Derp und Drang: The_Bowme Journal
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 10:03 pm
I hope it isn't too presumptuous of me to start a journal without an “introducing myself” post, but why create an extra data object in some server in India when the introductory text can do just as well here?
I’ve hesitated to start writing this journal as I think my relationship to my finances is so shot through with my emotional and philosophical concerns that it feels like a bunch of baggage to throw out into the internet for a site that’s about rice recipes and bike repair (jk), but as I seem to find myself returning often to this forum, I think it makes sense to be a bit more a member of the community.
I am 29, live in Denver. I have a job making $52,000 a year, and have a small but growing net worth. I often feel like my nut should be bigger, as I read Early Retirement Extreme when I was still in college, around 2008, and have read the blog and forums and related blogs since that time. But I guess things could be much worse. I graduated from University of Michigan in 2010 after studying Econ and Philosophy with $26,000 in debt, and went abroad to teach Spanish for two years. The job abroad paid 800 euro/mo the first year, and 1000 euro/mo the second. I found it difficult to save during that time, and ended up with about $3,000 in savings, while my loans were deferred and accumulated $10,000 in capitalized interest. My time in Spain was great, but I realized that I liked the anonymity and ease of life in my native language and came back to the USA.
I was scared of returning to the economy in Michigan (this was 2012), and so I followed a love interest to Colorado, and lived in a large closet with some friends for $125/mo in Boulder, while working a fairly hellish tax resolution job for 8 months. I applied for jobs like mad and got a position at an economic development lender in a junior position for $35,000 a year. I moved into a $500/mo studio in Denver. Since then, I bought a condo for $85,000, and got spooked over how much it was appreciating, and the inability of the COA to maintain a reasonable reserve, and sold for $115,000. I used all the profits to pay off my loans and save more, and sent $500 to each of my sisters. I have also been promoted at my company over time, and now have lost the junior part of my title, and as I said, make $52,000. My net worth is as follows:
Emergency Fund: $10K
HSA: $6K
2040 Target Date Vanguard Fund: $22K
Retirement accounts: $50K
Total: $88K
I live in an apartment with a roommate for $570 a month and don’t own a car. I’m saving between $1,900-$2,000 a month. I have a girlfriend (not the original love interest) who accepts me for my quirks and thinks the FI-bound lifestyle is cool and is supportive. I have a bus pass through work, so that’s free for me. I have a small group of friends here, but we get along pretty well. I don’t like being so far from family or Michigan’s natural environment, and think about moving back to the Midwest, but it’s hard to when the economy here seems so much healthier.
I struggle somewhat with a dysthemic/depressive streak, and have been in therapy for the past couple years. As an INTP, I find the only thing that gets me excited are various big ideas/”insight porn”, but haven’t found a creative competency that I find rewarding. I read Every Cradle a Grave and the Conspiracy Against The Human Race, and they have left me very uncertain about whether it could be ethical to have kids, yet I feel scared of how I will feel as an old man without a family or a successful creative career to look back on. I sometimes fantasize about taking my <$300 per month from my savings and just being a bum, but I know from experience that I’m not that big a fan of having to search for places to sleep, of having to watch all your shit all the time, and always feeling grubby, and I am fearful of losing the optionality of earning power if I leave the work force. But it seems like at the rate I am going, I will not have ERE options until much later, and in the meantime, I am working in a job that is quite stressful, and that I don’t feel “self-actualized”. I worry that I will finally save enough money to do what I want and find my opportunities to do anything I can really be satisfied with will have passed during accumulation.
I find myself thinking of my net worth often as a sort of mental idol that I ward off negative feelings towards my job. I did write a long essay on shittiness of jobs to try to exorcise these negative feelings last year, but it didn’t seem to help that much. I recently took a vacation to Spain to visit old friends, and my concerns with money did decrease without the job to worry about for a week. But seeing the employment situation for people my age in Spain left me feeling confused about whether I’m allowed to want something different, or if I am just thinking negatively and not appreciating how I already have it better than most from a financial point-of-view, and it’s my own screwed up preferences and anxieties that prevent me from having the higher quality of life that even people in much materially poorer societies enjoy.
I find myself trying to avoid financial independence message board where people specifically talk about their savings and income, such as the FI-related subreddits, as I worry it leads to me obsessing with money more, and also feeling extremely inadequate when I read about 26 year old couples who have $200K saved, not to mention the 23 year olds with $500K from the crazy economy we now live in. Seems like everyone’s a computer programmer…
I took a Udacity web development course and finished it, but didn’t really feel adequately prepared, or convinced that the career change was a smart one. It seems very visually focused, which I am not, and requiring constant study to stay on top of technologies ever changing, all basically to get people to visit sites to make miniscule amounts of ad revenue.
But enough bellyaching! I do enjoy various activities, and am working through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and working on improving in Chess. I keep up my Spanish studies with Anki, and I do find time to read. I cook a lot, and go out for drinks with friends and my girlfriend fairly often. I play tennis, and try to go jogging, although I haven’t been able to lately due to a knee injury (from running). Things are okay I suppose. But I feel like thinking about FI is creating a weird premature midlife crisis in which I need to decide what I care about now before it’s too late, and decide which potential futures to close.
I feel like FI ideas should be freeing, but I think I have found a way to make them not so much. Lately I have been thinking that working a job is maybe like sleeping, and instead of sleeping 8 hours, I am sleeping 16 hours, and I am ERE already--just a late sleeper! Clearly I’m slipping into madness It’s just there are so many maintenance activities and forms of procrastination that my 8 hours of early retirement a day seems so short.
Hmm, well anyway, thanks for reading. I think the individuals who post on this forum are wonderful and insightful--also giving and kind. I really admire the supportive community, and the wide supply of interesting points of view that are represented. Thanks for letting me introduce myself and get some thoughts off my chest!
I’ve hesitated to start writing this journal as I think my relationship to my finances is so shot through with my emotional and philosophical concerns that it feels like a bunch of baggage to throw out into the internet for a site that’s about rice recipes and bike repair (jk), but as I seem to find myself returning often to this forum, I think it makes sense to be a bit more a member of the community.
I am 29, live in Denver. I have a job making $52,000 a year, and have a small but growing net worth. I often feel like my nut should be bigger, as I read Early Retirement Extreme when I was still in college, around 2008, and have read the blog and forums and related blogs since that time. But I guess things could be much worse. I graduated from University of Michigan in 2010 after studying Econ and Philosophy with $26,000 in debt, and went abroad to teach Spanish for two years. The job abroad paid 800 euro/mo the first year, and 1000 euro/mo the second. I found it difficult to save during that time, and ended up with about $3,000 in savings, while my loans were deferred and accumulated $10,000 in capitalized interest. My time in Spain was great, but I realized that I liked the anonymity and ease of life in my native language and came back to the USA.
I was scared of returning to the economy in Michigan (this was 2012), and so I followed a love interest to Colorado, and lived in a large closet with some friends for $125/mo in Boulder, while working a fairly hellish tax resolution job for 8 months. I applied for jobs like mad and got a position at an economic development lender in a junior position for $35,000 a year. I moved into a $500/mo studio in Denver. Since then, I bought a condo for $85,000, and got spooked over how much it was appreciating, and the inability of the COA to maintain a reasonable reserve, and sold for $115,000. I used all the profits to pay off my loans and save more, and sent $500 to each of my sisters. I have also been promoted at my company over time, and now have lost the junior part of my title, and as I said, make $52,000. My net worth is as follows:
Emergency Fund: $10K
HSA: $6K
2040 Target Date Vanguard Fund: $22K
Retirement accounts: $50K
Total: $88K
I live in an apartment with a roommate for $570 a month and don’t own a car. I’m saving between $1,900-$2,000 a month. I have a girlfriend (not the original love interest) who accepts me for my quirks and thinks the FI-bound lifestyle is cool and is supportive. I have a bus pass through work, so that’s free for me. I have a small group of friends here, but we get along pretty well. I don’t like being so far from family or Michigan’s natural environment, and think about moving back to the Midwest, but it’s hard to when the economy here seems so much healthier.
I struggle somewhat with a dysthemic/depressive streak, and have been in therapy for the past couple years. As an INTP, I find the only thing that gets me excited are various big ideas/”insight porn”, but haven’t found a creative competency that I find rewarding. I read Every Cradle a Grave and the Conspiracy Against The Human Race, and they have left me very uncertain about whether it could be ethical to have kids, yet I feel scared of how I will feel as an old man without a family or a successful creative career to look back on. I sometimes fantasize about taking my <$300 per month from my savings and just being a bum, but I know from experience that I’m not that big a fan of having to search for places to sleep, of having to watch all your shit all the time, and always feeling grubby, and I am fearful of losing the optionality of earning power if I leave the work force. But it seems like at the rate I am going, I will not have ERE options until much later, and in the meantime, I am working in a job that is quite stressful, and that I don’t feel “self-actualized”. I worry that I will finally save enough money to do what I want and find my opportunities to do anything I can really be satisfied with will have passed during accumulation.
I find myself thinking of my net worth often as a sort of mental idol that I ward off negative feelings towards my job. I did write a long essay on shittiness of jobs to try to exorcise these negative feelings last year, but it didn’t seem to help that much. I recently took a vacation to Spain to visit old friends, and my concerns with money did decrease without the job to worry about for a week. But seeing the employment situation for people my age in Spain left me feeling confused about whether I’m allowed to want something different, or if I am just thinking negatively and not appreciating how I already have it better than most from a financial point-of-view, and it’s my own screwed up preferences and anxieties that prevent me from having the higher quality of life that even people in much materially poorer societies enjoy.
I find myself trying to avoid financial independence message board where people specifically talk about their savings and income, such as the FI-related subreddits, as I worry it leads to me obsessing with money more, and also feeling extremely inadequate when I read about 26 year old couples who have $200K saved, not to mention the 23 year olds with $500K from the crazy economy we now live in. Seems like everyone’s a computer programmer…
I took a Udacity web development course and finished it, but didn’t really feel adequately prepared, or convinced that the career change was a smart one. It seems very visually focused, which I am not, and requiring constant study to stay on top of technologies ever changing, all basically to get people to visit sites to make miniscule amounts of ad revenue.
But enough bellyaching! I do enjoy various activities, and am working through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and working on improving in Chess. I keep up my Spanish studies with Anki, and I do find time to read. I cook a lot, and go out for drinks with friends and my girlfriend fairly often. I play tennis, and try to go jogging, although I haven’t been able to lately due to a knee injury (from running). Things are okay I suppose. But I feel like thinking about FI is creating a weird premature midlife crisis in which I need to decide what I care about now before it’s too late, and decide which potential futures to close.
I feel like FI ideas should be freeing, but I think I have found a way to make them not so much. Lately I have been thinking that working a job is maybe like sleeping, and instead of sleeping 8 hours, I am sleeping 16 hours, and I am ERE already--just a late sleeper! Clearly I’m slipping into madness It’s just there are so many maintenance activities and forms of procrastination that my 8 hours of early retirement a day seems so short.
Hmm, well anyway, thanks for reading. I think the individuals who post on this forum are wonderful and insightful--also giving and kind. I really admire the supportive community, and the wide supply of interesting points of view that are represented. Thanks for letting me introduce myself and get some thoughts off my chest!