Early Retirement Extreme progress

[smurff]

A bidet?  In the kitchen?
What's it for, cleaning the veggies?

(You're right, most breads and pastries do taste like crap.)

[Figuring It Out]

Laughing about your "extreme" idea for the cell phone. That's not extreme - it's awesome! When my contract ran out about a year ago on my iPhone, I decided to go down to a "dumb" phone w/o a contract - with the understanding that I could always go back to a smart phone at any time. I was finding myself checking my phone too much, and it bugged me that I couldn't seem to stop, so I forced myself to take a break. I have found that I greatly prefer not being "always on" and connected. I read more when I'm out in public and have a few minutes to spare or when I'm eating alone, vs. checking stupid shit I don't really care about.

I kept my iPhone and now use it as an iPod, using WiFi at home and not taking it out with me much, but you could and just use it at hotspot places.

I vastly prefer my "dumb" phone, although when I ended up averaging $30/month for pay-as-you-go talk and text, I moved to an unlimited talk/text no-contract plan for the same amount, because most people I interact with have unlimited plans and don't think twice about texting numerous times on a topic, and the back-and-forth can add up quick. For that reason, unlimited works well for me.

In the course of that year, minus the cost of the phone, I probably saved $500. It would have been enough for a new GPS unit and a new iPod, but so far, I've stuck with the old.

[Lone Wolf]

Great topic!  I love that you've posted some hard data.  I won't try to compete with you because frankly you have wiped the floor with me in every category. 

First, your power bill embarrasses me.  Granted, you live in the South Bay and thus enjoy the best weather in the world when I'm often using air conditioning to survive.  But still.  You're beating me so badly here that I need to start adopting some of your ideas.  I'm going to order a Kill-A-Watt to see what's going on, a recommendation that IIRC I got from you some time back.  It's time.  I mean, you get by on 40 bucks a month.

Second, your baby bills are a lot lower than ours.  Baby food and diapers in particular kinda add up.  I see that you use cloth diapers (good money saver, but just not for us) and I'm guessing... make your own baby food?

I agree with Figuring It Out that dumb phones will work just fine for you.  You're off Facebook so the ties that once bound you to your smartphone are loosening even more.  I love that I have no urge to check my dumb phone unless someone's actually calling me.

[Pointedstick]

Thanks, LW!

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how we got the power bill so low. It was never really very high to begin with. Let's see, we shut our computers off at night, turn off lights when we're not using them (they're nearly all CFLs too), and um, that's about it. We have a plasma TV that sucks hundreds of watts when it's on (?2 hours a day), an electric range that does the same but for thousands of watts, and two 3D printers hooked up to a (relatively) inefficient PC power supply that eats up a few hundred watts when they're on. Not really having hardly any heating or cooling bills helps a lot, I'd imagine, but we really haven't done much of anything at all to optimize our electric bill.

Cloth diapering has cut the cost to virtually nil now that we have the diapers, so right now the recurring costs are wipes and laundry. We don't buy clothes and toys because we've been absolutely showered with those things by friends and relatives! And we think most parents buy waaaaay more of those things than their kids can actually appreciate. Our son isn't old enough for solid(ish) food yet, but I imagine we'll just puree up some normal food in the blender. Prepackaged baby food is a gigantic rip-off, and from what I hear, there's often unhealthy garbage in there too. Might as well get him used to the taste of when he's going to be eating in solid form soon enough!

The plan my wife and I have settled on is canceling her AT&T contract, paying the early termination fee, selling the iPhone (anyone interested in a 16g black 4s?), and signing up for month-to-month pay-as-you-go-ish service through Ting with a refurbished LG Marquee Android phone and judicious use of Google Voice and maybe Kik. We estimate that the monthly bill should fall to between $10 and $15 a month, down from $59. For anyone contemplating this path, a hugely useful resource is http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/forum/sh ... voip-cell/

I'll reiterate now deprived we don't feel. It's amazing how much you can cut out and not see a lick of difference in your happiness level! You can do it, LW!

[MachineGhost]

Here's my motto:

More Shit == More Stress

[AgAuMoney]

The plan my wife and I have settled on is canceling her AT&T contract, paying the early termination fee, selling the iPhone (anyone interested in a 16g black 4s?),

STOP!

Before canceling your contract, call AT&T and have them unlock your phone!

Usually if you have established a good history and talk nice (maybe talk about how you would like to be able to use the phone while traveling in Europe) they will unlock for you.

An unlocked phone is worth more when you sell.  Or you could use it prepaid on tmobile or simpletalk if that works for for you.

[Pointedstick]

Thought I'd throw in an update since about a month has passed since the original post. Here's what our October looked like:

Rent: $1422
Food: $518 (Ouch)
Health insurance: $250
Shopping: $70 (PP book, micro SD card for new phone, contribution to a kickstarter project)
Car: $48 (Light driving)
Cell phone: $54 (Should be much lower soon after an iPhone on AT&T gets replaced with an Android phone with Ting at < $15/month)
Internet: $52
Electricity: $43
Laundry: $31 (Should be lower next month with the Wonder Wash)
Home supplies: $18 (Dishwasher detergent, tissues, cotton balls, strainer)
Renter's insurance: $17
Dog: $15 (Food; should be $0 next month since it lasts a while)
Netflix: $8

Total: $2,546


Observations this month:

* We came in under the 6-month average of $2,596, but only just barely due to the higher than average food costs.
* No baby expenses! 
* Light driving obliterates the gas costs. I only needed to fill up at all this month due to a weekend road trip.
* As usual, I struggle to figure out where the food money went. Of the $518 total, $473 went towards groceries! Just stuff from Costco and Safeway. I suspect part of it was that we bought a monster load just a few days ago that will last well into next month, I hope.

[swank]

Do you have any other utility bills? No gas, water, sewage, garbage? That rent is killing you, pard. I'd put a small trailer in a friend's backyard, pasture, etc, and pay $200 a month, most places in the US.  That's 15k a year that you could be putting into something that MAKES money. 

[Pointedstick]

Do you have any other utility bills? No gas, water, sewage, garbage? That rent is killing you, pard. I'd put a small trailer in a friend's backyard, pasture, etc, and pay $200 a month, most places in the US.  That's 15k a year that you could be putting into something that MAKES money. 

Don't I know it!  No gas, but the water, sewer, and trash costs are actually incorporated into the base rent, and together run about $60/month, but they're fixed, so I can't get 'em down at all.

The problem is in the SF bay area, nobody I know has a backyard, let alone a pasture. Also, I have a wife and son, so we need a bit more space. But yeah, if I was single and unattached, I'd totally buy little lot and put up a tiny house. Sadly, the lot itself would run close to $300,000 around here!

[Tortoise]

The problem is in the SF bay area, nobody I know has a backyard, let alone a pasture. Also, I have a wife and son, so we need a bit more space. But yeah, if I was single and unattached, I'd totally buy little lot and put up a tiny house. Sadly, the lot itself would run close to $300,000 around here!

When Henry David Thoreau build his tiny cabin at Walden Pond all those years ago, I don't think he had to buy the plot of land or pay any rent because it was far enough away from the city.

I suppose Walden was sort of an "ERE" experiment: When you cut your expenses to zero, you can retire in... zero years!

[swank]

so who says that you have to stay in SF, or even in CA, for that matter? Certainly, there's places to be had. Gypsies and carnies still raise families in small trailers. So you need 2 of them, or a larger one, so what? U needn't live like that forever. If you can amass 70k, you can RETIRE in a couple of years, actually, altho you might have to go live somewhere else during those  2 years.  the method is based upon buying a cheap old wood framed house, a big one, with about  15 big rooms, in an area with lots of homeless, for whom there are not nearly enough public shelters.

Divide the rooms in half, clean up a few rooms, put tenants into them, use their labor/rent to fix up the rest of the place.  50k to buy it,  20k (and your labor) to fix it up, and it will CLEAR you 40k a year if you live there and manage it,  30k if you don't. Run it for  2 years and it will pay for another such building. 60k a year, after tax, no SS cause you are a "corporation" and you can live anywhere you want, actually.  On 30k a year, you can live well in MOST other countries. Hire a management company to check on the place, and put a retired military couple into it to manage it. they get free rent and utilities, on 2 of the rooms, and 5-10k a year to do so. It's by far the highest return, SAFE investment you can have.  you do have to watch out for local tax and code changes, tho, and shifts in demography. Insurance vs fire, vandalism is a major expense, so is the utilities, but you can gross well over  100k a year with such a setup.

[Pointedstick]

That's a very clever idea, swank. Is that what you do? If so, I'd love to hear some more details about the challenges and rewards of such a setup.

A nomadic lifestyle in a trailer, van, or RV is something we considered, but ultimately, we decided that we would prefer a house--even a very modest one, and preferably one we can build ourselves.

In the end, about the lowest I think we can realistically get our costs is $1k/mo with a paid-off house, which still requires $400,000, or a non-investment income stream, or some combination of the two, more realistically. I recently lost the latter when I shut down my business, because there just weren't enough hours in the day for a 60+ hour/week full time job, a business, and a family. What's funny is that I actually made enough from the business on a monthly basis to cover our current expenses (let alone our anticipated lower future expenses in a cheaper area of the country), but the full-time job was simply a more efficient use of my time in that it produced much more money much faster. So I guess technically, I actually could have "retired" from my job three months ago and kept up with the business, but that seemed too risky since it would have meant living basically payment-to-payment.

[Pointedstick]

The problem is in the SF bay area, nobody I know has a backyard, let alone a pasture. Also, I have a wife and son, so we need a bit more space. But yeah, if I was single and unattached, I'd totally buy little lot and put up a tiny house. Sadly, the lot itself would run close to $300,000 around here!

When Henry David Thoreau build his tiny cabin at Walden Pond all those years ago, I don't think he had to buy the plot of land or pay any rent because it was far enough away from the city.

I suppose Walden was sort of an "ERE" experiment: When you cut your expenses to zero, you can retire in... zero years!

Wasn't Thoreau actually imprisoned for nonpayment of taxes? I'm not especially interested in losing my freedom, so I'll gladly pay the tax man his blood money instead, which of course requires some kind of regular way to acquire it. Also, I believe Emerson let him use the land for free and he had other people do his laundry. It was almost more like an experiment in tax protesting and extreme mooching than true ERE, which requires financial self-sufficiency.

Still, the lessons are important. Simplifying one's life brings so many rewards. This is about as simple and inexpensive as I can imagine, without becoming an outlaw:

Food: $100 (lentils, rice, eggs, and the contents of your garden)
Property taxes: $50 (extreme rural area)
Health insurance: $50 (healthy single young person, HDHP)
Rent/mortgage: $0 (mortgage-free, self-built house)
Utilities: $0 (solar/wind electric system, composting toilet, rainwater catchment & filtration system, graywater system)
Car: $0 (no car)
Shopping: $0 (rejection of materialism)
Communications: $0 (no cell phone or internet)
Laundry, home supplies: $0 (hand-wash everything with no fancy machines)
Homeowner's insurance: $0 (you built it, you can fix it)

Total: $200

For only a little more, you could have internet access, a free VOIP home phone or cheap prepaid cell phone, buy a few luxuries, set aside come money for home repairs, and still easily come in under $400/month. I believe doodle already does, actually. He's a true inspiration.

[swank]

yes, I have done it once, and am working on the other house now. :-) Once I have the second one going, my Filipina and I are going to bum around the US for a year or 2, in a small trailer and a van.  The big issues are insurance, against fire and vandalism, throwing out the offenders (whores, drunks, dopers, violent, non payers. Get a week's deposit up front, or you will regret it. Make them sign an agreement that they have to submit to a pee test, and breathalyzer, at your demand. If they violate the agreement, no return of deposit and immediate eviction, changing locks constantly. :-) Huge utility bills, but if you have 26 rooms for rent, it's a lot of money coming in, and if you've hired a hardcore old couple to run it, and have a decent management company to check on the managing couple (2x a week) to see that the place is being maintained, it's pretty much worry free, after the first year. You find some decent tenants, let them get by a little cheaper, if they tell you what is going on, etc.

[MachineGhost]

The problem is in the SF bay area, nobody I know has a backyard, let alone a pasture. Also, I have a wife and son, so we need a bit more space. But yeah, if I was single and unattached, I'd totally buy little lot and put up a tiny house. Sadly, the lot itself would run close to $300,000 around here!

If you perused the Salary-COLI rankings chart in the other thread, why would you want to continue living in SF?

[Pointedstick]

I don't live in SF (thank god). I live in the south bay, where things are saner, and I'm there because I want to live in close proximity to my job to minimize commuting time and expenses.

[Pointedstick]

November spending:

Rent: $1,535.50
Health insurance: $250
Food: $189 (Had family over and they bought a lot of the groceries)
Car: $161 (Yearly oil change, more gas than usual for the start of a road trip)
Laundry: $70 (Wonder Wash hasn't worked out, and more diapers than usual)
Entertainment: $63 (Netflix + took the whole family to see Skyfall at the theater, which is awesome and you should see it too)
Cell phone: $53 (Still on AT&T while we hash out the details of the new approach, since Ting didn't work out)
Internet: $52
Electricity: $52
Misc. medical stuff $20 (Yearly eye exam)
Renter's insurance: $17
Baby stuff: $15 (Disposable diapers for a road trip)
Dog: $14 (Food)
Home supplies: $11
Shopping: - $556.34 (Sold a computer, an expensive gift, and a book; didn't do any shopping)

Total: $1,946

Observations and lessons learned:
We tried an android smartphone with Ting,  but unfortunately didn't have a good experience. Even now, a month later, they still haven't been able to activate the new phone, so it's basically an Android-powered iPod Touch. We're going to keep the iPhone put put a prepaid sim in it, which should actually work out to be cheaper anyway, and is actually what MMM advocates.

We also tried a Wonder Wash, but it hasn't really worked out. Unless I simply haven't figured it out properly, it doesn't wash very well, and using it is very time-consuming. As a result, we're back to hitting the coin laundry machines. I may look into selling the Wonder Wash and getting one of those mini apartment-sized automatic washers.

Sold a Mac Mini for $400 that I purchased for $550. Over the two years I owned it, that means it has an amortized cost of $6.24/month. Selling expensive unused things is fun!

[Kriegsspiel]

We tried an android smartphone with Ting,  but unfortunately didn't have a good experience. Even now, a month later, they still haven't been able to activate the new phone, so it's basically an Android-powered iPod Touch. We're going to keep the iPhone put put a prepaid sim in it, which should actually work out to be cheaper anyway, and is actually what MMM advocates.

That's what I did too, well... going to do, since they're porting my number.  They were the only prepaid with service where I am

[DragonJoey3]

That's pretty fucking rad man, I didn't know I wasn't the only one trying for FI here!  What kind of cell phone service are you using?  I pay $45 for unlimited data/texts with 500 minutes.

Thanks! The cell phone is actually my wife's (work pays for mine), and she has the standard expensive AT&T plan. We're thinking of switching to Virgin Mobile as soon as the contract runs out. The extreme end of what we're thinking about is ditching the smartphone entirely and using a one-time-purchase GPS unit in the car, coupled with an iPod touch or something. That would be zero monthly payment, save for loading more minutes onto the phone a few times a year.

Random thought but you ever thought of having your wife learn to cut your hair? So far in my life, I've only ever gone to the haircutter once in my life hah.

She actually does, some of the time. I'm still a n00b at using the trimmer, so sometimes she does it.

I personally use straight talk wireless, great reception.  $45 a month.

[Kriegsspiel]

Yea Straight Talk is the one I switched from.  Bad customer service, and no reception where I am.  And it was $35 more per month.

[MachineGhost]

Car: $161 (Yearly oil change, more gas than usual for the start of a road trip)

New site to compare auto insurance quotes.  Originally, insurance companies shut the site down with cease and desist orders as they were scraping quotes from the company's websites directly.  Now on the relaunch, they scrape each state's insurance filing data and simulate the risk modeling for each insurance company.  Tough shit!

http://www.leaky.com/

[frugal]

PS,

- What is your aim of money to be possible to ER?

- How much % you save or what is your savings per month?

- After ERE, what should be divided all the investments of this person? 
Do you agree with Talmud?


With my very best regards.

[dualstow]

PS, did you end up selling that Wonder Wash?

[Pointedstick]

Yeah. And to answer frugal:

PS,

- What is your aim of money to be possible to ER?

$500,000 + a paid-off house.

- How much % you save or what is your savings per month?

About 60%.

- After ERE, what should be divided all the investments of this person? 
Do you agree with Talmud?

Permanent portfolio all the way. My faith in the PP has been strongly renewed ever since WiseOne compiled that spreadsheet modeling how the PP would fare withdrawing living expenses from cash and letting the rebalance bands take care of the rest. If I recall, it has in the past easily supported an insane 5% withdrawal rate.

[Bean]

- How much % you save or what is your savings per month?

About 60%.

That is impressive.  I aspire to get to 60-70%.  Right now I float around 40%, would be 50%, but I was young and dumb when I bought a condo that I still own.

Are you high income, extremely frugal, or a combination?  Also, 60% of a dual income household or just you and no second income?