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Showing posts from February, 2025

Retire at 60

My goal is to retire at 60. This came about before I found the Choose FI podcast , and after listening to the podcast my goal didn't change, but my desire for this to happen has been strengthened. Why retire at 60? I have known several people who got diseases and died pretty soon after they retired, or while they were still working. - Rick Prouse , died at 60 of liver cancer, while still employed/ -Rob Robinson.  I can't find his obituary online, but I believe he was 62, while still employed, and died of a heart attack. - Jack Ballard , my amazing high school choir director, actually died at 81.  And he retired probably at 65.  The problem was that he suffered from Parkinsons and did not have a good quality of life for most of his retirement. -My father-in-law died at the age of 75, and I think he worked until he was 73.  But he didn't have a lot of outside interests, and working gave him a purpose and something to do every day, so I can't say this falls into the poi...

Is a house worth it?

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I have continued to claim at times around my family that owning our current house is actually a bad investment that prevents us from achieving financial independence.    They point out that it has been a good investment, since it will double in value at about the 12th year that we owned it.   So we received $200K equity. However, they don't take into account that due to having a larger house, we've had large expenses, and larger insurance costs, and heating and cooling costs.   So let's say that is about $200K more in expenses than a little house would have been, cancelling out the equity.    Meanwhile, little houses are doing amazing in the housing market, and are in high demand.  Our little house would have about $150K equity right now.  So the little house is actually a better investment.  It would be paid off for several years now and all of our income could be going to retirement or college savings, or whatever we need.  I...

Choose FI/Financial Independence

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  I found a podcast called Choose FI, and I have been listening to a lot of the old episodes.  It is made up people who want to build enough investments so that they could retire if they wanted to, and whatever age.  It is fascinating to listen to, and it has inspired me to set my pre-paycheck retirement savings to 15% of our income.   I have even looked into a Choose FI group in my area, and I plan to go to the meetings. However, there are a couple of weaknesses of this community.  And these are reasons that I also prefer the Dave Ramsey philosophy. 1. Lack of emphasis on giving.   I have been through over 60 episodes and have not once heard someone mention that they tithed to their church, or had a significant percentage of giving.  There were some interviewees who are doing service projects in their free time, which was nice.  But there is a lack of a giving mindset, which is something that is important to me.  I have realized wh...

Bad things about Trump administration

Trying to keep a running list of things I disapprove of in the Trump administration.  If anything is omitted, it's not necessarily because I agree.  It would probably be too long of a list to put on the blog. DOJ tells prosecutors to drop Eric Adams case, causing resignations of prosecutors.     Prosecutor quote:  Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations  Wild and vague accusations of fraud in various agencies.  I could be enthusiastic about cutting the Dept of Education and US AID, but it should be explained to Americans.  Some agencies that DOGE is investigating already has fraud detection programs like Medicare. It's pretentious to think in a matter of days they can find fraud better than these programs. At a high level, I agree with federal workforce cuts, because by definition ...

Good things about Trump administration

  Came in prepared and with a plan Banned biological men from women's sports Stopped production of the penny Making America Healthy Again  - "The order calls for a national focus on reducing chronic disease rates in the United States, pointing to rising rates of cancer, obesity, diabetes, asthma and autism spectrum disorder." (Aria Bendix, NBC News) Care about cutting costs...maybe?  Or is it all for show?  I wouldn't be surprised if costs balloon, for example, military costs, or costs of failed wall & deportations. Care about stopping illegal immigration...maybe?  Or is it all for show?  I see headlines that deportations have actually slowed down since the previous administration I am working on just writing and posting, rather than waiting until a post is perfect.  So I may update this as we go.

Walking DG

  I think my blog is due for a name change.   I think I was more into walking at the time when the blog was named.  Now I've mixed in working out in my basement and running.  I'm not sure what it should be called though...

Why I didn't vote from Trump Part 2

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I have not voted for Trump I think 5 times now.  Because of the 3 presidential elections and a caucus and the primary.  I think maybe they didn't have a caucus or primary for his first reelection campaign.  In 2020, I wrote a blog post about Why I'm Not Voting from Trump .   Some of my reasons for not voting for him in 2020 seem unimpressive now. They pale in comparison to things that happened after that, specifically the storming of the Capitol, and how Trump put pressure on Pence to not certify the election. 1. One of my reasons was that he commuted the sentence of Roger Stone.  If that was yuck, that pales in comparison to Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter. And it also pales in comparison to Trump pardoning the people convicted of invading the Capitol on Jan 6.  So the communication of sentence of Roger Stone sounds kind of innocuous now.  Things are getting worse, unfortunately. 2. One of my reasons for not voting for him was the national deb...

Church update

  When I posted back in June , I made a comment about people in my church that I feared would inadvertently offend some people.  So I wanted to clear things up. Probably the top thing that comes to mind is that it feels like a performance. We could psychoanalyze all of it, but that's not in the scope of this post. I do like talking to friends there with whom I have established a closer relationship. I just don't like the overly cheery surface-level interactions that happen when traversing the building. Reading that again, it's not very offensive.  But I just want to clarify, as a whole, people at my church are very generous, kind, and genuine people.  And it would be really tough to start going somewhere else, and building relationships all over again.  A lot of the issue is about me , but it's also about church culture in general. Part of it is just a general social anxiety that I have.  I can sing in front of people, without much of a problem.  In f...

Bad Instagram

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This is why I will stop using Instagram.  The feed is actually really good and I enjoy the content on there.  It shows me pages that I follow, and other similar content.   But the search area keeps showing me pictures of women.  I think it all started when I was looking for the personalities from my workout program, to follow celebrities essentially.   So then it showed me pictures of women working out, which morphed into just sexualized material.    I have tried to all the features I can find to block or say I’m not interested.  Such as searching for all other types of content or saying "Not interested in this content" and "This post makes me feel uncomfortable".  But these continue to show up on my search.   You can't really avoid the search area, because that is how you search for people or places you want to follow. I had a fear that I would want to search for something while around other people, and they'd see my Sear...

Bad Facebook

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  I just uninstalled the Facebook and Instagram apps from my phone.  And I will generally write a Facebook post every once in a while, and look at the first item item in the feed, but I won't scroll down.  I'll miss some updates from friends.  But I'm really just trying to keep my mind pure, and I don't know of a way to stop Facebook from showing me memes, many of them sexual in nature. This was the original that made me say "Enough is enough".  I reported this one, but Facebook has no place to report oversexualized inappropriate material.  So I reported as violence.  That was the best reason that I could find.   That image is actually a deranged caption for what is a cool story.  A mother-daughter team co-piloted a commercial flight. Yes, I may have puritan sensibilities.  Really all I ask is that I can go about my life, and follow my friends without my mind being introduced to deranged and immature sexual ideas.  Really, I do...

Remembering Jeanene

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  We became family friends with Skip and Jeanene when I was a teenager, and they have been a positive influence on my life.  As I went to the funeral for Jeanene today, I was thinking of several times when she stepped up for me, and later for me and my wife. Graduation party, 1999 The first is that when I found out I was intolerant to gluten in 2002, my mom alerted me to the fact that Jeanene was also gluten-free. So I met with Jeanene at her house, and she showed me how to read labels of food to look for hidden gluten (modified food starch).  In those days, the labels didn't say gluten-free, and it wasn't a cultural thing yet on restaurant menus or packaging. She also suggested bringing my own gluten-free pasta, and asking the restaurant to cook it.  I never took up her idea on that one!  Overall, this was a meaningful experience for me, since she was the only person I knew who was gluten-free, and she took the time to teach me how to take care of myself. Secon...