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No Wave posted:"just because we happen to be related?" Like, part of your rationale is that it would be too much of a pain in the rear end? You are not ready. Human lives cost around $1800 to save from preventable diseases. I know that FI and ethics make for strange bedfellows, but in what ethical system is your child's student loan debt worth the actual lives of 90 other children? edit: picked a less-good quote at first Mofabio fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 02:32
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tuyop posted:I don't think that this makes for very productive conversation, and I have a degree in international development. There is simply no way to square the circle of balancing your own life and priorities with the insane relative costs of the most basic of luxuries or conveniences if you frame it this way. You cut cable and opt for netflix so that you can donate an additional $50/month to your pet charity. But still, if you could just make do with less TV or movies, you could give another 14%! And what about the cost of food? Better go vegetarian, maybe you can find another 60 bucks to send to starving naked brown children who are covered in flies. I think someone coined it Schindler's syndrome? I guess I'm mostly curious about the ethical system that would make the things you listed bad for the world. I get that they would be slightly bad for the giver, but how would they be bad for the world? I used to read MMM with gusto, and I still like his anti-consumerism tactics. But (for instance) he refuses $4000 ad dollars per month that he claims would easily support his living expenses (or, cough, another family's), because he wants to swear on his site. quote:Maybe I should be more like Bill Gates and start doing something involving vaccines in India instead of building yet another kitchen or front porch for someone? [snip] Was I really willing to give up all that cash over one [swear] word? Do you guys think this is ethically defensible behavior? Mofabio fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 08:34
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(this was a double post, but...) A side note, it's kind of interesting how you guys are mocking things like replacing cable with netflix, going vegetarian, delaying or not having kids, making due with fewer possessions, and living in a small studio. The context here is charity, but these are common sense paths to FI, too. I understand where the compartmentalization is coming from here, just thought I'd point out the disconnect. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 08:35
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neaden posted:OK, this argument is bad for two reasons. Thanks for responding seriously. FI'ers and the somalian-refugee-roommaters have similar attitudes to consumerism and dollar efficiency. I'm just figuring out what separates the people who put the money in their Vanguard, and the people who give it away. For 1, the difference in marginal value of the dollars diverted to an after school program from FI, and an after school program to malaria eradication, is huge. It's apples to oranges, and weighted for marginal value, the apple is part of a raffle where you have to guess its weight, and the orange is a kumquat. So it's reductionist only if you reduce what I'm saying (i.e. why not give?) to something I'm not saying (only give perfectly!)  .edit: I'd also be careful of reductionist arguments against giving. As in, arguing against the extreme case. The extreme case would be the person maximizing income in the US, and equalizing expenses to the global poorest, at say a dollar a day. But if the poorest become even poorer (say 50 cents a day), obviously the problem got larger, but your argument against giving gets even stronger, because $0.50/day in the US is even more absurd than a dollar/day. (what's next, refugee roommates?!). For 2, that presents a false choice between collective action and individual action. Why not both? It's also true that America's least popular program is the "foreign aid" category, so I'd question whether lobbying is an effective use of one's time. We also live in a world where the Gates Foundation gives about half of what the country he pays taxes to does. Because it only takes a couple philanthropic billionaires to equal the collective output of the country, I'd worry about emphasizing collective action over individual. Also, lobbying for new laws, or trying to overthrow global capitalism, is pretty high risk/high reward, like putting all your giving on red, but with worse odds. But again, the right answer is "all of the above". Mofabio fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 17:44
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Dessert Rose posted:The thing that really blew my mind when I started looking into this was how eating well, being healthy/fit and being frugal actually all support each other. I was eating like poo poo, driving tons of places and spending way too much money to do it. Now I'm eating actual food made from base ingredients, I'm enjoying doing so, it's better for me, and I'm getting free exercise when going places ... and it costs me significantly less money. Hey, I really like this post, and the idea that they all support each other. I notice that when I drive to work for a week, my mood's lower, which saps my willpower to cook, which robs me of a "yeah I MADE this" high, which discourages me from working on my personal projects that provide me with "gently caress YEAH I MADE THIS" highs, which makes my mood lower... Also, I like how people think that ALL life has to offer is toys, meanwhile the best hours of their days in the healthiest years of their lives are spent taking orders from management.
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Jan 13, 2015 02:57
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Has anyone here experimented with a gap year before making the leap to FI? I'm saving ~70%, and I'm considering 2016 for a gap year. I've got a personal project I've been doing for like 2 years, and I love it, and I'd work on it 6-8 hours a day if I could. I figure that, for the cost of ~6 years of interest on a year of spending, I could both test out FI and work on my own stuff now + be an autodidact more than just evenings and weekends. Tax wise, would it make sense to take the gap year July->June, rather than Jan->Dec? I figure yes, because I could max out 2 401ks and 2 IRAs, and because I'd be in a lower marginal tax bracket for year 2, I'd do a roth 401k. My biggest concern is getting a job afterwards - but I also figure I can afford to be choosy, and hopefully won't feel the same stress of an unemployment-driven job search. Thoughts?
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Mar 1, 2015 22:38
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Blackjack2000 posted:
A few things: - most jobs are exhausting, and people spend their off-hours recuperating - the projects that give me meaning in my life are things that could be IP to my lovely loving company. I have to carefully avoid working on certain stuff they could one day decide to want, and take me to court over. - continuing your education in anything except the trades is very hard in the hours you listed. I took two machining classes the past year to learn engine lathes, and there are some things, and I mean some things, that make leaving work early to machine until 11pm difficult. - to continue on that point: a big FI dream of mine is learning a touchstone of physics, like general relativity or something. They don't offer those classes on the weekends. Textbooks exist, but complicated subjects benefit from the live instruction and q-and-a of a classroom. - for volunteering: don't take this the wrong way, but have you been involved in a real organizing campaign before? Campaigns have a tendency to suck up every available second of free time. Which, again, most people use to recuperate, because most jobs are exhausting. - also for volunteering: any radical (read: effective) organizing campaign, or even non-radical campaigns like fighting for worker rights or consumer rights that affect your industry, are going to make you layoff material. My company, for instance, has a very short list of acceptable volunteering opportunities. - and you know that traveling's easier and cheaper and usually better when you can leave on a Tuesday morning and spend a month somewhere. Full time career = week-long vacations = travel without language immersion or learning cultures deeper than a guidebook - I fill probably about 50% of my non-work time on my own project, but I've been working on it for 2 years, and yes, my full-time career is preventing me from making progress on it.
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Mar 2, 2015 09:24
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I think I've honed in on what's been bothering me about MMM: he takes political questions and de-politicizes them. Lemme draw some contrasts. MMM has probably written more about bikes than any other frugal habit. How many articles does he have making fun of SUVs, structuring your lifestyle to bike everywhere, modifying your bike? He fuckin' loves bikes. Notably though, in every single bike article, he mentions climate change. The guy cares about climate change. Doing a back of the envelope calculation, he's kept around 50,000 kg of CO2's carbon in the ground. Cool. I've got a friend who also cares deeply about climate change. He cares so much, in fact, that in 2011, he took a train from California all the way to DC to protest (and get arrested protesting) Keystone XL. This was the protest that made the pipeline a topic of public discussion. For reference, the Alberta bitumen contains around 240 billion metric tons of future CO2, or 4.8 billion times what MMM has done personally by restructuring his life. Take however many derating factors you want, 4.8e9 >> 1. There're a lot more examples. Instead of using all his free time to rally to fix his son's school, he's just taking his kid out and homeschooling him. Content of education is obviously a political topic, and is going in directions (more testing, more standardized curriculum) that he's actively trying to escape. As long as his son gets a good education though, everything's okay. He (especially in his first articles) talked about the drudgery of a 9-5 and the joy of free time. At the beginning of the 20th century, most US workers put in 12-14 hour days, and it was only because of a 60-year labor/socialist campaign (and the adoption of their platform as the New Deal) that in 1937 we got the 8 hour day - the 9-5, instead of the 7-9. Kinda like with CO2, his personal actions help a little, but the hours that we work are a political decision. He could campaign for something radical like 20 hour work weeks or 5 months of vacation, or even loving paid sick days - god knows he has the time - but like with CO2, like with school, he's happy if he and his family get the benefits, and the rest of us don't. It seems like one of the big benefits of FI is, if you care about issues, you can take greater action on them. You have the time, you don't need to care about your arrest record from a protest, and you can rally for issues that'd otherwise risk your job, like labor or voting for your boss or free speech rights in the workplace, or whatever else bothered you about your job. tldr: It just gets frustrating to read him care about political issues, and either not know they're political issues, or not care enough to do anything about them.
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Mar 3, 2015 19:33
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Xoidanor posted:It isn't really fair to fault the guy for prioritising his own life over making the sacrifices that political activism entails, regardless of his circumstances. Here's one of my favorite examples of the contrast: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/10/28/mmm-challenge-can-you-go-car-free-this-weekend/ "On weekends, we simply chill together. It is my idea of living, and it is the foundation of our relationship together as a family. We sit on couches and read and write books and comics. The boy and I ride down to the creek and carve channels and dams in the rocks and sand. Then we’ll climb some trees, max out the swingsets at the park, and maybe do some urban planning in the sandbox. We get home tired and nicely sunned out, and he’ll disappear to his room and make songs with Ableton while the lady and I will make some dinner. At this time of year it tends to cool down and get dark outside pretty quickly, so we’ll start a fire in the woodburning stove I built into the new house. Some wine may be poured. All of that, and it’s still only Saturday night. There’s still time to have friends over, or walk over to someone else’s place to mingle all the neighborhood kids and prepare a feast." ... in an article about the evils of cars, about how a friend just died in a car accident. Like, my friend was in DC for a week to get arrested protesting Keystone. He can't spare a week for an issue he cares about?
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Mar 3, 2015 19:50
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Dessert Rose posted:But in the end, you can do both: you can bike and you can protest. MMM is only posting about and trying to convince others to do the one which actually relates to financial independence. Oh for sure. I think what MMM's doing - showing that it's possible to have a rewarding, carless life - is reassurance to people and policymakers who'd be nervous about what a low-emission future might look like. I didn't want to focus on climate change - if he spent a third of his articles talking about how The Immigrants Are Taking Our Jobs, I'd wonder equally why he wasn't at the border with the minutemen (is that still a thing?). I wanted to talk about how FI frees you up for activism in general, and how arguably the world's most-read FI mapmaker's idea of activism - again, in spite of deeply caring about climate and how our work/life balance is terrible - is volunteering once a month in his son's school. And he's quitting that soon too. Somebody mentioned that he depoliticized his blog on purpose in order to focus on FI. That's probably right, and it's also true that there are a shitload of political blogs out there already and the world doesn't need one more. I'm not even calling him out for not doing enough (even though the couple activists I know would droooool for the amount of free time he's got). I'd be happy if he just mentioned that the things he cares about are political, and could even have political solutions, and that it ISN'T either/or.
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Mar 4, 2015 00:18
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Cicero posted:But his values are wrong. What? I said he depoliticized political questions. This would also be true if he had different values. I also said an advantage of FI is that, if you care about an issue, you can become an activist without the normal array of negative consequences, up to and including job loss. Also... Obama just vetoed Keystone. Keystone became a political issue only after the extremely successful Aug-Nov 2011 string of protests. ------------------- Ok anyway, I have an FI tip! I've been using the "don't break the chain" system, slightly modified for my priorities. I'll X a day only if money spent falls into one of 5 categories: food, bills, bike repair, gifts, and DIY. I have to break the chain when I buy gas, when I buy clothes, when I have to replace something rather than repair it, and most other stuff. I've noticed 3 benefits: I spend less overall, I have to think about every purchase to remember and categorize and assess its usefulness, and best of all, when I get the weird urge to lose money, I'll buy something that will help my project (which moves my project along faster). If you're thinking "those categories are ridiculous", the general idea is to make an X category consisting of necessities to stay alive, however you define them, plus stuff that makes you happy in the long-term. In the "break the chain" category, put your bad money habits that can be replaced. For instance, I'm happy with the level that I eat out now, but if I weren't, I'd break the chain whenever I went out to eat. If you're really unsatisfied with the rent you're paying, you can break the chain once a month. It's kind of the second cousin of a budget, but set at zero for almost everything, and set at infinity for the stuff you already have under control (or want to do more of). It works about as well as you can care about your chain, and (in my experience) if you get a string of chain breaks, you stop taking it seriously, and the system falls apart. So make it so a 3-week chain is challenging, but attainable.
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Mar 4, 2015 04:16
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Bhodi posted:I've taken a year off twice so far and if you made this post as a joke you will quickly find out that it's not a joke at all, people will absolutely react that way When you looked for a job after the gap year, how curious (or angry/confused) were your interviewers?
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Mar 4, 2015 17:57
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Cicero posted:You criticized his lack of protesting/field activism, implicitly critiquing his personal values that apparently don't put much stock in doing said activism. Yeah... I mainly just wish he'd mention it. Because, we all know people who actively fear retirement. When probed, at least the people I know really fear feeling worthless. We talk about how FI really means work is optional - not verboten - and about more vacations and time with kids and stuff like that. At least in my experience though, that doesn't actually convince anyone whose self-worth is tied up in their work. That's why it's so weird he doesn't even mention activism as a way to add meaning to your life after wage work is over. To recap: he cares about multiple causes, activism requires a lot of time and passion, you don't have the disapproval of your boss to worry about, it's pretty cheap (about 95% is meetings, for better or for worse), and sometimes it actually makes the world nicer. I understand why he did it, especially after reading how many FI-aspiring people here laugh at activists. But certain people ask "what are you supposed to do after financial independence?" and want a better answer than "anything!".
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Mar 6, 2015 02:03
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http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/01/impossible-dream/ Everybody knows you never go full bootstraps. It's astoundingly dumb that he wants a scientific analysis for structuring retirement programs, and then blames low savings rates on a lack of "spirit". Spirits are not testable or measurable. What's the spiritual difference of the German volk's 10% savings rate, and America's 5%? (Cue: some real vulgar, stereotype-based sociology). Seriously, have some curiously about how economics actually works. Banks don't hire spirit analysts to predict what the demand for cash, bonds, and equities will be. "Because the problem is not a shortage of money – it’s a shortage of spirit. A lack of desire and fire in our bellies to embrace hardship and challenge, to get the most out of ourselves, rather than designing a lifestyle that allows us to exert ourselves the least." Honestly, I'm enjoying my 70% savings rate, but this is like the clock that chimed 13 times - so wrong, you question whether it's ever been right.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:56
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Rick Rickshaw posted:At the risk of sounding like an MMM apologist, I don't think his approach to this article is entirely wrong. Yeah, I think that's pretty much right. MMM had an effect on my "spirit", showing me there wasn't an upper bound to savings. I like his line that early retirement is the biggest luxury purchase you can ever make. That stuck with me. Changed my spirit, as far as I can tell. But you really can't observe spiritual changes in other people. They're hard to even observe in yourself, much less talk about. Until we have sci-fi perfect brain mapping, the idea that we aren't saving enough due to lack of spirit is not a testable hypothesis. The fact he's comfortable using this shaky empirical ground to confidently dismiss other routes to retirement beside his own is, uh, real dumb. Like, reality's really loving difficult to figure out. Doubly so for human societies. There are actual scholars of pension programs who spend their lives studying them, across countries and businesses. The world would probably be a happier, more free place if more people did like us and MMM, but he isn't doing his cause any favors with an untestable, unworkable, spirituality-based analysis. edit: For instance, it wouldn't be economically impossible to lower the national retirement age by upping FICA deductions - just politically. The SSA's OASI overhead is 0.4% and falling, which is Vanguard territory. If he really believes early retirement makes you happier and more free, why not call for something like that, instead of a spiritual awakening? I know this is my second "ughhh MMM" post but gently caress I wish he wasn't just some savings-and-blogging idiot savant Mofabio fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 18:49
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I kinda like the rent-while-working path to FI. Relocating to new areas as a homeowner based on the evolving optimization factors of hip neighborhood, biking distance to job, good schools, low age of consent, friendly neighbors, hiking trails, proximity to grandchildren, peace and solitude gets expensive. Also I'm in the Bay Area and fuckkkkk buying a house here, the place 2 doors down is going for 900x my rent-controlled rent (read: 900/12 = 75 dumb years to break even). Fast fact: your FI dick length conversion factor is (savings rate % / 10%) * inches. Someone did a study. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 02:11
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Inept posted:
Wow, judge much dude? Middle school dances are the cheapest clubs around. That's a frugal tip, on the house.
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Apr 10, 2015 09:12
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:Any domicile is a means to cover your perpetually recurring liability against exposure (literally dying from cold), theft, and other risks. Let's call these domestic liabilities. Some domiciles also confer quality of life benefits. One thing to consider is that ghosts don't haunt 1-bedroom apartments, just houses, because ghosts are actually huge creatures and won't fit
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Apr 10, 2015 19:42
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Sundae posted:Are you confusing spirits with Minecraft ghasts again? No I'm not confused at all Yesterday my silly pharma company decided they were underpaying me and so I gots a 14% raise. I'm now making almost double what I did this time last year which puts me *holds entire palm on numpad* 3.5 years from FI. I'm deeply incompetent and forget to perform basic hygiene. edit: my friend just told me "Renting is a good way to prepare for death because implicit in the agreement is that you must one day relinquish your possession, whereas homeowners have a six-times greater rate of self-inflicted gunshot wounds because they have been lulled into believing themselves immortal. If you think you're immortal then at some point you're gonna try to shoot yourself to see what it's like." Mofabio fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 21:28
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I mean, the fundamental problem is that you don't get to pick what jobs are available or what they pay. If some Horatio Alger jumps a class, it means by necessity that somebody had to drop a class. There's no way capitalism can function without a massive class of wage workers - there'd be no way to skim off profit, no way to reinvest profits into new businesses. Lemme put it another way: if we all woke up tomorrow with identical, 200-point IQs, we wouldn't suddenly all be managers. I don't really understand the point of this derail because: no matter if people are genetically smart or are smart due to supportive environments, if they're genetically hard workers or people who learned to work hard, if they're women/black/brown/white, there's a set number of slots in each class. There's a set number of slots in each class. It's the same number of people suffering overwork in poo poo jobs, why does it matter that they're the correct people (ie the dumb people) you feel should suffer?
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May 28, 2015 00:45
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Inverse Icarus posted:MMM's recent article has an actual, acknowledged sockpuppet in it. What a weird life he has. Strangers email him with their secret finances, and he's trusted and expected to give them advice. I bet he feels like a specialized Dear Abby, instead of the happiness philosopher he'd like to be. Kind of a step down. I don't blame him for his last line - I'd resent an obligation to answer the same question every day, too. I bet we're less than a year away from him ending the blog, if his major interaction with it is a feeling of obligation to repeat himself to strangers. Yuck.
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Jul 3, 2015 00:56
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Sooo we had a discussion ITT a couple months back about how MMM could/should/shouldn't be more/less political. I was on the side of "should be more", and somebody - too lazy to check who - suggested I email him about it. Well, I finally did. I always thought it was amazing how popular he is, AND how deeply anarchist he is. And, because anarchism's so unpopular/"unserious"/un-talked-about, that he probably didn't even know it. What do you guys think (about the email, or the anarchist critique of work in general)? quote:Subject: You might be an anarchist, and that's okay
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Aug 1, 2015 00:49
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Cicero posted:What definition of anarchism are you using here? 'Anarchism' seems to mean a dozen different things across the internet. I confess I don't know the many factions of anarchism or the left in general, but it seems like there are a lot of people calling themselves anarchists who are making the same connections that MMM does (work boring/painful, work causes environmental destruction). I'm actually pretty fresh down this rabbit hole, do you happen to know of any writers (anarchist or otherwise) who are anti-work? I bought crimethinc's "Work", which that pamphlet was advertising- but I kind of feel like crimethinc's aimed at a more, uh, youthful audience (not that there's anything wrong with that). edit: and I've read some David Graeber stuff. Utopia of Rules is a fantastic examination of bureaucracies, and why they suck, and why we form them anyway. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Aug 2, 2015 |
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Aug 2, 2015 19:10
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Devian666 posted:This is what interests me is what work is to most people versus economic definitions. Most of my work is dealing with bureaucracy rather than getting any design work done. I've found my work a lot less interesting because of this. So I'll have to have a look at the Utopia of Rules. It's funny, I've twice automated my job with excel spreadsheets, including my current one. Each time, my boss gets wind, and I get more paperwork to do. Bureaucracy fills the gaps that automation creates.
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Aug 2, 2015 22:44
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Devian666 posted:The benefits of efficiency and increased productivity. Whether the paperwork has a use or not there's latent work waiting to happen. Totally off-topic, but for a CFD novice, how much trouble can I get into running fine fine mesh DNS on OpenFOAM? Laminar flows of basically Newtonian fluids in small-scale mixers (interFoam)? Not a programmer, not a meshing expert, I basically wanna know if I'm wasting my time or not. I'm trying to determine delta-P and mixing efficiency (worst case, because no diffusion). edit: assuming you do CFD, but I realize it might be piping networks. edit also: I know what you mean about certain regs. Not a republican, but I work in a GMP pharma plant, and the regulations are ridiculous: it takes 2 months of paperwork and 15 signatures to add printer paper to certain validated printers. Not even kidding. There's so drat much bureaucratic fat to trim if we went to a less-than-40-hour workweek, and that's not even getting into the corporate bureaucracy of performance evaluations, HR, et al. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 03:21
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pig slut lisa posted:My wife is a fluvial geomorphologist so I'm hoping she remembers enough of her fluid dynamics coursework by the time we want to retire I'm sure it'll all come flowing back
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Aug 3, 2015 04:42
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Xoidanor posted:It was as if millions of philisophy, polsci, economy and anthropology majors cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. From what I've read (again not an expert), serious anti-work thinking only really happens in anarchism. Every once and a while, a liberal writes an incredibly dumb essay about "the end of work", as if the last 80 years of productivity improvements led to any work reductions in the US, at all, except involuntary ones. Socialists/liberals sometimes support paid leave (moreso now than before the recession), but it's usually sold in terms of productivity improvements from rest, or public health in terms of paid sick leave, or healthier/smarter babies from mat/paternity leave. The value of work itself isn't questioned by liberals/socialists except to haggle over its price. It's pretty funny to me that, anarchism's so discredited, that probably the internet's most popular anarchist blogger doesn't know he's an anarchist. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 05:31
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Cicero posted:Some of the thoughts on lifestyle are the same, yeah, but I haven't seen MMM advocating for a stateless society, which is the core of anarchism. Fair, yeah. I kind of suspect that he's fine with high-earners being free from work, and fine with low-earners having to work - even though his and anarchist criticisms of work apply to both. And I suspect he'll justify this view with something like, well, you have to "earn" your retirement though hard work and self-sacrifice.
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Aug 3, 2015 21:04
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baquerd posted:Yep. Told them I needed to think it over of course, but hard to turn that down. Dude that's awesome. Unsung benefit of FI: more negotiating power.
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Aug 4, 2015 00:27
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God I love this thread
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Aug 6, 2015 20:09
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I know I know FI is a waiting game, timing the market doesn't work, but with stocks going on sale today, I'm kinda happy now that I procrastinated buying these ETFs.
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Aug 21, 2015 21:58
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$400k/year, from a blog that's about learning when you have enough, I mean what the gently caress. To paraphrase the expression, the best time to donate to malaria research was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.
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Feb 23, 2016 02:20
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:He preaches low expense living, not low income living. I get that, it's good he's not spending it vs. living a dumb $$ lifestyle. Just saying that it's less costly to make a difference for charitable causes now - a dollar spent to prevent malaria now (or polio 20 years ago, or whatever cause), will prevent more deaths over the long haul than holding and waiting.
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Feb 23, 2016 05:10
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I'd like some of that money, if he's got more than enough.
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Feb 23, 2016 21:26
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Quit my job 2 weeks ago. I'm half-FI. Gonna take 2 or 3 years off, then finish the marathon in (hopefully) a different company. Zero regrets so far. I'm baking more, working on my hobbies more, seeing friends and family more, biking more, reading more, and am just generally more contented.
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Apr 30, 2016 23:42
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Guest2553 posted:Congrats. How old are you, if i can ask? I'm under 30. Worked for just under 6 years, average salary in that period around 80k (chem engineering). What phase are you in? Drawing down expenses and getting the habits, or holding steady?
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May 2, 2016 02:28
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Wow, that's really impressive. A lot of the success stories I see are people making well into the 6 figures so it just doesn't seem achievable. It's encouraging to see someone do it on a salary not too different from mine. Do you mind if I ask what percentage of your salary you lived on during that time? Are you bringing in cash with any side jobs or rental properties or just living off investments? Thanks man. No side hustles or any investments except cash and index funds. I'm living on 25-30k in the Bay Area. The only thing I probably do differently is that I love DIY/engineering, so my commodities are forever 80% off. If not DIY, then I buy broken and repair, or just look for used deals. I'm pretty weird, but I like being surrounded by things I built myself, rather than things built by workers in jobs they probably dislike. Guest2553 posted:I have about 2-3 years of expenses in liquid assets at the moment, and enough bonuses coming in that I should be up to 4 by end of year. I won't be able to save as aggressively over the next few years for a host of reasons, but it will still be at a rate I'm comfortable with. My pension should cover my annual expenses by the time I'm ready to pull the plug, but a) I don't want to pin all my hopes on that and b) I want to have some gently caress you money to do more than just get by. That's awesome dude. The peace of mind of 2-3 years of savings is one of the finest things you can buy yourself. For me it was a turning point to stop being such a passive child at work, and start taking more risks. I really don't understand the lifestyles of my ex-coworkers. The guy next to me, before I left, had just gotten back from a $10k vacation in Fiji. They're always complaining that they're out of money, that $200k/yr household isn't enough to live on in the bay. Median income in SF is $70k, meaning HALF OF SF is living on less than that. And that's the richest that SF has ever been. I just want to grab them and be like, don't you have enough? Mofabio fucked around with this message at 07:15 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 05:16
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Sundae posted:So for curiosity's sake (because I'm about to move out there), where are you living that you can get rent even close to living on that amount? It feels like everything I find is $2.5K-3.5K regardless of size or distance from work. Clearly, I'm missing a neighborhood or something. Basically we got super lucky. $1000/mo for 1bd inlaw unit in (edit: north) Oakland (on the Berkeley border), which I split with the gf. Found it on craigslist. We THINK there's rent control, but even if there isn't, the landlord doesn't give a poo poo so long as we keep sending the checks. I think he wrote the lease himself, it's pretty informal. Market rate for a place like that 4 years ago was probably ~$1200, with fancy condo-like poo poo going for ~$1700, and now like you've noticed, it's doubled. I think I remember you're pharma? There's cheap stuff out in Vacaville if you're moving to the Wherever you end up, bike commuting in the Bay is so goddamn pleasant, that it's worth living <5 miles from work. Especially with this drought on. Winter 2015 I think I only needed to suit up in rain gear like, twice. My thought is, there are people in the Bay Area for whom the new $15/hr minimum wage means something. That's $30k/yr in a lovely, exhausting, full-time job. Somehow they've found food and housing, so us lucky sons of bitches should be able to, as well. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 21:11
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Mocking Bird posted:I have a rent controlled apartment in lowland Berkeley with a huge garden and two bedrooms, and you would have to set it on fire to get me out. $1720 is still considerably more than $1000, though, good find! V. nice. $1720 with space to raise a kid in Berkeley is awesome, dude. I got lucky with social spending too, I guess just by having poor friends who are happy to smoke weed and chat and watch movies. With my rich friends, we built a robot bartender, which is a great excuse to stay home and do "reliability tests". I usually get some bread going if I know friends are coming over. Fresh, warm bread and homemade butter is another good excuse to stay in, and it's not much work so I can still hang out, too. Homemade delicious bread for like 30 cents a meal is like, an FI cheat code, IMO.
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May 2, 2016 21:41
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Hm, I was basing it on cost of flour, but maybe there's more to it? I'm gonna publicly do this math. I buy bread flour for ~$3/5# bag, instant yeast is $8/lb, and I use .58oz yeast per 5# of flour, salt is $cheap, 57oz water is $cheap. Looks like maybe $0.50 to run the oven an hour to bake 5#, based on internet calculators. I let it rise in the fridge, let's say 1600g water * 4.19 J/g*K * 25 delK * 20% cooling efficiency = 0.25 kWh * $0.2/kWh = ok, a nickel, just making sure. $3 flour + $8/(16/0.58) yeast + $0.55 energy = $3.79, round up to $4, for about 12 500-calorie baguettes, 2 small pizzas, and a focaccia. I think I'm saving a shitload? Am I forgetting anything? Fresh sourdough boules can be like $4, baguettes $2, but admittedly a proper comparison would be by weight. And there's labor cost, but I don't mind 10 minutes of kneading. I guess I could save $0.20 on the yeast and use a levain. I don't think homemade butter saves much. I did the math one time and it was like, 30% off of an already-cheap fat, costco heavy cream vs. costco butter, and it spoils quick. Maybe there's more savings if you use the fresh buttermilk, too. We should do a Bay Area bread and pizza night for cheapskates.
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May 3, 2016 19:36
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