not sure but i'll try Journal

[not sure]

Hi there!

My first post, so pls don't judge if something don't look right.

I was inspired by the Frugalchicos' journal and a few others, so want to try as well.

Why: I'm the kind of person who needs to work towards goals or deadlines.
Without a financial goal, I tend to spend $ on crap. As a woman, I am pretty good at finding it
I also need accountability and know that posting something for others to see will give me a kick in the rear.

So here you go, thank you for reading! You are the reason I am on this forum

A bit about me:

I'm in my 30s, recently moved to the beautiful Colorado with my husband.
Financially, we are doing okay - no debt and a bit of savings. We both work reasonably well paying jobs.
We aren't big spenders, but I think we can be more intentional and (especially me) disciplined with it.

What attracts me in ERE is its application beyond the purely financial perspective.

My first introduction to ERE was around 2013. I read through the website, but it sounded a bit too radical for me. Now I find myself coming back to it and mulling it over more closely. This pandemic and the crazy US market situation is making me want to become more self-reliant.

So I plan to be posting financial and personal development goals and monthly progress towards them.
Still in the process of figuring what they are!

[Jiimmy]

Welcome! I look forward to following along.

I don't think there's a "right" and a "wrong" way to write a journal. This is your space, feel free to get as weird as you want!

[not sure]

Starting point for the journey:

Financial:
Total assets 212k
These are split between retirement, HSA, brokerage, cash accounts and Treasury i-Bonds.

Life:
Living in CO, renting at the moment.
Overall we are blessed in many areas, but it's been difficult to make friends in a new area during COVID.
DH and I live like in a bubble. Thankfully we still get along pretty well

Habits:
Good reading/learning habits
Ok eating habits, poor snacking habit
Poor exercise habits

Goals:

Financial:
Bring total fin assets to 500k by 2025.
It's a stretch with our current savings rate, but I feel it's achievable.
This will allow us much more flexibility in work and living situation, ability to travel to see family overseas, and one of us to stay at home if we decide to start a family.

Life:
Continue living in CO
Get a dog by 2022
Maybe start a family by 2025
Maybe buy a house if it makes sense (financially & geographically in relation to work, family, etc) also by 2025

Short-term: do things outside the home to meet new people.
Continue exploring the area (at least 1 new trail every week)

Habits:
This is the tricky one.
Develop good exercise habits in the next 2 mo: by March 2021 (daily exercise, stretches, less sitting work)

[not sure]

@Jimmy,

Thanks for the encouragement!

Your charts are fascinating, by the way, it's cool that you are able and willing to track that part of your life in so much detail!

[Stahlmann]

about craziness

there are no healthy people, they are just undiagnosed

anyway, good luck and have fun here.

[not sure]

I suspect I won't be posting so frequently in the future, but since I started working on my habits, I feel it's important to take stock and adjust frequently.

Stretching: 3/3

Less sitting: 2/3 - sat in my bean bag for like 3.5 hours straight reading yesterday. Arrgh...

Saturday hike: score! was a tough uphill one AND I discovered a new trail

Daily walk: barely 3/3 - I've been trying to walk at least 3 miles a day. I have a spreadsheet where I track it. Although I walked on all 3 days, the average was well below 3mi. Tomorrow, I will go for a 3 mi walk right after work.

Snacking: did okay, I think. I was good with portions on the weekend and went into the office today, so no snacking there.

Also, making veggie enchiladas today, so feeling pretty accomplished in the kitchen

[not sure]

Was meaning to get to it earlier, but ...

January numbers
INCOME (take home): $7,346

TOTAL EXPENSES: $3,793; % of income: 52%

Rent: $995
Food: $374
Auto: $204 (had some maintenance+gas)
Bills: $147
Shopping: $85 (books+ misc. supplies)
SUB-TOTAL: $1,805; % of Income: 25%

Gifts+Donations: $1988 (higher than normal, probably catching up on prior month)

Auto was high due to car maintenance. Gas was actually ~$60.
Food was high due to impulse purchases after Christmas/NY

Overall, I am pleasantly surprised - I thought our expenses would be well above 52%
Yet, there is room for improvement

Items to work on for Feb:
1) Determine if internet service is necessary. Possibly cut $45 from bills. We can hot-spot off phones, but bandwidth may be an issue for WFH
2) Spend less on food: goal $240. No impulse food purchases

[AxelHeyst]

I've found it tolerable to WFH off cell phone hotspot, even when throttled to 600kbs. Probably, even if you have an unlimited plan, there's some amount of gigglebytes after which you'll be "throttled" (mine is 20GB). Be sure to hit that point and see if your work habits are still good with that.

Welcome!

[not sure]

that's a really good idea, @AH, I'll try to run it down to the throttled amount. Not sure what that is, as we have a plan with a fam. member, but I can def. monitor usage from my phone

[not sure]

Update on habits:

Stretching: 4/4 - well done me
Walking every day: 4/4 - it's been pretty cold, so I haven't consistently walked all 3mi but averaged 2.4
Less sitting: ok, had 1-3 hours of standing desk work every day, did not sit for a long time reading a book

Less snacking - I am re-casting it as structured eating in order to track better.
Because when I'm at home and doing mundane work, it's hard to track what success means. A couple of bites here and there, semi-healthy snacks like dried figs, a piece of bread with yummy havarti cheese, extra helping during dinner - all that adds up to way more food than I need.

Structured eating will be:
1) oats and coffee for breakfast (my usual)
2) fruit around 10-11
3) lunch around 12:30
4) snack (1-2 fist sized depending on calorie density) around 3
5) dinner 6-8:30 (whenever works)

Coffee: up to 4 cups a day, no more than 3 caffeinated
Tea: unlimited
Beer/other alcohol: once a week (Fri or Sat)

Update on $
Doing okay with our grocery budget so far - spent just over half and a large Costco shop for the month is behind us
Checking into hotspot for internet with mixed success. I definitely notice a difference b/w hotspot and WiFi. Question is: is it bad enough to warrant $45/mo ?

Other
It's going to be pretty cold outside this weekend, so our heating bill will be up this month. Tried insulating a large window/sliding door in the living area by having an extra sheet (super large synthetic table cloth) behind the blinds & putting some towels on the floor near the door. Probably not as effective as blankets, but the I'm afraid the railing wouldn't hold their weight...

Anyone here got ideas for insulating windows/sliding doors in a rental? (we don't want anything permanent or too expensive)
Ours is a large one, essentially one wall in the living room is that window/sliding door.

[AxelHeyst]

Insulating large windows - you might check out reflectix, it's basically bubble wrap with tin foil on both sides, you can get it in a roll at any big box hardware store. It's super light and thin, you could just tape it at the frames. It will look like you're living in some sort of EMP-shielded Enemy Of the State faraday cage, unless you dress it up with some sheets or tapestries or something.

"window inserts" or "storm windows" can effectively turn a window in to a dual pane window, but I'm pretty sure those are quite expensive, particularly at sliding glass door level.

[not sure]

Thanks, @AH!
I'll look into it. May be good for wrapping around outdoor pipes, too, - woke up this morning to no cold water in the kitchen.
Gotta love cheaply built rental units

I don't care how we look, and my husband may get a kick out of Faraday cage

[AxelHeyst]

Hm, reflectix might work fine for outdoor pipes if you gave it a few wraps around with leftovers, but they do sell pipe-insulation designed for that job which I'm guessing would be cheaper and do a better job.

[not sure]

Insulation project done.
My bad, turned out the pipes in question were not actually outside.
Our kitchen sink is on the outside wall and the hole through which the pipe came in had a significant crack.

So we got some foam sealant, a roll of reflective and plastic painter's drop cloth ($20 all up). Had painter's tape, double sided tape, and Scotch at home.

Sealant went into the cracks, Reflectix went to insulate under the sink cabinet and on the inside of the sliding door, plastic got draped all around the window+door pane and secured with double sided tape on 3 sides and towels on the floor.

Cold water is running again and the sliding door+window feels significantly less drafty.

[not sure]

Time for some updates.

I've been reading Atomic Habits by James Clear over the last few weeks - good book.
Inspired me to consciously track habits I want to create.

One of the graphs at the beginning of the book got burnt into my memory: the one which essentially demonstrates "compounding interest" of good habits over time. And the same for bad habits. Long term, our habits truly make us who we are.

So I've got quite a few new habits I want to start introducing!
But, baby steps - gotta finish the month of Feb with these few I already started.

Stretching: 4.5/5, did not finish all the exercises one of the days
Walking every day: 5/5, average 3.6 mi
Less sitting: 4/5, wasn't feeling well one of the days
Less snacking, aka structured eating: 2/5. But overall some positive improvement even on the 3 days when I snacked.

Update on $
Tracking well right now but will probably have entertainment expenses towards the end of the month - going skiing with family for a couple of days.

[not sure]

February numbers
INCOME (take home): $7,371

TOTAL EXPENSES: $3,390; % of income: 46%

Rent: $995
Food: $272
Auto: $600 (auto insurance+gas was ~100)
Bills: $160
Shopping: $160 (misc. supplies, incl pharmacy, home projects, ski boots)
Activities: $115 (ski rental, museum, bison ranch tour, prof development meeting)
SUB-TOTAL: $2,302; % of Income: 31%

Gifts+Donations: $1088

Higher spending this month due to semi-annual auto insurance payment & activities. They were fun, although my goal would be to do about half the stuff we did in a month.

From last month's goals:

Managed to bring food down a bit, although still aiming to cut ~$30 from this level. I bought a few bulk items because they were on special, so confident we can bring this down.

Cutting the internet bill - I tested the phone hotspot and can make it work, but now DH is not sure. So this may go either way.

I am now tracking walks, stretching, and a few other daily habits in a spreadsheet. Has been very beneficial so far.

Items to work on for Mar:

1) Spend less on food: goal $240. Will try a different tactics: to underspend on the first 2-3 weekly shops in a month, to gain buffer for such purchases.
2) Find inexpensive skis (< $100). We still have a couple of days on our (gifted) lift passes, and I am confident we'll ski at least 4-5 days next year. So it makes sense to get some inexpensive gear.

[not sure]

I realised that thinking about ER makes me dislike work more. Or maybe I am still adjusting to a new role and a new workplace. I changed jobs a few months ago. I catch myself just not being motivated enough to strive to do better, learn faster, make a difference. And it's sad, I don't like being in this situation.

I am thankful for having a job during a pandemic, it should be interesting as it's a new and exciting field, but so far, my heart's not in it. Sigh...
Maybe it'll get better with time, maybe I'll have to compartmentalise my ERE thoughts and ideas, or maybe I'll start thinking about changing jobs again.
I feel responsible to the company that hired me, the team of people who trained me, so I wouldn't want to leave soon.

I am definitely not extreme in my savings so far, catch myself thinking of buying many "luxury" items, like a bunch of notebooks. Just because I like to take copious notes at work and the paper the company provides is the wrong format. I am sticker for stitched bound notebooks, don't like legal pads or spiral ones... The only compromise I made was to try find some at Family Dollar rather than Target...

A long way to go for me

[Lemur]

@not sure

Same boat lately with regards to work...adjusting to a new role has been very difficult. What helps me sometimes I dedicating 1 hour/lecture a day to upskilling. I'm doing so through a Udemy course. I skipped today though due to lack of motivation but I do find I feel better when I focus on things outside of work. I always say lately life is great between 5:30PM and 8:30AM

[AxelHeyst]

I hear you on the notebooks thing, that's a weak spot for me for sure. My "solution" was to make my own notebooks, but I only got halfway through that project and I'm going to need to practice a bit more before I make notebooks I'm actually happy to use.

And I think that bind of ER making you dislike work is a huge issue all aspiring ER folk have to deal with. You need to maintain *some* level of dissatisfaction, otherwise you'll have low motivation to stick to your strategy and ER. Jacob has a post on it (and it's in the book somewhere too if I recall, end of CH1 I think). But... dissatisfaction sucks! You don't want to defer happiness until you ER.

The only advice I can give here is to see if you can create a "schedule" of thinking about your long term goals, and checking in to make sure that your day to day activities are in support of those goals. e.g. once a week, check all your FI spreadsheets, think about your FI date, dream about what that'll be like, check to make sure your habits are on track, whatever that practice looks like for you. But during the week, try to not reflexively check that stuff, try to be more present-moment focused, enjoying the process of work. Perhaps pretend you *are* FI, you've just chosen to continue working for a bit because you enjoy the work and the people, if that helps. Easier said than done though.

[not sure]

Good advice, Lemur and Axel.
I'll need to find ways to incorporate both continuous learning/self improvement and scheduled FI thinking.
Which would mean reading less of this forum, among other things

I think we become what we feed our mind with, so frequently pondering the dissonance between the desired and the actual state could definitely lead to damage. In my case, damage would be to quit prematurely, my job is really not that bad and pays well.

On making my own notebooks - I am sure that'll cost me more in failed attempts I tried Rocketbook for a while - nice concept, pages are made of plastic, so you can write on it with a special pen, take a photo, then erase and write again. I use that for journaling. But it's hard to reference when you need to find info from 3 months back. So it won't do for work purposes. And grr, it's spiral-bound, too. And pens for it are expensive.

@Lemur, by the way, my high school nickname was "lemur" so I thought of taking that name here, but you beat me to it!
I had a lemur growing up, one like this: https://img.highriverlabs.com/img/simpl ... lori-3.jpg