Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Regarding exercising while sick: Are you feeling well enough to walk around the block? Coming back from being sick is hard, but even small bits can add up and get your motivation levels back.

mountainFrugal wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 02, 2024 10:47 am

Regarding exercising while sick: Are you feeling well enough to walk around the block? Coming back from being sick is hard, but even small bits can add up and get your motivation levels back.

Yes, I'm going for a bunch of walks, although usually just short ones. I'll probably be back at working out normally in a week or so

Well, so much to being active regularly here...
I guess, I'm active about one a year, so that's still regular in some kind.

But I don't know if I will even stick to that. ERE hasn't really been a focus lately.

Boring stuff first:
I went back to full-time work a couple of months ago, mostly because there was a lot to do for my projects, and since I don't get paid for overtime it made sense to take the extra pay for full-time instead of doing unpaid extra hours. Then the usual salary adjustments, small raises, inflation adjustments, etc. came in as well, so my net take-home salary is up to ~3.100€ which is nice. Expenses are still pretty much the same as before, so all the extra money is just going to my savings for now.

I know I could save more if I move somewhere else, this area is kinda HCOL for Germany. I know I also could earn a lot more if I get out of research and get an industry job.
That said, I don't really care about either. I like this area, I'm kinda starting to settle down and I'm slowly building up my community here. Same for the job, I could earn more, but I enjoy working in research and I think I won't get the freedom I have right now at another job. Nobody cares about my hours, nobody cares when and where I work, I can pick and choose what I want to work on and where to put my time and I like the people I'm working with. And, since it's in cancer research, it feels like I'm actually doing something useful for once.

So I guess I came to that odd point of "What's enough for me". I don't need to save 80-90% of my salary. I'm fine with the 60% I'm putting aside right now. I don't need to try to retire in a couple of years because I'm fine doing what I do right now for a lot longer.
If there are chances to reduce my costs significantly without much changes to my current life I'll take them sure, but I won't spend time trying to optimize further and further.

The focus, for now, won't be on getting towards an early retirement, but towards a local community I like to be in, towards some actual work I can be proud of, and towards changing in ways to become a better version of myself.