Getting Started: Part 2 - Homeless in the USA
I'm sitting in my AirBnb, with 24 hours left until I'm gently removed by a nice family and forced to be homeless again. How did I get this way? See the first item in the series here.
I'm in St. Paul, more commonly referred to the twin cities. We've driven about 1800 miles from Meridian, Idaho, my former home, to St. Paul, Minnesota in 5 days. In that time I've been in several wonderful AirBnbs, some dorm like and some just friendly, sharing a room. Then there was one terrible AirBnb with more problems than I care to list. That was my previous stay, in South Dakota. The best part of that stay was we choose to leave and sleep in a rest area instead of staying. With 4 hours sleep in the car under our belts, we drove another 5 hours to get to this place. They were so generous, they let us in an hour early and we simply collapsed into bed.
I've just enjoyed 2 days of a wonderful stay and am about to move onto a less posh stay for single nights. In two more nights we go back to being completely homeless--without bed or plan. Yes, we plan on figuring out our stay for the next week tonight but is always a race between planning things-- your next meal, where is gas, where to sleep and the things you actually want to do. If we were completely free to do what we wanted, we'd probably move a lot more slowly, but we have a schedule to keep, to visit my Grandmother and then to go to Europe.
One big challenge of doing this style of travel is eating at affordable rates. It is easy to blow 30 dollars a day for two in meals. In one case we went to a fancy restaurant and spent 25 bucks. We walked into the restaurant thinking it would be nice, but not too expensive given it was in a small town, but it was really pricey. We could have walked out, but we were tired and thought what the heck. In this case the portions were really small, which left us hungry and frustrated. Now, that being said, our normal way of eating is making .5-4 dollar meals per person at home. When traveling, if you have access to a kitchen, that is valid, but often you don't. The best you can do is limit the nice meals to once a week or so. So with that fancy meal we spent a total of $11 (subway) + $25 (fancy Italian) + $4 (drinks) + $2 (a kitchen cooked meal) ~ $42. There may have been some car snacking in there too, but that is close enough. In a more normal day, it would be more like 20-30 dollars a day. This form of travel is expensive! You are much, much better off performing slower travel. We plan on moving towards slow travel towards the end of the trip, but this is still a useful illustration of the downside to moving fast.
Regarding stay at hotels, our direct cost in stay in AirBnb is an average of $66.27 per day. It varies between the upper $40s and the lower $70s, but we have stayed at more $60s+ places than $40s. This also excludes a stay we had where we ended up getting a refund and slept in a rest area (after leaving due to questionable cleaning and unprepared room; more on that in a future post). See, it's an adventure!
Added together, a 7 day travel costs about 800 dollars. Even with AirBnb, food optimizations (another future blog post!) I can only really claim $750 for a week of travel at this rate. Surely, I could with more practice push this down to maybe $600 a week, but not much cheaper. Even assuming the efficient rate, it would cost $2600 a month. That is $31k a year, too rich for my blood! The only way to lower these costs would be to reduce the driving (slow travel) or decrease the days in AirBnb/hotels (deep homelessness) and spend more time in rest stops. I think that is viable, you probably could cut your costs another 200 a week if you only stayed in AirBnb on odd days. That might get you down to $25k a year, a very sustainable amount for us. The only other option is would be to camp outside. I see nothing wrong with camping, but it's not something my SO would consider.
As for other fun, we've been watching an invest series in the evenings. It's rather good. We've also taken a number of walks and stopped at random places like Wall Drug and a place with a giant Green Giant.
Work is a complex subject. I'm going to touch the highlights and leave much of the details to other posts.
With freedom there is a lot of options one can take. In my first getting started post I talking about the basics of withdrawal rates, I need to get into some of the more specifics here. My plan is to limit my work to about $10k a year in income. Now it doesn't have to be exactly $10k and certainly this year is not a requirement. Also, this $10k may not come for years, but rather I may make $50k one year and not work for the other four. That does have some tax implications, but that is for another post.
As for how to make that money, I could for example, I could just start trying to find things to sell on Amazon, driving around the country, but that is not something I want to take up this year. I also might monetize this blog. I can write code, including taking up another job in QA. I have a QA book I wish to write and I have several games I want to write. I also have some financial analysis tools I might try and setup and see if the advertising justifies there existence. I have lots of ideas, but the most interesting thing about this speed zoo style run is that it does not give much time for work.
Even as it is, writing articles fast enough to keep up with the living is hard. Dear readers, I literally m writing at 10 pm on a hard chair, straining an already strained back from driving all day. Spending the hours on code is near impossible.
Furthermore, family also demands time. Allow me to quote from a message from my mother: "[My Grandmother] was not happy with me [my mom] because I forgot to tell her that I had not heard from you via phone and she said she had waited for me to call her till 1030". My grandmother goes to bed at 9pm and while I never said I'd call, it appears I was expected to. I also have a SO who wants my time... and I then have my money also squawking for time, to think about what sorts of investments I want to do. Even with more free time, up to 100% of ones time can be filled.
I have read others like the mad fientist note how difficult his transition if it wasn't for his projects. For me, this trip, this plan is consuming my time. However, as the first half draws to a close, I must say I have not thought about my previous work much. I received an emailed question about work and what I recalled about an issue, but that is about it. I didn't mind since I really was running a fair amount of the QA organization myself and I knew they'd suffer greatly with me having left.
Transitioning into my own work during my first 10 days of retirement, when I was still a homed person, was easy and natural. I wrote hundreds of lines of code and was getting good work done. Then the move became important during the last 3-4 days of homed living. Then this trip. 300 miles don't drive themselves. I've chosen to do studying over writing of either code or blog, but it is all about balance. Learning to live in balance is key. That leads to the last element I wish to discuss.
When taking on an extremely off script life style, balance is something you must develop for yourself. I have influences from Mr. Money Mustache to Jacob of ERE fame to Permaculture to RV culture to Ribbon Farm to age old philosophers to personal heroes like Heinlein and Feynman. Developing models that mesh all these together is complex. Some of this blog is meant to document that effort and some of it is meant to document the level I have already achieved. It also is meant to document some anti-patterns that are mistakes I have made.
In doing this speed zoo travel I think it was great to get a feel for regular travel, but also shows much of the down side. I hope to slow this travel down and document the good and bad of moving fast. I also hope that in capturing real data on this topic, those who want to replicate such a life can see the cost or value.
Last but not least, there is some amount of balance being generated here in that one point of this travel was to examine cities for their viability of moving to them. That allows travel to be part of a larger web of goals, which has been really good for our long term future and maybe that balances out the expense and frivolous expenses.
Experiencing Moving from Place to Place
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| Going on a grand tour. |
I've just enjoyed 2 days of a wonderful stay and am about to move onto a less posh stay for single nights. In two more nights we go back to being completely homeless--without bed or plan. Yes, we plan on figuring out our stay for the next week tonight but is always a race between planning things-- your next meal, where is gas, where to sleep and the things you actually want to do. If we were completely free to do what we wanted, we'd probably move a lot more slowly, but we have a schedule to keep, to visit my Grandmother and then to go to Europe.
Eating, Expenses and Play
Eating
A few personal notes are in order to discuss this. First of all, we're both vegetarian. Second of all, I'm extremely picky. While not exactly accurate, I don't have 5 food groups, I have 5 foods. I rather like pizza, salad, sandwiches, cereal, pancakes, sweets, potatoes and a hand full of other small items. This limited list makes it hard to find places to eat. Just finding any place that will feed us both is difficult. My favorite is Subway. It's the right combination of healthy, easy to find and cheap.One big challenge of doing this style of travel is eating at affordable rates. It is easy to blow 30 dollars a day for two in meals. In one case we went to a fancy restaurant and spent 25 bucks. We walked into the restaurant thinking it would be nice, but not too expensive given it was in a small town, but it was really pricey. We could have walked out, but we were tired and thought what the heck. In this case the portions were really small, which left us hungry and frustrated. Now, that being said, our normal way of eating is making .5-4 dollar meals per person at home. When traveling, if you have access to a kitchen, that is valid, but often you don't. The best you can do is limit the nice meals to once a week or so. So with that fancy meal we spent a total of $11 (subway) + $25 (fancy Italian) + $4 (drinks) + $2 (a kitchen cooked meal) ~ $42. There may have been some car snacking in there too, but that is close enough. In a more normal day, it would be more like 20-30 dollars a day. This form of travel is expensive! You are much, much better off performing slower travel. We plan on moving towards slow travel towards the end of the trip, but this is still a useful illustration of the downside to moving fast.
Travel Costs
Based upon some quick estimates, our gas and food was roughly 50 dollars a day total, with the food portion making up approximately $25 a day (some of the credit card charges are less than clear, but it was no more than $30 a day). Obviously there is the oil change costs of about $30 dollars after traveling ~3000 miles and some wear and tear on the car. At 15 years old, I'm going to say that cost is $20 since the car is worth so little.Regarding stay at hotels, our direct cost in stay in AirBnb is an average of $66.27 per day. It varies between the upper $40s and the lower $70s, but we have stayed at more $60s+ places than $40s. This also excludes a stay we had where we ended up getting a refund and slept in a rest area (after leaving due to questionable cleaning and unprepared room; more on that in a future post). See, it's an adventure!
Added together, a 7 day travel costs about 800 dollars. Even with AirBnb, food optimizations (another future blog post!) I can only really claim $750 for a week of travel at this rate. Surely, I could with more practice push this down to maybe $600 a week, but not much cheaper. Even assuming the efficient rate, it would cost $2600 a month. That is $31k a year, too rich for my blood! The only way to lower these costs would be to reduce the driving (slow travel) or decrease the days in AirBnb/hotels (deep homelessness) and spend more time in rest stops. I think that is viable, you probably could cut your costs another 200 a week if you only stayed in AirBnb on odd days. That might get you down to $25k a year, a very sustainable amount for us. The only other option is would be to camp outside. I see nothing wrong with camping, but it's not something my SO would consider.
Fun
We are not fancy people, therefore our play is not all that costly. Thus far we have enjoyed free views, free road stops, the Mall of America (10 dollars in arcade costs), a used video game store (free), an awesome flour mill (that blew up once and caught on fire more recently) that was the most expensive thing at 30 dollars for tickets and car parking.As for other fun, we've been watching an invest series in the evenings. It's rather good. We've also taken a number of walks and stopped at random places like Wall Drug and a place with a giant Green Giant.
Work
With freedom there is a lot of options one can take. In my first getting started post I talking about the basics of withdrawal rates, I need to get into some of the more specifics here. My plan is to limit my work to about $10k a year in income. Now it doesn't have to be exactly $10k and certainly this year is not a requirement. Also, this $10k may not come for years, but rather I may make $50k one year and not work for the other four. That does have some tax implications, but that is for another post.
As for how to make that money, I could for example, I could just start trying to find things to sell on Amazon, driving around the country, but that is not something I want to take up this year. I also might monetize this blog. I can write code, including taking up another job in QA. I have a QA book I wish to write and I have several games I want to write. I also have some financial analysis tools I might try and setup and see if the advertising justifies there existence. I have lots of ideas, but the most interesting thing about this speed zoo style run is that it does not give much time for work.
Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time -- and squawk for more! - Lazarus Long
Even as it is, writing articles fast enough to keep up with the living is hard. Dear readers, I literally m writing at 10 pm on a hard chair, straining an already strained back from driving all day. Spending the hours on code is near impossible.
Furthermore, family also demands time. Allow me to quote from a message from my mother: "[My Grandmother] was not happy with me [my mom] because I forgot to tell her that I had not heard from you via phone and she said she had waited for me to call her till 1030". My grandmother goes to bed at 9pm and while I never said I'd call, it appears I was expected to. I also have a SO who wants my time... and I then have my money also squawking for time, to think about what sorts of investments I want to do. Even with more free time, up to 100% of ones time can be filled.
I have read others like the mad fientist note how difficult his transition if it wasn't for his projects. For me, this trip, this plan is consuming my time. However, as the first half draws to a close, I must say I have not thought about my previous work much. I received an emailed question about work and what I recalled about an issue, but that is about it. I didn't mind since I really was running a fair amount of the QA organization myself and I knew they'd suffer greatly with me having left.
Transitioning into my own work during my first 10 days of retirement, when I was still a homed person, was easy and natural. I wrote hundreds of lines of code and was getting good work done. Then the move became important during the last 3-4 days of homed living. Then this trip. 300 miles don't drive themselves. I've chosen to do studying over writing of either code or blog, but it is all about balance. Learning to live in balance is key. That leads to the last element I wish to discuss.
Balance
 |
| Forging a life, one hammer blow at a time. |
In doing this speed zoo travel I think it was great to get a feel for regular travel, but also shows much of the down side. I hope to slow this travel down and document the good and bad of moving fast. I also hope that in capturing real data on this topic, those who want to replicate such a life can see the cost or value.
Last but not least, there is some amount of balance being generated here in that one point of this travel was to examine cities for their viability of moving to them. That allows travel to be part of a larger web of goals, which has been really good for our long term future and maybe that balances out the expense and frivolous expenses.
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