The Education of Axel Heyst

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zbigi
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by zbigi »

Scott 2 wrote:
Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:47 pm
I did not appreciate the vast amounts of open land in the US, until I took a train across the country. Low density housing is a practical requirement in those areas.
Not necessarily. Post-war Poland built city-style apartment buildings (sometimes just a single one, or just a couple units at most - see example [1]) in the middle of nowhere, next to arable land that these people were meant to work. The reason was of course being resource-constraint - the country couldn't spare the resources to house people in detached housing. I can see the same logic applied if for example the US reaches those levels of poverty due to resource depletion.

[1] https://media.wplm.pl/thumbs/3ec/NzIweD ... pwZw==.jpg

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fiby41
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

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I also learnt on this forum that Poland has the longest continuous building in the world that is some fraction of a mile long and houses residential apartments.

zbigi
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

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shaz wrote:
Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:22 pm
@zbigi how do you see food production working without farms? Or will all the farmers commute to the farms? There are robot harvesters now so maybe with the addition of more farmbots the need for humans on-site would be minimal. But even cattle on open range do best with some husbandry.

See my other post above - communist Poland was housing farmers in apartment building built in the middle of nowhere. These farmers were employees of large, state-owned farms.

Also, before that, poor farmers lived in something called Czworaki (see [1] for an example) which is like a townhouse but built in a village or outside of it. It usually consisted of 4 separate one-room apartments, each of which housed entire multigeneration farming family and their farm animals.

[1] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czworak_( ... wicach.jpg

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Cool! I’m endlessly fascinated by vernacular architecture… in one version of my life I just go around building traditional forms of housing.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

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Holy hell. I *wish* I had written this: https://palladiummag.com/2022/01/06/quit-your-job/

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

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Two Years of ERE
  • I joined the forum in Jan 2020. My TTM Expenses were >7jafi (1jafi=$8,500 for simplicity) TTM in 2019.
  • By Jan 2021, my TTM CoL Expenses was 2.2jafi.
  • Now, my TTM CoL expenses is 1.3, and I've been <1.0 since September.
  • My 2021 TTM Actual Expenses is 2.5 and includes capx for some builds (one of which I'm getting bought out for) and a one-off surgery.
Image
If you stare at it long enough, this one graph has everything interesting about my financial circumstance in it.

My Relationship with W*rk
  • At the beginning of 2020 I had a FT job.
  • I dropped to 8hrs/wk in ~July 2020.
  • I was laid off in May 2021. I worked for @mooretrees for two months in early Fall. I'm not earning income at the moment, but I'm working on a visualization studio with friends, help DW out with her art business, and have paid projects lined up with my parents. If I *needed* to make money, I could drop what I'm doing and go make some money. This is something I worried about before dropping from FT employment. Now, I feel how insanely easy it is to pick up paid activity of some sort if one so desires. At the moment I have other stuff to do though, so nah.
My FIRE Goals
  • In Jan 2020, my goal was to FIRE in 2027.
  • In Jan 2021, my goal was to "not need to work FT" for good no later than 2024.
  • In Jan 2022, I no longer need to work FT for good. (Unless I'm wrong, which I'm probably not.) I consider myself "As-If FI", meaning that I am resolved to only do things I want to do that are on-mission, and generate my required yields of income incidentally.
My desired outcomes for 2021 were:
  • Lifestyle CoL < 1 jafi. Nailed it, 4 consistent months <1jafi.
  • Econ and investing fundamentals education completed. Not complete, but begun.
  • At least one comfortable shelter complete (the container). Not complete, pulling out of the container project, focusing on family land as home base.
  • Get back to FTE and re-engage accumulation phase. [Contingency: continue semiERE, focus on side hustles/entrepreneurship.] Did the contingency plan.
  • Tax-Advantaged accounts game totally dialed. Yep.
  • Starting to spend time "learning by doing" with low stakes investing. Not started.
  • Strategic Approach: Apply 80/20 thinking to every dimension of my life, with a focus on high-leverage activities that will hasten my achievement of autonomy/time wealth as quickly as possible. For example, some activities have a high satisfaction ROI, but will muddle my progress towards autonomy. Consider these activities very carefully, and consider shelving them until I'll be apply to apply my full attention to them. I consider this attitude to be largely internalized; yes.
Desired Outcomes for 2022:
  • Finish building a dry cabin/art studio on the family land, by end of Feb.
  • Sell my truck.
  • Fly to Portugal end of Feb; if they'll let us in, we're going.
  • Spend the rest of the year/as long as we want slowtraveling the world, relying on Workaway and the like to keep CoL very low (target remains <1jafi). Route is Europe > Turkey/Jordan/Oman > Asia > Down along Indonesia > Australia and NZ > Patagonia > Back up. Aim is to fly as little as possible.
  • NW is not less than it was at beginning of year. I'm not likely to earn much income this year, and that's fine. I think I can not *lose* any money, though.
  • Develop Renaissance Knowledge (see below)
  • Blog consistently
  • Podcast consistently, assuming I don't decide it's a bad idea and shut it down
  • Research and implement a longevity practice.
  • By December, be knocking on the door of WL7. This might be overly aggressive, and trying to rush it is a terrible idea. But I want it on the list to keep it in mind; I'm squarely in wl6 skillnode building phase, but don't want to get totally lost in it. There's a point to all this; achieving a mature nonconsumer internalized mindset.
Renaissance Skills, Renaissance Knowledge, Renaissance Wisdom
I feel like I've spent a lot of this last year developing practical skills, like cooking and eating for <$200, mending things, unlearning patterns of consumption, how to not need a cell phone plan, etc. Renaissance *skills*.

I'm feeling a desire to develop Renaissance *knowledge*; physics, biology, chemistry, history, politics, economics, literature, and better search and analysis cognitive tools. My current response to a lot of the 'controversial' intellectual topics of the day is to act on a precautionary principle, eschew certitude, and punt on developing well researched and analyzed positions on them, because I've got other shit to do that's more pressing. I want to develop my intellectual capacity, both in terms of depth of knowledge (hence the desire to dig into basic sciences and history again) that I can pull from as well as skills related to logic, fallacies, and the more modern skills of "search and analysis".

So I intend to do a lot of reading while traveling this year.

An implicit part of my current strategy is that, with my FU stash providing slack, I'll get a better lifetime ROI on non-financial asset building at this moment. The development of skills, knowledge, wisdom, connections, idleness, et cetera are more important at this moment in my life than adding more cash to the stash. It's like my life is a garden, and I have several rows of tomato plants [money]. But I don't have any other plants, or compost, and honestly I don't know much about gardening at all, and maybe bees or something?? So instead of planting more tomato plants, I'm reading books about composting and soil amendment and bees and permaculture and etc etc. Instead of just planting more of the same crops, I'm taking a step back from a production mindset to work on becoming a more competent gardener.

--

I quoted Steinbeck this time last year, and it's so damn good I'm going to quote it again:
John Steinbeck wrote:"In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear."
I'm reading Lifespan and contemplating the potential of making it, in decent health, to 2100. The above quote resonates to me in terms of approaching the design of an entire life. When it comes to lifestyle, I think it's really common for (young) people to really only think, or *feel*, about designing a lifestyle for the ages of 25-55. Beyond that it's a sort of grey fog of darkness. That lends a sense of urgency, I suspect. Also, most people don't deal effectively with contemplating their own mortality. I myself haven't spent any time thinking about how I want to feel when I'm 75. Or 90. Or 115. I haven't thought about being 65 and having another 40 years of good solid life in front of me.

It's a tricky balance. On the one hand, I don't want to put off living a good life because I think I've got all the time in the world, manana. On the other, I don't want to not even notice my life because I'm rushing around too much, in a scramble, frantically keeping busy mostly (if I'm being honest with myself) because I fundamentally can't handle the idea of not existing any more and need to distract myself from the horrible yawning abyss of death that is right.... over.... thereohmygodchristquickturnonnetflixorsomethingFUCK. [eta: relevant]

This kind of long term thinking is the theme of this year for me. How would you live if you thought you were going to live well to 120? Might that not be a good way to live even if you get hit by a bus in a decade? I suspect it might be.
Last edited by AxelHeyst on Sun Jan 09, 2022 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by theanimal »

I get that you found ERE many years before 2020 but the journey since then has been incredible. Really inspiring stuff. It reminds me of the question that I've heard Tim Ferriss ask, something like : "What are my goals for the next 5, 10 years? What can I do to achieve that in the next 6 months?"

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Happy EREiversary! Congratulations on all the progress in 2021. I'm really looking forward to following along with the international, vagabonding version of AxelERE.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 12:30 pm
Holy hell. I *wish* I had written this: https://palladiummag.com/2022/01/06/quit-your-job/
Methinks that lines up well with the yellow vmeme. The idea of working for a greater system as opposed to people, status, rules, tribe, or family. Taking initiative when possible---if not me, then who---and being driven by a greater vision rather than doctrine, strategy, tactics, or tools.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by fiby41 »

TTM=time to market?

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Jin+Guice »

Congrats on the stunning ERE progress! I thought you were trying to go way too fast when you appeared talking about leveling up WLs super fast, but I was wrong. #CrowbarMethod.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

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fiby41 wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 4:27 am
TTM=time to market?
Trailing twelve month

mathiverse
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Re: Axel Heyst's Journal

Post by mathiverse »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed Feb 05, 2020 12:33 pm
Anyways, DW wrote down some financial parameters I gave her for food shopping I came up with and re-took over the kitchen, immediately figured out where all the "local's days" are at the butcher shops, and started throwing around the idea of part-timing at the butcher's shop so she could get better deals and skills. :lol:
This post is from quite a while back, however I was wondering if you could list the food shopping parameters you listed out for your DW? I want to refocus on getting good food for less money and we eat a fairly similar diet (Paleo-ish, low carb) based on reading the posts near the quoted posts, so I am thinking maybe those parameters would be useful for me to consider.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

chenda wrote:
Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:40 pm
@axelheyst - In Spain or California? Either way sounds interesting do tell us more about it if your minded.
California. I’m excited to gocheck out The Originals here soon this year though. :)
Jin+Guice wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 5:18 am
Congrats on the stunning ERE progress! I thought you were trying to go way too fast when you appeared talking about leveling up WLs super fast, but I was wrong. #CrowbarMethod.
Thanks! Well, I feel like I’d been attempting to invent ERE off and on for a decade, but simply wasn’t smart, well-read, or Danish enough to pull it off. When I finally came across it (and was in a place to recognize it for what it was, unlike my first read in 2017 when my only take-away from my sleep deprived speed reading session was “this dude will sell any of his stuff; neat”), I had a ton of stored potential energy that I hadn’t been able to unleash/direct yet. Most people’s ERE journey involves a lot of…. convincing? that the Full Enchilada is actually worth it and not totally insane. I came to it in Jan 2020 ready to take the blood oath.
jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 5:46 pm
Methinks that lines up well with the yellow vmeme. The idea of working for a greater system as opposed to people, status, rules, tribe, or family. Taking initiative when possible---if not me, then who---and being driven by a greater vision rather than doctrine, strategy, tactics, or tools.
Interestingly, that essay is part of the issue of Palladium that is themed on “cultivating elites”. So the intended audience is somewhat people from elite backgrounds, and the implicit message is “embrace your elite status; do something interesting; don’t just take your Ivy League credentials and do high level spreadsheet pushing for XYZ Top-Level Consultants, go out there and build your empire so you can rule well.” Something like that. Ep 68 of the Palladium Podcast was very interesting, including the point that *everyone* is continually taking a leap of faith. Most people are simply unconsciously taking the leap of faith that the status quo path is the most secure one, it won’t be disrupted, the environment won’t change on them. The risks are ‘hidden’ or are not understood.

People who take intentional Leaps of Faith are a) taking their own sovereignty into their own hands, and b) maybe actually have a better relationship with risk because they at least are aware of it and are keeping their eye on their particular risk vectors, whereas most people don’t even know they’re at risk.
mathiverse wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 11:37 am
I was targeting a $200/mo/person food cost, and gave these parameters:
.$200/mo turns out to about 400cal/$ at our caloric intake levels. (some foods like veggies will be well below this, but if all else fails anything over 400cal/$ is fine)
.$8/lb for meat or less, at 1/4lb meat per person per day (I’ve since revised this down to $6). This is for 100% grass fed, pastured meat, we don’t buy anything else.
.I think I said something like $6/dozen eggs, but it’s easy to find them for $4 or $3/dozen, and we eat no more than 2 eggs/day. Again, these are organic, pasture raised, hippy chickens.

I derived these from making a meal plan that hit my daily caloric intake, and included two eggs and 1/4lb meat, and enough veggies, and came out under $200/mo. It requires pretty much the rest of the food to be very high cal/$: coconut oil at 1300cal/$, lentils similar, oat groats, rice, etc.

If I weren’t about to go traveling, I’d be working on v2 of a food system that gets the cost below $150 and closer to $100, mostly by reducing meat consumption further and finessing the relationship with DW a little bit. But I’m also doing learning wrt longevity and so am holding off making big systemic changes until I’ve incorporated that stuff.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

theanimal wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 2:49 pm
I get that you found ERE many years before 2020 but the journey since then has been incredible. Really inspiring stuff. It reminds me of the question that I've heard Tim Ferriss ask, something like : "What are my goals for the next 5, 10 years? What can I do to achieve that in the next 6 months?"
I love that prompt! “What would it take?” and often the answer is something along the lines of “well, I can drop these four other things I’m doing that are kinda bullshit anyways, take the time to make sure my strategy is straight (most important thing is to do the right things, vs. doing things right), and then unleash the forces of obsession within. e.g. it’s often more about removing obstacles to forward motion rather than trying harder to move forward faster.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by chenda »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 4:44 pm
California. I’m excited to gocheck out The Originals here soon this year though. :)
Great! BTW I Road tripped through Jordan a few years ago so any questions let me know. It was pretty awesome :)

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Re: Axel Heyst's Journal

Post by white belt »

mathiverse wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 11:37 am
This post is from quite a while back, however I was wondering if you could list the food shopping parameters you listed out for your DW? I want to refocus on getting good food for less money and we eat a fairly similar diet (Paleo-ish, low carb) based on reading the posts near the quoted posts, so I am thinking maybe those parameters would be useful for me to consider.
I know this wasn’t directed at me, but I attempted this for many years. Basically you’re going to run into hard limits with the costs of meat. You can substitute fish for meat to save some money. You can hunt or fish for supplemental meat. Your other option is to source and cook offal, which generally should be much cheaper than muscle meats. I did the latter for many years, but there is definitely a learning curve when it comes to preparation (with the exception of heart and maybe liver, you can’t just grill or pan fry a hunk of offal and expect it to taste good). A bonus is that offal have more micronutrients than muscle meats.

Edit: Another “hack” is to incorporate more dairy protein to include whey protein powder. Not sure if that qualifies as paleo anymore.

mathiverse
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Re: Axel Heyst's Journal

Post by mathiverse »

white belt wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 7:38 pm
..there is definitely a learning curve when it comes to preparation (with the exception of heart and maybe liver, you can’t just grill or pan fry a hunk of offal and expect it to taste good). A bonus is that offal have more micronutrients than muscle meats.
Thanks for the info! Any particular recipes you like for different types of offal? Any book you recommend? Any style of cuisine that makes frequent use of offal in ways that you found tasty?

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Re: Axel Heyst's Journal

Post by white belt »

mathiverse wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 7:44 pm
Thanks for the info! Any particular recipes you like for different types of offal? Any book you recommend? Any style of cuisine that makes frequent use of offal in ways that you found tasty?
Start with tongue and heart as those are still muscle meats so the flavor is comparable to regular meat. Then liver as it has a slightly different taste but is still relatively easy to prepare. Kidney is more advanced but not impossible if you soak it. I’ve never prepared other parts like stomach, intestines, etc but there are many recipes out there for such things. In my experience the easiest grass fed/pastures stuff to source in the USA is heart, liver, and tongue from beef, lamb, and chicken.

It’s been years since I’ve made any offal, but the internet is your friend here. Heart usually ends up in a stew and tongue is usually slow cooked. Mexican cuisine is one off the top of my head that makes use of tongue and heart. But you’ll find most global cuisines make use of offal, so it shouldn’t be hard to find recipes.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by theanimal »

Chicken gizzards are another option.

The tongue on deer is one of my favorite cuts, I've never had beef tongue but if it's anything similar it's very good and very easy to prepare. Pan fried heart is also very good. Mexican cuisine also incorporates stomach and intestines, it is a regular feature at most taco stands. Eastern European cuisine makes use of this stuff as well but I think it tends to be more bland than what's found in Latin America.

ETA: Also as with almost everything food related, if you are buying meat you can pay less by buying more at once. Many farms and butchers will sell a half/third/quarter of a cow or large portions of a pig.

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