Basuragomi's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

@ertyu sounds like a good rainy day project, like a sleeve with a snap closure, handle, pockets, etc.? For something that big, I'd recommend some kind of stiffener/stiff piping around the opening and flap to make it less annoying to use.

@kpa the graphs are kind of based on my cashflow statement, so doesn't include any tax liability. It's meant to be indicative of cashflow in vs cashflow out so doesn't really satisfy the accounting equation - I do conventional accounting behind the scenes, I promise. I include realized capital gains on short-term trades (held for <1 year), return of capital, dividends and interest - if I realized a capital loss on a short-term trade it would show up as an expense. I've been lucky/overly cautious though and have yet to lose money on one.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

classical_Liberal wrote:
Wed Aug 26, 2020 2:53 pm
Sorry I missed this Wheaton level breakdown before. Obviously you put a lot of work and thought into it. IMO, the big difference in your breakdown vs what has been discussed recently in other places is this new, mastery over self, domain. Higher wheaton levels require that one adjusts preferences(not sure if that's a good word?), in order to fulfill overarching goals in a manner that is consistent with values.

Feel free to correct me if you feel that is a bad interpretation.

I find this interesting because it add a few dimensions to progress towards moving up the levels. For one, someone has to really understand their overarching values. Which, I think, is no small feat in today's world of run, run, run. Then adjust actions in accordance to those values, even if this means doing some things labor-wise, that they otherwise might not find pleasant. Or at least learning to make them pleasant, which is maybe a better way of looking at it. IOW, if one of someone's core value is food independence, it's pretty hard to get there if you don't learn to grow or forage. If you don't like either, you need to learn mastery of self to learn to like them.
@classical_Liberal I think your interpretation is spot on. I was thinking about what the core conflict would be at that level. To hop on your example, if your core value is food independence but you hate farming, your choices are being unhappy due to being dependent or being unhappy due to farming. The mismatch between values and preferences would be expensive and wasteful because you'd be spending money and effort actively making yourself unhappy. The only way I saw resolution/satisfaction is through adjusting yourself. @JenAR had some thoughts about that as well.
classical_Liberal wrote:
Wed Aug 26, 2020 5:36 pm
The more I think about this, the more I think you may have hit something. We've had discussions before how people coming from different places seems to have different types of struggles moving up the levels. For example, a permi may be mostly self sufficient for food and shelter, but lacks the financial capital to pay head taxes. A working man may have cashflow and labor trading all figured out, but lacks the motivation to become FI. A salaryman has the financial savings for FIRE all figured out, but lacks understanding for self sufficiency and other forms of capital.

Obviously there are more of one kind than the others that show up here. But, basically, each of these people coming to ERE for the totality are missing a piece(s) because they prefer to avoid it, for whatever reason. This means some mastery of self to learn to enjoy the missing piece(s) is paramount to moving up to the next level. Or they simply have to decide that what they are missing isn't that important to them. A good, practical, step forward would then be to find a way to enjoy (or adjust preferences), in the areas you are lacking due to previous preferences against.

For the vast majority of us this is moving through the wheaton 5-6 moat from salaryman mindset.
Last edited by basuragomi on Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

classical_Liberal
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

The more I think about this, the more I think you may have hit something. We've had discussions before how people coming from different places seems to have different types of struggles moving up the levels. For example, a permi may be mostly self sufficient for food and shelter, but lacks the financial capital to pay head taxes. A working man may have cashflow and labor trading all figured out, but lacks the motivation to become FI. A salaryman has the financial savings for FIRE all figured out, but lacks understanding for self sufficiency and other forms of capital.

Obviously there are more of one kind than the others that show up here. But, basically, each of these people coming to ERE for the totality are missing a piece(s) because they prefer to avoid it, for whatever reason. This means some mastery of self to learn to enjoy the missing piece(s) is paramount to moving up to the next level. Or they simply have to decide that what they are missing isn't that important to them. A good, practical, step forward would then be to find a way to enjoy (or adjust preferences), in the areas you are lacking due to previous preferences against.

For the vast majority of us this is moving through the wheaton 5-6 moat from salaryman mindset.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

August 2020 update

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It doesn't really look like it, but it's barely a record high net worth.

ERE-type things I have been doing
- Picked around 10 kg of pears from my grandma's pear trees. I'm in the middle of canning the ones we couldn't eat and will distribute most of it back to family. I like canning my own pear sauce since I can control the sugar level (everyone is pre-diabetic or diabetic) and add spices. This time I'll make some jam too.
- Someone threw out an etiolated and wilted "salad greens" planter. I revived the plant with just regular watering and sunlight. I'm going to eat it and then use the planter for growing herbs going forward.
- Harvesting and eating chilies. Chili leaves are edible too and make a decent stir-fry. They're kind of bitter at this point in the season though so add some oyster sauce.
- More bubbles! Given the reaction children have to the bubbles I wonder if being a child birthday party entertainer has any potential as a hobby job. I also learned that guar gum mixed with high-proof alcohol makes a snot-like gel - if it works with vodka then maybe I can make edible/flammable alcoholic snot. No idea what it would be good for. Writing flaming messages on a wall?
- Spent a lot of time thinking about and working on my web of goals. Constantly building up my Tiddlywiki has made this task much simpler since I can more easily see how everything is linked together.

ERE failures
- Normally I make and freeze about 7 kg of tomato sauce from the annual tomato harvest. It then serves intermittently for lunch at work, stored in the work freezer, for the next 6 months (usually with bread or pasta). This year due to our sparse COVID shopping habits and the lockdown I couldn't get tomatoes, and the work fridge isn't easily accessible anymore. At least I get a free mason jar from commercial sauce.
- Bought printer ink for our white elephant printer (it was a gift in both the English and German senses, IMO). I'm as paperless as possible, but this is one of those compromises for a happy wife.

Things considered
- Thinking about the next ten years, there's no way I can see myself working full time to 40 - it seems almost irresponsible to have that much money. But I still enjoy my work. So maybe at some point the marginal benefit of more money will approach zero, and I'll be happier pursuing my own projects full-time. I'm much less certain that I'll feel that way by the time I hit my exit date.

Things to consider
- I'm very challenge-driven. In light of the previous section, I want to re-evaluate how much of my retirement goal is driven by the desire to say that I achieved RE at a very young age versus the desire to experience what comes next. I guess it's like the old retire-from vs. retire-to issue.
Last edited by basuragomi on Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

Web of Goals

Finally finished this pass at a web of goals. Blue rectangles are modules, ellipses are goals.

There are a handful of core values/goals that connect to basically everything, so I excluded them:
- building competence/self-esteem
- expressing creativity
- seeking novelty
- living within means
- making others happy

Also a few modules like sleep, housing & finances have been excluded because they exist more to enable other modules. That's why financial independence/ERE doesn't appear on the web, it would link to practically every module and hopelessly confuse things.

Image

My main takeaway from this exercise is that under the ERE approach, the work module just disappears, since the other modules take its place for income generation. Hence the whole "no distinction between work, play, leisure and recreation." With work gone my ideal life seems to be what I already do, just more of it. I'm taking it as a good sign.

Other than that, this was a worthwhile exercise. It really helped me evaluate both my goals and how the various parts of my life fit together.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

September 2020 update

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ERE-type things I have been doing

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- Pear sauce! Spiced pear jam! I never made jam before and screwed it up - pectin was probably too old, didn't measure accurately enough, who knows? It's very tasty though. What I like about canning is that you can make shelf-stable things that just don't exist as a commercial option - like low-salt, low-sugar, and niche flavour variants.

Image
- Tomato sauce! Unexpectedly got a box of very ripe tomatoes. Don't have freezer space so canned some very thick tomato sauce for the first time. Seemed to work out pretty well. I really need to make some sort of canner web to keep everything upright next time.
- Made corn tortillas for the first time after all the raving about them on this forum. They were pretty good!
- Darned and "armoured" a few more socks - I'm really liking the armouring, it adds cushioning where I like it and is way more durable than a simple darn.

ERE failures
- Bought a brand new fancy stock pot. It's pretty useful and contains splatter well, at least. I should be able to comfortably can quart jars with it too, which my boiling water canner struggles with.

Things considered
- I went through a few visualization exercises of trying to figure out what my day would look like if I quit my job. I realized that with working from home and the level of autonomy I already had, I'm in a position where work actually fits pretty well in my web of goals. The previous drawbacks are mostly gone, leaving me in a position where I can work on interesting problems effectively at my leisure. Being financially independent has enabled this by removing most of the reasons I should make myself miserable working late etc. that I was prone to in the office. Internal conflict is now coming from wanting to leave on my own terms rather than being kicked out - and with the market it looks like my job will be safe until well past my planned exit date. It's ironic that reaching FI enabled me to enjoy my work more, but I'll be staying put.

- Compounding returns aren't really noticeable at a high savings rate, an observation which also appeared in the ERE book. This has led to my reluctance to trust in any level of future growth, mostly because it has so far paled in comparison to sheer saving power. It's also a powerful attractant to one-more-year syndrome since two years at 80% savings rate is the difference between 25x and 33x savings.

- I did a back-calculation of how much of my net worth was attributable to investment gains vs. savings and found that I was getting a dollar-weighted return of about 8% over the time I've been investing - but that less than 20% of my net worth could be attributed to investment gains. It's a bit reassuring in terms of return as Canadian markets were basically flat for the decade I've been seriously investing, but not so reassuring from the "trust in compounding" angle.

Things to consider
- Reviewing my diet macronutrients - I've decreased meat/animal product consumption significantly in the past year or so. My calculations at the time indicated that I was getting more protein than I needed anyways, so I intend to rerun things and see if I'm missing anything.

- Evaluating housing options again... we're basically the last people in one of my social circles who still don't own a house or condo. Keep in mind the average house in Toronto costs $1.2 million now, the equivalent of 71 years of rent, and about 18 years of the median household gross income. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because every single way I look at it buying a house/condo at that price is insane, which is why I keep coming back to it. Taxes and utilities alone would exceed my rent, which is even over market rate right now! Am I actually the crazy one to continue renting??
Last edited by basuragomi on Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

mooretrees
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by mooretrees »

I'm not sure buying a nice stock pot counts as a total ERE failure. Unless you paid full price and it was an impulse purchase? Hopefully you found a quality pot and it will last for years, and you'll get the price per use down low?

No, you're not the crazy one to continue renting!!!! Most people have swallowed the 'normal' pill and don't take the time to really think and save for a home. Toronto sounds incredibly expensive to buy, I don't know how people do that. I had swallowed that pill and didn't save enough money and our house was under $150 K. I thought that was a LOT of money! Buying a house should make sense in a lot of different ways if you do it correctly: you like the area, it's affordable, the stock market is over priced, etc, etc....Being the rational person when everyone else is insane is a lonely place sometimes (not saying I'm always rational.....).

That's really interesting about your investments, maybe your gains will make a larger percentage the longer you live.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

I called it an ERE failure because even though we waited to get it on sale, it solved the wrong problem. My other half was frustrated with our current smaller pot, since she didn't like cooking with it, since she wanted to cook more food, since we haven't had certain dishes in a long time, since there's a pandemic on. But there's nothing special about the stock pot that allows novel dishes, it's really just that we can't hang out with our family that typically make these dishes - they make things like homemade bacon, duck sausages and deep fried stuff that we don't have the tools/space for. So our response to the problem of coping with the lockdown was to buy something which did nothing to address the root issue. Now we have a thing which is useful and an upgrade to our current equipment, but the frustration is still here. That's why I called it an ERE failure, it was a heterotelic (or maybe isotelic?) move.

I don't want to downplay the stress from the pandemic which is very real. One of the posters here described it like mourning for a way of life that has ended and that really resonated with me. I'm not even sure if there are many mentally healthy ways to cope with this new reality, though we discuss it regularly. But buying things we don't really need probably isn't one of them. At the end of the day it's just a pot and it's useful so I'm not too ruffled.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

October 2020 update

Image

ERE-type things I have been doing
- Been teaching my wife how to ride a bike! It took the pandemic to convince her to try, but hopefully it will stick this time.
- Running around for exercise now that it's cooled down enough to be pleasant. I really miss the gym but at least running's free.
- Harvesting and eating squash. Pumpkin coconut curry is one of my favourite fall dishes. The seeds make a great snack too.
- Fixed a broken light fixture for my grandmother - three different people told me "just buy a new one" which made fixing the poorly-designed $80 thing with a soldering iron and $5 part that much sweeter. No pictures because I did an embarassingly ugly solder job.

ERE failures
- Been reading way more fiction than usual and neglecting the non-fiction booklist, and it's not even particularly good fiction. I think I'm on an escapist streak and it's interfering with my other projects. I revisited this short story which was particularly prescient in retrospect.

Things considered
- No surprise from the macronutrient study, the more highly processed stuff you eat the more meat/vitamins/supplements are needed to counteract the deficiencies introduced. Combined with results from my sugar fast experiment, I found that I can't actually eat enough unprocessed food to maintain my weight. I need to eat at least some calorie-dense stuff to avoid feeling stuffed all the time. Protein content was concluded to be a non-issue.
- On housing: I'm learning to accept that we are just crazy viewed from the median person's perspective, on multiple fronts. Might as well be on the crazy cheap side. It feels like The City and the City where people live in two different worlds that somehow occupy the same space.

Things to consider
- Digital detox, Covid edition. All this screen time and no bike commuting is playing havoc with my medium-distance vision. Thinking about taking a week off and trying to refrain from most screens before it gets really cold outside.
Last edited by basuragomi on Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

CPP for early retirees

Most information available about the Canadian Pension Plan is deliberately obtuse. If you try to find out something as simple as "how much can I expect to be paid," you need to register for an access code, receive it by mail, use that to register for a second access code, then finally access the pension website (if you're Canadian, I advise getting the access code anyways in case you need EI in a hurry). Even then, the estimate assumes you are currently 60+ years old or will become immediately disabled. There is really no easy way to tell what your payment might be given X years of work at Y salary. There is also no way to tell what your return is on your contributions.

To answer that question, I spent some time digging through the Pension Act, the associated regulations, and the various tables that govern pension inner workings. Here are the results:

Image

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The salaries depicted in the graph cover the full range of possible pension payouts. The first thing you might notice is that for the first few years, all the $60k+ salaries are pretty much the same. That is caused by the massive expansion of the CPP benefit over 2013-2015, which more than doubles the range of pay affected by the CPP deduction and starts in 2024. There is also a very small kink upwards before the lines radiate which is caused by a smaller part of the expansion.

The next things you might notice are the bendpoints which occur at 40 and 47 years of work. The first bendpoint is from maxing out the benefit from one of the expansion pension components. The second is from hitting 65 years of age which maxes out the main pension component. Contributing after 65 used to do nothing at all (and could be opted-out) but now gains a different add-on pension.

Overall, CPP appears designed to replace approximately 1/3rd of employment income when receiving the maximum benefit. In reality the average payment is about 60% of the maximum.

Note also that there is a modifier of up to -36%/+42% depending on at what age you take the pension. Given average life expectancy the highest expected value comes from taking it at 67 for men and 69 for women - if you expect to live to 86+ take it at 70, if you expect to live to <70 take it at 60.

Life expectancy also affects the return from the CPP. If you live to 82 and take the pension at 65, you will have received a 2.8-3.2% return on your contributions, with lower incomes at the high end of the range and vice versa.

If you live to 90 and take the pension at 65, you will have received a 3.5-3.8% return on your contributions.

If you were self-employed the whole time, you can cut that return by about half because you were funding both sides of the pension contribution instead of just half.

So the CPP effectively acts as a mandatory investment yielding ~3%, with a ~6% savings rate. I feel that an ERE-er used to living off of <33% of their salary can effectively use the CPP to replace fixed income in a retirement portfolio.

Someone with a 75% savings rate who works for 12 years would have 36x expenses and a CPP benefit equal to 32% of their annual spending (about 10% of their former salary). At a 4% withdrawal rate, they could lose 0.7x expenses per year and still cover their spending in golden years.

Someone with a 85% savings rate who works for 7 years would have 40x expenses and a CPP benefit equal to 35% of their annual spending.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

November 2020 update

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Big jump, like most everyone else here has experienced.

ERE-type things I have been doing
-I've been going completely screen-free most weekends.
-Making my own candy - I'm trying to learn how to make dragon beard candy. It's hard, but the failures are tasty. I successfully avoided the post-Halloween candy sales (the pandemic helped) and I'm going to try making my own candy canes this year.
-Switched our power bill to a tiered flat-rate system. We use little enough power, even working from home, that it should always be cheaper than the time-of-use system.
-Making puff pastry. I save the fat from processing meat throughout the year and make dough in the fall, since I can leave the whole tray outside to stay cool. Maybe I'll try making soap from it instead next year.

ERE failures
-Old running shoes wore out. Got new ones. I need to acquire some kind of eternally-repairable shoe. I have an idea for a wholly DIY shoe using a cast silicone sole, since it self-fuses so strongly.

Things considered
-Going screen-free is pretty great. I don't have a TV but phone and computer are bad enough. It's definitely not as dopamine-inducing as sitting in front of a firehose of stimulation, but I get a lot more satisfying stuff done. Sitting at a computer to pointlessly consume media feels like keeping yourself warm by setting your time on fire, comforting but hopeless.

Things to consider
-Possible consequences from the massive Canadian asset/debt bubble. Inflation? Deflation? Further wealth inequality? Price discrimination targeted at intergenerational wealth transfers? UBI?
-My birth cohort (mid-Millennials) appeared as part of the largest ever annual increase of human population. Even now global annual births have barely surpassed that amount, but annual deaths are higher than in the late 80s/early 90s. How will decelerating population growth affect ERE?
Last edited by basuragomi on Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

The economy should keep growing at least until every only daughter can afford ticket to Paris OR resource crash.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I'm not actually advocating this but going barefoot would solve the running shoe problem. :)

Let me know if you have any equally good tips on going screen free, I find myself addicted to scrolling sometimes despite not enjoying it and trying to stop.

Are you close to FI? We appear to have similar spending and your net worth is where mine needs to be to hit 4%.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

@7W5: Post-crash Paris could still be pretty romantic! The tower transformed into a giant vertical garden, flocks of ducks herded down the Seine, sailing ships meandering up to dock...

@Gilberto de Piento: Barefoot's not for me, it bruises the heck out of my phalanges being a midfoot/forefoot stepper. I had a professor whose shoe solution was wearing the same pair of Birkenstocks year-round, with the only concession to winter being a pair of socks. That was pretty inspirational.

The only consistent solution I've found for enforcing screen-free time is metering access. E.g. Set a half-hour timer, associated with some naturally bounded ritual like breakfast, then shut everything down. It focuses your browsing and might help you ignore low-value content knowing that you're on a timer. The reflex to pull out a phone and mindlessly swipe through things is so strong, it's embarrassing when you realize how often and how trivially you whip it out.

I've considered myself FI for about a year now. A year ago it was at 4% withdrawal on an essentials-only budget. Now it's 3% withdrawal on a TTM basis. Still working on the retirement part. I've followed your journal since before I registered because as you stated, we're in about the same spending situation, and you have some very nice graphs that inspired the ones in my journal.
Last edited by basuragomi on Thu Dec 03, 2020 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

It seems like a bunch of us hit FI around the same time here. I see a lot of mid six-figure net worth individuals with vastly different spending habits.

Running shoes are not something I would skimp on. I get about 500-600 miles out of a pair, and even that's not recommended based on my relatively heavy weight. Do you run solely on pavement? Or do some dirt/trail too?

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

Pavement and treadmill, maybe 500 km a year. I've read all sorts of research on what causes/prevents running injuries, and the results seem very inconclusive. I don't think that shoes are a primary factor. The most common things that seem to affect injury chances: limiting intensity ramp-ups, BMI, limiting overall intensity, cross-training, a mid-foot strike, sufficient rest/recovery time, and previous injuries. Shoe squishiness doesn't really seem to have as much significance, so if they are comfortable and I'm not getting pain or injuries, then I think I'm okay. I did go from a cheapo brand to a fancy pair of last-season Asics though, so maybe I'll change my mind as I use the new ones!

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

December 2020 update and year in review

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Updated Carrot of Freedom:
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Twelve trailing month withdrawal rate: 2.99%
Twelve trailing month savings rate: 81%

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ERE-type things I have been doing

- We got a $5 immersion blender and I made hummus for the first time. Surprisingly easy and now I don't think I'll ever buy hummus again.

ERE-type things I have started this year and successfully turned into a habit:

- Going completely screen-free on most weekends. Like sugar, it's too good to avoid entirely, but controlling my intake has been very helpful.
- Making my own candy. The candy canes were a flop - I spent too long making the white part that the red part burned and I had to discard it. Still tastes good though and I'll be better next time. Embodying my own labour into candy really helps cut down my sugar/junk intake.
- Home haircuts. I managed to start doing this well before the lockdowns happened, so I had the best pandemic haircut of everyone!
- Growing bean sprouts. Also another skill that inadvertently helped with the pandemic lockdowns - fresh veggies and vitamin C on demand.
- "Armouring" my socks - darning on steroids. At this rate I won't be buying new socks for a decade or more.
- Eating less meat and more legumes/pulses. Learning how to cook them regularly with minimal hassle.
- Bike riding with my spouse (really just running behind her as she goes along).
- Home workouts. I probably won't continue after the pandemic ends though, I really miss weights that don't complain.

ERE failures

- Looking at my spending for the year, groceries were really high - shopping once a month or less meant a more expensive approach to groceries. My spouse also did the majority of the shopping this year which restricted our buying options, she's also a bit more impulsive shopper than I.
- Overall, I came in well under my projected $18,000 spending for the year (~1.8 JAFI) so I would call the year a success! This has done a lot to boost my confidence in making FIRE work, even if I get no income. In full ERE mode I would likely be spending less than $15,000/year without travel, due to how we split expenses.

Things considered

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the debt bubble is being fueled by intergenerational wealth transfers, from boomers to their millennial kids. Instead of sticking cash into the market people are using it to buy homes, and when money is close to free the price can go up arbitrarily. This may be helping to keep inflation low despite near-zero interest rates because houses are effectively unproductive assets? Decelerating population growth will probably help unwind it, but I think I am effectively priced out of personal housing for the next few decades.

Things to consider

I stated in 2019 that I really love my job. At the end of 2020 it has gotten even better. My work is at the intersection of things I'm good at, things I enjoy, things that pay, and things the world needs. Working from home improved things and a massive exciting project is underway. I got a raise too. It seems like I might be working for longer than planned, which means a firehose of excess cash.

By excess I mean I will likely end up retiring with well over $1M if I keep on this way. This is way too much money - I will have years of savings > years of life expectancy. The marginal benefit of this additional money is practically zero.

I spent some time with the tax code and figured this out: With a ~80% saving rate, I can donate almost all my take-home pay to charity and live off of the tax return alone.

So I am committing to this course of action: If I hit $800k invested and am still working, I will donate 90% of my post-tax employment income to charities.

This way at least someone besides my employer benefits from my work - that's ~40 families fed.
Last edited by basuragomi on Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Cheepnis
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by Cheepnis »

- We got a $5 immersion blender and I made hummus for the first time. Surprisingly easy and now I don't think I'll ever buy hummus again.
Roast a bell pepper or two and put that shit in there, delicious! I don't know what recipe you followed, but I eventually dropped tahini from my hummuses. It's by far the most expensive ingredient, I couldn't tell much of a diff w/o it, and it opens up room in the budget for a wider variety of additions such as the BP or whatever else I'm feeling.

Also, I love your carrot of freedom chart, just a great representation of pertinent info.

Anyway, glad you're doing well, those numbers are killer, and potentially living off tax refunds from donating most your income to charity is like the biggest baddest ERE/community/altruistic flex ever.
Last edited by Cheepnis on Sun Mar 28, 2021 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

I tried hummus with roasted eggplant and it was pretty awesome, so thanks for the tip!

I didn't realize you are also a millennial since nobody my age knows who Zappa is! Seeing Dweevil live was fun. I made this journal since there are so few actual examples of the canonical "save 70% for x years and retire in your early 30s" - breaking out of a lifestyle/social bubble is really one of the hardest things someone can do, so kudos for arriving.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

January 2021 update

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ERE-type things I have been doing
- Garlic was on sale. Bought a ton of it and minced it to store in our freezer for the year. This is an annual thing for me.
- Hacking together some squirrel-resistant planters and composting system for the growing season. Basil and spinach is the plan.
- Not much else has changed so here's some tahdig I recently learned to make:
Image

ERE failures
- My heavy-duty dish gloves wore a hole though the rubber after a couple years of use. I only realized after replacing them that I could have patched the rubber with the same rubber cement used on inner tube patches and a scrap from the arm end of the gloves. Next time!

Things considered
- Liking the "live off tax return" idea more and more. I think it's mostly driven by how meaningless more money is starting to feel, but it nestles into my web of goals quite nicely. Did you know that the average charity donor in Canada is 55 years old?

Things to consider
- Triaging all my accumulated DIY/repair tasks. There's too much stuff to do and I need to figure out how to either be more efficient or skip over the problems in an ERE way.
Last edited by basuragomi on Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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