Tropicalia’s Journal: The Ascension of a Bookworm

[Tropicalia]

My Background and Motivations

I have really waffled about starting this journal. I’m pretty easily intimidated and find it hard to accept failure. I have lurked for long enough though. I should be seeing any progress in the right direction as a success as well.

I enlisted in the Navy as a Nuke 4.5yrs ago. I had been struggling a lot with trying to find a job and feeling like a failure. I looked at the Navy as a way to pause my life and start over with a hefty amount of savings. A potential career path if I liked it. I had $45k in student loan debt and had been unable to finish my degree.

University had not been what I expected. I had hoped to build a network of friends and a good resume with internships under my belt. But these things were a struggle for me. I ended up changing my major because I struggled too much academically and did not enjoy the subject material. I chose a major based on what others expected of me and what would get me a good salary. I come from a low income household and was placed in Honors classes 2nd-12th grade. I felt a pressure to move up in the world through academics, but I never found something to be passionate about.

I regret not changing my major sooner. I ended up wasting a good amount of time and money. I just need one more class to meet the requirements for graduation. I can finish my degree after I leave the Navy, and finally close that chapter of my life.

I’m not really sure what I want to achieve with this journal. I’m taking a slow approach and hope to figure things out as I go, so taking the extreme out of ERE over here.

I’m almost 30 and simultaneously feel that I have plenty of time and not enough time for achieving much of anything. I guess I’m hoping that writing things down will help me figure things out. And to take action rather than waiting for the right time. But I also just like the community here.

I came across the blog and forums last year and felt like this is the sort of place I was looking for. I listened to the audiobook of ERE twice while on deployment and felt so inspired. I took down notes the second time and wanted to take action upon my return to home port. But my life took an unexpected turn. Things have changed dramatically for me and I’ve fallen into bad habits but I really want to work towards bringing joy back into my life.

Baseline

I have come to really enjoy tracking and analyzing my numbers in regard to spending and saving. I have only gone back to when I first joined the Navy. Tried to consolidate my data to show the big picture here:

______________Monthly AVG___Annual AVG___Percent of Spending

Car Expenses________$639_____$7,665_______21.4%
Housing & Utilities___$631_____$7,570_______21.2%
Leisure Goods_______$531_____$6,376_______17.8%
& Services
Student Loans_______$395_____$4,740_______13.3%
Gifts & Charity______$315_____$3,777________10.6%
Leisure Travel_______$264_____$3,168________8.9%
Food_______________$148_____$1,779________5%
Necessities__________$32______$384_________1.1%
& Life Insurance
Other Debts,________$25______$300__________0.8%
Fees and Tolls

Total_______________$2,980___$35,758

Overall Save Rate: 55%

Total Savings: 7x AVG Annual Expenses

Most of my basic needs have been met through being in the Navy. So that has reduced my expenses in some ways. My food cost are actually higher but I’d rather not count the cost of galley food since that is automatically withdrawn from my wages. It would obscure the food cost I have control over. I would spend ~$300 on food a month outside of the Navy. Galley charges $390 for lower quality food because the system includes a lot of waste.

[Tropicalia]

The Plan

Well next stage for me is to lean out the budget. With a few caveats. I don’t want to include student loans or gifts and charity in my spending goal. I actually want to work on increasing my spending on charity. I’ll just continue tracking my overall spending along with my subset of ‘lifestyle spending’.

So every other category is what I spend for my current lifestyle and I would like to get that down to <$20k annual spend or <$1,667 a month. Historically my lifestyle spending has been $2,200 per month or $26,400 annually.

I’d like to update this journal at least quarterly.

The Budget Breakdown

$800 Rent and Utilities
$300 Car (Insurance, fuel, maintenance and repairs)
$200 Leisure Travel
$175 Leisure Goods and Services
$100 Groceries
$50 Dining Out
$40 Necessities and Life Insurance

The biggest obstruction for me has been car expenses. I paid too much initially due to the inflated market. But repair expenses have been a real downer. Leveling up my mechanic skills should be a priority. But I’m not a car person and would also love to be car-free. I never intended to keep this car long term, I honestly hate it for being a massive burden. I was also terrified of driving and didn’t have a license until a few years ago. I’d rather go electric if I’m going to have a car at all.

I’m expecting to underspend for most months while building up little slush funds for occasional expenses like traveling to see family. Hoping for no major car issues and that I’ll be able to do more travel by train than by plane moving forward. The real hang up is not having many conservative days off work and family scattered all over. I’ve got East Coast, West Coast, South and Midwest to cover.

Beyond the Budget

I’ve started working on tracking my ecological footprint and life energy in regard to spending this month. I’ve been putting off going through all of my belongings to really quantify how much I have. Lots of small things to account for. I have more than I need but keep buying stuff. Gotta get that under control before my possessions exceed the capacity of a small living space. I’m inclined towards tiny house living at some point. I’ll start this process today.

For fitness I really want to get back into powerlifting consistently. I want to start running occasionally as well. I just need to adapt my fitness routine to my irregular schedule.

Reading has been going well. Read 24 books this year so far. Mostly in the last few months. I appreciate reading for helping my mindset. If I get lost in a book it has the benefit of relaxation and seems to improve my mood.

[Jin+Guice]

Welcome to the forum!

It sounds like you're off to a good start, keep it up!

[Dave]

Welcome Tropicalia!

I found your story really interesting and look forward to following along. You seem thoughtful and like you're consolidating your life to make some big changes in the years ahead.

[Tropicalia]

Thanks for the welcome y’all.

The past few months were rougher than expected but finances turned out alright.

3mo AVG

Lifestyle Spend: $1,708
Total Spend: $2,700
Save Rate: 66%
Total Savings: 7.5x AVG Annual Expenses

So, we’re off to a slow start but on the bright side there’s plenty of room for improvement. But seriously it wasn’t too bad. Mostly poor planning on my part in regard to residual apartment expenses after I moved out. Renting a room makes my finances more simple now.

Tracked my footprint and YMOYL life energy for 1 month and then couldn’t stick with it. It was nice to get that data point but I’ll just stick with traditional budgeting for now. Need to keep things simple for a while.

Clutter

Trying to reign in my accumulation of things and practice decluttering has been harder than I thought. I’ve only made a bit of headway on my book collection. This recent move into a smaller space makes it more apparent how much stuff I have and do not use because the clutter is so visible. I’m doing better with the frequency and quality of purchases I make but I’ve got to get into the habit of letting go of things.

My hesitancy comes from having a lot of small things that hold little to no value but I imagine I could eventually make use of it or it holds sentimental value. So I conclude that it’s better for me to hold onto it than to add to the landfills.

Work Life Imbalance

Been struggling to make progress on my non-money goals. Work has been emotionally draining and I haven’t been sleeping well. Trying to shift my mindset towards being more positive and use healthier ways to manage stress. But I just hit a new low point mentally around the middle of this quarter.

Things at work just didn’t pan out the way I wanted them to. They just decided to remove me from the qualifying process for my Senior watchstation. So I will just stay at this Junior watchstation until I leave the Navy. Made all of these years feel like a complete waste of time and like I just don’t belong here. Even if that’s not completely true.

The reasoning for their decision remains unclear. Like what they told me doesn’t make much sense and can’t be the real reason. Something to do with me having anxiety I guess and generally being a reserved person is not well suited to the position. It doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m ready to forget about this job and move on to something else. Just waiting for my contract to end now.

On the bright side I celebrated my 30th birthday in September with some of my family coming to visit me. It was nice but due to schedule changes I wasn’t able to take as much vacation time as I would have liked. But I’m taking another week off in a couple of days. Going to visit some family who couldn’t visit me. Hoping to relax a little bit more but it’s always stressful going back to work. Feels like I’ve spent too much time underway lately bet it’s only going to get worse from here. Gotta adapt to the ship lifestyle again.

After this break I really need to focus on healthy habits. Getting back into powerlifting and starting a running routine. And working on projects I have in mind as opposed to my endless hours of screen time. Like I ought to be making some recipes from all these cooking videos I like to watch.

I’ve been reading a lot still. Having fun with fiction books and getting back into Manga/Comics. I’ve been reading a lot of novels by Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut especially. And I read a few finance books to learn more about investing. Reading the Permanent Portfolio convinced me to add gold to my portfolio.

[frugaldoc]

Are you surface (CVN) or submarine?

Don't think of your time in the Navy as a waste because you aren't continuing on with that path. It was just a chapter in your life and now you are ready to start a new chapter. Whenever a Sailor's reenlistment package comes across my desk, I like to ask if they are reenlisting because it is part of a well articulated life plan or if they are just doing it because they failed to plan and have no other place to go. Many people just don't have the courage to leave the security the military provides. You do, so I commend you for that.

[delay]

Thanks for your journal update. If you don't enjoy a junior position, how likely is it that you would enjoy a senior position? Working just in hope of getting promoted doesn't seem like a good idea.

Reducing my book collection was easy when I counted how many books I actually reread. And you can buy or borrow that one book for a small cost. I threw out all 80% of my books five years ago, and then the rest three years ago. Now I only keep books I haven't read yet and 10 books I'm attached to.

I've considered buying gold as well. But Gold mines seem like such a waste. It doesn't feel good to encourage more of that.

[Tropicalia]

I’m a surface nuke. It’s just odd because qualifying is the endpoint. You’re just not as useful until you finish qualifying. There is always a shortage of people for the nuke rates and having less SIR people just makes it worse. We’ve already had a lot of depressed people in the department leave the Navy so there is an additional deficit there.

If I knew I would never finish qualifying I would have rather left years ago. I had to work on that SIR qual doing checkouts, interviews and drills. For like 2yrs. It was a lot of wasted effort.

I knew from the beginning that this job wasn’t for me though. It’s just that if I knew it would end like this, I would’ve tried to leave sooner. Have more time to myself for figuring out my next steps. Being a nuke is just exhausting and stressful. It seems to give most people insomnia by messing with our sleep schedules constantly. And there’s just a lot more work to get done than there are people to do the work.

I know what my first steps are after leaving the Navy. But I’m still in the process of deciding on a career path.

I feel bad about not settling on an investment allocation and sticking with it. But at least I just keep adding things and not pulling out of my investments. But then that just makes things more complicated than necessary. Well, maybe simple isn’t always better.

I didn’t think much about the impact of mining for gold. Assuming most gold is already in circulation. I’d started with a couple of physical gold ETFs and was pleased to find one that claimed to support responsibly sourced gold. But ETFs are not as good as holding physical gold. So I went and purchased an American Eagle coin to see how that works.

The point of holding gold is to have inflation protection independent of government influence and have a diversified portfolio with non-correlated assets.

For less impact in purchasing gold you could only buy older 1oz coins and wouldn’t require that many coins for a small permanent portfolio. I’ll have to think about it more.

[delay]

Thanks for your reply! I guess you could enjoy qualifying for a position but not the position itself.

The point of holding gold is to have inflation protection independent of government influence and have a diversified portfolio with non-correlated assets.

There's precedent for governments to seize what is necessary. For example the US government has seized all gold in the 1930s. Gold in a physical gold ETF would be much easier to seize than gold coins in circulation. It is usually considered as good thing that the government can do what is necessary to protect the economy. Gold did perform well over the past twenty years!

[chenda]

Exemptions from the gold seizure were made for jewellery, collectibles, antiques and other customary uses. Silver, diamonds and other precious metals could provide similar benefits to gold and are maybe more likely to fly under the legislative radar in a crisis.

[Tropicalia]

Failed my budget again. But not too bad overall since I started this journal. Gonna stick with the same budget plan in 2025 ($20k annual lifestyle spending). Also been working towards giving more to charity as I’ve fallen into a very good financial position.

Work wise I’m down to 1yr left in the Navy, so I’m looking forward to that. The increase in personal freedom will be a big relief. But for now I still have qualifications to worry about. Got moved to a new job position, it’s a new work center but in the same department. This new qual would be beneficial if I wanted to work in IT as a civilian. I’m not really interested though. Been dragging my feet on quals lately.

I must admit to being depressed through the holiday season. It’s been a persistent issue for me since the death of a loved one in the beginning of 2024. Struggling to get things done, just a general lack of motivation I guess. I’ve been reluctant to address this issue. I was content to remain in the habit of keeping my mind busy with various forms of entertainment and slowly processing my grief. But it should be a priority this year. I guess I’m making resolutions now. In a similar vein, regular exercise is going to be another priority.

On a more positive note, I’m pleased to have gotten back into reading a lot this year. Looking forward to keeping up with this trend next year.

And now to reflect on the numbers.

Books Read in 2024
- 22 Fiction Books [Favorite: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers]
- 14 Nonfiction Books [Favorite: Give People Money by Annie Lowrey]
- 57 Manga Books [Favorite: Chihayafuru]

Budget Breakdown JUL-DEC 2024

Total______Monthly Average____Category
$5,624.36 ____ $937.39 _____Housing & Utilities
$1,831.45 _____$305.24 _____Travel
$1,121.81 _____$186.97 _____Goods & Services
$984.69 _____$164.12 _____Transportation
$856.69 _____$142.78 _____Groceries
$284.81 _____$47.47 ______Dining Out
$196.91 ______$32.82 _____Life Insurance & Necesities
$62.12 ______$10.35 _____Debt Payments

$10,962.84 ____$1,827.14 ____Lifestyle Spend

$6,540.60 _____$1,090.10 ____Charity & Donations
$3,557.00 _____$592.83 ____Gifts

$21,060.44 _____$3,510.07 ___Total Expenses

Overall Save Rate [2020-2024] 63%

Total Savings = 9.5yrs of AVG Expenses

I actually spent a lot on food considering my access to galley food at work (3 meals every workday). But goods and services is what I’d rather spend less on. Gotta start working on repairing simple things by myself. It would be good for me to have more enjoyable meals by cooking at home though. I’ll be living on the ship for a large majority of 2025 though.

Looking forward to the day I have the flexibility to do slow travel. But for now I have specific vacation plans that should lower my average. And will need to do less touristy things but more lounging in port calls on deployment.

Having moved in July my housing and utilities expenses are converging down to the current level of ~$800.

So with those changes I think my budget goals are very achievable. Next year I’m looking forward to changing a lot of things about my lifestyle and hopefully leaning down the budget further.

[ertyu]

This new qual would be beneficial if I wanted to work in IT as a civilian. I’m not really interested though. Been dragging my feet on quals lately.

Sometimes, I do the following to myself: I think that if I get X cert/degree, I'm going to -have- to work in the field, and I don't want to work in the field, so I drag my feet on the cert. On the one hand, sounds like a no brainer: if you don't want to work it, why get the degree? On the other hand, there is a logical fallacy here; getting the cert and working in the field are unrelated decisions. You don't -have- to work in the field, even if you get the cert. If the cert costs you money or the time you spend towards it would be better used doing something else, not doing the cert is a no-brainer. But your situation seems a bit different: it seems like the cert is free to you and you're stuck in this situation for a while anyway. In that case, might as well finish -- no one can MAKE you work in IT, and you never know how the cert will be useful.

[Tropicalia]

@ertyu

It would be useful to have the qualification. I’m just tired of working with the Navy. So motivation is minimal. I’m just biding my time most days. Not getting that sense of progress towards something that I actually want to do.

I’m almost done though. Then I’ll have less to worry about at the very least.

[Tropicalia]

I’ve been enjoying reading through the forums. Keep getting started on long journals so lots to catch up on. I want to be more active on the forums one of these days. I think I’ll write more about my hobbies, although it’s just stuff I do for fun at this time, I do aspire towards working on creative projects of my own. Part of my drive towards FIRE was the appeal of being able to work on projects without having to worry about making money. But for now I mostly think about how hobbies impact my finances and tendency towards accumulating things.


Thoughts On Collecting as a Hobby

This comes up a lot in the hobbies I gravitate towards. From books, to movies and anime, then video games and most recently jigsaw puzzles. When I get honed in on a certain hobby I tend to buy things in support of that hobby. Accumulating things faster than I can utilize and enjoy them. At least I would reach points of saturation where my collections become a bit burdensome, and I’d lose interest in further growing the collection. Shifting mindset from quantity to quality.

I’ve found I get really into free to play mobile games that satisfy this drive towards collecting. A lot of them are like a derivative of deck building card games. I enjoy building up my in-game currency, and the new art as cards accumulate over time, even the randomization of units you buy is fun when it’s not frustrating lol. It’s unfortunate that the gaming model encourages gambling though.

My latest favorite, Pikmin Bloom, is more simple but includes interacting with the real world a bit (same company as Pokémon Go). It has increased my desire to go on long walks as I want to build up my Pikmin and find new decor types. I’m averaging over 10k steps a day for the year. The walking has been nice exercise and has me feeling more energized and productive. I’m otherwise more prone to lounging about after work and disappointed by how quickly the day gets away from me.

The Pikmin console games are also really good. The first one that was on the Nintendo Game Cube is actually one of my favorite games.

Now I’m thinking about how gaming is an easy hobby to spend minimal money on. Even for full price video games you can get so much play time out of them. And the standard cost for full price games has gotten cheaper over time in nominal dollars. Also the community built around games seems like half the fun these days. I always check out the Reddit community for games I like.

I miss being a kid and just hanging out with my sister and cousins playing multiplayer games like Mario Party. Hanging out with friends just adds more to the experience. A podcaster I like mentioned how board games are where you get a lot of fun out of the social aspect of games, and made me curious about getting into board games.

[ertyu]

before you do that, suggestion: without the expectation of ever putting it into practice, brainstorm at least five ways in which you can add a social aspect to your existing hobbies to get that "multiplayer" vibe. I say without the expectation of putting it into practice bc "but then im gonna have to *gasp* go out and talk to people" causes people to dismiss valid brainstorm options. also: five ways you can get into board games without spending money or creating a hoard. if some of the options you come up with cause you to feel a bit uncomfortable inside, that too is useful info: what exactly makes you feel uncomfortable? how come? etc.

you might find you want to implement some of these options, you might find you want to implement none of them, you might find you want to implement none of them but looking at 2 of them on a page gives you an idea of a third one that you do in fact want to implement, etc. also: what do your friends think about this? can they think of ways to add a social aspect to your joint hobbies that you haven't?

[Tropicalia]

@ertyu

I don’t have any friends around I hang with, so I just do solitary activities. I’ve only planned group activities with family who live in different states. Like whenever I travel it’s been to visit family.

I wasn’t thinking about buying board games because I don’t have anyone to play with. But more as a potential group activity that would be fun to join.


Last year I thought I could be more proactive about meeting people and building friendships but I gave up on the idea. I like to blame my sporadic work schedule but it’s more complicated than that. Most Navy people socialize with other Navy people it seems though. So it is harder to meet people outside of work.

I’m always just looking to do things when I have more control over my time. But at least one thing I’d like to do when I’m back at home is work on baking new recipes out of some books. I like sweets and will see about bringing the excess to work for others to try.

[frugaldoc]

Are you planning on doing Skillbridge? That would shorten your effective time having to live Navy life and serve as a nice transition to the civilian world. I have approved most of my junior enlisted's Skillbridge packages. I always regret it the minute we go on patrol because we have to suffer with that gapped billet but we manage to make it through to the other side. By the end of the patrol I have forgiven myself and I repeat the same "mistake" whenever a new package lands on my desk.

[Tropicalia]

@frugaldoc

I haven’t thought about doing skillbridge but I might as well keep myself open to other options. I’m leaning towards moving from east coast back to west coast and taking a year off from working. But the year off thing is arbitrary so I’m not too set on it. If I see an opportunity near where I plan to finish up my degree that could be an option.

[Tropicalia]

Q1 of 2025 Reflections

A rather belated post, but life just got a little hectic. Didn’t progress much on personal goals but I was spot on for the financial side of things.

The Numbers

Quarter Total __ Monthly AVG __ Category

$2,385 _______ $795 _________ Housing &Utilities

$475.32 ______ $158.44 _______ Goods & Services

$205.94 ______ $68.65 ________ Groceries

$199.58 ______ $66.53 _________ Dining Out

$565.53 ______ $188.51 ________ Transportation

$1,043.63 _____ $347.88 ________ Travel

$116.22 _______ $38.74 _________ Life Insurance & Necessities


Total Lifestyle Spending: $4,991.22/ $1,663.74 per month


$9,588.61 _____ $3,196.20 _______ Gifts

$1,767.80 ______ $589.27 ________ Charity & Donations

Total Expenses: $16,347.63/ $5,449.21 per month

Save Rate: 46%

Total Savings: 10.3 yrs


Biggest expense for the quarter by far was paying for my Grandma’s 90th birthday party. Everything turned out fine, but I can’t wait to leave the Navy after nearly getting screwed over with taking leave for the big event.

Trying to plan anything around the ship schedule is always a pain. The darn thing is perpetually subject to change. So after they changed the schedule so my leave would overlap with pull-in day I had to submit a special request to take leave underway. Request was denied. Then schedule changed again, but in my favor this time, so I had to draft a new regular leave request. I didn’t get to take as much leave as I initially wanted so it was just a weekend seeing family for the celebration.

So yeah, don’t bother asking for leave underway unless someone is dead or dying is basically what they believe. This would be less bothersome if the schedule was predictable. This job is just too invasive and time demanding (especially for a Nuke). The only thing keeping me from wallowing too much in negativity is how close I am to being done with my contract. There’s so much to look forward to in that regard.

But on the topic of Navy stuff. I did finally manage to finish that qualification. The position is like a LAN Administrator. My understanding is pretty rudimentary though. And I’ll be doing one more qual anyway. I would help out more with supporting the watch bill underway by qualifying this next watch. It’s a similar position but more hands on and involving specialized equipment.

Didn’t get to read as much as I’d like, but I’ll make up for that on deployment I’m sure. I’ve kept at being more active from walking a lot due to playing Pikmin Bloom. Didn’t start lifting again though. Another thing to work on for deployment though.

Now that I’m close to leaving the Navy, I’ve been thinking more about what I want to do in the future. Next post should be about me exploring my options and how I’ll set myself up for future employment opportunities.

[delay]

The only thing keeping me from wallowing too much in negativity is how close I am to being done with my contract. There’s so much to look forward to in that regard.

Thanks for sharing! It's natural to complain about cold in the winter and about heat in the summer. Perhaps it's better to enjoy the cold and the heat while they are there. An army job is very structured and predictable, and the army takes better care of its workers than a commercial enterprise. Why not enjoy it while it lasts?