3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
ertyu
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by ertyu »

HI all, I was reading the news lately and I thought about this forum -- kind of like, "I wonder what those guys are doing for ww3". Obviously, for whoever was doing ERE right, the answer is probably nothing - the current situation is, after all, exactly the sort of systemic breakdown the need for ERE is predicated on.

I have been working at my new job since October. I have been less frugal than advisable but I have saved around 20k USD. The work environment itself sucks, but it sucks much less than previous jobs and so far, I am able to tolerate it. I don't feel joi de vivre or however it's spelled, but I'm also not the kind of burnt out and depressed I've been in the past - though some things haven't changed, for instance, i am still fat and unfit and i spend my time on my own am not a social butterfly. If it wasn't for the geopolitical situation, I could see myself staying here for another couple of years. I have saved around 20k, putting my liquid net worth at 200k eur plus that dilapidated apartment I got.

The geopolitical situation, though, is making me reevluate, and there doesn't seem to be an obvious, intelligent choice about what to do going forward.

One option is to return home. I left on a dramatic conflict with my family of origin and have not contacted them since. It was an ESH situation. I was also at fault. But to be honest, I don't see it ever being repaired. I also left on bad terms with the various people I knew there, and a lot of that was my fault also. Going back now would be a return to what is familiar. In times of sudden change and anxiety, it emerges as an answer. But the relationships I left there do not seem like they can be repaired, and at this point, part of me feels it might be better to wait to do repairs on the apartment until we're not the next country in line for carpet bombing -- though with the world being what it is, would such a time come??

One option is to stay where I am, and it is an easy option. I have a very comfortable surface level middle class life, except the geopolitical risk of remaining in my current location may be too high. Let's say there's a reason these guys hired a job hopper that's been fired from his last two jobs, and the reason is that things being what they are, no foreigners want to work here.

The third option, which is the furthest out of my comfort zone, is to see if I can't use my EU passport while that option is still open and move to a western european country. I am not sure which one/what city, and what exactly I would do when I get there. 200k is certainly not FI-level money in the EU proper, though it could be a good start -- but it would require me to abandon the job-free lifestyle as a goal. Even if I pursue it, there's nothing certain: how deeply the coming crisis / fuel scarcity would hit, that the EU will stay structurally intact, etc. Another brexit-type situation, impacting one or multiple countries, is always an option. And then there are the more mundane concerns: whereas I have a bunch of degrees from the US., I only know English. All my job experience is in this niche geoarbitrage gig which has limited applicability elsewhere. One option is setting aside 30-50k eur and paying for a degree somewhere. I am, however, 40. How successful will I be? Will I be able to learn? A degree would give me the obvious advantage of being affiliated with an institution as I settle and being able to draw on its resourses. I guess there is also the option of doing 180 days at a time in any country that would let me and pursuing independent training and certifications - though in what?

As you can see, my thinking is still in the framework of the old, known, safe world. Personally, given the developments in the Russia/Ukraine war and the urgency with which the coup in the US is happening, combined with the accelerating climate change effects we observe, I have no doubt we are in ww3 and this will end bad. Already, a cheat-cheat prisoner's dilema equilibrium is being established when it comes to countries and emissions; China and India are going back to coal, the US supreme court is voting that the EPA can't control emissions from power plants. The EU is holding out in terms of commitment to climate goals, but for how long? So I don't know what to do. But the current events are certainly lighting a fire under my ass.
Last edited by ertyu on Fri Jul 01, 2022 1:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

guitarplayer
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Lots of big questions that I am not able to tackle on this cloudy Scottish morning, but in any case happy to see you back on the forum @ertyu!

zbigi
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by zbigi »

In my opinion, whatever terrible outcome of climate change will be, it will most likely not materialize in the coming 2-3 decades, so can be ignored for practical purposes. In 3 decades you'll be 70, so in high risk of death due to natural causes anyway. Hence, I wouldn't overthink the big picture stuff and just find a way to make the coming years fun, in a responsible way (i.e. fun while also accumulating some cash/skills/credentials).

ertyu
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by ertyu »

@zbigi this is true. but the terrible outcome of climate change will not happen all at once. in fact, it is already happening in the mice and locust plagues many countries experience, in the flooding, in the fires and drought, and last but not least, in the anxiety the billionaires of this world feel to entrench and establish their power - thus what is happening in the us and between the us and china in russia.

mooretrees
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by mooretrees »

Big, big questions for sure. I agree that we're already dealing with climate change in various degrees of urgency around the world. Here in the Western US, we're still in a mega drought and fire season is starting. However, the day to day of life is sorta just the same. Anyway, I'm not sure I have any advice, but glad you're back posting!

As an aside, I did go back to school in my late 30's and while it was harder than I expected, it was a good experience and I've got a decent career now. Of course, it's difficult to figure out what to do in school when you're thinking of switching gears.

ertyu
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by ertyu »

@mooretrees, thank you for the encouragement!

NewBlood
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by NewBlood »

Welcome back ertyu!!

Not sure where you are currently (guessing eastern Europe) but the view from western Europe is a bit glib at the moment. Definitely gonna be an interesting winter... Not nearly as scary as next in line countries though, so if you have an EU passport, why not? Any possibility of remote work?

sky
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by sky »

Welcome back ertyu

It sounds like you are living an interesting life.

If I was in your situation, I would continue to work until things get too dangerous in the city you are working in. If things get worse and I had to escape to somewhere, my plan would look something like:

Keep 2 years of living expenses ($24,000) in a cryptocurrency (Monero). Travel to a small, unimportant Greek island somewhere off the coast of Turkey and rent a small room or home with decent internet connection. Spend a good amount of time learning to make money remote online and live off the online work to the extent possible. Keep a low profile and pretend to be a tourist.

If things get bad there, you can escape via Athens, or Izmir, depending where the threat is coming from. You can act as if you were a European tourist trying to get back to western Europe.

I suspect war and various crises will be happening for some time. Perhaps eventually things will improve, but who knows?

Most of all, enjoy your life and don't let the media doom and gloom get you down.

ertyu
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by ertyu »

sky wrote:
Fri Jul 01, 2022 10:05 am

If I was in your situation, I would continue to work until things get too dangerous in the city you are working in.
Yes, this is the plan for now.

If something were to happen, it would be impossible to spontaneously leave the country, and this worries me, but on the other hand, it has been good having the first batch of savings from this year hit my account. I am now at 201k liquidation value in my brokerage account + 8k euro cash in home country bank (inaccessible from abroad, the area of the world im trying to access it from is ringing alarm bells and they will let no transactions pass through until such time as I am physically back in my country of origin and able to present ID at an actual bank counter. I have 10k usd in a bank where I am, and I am expecting my next salary on August 15th. At 2%, I am now replicating my father's pension. There is also the rundown fixer-upper apartment of doom which will probably be expensive to repair. It could be worse, but it also could be better.

The point of this post was to mark the milestone: at 2%, I have enough assets to guarantee bare survival.

The advice to look for ways to earn income long-distance is worthwhile. I will put some thought into it.

ertyu
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by ertyu »

Mended some clothes. Felt good.

My 2016 MacBook Air is starting to give up the ghost. Keys detach all the time and the little rubber ... things ... that keep the keys bouncy travel and need to be poked back in place with a needle. I have ordered a replacement top panel (my keyboard is uk-style so just the keyboard was unavalable). I have also ordered a replacement battery as the macbook says it "reccommends maintenance". And a set of 5 screw-drivers. let's see how my project of repairing my macbook myself from youtube videos will go. As usual, I'm feeling incompetent about this. I have however consciously decided to attempt this myself before taking the laptop to a specialist for repairs.

Based on various discussions elsewhere, I have started thinking up what I could do to generate peanuts-level income. One option I have been thinking about is pursuing training through the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading and freelance as a copyeditor. I can afford the training, it's modular and if I complete both the editing and/or the proofreading modules + the dissertation and thesis copyediting module, I would technically be qualified enough to do this. Would it work, or would this be another labor-intensive side-hustle where I would need to spend too much energy promoting myself? The training costs £1-1.5k. Would it be worth it?

I am also considering doubling down on savings. While my bills have not been high and rent is fairly alright, I have been spending between $15-30 per day on transportation to work and on food. The usual culprits are to blame: ubers instead of the bus, take-out, coffee, baked goods. I could almost certainly do better.

Something else that's been on my radar is the update that was just pushed on the Windows 10 users and the consequent talk on various forums that Microsoft is moving towards a subscription-based model. I assume Apple is little different. My next machine might have to run Linux even though I am a dumb user and thus intimidated by the potential learning curve. However, it feels more and more likely that I will make the switch in the next couple of years.

zbigi
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by zbigi »

It seems that MS is not really interested in making money on Windows licences any more. They gave updates from Windows 8 to 10 and 10 to 11 for free. I wouldn't worry about being milked with subscribtions as a Windows user.
Also, getting into Linux to save a couple bucks (if you're not into fiddling with Linux already) is a typical example where ERE can add more misery to your life than working the job to earn that couple of bucks.

ertyu
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by ertyu »

zbigi wrote:
Wed Jul 20, 2022 4:58 am
getting into Linux to save a couple bucks (if you're not into fiddling with Linux already) is a typical example where ERE can add more misery to your life than working the job to earn that couple of bucks.
I mean, yes - developing the skill to be independent of commercial solutions for anything is gonna "add more misery" than going to the store, forking over the cash, and getting it. That's how we ended up as overspecialized salarymen, no?

chenda
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by chenda »

You could probably retire on your current assets in Portugal or parts of Spain. Climate change needs to be a consideration though.

As someone of similar age I would not be inclined to retrain or something else unless I really wanted to do it. Maybe just milk your current set up for a year or two whilst looking at retirement destinations ?

NewBlood
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by NewBlood »

ertyu wrote:
Wed Jul 20, 2022 1:48 am
Something else that's been on my radar is the update that was just pushed on the Windows 10 users and the consequent talk on various forums that Microsoft is moving towards a subscription-based model. I assume Apple is little different. My next machine might have to run Linux even though I am a dumb user and thus intimidated by the potential learning curve. However, it feels more and more likely that I will make the switch in the next couple of years.
No idea what Microsoft is up to, but Linux doesn't have to be intimidating. I switched to Linux Mint, it's basically the same as windows from a user experience. You can install it on a USB drive and just give it a try on your windows machine without installing it (https://linuxmint-installation-guide.re ... /burn.html). See how it feels. The only thing I'm having issues with is when I need to edit a MS PowerPoint file. The formatting gets all messed up in LibreOffice.

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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by jacob »

ertyu wrote:
Wed Jul 20, 2022 1:48 am
Something else that's been on my radar is the update that was just pushed on the Windows 10 users and the consequent talk on various forums that Microsoft is moving towards a subscription-based model. I assume Apple is little different. My next machine might have to run Linux even though I am a dumb user and thus intimidated by the potential learning curve. However, it feels more and more likely that I will make the switch in the next couple of years.
I recently went the other way from ubuntu linux to win10. I also have a mac. The learning curve is pretty short and flat. OSs do the same thing in slightly different ways, so the only thing to learn is "where to find [the same] stuff".

sky
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by sky »

If you were to get a Raspberry Pi 400, an SD card >64Gb and a monitor, you would have a linux desktop to learn on. I think that knowing how to use linux and some terminal commands is a basic rennaissance skill. Plus, if you have to flee for some reason, pull out the SD card, hide it on your person and you can replicate your desktop/data in a new place with a new RPi.

I would be wary of paying for training. At least look first to see if there is work available that you can do without training.

NewBlood
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by NewBlood »

In the same vein as what sky suggests, you can actually make a bootable flash drive with persistence (meaning it will retain your files and all changes you've made, included any programs you installed when you shut it off). You can then boot from that drive from any computer anywhere and have access to your linux setup and files.

zbigi
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by zbigi »

ertyu wrote:
Wed Jul 20, 2022 5:51 am
I mean, yes - developing the skill to be independent of commercial solutions for anything is gonna "add more misery" than going to the store, forking over the cash, and getting it. That's how we ended up as overspecialized salarymen, no?
I think Jacob's selling point of ERE was "lifestyle no worse than middleclass, but on a fraction of money/years worked". Linux fails this, because even if you have the Linux skills (I have them for the most part), the experience is still going to be worse [1] than just going with Windows/OSX like middleclass people do. The caveat may be that if you're not a "computer person", then all the small ways in which Linux desktop experience sucks may not be apparent for you and hence no worse than Windows/OSX.

[1] The fundamental problem with Linux is that there's barely if any quality assurance done for it. So, the users end up being the QA team, but unfortunately, every new release, while fixing some of the old bugs, introduces a set of new ones (because again, it wasn't really tested). Good QA is labor intensive and not fun - hence, for the most part, it doesn't happen in the Open Source world. There are companies making serious money on Linux for the servers, so parts of Linux needed for servers (kernels, some core services, some drivers) are well-tested and high quality. Unfortunately, nobody is making money on Linux for the desktops, so it's basically a hobbyist-run bugfest.
Last edited by zbigi on Thu Jul 21, 2022 2:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

ertyu
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by ertyu »

@zbigi: fair. That is actually one of the first things I was pointed towards as a noob: the ways in which linux is different from commercial OSs because it's FOSS. It's good to be accurately prepared for what one will encounter so that one doesn't go into it with the expectation of receiving a Windows or MacOS for free.

@NewBlood and @jacob: thank you for the reassurance that this is possible for a normal human. I have lined up a couple of sources to begin learning the language of linux and to begin understanding it. If anyone else is interested, I plan to begin at the following two websites:

https://linuxjourney.com
EdX: https://training.linuxfoundation.org/tr ... -to-linux/

The goal is to learn the language of the community and get a basic idea of what is what before trying to install anything. I am an anxious fuck. I need to feel reasonably certain I won't mess it up.

@sky: I appreciate the link to mobility. My main reason for learning about Linux is to combat anxiety: in this case, the anxiety that evil companies can decide to lock me out of my PC unless I pay them a subscription for their OS. Understanding the basics of Linux and how to use it would thus enable me to say, well, even if that happens, I will not be a sitting duck, I will still have options. In my case, my entertainment is online, my learning is online, most of my social contacts are online, and I would not want to be isolated. Your raspberry pi suggestion links to another anxiety, which is ww3 catching up with me. I will look into it.

@jacob, what is your reason for going to win 10?
Last edited by ertyu on Wed Jul 20, 2022 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ertyu
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Re: 3 yrs to FI: ertyu's journal

Post by ertyu »

chenda wrote:
Wed Jul 20, 2022 8:12 am
You could probably retire on your current assets in Portugal or parts of Spain. Climate change needs to be a consideration though.
At 2%, my current assets generate €4,000 per year, or €366 per month. Might be possible, but I am not brave enough to pull the plug at this particular point with this particular cushion. At my current gig, I save approx $30k per year, so I expect to be at €220-230k in May 2023, inshallah, which is €383 per month. My willingness to pull the plug might extend if I am reasomably secure in having more than one stream of pocket change, but given that this here now salaryman gig is my best idea even as it carries increasing amounts of geopolitical risk, I find myself too anxious to let go of the teat yet

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