Wow. Been a while.

To give a brief update on my life in the last few months since my last post: Biggest change is I switched companies at work. My new company gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse, and well, in the name of FI, I had to take the money. I’m much busier now that I’m back to building things, on a job site around people again, and to be honest, I welcome the change. The job is only a 30-minute commute, much shorter than the proposed job I was supposed to be going to this summer with my previous company. But I have to say, getting out of the house each morning and “going to work”, has made my ability to enjoy my time off in the evening much more enjoyable. I can now switch off work at home. There’s a feeling of peace that comes with being at home now, one I didn’t have when I was hybrid working from home for the last year and a half.

I’m also at a more “corporate” company, and at the moment at least, I enjoy the structure and blind rules that a big public company offers. I like it when there are rules and norms that everyone must follow including a corporate type HR, rather than having a select golden few run wild like at my last company. The difference is much, I imagine, like living under the US government vs the government of Saudi Arabia. If you get into the circle at the top, life is good and you can do what you want.

I’ll do a write-up of how my workplace transition occurred in a future post. In detail, there was more than just the more money aspect. These days, and in this work market, companies can’t treat workers a certain way and expect complete loyalty and submission–especially ones like myself who have a mercenary mindset when it comes to being an employee.

Anyway, I’m much busier and much happier now. Even if it sadly leaves me with less time to blog. My pursuit of FIRE is stronger than ever. I have been writing fiction on the side, something I’ve promised myself to do more of this year. With these new changes and being a full-time dad, husband, and fixer of things around the house, the blog had been on the backburner, gently calling my name at night, but nothing more. I needed the break, even removing Twitter from my life has helped a bit (with their potential new owner I may or may not ever be back on that platform).

I recently took a “budget” vacation to Costa Rica, using credit card points to fully pay for the flight for the family. And using my points for hotel nights. We had an awesome time just lounging on the beach, doing some jungle activities, and dreaming of traveling full-time. So with my last few gleaming days off, I’ve decided to wade back into the blogosphere.

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As a super commuter, I’m accustomed to the ebb and flow of traffic on the clogged six-lane freeways of the Bay Area. At the beginning of my commuting career, I would look to try and beat the traffic. Outsmart it. If I saw cars moving faster in a lane beside me, I would instinctively change lanes and take advantage of going 6 mph instead of 5 mph. Then when that lane slowed I would change back into another lane. Constantly fighting and grinding my way home like a sailboat beating up wind.

With wisdom, I now know that there is no faster lane in commuter traffic (except the HOV lane or rare chase of an emergency vehicle). Changing lanes in gridlock to go faster is mostly futile and not worth the stress associated with fighting the conditions. Now I just pick a lane and stick with it.

Slow or fast, I don’t bother with looking for other avenues. I stay in my lane.

There’s some commuter knowledge I’ll use to change lanes strategically, like when the slow lane goes faster in certain stretches, or which lane to use in the Caldecott tunnel or through the Maze or toll plazas.

But for the most part, my commuting strategy is like cost averaging into an index fund. I cost average my time home by just keeping it simple in one lane, no stress or cares about the lanes around me or the cars that “appear” to be beating the overall traffic. Sometimes I get lucky and my lane goes extra fast, sometimes I don’t and I come to a halt while those beside me are going 30 mph.

I’ll watch other cars try to beat the commute and I can tell right away they’re either commuter rookies or made a horrible decision to travel on the freeway during the commute. They think they can fight it. I can visibly see the stress on their faces as they look in their mirrors trying to change lanes, or slam hard on their brakes to avoid a rear-end. Not only are they stressed, but they ruin everyone else’s slow crawl forward by daringly changing lanes in an unpredictable manner.

Still, with nearly 18 years of commuting, there’s one phenomenon I still find hard to accept. It’s when traffic grinds to a halt for no reason. No accident. No rubbernecking scene taking place. No rain. No lane bottlenecking or construction. Just plain old stopping for no reason.

Why the hell does that happen?

Variation is why.

Check this video out.

It’s chaos.

The slightest imperfection or “variation” sets off a compounding chain reaction that reverberates through the environment. No matter how small the variation is, it will inevitably compound. It disrupts the perceived order of how things should be. Hence my use of the average time it takes me to get home each day from work, though I know the distance I must drive and the speed limit of the road, I just never know how traffic will be.

But despite the frustration and suckiness that variation aka chaos creates in my life, I realize that it’s an inevitable part of living around other humans. I must deal with the decisions of others. So chaos and lack of control it is.

Chaos does create opportunity, to paraphrase Sun Tzu.

The stock market right now is commuter traffic that has come to a halt. As investors, we are all on a freeway heading in the same direction. Over the last few years, our commute to the promised lands has been easy peasy. The bull market was like having a car with a full tank and empty paved straight roads.

Who couldn’t get to where they were going in a hurry with those fair winds and calm seas?

Hell, the Happily Disengaged portfolio tripled in the last four years. Putting us well within the halfway point of our FI number range. Thank you bull market.

But then 2022 hit and the party ended.

2022

What happened to buying shares and then watching them go up week after week and feeling like a pro?

As of this post, I’m down about 18.56% year to date. Nearly all my gains from 2021 are gone. Am I worried? Nope. Not as long as I’m employed. Which is looking halfway certain for the next few years due to the project length of the job I’m on. Hopefully, this job can ride me through the market downturn and any recession that might be headed our way.

If this dream scenario of staying employed and investing through a bear market works out, then I should be able to benefit massively in the years to come by investing in this season of chaos.

Just look at the discount I’m buying VTSAX at this past week.

• 5/20/2022- VTSAX $95.07 a share.

• 1/3/2022- VTSAX $118.25 a share.

This is a huge discount. A 20% off deal.

Let’s go hypothetical with some simple arithmetic because this is what we do in a bear to make ourselves feel better.

Just say I’m buying $1,000 worth of VTSAX a week and have been doing this for a while. I can now get (10) shares versus the (8) I got for $1000 back in January. Two extra shares a week? That’s it? You may counter. That’s not worth the gut punch of watching my net worth lose a quarter of its value.

Doesn’t sound like too much benefit, but this will add up and compound.

If I average getting two extra shares a week for six months, that’s 52 extra shares.

Now when the market recovers, because there’s an astronomically high chance that the market will recover, we will have an extra 52 shares. This is on top of the (208) VTSAX shares that weekly $1000 purchases will have accumulated to in 26 weeks.

So yes, even though we are going through a bear and our net worth is down and it sucks; we will have more wealth than we did when the market returns to its January 3rd 2022 S&P high of 4796, not the same. Significantly more wealth, because we’ve regularly bought through the bear and now own more shares of VTSAX than we did on January 3rd, 2022. Cost Average investing–choosing a lane and sticking with it through the traffic jam. This is how we win. We don’t win by always buying at the top of the market because it’s on a raging bull full time, I mean yeah that feels good too, but those prices are always foamy and bubbly. Using a recovery as a slingshot is always the best way to make the most money in the market. And here’s our chance to get in like those lucky investor folks did in 2009.

Outstanding time to buy…NOT SELL. Let’s repeat that. Outstanding time to buy, not sell.

So yes. As an investor on the FI Freeway, we’ve all hit a little bit of traffic. It sucks. But does that change our need and want to get home at the end of the day? Nope. We must grind it out. Pick a lane and stick with it. Sooner or later this traffic will clear and we’ll make it home with even more wealth and faster growth because we took advantage of the bear market.

Has your investing strategy changed with the market conditions?