Blackjack's Briefs

Where are you and where are you going?
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Blackjack
Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

Hey everybody, I’m Blackjack. I've been an on and off reader of this blog for 7-8 years, practiced ERE for a while (had an old account I can’t be bothered trying to find these days), and then I got distracted chasing other goals for a while. Anyways, I've been spending a lot of time more recently focusing on systems thinking for living a life that I want ethically while trying my best to contribute towards fixing the world instead of destroying it, and I find myself back here (thanks Jacob for that interesting talk on Emergent Renaissance Ecology). I ended up heading back this way again via many different paths (zero waste (and plant based eating), permaculture, and systems thinking mostly). My investing knowledge in the explicit case of ERE is pretty weak, and I'm very open to advice here. Currently living in a VHCOL area, with all of the downsides of property costs, but the great upsides of high salaries.

Now I've been working as an devops / software automation engineer for the past 5 years, which has tangentially interested me in building simple (passive) systems for humans in which to thrive and create abundance (which is pretty much the goals described in permaculture). So the steady state my SO and I are aiming for here is generally to live a nice chill downshifted life much like is described in the book Retrosuburbia, essentially retrofitting a house in some part of the world/ country where things grow nicely (year round even!?!) and sustaining much of my food needs through gardening and bartering fruits / veggies / etc. Obviously this lends to rural areas a fair bit, but I would also love to have the ability to bike and take public transport most places I need, and be able to spend a lot of time socializing with other humans. This pushes itself into more urban or suburban spheres. The advice given by David Holmgren on that subject is to choose the peri-urban, or to find yourself in the edges where people may look at you less weirdly (and skate by the codes for HOA's, semi-illegal greywater and rainwater capture systems, etc). I've been looking at property in the PNW currently, which is high in the rainfall and resistance to the next 50ish years of climate change, at the cost of a lot of free energy (sun), but if anyone has other suggestions I would love to hear them. With a nice long growing season, obviously food storage over the cold season is a great option too, just less fun than tending a garden all year long. I currently live in an area with 250ish days of sunshine per year at the cost of rainfall, so I would have to live in one of those places with 150+ days of grey/rain to see if I could handle it mentally and it is what I’m looking for.

Blackjack
Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

Financial Sector:

Net worth: ~240k ( i need to wrangle up a bunch of old HSAs into one account to get the actual number).
House Equity: ~180k
On hand Cash: ~ 15k
Investments: 50k (and mostly after tax because I've never planned on working past my mid thirties and thus don't understand how to invest for "retirement", which is untouchable until 59.5 here in the US).

Monthly income:
Salary:10466
RSUs: 1167
Bonuses: 667
Rent: 1000
Total: 13800

Expenses:
Taxes:3944.60 (did calcs last night and this is apparently a massive overpayment once i calc in mortgage interest stuff, I need to correct but I'll expect to see about a 15k tax return if I don't).

Budgeted expenses (not including mortgage): 1332 (This should be able to essentially be cut in half, I am just padding this number this month for comfort, current non-housing spending is something like 375 with most of that investments in getting my car ready for sale).

Mortgage: 2780 (ridiculous, but the value of the house has increased an average of 9k per month since i bought, so this kinda stupid choice has ended up being incredibly fruitful / lucky)

HOA (one of the reasons i chose my current house was the super low HOA for the area, and then it doubled two years in a row): 350
expense total: 8406

Monthly savings: 5394
Expected monthly savings after tax adjustment: 6601

Savings Rate: 39%
Expected savings rate after adjustment: 47.8%


From tracking NW over time:

expected time to hit easy non-housing expenses goal (1000 per month, lets say 300k) (no housing value increase): 9 months

Expected time to hit easy non-housing expenses goal (1000 per month, lets say 300k) (house average equity increase added): 4 months

Value in 3 years (assuming 7% returns annually):
Current Monthly Savings (5394): 506,500
Tax Adjusted Monthly Savings (6601): 556,700
Crazy house Adjusted (15601): 914,952
(assuming rent drop to 1000, 7731 contribution): 601,700
(assuming rent drop to 800, 7931 contribution): 609,700
(assuming rent drop to 500, 8231 contribution): 621,615

Value in 3 years (assuming 10% returns annually)
Current Monthly Savings (5394): 543,340
Tax Adjusted Monthly Savings (6601): 593,442
(assuming rent drop to 1000, 7731 contribution): 640,347
(assuming rent drop to 800, 7931 contribution): 648,649
(assuming rent drop to 500, 8231 contribution): 661,102


Value in 3 years (assuming 13% returns annually)
Current Monthly Savings (5394): 579,666
Tax Adjusted Monthly Savings (6601): 631,887
(assuming rent drop to 1000, 7731 contribution): 680,776
(assuming rent drop to 800, 7931 contribution): 689,429
(assuming rent drop to 500, 8231 contribution): 702,409

I do want to sell this house and then buy another house in cash (no loans), then end up with exceptionally low bills which can be funded from a cash fund, in 3 years if current trends continue, that number looks like it should be fine if I can find some decently cheap (300k or lower) housing. During that time I will work on growing the skills needed to keep bills very low as well as build up other skillsets. With those things together I should be relatively well off enough to call it quits and do whatever I want.

Blackjack
Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

Gardening sector:

First frost is this year is in the next 2 days so i’ve talked with all my plants and thanked them for all the delicious foods and told them I’ll see them next year.

Crops produced in the garden this year:
Blueberries: 0 lbs (year 1)
Strawberries: 5ish lbs (year 1)
Blackberries: 0lbs (year 1)
Perennial spinach: (idk a lot but it doesn’t weigh anything, so hard to tell)
Tomatoes: 43ish lbs
Eggplant: 6ish lbs
Swiss Chard: Idk but more than we can eat at 3 plants
Bok Choi: 6? Didn’t weigh them
Collard Greens: Same as Swiss Chard
Shishitos: didn’t weigh these, as they are light and harvested constantly. Tons.
Kale: 6 bunches. Can easily grow more.
Tons of herbs.

Rough estimate:
60-70lbs. Not bad for the first year, but these numbers can go up pretty drastically as the system expands (and I currently have a tiny tiny yard).

Lots of failure in the garden this year (planted literally dozens of peas and green beans, got about 10 bean pods out of it). I’ll consider investigating further but I think the region is maybe a bit hot for them. Lost 3 brussel plants to aphids. I’ll need to be more vigilant next year to keep them off.

At this point moving more over to perennial systems is a weird one to me, as I felt like growing many of these veggies were very low effort, high payoff. Turns out maybe halfway decent system design makes a lot of payoff pretty easy? Or maybe I just got lucky.

Blackjack
Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

Food:

Current goal here is moving towards all processed foods which are hitting a high spending threshold (>$10 per month) being made by us, except tofu (I’ve done it, but it isn’t resource or time efficient for me to do it here). Most recent changes, Mayo (Vegan mayo is soooooooooo expensive for no reason, just oil + soymilk + a garlic clove and some mustard, now $1.xx for 32 oz), Plant-milk (I’ve been enjoying peanut milk, which costs the equivalent of $2/gallon, but i don’t go through that much in a month even. Oat milk is even cheaper at something like $1.25 / gallon, but is much less tasty and much more of a pain in the ass to make). All of those take < 5 mins to make, I’m honestly not sure why they are sold for so much money. Other than that our diet consists of loads of grains, produce, legumes, nuts, and pulses. Almost all sauces are made ourselves, with the exception of mustard and ketchup. Component bits are still bought when we run out (soy sauce, hot sauce, vinegar, oils, nuts). Grains come mostly from dried goods (flour, rice ((thank goodness for those new cool gamma seal 5 gallon bucket lids)), pasta, oats, quinoa) and other primary carbs come from starchy tubers and veggies.

In the summer we drop by the local market once a week to fill up on goods, with our latest changes we will probably only need to hit the supermarkets or bulk stores once every month or so (only exception I can see here is avocado. Without access to any meats this is a thing we struggle to do without)

We have both gotten to the point where we can invent spice profiles on the fly for the food and decide on sauces, etc. I don’t exclusively make my own creations or think I’m a professional chef (a lot of things we make are riffs off single recipes or combinations of recipes), but many or most of the foods we eat are better than the restaurant equivalents we can find within several hours drive. Though, one thing has been eluding us, if somebody here knows how to make a good plant based “cheese” for pizza, please let me know.

Blackjack
Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

Fitness:
Long term health is a function defined by physical fitness, as we know from countless studies, etc. As someone who sits at a computer all day to make a current income, and spends more of it reading, a large amount of intentional physical activity has needed to be a pillar of my lifestyle to keep from bodily degradation, etc.

I’ve spent the past 5 years averaging 3 hours of training a day 6x per week, which has wound down to 1.5-2 hours per day, 5 days per week starting this year. This puts me in around the 4000-5000 hours of dedicated physical skill training in the past decade. And most of this under tutelage of “masters” of many different physical skills totalling tens of thousands of hours in multidisciplinary physical fields. Their philosophy behind training this way is to train subsections of skills to a certain goal, and then move onto the next goal. The goals are complex enough to take many hours to master as a generalist, but will obviously be surpassed by the specialists. Take this idea like building a generalist “core”. After abandoning a skill, it will degrade a bit with time, but if these skills are sufficiently complex, you will stay at a much higher level of strength, coordination, etc than you were before without gaining this skill. You will also be working on several of these goals at one time. As you progress through this amount of skill acquisition, cross disciplinary skills become easier to acquire and maintain, and you become a much more capable and interesting human. Then there is a good amount of cross skill “play” involved in these physical interactions, between several humans and also the play where early on you are pushed to start integrating and improvising certain subsets of movements and patterns into floorwork and dance sequences. Obviously, being able to improvise complex movements grabbed from martial arts into integrated closed or open form flows where you enter and exit into completely different movements signals some drastic and beautiful mastery of a single piece itself.

Random strength skills I have achieved and can think of right now:

Strength (Nx is N times bodyweight added to the lift)
2x deadlift (technically supposed to go to 2.5 but I CBA to lift over 200kgs)
2x squat
1x split squat (in progress)
0.5x each hand dumbbell bench press
^ same but row
Full pistol squats
Full shrimp squat
Full nordic curl
Full reverse nordic curl
5x archers on either side (not worth the 500 hours and massive dieting to achieve the 1 arm at ~200 lbs)
60 second handstand
5x muscle ups
Tuck planche (progressing past this at 6’2” is a bit ridiculous)
Extended tucked front lever
1x Jefferson curl

Currently working on:
0.5x step up
1x split squat
0.25x external rotation

This is obviously an endless (but oddly fulfilling) rabbithole of skill acquisition and ends up spinning off a subculture which is a bit cult-y and whatever, but I honestly do think it is a VERY good model of complex skill acquisition and wonder if it might be worth synthesizing a similar model to something like ERE, to see where the differences are between the way that its currently taught to people and a way that may end up being more approachable.

Essentially this would boil down to creating a multi-tiered (for each goal there is a sufficient and advanced level, or maybe more levels even) web of goals of skills needed for building the generalist or Renaissance ideal philosophy, letting people with a lower Wheaton Level have bite-off able chunks of goals to push for in building to a full complex operating system. Then to follow up this document, if possible it would be ideal to offer some training advice on how to move towards these goals, from more basic levels to advanced levels. I think with a community of people stretching from WL 1 to WL 8 or whatever we have on the top end, we could generate something sufficiently useful to people on the path, instead of sparking a kinda nebulous framework. Its been a hot minute since I read the ERE book though, so i will have to reference that to see how similar it is to what I'm echoing here.

Blackjack
Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

Stuff ownership:

Slowly gaining the skills to fix most of my own issues. With bikes, we own bikes that need pretty little repair. I bought these new for that purpose, paying a little more out of pocket for integrated gear hub systems, belt drives, CVTs, hydraulic disk brakes. Its how the gf and I get around the town most of the nice days, so I felt less bad spending around 1k each on them, and other than the disc brakes, all of these systems are trivially easy to upkeep (with a “blowout cost” on repairing the CVT, but those should last something on the order of decades, we don’t really have the full data to test it throughout). Have changed maybe 3 tubes this year, and have experience truing wheels / other normal maintenance on my Surly which kinda mostly sits in the corner these days ((I should probably sell this)) ).

Pretty much everything I own that are not electronics are now obtained secondhand for massive discounts. Its not paying absolutely nothing, but most goods I have can be resold for the same price I paid or more. Bringing total cost of ownership to something near 0, provided I end up taking care of the things and not letting them get destroyed.

Some of these may end up with their own little posts, but here’s some things I have ended up fixing over the past year.

2004 Jeep Wrangler, mostly just bolt on / bolt off jobs with changing out lights to non-dangerous things, restoring paint / soft tops / plastics / etc. With the inflated car market, and the gf and I barely even using 1 car, let alone 2 (which we own), its time to let this go for a nice profit (44kish miles, family owned, full service history, in incredible condition for an 18 year old car). I need to figure out how to advertise it a bit more widely to garner a little more interest.

Wrought iron patio furniture: Inherited this from some in-laws (I inherit a lot of valuable furniture from in-laws who feel bad wasting things / want to give them away). Estimated to be 30 years old, was starting to get some rust in certain places from being left out in the mountains for who knows how many years. Brushed off the surface rust, re spray-painted with Krylon, then replaced the little feet pads. Total cost, something like $15. Using for now, but eventually I’ll end up selling it for a profit.

Other vintage steel outdoor chairs: Needed new armrests. Disassemble the old ones, cut out a pattern, cut it out with a jigsaw, then upholster with some loose fabric and batting from the secondhand art supply store. Total cost, erm something like $3 since I had some plywood floating around and staple cost is negligent.

Pine Furniture: Friend had a father in law who was retiring to Costa Rica and my friend was stuck selling tons of gorgeous pine furniture (a butcher block trestle table, desk, dresser, and 2 cabinets) for cheap. Some of it was covered in paint(? Or something weird). Just needed a light sanding, then mixed some oil and beeswax to make a halfway decent furniture polish. Might need to go back and add more to this, but I’m not sure it would call for something like tung oil since its a lightly colored soft wood.

Refrigerator: (Needs done). The opening and closing is a little weird right now. I have a couple of the parts I *THINK* are the perpetrators. Obviously they were the most expensive / complex parts in the region at around $105 for both. Have parts, need to remove the door and replace this part soon.

Oven doors: (Needs done) Oven doors don’t fully stay shut, leaking heat into the house and making the oven probably work a little weirdly. I think there is a part where the doors attach that I need to replace that will fix this issue. Still need to order the parts and then replace (the actual replacement itself is not too difficult on this one, just detach door, screw out, put new piece in, screw in).

AxelHeyst
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Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by AxelHeyst »

Hey Blackjack, welcome and what a strong journal start! I'm excited to follow along with your Retrosuburbia-inspired projects and evolution of your thinking. ps thanks for the wrist prehab info! To attempt to (weakly) return the favor, you mentioned confusion about all the color talk. :) Quickest way to get somewhat up to speed is watch the first 15-30 min of the Orange, Green, Yellow videos from actualized guy, and expand from there as desired (or not). It goes RBOGYT.

basuragomi
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Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by basuragomi »

You can bend fridge and oven doors back into the right shape to seal better, depending on how they were used they can warp over time which might be the problem. It's just light sheet metal, brace it against your hip/knee and pull.

Can I see a picture (representative or otherwise) of the bike? The idea of a bicycle with CVT is blowing my mind. How much does that weigh? I'd recommend tire liners too if you're weight-insensitive, it's decreased my flat frequency by an order of magnitude.

Blackjack
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Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

basuragomi wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:42 am
Can I see a picture (representative or otherwise) of the bike? The idea of a bicycle with CVT is blowing my mind. How much does that weigh? I'd recommend tire liners too if you're weight-insensitive, it's decreased my flat frequency by an order of magnitude.
The larger geared CVTs come in at like 5lbs.
Bike specs: (https://www.prioritybicycles.com/pages/ ... ifications)
Bike: (https://www.prioritybicycles.com/products/turi) ( I think i paid 799 due to some promotion, but i would recommend the bike).

Enviolo is the company who makes all the hubs at reasonable prices these days, and they seemed to have issues with some of the hubs initially, but now I see them rated for 15-22k miles before service / replacement. If I hit that on the bike I will be happy to deal with the issues then (either in $$$ for repairs or personal maintainance if its an easy to fix issue). Gearing ranges change depending on the hub, but the hardest part here is seating the hub in the wheel. May be a pain in the ass, we will see if I even need to reseat it and not just true the wheel.

I'm unconvinced you would ever want to convert an old bike over strictly from a cost perspective if you are doing all the maintainance yourself, but if you are paying to have a bike serviced yearly you would recoup the cost quickly. you now have no issues with derailleurs, and belt drives have been on cars and motorcycles for a long time with expected longevity in the 100k mile range. Replacement cost on the belt is about $50, so not too bad even if it did end up breaking.

I also own an old (circa 2006) Surly LHT which currently needs a lot of love, so I guess I'm supporting both biking philosophies here, ultra durable and repairable but needs waaaaaay more service vs virtually hands-off. I'm guessing by the time I die I will have some frankenstein mix of the two bikes :lol: .

Blackjack
Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

basuragomi wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:42 am
You can bend fridge and oven doors back into the right shape to seal better, depending on how they were used they can warp over time which might be the problem. It's just light sheet metal, brace it against your hip/knee and pull.
The springs fully gave out about 2 weeks ago, which sucks. So i ordered a replacement part. The OG replacement part is out of manufacture, as is the part made to replace the replacement part, but there is now a 3rd party replicating the replacement part of the spring which will sell them to you for the low low price of $120 each, so I am $240 poorer but I have a working range, so its fair enough compared to the equivalent cost of a replacement (~3500).

I also had to implement something close to what you were saying above barasugomi. Throw towels in the spring / pivot point of the oven door, then close it up and apply some more pressure. Pulse for a few tries, then check how much the position of the stove has changed, and repeat if necessary.

Blackjack
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Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
Location: Front Range, bikescore 99

Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed Oct 20, 2021 10:56 pm
Hey Blackjack, welcome and what a strong journal start! I'm excited to follow along with your Retrosuburbia-inspired projects and evolution of your thinking. ps thanks for the wrist prehab info! To attempt to (weakly) return the favor, you mentioned confusion about all the color talk. :) Quickest way to get somewhat up to speed is watch the first 15-30 min of the Orange, Green, Yellow videos from actualized guy, and expand from there as desired (or not). It goes RBOGYT.
Thanks for the SD references! Its fun to think about the world and other people's psychology this way. Even more interestingly there are a lot of people around here leftover from Integral Theory / spiral dynamics / Ken Wilber circles, and I've been a transient through a lot of the Green+ circles in my town. So I'm gonna do some asking around of acquaintances and find some of the old Wilber practitioners from back in the day, and see what they think of integral theory / SD today.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by mountainFrugal »

Cool journal so far @BlackJack. I did not know what you meant by skill acquisition for BW fitness, but after some YT videos on progressions, I think I understand now. They are complex movements that require strength, balance and mobility in order to do them properly so they are skills. Some of the skills on your list look pretty advanced so great job! An inspiring list.

Blackjack
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Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
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Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

@mountainfrugal Thanks! I appreciate it, its been a lot of hard work (and an incredible amount ahead, as always). I've kept up with some of the recent entries in your journal as well, and I'm very inspired by your monthly look back in infographic form. Also as an ex distance runner (quit in my late teens after completing a marathon and needing to deal with some accumulated / persistent injuries ((probably due to form)) afterwards) I'm also seriously impressed at your cardio skills. I'll make it back to longer form cardio someday (Just wish it didn't interfere with the strength and mobility gains so much).

As to the skill acquisition piece, I'm working on a long-form post on a more systemic focus of a movement practice for health / longevity (as when I look into people's journals, a lot of people seem to be exercising for health and longevity but without specific cues for what will lead them to health / longevity / fixing injuries and mobility issues), but It will probably need to be very, very, very long, so that work is still in its infancy.

Blackjack
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Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:36 am
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Re: Blackjack's Briefs

Post by Blackjack »

I want to echo the OG permaculture ethics in here, because those are some of the system filters through which I should live my life and think about it.

1. Earth Care
Self explanatory. I'm learning to care for the planet in my backyard, but I'm still too attached to this stupid notion of private property and not practicing earth care all around my community through things like guerilla gardening, etc. I'm generally working these next few years in a silly world of software to be able to focus the rest of my life on Earth care. Its selling my soul to some degree, but I'm fine with understanding that. Things to think about: should I save some extra money for spending on later training in Earth Care? Its something I'll have to think about as i get closer to the actual FI date.

2. People Care
I'm bad at this. Socially I'm fine, I can handle myself in a social setting and invite people to hang out, etc. But I've also burnt myself in a lot of social situations and Covid that have kept me from the same amount of social interaction I've had in my life previously. Pre pandemic, I used to literally hug probably 50 people in a day. Now its one. With my focus on earth care and pretty good cooking ability, I'm tempted to start something like a biweekly or bimonthly Epicurean dinners mountainfrugal mentioned in their journal. Covid / having my partner around all the time really messed me up and made the larger social aspect of my life a bit rough, so I need to correct and move towards that way.

3. Limits to growth and consumption. Share in a surplus.
I feel like this is the one that I wrote this post for. Find out what you actually need, and then limit yourself past that. You can live a good life without all these consumerproducts. But I need to focus this into my decision making moreso as a technical filter of permaculture, not as some stoic do-without. Its just that I have 30 years of consumer programming telling me the wrong things, and teaching me how to be a mindless consumer instead of giving me an idea of how to actually live in harmony with the planet and the

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