Nomadic-ERE Year 5 - Wanderlust Prevails

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by mountainFrugal »

I am wondering with all that walking and your Journal title if you have read Wanderlust- A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit?

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

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Sat Jan 01, 2022 1:07 pm
I am wondering with all that walking and your Journal title if you have read Wanderlust- A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit?
I haven't, but it's now been added to my list. Walking (a close second to cycling individually for me) is DW and I's favorite way of exploring an area. In a society that's sedentary and dreads walking from the far end of a parking lot to the store entrance......we're definitely outliers. My whole neighborhood is not designed for walkers. There are very few sidewalks, and when it snows, they don't even bother clearing them. Europe way much better in this regard.

Musings

2022 is definitely going to be an interesting year. We're spending the rest of January up in the great north, after which a road trip is planned for warmer pastures. We'll be visiting some friends and family and working remotely for a month. By mid-March a decision will be made on next move. I'm in favor of extending the adventure a bit somewhere warmer than New England but possibly still cold (SC/NC/TN).

Our expenses will temporarily be very high as a result of carrying costs for housing in two places at the same time( $2-3k/month ON TOP of our regular costs) . We've decided that giving up our apartment for intermittent travel while working doesn't make sense from a practical standpoint. It sure isn't the ideal way, and if we weren't working it would be easier to plan longer periods of travel which definitely make giving up a permanent residence much easier.

Right now DW and I are focused on making the most of winter here. We've been very active to start the year, and look forward to taking advantage of warmer weather next month to do a lot more walking and cycling.

This is the year where we are able to take things a month at a time. We have nothing keeping us in our current location. For now, work continues to be 90% remote. So long as this continues, we can have a lot of flexibility to travel and explore domestically and even internationally in shorter stints. We never dreamed this would be possible. If business travel resumes and our employers require our presence in physical locations regularly, one/both of us will likely pull the plug again.

Financially things are going well given the circumstances. We should be able to maintain a very high savings rate for the first half of the year, despite our spending once again doubling. leanFI has been achieved, and we could probably cover our true needs using a relatively sustainable WR% indefinitely. So now it's really just a matter of some financial cushion and possible home base purchase. (@WRC, told you we were in similar boats ;) )

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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by jacob »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:06 am
I haven't, but it's now been added to my list. Walking (a close second to cycling individually for me) is DW and I's favorite way of exploring an area. In a society that's sedentary and dreads walking from the far end of a parking lot to the store entrance......we're definitely outliers. My whole neighborhood is not designed for walkers. There are very few sidewalks, and when it snows, they don't even bother clearing them. Europe way much better in this regard.
You might like this:
viewtopic.php?t=12106

It's been excellent for exploring areas/towns that we'd never have gone to otherwise. There are 2000+ routes in the US alone, but it's international.

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

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Thank you for sharing @Jacob! Navigated to the AVA site and there appear to be dozens of options within a very reasonable distance to where we will be staying for the month of Feb and into March. Need to take the time to read the whole thread you linked and see what other forum members are doing. I would personally be interested in some of the longer walks, as DW and I consider 5k walk as necessary as brushing our teeth.

Musings

January is off to a pretty good start. The sport focus shifted towards weight training a bit as the weathers been single digit cold followed by significant rain and winds. Did manage to get out for a few runs and MTB rides though.

On Dec 1, I wrote that I would like to get down to 212 lbs by the end of the month, well the end result was actually a weight gain till the end of the month. The trend revered on Jan 1 and now I'm back down to ~213 lbs. Knowing we're headed for warmer weather, the goal is to shed another 5-10 lbs of body fat, though I suspect this will happen naturally as activity tends to go up and appetite down from past experience.

On the work front, things have been quiet. Last week I had to put in ~1-2 hours of work per day Mon-Thurs and about 4 hours of Friday. I expect this workload to continue for the next 6-8 weeks. That should make traveling to warmer climate this time of year more worthwhile. Plan to dive right into Volksmarching.

My compensation is tied to performance in a major way, and last quarter I was able to execute flawlessly, with some good fortune thrown in the mix it turned out to be my best performing quarter yet. This means a bonus at the end of the month that adds a whole year of expenses to our stash. It also means that I should be given some breathing room for the next few months wrt future performance. My low hanging fruit is gone at work, and this is a good time to shift my Pareto efforts to other parts of life.

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

Post by Western Red Cedar »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:42 am
The sport focus shifted towards weight training a bit as the weathers been single digit cold followed by significant rain and winds. Did manage to get out for a few runs and MTB rides though.
I think you mentioned you used to be a personal trainer. I'm curious what your weekly weight training and exercise regime is like? Days/reps/sets, etc...All weights or do you mix in cardio?

What are your plans to maintain muscle while on the road? Any lessons learned from the Europe trip?

Feel free to point me in the right direction if you've posted all this before. I've been on a push/pull/legs routine for a while and like it a lot, but I was lifting too much and I'm taking a month off to let my elbow heal up. I'd like to establish a bodyweight routine to utilize while traveling.

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

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Hi, WRC. What works for me, might not work for you. Since we probably have different baselines and goals. But currently I'm doing a push/pull split and training 3 and sometimes 4 times a week. There is no leg training at the gym, as that's handled by running 1-2X a week and MTBing 1-2X a week. My legs are muscular enough from years of squatting and deadlifting that I have no need for hypertrophy, so performance for my other sports is what matters most. When traveling and limited access to biking, I definitely stick to a similar split to yourself.

For the past two years (minus the period in EU in 2020) DW and I go to a chain gym that has over 2,000 locations nationwide but is limited in its freeweight availability (no squat racks or free weight barbells/plates, just smith machine.) So we use DB's which typically only go up to 75lb to do most of our compound movements, along with cable work. Workouts only take 45-60 minutes and consist of 4-6 exercises with 1-2 warmup sets and 3-4 working sets per. A typical back day would be some light cable pulldowns to warm up, followed by working sets, single arm cable rows, standing cable pullovers, reverse grip EZ bar curls, DB curls, and pullups to finish things off. A typical pushday looks like warming up with low incline DB presses, working up to 4 heavy sets, then doing cable crossovers high, crossovers pins set low, then supersetting tricep rope pressdowns with upright cable rows, and finishing with a superset of seated side lateral db raises and bodyweight dips. Depending on how busy the gym is, what equipment is taken (usually not an issue as I train early morning or mid morning when people work) I will switch up the order or substitute other exercises. But that's a typical mix.

I find that intensive MTB riding 1-2 times a week is basically a killer HIIT and leg workout. I ride clipless and typically do 90-120 minute rides that are mostly black diamond difficulty singletrack/XC type trail. It ends up being a good grip and upper back workout too. Running I notice is great for cardio and also core strength. Hope that helps.

FWIW I spent the first 10 years of my lifting career powerlifting/bodybuilding and competing at a decently high amateur level. My goals are to maintain my lean mass and keep my body primed to be able to enjoy sport and active life as long as possible. I don't care to get any stronger from a 1RM perspective or get any more muscular, so YMMV.

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

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Crazy ride in the markets this year. Between expenses going up and portfolio losses, we went from 27.1x TTM expenses on 1/1/2022, down to 20.8x as of this morning. Plenty of fat in the budget to trim if we needed to, so for now we'll continue DCAing on the way down, and see where the bottom end up being.

These final days in the frozen north are going to be spent seeing some family and friends, packing, cleaning, and getting everything prepped for being away a few months. We're looking forward to warm weather and sunshine.

MBBboy
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by MBBboy »

Its always interesting when the portfolio gets big enough that the markets behavior starts whip sawing the value of your portfolio. You don't seem worried (and you shouldn't be) but a lot of people find it disconcerting.

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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

MBBboy wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 11:37 am
You don't seem worried (and you shouldn't be) but a lot of people find it disconcerting.
For sure.

It made me queasy in Feb/March of 2020 since it was a 35-40% drop and I had left my job behind in October 2019. Since then, it feels a bit less worrisome to see the sudden losses. It's also a very different feeling when you have income and/or other diversified forms of capital.

Welcome to the ERE forums btw!

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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by Frugalchicos »

Might be a good time to keep accumulating and make the big move in a couple of years!!!

Are you still considering buying property in Portugal? Also, you mentioned something about being able to get a mortgage for a property overseas? may I ask how were you planning in doing it?

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Re: Semi-ERE Year 3 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Feb 1, 2021
NW = 26.3X TTM Spending (-.8 month over month)
WR = 3.79%
January Savings Rate = 93%

Activity
Walked - 107 miles
Ran - 7 times for a total of 31.1 miles
MTB - 5 times for a total of 92 miles
Weight lifting - 12 times
Weight - 211.8 lb, 7 day average down 4.0 lb for January

Musings

January was our highest income month to date. It was just barely enough to offset market losses, which were pretty big.

Spending continues to trend up as we are double paying for accommodation.

We made it safely down to FL for the next month or two. Today will be 75 degrees and lunch will be spend on the bicycle.

Other than that, not much else to report. We continue to take things week by week and month by month at work. February should be fairly lite, meaning a lot of outdoor activities and sunshine are on the menu.

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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by Frugalchicos »

Florida sounds look a good plan these days…I don’t think you will miss the snow and cold of the North!

You should consider longboarding in FL. There are pretty amazing waves in Portugal where you can surf. It is a good ERE hobby that keeps you in close contact with nature and heals your soul and mind ;)

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 3 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

March 1, 2021
NW = 25.7X TTM Spending (-.6 month over month)
WR = 3.89%
February Savings Rate = 70%

Activity
Walked - 159 miles
Ran - 1 times for a total of 3.7 miles
MTB - 6 times for a total of 108 miles
Weight lifting - 15 times
Weight - 211.8 lb, 7 day average down 0.0 lbs for February

Musings

February kicked ass. Had a very successful month at work, which did require working 30-40 hour weeks for the second half of the month. It will result in another good income month soon.

Was way more active since we're down here in the land of sunshine. Weather has been unseasonably warm. Spending a ton of time walking, biking, and even working outside.

We extended our stay into April. Thus adding an extra month of paying double accommodation.........worth it. Non housing spending is very low, despite very obvious inflation of food and fuel.

@frugalchicos, I realized that I never answered your question from January. Yes we are still considering it, but with annual leases fairly cheap, it might be worth a year test run......a) to see if we really like it longer term vs. romanticizing our last visit and b) to make sure we can establish residency for DW. It would be terrible to buy and then visa laws change or something and she's only able to be there 3 months at a time. Regarding accumulation, we're sitting at a nearly 4% WR using rolling 12 months of expenses, and this will keep going up until ~July and then level off somewhere around 5%. We're really close to our "number", and if EU wasn't a shit show right now, we could easily slow travel on ~3.5-3.75% of our nut........working right now has been really good. No stress, completely remote, great team, great boss, good company culture, and so much autonomy over my time and work that I can't believe the comp is as good as it is!

re: surfing......we're on the west coast of FL, but I do want to learn this year when we return home. There are plenty of places we want to visit on this planet where a surfboard and a bicycle can provide all of the exercise/entertainment one could imagine needing.

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

Post by Western Red Cedar »

I've got to admit I'm a bit jealous of your decision to head south for the winter. I keep getting teased with glimpses of spring weather, but it looks like we will have another day with temperatures below freezing tomorrow.

I'm curious how valuable you think the TTM metric is. You likely won't be paying double accommodation in the future. Do you still find TTM valuable for future planning and considering a SWR?

I tend to think it holds less value for people planning significantly different lifestyles after reaching FI, such as vagabonds. But...this may be a rationalization for sloppy accounting on my part as well.

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

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

@WRC, don't be jealous but I do recommend some sort of location arbitrage during the cold dark winter days.....unless of course you love that sort of thing. No amount of "proper" clothing could replace longer days and sunshine for DW and I. I don't mind the cold so much as the grey New England Skies and darkness before dinnertime. After spending 4 months in FL/SC last winter, it was a no-brainer for us and we have zero regrets.

I think TTM is a very viable metric because the double accommodation could easily be replaced with something else in the future. Long term TTM spending vs. WR% tracking to us is a super useful metric over a long period of time because it looks at cashflow coming in and encourages reductions in consumption to get/keep the lines from intersecting the wrong way. All too commonly in the FI-sphere, people have unrealistic budgets/ideas of what life will look like after they stop working. If someone has a $100k/yr household spending, what makes them think they will be able to cut down to $40k/yr and not feel deprived? Therefor I would encourage everyone to track these metrics and practice getting to a sustainable spending level before pulling the plug (at least if you plan to reach true FI vs. semi-ERE/FIRE).

In big picture tracking/planning, the two metrics I'm most interested in now is TTM spending vs. 3% WR, and YoY portfolio growth/loses (adjusted for inflation). If the double accommodation is truly a one-off for 3-4 months then it will only result in a blip in those charts over a longer term. But if double accommodation turns into say vehicle based exploration with its own set of costs, or drastically inflated living costs due to real inflation of energy, goods, and services, then it's not something I would want to count on just going away in the future.

It's sort of how I knew our ~2-2.5% TTM WR% in 2020 was also an anomaly due to lack of housing costs and not spending money during lockdowns/quarantines. We will continue going through cycles, and at the end of the day this data can be used to maintain a relatively desired trajectory, but we're not making day to day decisions based on the numbers skewing one way or another.

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

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Thanks for the detailed response. You've probably given me more motivation to seriously track expenses again than a number of different FIRE blogs and posts. I tracked expenses for about six months four or five years ago. I realized that most of our expenses are fairly stable, and we tended to average around $2,000 per month as a household. Our bare bones were closer to $1,500, but random things like a medical bill, a car repair, or a wedding/event would balance us out around 2k per month.

I decided to stop tracking because it felt like it was putting unnecessary stress on my relationship with DW. She spends more regularly on personal/discretionary expenses, but they are rarely more than 100-200 dollars per month. Often much less. In the grand scheme of things, this was really just a drop in the bucket and it was easier to just shift our focus on other aspects of life. I could see how this might be dangerous for traditional spenders/couples, but DW's expenses are typically thrifting some designer jeans, replenishing health/beauty/makeup products, or buying art supplies.

I tend to not worry about occasional splurges, like an international trip every 3-4 years, because these aren't ongoing expenses and the price is inflated by maintaining our carrying costs back home. This is probably where I'm at most danger of getting into some fuzzy accounting.

I decided to check our finances a year ago and sure enough, over six months, our expenses were around 2,100 per month. A big car repair had jacked everything up a bit, but still in line with what I was estimating.

But...I do like the idea of having better data to help model how we could make certain lifestyle changes. After tracking body measurements and different physical metrics for the last four months I've noticed a change in my thinking. It is much harder to lie to yourself when you are looking at hard numbers or data on a spreadsheet. I've adopted a narrative that I shouldn't worry about some non-fixed expenses related to travel, because I'd be cutting other costs and meeting those needs through geoarbitage. That probably isn't a wise position.
2Birds1Stone wrote:
Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:46 pm
It's sort of how I knew our ~2-2.5% TTM WR% in 2020 was also an anomaly due to lack of housing costs and not spending money during lockdowns/quarantines. We will continue going through cycles, and at the end of the day this data can be used to maintain a relatively desired trajectory, but we're not making day to day decisions based on the numbers skewing one way or another.
This gets to some of the reason why I'm not particularly fixated on TTM though. One of the benefits to ERE in my mind is that it encourages flexibility and creativity when approaching life and finances. It seems to me that if one is creative enough, one shouldn't worry too much about the numbers. Choosing an option that significantly lowers expenses for a few months is often a viable path. In fact, it might even be the more exciting path!

For example, you could ditch the vehicle travel in the US and hop on a bicycle instead - or tackle one of the many long-distance trails for months on end.

I suppose I may still be approaching this all from somewhere in the SemiERE band that J&G talked about a while back. A more fiscally conservative position of the SemiERE band, but not as fiscally conservative as traditional FIRE.

macg
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by macg »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Fri Mar 11, 2022 2:37 pm
I decided to stop tracking because it felt like it was putting unnecessary stress on my relationship with DW. She spends more regularly on personal/discretionary expenses, but they are rarely more than 100-200 dollars per month.
I think this is a common issue. In the times I've run into it, I've done what others have suggested in various threads - specifically map out in the budget (or in the "financial plan conversations" if no physical budget is used) a line item for discretionary spending, and make it big enough to not cause concern. Meaning, if it's generally around 100-200, make the line item 300. Not always been successful, but most of the time it works.

shaz
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by shaz »

I've been tracking TTM for several metrics for about a year and a half after being inspired by @2b1s (thanks for that). I find it to be very helpful because it keeps me from lying to myself that the best months are typical. It's true that some months have unusual expenses but mostly it has been surprising how consistent our expenses are from month to month. Without realizing it we spread out our intermittent expenses (car insurance, annual vaccinations for the animals, etc.) over the year.

DH and I have been struggling with whether to make all budget cuts now or assume cuts will happen more easily after retirement. I think we should make the cuts now because it takes some trial and error as well as practice settling into a different mindset.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Semi-ERE Year 3 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

April 1, 2021
NW = 26.2X TTM Spending (+.5 month over month)
WR = 3.82%
March Savings Rate = 90%

Activity
0 miles ran
14 times lifting weights
231 miles MTB
132.5 miles walking
3 lbs lost, 7-day average 208.9 lbs

Musings

I was done with work by the first few days of March, essentially had 4 weeks of PTO without using any PTO.....score!

Financially this was a pretty crazy month. High income thanks to work performance, markets made a slight recovery resulting in our largest 1 month increase in net worth ever in absolute dollar terms (but not %, that was Oct 2021). We spent a lot on entertainment/going out, restaurants, breweries, happy hours, etc. Totally worth it.

We almost bought a house! While we may not have been successful in the short term, it's solidified DW and I's desire to own something of our own before quitting the corporate rat race! We are still going through the mortgage underwriting process to ensure that when we do find a property in the coming months which checks the right boxes we are well positioned with an offer that ensures a quick close.

We also made new friends through serendipity (our hosts for the last 3 weeks in FL), who have given us an open invite to rent from them under the same arrangement any time they aren't hosting family! That means next winter we have a really cheap place to stay for 1-2 months. This arrangement worked out so well because we clicked with our hosts on many levels, turned out to have very much in common with them, enjoyed leisure time together, alternated cooking for each other, and did some pet sitting/dog walking etc, helped with some gardening projects, fixed their bikes etc.

For now we have no real travel plans for the coming months besides a badass work trip to NV the second week of April, and a trip to a very tropical place as a reward for a job well done in July. We would love to get to Poland for 3-4 weeks in August if things with WWIII deescalate, and we are planning 2-3 weeks in Portugal in Oct so long as work doesn't get in the way.

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Re: Semi-ERE Year 4 - Wanderlust Prevails

Post by Frugalchicos »

Hey there!
Are you finally buying a house in FL? I always say I have to live in the US forever, I would buy a house in a beach town in NE FL. I love the weather and the ability to go to the beach and bbq all year round.

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