The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Where are you and where are you going?
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canoe
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The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

I’ve decided to start a journal here to keep myself on the right track and participate in the community a bit more.

Some information about me is here: viewtopic.php?p=230812#p230812

I’ve recently started a new software engineering job, and in the next few months I’ll be moving out of my parents’ basement to the Kitchener-Waterloo region of Ontario. I’m planning on getting a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate. This will likely cost $800 a month each. I feel like it’s too expensive; I’d be willing to accept less for less. I’ve considered buying a vehicle to live in, but considering winter and the high insurance rates for those of us under 25 I think I’ll go with the apartment for now. Maybe next summer.

I think it would be cool to get to the point where I spend so little that I’m financially independent with my current assets and then gradually increase my standard of living as I continue to save. For now though, that’s a bit of a dream. Some of my other goals include moving up the Wheaton scale, not falling too far into the typical software developer trap of "behold my enormous comparative advantage" specialization, and developing more social capital and sense of community. In the future, I'd like to develop more practical skills, including house building and advanced first aid.

Feel free to ask questions if you’re curious about anything.

All currency will be in Canadian dollars (one Canadian dollar is 81 cents US as of this writing).
Last edited by canoe on Sun Oct 31, 2021 8:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

Financial Update for October 2021

Cell phone: $25

Entertainment and discretionary food: $52.43

Health and fitness: $39.49

Clothing: $104.22
- trying out wool, since I hear it’s more durable and you can wear it longer between washes

Charity: $126.69

Other: $28.11

Total spending: $376.24

Savings rate: 85% - 90%

Monthly spending my assets can support: $330


This month is pretty low due to living with family. I’m interested to see what happens when moving out in a month or two.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

My current roommate lead had to back out. Without the moderating effect of another person I'm considering more extreme options such as living in a tent in somebody's backyard: viewtopic.php?t=12181

Blackjack
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by Blackjack »

Hey! Welcome to the forum! This post looks a lot like mine when i originally first posted here (different account back in 2015), except one country to the south from you.

I love the enthusiasm in finding alternative living arrangements, however as a young single guy I would personally hesitate to live in a tent in another's back yard just due to the tempering of social situations (i.e. pain in the ass to have multiple friends over, smaller dating pool of people who want to deal with that, etc). Also, you lose the whole amazing ability to work from home when you don't feel like going into the office (you may be able to do it technically, but there will be some weird outcomes if you have to be on video chat from a tent when they know you are being paid decent tech wages. With very very high social skill / charm you can probably explain yourself out of this).

Looking at your ideas though, I do wonder about the availability of finding a sliiightly more standard but still creative approach thats easier to find (i.e. a shared room in a house is probably < 500, but this may quickly eat you alive if you never have an actual moment of privacy. Also see minimized dating pool argument from above). Down here we have the tendency to create small groups called "<insert city name> creative housing" on social media sites (facebook, reddit, whatever) where people post both normal and weird housing situations they have up for rent. Before I made a crazy speculative investment on a house, I spent 4 years paying < 300 per month rent here with just a couple roommates, with my own private bath, etc. I could do this because I came upon a good place to rent that was underpriced as a whole unit, then rented it out myself for a month, and then rented out all the rooms to cover nearly the whole rental cost :lol:. The other roommates were getting a good price for the area, and I was getting an insane price, so everyone was happy-ish (till the pandemic came in and ruined everything). I wonder if you could replicate something like that, or maybe end up in somebody's 25 square meter grandma flat or shed in the back yard?

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

Hey thanks @Blackjack! The social concerns are real, that's something I'm thinking about. I was hoping to work from a nearby public library/starbucks/park when not in the office, but tbh the free food will probably keep me in the office most days.
I couldn't find that sort of facebook group in the area unfortunately, but I like your idea of being the sub-landlord and will look for opportunities like this.
@2Birds1Stone also brought up in the linked thread the idea of living with an elderly person at reduced rent in exchange for doing chores. That's another avenue I'm going to explore.

MeloTheMelon
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by MeloTheMelon »

On the same note as what 2Birds1Stone said, you can also talk to small farms or stables. Some of them have guest rooms and you could probably get something going like a room for helping out on weekends

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

Update:

I'm renting a room for December and January. This will give me a home base from which to tour places in person before committing longer-term (I rented this place after only a video tour).

I'm going to try and meet local people in order to build up some measure of community which may lead to future opportunities in addition to being nice on its own.

Financial update
Since I'm lazy, I'll just report my savings rate for the month of Novermber: 80-85%.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

Moved into my new room.

Since my job is at a tech startup and I maintain an IF window, they provide enough food that I don't need to prepare any of my own on workdays. With this in mind, to save time I'm going to try and eat on only food that doesn't require much preparation, since I'm lazy about cooking and the returns to batch cooking are much lower for me now.

For the time being, my entire pantry will consist of: nuts, vegetables, bread, peanut butter, mayonnaise, salt, hot sauce, and hummus. Also, there's a local bulk food store that sells things which are like potato chips but made of broad beans. They're good; I might get more of those.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

December savings rate: 85%.
2021 savings rate: 88%.

I got some Soylent powder and will experiment to see whether it's an adequate replacement for food on my days off. My initial impression is that the plain flavour is tolerable, but I find it very hard to just chug down so I'm not sure how much faster it really is compared to my current low-prep diet.

It's over $10/day, so pretty terrible from a cost perspective. I'll have to be able to learn to chug it down real quick if it's going to be worth buying any more. I suppose it goes down to $8.35/day if I were to do 1600 calories per day and make up the difference when I go back into work. We'll see how satiated I can feel on it. I know some people make their own DIY concoctions that bring the price down. I may experiment with that if the Soylent grows on me.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

January savings rate: 57% :shock:
In my defense, this includes two months of rent and some purchases that will be reimbursed by work as well as a large donation. But yikes.

I've moved into a new place and had to pay first and last month's rent.

It's unfurnished, so I'm sleeping on a camping mattress on the floor and working from home on a collapsable camping stool. The office can't open soon enough!

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

The annoyance of looking for housing, being so dependent on the local market and not being able to modify my space as I see fit are really making me consider getting a van to live in.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

I rented a u-haul and picked up some cheap second-hand furniture. U-hauls are expensive! They lured me in with the $19.99/day advertisements. After gas and mileage fees etc, I think I'd rather carry the disassembled bed home than pay all that next time.

Wouldn't be a problem if I had a van!

I've been thinking about some sort of modular tiny house that can be wheeled in and out of the back of a cargo van. This would solve my biggest hesitation about putting serious work into converting a vehicle, namely that the housing and propulsion system become too tightly coupled. If I end up buying a lemon or having a breakdown, a lot of my work may be wasted. Maybe a converted trailer and truck combo would be better from that perspective. If the vehicle becomes unusable, I just hitch it to something else when needed.

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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by theanimal »

I recommend checking out the trailers next time if you have a vehicle with a trailer hitch. Their trailers are at the advertised rate (~$20/day) with 0 additional mileage fees or extra costs. I’ve used them a lot to move large objects, firewood etc. with just a Subaru Forester.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

Thanks theanimal. I'll keep that in mind if I ever get a vehicle. I wish I were cool enough to have towed it with my bike! :D

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

I've been thinking lately about what bottlenecks I have for improvement in life.

Currently, I don't think the biggest gains will be financial. My expenses are low. My ERE housing score is 6. My job pays very well. I could optimize for similar pay with fewer hours, but I think the best way to do so currently is to stay in my current job for at least another 8 months.

The main problem is that I'm mainly currently a frugal salaryman. It will be easy to stagnate here.

Nonetheless, I feel that confidence and social skills will open the most opportunities. When thinking about social capital as a goal and means to learning new things and having new experiences, I don't know if I even have the prerequisites to pursue this effectively. I need to be at the point where I can comfortably approach someone, engage them in conversation, and build this connection into a friendship if desired.

I've read enough that I now know it's not that I'm missing any hidden set of rules or methods. The real bottleneck here is practice. Unfortunately, this is very difficult. I've heard estimates of at least 5 hours of deliberate per week for at least 6 months to fully become comfortable and skilled in this sort of thing.

I'm pretty fired up about taking steps to practice. It would be great to have some sort of support and accountability mechanism. I wonder if anybody else on this forum is in a similar place. Maybe there would be demand for a "Prerequisites to Strong Social Capital" mastermind group.

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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by mathiverse »

unemployable wrote:
Sun Jan 30, 2022 12:28 pm
Discussion on how to develop social capital. How to offer it, how to procure it, what can be offered or procured in the first place. Explicitly not about your number of friends or followers on social media.
theanimal wrote:
Sun Jan 30, 2022 4:06 pm
I'd join one on social capital...
Social capital isn't a focus for me right now, however I noticed that there are at least these two above posters who would be interested in a social capital focused Mastermind group! I think it'd be a great idea. Even if the other people in the group approach the problem of developing social capital in different way, the members would probably get a lot of value from each other during the collaboration.

I hope you decide to start up a social capital MMG! Looks like the only thing missing is someone to get the meetings organized.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

Excited for tax season.

I'm definitely going to take some action on the social captial front. @mathiverse, there's a good chance I'll start a MMG, thanks for the inspiration! Not sure when though, as I've been busy with work. It may get worse before it gets better unfortunately.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

Completely random musing: I'm finding chess tactics puzzles to be a surprisingly effective way to improve ( at ~1150 ELO at least).

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

February savings rate: 56% :shock:
15% was eaten up by a large donation, and another 3% or so by expenses that will be reimbursed. My assets can support about 14% of my current monthly spending.
I'm starting to wonder if I might rather "put on my own oxygen mask before helping others."

I'm excited about the second mastermind group that's getting started. Turns out I didn't need to create one.

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canoe
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Re: The Portage (Canoe's Journal)

Post by canoe »

I've created a social-capital-building score that will help me track my progress week to week. I'm not going to get into detail for the time being, but for last week it was 545.

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