my definition of a good time.
I have lots of friends I play basketball with, but few walking/hiking buddies, so hopefully this can become a regular thing and scratch that itch for me.
Given Dave and Jacob are both professional investors, I kind of feel like I should open a Robinhood account and see if I can make gains that impress them for the next time. Maybe I’ll start with buying Chewy and Petco, I can’t be the only schmuck treating my dogs like royalty.
Reading
I started “The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West”
Very fascinating, very sad. The most notable parts to me so far
* The Indian tribes were basically constantly at war with each other. The tribes that were in the midwest/rocky mountain region when US white settlers started showing up had only recently displaced a much older tribe. There was no notion of “Indianness” and this lack of Indian solidarity was a huge reason they could not put up a very effective defense. I didn’t realize just how many tribes actively worked with the US Army to help them battle other tribes, using the thinking “an enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
* The average army soldier out in the west at that time was extremely prone to drunkenness, sloth, whoring, and desertion. The big exceptions were the few all black regiments. They were model citizens because they wanted to represent all black people in an exemplary fashion. They did this in the face of tremendous racism and while being handed the worst assignments. Very inspiring.
* The way the Indians structured their cultures around being warriors was so goddamn intense. From a very early age they were trained to fight and to withstand hardships of all kids. A male’s status in society was determined by his fighting prowess. It’s like reading about ancient Sparta, except it wasn’t that long ago and it was happening in my backyard.
* The act of counting coup is bizarre and cool. To count coup was to touch another warrior in battle without harming them, sometimes using a “coup stick”. You had to count coup by a certain age in order to progress through the stages of adulthood.
Fitness
I trained pretty hard this month. I can jump and grab a 10 foot basketball rim with two hands again, which is a fun milestone. I also strained my lower back chasing around high schoolers playing pick up hoops. That was less fun. It’s the second time that has happened in the last couple months, and I’m still trying to figure out why. My working theory is that it all comes back to my hip flexors. When those feel tired and overworked, I need to hold off on full speed basketball.
On a more vain note, I went to a friend’s lake house recently and got to talk to a bunch of people I just met about how I can be both ripped and a vegan. (They brought it up, to be clear, I am not a raging narcissist). I think as you enter your late 30’s you become more and more of an anomaly if you are in good shape and have large muscles. Doubly so if you’re vegan. It can be a little awkward when people start encouraging their husbands to work out with you, haha. But overall I really enjoy upending people’s expectations of what a vegan is supposed to look like. So many people simply cannot fathom that you don’t need animal protein to get jacked. At least, not everyone does. I’m sure genetics play a big role.