Smashter's Great Adventure

Where are you and where are you going?
Smashter
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Midwest USA

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

Finances

318k USD combined assets in golden butterfly

168k mortgage debt at 3% 30 year loan

60% savings rate so far this year (spending ~$4500/month)

Life

DW and I have decided we are going to change things up, job-wise, once we either get to 400k in assets or reach the end of 2021, whichever comes first.

At this rate 400k assets will come a lot sooner, but you never know how the market will go.

Now we just have to figure out what “change things up” means.

Sabbatical and we come back to our jobs if possible? Try to pull an @AxelHeyst and see if we can do our jobs for just a few hours a week plus keep our healthcare? Take a break and figure out a more sustainable semi-ere lifestyle once we decompress?

The major wildcard is that we still want to have a kid and we’ve started exploring infertility treatments. My wife realized her insurance has amazing coverage for everything up to and including IVF if it got that far. (NY state insurance for the win) So we’re starting some initial testing just to see what’s up, as we are too otherwise very healthy people in their early 30s who should be able to procreate.

We both feel like one of us should keep a cushy tech job if there was a pregnancy. And I’d feel a lot of responsibility to shoulder that burden. And maybe it’d give me a renewed “why?” and extra energy?

I am chugging along at work. They like me and I have a lot of leverage because I’m the only person doing what I do. So my schedule is usually very manageable, and I make my own hours.

But kind of like AE was saying in a recent journal post, I am well past the point of realizing this is not a career I want to do for much longer.

I have had two jobs that I loved (pro basketball player & TV writers assistant). It took very little willpower to do those jobs because I was so excited by the work. This twitter thread really got me thinking about how to get back to that state:

https://twitter.com/reasonisfun/status/ ... 9415211009

The TLDR is that we need to spend time figuring out how to be “unconflicted about what we want to do.” Once you resolve that conflict you go full speed ahead, not wondering “what if.” Of course it's not necessarily an easy thing to do, I just like the framing and I've been enjoying pondering what would make my heart sing again.

Smashter
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Midwest USA

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

Finances
~520k USD combined assets with DW, mostly in large cap index funds. This was much closer to $600k not too long ago :shock: . I am happy that the large drop has not made us lose any sleep. This could be because...
~We are earning a combined ~13k USD per month after taxes

Infertility
Infertility is hard, y’all! DW and I tried to have kids. Like, really tried. Did every infertility intervention under the sun, including IVF. Eventually DW was diagnosed with a condition called endometriosis. She had surgery for that and apparently we can now try naturally again. We’ve been doing so for a while now with no success. I don’t have my hopes up. Maybe we’ll adopt or foster some day.

Quit? Travel? Pursue more meaningful activities?
The lack of children left us feeling underwhelmed with where we were living — a suburban community outside of Milwaukee. We had bought the most standard “it’s time to settle down and have kids!” house you can imagine. We were surrounded by nice families with young kids plus retired empty nesters.

It was lovely in some ways. But it stopped feeling like a good fit for a couple who had only ever lived together in big, bustling cities.

So we moved to Brooklyn. To shake things up. We decided to look past the absurdly high rent and just go for it. We wanted to optimize for fun and walkability over all else. To be clear, fun for us is low cost or free trips to world class museums, biking to the store, eating incredible vegan food, long and long walks with our dogs in the incredibly beautiful park we live next to — not clubbing :D

We are now really considering quitting our jobs, buying a vehicle, slow traveling out to the west coast, visiting a bunch of national parks, then seeing if we want to settle down out west. I’m from SoCal and that’s where we met. We’ve always liked California.

We both have good paying jobs that leave us feeling quite un-fulfilled at the end of the day. We are thinking that taking some time off to reflect and decompress will do us good. Neither of us have taken longer than a 2 week vacation since we started worked corporate America jobs about 10 years ago.

I am always the type to find silver linings and blessings in disguise. So it’s no surprise that I am feeling like our infertility struggles might be the nudge we needed to reassess how we were living and pursue more meaningful lives.

We have a lot of money and great health. The downsides of quitting and trying to figure out how we can make a uniquely positive mark on the world are limited. 

I went back and re-read the Quit Your Job post and subsequent commentary in AH’s journal. 


AxelHeyst wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 12:30 pm
Holy hell. I *wish* I had written this: https://palladiummag.com/2022/01/06/quit-your-job/
I saw it with new eyes. I feel inspired. I’m excited to figure out what’s next!

I particularly liked this part of a reply that Jacob left on the thread: 

jacob wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:19 am

Another way of saying it---what I think is the author's point---is that if you can not find your soulcraft within the stultifying framework of corporate America, the [nuclear] family, clubs, or traditional institutions AND you have the means and talents to do so (<- so there's a certain amount of "aristocratic privilege" there), you practically have a duty to break out of the aforementioned [Plato] caves, but you're also responsible for the failure should your vision prove wrong. Thus this isn't an exercise in carpe diem only to move back into the parental basement unit.

Yet another way of saying it ... it's about following your internally subjective calling (if you have one). You're deliberately rejecting the currently existing external constraints (career, ...) in order to do so. You may set up new external constraints (which I did) but it is not required. This takes a lot of ego. One has to be pretty brazen (and arrogant?) to essentially reject existing intersubjective (cultural) programming and external collective structures and proceed to build replacements.

Yet another way... you're basically not corruptible. There's very little anyone can offer you (money, sex, power, fame, ...) to sway you other than a better chance of implementing your vision.

I also think it's rare to feel this way. It's definitely not a FIRE manifesto, but I suspect many FIRE-OGs felt this way.

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RFS
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by RFS »

Smashter wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 3:47 pm
So we moved to Brooklyn. To shake things up. We decided to look past the absurdly high rent and just go for it. We wanted to optimize for fun and walkability over all else. To be clear, fun for us is low cost or free trips to world class museums, biking to the store, eating incredible vegan food, long and long walks with our dogs in the incredibly beautiful park we live next to — not clubbing :D
Fantastic :D I've heard that NYC has changed a bit since the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns. How is the city compared to when you previously lived there? Does it feel much different?
Smashter wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 3:47 pm

We are now really considering quitting our jobs, buying a vehicle, slow traveling out to the west coast, visiting a bunch of national parks, then seeing if we want to settle down out west. I’m from SoCal and that’s where we met. We’ve always liked California.
Dude, yes. This sounds like a plan that has almost 0 downside and unbelievably high upside.

I'm also sorry to hear about your struggles with infertility. I'm sending all my best energy to you and DW!

Smashter
Posts: 541
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Location: Midwest USA

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

Thank you, I appreciated it!
How is the city compared to when you previously lived there? Does it feel much different?
My area of Brooklyn feels about the same. Manhattan, to me, feels like 10%-15% less busy in terms of people walking around, than what I remember.

It also feels the same in terms of number of the number of unstable and potentially dangerous people walking around. I’d say you see ~1 per several hour outing, could be more or less depending on where you go of course.

To go into “old man rants at sky” mode for a second, the biggest change I’ve noticed is the amount of battery powered scooters and bikes all over the city, including park paths. In theory I would support this, because maybe more e-bikes and scooters would mean less cars overall. In practice it leads to every bike ride and jog becoming more stressful because you have to watch out for people buzzing by you at very high speeds. Those little one-wheelers are the most insane in my opinion. It's hard to fathom the level of disregard for your own safety you have to have to rocket around NYC on one of those at 40 MPH.

The vast majority of new e-bike riders appear to work in food delivery. And I have empathy for them. It seems like a crummy job. I'd probably be trying to go as quick as possible to make as much money as possible, too. But goodness gracious, those people are wild — going the wrong way in bike lanes, riding on sidewalks, ripping past pedestrians who have the right of way — I’m amazed I haven’t seen a really bad accident yet. I have friends who’ve seen an e-bike delivery person wipeout on a sidewalk in Manhattan and take out a bunch of pedestrians. They said it was horrifying.

Anyway, it’s still a very bike friendly city, which I’m grateful for. But I miss the days where the only people dangerously passing me were at least pedaling.

I wonder if people in other big cities have noticed something similar.

Smashter
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Midwest USA

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

General Life Stuff
We are now leaning toward moving back to the midwest instead of doing the van travel thing. Some long walk and talks with DW revealed that we're still interested in starting a family soon, even if it means through adoption. And if that's the case, somewhere back around where we used to live just makes sense. We still want to be in a city though, we are not going back to the small town suburb life. We also really miss our friends back there.

We are exploring going to a fancy, well regarded fertility clinic in NYC. Might as well see the best of the best while we’re here. We barely spent any money on our wedding or honeymoon, and we don’t take expensive vacations. I’m thinking we can spend some money here (should be max $10k) and then always have peace of mind knowing we gave it one more shot. This is still early stages, let’s see how it shakes out.

Finances
Roughly 600k net worth

Apartment flooding
About a month ago we were about to sit down to a dinner when we heard the sound of rushing water above our heads. I went upstairs and found my upstairs neighbor in a frenzy. She said the pipe under her sink burst. My next-door neighbor had his head under the sink, desperately trying to get the water off, but it was tough because it was a steam pipe. So it was really hot and mist was everywhere. The superintendent wasn’t answering the phone. It was chaos.

Downstairs in my unit, lots of water had begun to stream from the ceiling, out of the light fixtures and down the walls. It was legit raining in my apartment.

The joys of living in a building where some of the units are rent controlled, and thus are never maintained by the landlord!

Eventually my next door neighbor got the water off. Someone had also called the fire department and they came and shut all the water down in the building and hacked holes in our ceiling to let the water through. Then a few minutes later our super rolled up, just in time to not do anything.

Lessons:
- Get apartment insurance! We had it and they surprisingly took really good care of us.
- Don’t rely on your super/landlord to respond quickly in a crisis — befriend your neighbors instead
- Be grateful for retired neighbors who are basically always home and also happen to be handy and brave. The neighbor who thrust his face into the steam and finally got the sink situation under control is the real MVP of the situation. Had he not done that our situation would have been way worse. The would have meant probably 10 more minutes of water damage before the fire department showed up.
- Take pictures and video in the moment — we captured a lot of dramatic footage of water gushing into our apartment that made our insurance claims a lot easier

All in all we are lucky in that we were able to report a good amount of damage based on very gross, dirty water falling from the ceiling and on to our stuff. But it was almost all stuff we just had to wash and it was fine. The leaks didn’t damage any electronics. So we made money at the end of the day because insurance paid us out in full for our the stuff as if it was beyond repair, and our apartment took 4 days off our rent when we only had to be out of the house for one night. They had a construction unit repairing things the next day. We bought a water monitor to test if the walls were wet because we were worried about mold and it shows everything as nice and dry.

What a saga.

Health
I got a nose surgery to fix a longstanding breathing issue. It was deviated septum fix + nasal valve repair + turbinate reduction. This is the cost of breaking your nose 5 times playing basketball over the years. It's still not 100% healed and it's already way better than it was, though not as good as I was hoping it would be. Still, I'm happy with that result, and it should continue to improve as I heal. Gotta have patience.

So yeah, high health expenses this year, but we’ve got good insurance and we’re in a city with many highly regarded surgeons. So I am taking advantage of that. I figure breathing properly for the rest of my life was worth $3.5k (The rough out of pocket cost.) 



ERE-ness
I have not been feeling very ERE lately, given my high rent and high healthcare costs. But to not be too hard on myself, I’ll note that we cook a lot with inexpensive ingredients (DW has mastered a particular bean soup that I can’t get enough of), we walk basically everywhere, we play boardgames with our friends instead of going to bars, we utilize the library, and we still save >50% of our income overall. It could be worse. And things will get a lot better with a move back to a LCOL area.

Smashter
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

jacob wrote:
Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:52 pm
Meanwhile, lots of other people are living lives of quiet desperation/comfortable misery/miserable comfort and hoping for some alternative. However, they're stuck in once-a-week two-hour "talking fests"---alternatively two year alternative living experiments before going back to corporate jobbing---which have been going on for many decades because they're based on hope and not practicalities. While people have been trying many different approaches going back to the 1970s, most of them focused on ideology and wishful thinking rather than the practical process of going from here to there. I think this is where ERE1 stands out. It shows where to start ... Whereas most other attempts have focused on where it might possible end.
Pulling this out of the ERE2 thread and dropping it here because it hit me hard. I am guilty of the once-a-week two-hour "talking fests" that don't result in me changing much of anything.

I gotta get more practical. More doing, less talk fests.

bostonimproper
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by bostonimproper »

Smashter wrote:
Fri Dec 02, 2022 4:52 pm
Apartment flooding
Woah that whole ordeal sounds intense! Thank goodness everyone’s okay (especially the neighbor who stuck his head near a steam pipe) and there was only minimal-ish property damage.
Smashter wrote:
Fri Dec 02, 2022 4:52 pm
General Life Stuff
Smashter wrote:
Thu Dec 08, 2022 8:06 pm
I gotta get more practical. More doing, less talk fests.
I’m sorry that you guys are going through infertility issues. I imagine the limbo of it all may be contributing somewhat to the difficulty of “do more and talk less.” At least, I know that was the case for us throughout our infertility/pregnancy journey and caused me to stick around longer in a unhappy work situation(s) than I needed to because stability.

In any case, I hope you guys are able to get the help you need to build the family you want.

Smashter
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

@bostonimproper — thanks for the support. That's a good point, it is a stressful thing to navigate and I should make sure to account for that when I'm tempted to be hyper-critical of myself.

DW was in a position much like you with her old job. She stuck around a toxic environment because we got an entire round of IVF fully covered through her insurance. Now she is in a new, much better, higher paying, lower stress role, but one without any IVF coverage.

We never thought we'd consider doing IVF out of pocket, but I had a friend highly recommended this place and their reviews and success numbers are top notch. I think my $10k max prediction might have been wildly optimistic, but we're going for it anyway. One more shot using the best docs in one of the wealthiest cities in human history. If they can't help, no one can.

We have a lot of fat we can trim for our budget to make the hit less painful, and it's actually been a really nice kick in the pants for both of us to tighten up some sloppy spending habits.

I'm honestly less worried about the money than about DW being super extra sad if we do all this and it still doesn't work. I will be disappointed, but I have a sturdier disposition around this kind of stuff in general. She might take it really hard.

Smashter
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

Finances & General Life Stuff

It kind of feels like Groundhog Day when DW and I discuss future plans and the state of our finances. We have a lot of money. And we both kind of want to do other things. But we’re scared to take a leap out of our steady jobs because there’s a lot of uncertainty in our life right now with regards to where we’ll live and whether we buy another house and if we’re going to have kids. What if we want to adopt kids, will the agencies see us as deadbeats if we are in a semi-ere lounge phase at that time?! :?

Then we saddle back up to the keyboard Monday morning so that the paychecks keep flowing in. The fact that my jobs is pretty easy, with so many cushy tech company benefits (though with periods of intermittent high stress — the sales life) makes it all the tougher to pull the plug. Though we are transitioning from a more Wild-West, do what you want as long as you get results type environment, to a more corporate feeling vibe as the company grows. Which makes things way less fun.

I have also been thinking about a conversation I had with a good friend recently. This friend had decided to take a less high paying job for better work life balance. He was very blunt about telling me he thinks I should make a change, employment wise. This person knows me well and wants the best for me, and his example is inspiring.

Despite, that I don't see either of us making a change until we leave NYC. Partly because....

IVF testing has started in earnest. So many tests. But the mega bill won’t come due until February. There is still a long shot chance we get pregnant this cycle and won’t need it, which would be a holiday miracle.

Freedom to
I need to start considering the freedom-to aspect of leaving tech worker life more.

Some of my interests include:

- Local journalism
- Farm animal welfare
- Getting involved in basketball again somehow, maybe coaching?
- Trying to improve zoning policies, housing policies, or transit policies
- Helping incarcerated people somehow

I also am a fan of the idea of doing basically nothing for a few months and seeing what comes up after that period of decompression. Maybe I just need to trust that I’ll find my way.

Random thoughts about a macro economics podcast

I have been listening to this macro economics podcast lately. 
I don’t understand much of the jargon, and I think it kind of makes it better? I don’t know why, but I find it strangely nice to throw on a conversation full of people talking about nominal GDP targeting, R-star, and the Philips Curve without fully grokking all of it.



I like that while they all have PhD’s and seem quite smart, neither the host nor any guest predicted this recent bout of inflation. It’s a nice reminder that models only go so far, and often don't reflect reality.

It’s also a reminder to not just follow the herd. The host recently talked about how he wrote an Op-Ed in the NYT in Feb 2021 called “Don’t Worry About Inflation” and now he has egg on his face. He said it happened because he ignored warning signs and over-indexed on what the bond market was saying at the time, or something? All in all he didn’t seem too worried about the fact that he has devoted his life to macro economics and can’t get basic macro predictions even remotely right. Does this speak to the difficulty of the profession, or the pointlessness?

I get a kick out of it all, and I learn a few things. Plus it makes me happy that there are all these people in the world who genuinely seem to have found their passion in this niche space. And I get the sense they generally think their models and research can make a positive difference in the world. I hope some of them are right.

ERE Forum Thoughts

I had a couple posts all typed up when the Jacob vs MI battle was going on in the forum culture thread. But I ultimately felt like they would just be feeding the trolls so I held back. So I’ll use my own journal space to say that it’d be an absolute shame if Jacob walked away from all this because the culture took a turn for the ugly. Of course all things must end, etc etc, but they don’t have to end via hyper-paranoid wanna be Green Mountain Boys spewing their vitriol. And I say that as someone who genuinely has enjoyed reading MI’s posts over the years. I hope he sticks to in-depth critiques of baseball fandom plus detailing his aggressive market timing strategies, that stuff is really interesting!

My 65 year old dad went through a transformation over the last 5 years from middle of the road republican to rabid QAnon believer. He's constantly trying to tell me about "totalitarian plays" that are being made against him, and about how "the good guys" are going to take back the country via military coup any day now. I hope MI and anyone feeling similar to him on the forum can get off the train before that stop.

For whatever it’s worth, I am also in the camp that thinks the ERE 2 people have not been overbearing despite some threads being taken over by color talk. I can happily ignore what does not interest me and focus on what does.

Slevin starting the lentil appreciation thread at the height of all the drama was pure gold.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Smashter
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

Finances: Strong. ~600k in combined assets. We shifted our non-retirement account equities and gold into cash to get ready for a house purchase. We are thinking about buying something for cash instead of doing a mortgage this time around (we’ve owned 1 house previously)

Going to cash in non-retirement accounts has reduced my stress levels. Once we get a house we'll hopefully get the taxable stock portfolio beefed back up again. It's pretty exciting to see an amount in cash greater than the ~$160,000 I owned on my student loan back in 2014, a couple years before I joined this forum. I don't even feel like we've been that diligent, ERE-wise, but just doing the basics goes such a long way.

Family: The roller coaster continues. In my previous updates I talked about how we were going to do another round of IVF. We did all the testing, but in the end DW decided she didn’t want to go through with it. We have shifted gears into looking more into adoption and foster care. We also still have a couple frozen embryos we can try to implant at some point from our last round of IVF.

I've been dealing with some family drama surrounding my recently deceased Grandmother. I had a long talk with a trustworthy cousin who made a pretty compelling case that my mother pilfered at least a hundred thousand dollars as part of taking over as my grandma's power of attorney in her final years. She also was negligent in providing care. I know my mom is a narcissist and an alcoholic, but this still surprised me.

So lately I've been lightly investigating to see what I can learn about the money. My cousin told me that my Mom was adamant that my grandma didn't have a will. But when I asked my mom, she instantly replied that there was a will. She also said "are you asking this on behalf of someone else?" like she had a sixth sense that I was on to her. I played it off. I guess I need to tread lightly. I feel sort of like one of those people who is sent in to a high security prison to befriend a murderer and then extract a confession for the police.

My goal is to stay out of any fights for the time being. I am going to continue the process of figuring out what kind of relationship I want to have with my mom.

Moving: We also decided we are officially moving back to Wisconsin. We got a short term lease in Milwaukee to see how we like it there. Our friends and family in the region are happy, and so are we.

Fun finds in the neighborhood: Walking through our neighborhood recently, DW noticed a nice looking Dyson air filter left out for the taking. We grabbed it. An inspection at home revealed it worked perfectly and the filter appeared to be brand new. This model retailed for $550 just a few years ago. We are going to keep and use it for now but could probably flip it for $150 bucks or so if we wanted to.

Watching/listening/reading: I have been making my way through the 8 part documentary series TraumaZone. It shows what life is like in the soviet union as it collapsed. Fascinating stuff. A good reminder that life in a relatively stable western democracy is truly a thing to be cherished.

I’ve been listening to a podcast called Upzoned. It breaks down urbanist projects throughout America, both good and bad.

I’ve been reading a lot of books on the foster care system. It is incredibly disheartening. So many kids face neglect and abuse that get them into the system, only to be further abused by their foster families.

I’ve learned about parents who prostituted their pre-teen daughters, or pulled out every one of their child’s teeth as soon as they grew in, or scalded their baby before killing it. One teenage girl talked about how her infant brother starved to death because, “There was nothing to eat but jam.”

One memoir of someone who was a former foster kid turned successful business executive laid out a few ideas for improving the system, which seem reasonable to me.
  • Decrease caseloads and increasing pay and benefits of social workers.

    Incentivize wealthier parents to foster. “Perhaps above all, we need to recruit more middle and upper-income foster parents with higher education degrees. This effort is not to displace but to add to and diversify the incredible commitment of lower economic classes who are already fostering.”

    Make foster parents eligible for pensions, give them free health care, and give the foster kids and any of their biological kids free college tuition

    Let older foster kids enroll in community colleges as well as high school in order to do vocational training

    Provide priority housing for foster youth at community colleges

    Put more effort into broad, society wide poverty fighting efforts (this one is probably the most pie in the sky in terms of feasibility, but yeah, of course, reducing poverty would be great)
Other than all that I've just been chugging along at work, saving a bunch of money, and getting read for the big cross country move.

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Ego
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Ego »

Way back when we were going through the same, I received advice from someone I greatly respect. He was a boss who never talked about personal issues and when he made this exception, I paid attention.

His biological parents were excellent silent-generation parents (I knew them well) who decided to foster two children with the intention of adopting, after they lost the ability to have more biological children themselves. Back then, big families were the ultimate measure of success in their church and they got caught up in making that a reality. He was uncharacterizable adamant and had tears in his eyes when he gave me the advice that if we decide to foster/adopt, we should go slowly and avoid making long-term commitments before being absolutely sure we knew exactly what we were getting into. He felt that once his parents were approved, they felt they had to accept whoever the 'system' selected for them.

I have always been grateful for his advice.

I typed this response several times and deleted it because it may be over the line of imprudence. If so, I apologize.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Western Red Cedar »

I'll echo @ego's recommendation to go slowly and be very deliberate about decisions to adopt or foster. It might be a great decision, but it requires trauma-informed parenting and a lot of preparation. Feel free to PM me if you have questions.

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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by jacob »

Having children in whichever way attempts to fulfill any 0-3 of the following. (Please LMK if I miss a variable here.)
  • Parenting (taking care of young humans)
  • Family (potentially being connected to the degree of ride or die)
  • Legacy (installing your DNA or ideas in the next generation)
The standard model (getting pregnant, no test required) often presumes that all 3 will be fulfilled automagically. However, I don't think that is the automagically the case. One might get only one or two of the above. Zero or three is also quite possible. Nature/nurture skews the numbers a bit but keep in mind that DNA combinations revert to the mean.

Smashter
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

@Ego (and everyone else), please don't be worried about crossing the line, advice wise. I totally respect this community and want to hear what you all have to say. Thanks for giving your perspectives.

I would not want to go into this with the naive hope that it would be easy. Or to Jacob's point, with the naive hope that raising kids would lead to profound fulfillment of all of his variables, leading to a scenario where, on my death bed, I'm surrounded by the glowing faces of grandchildren who both love me and have figured out how to cure cancer.

I think adopting or fostering would be an extremely taxing path with uncertain payoff but tons of potential for fulfillment. And of course, potential for disaster. I think I am temperamentally drawn to such scenarios. I was a small, white, jewish kid who decided the best way to spend the first 25 years of life was to work on becoming a Division One and then professional basketball player. It was not a road without hardship. But I achieved my goals in the end. Similarly, I’ve almost always worked at tech startups in my career. I know this is not at all the same as raising a traumatized child, I just think it speaks to why it piques my interest.

We are still at the very preliminary stages of exploring all this. I imagine that adopting an infant, for instance, would be not too unlike having a kid of our own. Whereas jumping straight into fostering kids above the age of 2 would be a pretty extreme shock to the system.

@WRC thanks for that offer, I will keep it in my back pocket

Western Red Cedar
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Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Smashter wrote:
Thu Feb 23, 2023 1:35 pm
I imagine that adopting an infant, for instance, would be not too unlike having a kid of our own. Whereas jumping straight into fostering kids above the age of 2 would be a pretty extreme shock to the system.
This was my assumption as well for many years in regards to adopting infants. There is quite a bit of evidence that difficult pregnancies, early separation from biological parents, and early experiences in orphanages (even for infants) has a lasting, neurobiological impact on the child. The way some of this trauma manifests throughout childhood and even well into adulthood is really hard to imagine for those who don't have a lot of direct experience with adoptees.

I'd encourage you to check out Gabor Mate's new book, The Myth of Normal, for more context about how preverbal trauma can have lasting impacts on individuals. It doesn't focus explicitly on this topic, but explores a lot of ways that the social and economic constructs of modern society undermine our physical and psychological health, and our ability to raise children. It is a very relevant critique from an ERE perspective IMO.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by white belt »

Smashter wrote:
Wed Dec 21, 2022 4:59 pm
Random thoughts about a macro economics podcast

I have been listening to this macro economics podcast lately. 
I don’t understand much of the jargon, and I think it kind of makes it better? I don’t know why, but I find it strangely nice to throw on a conversation full of people talking about nominal GDP targeting, R-star, and the Philips Curve without fully grokking all of it.



I like that while they all have PhD’s and seem quite smart, neither the host nor any guest predicted this recent bout of inflation. It’s a nice reminder that models only go so far, and often don't reflect reality.

It’s also a reminder to not just follow the herd. The host recently talked about how he wrote an Op-Ed in the NYT in Feb 2021 called “Don’t Worry About Inflation” and now he has egg on his face. He said it happened because he ignored warning signs and over-indexed on what the bond market was saying at the time, or something? All in all he didn’t seem too worried about the fact that he has devoted his life to macro economics and can’t get basic macro predictions even remotely right. Does this speak to the difficulty of the profession, or the pointlessness?

I get a kick out of it all, and I learn a few things. Plus it makes me happy that there are all these people in the world who genuinely seem to have found their passion in this niche space. And I get the sense they generally think their models and research can make a positive difference in the world. I hope some of them are right.
There is quite a divergence between academic economics and professional finance. Jacob has written extensively about this before. The academics can be decades behind the practitioners that actually trade/invest in the markets. I highly recommend listening to podcasts with professional investors and researchers whose career success relies on them being right about markets, rather than those who navel gaze in an ivory tower and develop models post hoc. I like Macrovoices, the Macro Trading Floor, and the Market Huddle. I also recommend reading a few textbooks from Jacob's Startup curriculum if you want to actually understand some of this stuff.

Smashter
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Midwest USA

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

Finances:
Humming along, cash piling up. It was very nice to have our paychecks hit without having to give $4600 rent to an NYC landlord :shock: . I’m grateful to have such a comfortable place to stay (at the in-laws) while we transition to our new life and wait for our short term air BnB to start in June. 

We just opened up a couple new checking accounts to get their giant sign up bonuses. We are still focused on trying to buy a house for cash sometime next winter.

Social:
Played a long boardgames with a friend this week, and will likely join his weekly boardgames night with some other friends.

An idiosyncratic look at working at a hedge fund:

I had some fun goodbye dinners in NYC. I got to chat a lot with a good friend (mid-30’s) who I’ve probably mentioned in this journal before. He works at a hedge fund “running his own book”, meaning he has a big ol’ pile of money to invest and he gets to make the calls on what to invest in.

The most interesting part was when he started talking about how tough his 2022 was. He looked right at me, dead serious, and said, “I made $0 last year!”

Then he paused, and clarified: “Well, that’s not true. I have a really high base salary. But that’s not what you’re playing for!”

It’s funny to me that his base salary is probably triple mine, yet he considers it nothing. He said that if he did as well as he possibly could he could earn a 10 million dollar bonus. He admitted that was unlikely, but that’s the scale he’s operating at.


I’m always trying to pull information out of him about what the heck he actually does at his job, but he mostly wants to talk about other things. He calls his job “playing a video game for money”. He doesn’t enjoy it. I sometimes try to encourage him, by saying things about how hedge funds are important for making sure capital is put to its most efficient use, or something like that. He brushes it aside. He doesn’t think he’s doing anything useful for society. He’s just playing a game, trying to score the most points.

We asked him at what point a streak of good performances at a fund is enough to take the pressure off. If you make 50 million one year, will the bosses tolerate a down year the next? The answer was a definitive no. The pressure is always on, and you’re expected to beat your past performance every year. He spoke about a person he know of who probably earned hundreds of millions for his firm but who got the axe after just a couple bad years.


He spoke about younger people who ask him for advice on how to get where he’s at. He said he talks to them about how 75% of people who do what he does can’t make money, and to not underestimate a low-stress job. 

He seems to yo-yo between enjoying the job because he makes good money and he doesn’t have to do all that much and hating the job because of the volatility and stress. In one breath he’s joking about how he uses one of those devices that jiggles a mouse every so often, so that it always looks to his colleagues like he’s “active” online even when he’s away from his computer doing whatever he wants. In the next he’ll talk about how he didn’t sleep for a week and lost a bunch of weight because he wasn’t performing well.

I was impressed with how quickly he could switch into analyst mode at a random point in the dinner. A person at the table mentioned how they work a (very small) publicly traded company. My hedge fund buddy immediately jumped in: “Oh cool, you sold X units last year.” And he was right.

Family planning: No movement. We’ve been focused on other things.


@WRC — I need to grab one of the Gabor Mate books from the library, thanks for the recommendation. In doing a cursory perusal of his work, I can already tell I am going to have a hard time embracing his worldview. I feel like if we tell people events that happened when they were infants are supposed to traumatize them, that is what might happen. I think so much of this stuff is cultural. Like how PTSD apparently did not exist for the ancient Roman soldiers. Scott Alexander wrote a fascinating essay about this kind of stuff recently: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/b ... of-madness



Am I more traumatized than I realize because my parents hated each other and fought constantly? My Dad admitted to me recently that he knew he’d made a huge mistake marrying my mom by the time my older brother was an infant, two years before I was born. Maybe I’m carrying around tons of unprocessed trauma! I currently don’t find it productive to think like that. That might change as I learn more.

I definitely think trauma can have a huge negative impact on people’s lives. I also believe in the human capacity to overcome tremendous amounts of trauma.

I recently read a book on "Genie" a girl who was locked in a room alone for the first 13 years of her life. She was either in locked crib (that was more like a cage), or strapped to a plastic potty seat, where all she could do was wiggle her hands and feet. She was never talked to or given any love. She was routinely and savagely beaten. She had no toys or stimulation other than being able to hear a neighbor practice piano through an open window from time to time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)

It's truly horrifying to read about. But what most interested me was following her progress once she was freed. She was never able to speak normally, but she displayed incredible, off the charts spatial reasoning. She was able to express herself so well non-verbally that it routinely startled people who interacted with her. She formed bonds with caregivers, overcame her fear of dogs, and found things she enjoyed about life.

This all ended in more tragedy as she was put into a series of terrible foster homes once the fancy researchers had learned all they could from her. But just the fact that she could live a somewhat normal life, even for a little, after 13 straight years of torture from the moment she was born, makes me think that we posses a truly remarkable capacity for perseverance. I can never know what her internal experience was, maybe it was pure hell even after she was freed. But like to believe she found a way to cope and to feel her version of joy.

Western Red Cedar
Posts: 1205
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:15 pm

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Smashter wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 12:01 pm

@WRC — I need to grab one of the Gabor Mate books from the library, thanks for the recommendation. In doing a cursory perusal of his work, I can already tell I am going to have a hard time embracing his worldview. I feel like if we tell people events that happened when they were infants are supposed to traumatize them, that is what might happen. I think so much of this stuff is cultural. Like how PTSD apparently did not exist for the ancient Roman soldiers. Scott Alexander wrote a fascinating essay about this kind of stuff recently: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/b ... of-madness



Am I more traumatized than I realize because my parents hated each other and fought constantly? My Dad admitted to me recently that he knew he’d made a huge mistake marrying my mom by the time my older brother was an infant, two years before I was born. Maybe I’m carrying around tons of unprocessed trauma! I currently don’t find it productive to think like that. That might change as I learn more.

I definitely think trauma can have a huge negative impact on people’s lives. I also believe in the human capacity to overcome tremendous amounts of trauma.
Based on the childhood experiences you described, I think it is definitely worthwhile exploring some of this stuff. Mate did a large round of podcast interviews before releasing his new book which cover a lot of his ideas. You could start there if you don't want to commit to a book. This one is good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPup-1pDepY

It isn't really about telling people what happened in their lives, but asking questions and exploring some of the narratives we tell ourselves.I suspect that some of the nuance you are missing is that trauma manifests in different ways. It isn't necessarily an external event or experience, but how an individual internalizes that experience and how it impacts them moving forward. This could be a major event, such as a divorce, abuse, etc... or it could be something more subtle like a parent who is emotionally distant, chronically stressed, or suffering from depression.

He spent a long portion of his career exploring addiction. As a society we place value judgments on addictive behaviors and normalize or even praise certain addictions. We tend to look down on those using hard drug or severe alcoholics. But we praise the workaholic entrepreneur or endurance athlete who may be filling an internal void through success, achievement, or adrenaline. This isn't suggesting that all successful people are necessarily doing this, but we tend to overlook certain behavior traits that would fall on what Mate refers to as the spectrum of addiction even though it could be causing significant harm in other areas of their life.

As I started asking myself more questions, it gave me a completely different perspective on why I valued academic success, why I lean towards perfectionism in my profession, and certain habits and behavioral patterns in my personal relationships. It even gave me insights on why I am so focused on financial independence.

ertyu
Posts: 2893
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by ertyu »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:03 pm

It isn't really about telling people what happened in their lives, but asking questions and exploring some of the narratives we tell ourselves.I suspect that some of the nuance you are missing is that trauma manifests in different ways. It isn't necessarily an external event or experience, but how an individual internalizes that experience and how it impacts them moving forward. This could be a major event, such as a divorce, abuse, etc... or it could be something more subtle like a parent who is emotionally distant, chronically stressed, or suffering from depression.
I'd say, Smashter, if the word "trauma" isn't helpful for you, ditch it. The core of the matter is what @WRC is talking about above: examining the way our experiences have shaped us. What you call it doesn't matter. Or rather, it matters, but only to the extent that the word itself may be helpful -- or not. There isn't an objective definition of trauma. For example, where is the line between "learned helplessness" and "traumatic response" -- I'm pretty sure there isn't one. If you'd like to avoid a value-charged label, go with "conditioning." No one can deny we all have conditioning. The main point here is simply that shining a light on our conditioning and examining it is beneficial.

Smashter
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Midwest USA

Re: Smashter's Great Adventure

Post by Smashter »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:03 pm
He spent a long portion of his career exploring addiction. As a society we place value judgments on addictive behaviors and normalize or even praise certain addictions. We tend to look down on those using hard drug or severe alcoholics. But we praise the workaholic entrepreneur or endurance athlete who may be filling an internal void through success, achievement, or adrenaline. This isn't suggesting that all successful people are necessarily doing this, but we tend to overlook certain behavior traits that would fall on what Mate refers to as the spectrum of addiction even though it could be causing significant harm in other areas of their life.
"Workaholic filling a void through success, achievement, or adrenaline" would have been a perfect descriptor of my behavior at many points in life. It’s something I should still do more about addressing. I appreciate your persistence in opening me up to these ideas! (thank you @ertyu as well, you make good points)

“We tend to look down on those using hard drugs or severe alcoholics. But we praise the workaholic entrepreneur or endurance athlete”

I had a debate around this topic with my brother and sister-in-law the other day. My sister has been in a downward spiral with alcohol addiction over the past few years. I’ve finally reached a point of acceptance that no matter how hard I try I can’t help her. I’ve transitioned into just being annoyed at her. 

I still have empathy, but I can’t shake the part of me that feels like she should be able to look around at the destruction she’s doing and….stop. Or at least pull back. It’s been done before. She wouldn’t be the first to pull it off. It is not against the laws of physics. Sadly, I know that’s extremely unlikely. Plus there’s a selfish part of her that doesn’t want to, beyond whatever grip the alcoholism has on her. She’s admitted as much!

My brother and sister-in-law think my sister has basically no personal responsibility, it’s all the addictions fault. They said to me, “What if all of sudden people told you you can’t work out anymore, you’d go crazy! It’s like that for her with booze, but way worse.” 

And I say sure, that’s true. But my being addicted to working out is not causing me to lose jobs and get in trouble with the law while devastating my health. It’s like comparing a lit match to a forest fire.

I’ll save my rant about how Alcoholics Anonymous seems to be doing her more harm than good for another time.

Anyway, here are my other updates. 



Finances

Strong. Cash is piling up as we live rent free at my wife’s parents house. We had to have discussion about making sure we stay under the FDIC limits on our accounts, though it’s unclear how much that even matters anymore in these post SVB collapse times.

I have to open a new high interest savings account soon. I’m overthinking my options, wondering if I should pick smaller banks that have better offers. In the end I think I should just go with a bigger bank that offers a ~4% APY.

We recently tried to open up checking accounts at a Huntington Bank because they offered a $600 signup bonus. It turned into a logistical nightmare. It was hard to transfer the money. At one point they were going to require us to go in person to a branch 1500 miles away in order to get our money back out. Thankfully that didn't come to pass. Not worth it!

Multi-generational living

I am enjoying this stint with my wife’s parents much more than I thought I would. I think if I was in my twenties I would feel like a loser millennial living in the basement. Instead I feel like a person making a prudent financial move while getting the chance to help out and spend time with some people I love. I remain grateful that we have this as a transitional spot we can always rely on. 



Health

Feeling good. I’ve started playing basketball again for the first time since my deviated septum surgery last October. I’m as fit as I’ve ever been. I got some Hoka running shoes and it feels like I’m on clouds. I’d been using very old sneakers for a long time and wow, I should have upgraded sooner. 



One close friend recently stopped drinking alcohol and has started working out more. He excitedly told me about this over text. I like being the kind of friend who acts as inspiration to get fit.

Content consumption, philosophy edition

There’s something immensely satisfying about stumbling on a new blog you really enjoy that has a big back catalog. That happened to me recently with this philosopher named Joe Carlsmith. (https://joecarlsmith.com/) 

I particularly enjoyed the following essays
- On seeing more whole (https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/17/seeing-more-whole)
- On sincerity (https://joecarlsmith.com/2022/12/23/on-sincerity)
- On clinging (https://joecarlsmith.com/2021/01/24/on-clinging)

The pieces can be a bit heavy on philosophy jargon, but he still maintains contact with reality. He tries to connect everything back to things like figuring out how to make hard choices, or figuring out how to live a life you’re proud of.

I am also biased because he’s anti factory farming and has a compelling way of talking about animal issues. 

I’m also a fan of old school blogs that are just firstnamelastname.com. Seems rarer and rarer in the time of infinite Substacks that try to get you to subscribe by spitting out a steady stream of opinion pieces about current events, hounding you with pop ups the whole time.

Anxiety about chatbots ending the world

Still not that high yet. I think if we managed to not nuke each other to smithereens, we should able to manage the AI tools. My bigger worry right now is that spam will get worse and scam calls/emails/texts will devastate even more elderly people. 

It doesn’t seem like my job is too far from being automated either. I feel like pretty soon these LLMs will be able to do everything beyond the actual 1:1 calls with other humans. Those are the high leverage, most important parts of a sales job though, so I expect calls to be handled by real humans for a bit longer.

I like to read through this person’s roundup posts for a more pessimistic take on the whole AGI situation : https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-4-intr ... k-our-jobs 



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