Easier said than done - Melo's path towards freedom

[MeloTheMelon]

December Update

- Save 25k (6k)
December was a bit more expensive than my usual month, due to a lot of travel to visit several family members. I managed to put 1500€ into my portfolio, but since Crypto tanked the overall networth didn't grow that much. But I guess that's the nature of that asset

- Read 24 Books (7)
Really good progress here. I finished the book on Collaborative Storytelling, but there isn't much to add to what I said a couple posts ago.
Then there was Candide by Voltaire, Show your work by Austin Cleon, and re-read The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco.

- Find something I like to do:
Since I had a couple weeks off work, I actually got to try out some things.
And I took my post about producing stuff to heart and started to work on some project.
I started playing around with a laser cutter/engraver, I liked the work and have a bunch of plans for little projects to do with it. Downside of that is that I can't use it at my place due to the smoke it creates and not being able to ventilate the whole room well enough to not set off the fire alarm every now and then That's why it's now standing at my parents garage, and I will work on some stuff whenever I visit them.
I'm still keeping up the journal, and realized that there are a bunch of ideas in it I would like to store somewhere. Because I was reading Show your work I got the idea to just "store" them on a blog. So I put together a little website and started publishing my ideas there. I don't think many people will stumble over it, since I'm not really talking about / promoting it. It's just meant to be a space for my ideas to live, and if it helps someone that's a bonus.
Last but not least, I had an idea for a fandom wiki which I'm setting up at the moment. It's still in the planning phase, so I'll talk about it once I start to make some progress on it.

I really enjoyed the long vacation I had, and it was a first taste of "retirement". The big thing for me was that I saw that I won't just sit around and not know what to do. Sooner or later I will get an idea and I will be able to just start working on it. In hindsight, I was a lot more productive than it felt during the vacation. All of the free time made me realize how much time my job actually takes up and made me think again about going part-time in the near future. After all I could go down to 16h a week and still save a good amount of my income. Sure, my date for full retirement would be way further in the future, but I always would have time to follow more of my ideas.
Another big thing to consider is that I would like to live closer to my family again. Although sharing a house with my parents was a bit annoying at times, I enjoyed being able to see them and my extended family pretty much every other day, compared to my current situation where I meet my friends maybe once a week.
And well, helping out at my parents stable every now and then is a great workout and feels a lot better than doing some workout routine or going to a gym

Long story short, vacation made a lot more things clear about my ERE and my journey towards it. I definitely have a lot work to do in the next couple months

[MeloTheMelon]

January Update:

- Save 25k (7k)
The drop in the market pretty much got rid of all the profit from the last year. My savings rate this month was 80% and with some money from selling more trading cards on the side I managed to invest 2.000€ this month. I got lucky and bought at what looks like the bottom of the last crash, so this turned out better than I thought it would be.

- Read 24 Books (8)
I read Bill Gates's book on Climate Change. It was a pretty good primer on what is happening, what we have to do, and what kind of innovation we need to have a chance to fight it.
Really enjoyed the book, because it used a bunch of numbers and took a look on all the areas of life, and especially the impact different climate policies and changes might have on developing countries.
I started two other books - The warrior diet, and Algorithms to live by - I'm a good way in for both of them, but haven't finished either because I kinda jump between them a lot. I'll probably finish at least one of them this month.

- Find something I like to do:
I'm still keeping up with blogging, writing 2 posts a week. Lately, they have become a bit long (1.500-2.000 words each) but I'm having fun and it helps a lot with my ideas. Writing them down makes me think about them more in detail and helps me implement them in my life.
I don't know if someone actually reads the posts, but I honestly don't care about that too much
Other than that, I started a little coding project, but I'm not sure if I will keep up with it or drop it once I have a proof of concept

[Gilberto de Piento]

Thanks for the recommendation of the climate change book. I put it on my list of books to read.

[MeloTheMelon]

Long time no see!
Well the last months weren't the easiest and there wasn't much going on when it comes to ERE, other than my savings growing.
I'll just start with the big topic. I just quit my job. Or rather, I'll be leaving my current job at the end of the month. Main reason here was that everything developed further and further away from what I want to do. My daily task got more and more repetitive and I got pulled into a bunch of meetings and organizational topics. This just didn't align at all with me. As an introverted progeammer, I'd rather be just left alone and code on new parts of the system. After complaining about these changes a couple times and nothing happening I decided to leave. Eventhough I will miss the relaxed office and definitely the pay checks...

I decided against jumping into a new job right after leaving this one and want to take some time off, at least a couple months, maybe even a bit more.
I want to use the time off to spend more time with my family, whcih I haven't really seen much the last 4 years, other than when I was visiting during vacations, I also want to explore some hobbies a bit deeper. But more than anything, I want to get a taste for retirement.
Until now, the whole ERE concept was only focused on the savings part, which I made pretty good progress in, but honestly it feels like I'm just saving for a rough idea. What I mean is, I save for an early retirement, but I still have zero clue what I want to do once I reach it. So I thought taking a "mini-retirement" might show me what I really want to do with my time.

To not completely use up all of my savings during that time I'll move back to my parents place. They have a whole unused floor anyways and it will save me a bunch on rent. I'll also help out at the family business for about 8 hours a week. This is mostly so I have "a job" which saves a bunch of money on health insurance. I'll leave the rest of the salary to my parents in exchange for living with them.
So in theory I would be able to live on pretty much nothing, at least for a while.

I don't really have much planned for the first couple weeks. The only big thing I want to do is declutter. My brother and I have a bunch of stuff stored at our parents place and it's time to get rid of all the unneeded things. There is so much stuff that nobody used for over a decade, so getting rid of it will be a good start to reducing the "stuff" I have in my life.

For now the main tasks on my to-do list is mostly getting a bunch of paper work done. Even in the EU moving between countries comes with a bunch of forms

PS: I think I'll keep updating this journal every now and then instead of monthly. I'd rather just make a new post when there is a big change, than posting about the same thing every month.

[MeloTheMelon]

This will be an odd update, but a lot has changed since I posted here the last time.

I lived with my parents for the last ~5 months, helping out at the stable for a couple of hours every other day. I have to admit that the physical work was a welcome change from the office job, even if I dreaded it every now and then - especially when the weather was terrible

Like I mentioned in the last post, I spend a good amount of time decluttering and just selling stuff I had stored away. In the end, I managed to make around 2000€ just from that. Which mostly came from selling trading cards and video games. I still have a bunch of things I want to sell, but I'll get to those when I have some more time.

But even with working some hours, selling stuff, and living with family, I pretty much cleared out my savings. So here's how I got rid of ~45k in 5 months, and all without great parties, expensive cars, or crypto coins
Long story short, I gave it away. My parents found their dream house, they bought it almost completely in cash and I wanted to support them. They supported me throughout my studies, paying for my rent, or study fees while I was studying in the UK, and giving them my savings so they can get a place for themselves for once was the minimum I could do to give something back.

I know my parents won't get a huge amount from their retirement funds once they retire (it's not that far in the future) and by helping them get the house I know they'll always have a roof above their heads. I saved up that money in about 2 years, so I guess I can get back to that soon-ish anyways.

The other big change is that I'm back working a real job. I got an offer from an old colleague. Since the beginning of the month, I'm back working for a university, supporting a medical computer science research group. They work on a bunch of projects, but I focus on a single project. Which is one of the big differences from my last job. The salary is alright, but I reduced my hours to four days a week. This leaves a lot more time to explore hobbies.

The big downside to this job in comparison to the last one is that I lost the employee apartment. So my monthly rent is about 3x higher. I could have gotten a cheaper apartment, but all of those were pretty far away, which would have led to long commutes and either a bunch of train tickets or a car. With the current apartment, the rent is higher, but I can walk to the office, stores, etc.

On the upside, I really like the project - without boring everyone it's about improving cancer therapy - and the team. For once I actually enjoy going to work, and with the 3-day weekend, I feel like I have enough time to follow my ideas and try out new things. I'm also using this time to improve/fix things in my life that I'm unhappy with. So that might lead to some bigger changes in the next months.

In summary, I feel like I traded my high savings rate for happiness. I don't mind taking longer to reach ERE if I'm happy doing what I do. This also shows a change of focus. Before I always looked at the financial aspects of any choice. Now I value happiness a lot more.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not partying, buying exotic cars on credit, or going around throwing money at people. I always was frugal and I don't think I could change that. But I don't rule out things anymore just because they don't make financial sense. It's not all black and white anymore.

[Scott 2]

Your high savings rate made the space to help your parents. I'd call that a success by any measure, even though the money is gone.

The new job sounds ideal. Your low spend afforded the option to work less, on something meaningful. Congrats.

To me, the ability to make choices like this a key benefit of living frugally. There's no need to reach FIRE before making them.

[shelob]

Hey there!
Long time no see. It's cool to hear from you again. Sounds like you're doing great, and focusing on what matters to you. Congratulations on making the decision to help your parents. I'm not sure if I'd have had it in me to do the same, but I do admire you for it.
FWIW, if the stories of other forum members are any indication, with your shift in perspective you'll eventually end up spending less money, and being less reliant on it, than before.
A family member faced the same dilemma you do re: apartment location. She solved it by having a 1h bike commute each way. I'm galaxies away from her, but she's my inspiration for that sort of thing.

[MeloTheMelon]

Happy Holidays to all of you!

@scott I definitely count all of it as a success even if it looks negative on paper. I full-heartedly agree with your last sentence. Being able to make those decisions is what I'm really working towards, not a number. It also reminds me of a quote I heard a while ago: "People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can't fathom."

@shelob Yeah, I didn't really post the last months since everything was a bit chaotic. I'll probably return to posting more regularly once I get into a bit of a routine again.
Regarding the apartment situation, I thought about that, but I really want to be in the office most days. If I would work from home half the days I probably would also be fine living further away. For now, I'm glad I found one close to the office with everything else within walking distance, that way I still can live without a car.

[MeloTheMelon]

Update from like half a year later.
I'm still in the somewhat too big apartment. It's still pretty much empty.
For furniture I got a bed and desk with some chairs (plus the kitchen that was already here) I don't feel like I need much more. Sometimes a second desk would be nice, especially when working from home, and maybe a bookcase since right now they just stack on the floor. But I don't feel like I'm missing anything important furniture-wise.
I kept looking for cheaper / smaller apartments but there's just nothing coming up. The area is more like a village and apartments are either 2+ bedrooms or way too expensive studio apartments.
I guess I'll just stay in this one for the next year or so until my contract runs out.

Savings rate is around 50% +/- a bit depending on the month. Which I'm fine with considering that I also reduced my hours to 4 days a week.

The struggle right now is more about life itself. I have this feeling of my life fleeting by without anything happening in it. Weeks go by in a blink of an eye and my life is still the same. Week after week I'm doing the same stuff, and I just can't break free from it. I guess the problem is that I don't really know what to do with my time.
IIRC Jacob mentioned once that people who are unhappy in their retirements are those who don't know what to do with their time once they don't have to work anymore. I think that really hits me right now, even with working. I don't really have anything I'm working towards, no interesting hobbies, nothing to do outside of work. But I also can't get myself to try anything out. I feel like I'm not interested in anything.
I got myself to work out again, look at my diet, and fix my sleep schedule, in hopes that that might change my mood but it didn't.
I'm spending a lot of time just walking around lately. I wanted to get away from the PC since I thought - and still think - that that might be part of the problem. But just walking around isn't really changing anything either.

It feels a bit like it should be the time in my life when I should collect experiences, but all I do is waste my time away.
I'm not sure what to change or how to get out of this rut, but I guess only time will show.

Let's hope the next update is on a happier note

[ertyu]

Some recommend to decide on the experiences you want to have rationally, plan and schedule them, and make yourself go even if you don't feel like it. If you really don't feel like it, incorporate a jurnaling element: before going, rate how much you expect to enjoy the activity (say 3 out of 10) and then, after completing the activity, rate how much you actually enjoyed it. Occasionally, you'll get results along the lines of, "yeah this did really suck balls" but in general people find they enjoyed it much more than they anticipated.

And then, eventually, the very fact that you've done things and you're seeing results will start making you feel better

good luck

[MeloTheMelon]

Update from another 6 months later.

Nothing changed yet in the apartment situation. It's still only a bed, dinner table, and the kitchen that was already there. I don't feel I need much more now except maybe a bookcase. I don't plan to stay here for that much longer, so I don't mind.

Savings are still going fine and I added a good chunk to the nest egg due to a small end-of-year bonus and a pretty big tax return. But I could definitely save more, especially if I start using a real budget again. Right now I'm only tracking my expenses. I've set up my old budget sheet again for January and see what I need to adjust as I go.

@ertyu What you said is something I've been thinking about for a while now. The main problem I can find is that I don't really have many social connections at the new place, especially outside of work. And the experiences I'd like to have usually have to do with other people, be it friends or family.

For almost a decade now I've been travelling between my parent's town in Austria and my university/job in Germany all the time. Usually, I was happy whenever I was back in Germany, I had my social life there with friends from the university. Since all of us have graduated we kinda split up though and got scattered to different places. It now shifted a lot and I feel happier in Austria, being close to my family and some friends from high school. I also think that I just have more options and motivation there, even if the job market is terrible in comparison.

My parents managed to pay off their mortgage in a year and I'm super proud of them. The plan at first was to pay back the 60k they had to borrow for the house over six years, but they hated the feeling of being in debt and started working more and selling a bunch of stuff that accumulated over the years to pay it back as quickly as possible. I still have my room there and the option to either turn the basement into a small apartment (that would only need a small kitchen) or renovate the attic (that would be amazing but way more work).
I could have my own place there, save rent and only contribute to the yearly costs of the house.

I want to move back here sometime next year, although the details aren't really clear yet. I have another 3 weeks of vacation over the holidays which I want to use to think this through and think about my life in general.

Right now I'm using my free time to re-read the ERE book and take some notes while trying to come up with a rough plan for the next year.
I also want to be a bit more active here and will read through a couple of threads to get some inspiration.

[mountainFrugal]

I want to move back here sometime next year, although the details aren't really clear yet. I have another 3 weeks of vacation over the holidays which I want to use to think this through and think about my life in general.

Right now I'm using my free time to re-read the ERE book and take some notes while trying to come up with a rough plan for the next year.
I also want to be a bit more active here and will read through a couple of threads to get some inspiration.

If you had to make a plan today what would it be? It can always be refined later.

[MeloTheMelon]

If you had to make a plan today what would it be? It can always be refined later.

Well, the plan right now is to get a one-on-one meeting with my boss and talk about working remotely from Austria. We did touch on that point before I started, but I didn't like the idea of working with a team and people I had never really seen before. From a pure work perspective, there is no real reason to not allow it, but I have no clue about all the bureaucratic things that need to be checked for me to work remotely from a different country.
I like the job, the projects I work on, and the people I work with so I don't want to leave the job, but if I can't work remotely I'll have to look for something else.
It's not hard to find a job in my field, the bigger problem is to find something I see as valuable work. But I'll think about those things after the talk with my boss.

The other parts of the rough plan for the next year are mostly about coming up with small projects to work on during my free time to build up some skills. I've already started with that by fixing a couple of broken things around the house. I actually managed to get an old grandfather clock to run again, which was one of the things I thought you'd need an "expert" for, but after two hours of watching videos and trying out things, it's running again.
I have an old bike which is next on the list. That only needs some new breaks and after that, it should be good to go.

Once I'm back in my apartment I want to try out growing some food. I'm not sure how much I can do indoors, but something like tomatoes shouldn't be a problem.

[MeloTheMelon]

I read through my past journal and decided to give a bit more detailed update and go back to the style I had at the beginning. So here it goes:

# Money

Income: ~2286€ after taxes
Estimated expenses: 1.136€
Estimated savings rate: ~48%

Savings: 13.820 on savings account (+ ~3.5k in checking)

### Income
I'm currently only working 4 days a week, the easiest way to increase my income would be to increase my hours.
Going back to full-time would mean a take-home salary increase of ~450€
If I want to increase my income further I'd have to look into finding a new job. As a research assistant, my salary only increases by the years I've worked (and the occasional systemic pay raise). I'm not sure if I want to take that step because the current job is low-stress and leaves a lot of time to do other things.

### Expenses
This looks so bad compared to where I was two years ago. The big offender is the apartment. I now pay 872€ if I include all the utilities for a two-room apartment that's mostly empty. I've been looking for smaller ones but the prices have skyrocketed and the only "cheaper" ones are pretty far away from my workplace. Which would mean the savings from rent would go towards transportation. Right now the apartment is two blocks away from the office and everything else one could need, which means I walk everywhere.
There are some other areas where I could shave off a couple of euros, but I'm not spending much on things other than necessities.
120€ are for groceries, 90€ are put aside for different occasional purchases (eating out, travelling to family, clothes, and birthday/Christmas gifts), and ~50 go towards a monthly public transport ticket. That's pretty much it.

### Future ToDos:
- Go back to full-time
- Negotiate a remote position / if not possible look for a remote job

------

# Skills

I want to work on a couple of skills in the next months some of them work-related and others not, I'll list them up and see what I can do for them.

### Work related
I got the "time budget" to use 20% of my hours on personal projects - as long as they are roughly useful for the institute - which I want to use to build up some new skills.
Some ideas are floating around that would make my day-to-day job easier and build up some skills which would be great for personal projects/side hustles too. At the moment I'm focused a lot on database management and data engineering, the projects in mind would allow me to do full-stack development.

### Gardening
Gardening has been on my list of things to learn for a while now. I don't have access to a garden, but like I said earlier, the apartment is pretty much empty and there is a decently-sized balcony too. I'll focus on vegetables I use regularly that are somewhat expensive. In the beginning, the idea is to try and grow some tomatoes and bell peppers.

### Investing
Another thing I want to start looking into is investing in farmland and forests. I've been thinking a lot about what to do with my savings and I'm not happy with either the stock market or "normal" real estate. So I started looking at it from a different point of view. The resources I need to survive are shelter, water & food, and a bit of energy.

Shelter is something I have by owning half of my parent's house and always being able to move into the basement.
Water isn't anything I can "farm or generate" other than collecting rainwater.
Food could be grown in the garden or (in higher quantities) on a field.
Energy could be generated by a bunch of technologies, but having firewood sounds like a decent option (I'm used to heating houses with wood and like how it can be decoupled from companies/institutions).

The idea is to generate the resources I need to live, like food and firewood, and sell whatever is left over. That's something I can't do while still working a full-time job in the city, but nothing keeps me from buying the needed land and renting it out to farmers etc.
OTOH this is a pretty new idea and I haven't looked into it at all. I want to read up on this and do my research. And it's not like I can get far with my current savings anyway:lol:

------

# January ToDos

- Sort out my work situation
- Start the gardening project
- Research farmland investing
- Use the detailed budget and look for ways to save some cash

[delay]

Thanks for sharing your journal!

The struggle right now is more about life itself. I have this feeling of my life fleeting by without anything happening in it. Weeks go by in a blink of an eye and my life is still the same. Week after week I'm doing the same stuff, and I just can't break free from it. I guess the problem is that I don't really know what to do with my time.

The infrastructure for social life is shrinking. Pubs, sporting clubs and churches are empty. It's easy to end up in a kind of virtual world. Like browsing social media or imagining a future self.

It's quite hard to break out of that. The now is harsh, arbitrary and bleak compared to social media. Yet it helps to focus on the now. What can you do to make the best of today? What would you like to eat? Who can you meet? Listen to your inner self.

Income: ~2286€ after taxes
Estimated expenses: 1.136€
...
I now pay 872€ if I include all the utilities for a two-room apartment that's mostly empty. I've been looking for smaller ones but the prices have skyrocketed and the only "cheaper" ones are pretty far away from my workplace.

Looks like you're paying 872 / 2,286 = 38% of your income in rent, and 872 / 1,136 = 77% of your expenses. Spending 1,136 of a 2,286 income it takes about 25 years to save 25x your yearly expenses. If you work five days instead of four for 450 additional income it takes 18 years. Say you are 30 years old, you'd be working a day extra until your 48th birthday instead of your 55th birthday.

These seem like really long timelines. If I were in your shoes, I'd focus on how I would enjoy the coming years, not those 25 years away.

Investing in farmland is an interesting idea! I looked a while ago and found a cooperative that did just that. But they are now switching from investment to charity and my money will be used to promote sustainable farming. So interested to learn how you fare!

[MeloTheMelon]

Looks like you're paying 872 / 2,286 = 38% of your income in rent, and 872 / 1,136 = 77% of your expenses. Spending 1,136 of a 2,286 income it takes about 25 years to save 25x your yearly expenses. If you work five days instead of four for 450 additional income it takes 18 years. Say you are 30 years old, you'd be working a day extra until your 48th birthday instead of your 55th birthday.

These seem like really long timelines. If I were in your shoes, I'd focus on how I would enjoy the coming years, not those 25 years away.

The crux is that if I can quit my job, I can get out of the apartment and reduce my rent to about 200 a month. So the timeline gets a lot shorter. My monthly expenses would go down to around 500 a month, probably a bit less since I also won't have to spend as much on train tickets and the like.
With the extra income from working more, I'd get the number down to about ~7.5 years.

[loutfard]

The crux is that if I can quit my job, I can get out of the apartment and reduce my rent to about 200 a month.

May I be curious and ask how you can rent in Germany for 200€ per month? I am looking for ways to reduce our housing cost in a way acceptable to both my partner and myself. Even a 12 m² student room with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities is >400€ over here, not allowed for a non-student to live in and noisy.

[MeloTheMelon]

May I be curious and ask how you can rent in Germany for 200€ per month? I am looking for ways to reduce our housing cost in a way acceptable to both my partner and myself. Even a 12 m² student room with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities is >400€ over here, not allowed for a non-student to live in and noisy.

My family owns a house with a basement apartment that isn't in use at all. The 200€ would be my share of utilities and a bit to put aside for potential repairs in the future. So that answer probably won't help you much.

However, when I lived in Munich I managed to get a "company-sponsored" apartment, that wasn't much more than a student room, but I also only paid ~300€ with utilities included. During that time I worked for the hospital there and got one rather quickly (about 3 months after applying for one). Back then they also told me that there are bigger ones for families and that you can even get one if you only work part-time. But that changes depending on the company. Maybe that's an option for you.

[loutfard]

My family owns a house with a basement apartment that isn't in use at all. The 200€ would be my share of utilities and a bit to put aside for potential repairs in the future. So that answer probably won't help you much.

It would have, if my wife hadn't vetoed living in my parents' attic. It's over 70 m² not including the large upper attic storage, with a bathroom already installed and trivially separated from the rest of the house. We both love my parents dearly, and they're also about the least nosy people imaginable. Still, my wife is worried about our privacy.

My parents' house is also smack in the middle between my two workplaces - on site about twice a week. Hers - on site about twice a week too- is walking distance. That won't help convince her to move there either.

I suspect her main hesitation is about their old age though. Living there seeing my parents' old age set in probably terrifies her. My siblings respectively care about my parents very little, overexploit them, or would do anything for them if not for their chronic fatigue syndrome. Chances are the work of organising their caregiving would fall mostly on us anyway, only from further away instead of nearby. Not to mention some of the caregiving tasks themselves.

I can only respect my wife's point of view and think of alternatives.

However, when I lived in Munich I managed to get a "company-sponsored" apartment.
Maybe that's an option for you.

Unfortunately not without leaving my luxury meaningful full-time pay less-than-part-time-work public sector job.

We live in my house in a very desirable spot in the very centre of a city slowly turning into a little Cambridge. University related tech and health jobs are pushing out median income earners. My unrealised home equity is an unhealthy >90% of our net worth. By itself, it would make up a <5% SWR investment portfolio for us both if and when realised.

My line of exploration now goes in three directions:
- converting our primary residence to a short term rental when we're away. The least intrusive path.
- tiny houses. These are relatively cheap and bear less of the strong stigma associated with trailers. Finding a spot for it would be the trickiest bit. Urban planning is super restrictive. The only trailer park within 10km is a gypsy camp. My wife would rather die than live there. The rest are further away, bad quality, and almost exclusively offer extortionate contracts. "Don't ask, don't tell" and illegally living in a tiny house in the garden of trusted acquaintances seems to be the most realistic path.
- selling the house and moving to a humble 40-50 m² apartment nearby

Having written this, I realise I don't want to divert attention from your journal too much. Good luck deciding where to live, and a happy 2024!

[MeloTheMelon]

January Update

Let's start with the boring stuff:

# Money

Income: ~2.286€
Expenses: ~1.194€

Other income sources: ~115€
This was mostly from selling stuff I had lying around at my parent's place.
There's more of that but I only can take a couple of things with me whenever I visit.
I'm not sure if I want to throw all of that into savings or maybe use it to build up a budget for random hobbies or business ideas.
For now, the split is 40% savings, 40% random projects, and 20% whatever I want (mostly hot chocolate and pastries).

Budgeting went fine, I only was a couple of euros over some areas (eating out and transportation) which was mostly due to staying with my family and I made up for that by not having to buy groceries, so it evens out.

Some holes I plugged. I had a monthly ticket for public transportation in Germany costing me 49€ a month. I realized that I don't use it often enough and that I will pay less if I just stick to single-use / day tickets when I need them. I cancelled the subscription and will track how much I save through that.
I also talked to my energy provider about my monthly payments, due to it being a new contract they just assumed a "normal" energy usage for me for the first year. Since that year is over and I used less than half of what they estimated I should get some money back and my monthly bill should get reduced. Haven't heard back from them yet, but they also didn't charge me for January, so no clue what is going on there.

Considering that I only needed 322€ without rent/utilities. I'm pretty happy about the month. I know there are some areas I can improve, especially the living situation, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Savings: 14.960 on savings account (+ ~3.5k in checking)
Thinking about it, I probably just transfer 40€ from the random project budget to savings so it's an even 15k.

### Job stuff
I had a short meeting with my boss about the whole work situation.

My contract will run out in 10 months. These limited-time contracts are normal due to the team being paid through research projects and grants. We have way more project proposals and grants lying around than we can fill. I can sign a new contract for another 2 years any time I want, so I won't be out of a job if I don't want to be.

My boss in general is not against me working remotely from my parent's place, his boss also would be on board. The problem is that none of us have a clue if the company will allow it since it is a pretty big bureaucratic problem. Taxes, insurance, and all that stuff.
We asked our point of contact in the HR department for a meeting and just hope there is a simple solution.

I also thought about "freelancing" for the same team. That way I could handle all the tax stuff and it would be less of a hassle. There are a bunch of regulations though, and again dozens of bureaucratic problems because of sensitive data, the projects being for the German government, and so on.

To be honest, I'm not hopeful that I will get the chance to do this job remotely. But I like the team and the stuff we work on, and the salary-to-workload ratio is amazing. So I'll wait until I get a definitive no and in the meantime look around for something else in Austria.

On the upside, there is zero problem with me working more
If I want to go back to full-time and cash in the extra ~500€ we can do that without much hassle at the beginning of a month. I'm thinking about that starting with March, but I'm not 100% sure about it yet.

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# Skills
This went a bit differently than I planned.

### Investing
I started to look into it a bit more and decided that it just wasn't worth it with my current savings to waste time on big investment plans. I'll ignore that until I have 50k in savings and reconsider then.

### Gardening
I simply didn't get to it yet. I did read Paul Wheaton's Building a Better World in Your Backyard, which sparked some ideas. But the last weeks were pretty busy.

### Work Related
I have the ok to work on a small internal tool. Nothing big, but as someone who always only worked on backend stuff I'm happy to get the chance to do some full-stack development. That will also come in handy if I ever have some ideas for coding projects in the future.

### Writing / Reading
I've upped my time with books, although mostly fiction, I'll get to why later.
I also started writing my own little story. Nothing special and nothing "good", at the moment I'm simply typing away on a first draft. It's more about building the habit of writing consistently since it is something I always enjoyed and never really managed to stick with. I've only been "forcing" myself to write daily since last week. In that time I did manage to write a bit over 8k words on the story. My daily goal is 500 words, but usually, I get into a flow state and just keep typing for a while.

### Exercise
I planned to get back into working out, but caught a pretty bad cold and was in bed for 2 weeks. I'm still recovering, so working out is postponed for another week or so until I feel fit again. But it's something I have on my mind and want to get back into.

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# Random Rambling
At the beginning of the month, I was reading through a couple of journals here to try and figure out what I want, since I have a bunch of different paths for my life in mind and depending on the day it seems to change.

While doing that I realized that the whole "you are the average of the people you spend time with" applies way too much to my wants. Although it's more "my wants are the average of the content I consume".
While reading the Wheaton book I thought I wanted a homestead, days later I would see some travel videos by vanlife people and I'd think that's what I want, and so on.

So for now I limit what I consume. This is also why I "banned" non-fiction for now, and I try to limit my input on most topics. The only exception right now is writing-related, which allows me to consume one piece of content a day. The main thought behind that is that it helps me learn and keeps me motivated to write every day.

I'd like to completely go offline for a while, but that's kinda complicated with my job. So I'll keep that in mind for the next time I'll have some time off, which will most likely be around the end of March.

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# February ToDos

- Move forward with the work situation once I get a reply from HR
- Keep writing
- Try to de-connect from the online world a bit more