White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Where are you and where are you going?
white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

GandK wrote:
Thu Nov 11, 2021 4:28 am
This issue is tough, and advice can be dangerous. Education has got to be the beginning.

My husband and I have been FI for almost 3 years now, and traveling full time for 2. There are investment decisions we make that would be remarkably bad for a lot of other people.
Well, in my mind I'm treating any sort of active trading as I would a source of income that I think fits into my web of goals. I have excess mental capacity and time capacity at work to put towards something, but I can't work a typical part-time job due to my irregular schedule and the fact I have to physically be in the office. Again, I'm still in the very early stages of educating myself, so I may ultimately decide that it's not a good fit for me or I'm not a good fit for it. I'm planning on trading with 5-10% of my portfolio with strict stop limits and exit price targets while the rest is in typical permanent portfolio-ish investments. There's a good chance I'll have enough money to traditional FIRE in the next year or 2 of full-time employment anyway even if I'm not playing around with a small trading portfolio, but I'd also like to have a few different sources of income for resiliency purposes.

I talked to my landlord and another source of income could be helping him with landscaping and other property maintenance, but it sounds like that work will mostly not be until the spring.

In the short term, I believe I've hit a temporary wall with lowering my expenses. My hope is to be able to knock $100-200 off my rent for helping my landlord and maybe ditch my car if I can get transferred to a different section at work, but it doesn't seem like those will be in the immediate future.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Scott 2 wrote:
Tue Nov 09, 2021 3:26 pm
Games People Play - The core content was written in the mid-60's, lightly revised in the mid-90's. It's an interesting read, but as much for recognizing social progress since then, as understanding the author's transactional analysis framework.
I agree the book is quite dated, however I do still think it provides an interesting framework.

My biggest takeaway from the book is summarized with the following quote:
Berne 172 wrote:People pick as friends, associates and intimates other people who play the same games. Hence "everybody who is anybody" in a given social circle (aristocracy, juvenile gang, social club, college campus, etc.) behaves in a way which may seem quite foreign to members of a different social circle. Conversely, any member of a social circle who changes his games will tend to be extruded, but he will find himself welcome at some other social circle. That is the personal significance of games.
In my opinion, the value of the book is not much in becoming expert at categorizing games and treating every social interaction as some sort of chess match or requiring hours of after-action review, but rather in just recognizing the fact that such games exist. The author points out that games are most often played by those with ulterior motives who lack some level of "mature development". Those who will get the greatest insights from the book are also those who likely frequent social circles in which games are relatively rare and who would make the erroneous conclusion that since they don't play such games and most of their peer group doesn't play such games, that the games don't exist.

My GF and I discussed the book and both recognized that we don't seem to partake in many games with each other at the moment; we both value being straightforward and honest with our communications. However, we also could point to multiple examples in our own lives of coworkers, friends, family members, exes, etc playing games that at the time baffled us, but in retrospect become apparent through the lens of transactional analysis.

Scott 2
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Scott 2 »

white belt wrote:
Sun Nov 28, 2021 10:57 pm
The author points out that games are most often played by those with ulterior motives who lack some level of "mature development". Those who will get the greatest insights from the book are also those who likely frequent social circles in which games are relatively rare and who would make the erroneous conclusion that since they don't play such games and most of their peer group doesn't play such games, that the games don't exist.
I'm with you until here.

In my experience, everyone has their games. Rather than driven by ulterior motive, they represent weight of a person's lived experience. Often the person is blind to it. Even after the patterns become clear, attempts to stop probably won't work, because they are so practiced. Part of a relationship is evaluating if games can mesh constructively. Knowing a person's past can help understand (and forgive) their rules.

IMO Berne's treatment is purposefully coarse, for the sake of clarity. I think there are more generous ways to frame it. I like Covey's simple "seek first to understand, then to be understood". One could argue my life is steeped in dysfunction and some people aren't living this way. I haven't found them.

This framework made it easier to recognize forgiveness afforded by others. To the world in general, but especially with me. It is humbling. I held (hold?) unreasonable standards. My assumption was they shared the same. By accepting me, they confirmed how awesome I am. Hah, not quite.

My sense of self was greatly overly inflated. I am still integrating this shift in perspective. It started when I left work. Bad for the ego, but good for appreciating the kindness in my life. It's much easier to find gratitude now. I hope this leads me to offer the same with others.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by jacob »

One way to 'unlock' the conundrum is to realize that everybody has a set point on a scale between "authenticity" and "socialization", that is, how much of your ego is formed by yourself and how much is formed by the people around you. If you fall toward either extreme on this scale it will be hard to accept that games exist. Like water for fish. Either you've always been in the water and thus blind to it... or you'll never have been it it at all and thus ignorant of what water is.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Scott 2 wrote:
Mon Nov 29, 2021 12:59 pm
In my experience, everyone has their games. Rather than driven by ulterior motive, they represent weight of a person's lived experience. Often the person is blind to it. Even after the patterns become clear, attempts to stop probably won't work, because they are so practiced. Part of a relationship is evaluating if games can mesh constructively. Knowing a person's past can help understand (and forgive) their rules.

IMO Berne's treatment is purposefully coarse, for the sake of clarity. I think there are more generous ways to frame it. I like Covey's simple "seek first to understand, then to be understood". One could argue my life is steeped in dysfunction and some people aren't living this way. I haven't found them.
I think I'm mostly in agreement with you. I was just using Berne's explicit definition of "game" within his framework, which differs from how it is used in common parlance. A person playing a game has to have an ulterior motive that is counter to what they are saying/doing on the surface, or else it does not qualify as a game.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by jacob »


white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

The U.S. tax code is peculiar. I've been reading and thinking a lot about my tax situation as we get towards the end of the year. The good news is I'm starting to accumulate some large capital gains on investing positions. The bad news is this means my tax burden will increase. This year it's not much of an issue, but whenever I exit my crypto positions next year, I'll likely have a large bill for Uncle Sam. I also would like to harvest some gains from VTSAX and reduce my exposure to the S&P500 in my taxable accounts. I've been reading Taleb and I'm starting to think the "golden middle" of indexing is really the worse of both worlds for me (more on this later).

Anyhow, INTJ gonna INTJ, so I ran the ballpark numbers on the tax/benefits implications of getting married for me (not a 2021 consideration but good background information to have):

Job benefits
-$6228 increase in BAH (tax-free income)
-100% free healthcare and dental for spouse

Tax benefits
-Reduce income by standard deduction ($1500)
-Reduce income by IRA contribution ($700)
-Reduce tax bracket to 12% ($1300)
-Reduce LT capital gains to 0% for $30k in gains ($4500)

Total = ~$14k

So, getting married would net me about $14k a year annually because my potential spouse wouldn't be earning income while she is in school (which is also enough to cover all of her expenses other than tuition). Of course the math changes if/when she starts making an income. And divorce ain't exactly cheap, so that outcome would certainly be a negative financial impact. But it's interesting how favorable the tax code is to married couples with only one income earner (or significant disparity in incomes between partners).

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

GandK wrote:
Thu Nov 11, 2021 4:28 am
Example 1: We have pensions, and have made riskier investments with our remaining retirement money than 50-ish year old people should make if they don't have something stable like fully funded pensions. Our brokerage account looks more like a mix that 25yo people might have, risk-wise.

Example 2: I have a small Roth that I trade pink sheets in, and periodically chuck half the returns I get from the pink sheet trades into TQQQ. And that account has been our highest percentage return account over these last 3 years. But I'm fully cognizant that I could lose every penny in that account, and that "trading pink sheets" is not an investment strategy. We're not living off that account, so neither of us mind.

I would never advise Joe Random who is 50 to do what we do.
I think there are some parallels with my current mindset. I don't have a pension, but have an extremely stable source of income in the form of my current occupation. I still am locked in to 2.5 years more of employment, so it's likely I may end up with a sub ~3% SWR at the end point of that no matter what. On the one hand, maybe I should just be conservative and ride things out until I traditional FIRE at that point. On the other hand, I have so much extra time and mental capacity at the office that I've recently been devoting towards investing/trading topics. I also know that I won't need to touch any of this money for years and years, so I'm more comfortable making risky asymmetric bets with 5-10% of my portfolio. I'm still just reading all I can and dipping my foot in a few trades.

In regards to the TQQQ outperformance, I'm not surprised. One thing that has been floating around my head is that the SPY might really be a terrible "golden middle" in today's low-rate/highly leveraged environment. I haven't fully formed this idea, but I get the feeling that the FAANG names and QQQ overall are what is really carrying the entire market. In other words, if QQQ tanks, the entire market is going with it. Therefore, maybe the risk payoff is there to just stay in QQQ and eat the high volatility because you are going to get higher returns if current trends continue. So maybe the barbell approach is TQQQ (or something similarly bullish tech/information age hypothesis) as the risky bet and gold/bonds as the safe bet, rather than something like 100% SPY which is vulnerable to the same factors that will crush QQQ but does not offer the same returns. Some of this might be moot because TINA in my TSP as long as I am working, but it does have me considering reducing my exposure in taxable accounts. I want my safe assets to be safe and my risky assets to be risky, not some amalgamation of both in one asset.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

November Report

Income: 8325 (after tax)
Savings Rate: 77%
Expense Total: 1894

Housing - 800
Food/Restaurant - 376
Dating/Social/Entertainment/Alcohol/Bars – 368
Car/Transportation/Insurance/Travel – 175
Health/Fitness – 71
Other - 65
Cell Phone/Music - 39

Some more travel spending this month due to LDR and holidays. It seems like I'm starting to settle into a new spending level of about $1.9k. I expected expenses to go up a little bit from traveling back and forth to see DGF, but I've also been able to offset a lot of it by using basic travel hacking techniques.

The increase of spending for entertainment can be attributed to a few pricey restaurant meals and dating/social activities. I think the next evolution in recreating the restaurant experience at home will be to make some unique cocktails with DGF.


Financial Snapshot
Rolling 3 month expense average: $1863
Net Worth: $428k

My portfolio allocations at the moment are a little tricky to calculate since I have some cash on the sidelines to put back into global macro trades (my spreadsheet doesn't include cash holdings as part of the portfolio allocations). I exited my URNM trade as a 3-bagger with $4k in profits (in IRA). I'm unsure if I should count the gains from trades as income or just roll them into my net worth summary each month, so I opted for the latter at the moment.

I've been reading a lot about trading and investing in general. Still not sure if what I'm doing is wise, but I at least am getting a better sense for what all the words mean.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Scott 2 »

It's been awhile since you dropped the paid coaching for your lifting. How has that changed played out?

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Scott 2 wrote:
Sun Dec 05, 2021 12:38 pm
It's been awhile since you dropped the paid coaching for your lifting. How has that changed played out?
I've been a bit adrift with what I want to do next for my lifting, which actually started a bit before I dropped the coaching. To be honest, I haven't really been able to get into a great program rhythm with my rotating shift schedule (I have a suspicion the rotating shifts are suppressing some of my natural T which doesn't help). Basically I've been eating maintenance and lifting a few sessions a week for the past couple of months just to maintain things. I may have lost a bit of squat and deadlift strength, but my bench is still just around PR levels. I have no doubt I could get back up to PR levels after a month or two of training squats and deadlifts 2x a week like I used to do when training 5 sessions a week.

I liked doing the olympic lifts because they involve some technical focus and explosiveness, compared to powerlifting or bodybuilding training which can become pretty monotonous (although I do like the steady progress made with the latter). I also liked that the olympic lifts forced me to maintain some flexibility/mobility in areas like my wrists and shoulders (variety in movements is also probably good for longevity), which I don't get as much if I'm just training for strength or hypertrophy in the big 3 lifts. I'm such a novice with the olympic lifts that even after ~2 years, most of the snatch/c+j exercises are just technical practice (e.g. my PR clean+jerk is maybe 205 lbs, whereas I PR squatted 405 lbs for a double). Additionally, under my coach I was training for supertotal rather than weightlifting pure, so my program incorporated the big 3 along with the 2 classic lifts. At one time my plan was to alternate weightlifting and powerlifting competitions every 3-4 months, eventually trying to build to up to qualifying for USAPL and USAW nationals. I'm not even sure what the status of those events are with COVID.

In other words, I still think I can make a lot more progress and am comfortable designing my own program along with evaluating my technique at this point. But it's more of a question of motivation. I think it's easier for me to follow a program when I have a specific outcome in mind, so maybe I should just schedule a weightlifting or powerlifting competition and then make a program leading up to that.

There's another aspect that has actually reduced my motivation a bit as well. As I'm sure you know, it takes much less work to maintain muscle/strength compared to building it in the first place. So basically I've been able to skate by with lifting maybe 1-3 sessions a week with my physique staying the same and maybe only slight losses in strength. I'm the leanest and most muscular I've ever been. I have abs. I think I'm realizing that as much as I really like gaining strength, a big part of me was also lifting for vanity purposes. I used to have to stay in shape for my job as well, but my maintenance fitness is already in the top ~95% of the military and probably the top 99% of my largely desk-bound career specialty.

So I guess I have a few options that I will have to ponder. I estimate that I'm at maybe ~13% BF currently and I still plan on doing one more fat loss phase to get down to 10%, which at the moment I postponed until after the holidays. Then I'd start a hypertrophy phase and continue the cycle of hypertophy/strength/peaking/gpp to pair along with the diet process of massing/maintenance/fat loss. I'd still like to add another 5-10 pounds of muscle I think, which would take me another 1-2 years depending on how things go, but that is also influenced by trying to fill out weight classes for competition so I'm not sure.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Scott 2 »

It's cool you've been able to keep most of the gains. That is a great spot to maintain.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by shaz »

That's a great idea to just sign up for a competition and go for it. It will give you a specific goal and also the competition will give you a better idea where you stand.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

I feel a disconnect with my financial capital. My savings are already greater than 20x annual expenses. In a parallel universe where I worked as a tech bro, I could quit my job today. I have no doubt that at some point in the next 50+ years of my life I will make some money again. However, I don't really have a sense for what all of this money is good for. Optionality, access, control, and freedom are all things I don't have and even if my net worth were 10x what it currently is, I'd still be severely limited on those things as long as I'm stuck with my FT job. There is no such thing as FU money when it comes to a military obligation.

On these forums, I often read about freedom-to do X. But freedom is a hard concept for me to grok. I haven't been "free" for over 10 years; I've been a on a set path where my job and living locations are planned out in 2-3 year increments. I think I find this predictable timeline comforting, particularly because some of my greatest life anxiety has come from the unknown (e.g. the last 6 months before a new assignment where I'm waiting to find out where I'll end up). I feel like I'm a very forward-looking person, which I guess makes sense since things like saving money were second nature to me even as a teenager. It's easy and comforting to plan out the future; I'll be here for 3 years, next year I'm going to do this, in the next few weeks I'm going to be doing this, I'm looking forward to trip x with y. In times of high stress or boredom, I've often found myself doing research or planning for the future as an escape, even if what I'm researching has nothing to do with my life now and likely will never even come to fruition. It gives me a weird sense of productivity in the moment but ultimately leads to a feeling of wasted time after the fact, which I've recognized in my adult years.

I'm starting to feel a bit trapped in my career. I thought I'd never be one of those people counting down the days until they leave the military and yet I feel like I've been stuck at 2.5 more years for months. DGF lives in one city, my friends and family live in another city, and I'm in a third city. I work a terrible rotating shift schedule in an office job that provides virtually no fulfillment. Meanwhile my friends have been working from home for almost 2 years, free to hop to a different job for more pay as they please.

I used the one option I had left to attempt to get pulled to another department that would be able to utilize me. Closed door discussions were had at way higher levels than me and it sounds like my boss's boss was able to block the request. This was a risk and the department trying to poach me knew that I'd be put into an uncomfortable position if it appeared that I was asking to be moved. I think I was able to play it off like it was unexpected when I heard my boss mention it for the first time last week, even though the reality is that that department lead had called me a month ago to make sure I understood the risk of changing jobs in the middle of an evaluation period. I haven't gotten the full scoop from my source at the senior levels, so maybe there is still hope for transferring this summer or at a future time. Office politics have never been my strong suit, but they are how my current organization works.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Things overall are going well as I head into the holidays.

One thing I am struggling with as I think about a transition from WL5 to 6 is the concept of social capital. I understand social capital and the value of it. However, my current lifestyle is really split into 3 geographical areas (my current city, DGF's city, and my retirement city), which makes developing/incorporating social capital particularly difficult. A breakdown of the number of days I spend on average per month in each location is probably something like 20, 4, 6 but the first category includes an 8 hour shift and the other locations are usually free of job responsibilities.

I have the most social capital in my retirement city, however I am only there 1-2 weekends a month. I have few friends in my current city other than my roommates and work colleagues. I have none of my own social capital in DGF's city but can at least rely on some of DGF's.

Another issue I'm wrestling with is how to further reduce spending. I have pretty much come to the point where the majority of my discretionary spending is related to socialization. The reality is, typical activities in my social group like eating at restaurants, going to events, going on trips, and so on all cost money. If I reduce these expenses, my social capital is definitely going to take a hit, which I'm hesitant to do given my natural introvert tendencies. There is some optimization that can be done by suggesting alternate activities and skipping out on the most expensive commitments, but it's largely at the periphery. Finding new social groups may be a better solution in the long term, but it is not so easy when I'm split between 3 locations and also juggling rotating shift work.

DGF and I went on some trips this month before her schedule gets much more demanding, but I think overall we are getting better about entertaining ourselves while spending minimal money. Traditional travel hacking makes this a bit easier to accomplish as well. I'm not a huge fan of travel but I also recognize DGF hasn't been anywhere, so we at least traveled to a nearby city to see the tourist sites she wanted to go to.

white belt
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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

white belt wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 5:16 pm
The housing in this HCOL is what kills me. I am definitely exploring more creative solutions, but again I come back to the opinion that it is unpossible to get to 1x JAFI ($770 a month) when housing+utilities expenses are >$400 a month.
I'm thinking again about how to live a good life at 1x JAFI. I found myself going back to the OG ERE challenge from the blog and of course I've rediscovered that Jacob came to the same conclusion about housing that I quoted above back in 2008:
Jacob wrote:I think that a good guideline per person for living arrangements is $200-300/month/person. In some places this buys more than other places. As far as I am concerned, the number is absolute. If I want to live in a “nicer place” it simply translates into a (much) smaller place and vice versa.
Source: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/day-1 ... -live.html

I plugged the numbers from the blog post into the inflation calculator and voila it just so happens that the upper end of that comes out to ~$400 a month in 2021. So again, I am refocusing my efforts on solving the housing puzzle to reduce my current $800 a month rent down to the $400-500 range.

$800 a month is just about the lowest I could find on the open market at the time I signed my lease. I could walk away with a month's notice at anytime and move into a cheaper place since my initial lease is now month to month. I perused Craigslist and there seem to be the following opportunities (I think maybe rents are cheaper in the winter since there are less tenants moving):

1. move into a similar shared house in area slightly further from metro station for ~$650
2. move further out from metro/city and shared apartment for ~$500, but this would increase my car commute by 10 min roundtrip each day and preclude me from using public transportation as easily
3. establish work agreement with landlord in exchange for rent discount at current location
4. find unlisted living opportunity through social capital
5. alternative housing like boat, RV, van

I'm not sure that option 1 for savings of only $150 a month is enough to move the needle for me. I like my current roommate situation and location, and moving even in town is a hassle with at least some expense. $200+ a month in savings and I would really consider it.

Option 2 gets me closer to my expense range, but it also locks me into driving a little more. It would be too far to bike commute, although I haven't bike commuted in my current location for a few months anyway.

I tested the waters with option 3 in regards to landscaping tasks, but basically my landlord said there wasn't much work to be done until Spring. I think if I make the offer to do maintenance/projects around the house then he might have some stuff for me to do. I'm not sure how much labor would be required to net a $200-400 rent discount. AFAIK this it he only property he owns.

I haven't explored option 4 at all. My social capital is relatively undeveloped here but I know there are neighbors on my street living alone in big houses. It could be feasible to rent out a room for below market rates if I build up some rapport with them. This is a more reasonable option now because I am no longer having girls over except when DGF visits for one weekend a month or so. I am also gone more often visiting DGF.

Option 5 doesn't seem viable in this HCOL area. It's just too built up.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by macg »

Doesn't this calculation assume that rent/mortgage has increased at the same rate as inflation? In the US at least, hasn't it in reality increased at a greater rate?

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by Western Red Cedar »

white belt wrote:
Thu Dec 23, 2021 5:27 pm
One thing I am struggling with as I think about a transition from WL5 to 6 is the concept of social capital. I understand social capital and the value of it. However, my current lifestyle is really split into 3 geographical areas (my current city, DGF's city, and my retirement city), which makes developing/incorporating social capital particularly difficult. A breakdown of the number of days I spend on average per month in each location is probably something like 20, 4, 6 but the first category includes an 8 hour shift and the other locations are usually free of job responsibilities.
Is it possible to look at this as a strength rather than a weakness in terms of building social capital? One of my friends who seemed to have the most social capital in my 20's regularly traveled up and down the west coast, either living in his van or staying on people's couches. I once traveled with him and was amazed at the networks of friends he had in different cities. They all loved to see him just as much as my group of friends, and went out of their way to help us out on our trip.

I think building relationships and developing social capital works best when you give without any expectations.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Tue Dec 28, 2021 2:31 pm
Is it possible to look at this as a strength rather than a weakness in terms of building social capital? One of my friends who seemed to have the most social capital in my 20's regularly traveled up and down the west coast, either living in his van or staying on people's couches. I once traveled with him and was amazed at the networks of friends he had in different cities. They all loved to see him just as much as my group of friends, and went out of their way to help us out on our trip.

I think building relationships and developing social capital works best when you give without any expectations.
I'm largely in agreement with your post. To be clear, I never pay for lodging in either of the cities that I regularly travel to. Nevertheless, my history has shown that I haven't ever done well with making friends in a new location outside of work. At my current job, I don't have any coworkers that I would want to spend time with outside of work. I'm sure for an extrovert living the van lifestyle on the west coast, finding like-minded people isn't so hard. For an introvert living in the yuppie cities of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, there are far fewer like-minded people since the HCOL forces people to mostly focus everything on their careers.

Let me illustrate the point I'm making with an example. I helped my roommate with some car maintenance issues she was having in city A. I need a ride from the airport in city B. If I wasn't split up between 3 locations, it's feasible I could have asked my roommate and she would have gladly given me a ride. But instead I have to pay for an Uber since there are no public transportation options and I'm in a different city.

macg wrote:
Sun Dec 26, 2021 1:39 am
Doesn't this calculation assume that rent/mortgage has increased at the same rate as inflation? In the US at least, hasn't it in reality increased at a greater rate?
Sure, not every area has rent increases that keep pace with inflation (many HCOL areas outpace inflation). The Fed still buying mortgage-backed securities and ZIRP means property values have increased faster than inflation. If you want to allocate more money to housing you can, but I'm just saying that there are very few people that can make 1x JAFI work with housing costs greater than $400 a month. If you live in an area that doesn't require car ownership or regular use of public transportation then you might be able to make it work with higher housing costs (e.g. transportation costs are ~$0).
Last edited by white belt on Sat Jan 01, 2022 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: White Belt's Military Journey to FI

Post by white belt »

This isn't the "Year in Review" post. That'll come when I have energy to dig through my December expenses. At the moment, I just want to post some things I've been thinking about.

I think a decent one sentence summary of ERE1 is "How to live a good life on <$10k a year." I expect the JAFI numbers to be around $9.5k when the December CPI data comes out and for simplicity I just rounded up. If we break down that statement further, we see there are really two components:

The first is to live a good life. I believe in Maslow's triangle and that once basic needs are met, the typical person is looking for self-actualization. This is no easy task and is largely independent of how much one spends. One can lead a fulfilling life at $10k a year and an unfulfilling one at $100k, and vice versa. In modern society, consumerism (the cave) obfuscates the ways we go about living a good life, essentially sending one on myriad side quests that serve as an obstacle to completing the essential quest (to use a video game analogy).

The second "10k a year" part only matters if you believe that the individual has a role in not making climate change worse. The more I've read, the more I feel like I don't want to be a part in making things worse.

Most of what we talk about in the ERE sphere are variations on strategies and tactics to accomplish the one sentence summary. I think it can be tempting to lose the forest for the trees, especially if one (like me) is trying to cross the chasm between WL5 and 6. But really it comes back to living a good life. Some people live a good life by shaving away the superfluous things and savoring only the most essential marrow. Others live a good life by utilizing various forms of capital to experience all sorts of hedonistic pleasures without having to sacrifice their time to a lifetime of toiling. I guess a true renaissance man combines as he sees fit.

I'm not really sure of the point I'm trying to make. I can't quite figure out where to focus my efforts next, other than the fact that my life is currently missing some excitement and fulfillment. DGF recognizes that I am most fulfilled when I'm learning and doing something, which is something I'm not really getting out of my job at all. So I'm left almost searching for things to do that give me a sense of satisfaction. My social life is enjoyable as a break, but again I don't get much fulfillment except for rare occasions when I get to collaborate with others on something.

Here are some projects I have off the top of my head:

-start cutting my hair again
-start growing microgreens again
-learn to shave with safety razor
-learn to darn socks
-fix broken spoke on bicycle
-fix weather stripping on car

Maybe I'll try tackling that list at some point soon.

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