Saving Money

Been thinking why I’m always so broke 😳💵

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Been thinking why I’m always so broke 😳💵

I often have very little extra money in my bank account and I’m always looking for ways to trim expenses from my budget. I refuse to get home internet and do not do online shopping and only rarely do I drive my truck, preferring to take public transportation around town.

The thing is my checking account is not interest bearing so it makes little sense to keep money there except when absolutely necessary to pay the bills. Plus looking at an nearly empty account makes me watch my spending to avoid draining it too low.

Not having trash service makes me think carefully about everything I buy and how I’m going to get rid of it. Things that don’t burn, just accumulate until I take them to the transfer station for recycling or disposal. Having to think about how to get rid of things makes me want a lot less things.

And it just bothers me to see my hard earned money go up in smoke – literally when I burn packaging – but also more figuratively when I pay my electric and heating bill. I just hate being billed for things after the fact. I’d rather pay up front and use up what’s already mine. Maybe when I own a house I’d much rather have a coal or wood stove where I can at least see how my stockpile is being used up.

Plus I’m deeply committed to building a better future for myself so I don’t have to live in this run down apartment forever. I want to be able to own acreage where I shoot my guns, have fires and livestock and do my thing without neighbors right next door. Even better yet would be to off-grid, generate most of my electricity and heat on-site using food, then farming a lot of my own food.

I can only imagine how controversial a proposal to adopt a digital currency would be

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I can only imagine how controversial a proposal to adopt a digital currency would be. 💵

If the government has access to your digital currency, it could lead to all kinds of privacy violations and abuses.

At least with a credit card, your financial data is in the hands of a private business, so you have some certainty that the government will need to get a search warrant before rummaging through your list of purchases. While certainly some privacy safe guards can be set up with a digital currency, you got to think that there is still some greater protections by having your money in a private institution then in the hands of the government.

NPR

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The U.S. is debating whether to adopt a digital dollar : NPR

The U.S. is gingerly considering whether to adopt a digital version of its currency, one better suited for today's increasingly cashless world, ushering in what could be one of the dollar's most fundamental transformations.

In that scenario, the U.S. would not only mint the coins and print paper bills. It would also issue digital cash, or a central bank digital currency (CBDC), that would be stored in apps or "digital wallets" on our smartphones.

Gold Bugs

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I don’t really get the appeal of gold to gold bugs, people who obsess over gold and say it’s an essential commodity to have in one’s portfolio.🤑

Gold is shiny and popular for use by rich people for showy jewelry, 💎 it’s uses in the real economy are quite limited — it’s fantastic conductor and has some other uses in chemistry — but other then that is has no real value. Gold in certain electronics is an important use, but the gold typically used is only a few atoms thick and only a small portion of the gold mined and consumed every year. Gold might not be entirely without use, but most of it’s practical uses are in margin, a small part of production each year.📿

There is some value in investing in commodities or energy businesses as a hedge against inflation, especially energy-driven inflation like what we saw during the 1970s with the energy-crisis. That said, commodities are always risky, as you don’t know if products will be substituted for new products. Coal, for example, has seen a long decline in recent years as natural gas and renewable have replaced it as a cheaper source of energy.🛢 Energy companies, especially in broader form, are less risky then raw commodities, as they enjoy a larger degree of flexibility in the sources of energy they sell. Electricity companies will continue to have a dominate role no matter what their generation is fueled by, coal and oil companies have certain talents and land ownership that will make them leaders even if we move towards geothermal, wind and solar.

Most precious metals aren’t really the precious, even if they are rare.🐲 I am more interested in the real economy, something you can point to actual economic growth, rather then some dubious scam pushed by certain unscrupulous business people.

Gold Finch

Losing out on my pension and the value of time and money 💵

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Losing out on my pension and the value of time and money 💵

The other day I was reminded of the high cost to my pension of taking a year away from my state job to persue other non state work duties. That said, between my greater experiences and additional pay doing alternative activities it really came out to a wash after doing the math. It really wasn’t a year lost.

And I’m less concerned about my state pension than many other people. The 20 year mark and the jump from 1.6% to 2% per year of service is nice but it’s also kind of icing on the cake. I’ve been maxing out my Roth IRA and the 458 plan to the tune of around $25k for a few years now. I’ve also been aggressively investing and saving well over a thousand a month.

The truth is that I plan a fairly frugal semi retirement when those days come in around 15 years. I want to have my homestead, which I plan to pay for with cash in a low tax state and be able to avoid many of those costs of a typical suburbanite home owner. I want to live in a small, off grid cabin without a lot of furniture and appliances, produce a lot of my energy on site, raise and harvest a lot of my own food, heat with wood, shun expensive internet and television services, burn – compost – scrap my trash rather than paying for expensive landfill hauling and dumping services.

I don’t expect to be fully retired until 65 but I want to own land well before then – and will need a job with health insurance. But if I build up enough assets and trim my budget down enough, the actual income won’t be as big of a deal. Farm tractors, implements and land are expensive but the ordinary throw away suburbanite life is more expensive. Making a life at least partially off the land with livestock and a garden.

I was looking at money market accounts after reading this book promoting them.

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I was looking at money market accounts after reading this personal finance book I’m reading promoting them for short term savings. 🏦

With current low interest rates there really is no real difference – the FDIC insured online only savings account I have is 0.15% below that of most of the money market accounts out there and I’d have to deal with another bank. Online only savings accounts aren’t far behind money market accounts – it’s not like the 1970s. My grandmother thought money market accounts were the best thing back in the day, maybe they were compared to CDs at the her local bank.

That said, I do seriously need to think about buying more bonds as I’m getting older and with recent market growth too heavily in the stock market. I’ve been watching the stock side of things creep up disproportionately as stocks grow so much faster over the past few years compared to everything else – despite my efforts to try to keep things balanced. I have too much on both extremes and not nearly enough in the happy middle known as bonds.

With the market probably heading straight for the crapper, now isn’t probably the best time to buy bonds but I’m not planning to sell stocks but going forward I’m leaning towards getting more bond funds during routine buys and maybe moving some money out savings towards individual bonds. I can’t imagine that a CD or savings account with such low interest rates would out preform bonds over the medium term and I have in excess of what I need for a rainy day in savings.

Life was so much easier when I started out and interest rates were around 5%. But alas the fed is holding down rates to stimulate the economy.

At the end of the day I don’t think much about money, but I do think about the mud and manure of farm life, homesteading, having my own land, more guns and toys and the off grid property. I don’t want to have to work my job downtown and live in my crappy, rundown little apartment in the city forever.

How saving gets me high 💰

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How saving gets me high 💰

I do automatic savings every paycheck. Have done it for years – about half for retirement and half in more mid-term and short-term investments. I don’t really care money alone, for me it’s a means to that off-grid home and farm, my own land where I can have whatever guns I want and  burn barrels for trash and a wood stove. Produce my own electricity with solar. Compost and feed waste. Land that is my own, that I can manage for ecological diversity, hunting and trapping, livestock like pigs and goats for food. And that’s a vision that gets me high with a little dopamine hot every time I get that notice in the email.