May 2021 Household Expenses

Posted On June 9, 2021

May felt much like a blur, as I’m at a loss right now for any notable events that occurred. I’ve started refinishing my kitchen cabinets. We bought our return tickets from Portugal and an Airbnb. I’m very much in my grind at work, if it can be called a grind. More like a routine. I love routines and habits, especially when they make you a better person, but I also believe that too much routine is what makes life speed by. The Navy taught me early on about the divine nature a routine and order can have on life. And since then, I’ve craved a routine in much the same manner I crave oxygen. But there’s another effect that a routine can have on you, it doesn’t allow you to pause, stop, and contemplate life (which is probably why the Navy likes routine).

Here’s a quote from my favorite author E. Hemingway from his book The Sun Also Rises. In my interpretation of the novel, this is the core theme of the book, and why it hooked me in my twenties and has doubled its grasp in my thirties.

[Cohn:] “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.”
[Jake:] “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.”

For me, this exchange begs the question: Where am I heading? And is it where I want to go? A routine can cover up this question very easily. I think it’s better to stop and ask this question once and a while, rather than ignoring it. Lest I wake up one day and have more life behind me than ahead, having never once stepped into the ring to take on my bull.

work

I’ve gotten over the initial trepidation I’d had in my new role of somehow screwing something up. Now that I have a few dozen construction schedules under my belt for projects of varying sizes, I can easily break down a job by its different phases and piece them together like a video game level I’ve played before. For those not in construction, I can equate the life of a construction project to the pieces and parts of a car. There’s the chassis and frame: the structure. The exterior envelope: the aluminum body. The interior rough-in: the engine, hoses, batteries, belts, and fans. And the finishes: the upholstery, lights, and paint. Then all the functional life safety testing that I guess would be the quality control process of the car: making sure it runs and the brakes work before it’s sold off.

They’re all the same, the only varying thing is the length. I’m actually finding that I like making construction schedules for retrofits better than new builds. They’re a bit more complex as you have to dismantle an existing structure, then safely put it back together. Once I figured out the typical durations based on linear or square footage, its become routine. If there’s one aspect to schedules I’m still fine tuning (and may never master), it’s finding a balance between how difficult and easy the P6 program is to use. Googling answers to my problems is insanely difficult given how popular the program is.

I can see how this stint in the main office has developed my professional skills, which is the purpose of it. It’s as if I’ve been able to shoot up to the proverbial 10,000 feet and look down at a construction project holistically. My head is out of the weeds and I can now see the forest. I’m ready to parachute back down to the forest floor when that opportunity arises. They’ve told me I can be making schedules till October or worst case March–and as routine and dull as this has become–I can see myself missing it once it’s gone. The time I’ve been able to spend with my daughters is priceless. Being able to pick up my daughter from school regularly is something I never thought possible as a working father. And here I am doing it. Spending the entire day with them. Laying in bed till the sun has risen up enough to light my house in its brisk summer beams. Drinking coffee each morning in my kitchen, instead of in my truck on 80. No arguing with grown men. No phone calls every ten minutes or emails piling up into the hundreds. Just my schedules and my family.

kitchen cabinets

A little lipstick is being applied to the ’90’s era orange oak cabinets in my kitchen. The cabinets work perfectly fine, so there’s no need to replace them. Last year I purchased some special paint to fill in the grain of the wood. So I’ve started sanding down and refinishing the cabinets white. Our bamboo floors are dark brown, so the white will hopefully complement the color. We’ve been waiting since 2017 to do this and now it’s finally getting done. And all for around $200.

The problem is just finding the time to do it. Our weekends are booked up with family events. During the weekdays I don’t work on it because the hassle to roll out protection throughout the kitchen for an hour of work in the evening while we’re trying to cook dinner is tough. It was the same with my hardwood floors. What should have been a 5 day project took three months because I work full time–actually, getting the floorboards down was fast, it was the baseboard that took forever…

portugal

Return tickets bought. I finally pulled the trigger. We also booked a flat in the Alfama district of Lisbon. The tough part about this trip is that currently, we’d need to get our two daughters covid tested within three days of return to the States. Entirely possible, just something we have to deal with. I look at it as part of the adventure of traveling. Errands can be quite fun in other countries, as they force you to do un-touristy things and go to un-touristy places, or so I romantically remember it that way from my backpacking days. Maybe the requirement will be dropped before we go this fall.

To pay for the tickets we decided to alleviate our taxable investment purchases for a few weeks rather than pull from our cash savings to pay for the tickets. Behind the scenes, June won’t be a 50% savings rate month. Our 401k’s and Roth IRA’s will stay fully funded, just the taxable accounts will be snipped. We will likely do the same when it comes time for our actual trip. A month or so ahead of time we will close the valve on our taxable accounts and divert it to a cash bucket for the vacation.

Vacations and travel are one thing we will always splurge on. If it adds another year to FIRE, so be it. The experiences are well worth it for us as a family and incomparable to an electronic number on a shiny screen.

May expenses

Higher than usual, but as expected. The biggest takeaway is the gas line item. I haven’t paid this much for gas, in a non road trip month, since I was a carpenter and paying my own gas for the work commute. That’s more than 6 years ago. This price hike sucks. I’m used to fairly expensive gas out here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it’s getting ridiculous. Luckily, the wife drives a honda civic that gets about 35 mpg on the freeway and my company pays for my gas to work. If I were paying my own gas this could easily be close to $1k.

Childcare is way down. I think we’re behind a payment! Anyway, it’s not as much as it used to be since I’m home so much. Typically this line item runs about $1,200 a month when I’m at work full time. And this is with family watching. My wife works out the deals with her mother, so I stay out of the money talks and payments in our fantastic arrangement. I realize I’m very lucky to have family that’s able to watch my kids. I have a post coming up about my childcare arrangement.

General merchandise is amazon. I bought a fly trap for the backyard, some more paintbrushes, tooth brushes, a new hair straightener for Mrs. Disengaged, and some expensive lotion for my daughter who’s been having some really dry skin lately.

Overall, if I take away the outlier airline tickets and airbnb, our base spending is about $5k. Working from home is saving us money, and more importantly time.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I, someone who worked over half my career as a carpenter and with no college degree, would be able to work from home from a computer. Life sure is full of surprises.

How was your May? Any summer plans? Any home projects taking place?