Nomadic-ERE Year 5 - Wanderlust Prevails

Where are you and where are you going?
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Lemur
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by Lemur »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Wed Mar 30, 2016 10:20 am
I doubt anyone will be reading this, but I hope to look back on this post 6 years from now and smile :)
Wed Mar 30, 2016 11:20 am

It has been 6 years. Under 4%. You've experienced not working for a lengthy period of time. Increased net-worth 50% in 18 months. I would certainly be smiling :D

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

@Jacob, I've noticed the ability to edit most of our previous posts has dissappeared. I am only able my last two posts in this journal.

Was there an announcement somewhere that I missed about the changes?

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Lemur wrote:
Tue Jun 07, 2022 12:22 pm
Wed Mar 30, 2016 11:20 am

It has been 6 years. Under 4%. You've experienced not working for a lengthy period of time. Increased net-worth 50% in 18 months. I would certainly be smiling :D
Definitely smiling, but you jinxed me =D

July 1, 2022
NW = 24.4X TTM Spending (-1.5 month over month)
WR = 4.1%
June Savings Rate = 72.7%

Activity
0 miles ran
14 times lifting weights
128 miles MTB
213 miles walking
-.5 lb Lost, 7-day average 212.3 lbs

Musings

"Worst market performance in the first half of a year in 52 years" coupled with bonds getting obliterated simultaneously, and then to drag us through the glass a little bit more, let's toss in the highest inflation in 40+ years.

Despite the headwinds, we're continuing to inject drips and drabs of our income into equities, CD's, and I bonds.

Spending trajectory has been on a steep rise since we moved back to this HCOL area a year ago. July will be the first month with the same housing costs YoY. Food and energy prices are up significantly, and that's where most of our increased spending will be coming from. The world's also opened up from covid. Travel will be another category that's going to be higher moving forward, especially with prices well above pre-pandemic levels.

Really curious how all of this plays out and/or impacts our plans. We're above a 4% WR for the first time since April of 2020. No bueno.

If we play our cards right, the blue line should level off over the next 3-6 months and then slowly decline. Meanwhile eventually the markets have to recover and the red line should shoot up.......in theory. I would feel a lot better quitting my job when they cross once more.

Image
Last edited by 2Birds1Stone on Mon Aug 08, 2022 2:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Tue Jun 07, 2022 5:29 am

We took a step in the right direction and booked flights to spend a month in Poland from mid-August to mid-September. I've felt homesick lately and it will be nearly two years since we've seen many of our friends and family on that side of the pond.

We have some shorter trips planned starting with a road trip next weekend to visit family and friends, our first "vacation" to a tropical place in July.

Between those three, that gets us to autumn here in NY, which is my favorite time of the year for hiking, MTB, and most outdoor activities.

From there we work on downsizing our live into a car and hitting the road to FL for the winter, getting rid of our permanent residence in the process.
Time flies. We're now ~2 weeks away from flying over the pond for a month. Taking two weeks of PTO and working remotely the other two.

After that, we get home and have just under 7 weeks to downsize our lives into a car and move out of our apartment. We're getting rid of this place for good, and heading south for the rest of fall/winter and into early spring.

Getting back to those ERE roots, we've solved housing for the winter with a combination of renting a room in a shared house and committing to a couple of pet sits. This should theoretically bring our housing costs down to the lowest they've been in the past few years, unless things blow up, then we're stuck paying crazy high market rate for short term rental/hotel/AirBnB or geoarbitraging somewhere much less desirable. Time will tell.

Excited for this next chapter of the adventure.

Western Red Cedar
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Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:15 pm

Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Great update! It is nice to see you leveraging the geographic flexibility with work to hit on different goals. Are you still thinking about completely walking away next Spring/Summer?

2Birds1Stone
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Location: Earth

Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 1:16 pm
Are you still thinking about completely walking away next Spring/Summer?
More than thinking, I already have a date set for turning in my two weeks notice. It's the same day my employer 401k match vesting cliff is. It's all or nothing after 24 months of service, then I'm out! We may even leave for Europe a month prior and I'll resign while abroad. DW has no more golden handcuffs after December, so I told her to quit whenever she feels burned out or wants to explore some other hobbies/interests while we are in the SE US this winter.

It's starting to feel real and a bit overwhelming with regards to the move. This time we're not coming back like the last two winters, which means purging everything and being very selective of what we will keep. Definitely going to be stepping out of our comfort zones quite a bit over the coming 10 months.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

August 1, 2022
NW = 25.7X TTM Spending (+1.3 month over month)
WR = 3.9%
July Savings Rate = 72.6%

Activity
0 miles ran
12 times lifting weights
60 miles MTB
185 miles walking
2.3 lb Lost, 7-day average 210.0 lbs

Musings

After 30 months of avoiding it, I tested positive for covid shortly after posting here. I felt fatigue and achy joints on Wednesday, and then a tickle in my throat that didn't go away on Thursday. Yesterday I woke up feeling congested and took a test to immediately get a positive result. Self isolating till at least Tuesday and trying to avoid getting DW sick.....it's a bit hard when we live together in a small space. Trying to take as many precautions as possible and stay out in the yard nearly all day.

July was a good month for the portfolio. We recovered some losses, kept investing, and were successful keeping expenses <$3,800

Expenses included some one-offs like a passport renewal, a drivers license replacement, car rental and meals our on vacation, and prepaying a few things for our trip in a few weeks.

Really looking forward to seeing friends and family in Poland soon. It will be really nice to spend 4 weeks there! Wish we could have timed it a bit better and moved out of here a month earlier, but it would have been a logistical nightmare.

2Birds1Stone
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Location: Earth

Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Can't even update my journal title to reflect the start of the 5th year on this journey.

As of two weeks ago, we're fully nomadic and houseless. We're arbitraging housing costs in a very desirable area to spend the winter in the USA. Between housing expenses getting halved, and a continued high savings rate, we are finding ourselves sitting around a <3.75% WR despite the carnage in the equity markets and inflation levels.

Just under 28 weeks of work left for me, and 24 for DW. We'll be wrapping out careers in style from somewhere on the Iberian peninsula. For now we're enjoying beautiful weather, a ton of time outdoors, and WFH with pretty flexible hours.

Everything has been downsized into what we could fit inside a vehicle. Next step will be storing a few things with family and downsizing into two carry on bags for ~6-8 months.

Frugalchicos
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by Frugalchicos »

Excited for you. Good luck with your travels. Let me know if you need any recommendations for north Spain!

classical_Liberal
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by classical_Liberal »

Where are you sprning winter? PM if you prefer

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

@Frugalchicos, will do!

@c_l, good catching up by txt. Your plans are way cooler than mine, at least for the next few months :)

Work took a turn for the worse. Previously thought I would make it till some golden handcuffs came off, but it's looking less and less likely.

This is good from an ERE perspective, since it forces some big changes toward a more desired long term path. It also opens up quite a bit of options for where/when to go this spring.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

I was one of the people who dropped from the FI MMG. I was also one of the people guilty of abandoning the forums and my own journal as a result of keeping a parallel but more open one there.

The goal moving forward is to do a better job of updating this thing here at least 1-2 times a month. There's a lot happening right now;

We're still working for the next 1-5 months. Things are very shaky and up in the air wrt work. We're ok with that because we've finally hit FI by most reasonable measures as a household. This means that any income earned beyond this point is not providing a lot of utility. The focus has shifted to lifestyle design and non-monetary pursuits. Right now my focus is rehabing a fairly injured shoulder, re-learning how to kick around a hacky sack, and watching WC football. There's a good amount of walking, cycling, and reading mixed in there.

Even with US markets down ~20% and inflation what it has been year over year, we're sitting at 28.5x expenses with a ~3.5% WR. Our spending is now below $100 USD a day, all in. We're still in a relatively HCOL area in the USA, especially for this time of year.

There's a lot of cool shit on the horizon, much of it uncharted territory for us. Looking forward to sharing a lot more than just the financial stuff here. It's time to get back to basics in a whole new way.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by Western Red Cedar »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Wed Nov 30, 2022 12:00 pm
There's a lot of cool shit on the horizon, much of it uncharted territory for us. Looking forward to sharing a lot more than just the financial stuff here. It's time to get back to basics in a whole new way.
I'm excited to hear about the next phase. I reread your entire journal earlier this month and appreciate all the musings and reflections over the last six years.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Wed Nov 30, 2022 3:06 pm
I'm excited to hear about the next phase. I reread your entire journal earlier this month and appreciate all the musings and reflections over the last six years.
Need to find a balance between contributing here and privacy.....unfortunately I had to scrub a LOT of very good posts completely because they would have made doxing too easy for IRL family/friends/coworkers, so the first few years are mostly lost. If these journals were behind something that prevented them from being accessed with a quick google search that probably wouldn't have been perceived as necessary.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Made a mistake in my last post, I guess it's guilt by association that when Jacob refers to the journal deleters of the past I lump myself in since I did go ahead and cleaned some posts from having absolute values, but left 95% of the non-numerical content intact. After WRC mentioned reading my whole journal I went back and did a reread over the past few days......what freakin ride.

Small Life Update

Currently sitting in the mountains watching snow, it's going to be -10 degrees here this evening. The fire is burning and most of my family is with us. We are here for the next 4 days. It offers a lot of time for reflection and contemplation.

In typical 2B1S satirical fashion, work is an absolute shitshow. With money a long ago solved problem, the other reasons for working are no longer present......the exit is visible, now it's just a matter of using the best tactics to make this next transition. I imagine this will be my last (2nd) time retiring from corporate America.

Christmas Eve will mark 13 weeks without any alcohol.....no real goal as far as sobriety....call me sober-curious and on a roll.....this is the longest I've gone without any imbibing since highschool....which was almost two decades ago.

Living in a warm climate during the holidays has produced stellar results as far as fitness.....this is the lightest and best shape I've been in coming into a new year.

I have a lot of things to share and write about, life, plans, the forums, community, my hopes for taking an active part in the ERE2.0sphere......despite how controversial it seems to be here lately, I love what the vision is, and from an ERE1.0 perspective this is certainly my tribe. Hope to meet many of you in person in the coming years.

Will do a longer post when time allows in the coming days. For now, it's family time.

theanimal
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by theanimal »

Nice work regarding the sobriety. It gets even easier to abstain the further you get along that path, as not only you will begin to identify as a person who doesn't drink, but friends/family/others will see you as that person as well.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by AxelHeyst »

Looking forward to that longer post, and to meeting you IRL in the near future 2b1s!

re: the scrubbing - yeah, don't worry about some little number scrubbing. It's the stories here that matter.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

@theanimal, I'm not sure if I want to completely abstain indefinitely. Right now it's been incredibly easy, even though I definitely consumed way too frequently and likely much due to tolerance. Looking back, it was a terrible habit, but given how easy it was to just stop, I don't know if addiction played any role. It feels like one of the best choices I've made in my adult life, even if it just forces me to make informed decisions moving forward......but I can't imagine ever going back to regular mindless consumption.

@AxelHeyst, thanks man. I have been in a sort of writers block lately. This place can be a bit intimidating to open up to.

My thoughts are a bit disorganized right now. 2022 was a whirlwind year for DW and I. Working through some stress and burnout related to the year-end at work. We told ourselves that we would return for no more than two years after the pandemic cut our travels in 2020 short. It's been just over two years and the burn/brown out has returned, especially the past few days/weeks as things started to deteriorate very quickly for me. Initially, I was planning on sticking it out till end of May, spending the last month or two burning PTO in Europe and vesting into the final set of golden handcuffs my job has for me. Now, after things unraveled the way they did, it looks like I have roughly 5-10 weeks left. We were planning on sticking around in the SE US until end of March anyway.....in hindsight, we got extremely lucky with our timing of this last stretch of work. Unless there is a collapse in the economy, we have a perpetual WR that's lean but livable. Ego's post about choosing the more interesting and adaptive route is much more satisfying and resilient than the easy "let's live off capital" route. There's a loose idea of where we want to be and what we want to do over the next 6-9 months.

The biggest project will be restoring my grandfathers orchard. This is going to be interesting to document, as we have almost zero experience in the domain we are stepping into.

RoamingFrancis
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by RoamingFrancis »

The only time I consumed alcohol was when I visited @AxelHeyst's place and got drunk in the desert. It was terrible. Don't plan to do it again.

Cool to see other people on here doing sobriety as a lifestyle choice.

Jin+Guice
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by Jin+Guice »

Dawg, I swear to fucking god if I find out you are in New Orleans and didn't hit me up...

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