July 27, 2021
Or is this just the pandemic? How can we even tell?
My current job pays decent money and I have the accommodations that I need. I’m treated with respect, my staff are treated with respect, and my voice is heard. I’m genuinely good at the work I do and the work does matter in the world, to some real extent. I don’t want to have to find a new job or make the compromises that I’ve had to make at every other job.
So this is a not-awesome thing to feel: I don’t want to work. I am so tired of making my life and energy fit around work. I also can’t help but wonder how much longer I can ride this wave with this job. I would need my bosses not to do anything stupid for the next ten years. That seems like a really long time to hope they don’t make any changes I hate.
A friend reminds me that having the kids off to school will likely change the landscape too, which could influence how I feel, and maybe that’s part of the pressure cooker feeling: I have to do ALL THE THINGS ALL THE TIME right now.
Maybe when daycare is back and school is in session and my daylight hours are mine again, maybe I won’t hate spending those hours working.
I want to do nothing useful for at least six months. Just read and eat and walk the dogs and sleep. Maybe even twelve months. Then I will want to do something that feels good to me, and something that makes money. Maybe it’d be nice if they were the same thing. But I have zero desire to go from a reasonably comfortable good fit job to entrepreneurship if we actually need the money to live. That’s too much pressure of a different kind. I’d like to have enough saved that I don’t have to compromise on our standard of living and make real money without depending on it. Is that too much to ask? (When you factor in the part where I have no idea what I’d want to do and I don’t want to do anything I’m really good at professionally because I don’t love any of those tasks…. Yes. Yes that is asking too much.)
Segue into thinking about planning for financial independence: number crunching is my attempt at stress relief but it’s just fake endorphin juicing. Diving into the spreadsheet burrow and inputting a series of equations to game out possibilities temporarily generates a sense of accomplishment, a sense that I’m doing something to get us closer to the nebulous goal in the future when we know that the crunching alone can only draw a roadmap. It can’t move the game pieces around. Then the hit wears off and I’m deflated again because I can only do what I’m already doing: earning W-2 income, be here for my family, spend judiciously, invest regularly. Try not to freak out about the stock market highs that seem outrageous and overvalued.
Sometime in the last three cycles last week, one new realization dawned on me.
We are currently careful with our money, though we do enjoy creature comforts, so we can save aggressively. We save aggressively so we’ll have plenty of money in the future, we hope, to live off of for as long as we need it (we hope). My simulations are based on quite high annual spending projections to, as best I can, ensure that when we choose to step away from our jobs, we have the freedom to keep spending if we want to or have to. I don’t want to go back to worrying about money. Except, if we’re being honest, I’m always thinking about money now so why would that change later when I have more time on my hands? It won’t. I love thinking about money.
I’ve been thinking about how many early-retired people caution others not to rush to early retirement and to enjoy the journey there. Carl of 1500Days recently said: “All of this money stuff is fun to think about, but the real goal is to enjoy life. If you’re so obsessed with winning the money game that you forget to enjoy life, you’ve lost. I know this from experience. If I had to do it over again, I would have gone slower. Hell, I might of actually still been working.”
I get the point. I haven’t forgotten to live today in pursuit of the far-off tomorrow like I once did. PiC and I spend money on things that make us comfortable (insulation!) and happy (cool stamps! special cheese!) and sane (childcare! again! someday!). I even dumped our rental because it was eating my sanity and happiness. We aim for an equal amount of removing alligators and adding kittens. We’re doing the best we can without sacrificing the important things of today. But I can’t help quietly fretting over our savings rate. It feels like we’re creeping along at a snail’s pace and it feels like we’re not going to get there “in time.” My health is improving with therapy and exercise and diet changes, but it’s still a vast gulf between where I am now and being healthy, free of constant pain and fatigue, with energy.
It feels like I’m not doing enough. It feels like there’s so much more I should be doing to grow this nest egg exponentially so that we don’t run out of good years and money to support those years. This year’s rash of losses underline the fact that while we ARE living today, we also don’t know how many more todays we have. I don’t want to spend the majority of them working, and I don’t want to run out of the freedom (aka money) to enjoy life today and tomorrow and next year. I feel like I’m walking a tightrope.
:: How are you feeling at this stage of life with your job and your future plans?
October 20, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,816.35; Rural libraries, $346.69.
Week 31 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 31, Day 213: We had a talk with JB’s tutor about the two priorities we’re balancing: academics vs structure. Structure is the part that they have always had with daycare scheduling to prepare them for the way a traditional classroom is run, vs the learning itself (academics).
Kindergarten completely lacks consistency and structure. We never know what they’re going to be doing at any given time of the class session, or even what time the class will end. Daycare was incredibly structured down to the five minute mark and we always knew what they were expected to be doing at any point in the day. Our tutor expressed concern that if JB were to continue on a trajectory where they are academically a grade level or two above their current grade but continue to lack that ability to handle the structure, skipping a grade would be a real problem. We appreciated that insight but we realize that JB’s social development isn’t progressing at a pace that I would think skipping grades could work well for them in the next year or two. That could change, but at the moment, with the few opportunities they have to socialize, I have my doubts it’ll shift much over the next year.
We decided that within the tutoring session, focusing on the academics will be our higher priority. PiC and I will continue to work on balancing flexibility and structure across the whole day so that they aren’t completely feral by the time first grade starts.
Today I introduced a short post-kindergarten class exercise session. We took the dogs outside for a very short walk to a safe part of the street where I could send JB to do wind sprints. I posed this as their “real dog owner training”. They need to build up strength and stamina if they’re going to have a hope of keeping up with running Sera one of these days. Then they get to do a quiet activity of their choice for up to 40 minutes, followed up by an assigned chore. We’ll go into lunch and rest time before their afternoon educational session from there. (more…)
October 12, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,816.35; Rural libraries, $346.69
I’m trying to decide what to do with our travel cards – we routinely use the Marriott Bonvoy and CSR cards. Broadly speaking, I don’t see us using the Marriott free night to offset the annual fee anytime soon, and we aren’t going to get our money’s worth out of the CSR anytime soon either. I prefer to only have two active keeper cards so I need to do some in depth research here.
American Express
Replacing the Marriot Bonvoy?
I intend to stick with AmEx because their customer service has always been good to us, but does carrying on my usual hotel points hoarding makes any sense given we have no intention of traveling for probably a year.
Perhaps it’s time to downgrade the card to something without a fee. The best of both worlds would be an AmEx with great earning potential and slightly better cashing out options.
They have stated: Points expiration is paused until February 2021. Starting February 2021, points will begin to expire 24 months after your last activity.
That’s good. I’m not worried about expiration right now since we continue to earn points every month but I will have to remember we have 2 years after I change cards to have activity on the account.
Initial Research for replacements: Meh.
Cash Magnet: 1.5% cash back on everything, redeemable as statement credits whenever reward balance is $25 or more (meh). Free ShopRunner membership. No annual fee 👍🏻, 2.7% foreign transaction fee 👎🏻.
AmEx EveryDay card: 1 point/$ on all purchases; 2 points/$ on groceries; 20% more points when the card is used 20+ times per billing period less returns and credits. No annual fee 👍🏻, 2.7% foreign transaction fee 👎🏻.
Blue Cash Preferred® Card: 6% Cash Back at U.S. Supermarkets (capped); 3% cash back on Transit; 3% cash back on Gas; 1% On Other Purchases redeemable as a statement credit. Annual Fee: $95 (meh), 2.7% foreign transaction fee 👎🏻.
Blue Cash Everyday® Card: 3% Cash Back at U.S. Supermarkets (capped); 2% cash back on Gas; 1% On Other Purchases redeemable as a statement credit (meh). No annual fee 👍🏻, 2.7% foreign transaction fee 👎🏻.
Chase
Replacing the Chase Sapphire Reserve?
I’m far less attached to Chase. Their customer service isn’t much use. I enjoyed the CSR card for a while because they had a decent set of perks but those perks are declining in real life value.
I do like that Ultimate Rewards can be cashed out and that I have some reasonable flexibility in earning potential. Perhaps this current stash should just be cashed out and this card downgraded as well. Once upon a time, I was happy with the Chase Freedom card, the current Chase Freedom Unlimited might work for us. I like the flat 1.5% cashback, I dislike the foreign transaction fees. I won’t need to worry about that any time soon but I typically plan for the long haul with keeper cards (vs churn cards I don’t care about).
I haven’t had time to do any Chase related research but I am willing to consider ditching Chase entirely and using our Citi Costco as a regular keeper card to save me the trouble of thinking about this too hard. The perks aren’t as varied but that may not matter much since we haven’t been using many of Chase’s perks lately.
I did like getting the choice to redeem points at 1.5x for restaurant purchases but I didn’t end up doing too much of that. I suppose I’d just rather have the cash in hand.
:: Do you have a favorite go to card that you’d recommend?
August 21, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. We finally caught the edge of a heat wave and part of me was really happy because it’s cold here 98% of the time. I appreciate what we have – we never have to worry about anything melting when we leave it out for example – but I do love a hot day or two once in a while to break it up. I bask in the glory of being too warm because it’s so rare.
2. The hot days also meant we could finally easily bathe the dogs! It’s so hard for Seamus to stand for long periods of time now. On a hot day, he can go for a bit of a walk and hang out and dry quickly. On a cold day, he needs to be blow dried and that’s just so hard on his arthritic joints. All credit goes to PiC on that chore.
3. JB is in really good spirits about the upcoming school year, no matter what form it takes. The nice thing about how hard it’s been up til now – it’s left us all with a complete lack of expectations (other than that it may be a circus). If it’s better than a disaster, great. If not, we’ll figure it out.
4. Speaking of PiC being great, he’s taking the whole first week of school off work so he can be there to oversee and assist. I definitely could not do that even though I had originally really wanted to take the day before and the first day off to be mentally and physically present. My staff needed the time off at the same time and since they booked it first, I wasn’t going to stress the rest of the team with my absence too. We have a lot of flexibility but we still have to get the work done and I have some bigger life balance goals to achieve in the long term so having PiC there instead should do the trick.
Challenges this week: The heat did a number on my hands, much as the rest of me enjoyed it. They were swollen like oven mitts! But it was a small price to pay. We also had another hiccup with the rental and the property manager and that ate up another precious couple of hours of my work time. I ended the week on a low note: with at least half a day of work that I’d have to make up next week or on the weekend. That was disheartening. I like to walk away on a Friday night and know I don’t feel any need to come back until Monday. Also can we take a moment to reflect that we’re five plus months into a pandemic, plus we have heat waves, plus rolling blackouts because PG&E stinks, plus wildfires. I had to shut all the windows that were letting in the cool air, thus avoiding the need to run fans, because of the smoke. There’s a fair bit of coping whiplash in our corner of the world.
5. I made the call to list our rental for sale. It stopped being fun years ago and while I’ve been learning a lot, the biggest things I’ve learned are that I don’t enjoy dealing with an investment that requires me to talk to people. Ever. I also don’t enjoy the people by and large. It was a grand experiment and I still do believe strongly in affordable housing but I also can’t be the one to offer it when we cannot easily absorb the costs of a wrecked property. If we were multiple times richer, that wouldn’t bother me but at this stage in our financial lives, that’s not a hit we can just shrug off without impacting our long term plans. I believe in prompt service and taking really good care of the property for the tenants and that didn’t align with my past sets of tenants. So I’m hugely relieved to have made the decision that it’s ok to end this experiment here and take a part time job off my plate. I don’t know how quickly it will sell but I’m crossing my fingers that it goes for a good price and smoothly and quickly. I’m ready to move on. And that’s ok!
6. We had a distanced and masked activity with a couple of friends. We have seen them a few times since March, just for quick porch and distanced drop offs of food gifts, but nothing like spending actual time together. We haven’t spent time with anyone in five months, really. I didn’t think it bothered me at all, and maybe it doesn’t specifically bother me, but the lack of fun times means I haven’t replenished my spirit in nearly half a year. I’ve just been coping day to day to day to endless day. I couldn’t believe what an enormous difference it made in my ability to breathe and be patient to have even distanced company for a while and be relaxed with friends and laughing over silly things. Even aching from head to toe with the unexpected physical exertion, I had reserves of patience for JB that I have been searching for for months. I both felt elated and bad that I can’t maintain that much patience normally but it’s just an honest indicator of how depleted I’ve been. Whether it was the fun activity or the company or both, we need more of this.
:: How was your week?
April 14, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
November 9, 2016
I had another post for today but first I’m sitting here with the Election doing what it’s doing and I’m wondering how we live in a country that would rather put a Hateful Incompetent Blustering Serial Liar in the highest office of the land over literally anyone else you could think of? A person who has made a campaign promising to deport citizens based on their religion, who considers many citizens of this country including women, disabled people, people of color, LGBTA, veterans, and immigrants as less than dirt to be trod on? When he incites violence against those who disagreed with him, invoked the Second Amendment in reference to his opponent – how are we to expect anything different from him if he’s then installed in the Oval? How precisely is he meant to lead and represent this country when his view of the nation is one that would be better off if most of us were gone?
Some of us have kids to whom we’ll have to explain how a bully and a predator was elected to the highest office in the land. How a man can brag about sexual assault and have multiple accusers of sexual assault and still be elected President. Some of us have daughters to whom we’ll have to explain how no matter how experienced you are, no matter how much blood, sweat or tears you’ve invested in the process and your career, a blustering man with literally no credentials or perceived competence can still win over you. Honestly, none of this was new, it’s just that much more obvious now.
I already knew I’d have to explain this to JuggerBaby someday but I had held to this frail hope that it could be in the past tense when ze was old enough to understand.
Add to the list of explanations: why are they telling us to “go home”? Because that’s nothing new either, but it’ll happen more frequently after the election, just as it was becoming more obvious during the campaign.
I was thinking earlier today, is this how it felt in Germany after the elections? A sense of foreboding, and impending doom, and wondering how many of your friends you can shelter from the coming storm? How long you can hold out?
The blistering racism, festering sexism, and ever-present xenophobia that’s pocked this country had me prepared for a close race, but I had held out hope, based on all the good, decent, and kind people I know here, that it wouldn’t come out in favor of hatred and bullying. This didn’t even come down to warring conservative versus liberal values and agendas. For me, this was about basic human decency and he didn’t even meet the minimum bar for that.
It’s not been called yet but I’m worried for the many who are even more vulnerable than I.
I don’t feel it yet, but I can say that I hope that when we wake up, it won’t be as bad as all that. That it isn’t the beginning of the long slide. I hope.
Nov 9 update: The person I couldn’t believe was the Republican nominee is the President-Elect now. It’s an outcome I knew was to be feared and the repercussions will range far and wide. It’s too early to try and hope again, today’s a day for resting, regrouping, and then we’ll pick up again. We’ll stand up to protect ourselves, defend those who need help, and be the best possible people we can be. That’s our job. And in two years, we need to do what we can to change the fact that all three branches of government are held by one party. The checks and balances can’t work when there’s no aisle to reach across.
July 27, 2016
Joking with Kate and Little Green Revolution on Twitter about being ingrates who give unwanted, personalized, gifts that you can’t regift, a genius brainstorm hit me. I can hire JuggerBaby out! Ze can finally earn zir keep!
Ze is a natural (two-legged) cat with the added benefit of not shedding (much). Ze has been auditioning for the role of Minimalist Cat for MONTHS. If there’s anything breakable within reach, ze makes eye contact, reaches out with a chubby paw and pushes it off the shelf. Grins for the smash. Extra giggles if you react. Extra extra cackles if you react with anger.
Foolish human.
Minimalist Cat thrives on bringing chaos.
Disclaimers: Minimalist Cat does not recycle. Minimal Cat does not dust or pick up unless you offer really good bribes and use Mom voice. Minimalist Cat is a fan of brooms but mostly for licking and wild gesticulations. Not so much for sweeping.
Got clutter? Minimalist Cat will help you!
- Is it breakable? Minimalist Cat will break it.
- Is it fabric? Minimalist Cat will pick and chew it.
- Is it paper? Minimalist Cat will shred and cheek it.
- Is it shoes? Minimal Cat will steal them.
- Is it a gift you really really didn’t want? Minimalist Cat will rend and tear it.
- Are you daunted by how much there is? Does it feel like too big a job because your shelves overflowing? Minimalist Cat will empty them and strew things EVERYWHERE. The better for you to sort it.
- Are you not unsure what’s in that one closet you don’t open the door to? Minimalist Cat fears not! Ze has your back. Services offered: pull everything out of the closet, unpack all bags and boxes so you can’t pretend you didn’t know it was there, and lick half of it. It’s marked now, throw it out.
- Is that your mouse? YOU DON’T NEED IT.
- Is that a landline? Ze can smash it.
- Is that a cell phone? Ze will use it.
- Is that your baby? No, silly, that’s Minimalist Cat’s baby now.
“‘Uh-oh’ is for accidents, Minimalist Cat,” says PiC. HAH.
No, but seriously
Clutter is a problem around here. Unwanted gifts, poorly selected clothing, snowdrifts of junk mail all make their way in and it’s a Herculean labor to shovel it all back out again. It’s an endless task but it’s gotta be done or we’ll drown in Bed Bath and Beyond coupons.
I’ve tackled the closet one 20-minute session at a time, forcing myself to make ruthless and realistic decisions. The one-year rule doesn’t work for me because I can go a whole year without touching half my closet but then need that half the following year.
Now, I’m paring down with the aim of having a week’s worth of clothing suitable for each season, casual and business. If I do it right, I’ll end up with a much slimmer and more classic wardrobe.
As for kitchen supplies, nothing new is allowed in there unless we get rid of three things for every one item. I refuse to end up with a Hoarders-level kitchen!
:: What decluttering challenges do you face? Do you discourage gifts from family or friends? Would you like to hire JuggerBaby?