mathiverse's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
mathiverse
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2019 8:40 pm

Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Food Update

I hit my food budget and went slightly beyond it on Monday.

Take a look at my food expenses this month.

Code: Select all

Eating out	$41.69
Blueberries	$32.92
Long grain enriched rice	$19.98
Coconut water	$15.53
Chicken	        $12.35
Chocolate bars	$10.97
Snack bars       $9.00
Black beans	$8.91
Sweet potatoes	$8.90
Maple syrup	$6.99
Avocados	$6.25
Fruit juice	$4.09
Bananas	        $3.98
Red bell peppers	$3.75
Yellow onions	$3.49
Organic beets	$2.49
Jumbo eggs	$2.19
Baby Bella Mushrooms	$1.99
Microwaveable Food	$0.50
A few things I can improve:
  • Drink less coconut water.
Maybe I should try to find some satisfactory teas. Once I can go back to eating sweet tea, perhaps I can make batches of that to replace coconut water and fruit juice. I could also replace my coconut water and juice habits with water, but I have a weak will against sugar cravings.
  • Find produce suppliers that are cheaper. Also switch to in season produce.
The Mexican grocer near me is cheaper, but further than my main grocery store. I should make the longer trip. Perhaps making a more planned out food menu each week would make a single weekly shopping trip feasible which would mean I would only have to make the longer trip once a week. Currently, I go to the grocery store whenever I need something since the more expensive grocery store is right next door.

I should also look up what's in season and try to get in on those deals. Blueberries aren't in season until May/June, but I've been eating a ton.
  • Replace chocolate bars and snack bars with cheaper sweets.
Putting a moratorium on buying snack bars while I'm out would also help. Pure discipline changes like that don't seem to be possible for me at this time. I can try not to go out when I'm hungry though, so the bars are less tempting.
  • Improve my cooking.
Each time I ate out was because I wanted some particularly good cooking that day. I need to improve my cooking skills. I've been going through a cookbook focused around using an electric pressure cooker, but I haven't figured out how to make anything well enough that I'd rather eat that than go to a restaurant. I have no idea how to get to that level of skill in cooking. My current plan is to read more of the cookbook and keep trying new recipes when I can. If I repeat recipes and they continually get better, maybe I'll eventually get to the point where I'd prefer to eat in.

Overall, I need to start making better shopping choices. This month I had a lot of food that I had bought in previous months, so the fact I shopped poorly didn't have as great an effect on what I could eat. For example, I had garlic in nearly every meal because I had around 9 garlic bulbs in my cabinet from prior months. I also have a bunch of spices and vegetables that were bought in the past. In the next two or three months, I'll start running out of prior stock and will need to replenish in a cheap way or stop buying certain items if that's not an option. The goal of better food budgeting may get harder (as I run out of previously bought food items and learn to cook and shop better) before it gets easier.

Resources on improving my grocery budget
TheRedHare's thread on how to cut back food spending: viewtopic.php?t=10586
cmonkey's thread on how much folks spend on food: viewtopic.php?t=6683
Day 3 of the 21 Day Makeover: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/day-3 ... pping.html
Amy Dacyzyn's Tightwad Gazette Compendium
Learning to Cook Saves at Least $5,000 a Year: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/learn ... -year.html
Pilaf: To Really Slash Your Grocery Budget: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/pilaf ... udget.html
Cookbooks related to the foods I want to make and the tools I have to make food (ie electric pressure cooker specific and general cookbooks)

Although it's one thing to read all of the above and another to put it into practice enough to be second nature. I'm still very much consciously incompetent at many of the tips, tools, and tricks outlined above. Seems like a long road to unconscious competence which is the point at which I can probably move on to other problems. Hopefully I'll get a decent way there over the coming year.

Update on housing

I decided to wait another month or two before moving. I think there will be similar housing opportunities like the one I mentioned in my last post. If I wait, my SO said they may move in with me and also I won't be double paying rent since my current lease doesn't end for another couple months. I was in a rush to move because I wanted to bike more and didn't think I'd be able to get myself to do so without moving, but I've found biking to my SO's place on the weekend is sufficient for now.

Update on work
I've been focusing on remembering the things I like about my job whenever I start to get down about it. This helps a bit.

It seems like it'd be more useful for me to start honing in on what I like day to day and reducing all things other than that. I have a decent amount of flexibility in what I work on, so trimming should be feasible. Also increasing my competence in my core skills should help me get into flow more often at work.

Coming back from my long holiday break was really hard, but as the days pass I get back into the habit of going to work and have been feeling a lot better. I'm rethinking whether I should take a multi-week vacation next year around the holidays. It's so hard to get back into it when I've been off for such a short time. If I'm off for a few months, I might be raring to get back, but when it's only a few weeks, I dread going back because it feels like it's too soon.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

I also added rows to my spreadsheet that show my yearly and monthly income based on a 3.5% withdrawal rate from my taxable investment accounts. I like seeing that number as it motivates improving my spending efficiency to get to the crossover point.

basuragomi
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by basuragomi »

Have you tried restricting your purchases to the front page of the grocery flyer? Those are where the loss leaders and staples are. It is also much more cost efficient to find recipes for what's cheap instead of buying to match a pre-planned recipe. We spent less than C$180/month on groceries for two people last year, and that's with a lot more fruit and vegetable variety than what you posted. You could link a flyer to receive cheap recipe suggestions.

If you have a food processor and freezer space, you can pre-chop garlic in bulk and freeze it instead of scrambling to use it all. Same thing goes with fresh herbs.

Baking loaf cakes (e.g. banana bread) might be a good snack alternative. Simple recipes and still all the sugar, fats and portability at less cost. You could even mould them into chocolate bar shapes.

I would recommend roasted barley/corn tea. Savoury but no sugar or caffeine. You can get it at Korean markets in bags and can scale to bulk loose purchases if you like it. Also drinking more unsweetened water in general will cut down on sugar cravings - dehydration makes you crave sugar.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

The anecdote about the garlic was only illustrative of the fact I had a bunch of ingredients I could use to make my food taste good without having to use up my grocery budget for the month in January. That may not be the case in future months as I eat through my pantry. I enjoy having garlic in all my meals and wasn't eating it in all my meals to prevent spoilage.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

January 2020 Breakdown

Code: Select all

Category        Budgeted  Spent
Rent/Housing	$3,000	$2,934.32
Work related 1	$400.00	$400.00
Food	        $200.00	$268.41
Trips home	$167.00	$0.00
Car insurance	$125.00	$0.00
Utilities	$120.00	$151.06
Healthcare	$100.00	$2,073.29
Internet	$50.00	$0.00
Gasoline	$50.00	$77.86
Car maint/reg	$50.00	$0.00
Cell phone	$31.01	$31.01
Work related 2	$29.25	$0.00
Household suppl	$20.00	$66.71
Renter's Ins	$10.00	$0.00
Fam support	$140.00	$140.00
Miscellaneous	$0.00	$10.88
Total spent: $6,153.54

The miscellaneous category was the cost to close my UPS mailbox that remained from my time spent in a van. I had to replace the keys.

The household supplies category included getting some five gallon buckets and gamma lid seals because I want to have a supply similar to jacob's here: viewtopic.php?p=135933#p135933. I haven't gotten past buying rice and the containers though.

February 2020 Budget

Note: I'm raising the gas budget to $75 because I set it too low based on my prior car usage. I realized I had a mistake in the spreadsheet I used to set that budget originally and it turns out I normally spend $75 a month on gas. I believe the cell phone bill is also higher than I originally estimated in my first post and that's due to my carrier increasing their cell phone plan costs.

Most budget categories will have surpluses and overages rolled over. Only the internet bill and healthcare won't follow that pattern.

I blew the healthcare category out of the water, so I'm only going to track it and have a nominal budget. I'll try to lower my costs later. I should learn how my insurance works I guess.

Here we go for February's budget.

Code: Select all

Rent/Housing	$3,065.68
Work related 1	$400.00
Food		$131.59
Trips home	$334.00
Car insurance	$250.00
Utilities	$88.94
Healthcare	$100
Internet	$50.00
Gasoline	$72.14
Car maint/ins	$100.00
Cell phone	$30.73
Work related 2	$58.50
Household suppl	-$26.71
Renter's Ins	$20.00
Fam support	$140.00
Miscellaneous	$0.00
Upcoming in February

I'm still apartment searching. Now I'm looking with my SO. We are going to sign on a new place this month and so I'll blow the rent/housing budget out of the water by putting down a deposit and double paying rent for March. It's better that I overpay for a month than miss this opportunity to move in with my SO.

Work Related Thoughts

Having regular hours at work and taking a walk at lunch seems to have made my work life significantly better. Let's hope this optimism continues. It's also helpful that I made significant progress on work that was stressing me out. I'm almost done with it, then I'll be able to set it aside.

Final January Food Spending

Code: Select all

Item	Paid	Percentage of Total
Eating out	$41.69	15.64%
Blueberries	$32.92	12.35%
White rice	$19.98	7.49%
Coconut water	$18.50	6.94%
Garnet yams	$18.16	6.81%
Black beans	$13.86	5.20%
Gin 		$13.07	4.90%
Chicken		$12.35	4.63%
Fruit juice	$9.08	3.41%
Snack bars	$9.00	3.38%
Yellow onions	$7.47	2.80%
Maple syrup	$6.99	2.62%
Chocolate 1	$6.98	2.62%
Avocados	$6.25	2.34%
Nutrition yeast	$5.99	2.25%
Quinoa		$5.99	2.25%
Mushrooms	$5.97	2.24%
Ground beef	$5.49	2.06%
Bananas		$5.00	1.88%
Lentils		$4.95	1.86%
Chocolate 2	$3.99	1.50%
Bell peppers	$3.75	1.41%
Wine		$2.99	1.12%
Organic beets	$2.49	0.93%
Jumbo eggs	$2.19	0.82%
Frozen corn	$0.99	0.37%
Microwaveable 	$0.50	0.19%
Why did I spend more after that last post about using up my food budget?
  • Idk. Impulse control problems partially?
  • But also I was scared due to the Wuhan virus thread. I wanted to stock up.
  • And I planned poorly for a long car trip. I was tired and hungry and needed something to eat so I could handle the meeting I had travelled to attend.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Also, I've stalled out on cooking. My cooking hasn't gotten much better. Plus this week I haven't cooked anything more than rice. I get a more varied lunch at work so I'm not too frustrated with this. I'm going to try to cook more meals in the coming weeks.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Moving

I'm moving to a new place this weekend. I ended up saving only a few hundred dollars a month in rent by moving in with my SO, but I think the lifestyle change will be worth it. I'm really looking forward to adding a bike ride to work to my routine.

Work Related Thoughts

I'm back off my game at work. I've been very unproductive. I can hopefully wrap up a long lasting project this week. I don't know how to spice up my work life and get on with my work. I'm hoping the regular exercise from biking will make a difference here starting next week.

My constant problem is that I really want to be doing something else when I'm at work and that I totally can do something else and that it doesn't appear to be an issue that I frequently choose to do something else. I don't know how to add internal motivation to stay on task and there is very little external motivation to do more than I am given my solid performance ratings. There is internal resistance to this state of working given by how unhappy I can be while doing something I want to do, but that is not what I should be doing. How do people maintain inner drive to do the work when there are 10 other interesting things one can do instead?

AxelHeyst
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by AxelHeyst »

My answer to your last question is, I don't. I cope.

I have similar feelings about work. Everyone is very happy with my performance, except for me. I know I could be doing so much more, if only I were focused and on-task more. But that's hard. And I'm guilty when I'm not focused and on task, whether I'm doing actual work or something else. So I can't even enjoy doing something else. But motivation to improve is low, because my 'ratings' are high. This dynamic is the biggest contribution to my chronic stress.

In an effort to be happier with my level of output, I've sought to increase focus and productivity by getting deep in to GTD, Deep Work, and Ultralearning. These have made me more productive, but I'm not sure they've actually helped my level of stress, because I feel like they just moved the goalpost for how productive I can or ought to be ("huh, I'm not learning at the rate of 1 MIT computer science degree per year. I'm garbage.") It doesn't help that the amount of work is potentially infinite - there's no such thing as "I finished all the things that needed to get done this week". The faster you get at getting stuff done, the more stuff to do gets chucked at you. I'm guessing it's similar for you.

I'm starting to believe it's a structural problem... I've gotten this idea that I need to be focused and on task at work, but that's like 40 hours. No human can be in flow and highly motivated on one thing for 8 hours a day, that's an insane expectation. I know that intellectually, but I can't quite shake a deep-level belief that if I'm not In the Zone every work hour, I'm basically stealing from the company.

So I'm bipolar with work. Sometimes it's awesome and I'm dropped in to flow and its unicorns and rainbows and I'm providing oodles of value to my company and The Important Work, and the rest of the time I feel like someone's going to "find me out" at any moment and fire me because I'm a waste of oxygen and health benefits. I've never found a happy medium. Being remote might have actually made it worse.

Exercise, being outside, taking time off, sleeping enough, meditation, having enough sex, being around friends, reading good books and remembering how magical the world actually is, all help tremendously. But in my case they don't fix the underlying dynamic. I'm not sure this is a solvable problem for me. My long term solution is to FIRE asap. /shrug

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 12:22 pm
Exercise, being outside, taking time off, sleeping enough, meditation, having enough sex, being around friends, reading good books and remembering how magical the world actually is, all help tremendously. But in my case they don't fix the underlying dynamic. I'm not sure this is a solvable problem for me. My long term solution is to FIRE asap. /shrug
Same as my list right now. I'm also hoping FIRE will make this a non-issue as well.

Curious about why you feel like working remote made it worse? I was recently wondering if switching to remote work might help, but I've never worked remotely before.
bigato wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:30 pm
Usually they are blind spots very well hidden from our conscience and located on the periphery of the problem itself.
Any tips for rooting out these blind spots on my own?

AxelHeyst
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by AxelHeyst »

mathiverse wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 10:44 pm
Curious about why you feel like working remote made it worse?
The pros of remote work *far* outweigh the cons of remote work for me, so don't take this as me discouraging it. Just a heads up on one of the issues you might have to deal with.

In an office, you can build career capital through a variety of methods. You can do good work. You can do fast work. You can do good work, fast. I call this Type 1 work.

But also! You can be charismatic and play office politics well. You can arrive before everyone else, and leave after everyone else, and they'll all assume you're a hard worker. You can have good hygeine and sit up straight. You can be attractive. All these things build you career capital, but aren't actually getting work done. I call these actions Type 2 work. They're bullshit, but they matter in terms of perception. If you're kinda burned out, you can coast for a day or two just doing well at Type 2 but not really doing any Type 1 stuff. These are like mini-mental health breaks that are totally internal. (It's also interesting that if you are great at Type 1, but really suck at Type 2 (e.g. if you're a smelly jerk and your desk is a pit of moldy burger king wrappers), it kills your career capital.)

When you are remote, you can only do Type 1. No one knows what hours you keep, if you showered this week, and if you bothered to put pants on that day. You get no career capital from Type 2. Everything is riding on Type 1. So if you need a mental health mini-vacation from Type 1 work... tough shit. Your career capital flatlines for the duration of your inability to get good work done quickly. And that induces career anxiety, stress, etc.

I also think 80% of this is in my head. I don't think I actually slack off too much, I just think our culture/my upbringing/Instagram has built a completely unrealistic expectation in my head of what a productive worker is, that is impossible for me to live up to every single day. And Suffering = Expectations - Reality, so I experience stress over it.

(edit: it might be relevant to mention that I was/am a workaholic? This is one reason why ERE is so attractive to me. It feels like an escape hatch. Being in the working world feels like being a recovered heroin addict who has to take *just a little bit* of heroin every day. I want to get far away from it. But I worry that there are underlying issues/blind spots that I need to figure out how to resolve, like bigato alluded to. Like, is all this because I don't believe deep down that I'm worthy of love? Whoa I went there.)

RoamingFrancis
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by RoamingFrancis »

@AxelHeyst If your workaholism is caused by underlying issues or blind spots, it'll be a hell of a lot easier to work on them if you're not in an environment that makes their influence over your behavior even stronger.

Everyone is worthy of love! Period!

classical_Liberal
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

@bigato
This is very interesting to me. Sometimes I wonder if this anxiety we tend to feel is related to a #firstworldproblem of not having overcome enough difficult obstacles in life. We've (society) created a situation in which there really aren't any significant survival struggles or rites of passage to adulthood and self sufficiency. For instance, maybe someone served in war, upon surviving this horrible experience, coming home to family life and a job where problems seem so insignificant in comparison, they are able to dismiss these minor life obstacles more freely.

Not that I think we should all go and join the military, it's just that a really tough experience tends to change someone. I think this is what you are alluding to in your above suggestions. The more we are able to overcome various obstacles, the more we learn about ourselves and gain confidence that any future obstacle with be overcomable. Without these challenges, there is a constant underlying fear that this silver platter we've been served will be yanked away, with devastating results. That may or may not be true in a given circumstance, but how does one know unless they try to live without it?

On the other hand, I think we have a weird concept of needing to be constantly self-improving. Not that self growth is bad, but to constantly endeavor to be something more than we are creates a dissatisfaction with what we actually are presently. I think sometimes it's OK to just lay around and do nothing, without the expectation of creating anything of value. Actually, I believe large portions of life should be devoted to this type of time as long as you've taken care of basic responsibilities.

mooretrees
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mooretrees »

bigato wrote:
Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:15 am
Well things went down fast. In a sense I believe that working on our underlying issues is more important than getting freedom from work. And work is often not the actual issue, it just happen to be the activity in your life that better exposes your weakness. In my mind, escaping from it may be necessary and even healthy in some cases, but if it is the only thing in your life that triggers those weak spots, shutting it down because I’d feel more comfortable, is akin to shutting down the fire alarm because it’s noisy.


Again, bigato with the wise words. This resonates with me so much because recently I feel that I'm complaining left and right about my job. The only thing different is me, the job's been the same for five years. So, I've become less tolerant of it and more desirous of freedom. I'm not sure freedom from full time work will cure whatever ails me. Anyway, ready to hear more from you @bigato! I'll be thinking about how to safely discover my blind spots....

classical_Liberal
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

bigato wrote:
Sun Feb 23, 2020 9:42 pm
Traumatic experiences consistently mess with our mental health, including increased anxiety. That was in my opinion a really poor example for the point you’re trying to make.
Maybe you're right. I do not mean to offend anyone who has been through this either. However, I do think those who survived and thrived after trauma are able to realize a higher sense what's truly important. I guess that was my point. Extreme difficulty survived brings about extreme ability to thrive. Although not everyone is able to do so, which is why I thought your suggestion of pushing oneself to limits in a safe environment to be the best of both worlds. Although, I have somewhat of a repulsion for this idea of "safe place" due to the cultural meaning in USA. I think sheltering people from even the slightest disquiet is part of the problem, this creates the anxiety we feel today, because we shelter ourselves from so much, we do not know how much internal personal strength we have to deal with adversity.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

February 2020 Breakdown

At some point I got off track with tracking expenses and income. I'm all caught up now. Here's the update.

Code: Select all

Category        Budgeted  Spent
Rent/Housing	$3,000	$5,295.77
Work related 1	$400.00	$400.00
Food	        $200.00	$1,587.40
Trips home	$167.00	$0.00
Car insurance	$125.00	$0.00
Utilities	$120.00	$268.42
Healthcare	$100.00	$583.32
Internet	$50.00	$0.00
Gasoline	$50.00	$88.48
Car maint/reg	$50.00	$0.00
Cell phone	$31.01	$31.00
Work related 2	$29.25	$0.00
Household suppl	$20.00	$965.18
Renter's Ins	$10.00	$0.00
Fam support	$140.00	$140.00
Miscellaneous	$0.00	$28.82
Total spent: $9,388.39

Misc: Food for friends that I didn't get reimbursed, certified mail for important docs, a song from iTunes.

Over budget on Rent/Housing due to moving and double paying rent for March. That'll be better in March.

Utilities: double payment for expenses split among the apartment complexes I'm on lease for, high electricity bill due to heating. Easily improved by getting off the lease at the old place. This will be better in April.

Gasoline: I'm not driving now due to shelter-in-place, so this will be better in March. I'm planning to sell my car later this year, so this will end as an expense.

Food: I stocked up for COVID-19. I don't want to go out. I probably overspent, but I can eat through my stocks for the next few months since I'm finally getting better at cooking due to being at home all day.

Household supplies: Also high due to COVID-19.

Healthcare: I don't understand my insurance. Seems like I pay for almost everything out of pocket when I go to the doctor. Something to figure out later.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

COVID-19 Related Update

Remote Work

I'm a software engineer at a big tech company, so I've been working from home for the past month or so. It turns out working remotely is amazing and I'm looking for a remote job even as this crisis plays out. I can cook, I can exercise, I can get enough sleep, I have less stress, I have more peace and quiet, I can focus. I'm more introverted than I thought and I'm 95% satisfied with only seeing my SO in real life (I'd probably still hang with friends on occasion if I went full remote in a time without a pandemic) and I am content working with coworkers over video chat, email, and messages.

If this crisis lasts a long time, perhaps my company will change it's policy to allow remote work afterward, but it currently seems unlikely that this will result in a culture shift thus far based on conversations with management.

Crisis Preparedness

This crisis has also made me realize how shitty it is to be in the Bay Area during hard times given the lifestyle I set up here. My burn rate is too high for comfort. I'm glad I have cash savings to avoid selling while things are down in case the layoffs start at my company, but I keep thinking how much longer that buffer would last elsewhere. Before COVID-19, part of my job loss plan was to break my current lease and move somewhere cheaper within the first month and to move back home if the unemployment lasted longer than a few months (unlikely, I thought at the time, given how great the job market was). This crisis makes that less of an option. It's still technically an option, but that would be my last choice. I'd rather stay here for the duration of the pandemic in the US.

I'm hoping I can keep my current job through the acute crisis and quarantines, but once that's over (however long it takes), I want to have a remote job lined up and move back across the country closer to family and somewhere much, much cheaper. It's too little, too late for this crisis, but I hope to be prepared next time.

sky created a thread asking if this crisis is a turning point for folks, and, for me, I think it is. It gave me a low effort way to try remote work which has opened my eyes to what a non-work-focused lifestyle could be. I've been improving my ERE skills/habits (darning, cooking, going to cut my SO's hair, reading more, etc). We'll see if I follow through on moving away from the Bay Area, but it seems likely at this point. I don't know. Assuming I survive this crisis (and I will in all likelihood), I think I'll be better off for having gone through it. I'm not happy it happened, but think I can make some solid lemonade out of these lemons.

No Spend Year Update
Uh, so yeah. I was not doing this for the past two months. I'm back on it starting today except I'm going to give leeway for buying supplies to do some container gardening on my porch while I'm stuck at home.

mathiverse
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Work Update

I love working from home. My company announced WFH for the rest of the year, so I am holding off on the job search. I think the optional WFH policy will last even longer than this year, therefore I'm not in a rush to switch jobs.

The other reason I'm not in a rush to change jobs is that I love the work I'm doing right now and would prefer to see it to its conclusion in a year or two. My work has taken a turn towards more open-ended, blue sky work which is fun and interesting. One downside is that, while the work is awesome, blue sky work doesn't pay the company's bills, so who knows maybe I'll be asked to work on something else. For now, I want to take advantage of the opportunity.

I'm also completely in charge of a project for the first time ever. Now that I'm work from home I can really drive that kind of work rather than struggling to get any work done while distracted and unfocused in the office. The timing was perfect and I want to use this project to improve my leadership skills, my expertise in the codebase (which is open source and thus the knowledge is portable to other jobs), and my expertise in the domain I was hired to work in. Success on this project (and even many failure outcomes) will put me in a better position to get the types of roles I want in my next job.

ERE Related Update

I cook a lot better now. My SO or I have cooked all of our meals for the last two months. WFH makes it easier for me to do that too. There's also the incentive to avoid getting COVID which helps too. :)

No Spend Year Update

I have been spending less than usual, however I have consistently failed the no spend year thing since the quarantine started.

I'm going to recommit to the no spend year today.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Great journal so far, quite the progress (both theoretical and executed) in such a short time. Did you April expenses drop as expected?

It sounds like you found a good balance for the time being. Can you elaborate on how you're able to work productively while living with SO, I'm assuming they also WFH for the time being? Do you have separate working spaces?

edit - didn't mean to assume SO's gender!
Last edited by 2Birds1Stone on Sun May 10, 2020 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

mathiverse
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2019 8:40 pm

Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Thanks for reading, 2Birds1Stone! April expenses did drop as expected! And this month should be lower still. :)

As you guessed, my SO is WFH too. We've got a two bedroom apartment, so, fortunately, it was straightforward to find separate work spaces. I work in the dining room nook and they work in the second bedroom. My SO's personality is introverted and they work in a similar role, so they are understanding when I say I need to focus and they don't interrupt me much. We typically work similar hours. If I decide to work longer hours for a day or two, they can tell since I'll be at my desk into the evening and they take that as a cue not to interrupt.

mathiverse
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2019 8:40 pm

Re: mathiverse's journal

Post by mathiverse »

Money Update
Expenses are still low. I spent more on food than budgeted, but I think that's made up for the lack of spending in every other area.

Work Update
I'm still enjoying work and making more progress than any time in the past. I've stalled a bit on the project I'm leading. My coding abilities are really the bottleneck right now. It's still enjoyable, but it's frustrating to be going so slow. I'm trying to enjoy each bit of submitted code as much as possible since it's slow going and I like having frequent wins when possible.

General Update
I have had significant food waste lately because of my lack of food planning skill. It's gradually gotten better as I settled into a routine around what and how much I eat each day.

I've been running consistently since working from home. It's a lot easier for me to keep up that habit with my low levels of stress lately.

I've started learning French. :) I have a slight advantage in that I know some Spanish from secondary school. It's easier than I expected in some ways and harder than I expected in others. It's been fun talking to my SO who is a fluent French speaker.

I also started going through a math textbook in preparation for some summer classes. This summer is an experiment to see if I can comfortably work full time while completing a few classes. I'll take more if it goes well.

Hm, I don't know if I'm taking on too many projects. I can always drop French at any time. The classes I have less flexibility with if I want to keep my school record clean, but it's also only ten weeks of classes so a short term spike in work. Work may go slower than I want due to these other projects, but it won't go slow enough that I have performance issues given what I've already completed this performance review cycle, so that should be fine. We'll see how it goes I guess.

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