Gyroscopic Investing

Does anybody here subscribe to the Early Retirement Extreme philosophy? My wife and I have recently jumped on board and I'd be interested in hearing, if anyone else here does it too, what's worked and what's been hard.

For us, housing and food are the real killers. Housing I understand since we live in a very expensive area and haven't been very creative about getting the cost down, but I struggle to understand where our food bills come from. It's mostly groceries at this point, but somehow the the two of us plus one baby consume more than $600 a month. I have a co-worker who's also a new father and he pays less than half that. It boggles my mind! Has anyone here done anything really creative to lower their housing or food bills? Or heck, any monthly costs?

I wouldn't feel too bad.  The wife and I and 1 baby also spend around $600 a month on food.  Sure, you can cut that in half, but you're going to be eating stuff like Kraft Mac&Cheese and Ramen noodles.  We spend $125-150 a week on groceries but we eat mostly at Trader Joes and eat all Organic food.  I think you can spend less, but in the end you're short-changing your health if you do...

I guess I'd call myself an aspiring EREer. Or maybe more correctly, an early semi-retiring Mr Money Mustache type.

Take away the restaurants, and my wife and I spend about $300/month on food. We don't buy into organic marketing, we shop based on what's on sale, and we regularly visit farmers markets and ethnic stores where produce prices can be significantly less than big name grocery stores.

Pointedstick wrote: For us, housing and food are the real killers. Housing I understand since we live in a very expensive area and haven't been very creative about getting the cost down, but I struggle to understand where our food bills come from. It's mostly groceries at this point, but somehow the the two of us plus one baby consume more than $600 a month. I have a co-worker who's also a new father and he pays less than half that. It boggles my mind! Has anyone here done anything really creative to lower their housing or food bills? Or heck, any monthly costs?

That doesn't seem all that high for fresh meat and veggies; a rough rule of thumb is $50 per week per person.  Are you shopping at the warehouse clubs, Super Walmart, Trader Joe's, Sprouts or taking advantage of national grocery chain sales?  I mean, if you want to eat processed food and other cheap non-fresh foods, you can get the cost down dramatically to like $45 a week for 4-6 people, but its not a wise practice from a health standpoint: http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/40dollarmenu.htm

Housing costs is one of those things you've just gotta move somewhere to get lower, usually to a blue collar section of town.  I like to do a ranking of the cost of living vs housing costs every few years for the nation.  Last time, the winner was Oklahoma.  There are so many extenuating circumstances that drive up housing costs though, that you can't just go by price alone (i.e. Oklahoma is in Tornado Alley and is essentially a desert in the cheap areas).

I love reading a little ERE for inspiration but the "full monte" isn't quite right for us.  It's great material, though, and I hope you continue to share your experience with it!

Would you feel comfortable sharing any other aspects of your budget?  Any ideas on saving power/water, etc. that you have put into practice?

Pointedstick wrote: It's mostly groceries at this point, but somehow the the two of us plus one baby consume more than $600 a month. I have a co-worker who's also a new father and he pays less than half that. It boggles my mind! Has anyone here done anything really creative to lower their housing or food bills? Or heck, any monthly costs?

Food is just a tricky one!  That's an area where you don't really want to take a lot of chances IMO.  Going with a cheaper power company, cell phone plan, etc. just doesn't threaten the same kind of long-term consequences that a poor choice in food quality does.  Especially with a baby.  Good food tends to yield good peace of mind, at least for our clan.

One idea that we briefly pursued was making our own baby food.  The trouble is, with two working parents, this kind of thing just doesn't happen.  Free time and family time were just too valuable to "sell" in such an endeavor.  You may have more skill here, though.

As far as monthly costs, the big ones for us were taking a very cheap cell phone plan (no data plans, no smartphones) and getting rid of cable.  That's saved a nice chunk of change.

Pointedstick, I would have thought you would have mentioned healthcare / health insurance as one of the 'real killers' as well.  For anyone considering early retirement, healthcare costs area a major factor to consider.  I'm not sure what you consider to be "early" when it comes to retirement.

I was blessed in that I was able to retire from the Army in 2006 after 30 years of service.  I do have a very good Army retirement pension and have the ability to use military facilities such as the Exchange where I can purchase items without having to pay sales tax and of course, the commissary where grocery items are more moderate in cost.  Of course during that time, I had to go to war a couple of times and was injured jumping out of airplanes -- so while I have decent benefits, I was in some dangerous situations and spent a lot of time away from my family, both during training missions and real-world deployments.  However, I was 53 when I retired from the service six years ago and I'm sure that many would consider that an "early retirement." 

While I did not know about the PP back then, I did save and invest and we lived below our means. 

For what it is worth, in the mid-1960s when I was growing up, I remember that my mom budgeted $100 a month for groceries to feed the family.  And we ate well -- roasts, steaks, etc., as my mom was a great cook.  The other day we bought a few grocery items while at Wal Mart and they came to over $60.  Oh well....

Here are a few other threads on this topic:

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... ic.php?t=8

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... ic.php?t=7

One thing that really intrigues me about ERE is all the doors that it could open.  Right now I'm stuck in a monotonous loop, that doesn't really lead anywhere.  My psyche is definitely becoming tired of it.  It would be fun (and terrifying) to step into the unknown. 

I have no desire to "retire", but would love the opportunity to see where the new found freedom would lead me.

I subscribe to much of the ERE philosophy and participate in their forums with the same screen name. By default I approach personal finance matters in an ERE way. However my wife and I have made a conscious decision to upgrade some key areas above that level. The biggest one is housing, we've chosen to buy a smallish conventional townhouse in an expensive area. That decision alone puts us on an ER rather than ERE timeframe. We're OK with that. We've also chosen to keep pets and occasional restaurant trips.

Actually I do think food can be made significantly cheaper without sacrificing health. The two big changes are
1) cook everything from scratch, and
2) eat a majority plant-based diet.

Our approach is:
- Stock bulk staples: varieties of beans, rice, and flour bought in 25 lb sacks. Also bulk eggs, spices, olive oil, onions, canned tomatoes and sardines, and other basics.
- CSA subscription provides loads of fresh nutritive vegetables we feel compelled to use and not waste.
- Supplement with other groceries priced $1/lb or less, or on an exceptional loss-leader sale.
- Weekday breakfast is a hardboiled egg and yogurt or homemade bread toast.
- Weekday lunches are a big crockpot of a rice and beans dish. Many tasty Indian, Thai, Cajun, and Mediterranean recipes to choose from.
- Dinner is a main course using an on-sale protein source, with fresh vegetable and rice sides.

Once you get into the rhythm this takes very little effort to maintain. IMO it's worth investing in a crock pot, bread machine, pressure cooker, and decent chef's knife. Then the tools do most of the work. The bulk food stores, and knowledge of how to use them, double as disaster preparedness.

I like the ERE idea that you need much less than you think you do to be happy. 

I also like the idea that one can reject consumerism.  To what degree one chooses to do this may vary, but just realizing it's an option is very liberating.

A few quick thoughts on food bills and health insurance from someone who has struggled with bills and been dirt poor at times.

1. Stick to non-name brand groceries wherever possible.
2. Cut back on junk food. You grocery bill will shrink as well as your waistline.
3. Look for discount grocery stores. I cut my grocery bill by a third when I stopped hitting the big chain supermarkets.
4. Consider a High Deductible Health Plan. If you have a significant cash reserve and you don't have any serious medical issues you may find an HDHP a great way to reduce health insurance expenses. You will basically cover routine expenses on your own along with minor medical emergencies. But the insurance is there in case something really bad happens. Make sure you have no copay and no coinsurance once you meet your deductible though. Also a lot of HDHPs are linked with Health Savings Accounts which can be a huge boon for taxes.

Lots of great thoughts, everyone. I'd be happy to share our current progress.

Housing: $1422. Water/garbage/sewer included. This is the killer, and I'm not happy about it at all. It's a by-product of living in an expensive area for my nice job. I admit I haven't been very creative about cutting the cost, but there are precious few options unless I do as ERE Jacob did and live in an RV, which doesn't seem like the greatest idea while raising an infant.

Food: $600 average. The reason why this confuses me is because we don't eat out or buy junk food, soda, or alcohol, besides cheap cooking wine. In the hopes of cutting the costs, in the last month we've joined Costco and starting keeping a "price book" of how much things cost at the different nearly stores. For example, in our area it's most efficient it to buy the nice grass-fed meat at Whole Foods, the pasta at Safeway, and all the fruits and veggies at Costco. I'm really hoping we can at least get this down to $400 while still eating the high-quality stuff where it counts. If only our apartment got any southern sun exposure...

Health insurance/care: $250. This is a "fully-loaded" HMO plan for the whole family through my employer. As long as I have such a nice thing available, seems silly not to take advantage! The recent birth of our child cost us only $200, for example. This included an epidural and a three-day stay after the birth.

Transportation: $110 average. The car is paid off, we buy gas at Costco, drive like a granny, renegotiate car insurance frequently. Most of the monthly cost is insurance

Shopping: $92 average (last 6 mos). This used to be huge. Like, $400 a month huge. I just one day realized that I didn't know how to account for all the crap I'd been buying, mostly from Amazon. They make it so easy!

Phones: $60 average. I'm blessed with an employer who pays for my cell phone, but I made the mistake late last September of buying my wife an iPhone that she wasn't really that enthusiastic about. Does anyone have any ideas here? Is busting out of the contract early worth it? The only smartphone feature she really uses is the GPS. Anyone use one of those one-time-cost GPS modules that sticks to the car windshield instead of a smartphone app?

Internet: $52. Just found out I'm paying $7/month renting the modem. D'oh. Going down to $45/month isn't bad, but I plan to downgrade to a cheaper/slower service since I just checked my router's logs and we practically never take advantage of the 25/5 service we're paying for.

Home supplies & laundry: $51. This is going to fall since we just started line-drying our laundry.

Electricity: $40 average. I obsessively turn off lights, keep the TV off 90% of the time and use a Kill-A-Watt to monitor everything's energy usage.

Entertainment: $13 average. Mostly Netflix; no cable TV, no bars, no movie theaters, infrequent music purchases. Thankfully, this is pretty easy for us due to our temperaments.

Baby stuff: $114 average so far, but the median would be much lower. Last month we bought a lot of stuff that will last a while, like a changing table and a really nice hardwood glider. This month, we've spent $13 so far. You can save big bucks by breastfeeding, using cloth diapers and line-drying them (as well as the rest of your laundry, obviously), and buying your wipes in bulk from Costco. $20 for 900! So far the biggest expenditures have actually been on clothes for my wife as she expands and contracts in various places  :P




Ad Orientem and KevinW, it's great to hear your approaches for saving on food. One problem I think is that we don't use bulk beans. Sadly that's not really an option right now beany breastmilk upsets the baby's stomach. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've even ever seen bulk beans on sale, even at the Costco. Where do people buy them, and what kinds? We do at least have a crapton of rice and the Costco prices for bulk onions and garlic are really good. Well, better than the Safeway's at least.

You're doing pretty good, to be honest.  Living in an expensive city and only paying and $2500 a month is about twice as good as we are doing.  Our monthly expenses are around $5K, but we have a car payment, pay over $2000 for rent, and spend a lot of money on commuting costs like gas, train ticket, etc.

Even still, I calculated that by the time I am 48, which is 10 years from now, I should be able to retire.  This is mostly due to saving around 40% of my income and having my wife save around 40% of hers too.

We are not doing ERE, more like ER.  I still plan on having $60K annual cost of living expenses, adjusted for inflation, when I retire.  We do want to live comfortably and enjoy things like vacations once a year.

I do admire those that can do ERE.  If I wasn't accustomed to living in such luxury I could probably retire right now and move somewhere with a low cost of living.

Pointedstick wrote: Housing: $1422. Water/garbage/sewer included. This is the killer, and I'm not happy about it at all. It's a by-product of living in an expensive area for my nice job. I admit I haven't been very creative about cutting the cost, but there are precious few options unless I do as ERE Jacob did and live in an RV, which doesn't seem like the greatest idea while raising an infant.

That's not too bad for three people in an expensive area. Are there any compromises to be had? A low-rent apartment? Or relocate closer to work to reduce commuting costs?

Pointedstick wrote: The reason why this confuses me is because we don't eat out or buy junk food, soda, or alcohol, besides cheap cooking wine.

Are you cooking from scratch? Bulk ingredients are cheaper than prepared or processed food.

Pointedstick wrote: The only smartphone feature she really uses is the GPS. Anyone use one of those one-time-cost GPS modules that sticks to the car windshield instead of a smartphone app?

I just make do without GPS. I don't own, but have used, standalone GPS units and they seem like a good value. No ongoing costs.

Pointedstick wrote: Home supplies & laundry: $51. This is going to fall since we just started line-drying our laundry.

Not bad. You can drive that down by using DIY cleaning supplies from vinegar, baking soda, and similar.

Pointedstick wrote: Sadly that's not really an option right now beany breastmilk upsets the baby's stomach. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've even ever seen bulk beans on sale, even at the Costco. Where do people buy them, and what kinds?

Bulk beans tend to go on sale rarely because they are commodities and are constantly priced competitively. 10-25 lb bags are usually $.50-1.25/lb depending on variety, which is a fair price IMO. They are dried, and at least double when rehydrated, so are some of the cheapest food you can get on a per-pound basis. We use a lot of pinto beans, chickpeas, and green lentils, and smaller amounts of black beans, red lentils, and white beans. We usually buy them at Smart&Final which is a local Costco-like warehouse store with no membership fee. The local Persian and Mexican ethnic grocery stores are competitive on price and selection.

Pointedstick wrote: The only smartphone feature she really uses is the GPS. Anyone use one of those one-time-cost GPS modules that sticks to the car windshield instead of a smartphone app?

Yes.  We've been using the same Garmin nuvi since mid-2004.  It's a wonderful little unit with a cute little British accent and has served us very well this whole time.  I assume it's now completely ancient and obsolete so you'd want to look at the newer, better stuff.  As I'm sure you've discovered, a GPS makes driving a great deal more relaxing so buying a good unit should give you an easy transition away from the smartphone.  Buying the newest maps for these units is an extra charge but we've only very, very rarely bothered to do this.  (Between 0 and 1 times in 8 years -- can't recall which.)

Also, you mentioned that you live in "an expensive area".  If this expensive area is California, there are rules about where you're allowed to mount GPS units on your windshield.  When we lived in California we had a little beanbag that let it sit on the dashboard.

Storm wrote: Even still, I calculated that by the time I am 48, which is 10 years from now, I should be able to retire.  This is mostly due to saving around 40% of my income and having my wife save around 40% of hers too.

What formula are the ERE'ers and semi-ERE'ers here using?  Being able to live on a 3% drawdown?  Or some other standard?

Pointedstick, in another thread you mentioned college education expenses as something you do not directly save for.  Like you, I'm skeptical that tuition can continue to inflate at the current absurd rates forever.  At the same time, though, I can't mark this down as an expected $0 cost.  What are people using here for a "middle ground", if anything?  Or is it $0'd out?

Lone Wolf wrote: What formula are the ERE'ers and semi-ERE'ers here using?  Being able to live on a 3% drawdown?

Yes.

Lone Wolf wrote: What formula are the ERE'ers and semi-ERE'ers here using?  Being able to live on a 3% drawdown?

Well, tying this into PP, my goal is to be able to live on the expected PP return over inflation :-P

dragoncar wrote:

Lone Wolf wrote: What formula are the ERE'ers and semi-ERE'ers here using?  Being able to live on a 3% drawdown?

Well, tying this into PP, my goal is to be able to live on the expected PP return over inflation :-P

That's a good approach. If you can handle a little flexibility I would go with that plan. For those using a PP or similarly diversified portfolio and who are looking for a firm percentage number, I think 3% is probably safe. But I would be cautious about going over that. I am not comfortable with the 4% rule. And if you are doing ERE I would say that 3% is probably as high as I would be comfortable with.

But I admit that I'm pretty conservative.

Ad Orientem wrote: If you can handle a little flexibility I would go with that plan. ... And if you are doing ERE I would say that 3% is probably as high as I would be comfortable with.

Well to me a key ERE trait is flexibility.  Most ERErs seem to expect that their post-ERE pursuits will likely present an opportunity for at least some supplemental income.  If a 4% withdrawal rate means that I have to work one day a week... well that still sounds dandy.

dragoncar wrote:

Ad Orientem wrote: If you can handle a little flexibility I would go with that plan. ... And if you are doing ERE I would say that 3% is probably as high as I would be comfortable with.

Well to me a key ERE trait is flexibility.  Most ERErs seem to expect that their post-ERE pursuits will likely present an opportunity for at least some supplemental income.  If a 4% withdrawal rate means that I have to work one day a week... well that still sounds dandy.

That's kind of my thinking too. Right now I'm running a side business that produces an average income of 3k per month and I can pretty much dial up and down at will as time becomes more or less available (so far with a newborn, the most recent answer has been less ). I see myself supplementing with such a thing after I've ERE'd.

I'm living with my rents while commuting to work in another state to save on lower state and local taxes in PA versus MD. I pay rent to my parents by mowing the lawn weekly. Retiring at 35 here I come!