Having Essentialism in physical form proved invaluable. I filled the margins with notes, worked through exercises alongside the text, and took the time to fully absorb the material as I progressed.
Essentialism is not a new concept, but the key takeaway is the author’s focus on truly internalizing the message. “Focus on things that matter, trim the excess” is a simple motto to remember, yet challenging to implement. Throughout my life, I’ve adopted many of essentialist practices in one form or another, from guarding my calendar to learning to say “no” to prioritizing essential projects. However, over time, clutter inevitably creeps in.
McKeown wisely focuses on routines that support the essentialist lifestyle, emphasizing the importance of dedicated time for reevaluation and recentering. He suggests establishing routines that prevent slipping into the frantic “onto the next thing” mentality so prevalent in the modern corporate world.
An analogy that particularly resonated with me is the closet metaphor. While you can declutter your closet once, it will eventually refill with clothes you don’t need. To keep your closet tidy, you need to have a regular time to reevauate your outfits, know where the nearest donation center is, how to get there, and what hours is it open. Similarly, McKeown provides methodologies to regularly reevaluate our priorities, supporting the rigorous process of regularly discarding the non-essential.
Essentialism extensively focuses on routines, practices, and exercises. The edition I read includes a “21-day Essentialism Challenge,” a helpful list of concrete activities corresponding to each chapter. While some prompts, like “take a nap” or “play with a child for 10 minutes” are a bit silly (where am I supposed to find a child on a Tuesday, Greg?), many steps effectively reinforce and integrate the material into your daily life, such as “design your ideal calendar,” “practice saying no gracefully,” or “schedule a personal offsite.”
The latter suggestion, scheduling a personal offsite, left a significant impression on me. It’s time dedicated to strategizing around your personal and professional goals. While I occasionally reflect on my career and life, McKeown elevates this practice into a ritual – a full day focused on self-reflection, planning, and deliberate action.
Essentialism is a helfpul book that prompts the reader to think about the routines one can put in place to change the way we approach life. It’s a reminder that less can indeed be more, and that by focusing on what truly matters, we can create a life of greater purpose, meaning, and fulfillment.
]]>If this is new to you - static website is just what it sounds like - static HTML and CSS files, sometimes with some light JavaScript sprinkled throughout. There’s no server side processing – the only bottlenecks are the host server speed, recipient’s connection speed, and the browser rendering speed. Page is stored as is, and is sent over as soon as it’s requested. This is how the Internet used to be in late 90s and early 2000s (with eclectic web design to boot, of course).
I think static websites are cool and aren’t used nearly enough, especially for websites that are, well, static. Think to the last website you’ve visited to read something - maybe a news site, or maybe a blog. Now did it take at least a couple of seconds for them to load? Likely. Did their server have to waste unnecessary cycles putting together a page for you? Most definitely. Now, contrast this with your experience with a static website like this one. Here’s the result from pagespeed.web.dev for this page:
Every render complete in under a second, and I didn’t have to put in any work into optimizing my website.
This site is built on a (now unsupported) Octopress, which is itself built on top of Jekyll. You write pages in Markdown, generate web pages using a pre-made template, and deploy the resulting pages to a hosting provider. In fact, GitHub Pages allow you to host your static website for free, and you can have a third party platform like Disqus provide comment support.
Static websites work great for portfolios, blogs, and websites that don’t rely on extensive common manipulation. They’re more secure (no backend to hack), simple to build and maintain, very fast even without optimization, and are natively SEO friendly (search engines are great at understanding static pages). Static websites are cheap to run - I only pay for a domain name for this site (under $20 a year).
If you have a blog or a portfolio and you’re using an overly complicated content management system to write - consider slimming down. Jekyll (or many of its alternatives) offers a number of pre-made off-ramps for major CMS users, is easy to set up, and is straightforward to work with. Can’t recommend enough - static websites rule!
]]>But one faucet of these games ties together the experience: combat. Tight, responsive, and unforgivingly difficult. And mainstream critical success of these games is what allows us to see publishers take more risks with difficult games.
And nothing makes this more apparent than a game stripped down to its core: Sifu. Okay, bear with me - Sifu has nothing to do with the Dark Souls franchise, and the small French Sloclap studio is as far away as you can get from the now behemoth of the industry From Software.
But Sifu is just that: a responsive, fluid, and unforgiving combat experience masquerading as a game. Sifu is a revenge story set in modern-day China, that sees you play through through five levels, each of which culminates with a boss fight.
There’s a twist: every time the character dies, they get older - increasing their damage and reducing their health. Once you go past 80 - it’s game over. This forces the player to master each level, as the player is incentivised to finish each level at the youngest possible age.
The game’s final boss - a man who killed the protagonists’ teacher is hands down one of the hardest boss fights I have experienced in the video games. He’s immune to every cheap trick you might have in your sleeve, attacks relentlessly, and leaves nearly no room for error.
And it’s this boss fight that really made me aware of the state of flow difficult combat forces the player into.
State of flow, or the feeling of “being in the zone” is a state of intense concentration, a perfect balance of difficulty and skill. State of flow is immensely satisfying, and time flies by in an instant while you’re in the zone. And difficult games force the player into the state of flow to progress.
State of flow has many benefits: increasing concentration, creativity, problem solving abilities, and even boosting self esteem. Among many benefits, state of flow helps to reduce stress and anxiety: it’s an inherently relaxing and enjoyable experience, and is one of the main reason I like playing difficult games, even if I’m exhausted after a long day. I can rely on an induced state of flow to help myself relax.
Back to Sifu’s final boss.
The only way I was able to defeat the final boss in Sifu is by sitting back, relaxing, and letting the built up muscle memory take over. It’s a beautiful experience akin to playing an instrument - something that requires the right amount of concentration: too much focus would make you get in your own way, too little would allow you to get distracted. It’s a state of flow, which I immensely enjoy, and which games like this help me enter.
But it isn’t until a second playthrough, which the game encourages you to take to experience the full story, that you’re able to appreciate all the progress you made, and reenter the state of flow for the duration of the full playthrough. Because you’ve already completed the game, there’s confidence in mastery of the game’s systems, but the difficulty and unforgiving nature of encounters still keep the game a challenge.
I think this applies to many games that are built with high difficulty - be it platformers like Celeste, or even tactics games like XCom. In fact, I’d be really curious to see how more cerebral video games get the player into the state of flow - I might dig into that someday.
]]>It’s short and simple, and only takes few minutes:
I’ve seen a common variation of the same acronym stand for Time, Energy, Attention - but I found that didn’t work well for me. Maybe that’s because I’m terrible at estimating or understanding time, or maybe that’s because the most important decisions sometimes end up not taking any time at all. Either way, I try not to concern myself with time. Hence: Thoughts, Energy, Attention.
You can read more about T.E.A. in this PDF from Google.
]]>I’ve used Vimwiki extensively for nearly 10 years now: it’s a fantastic way to organize my thoughts and everything I learn about the world, and it works with the tool I know and love - Vim. My Vimwiki followed me across machines, and I use Google Drive to keep it in sync regardless of the environment I use the Vimwiki in.
It took me way longer than I would like to admit to get Vimwiki working on my Chromebook: here lies the journey of getting the Vimwiki to work on a ChromeOS. There are three major hurdles I had to jump over:
Good news is that ChromeOS allows you to run a Linux environment. Bad news, is that things can’t get a tiny bit finnicky.
First, set up Linux to run on ChromeOS via “Settings > Advanced > Developers > Linux Development Environment > Turn on”. After a few prompts and a freshly brewed cup of coffee, you’ll have a Debian Linux environment running on your Chromebook.
Newly installed Linux is accessible from the terminal:
Pop open the terminal and update Vim and get the latest version of Python:
sudo apt install python3 vim
Download and install Vimwiki however you’d like: there are extensive instructions on GitHub. If you’re anything like me, you might have a self-installing vim-plug, and all you need is just plop your existing .vimrc into your Chromebook Linux instance.
Now, for getting Google Drive, Vim, and ChromeOS to play together. ChromeOS and Linux are integrated well enough, and you can access your home directory through ChromeOS native file manager:
To share files in another direction, there’s a handy “Share with Linux” option for files:
This option shares files with Linux via /mnt/chromeos
. In Google Drive, I have a vimwiki/
folder which contains wiki/
and wiki_html/
. I’m able to share that folder, and update Vimwiki configuration accordingly:
let g:vimwiki_list = [{
\ 'path': '/mnt/chromeos/GoogleDrive/MyDrive/vimwiki/wiki/',
\ 'template_path': '/mnt/chromeos/GoogleDrive/MyDrive/vimwiki/wiki/templates',
\ 'template_default': 'default',
\ 'template_ext': '.html'}]
Now there’s a corner case I ran into when I had Vimwiki set up on a different account than the one I use to log into the Chromebook. Only the primary account’s Google Drive shows up in ChromeOS file manager. To work around that, I had to share my vimwiki/
folder with the primary account, and then share that with Linux. The resulting directory was available through a /mnt/chormeos/GoogleDrive/ShortcutsSharedWithMe/...
:
At this point Vimwiki works just fine: working with the wiki and generating HTML is functional. All that’s left is getting the generated Vimwiki to show up in the web browser. Ever since Chrome disabled local file access, I (expectedly) haven’t been able to get :Vimwiki2HTMLBrowse
to function, since simple file:///
URLs aren’t accessible for security reasons.
That’s where Python comes in, with it’s native web server module. I made a small alias in my .bashrc
:
alias vimwiki="cd /mnt/chromeos/GoogleDrive/MyDrive/vimwiki/ && python3 -m http.server"
Next thing you know, I’m finally able to access the generated web version of my Vimwiki via localhost:8000/wiki_html
:
As someone who has a short attention span and easily gets overwhelmed, I find Eisenhower matrix to be an invaluable tool in allowing me to focus on what’s important, rather than what’s right in front of me.
Oh, I still struggle to make sure that things that are important to me are what matters to others, but that’s a whole different battle - at the very least I’m able to keep my own head straight, and that’s a win in my book.
Without any further ado, I present to you the decision making framework developed and popularized by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States (and clearly a notorious efficiency nut).
It’s pretty simple, really. Take everything from your long single-file To-Do list, and place it on the matrix based on its urgency and importance. Work through the matrix in the following order:
It’s easy to throw everything into the “urgent and important” pile. In reality, that’s not often the case. If you find yourself throwing everything in the first quadrant - I implore you to think of your tasks in relative terms. Out of everything on your mind, I’m sure some things are more important than others.
I find that over time most of my work shifts into a single quadrant (usually the “important, but not urgent”), and I find it helpful to redistribute those, or populate the matrix from scratch.
One of the goals of the Eisenhower Matrix is to increase visibility into how you spend your time. While it’s easy to spend most of the time in the “urgent and important” quadrant, the best work happens in the “important, but not urgent” section of the matrix. That’s where the best use of your time is, and that’s where most of the energy and attention should be spent.
Otherwise you’re just running around like a chicken with its head cut off, although I can sympathise with the difficulty of getting out of the urgency trap. It’s not trivial, and probably downright impossible in some cases.
This is where the biggest pitfall of the Eisenhower matrix lays in my experience. You want to maximize amount of time spent in the “schedule” quadrant, but you don’t want to end up with a massive list that becomes a yet another To Do list, because one dimensional To-Do lists suck.
Not everyone has someone to delegate work to. Or not everything can be delegated. In these cases, I treat the “delegate” bucket the same as “eliminate”. Hopefully that won’t come back to bite me in the future.
I really like following up on things, to a fault. I don’t like leaving loose ends, unanswered emails, or unspoken expectations. I find it helpful to schedule time to explicitly eliminate certain work, and communicate explicit expectations to everyone around me about that. Because of that, that’s where the most of my procrastination happens. Telling people “no” isn’t always easy, and I still don’t have the best process for combing through the “Eliminate” quadrant.
I know many people are a lot more comfortable letting unimportant things quietly fall through the cracks, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
]]>This is a checklist for high stakes emails, let’s dig in:
Let’s apply this to an example. Say, I’m writing a book, and the editor I’m working with hasn’t been responsive. I’ve tried talking to them about it, but they’re not responsive. I think it’s the time to escalate to their supervisor.
Here’s the quick, dirty, and impulsive draft I would write:
Hello X,
Y hasn’t been responsive when reviewing the chapters, and it’s really difficult to get back to chapters after a whole week passes by. By then I don’t even have the context! I’ve raised this multiple times and to no avail. Can you please get Y to be more responsive or find another editor for me to work with? I haven’t been able to make meaningful progress in a month!
Pretty brusque, isn’t it? I don’t normally dissect every email like this, but sometimes it helps to take a closer look and formalize the decision making behind each sentence. Thankfully, much of this becomes habitual over time.
First things first, I want the editor to be more responsive. Why? To have a shorter feedback loop when it comes to making changes. Why? To make it easier to write - it’s difficult to come back to the chapter after a long amount of time passed. Why? This pushes back timelines for each chapter.
I don’t really care about how to achieve this goal: the same person can be more responsive, or maybe I get a new point of contact to work with. Maybe there are other options I haven’t considered.
To summarize in a single sentence, the goal is to “reduce the feedback loop”.
The audience is the editor’s supervisor, or maybe someone else from the editorial team who’ll have the incentive to escalate.
I know that the timelines are very important to this publisher, which is something I can use. I can frame the concerns around impacts of the timeline - even if it’s not something I necessarily care about myself.
Since there are multiple ways to achieve my goal and I don’t particularly care about how, I can make the call for action open ended. I’m doing this because I’m comfortable with either outcomes - like the editor not being to improve response times, but the publisher providing more leniency around the schedule - which, while isn’t ideal, still helps.
As multiple people can help me accomplish a goal, and I might not be aware of all of relevant parties - email format works best.
Narrative structure here is simple - I have a problem (the beginning), here’s why it’s bad (the middle), let’s fix it (the end).
This email is short enough not to require a TL;DR.
As my concern is about a particular person, I have to talk about them. I don’t want to avoid candor, but I can approach the situation with empathy and assumption of best intentions something along the lines of: “I understand X has other commitments”. Focusing on facts and leading with empathy would help here.
Having an unresponsive editor is definitely frustrating, so it’s worth taking a step back, and maybe paying extra attention - there’s no use having frustration show through.
After running through the checklist, we end up with (what I hope is) a better, more actionable, and less icky email:
Hello X,
When working with Y, it takes up to a week for me to receive feedback on the chapters I wrote. I understand Y is working with multiple engagements, but I’m concerned about the timelines for the book. If we continue as is, it’s likely we’ll have to push publishing date by X months.
Could you help me find a resolution here?
It’s short, omits unnecessary details, and leaves the reader with a clear (but open ended) call for action. Now, all that’s left is to schedule send that email in a morning, and wait for a response!
]]>As a California resident, I decided to dedicate a long weekend to exercising my privacy rights. The long weekend turned into a week worth of back and forth with a dozen-or-so companies, and me having a much better idea of what information about me is out there.
Turned out many large websites provide privacy dashboards where you’re able to review and see information collected or inferred about you. But most of this data is hidden behind a formal request process which takes a few days to a week.
First, I decided to stroll through Google’s privacy settings. There are two ways forward: privacy dashboard, or full-on Google Takeout. Google Takeout allows you to download an archive of everything Google has on you, which took a few days to process, and is near impossible to go through while keeping your sanity. So I decided to play with the privacy dashboard instead.
Google Maps has location history of most places I’ve visited for the past ten or so years (creepy, but I found it useful on more than one occasion), and YouTube and Search history stores thousands of searches. I already had Assistant history disabled, since storing audio recordings is apparently where I draw the line when it comes to privacy. Targeted ad profile was an interesting thing to look at, accurately summing up my lifestyle in 50 words or less. I ended up disabling targeted ads from Google (and all other services as I went about on my privacy crusade).
Google had some of the finest privacy controls compared to other services, with actionable privacy-leaning suggestions. Google’s not known for its services playing well together, but privacy is where Google feels closer to Apple experience - everything is in a single place, surfaced in the same format, easy to control, and plays well together. Given the amount of transparency and fine grained control, I feel pretty good staying in the Google ecosystem.
Next I looked at LinkedIn. Outside of the expected things – emails, phone numbers, messages, invitations, and a history of just about everything I’ve ever clicked on, a file labeled “inferences” stood out. Whether LinkedIn thinks you’re open to job seeking opportunities, or what stage of career you are in, or if you travel for businesses, or if you’re a recruiter or maybe a senior leader in your company.
Since LinkedIn is a professional network, all information I share is well curated and is meant as public by default – and I found LinkedIn privacy settings in line with my expectations.
As an avid gamer, I went through Steam, Good Old Games, Ubisoft, Epic Games, and Origin privacy details. Unsurprisingly, the services tracked every time I launched every game, shopping preferences, and so on. Thankfully the data seemed confined to the world of gaming – which made this level of being creepy somewhat okay in my book.
I also looked at random websites I use somewhat frequently – Reddit, StackOverflow, PayPal, Venmo, AirBnB, and some others – not too many surprises there, although I did end up tightening privacy settings and opting out of personal data sharing and ad tracking for every service.
Last year I requested deletion of all my data on Mint, Personal Capital, and YNAB (You Need a Budget), and to be honest I’m a little relived that I didn’t have to look at the data these companies had on me.
Amazon data sharing turned out to be the scariest finding. Until now I didn’t really self-identify as a heavy Amazon user, but that turned out to be a lie: Prime shopping, Kindle, Audible, Prime Video.
The amount of data Amazon kept on me was overwhelming: Kindle and Audible track every time I read, play, or pause books, the Amazon website keeps full track of browsing habits, and Prime Video has detailed watch times and history. Most of this data ties back into real world – including nearly every address I ever lived at or phone numbers I had.
Even scarier, despite never using Alexa, I found numerous recordings of my voice from close to a decade ago – me checking status of the packages, but a few of me just breathing and walking around. I found no way of deleting these, as they didn’t show up in any privacy settings (including me installing an Alexa app just to get into privacy settings).
All of this gave me pause. It feels like the privacy controls are either lacking, hidden, or spread out thin across Amazon’s various apps. And I’ve only briefly scanned through the data Amazon had on me.
That’s where I had to take a break.
I have accounts with hundreds of services, and I have no idea how my personal data is used, and what it’s joined with. As I’m go on about my daily life, I’ll start tightening privacy controls, and maybe deleting services and their data where possible.
It’s just too creepy for my taste.
While you have control over the services you have accounts for, companies and ISPs collect a trove of private information on you even while you’re not logged in. For that, I strongly recommend using a VPN. I’ve been using PIA since 2019 and I’ve been very happy with it. Wholeheartedly recommend.
]]>I’ve talked to half a dozen financial planners over the past 5-or-so years. Some of those conversations have been very influential, and some have been more aggravating than anything else – but it was a net positive experience for me.
The aforementioned financial advisor I’ve had the pleasure to talk to was a colleague’s spouse. I’ve voiced my interest in early retirement, and we decided to sit down and run through a financial overview.
I’ve learned a lot from this meeting, and the advisor helped me frame my knowledge, and fill in the gaps for everything I’ve learned on the Internets. The biggest value came from leveraging tax-advantaged accounts and employment benefits: maximizing 401(k), IRA, and HSA contributions, leveraging IRA backdoor and 401(k) megabackdoor (I just talked about these in detail in “Accessing retirement funds early”). We discussed fund selections, risk profiles, and even touched on housing. It was great to have an opportunity to have someone who knows what they’re talking about answer all the questions that built up over the years.
The conversation had profound impact on my initial portfolio and investment strategy, and set pace for early retirement planning. With the confidence of having my plan and assumptions validated, I went on with my investments (employing the “slow, boring and steady” strategy, if you’re interested).
After some time said colleague and his spouse became our family friends: and I don’t much care for doing business with friends.
After that experience, I struggled to find the person I would work with for a prolonged amount of time.
At some point I thought I found “my guy”: a financial planner who was familiar with early retirement, and was eager to do additional research for just about any topic I could ask. Unfortunately for me it didn’t take long for “my guy” to soar through corporate ranks and get promoted past working with individual clients.
This is where the cracks started to show. For many financial planners, early retirement refers to age 55. And that makes sense – retirement in your 30s is such a niche topic! Most financial planning tools don’t account for this. Things like tapping into 401(k) or IRA balances before age 59 ½ is not something supported by the rigid financial projection tooling.
Your typical financial planner will not be intimately familiar with the intricacies of early retirement – or any other niche topics for that matter. And that’s okay. Because financial professionals still know their shit – and it’s much easier for them to make professional judgement about things your smart ass found online.
The best financial planners I talked to were willing to listen and put in work outside of our calls. Those folks would understand my concerns, supplement their answers with research, and come back with educated opinions.
A model that works for me is providing my questions and concerns in advance of the call, giving the advisor time to research niche and domain specific questions.
Financial planners worked for me especially well for two purposes:
This is where a financial planner pointed out that I misunderstood 401(k) contribution limits, or didn’t consider implications of varied cost of health insurance in retirement. This is the person I bombarded with an hour worth of questions about my auto insurance or the need for umbrella policy.
One time fee advisors worked best for me. I know some folks who moved assets under management for a certain percentage of those assets in fees, and are now trying to get out. This worked okay for them early on, but ended up not being what they want as they became more financially savvy. And it turned out to be oh-so-expensive in the long run.
And there are many things I had to watch out for along the road. Some advisors I’ve talked to seem to have no idea what they’re talking about, and just sound misguided. And it’s not solely my opinion - sometimes I would write down something a person would say, ask for independent opinion, and get back “What drugs are they on? I would like some of that!”
There’s also the question of their interest.
Some financial advisors might be inclined to sell things like lucrative whole term life insurance, and while in certain cases it’s appropriate, it might not always work for all individuals. But it sure as hell pays well for those advisors, so it’s hard to fault them for peddling the insurance.
The United States has a fiduciary system that’s supposedly requires a planner to work in your best interest (I personally learned about it from this Last Week Tonight show episode).
If you’ve done a lot of your own research (and especially if you haven’t) – it certainly wouldn’t hurt to talk to professional and review your decisions. Someone who has an idea of what they’re doing can go a long way in making sure you’re not heading down the wrong path – and if you are – you’re doing it with full awareness of the trade offs you’re making. Just be mindful of pitfalls when doing so.
]]>I wrote about my strained relationship with ToDo lists before: all the way back in 2014. Back then I focused on moving away from a monolithic ToDo list, and focusing on just a few major things I’d like to accomplish each day. I continued to do this, but with some changes to my philosophy.
I’m back to keeping a ToDo list, but it’s a bit more complex than a single list I used to keep. I split things I care about by days, weeks, and months, and I review these lists regularly.
Last year I learned about bullet journaling, often shortened to “BuJo”. Akin to artisan coffee and avocado toast, this hipster friendly and highly marketable approach has a solid foundation. At its core bullet journaling consists of two parts. First is a consistent and simple notation for tasks, notes, and events: some simple guidelines on how to document what happened, what will happen, and what you need to remember. Second part is a rule set on organizing these lists: daily and monthly notes, custom logs, and so on.
I rigorously keep daily notes about work, meeting annotations, records of important thoughts and ideas, and things I need to do (or have already done). This helps me leave work at work – or more precisely leave work in a journal. Once it’s closed - I’m done for the day. Everything I need to think about is written down, and there’s no need for my mind to wonder back.
Some weeks I omit note taking, and the contrast in my well-being is jarring. My mind wonders back to the events of the week, and I even have trouble sleeping some days. And no one wants to dream about work – I’m sure as hell not paid enough for that.
Another technique I picked up from the bullet journal keeps me from getting overwhelmed and keeping focus. BuJo advocates for regular migration of ToDo items – meaning that you should be crossing out and rewriting the same thing over and over again, day by day, week by week. At some point it becomes either to either do something about those ToDos, or choose not to do them altogether. Either way, it’s a huge weight off my shoulders.
And this is where the aforementioned snippets come in. At the end of the week, all I have to do is go through the weekly set of notes, and transcribe noteworthy bullet points. That’s the time I take to look back at my week, migrate tasks I choose to revisit at a later date, or cross off tasks I choose not to do.
]]>One of those things are snippets. Google (and from what I hear other Silicon Valley giants as well) utilizes a system of snippets: a transparent and widely accessible set of weekly notes. It’s not mandatory, and some groups use it more often then others. Sounds ordinary, but I think it’s a lot more interesting then that.
Communication and visibility is one of the major challenges in any paid creative work, but it’s especially important in software engineering. Engineers often settle on tasks they know nothing about: tasks are hard to measure and estimate. This makes it even harder to communicate progress broadly.
There are ways around this communication barrier – regular standups or periodic reviews come to mind. But there’s a better (although not necessarily exclusive), more asynchronous way to communicate and increase visibility. Enter snippets - a condensed list of what happened with you and your colleagues last week, delivered straight to your inbox.
Every Friday, an email notification reminds you to fill in weekly snippets. These snippets might look something like this:
On Monday, an email goes out compiling our team’s snippets in a single digest. Skimming through snippets covers any communication gaps from the past week, and raises visibility on what everyone is working on.
This system has many benefits:
This doesn’t have to be a particularly complex system. A running doc with notes could suffice, although email notifications remove a lot of the overhead needed. Even if the organization doesn’t follow the model, I find it worthwhile to keep snippets, and to share them with my manager and team.
]]>I put together this post to test my understanding of the subject, so please let me know if there’s something I misunderstand. I used the IRS and the United States Code websites as the sources of truth, and I link to each throughout this piece. The links are likely to get out of date within a few months to a year though, so don’t hold your breath for those.
This article is for retirement accounts in the United States only.
There are 5 tax-advantaged retirement vessels that I’m somewhat familiar with:
These are not the only tax-advantaged accounts out there for different employment situations, but I think these are fairly common. Here’s a quick reference for each with some stats as of June 2021:
401(k) | Roth 401(k) | IRA | Roth IRA | HSA | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Employer-sponsored? | Yes | Yes | No | No | Sometimes |
Allows for employer match? | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Tax-advantaged contrib. limit | $19,500 + match | $19,500 + match | $6,000 | $6,000 | $3,600 |
Total contrib. limit | $58,000 | $58,000 | $6,000 | $6,000 | $3,600 |
Contrib. increase at age 50+ | $6,500 | $6,500 | $1,000 | $1,000 | $1,000 (55+) |
Taxation | Deferred | Exempt | Deferred | Exempt | Exempt/free |
Withdrawal timeline | 59 ½ | 59 ½ | 59 ½ | 59 ½ or 5 years | Qualified/65 |
Mandatory withdrawal | 70 | 70 | 72 | N/A | N/A |
Early withdrawal penalty | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 20% |
I dig into each a little bit more below.
401(k) is an employer sponsored plan: it allows you to invest in a choice of funds selected by your employer. 401(k) often comes with an employer match, which allows the employer to contribute additional amount on top of the tax-advantaged contribution limit. At age 50, you can contribute additional amount in “catch-up contributions”.
There are two limits for 401(k) plans: the tax-advantaged contribution limit (at $19,500/year in 2021, not including employer match), and the total contribution limit (at $58,000) (IRS website). You don’t get any tax benefits from contributing to your total contribution limit, but it’s primarily used for “401(k) megabackdoor” - to funnel money into a tax-advantaged Roth IRA. The limits are shared across Traditional and Roth 401(k).
From what I understand, Roth 401(k) also requires the employer match to be contributed to a Traditional 401(k) account.
Traditional 401(k) is tax-deferred, meaning you don’t pay taxes on the amount contributed, but you pay taxes on withdrawal – this includes paying taxes on the principal (the investment income). In contrast, Roth 401(k) is tax-exempt. You pay your taxes in advance, and investment income or withdrawals are not taxed.
Early withdrawal penalty of 10% applies if you attempt the funds before age 59 ½, but keep on reading to learn how to get around that. You must begin withdrawing from your 401(k) by age 70.
IRA is an individual plan which allows for tax-advantaged investments. Direct contribution limit is at $6,000, however rollovers are not capped. Meaning the above mentioned 401 megabackdoor funds don’t follow the limit. At age 50, you can contribute additional $1,000 a year. The limits are shared across Traditional and Roth IRAs.
There’s technically an income limit on Roth IRA contributions (MAGI of $140,000 single or $208,000 married), but Traditional IRA contributions can be rolled over into Roth IRA (IRS.gov), effectively nullifying the limit. This is referred to as “IRA backdoor”.
Just like with 401(k), Traditional IRA is tax-deferred: you get a tax refund for contributing to it, but you’ll have to pay back those taxes on withdrawal. Roth IRA front loads the taxes, making earnings and withdrawals tax free.
Traditional IRA can be accessed at age 59 ½. Roth IRA can be accessed either immediately upon reaching age 59 ½, or after holding IRA account for 5 years. There’s a 10% withdrawal penalty otherwise, and you must begin withdrawing Traditional IRA contributions by age 72 (Roth IRA doesn’t have the mandatory withdrawal period).
Health Savings Account is another tax-advantaged investment, but it’s not tied to the employer (however employers might choose to offer an HSA plan). HSA contribution limit is at $3,600 for 2021, which includes employer match if employer offers any. This can be increased by $1,000 if you’re over the age of 55.
HSA is effectively tax-free, meaning that you don’t pay when you contribute, nor do you pay when you withdraw (but there are caveats). HSA can be withdrawn to pay for qualified medical expenses without a penalty. Reimbursing for expenses does not have an expiration date, as long as the expense was incurred after your HSA was established. You can also withdraw HSA without qualified reasons once you hit the age 65 (which is higher than 59 ½ used for 401(k) and IRA).
Now that the basics are out of the way, let’s discuss early withdrawals from each of these accounts.
Let’s look into IRAs first, since the most common way to access 401(k) funds early leverages IRA peculiarities.
I’ve also heard the 5-year rule referred to as a “Roth conversion ladder”.
The most obvious candidate for early access is Roth IRA. Roth IRA contributions (money you put in), can be accessed at any time without a penalty or paying additional taxes. Roth IRA distributions (aka the principle, or the money you’ve earned) can be accessed using what’s referred to as a “5-year rule”.
There are confusingly three 5-year rules when it comes to IRAs, and even more confusingly we care about two of them (the third rule deals with beneficiaries).
The first 5-year rule lets us access Roth IRA distributions within 5 years of owning the Roth IRA account. Simply enough, if you’ve had Roth IRA account for more than 5 years, you can access both the money you put in, and the money you’ve earned.
The second 5-year rule covers rollovers. Rollovers from Traditional IRA or Roth 401(k) need to marinate for 5 years (per transaction) before being accessible. So if you converted between your Traditional IRA and Roth IRA twice – in 2021 and 2022 – you’ll be able to access the money in 2026 and 2027 respectively.
This means that Roth IRA can be accessed if you hold the account for at least 5 years, and Traditional IRA can be converted to Roth IRA (a taxable event) and accessed penalty-free after 5 years.
For example, if you opened a Roth IRA account in 2015, and it’s now 2021 – you can access all the funds at any time without paying taxes.
In a more complex example, you’d convert the Traditional IRA to Roth IRA, and access the resulting money after 5 years:
This works out similarly for Roth 401(k) to Roth IRA conversion (but with less steps and without taxes):
72(t) SEPP (Substantially Equal Periodic Payments) can be used to sign up for a payment plan from your Traditional IRA (technically you’re able to use SEPP for your Roth IRA as well, but this will incur double taxes). This is quite a commitment, and you’ll be receiving periodic payments from your IRA until you hit the age 59 ½ (or for 5 years, whichever is longest).
For a Traditional IRA example, you can sign up for SEPP to receive $5,000 annually. This means that each year (until you turn 59 ½ or 5 years passes – whichever is longest) you will pay taxes on those $5,000, and withdraw the difference.
Additionally, IRA can be used to pay for large medical expenses (within the same year), high education expenses, home-related expenses ($10,000 lifetime limit), and a few more niche cases.
10% penalty sounds large, but it’s really not a terrible choice if the other options don’t work (although I don’t see why they wouldn’t). Given the tax-advantage growth that these assets have been enjoying, 10% penalty is not a steep price to pay. Although understandably loss aversion kicks in, and either a 5-year rule or the 72(t) SEPP sound preferable to paying the penalty.
In case with the Traditional IRA, the penalty would have to be paid in addition to paying taxes on withdrawn amount. Roth IRA only imposes a penalty if you didn’t wait for 5 years since the account creation or the rollover transaction.
401(k) can be accessed early (before the required 59 ½ age) in multiple ways. Both the 5-year rule (aka the Roth conversion ladder) and the 72(t) SEPP can be used to access 401(k) funds.
Roth conversion ladder leverages the ability to rollover Traditional 401(k) to Traditional IRA, and subsequently convert Traditional IRA to Roth IRA (a taxable event). Within the 5 years of that second conversion, you should be able to access the money.
For example, when getting ready for retirement, you may convert all your Traditional 401(k) balance to Traditional IRA. Then each year, you could do the following (this may look familiar from the above):
This works with Roth 401(k) to Roth IRA as well. It’s simpler too, as Roth 401(k) to Roth IRA conversion is non-taxable. Convert Roth 401(k) to Roth IRA, wait 5 years, and withdraw at your own leisure.
As you may have guessed, HSA balance can also be accessed before the age 65. But it does come with a caveat.
You see, HSA allows you to pay for qualified medical expenses tax-free. No taxes on withdrawal, tax-free growth, and no taxes when paying out. However, these qualified medical expenses don’t expire. As long as you had an HSA account at a time of medical expense occurring, you can get a refund on that medical payment.
This is something that we’re doing – banking medical receipts (which isn’t hard, given the overpriced American healthcare system) to cash in at a later date.
There’s a number of ways to access retirement accounts in the United States. Be it through Roth conversion ladder, 72(t) SEPP, or even by using old medical receipts. And now I have somewhere to look back to once I inevitably forget how any of this works.
]]>In contrast, I find it straightforward to write once I know what to write about. In part due to the volume of writing I have to do for work: as a technical lead at Google I routinely use extensive design documents to communicate my ideas. I also wrote a book once.
I found a set of techniques that work well for me. I don’t know if these techniques help me write higher quality material – you’ll be the judge of that. But these techniques help me express ideas from my head and onto paper. Hopefully in a digestible and entertaining format.
I never took journalism 101. Like with many things in live, I found my own way of doing things: why take an easy path, when a difficult one could work just as well?
I break down writing process into a set of distinct steps. I start with some preliminary research, write an outline, do my in-depth research, write a wine draft, turn that into a coffee draft, and finally proofread the result. I try to take breaks and get some distance from whatever I’m working on in between these steps.
This is a step zero, although it might not apply to everything I write about. This is a breadth-first, “open as many tabs as computer can handle” type of research. There’s no in-depth reading at this point, and only high level information is consumed.
I picked up this approach from my wife, who is an indisputable queen of online research. I find it tempting to dig into the first source I find. Stopping myself from digging too deep helps me understand the information landscape.
For instance, when writing about financial independence in Cote d’Ivoire (a topic I know nothing about) my preliminary research consisted of: a brief review of country’s history, a list of major geopolitical events, investment landscape, and identifying trustworthy sources which could tell me more about currency stability or tax situation.
I’ve also looked for existing sources on the subject, but there wasn’t any.
This post started with an outline. An outline is crucial to pacing and identifying areas of focus. Chapter summaries in a book, outlining headings in technical documents, or putting together a bulleted list for a blog post – you name it.
Outline only needs to make sense to you, and you don’t have to use complete sentences. I started with the following outline for this post:
An outline is not final, and it evolves as I write. For instance, by the time I wrote the bulk of this post, an outline evolved – something was removed, and a whole lot of things were added:
I like to keep an outline on the screen as I write, as it reminds me to write in context. I often jot down a brief outline when I have ideas about writing something: this way I don’t have to start from scratch when I sit down to write.
This is where I actually read through dozens of tabs I opened during the preliminary research. This is where I spend the most of my time for topics I don’t feel particularly comfortable with.
I make a point to time box research tasks. It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole when researching a topic, and there’s always more to learn the more you understand the subject. Putting a time limit on each research topic helps me stay on track.
Step 4 out of 6: this is when I start writing.
I found it near impossible to write without separating creative stream of conciousness from the editing process. The “wine draft” is the first attempt at filling in the blanks. The grammar can be all wrong, and the sentences don’t always have to make sense. It’s not necessary for the content to flow or read nicely.
This is where the outline really helps, because writing top to bottom is generally very difficult. Filling in the blanks under the outline however is much easier. I often find myself jumping between different headings and writing a little bit here and there under each heading.
Prioritizing cadence during this step helps, as a stable writing rhythm helps me enter the state of flow. To stay in the flow, I have a wine draft authoring rule: no sentence-level editing. Moving paragraphs or headings around is fine, but changing sentences is generally not.
That’s the goal - get as much content out as possible, no matter how much the language rules get abused. I find it easier to edit down a boatload of content, rather than struggle to come up with the missing pieces when editing.
This is the stage when I decide if the content is not worth publishing – many of my wine drafts never see the light of day.
I find accompanying wine mandatory, but whiskey or tea works in a pinch.
After the wine draft is complete, I take a break. Often couple of hours is enough to create a distance between me and the text. A coffee draft requires more focus and attention. This is when the messy draft takes shape and becomes (hopefully) readable. You tell me.
I make my way down, sentence by sentence, turning ramblings of a madman into a coherent narrative. I rearrange sentences, correct syntactic and grammatical errors, and liberally remove what doesn’t contribute to the narrative. If the wine draft is particularly incoherent, I simply rewrite each paragraph one by one.
This is when I add illustrations if need be. A coffee draft is nearly the final result, barring typos and minor mistakes.
Coffee helps here, but, unlike with a wine draft, is not required.
The final step involves good old proofreading (unless you have a proofreader: it was great having one when working with a publisher).
I try to proofread in a different software suite, or with different fonts and colors: it helps create further distance between the content and I. For instance, I write this post in Vim using Markdown, but I proofread by reading the final preview using my blog’s visual theme.
It often helps to read things out loud too: anything you can do to change up the way you perceive the text.
And finally it’s ready to be published: ta-da! This method hasn’t failed me yet, be it for writing Mastering Vim, technical design docs at Google, or blog posts like this one. Fingers crossed it’ll continue working well for me.
]]>Many games were heavily inspired by it - like Ancient Domains of Mystery and Nethack, or more recent Cataclysm: DDA and Caves of Qud. Modern games bring a lot of fantastic fusion into the genre too with like The Binding of Isaac or Hades. But I digress.
A few months ago I was struck by a bout of inspiration. I’ve tried countless times before, but never produced a complete video game – this was meant to be the time! I’ve significantly reduced the scope, came up with a plan of action, and started coding!
I codenamed the game “Hikaya”, which means “a fairy tale” in Tatar - my native language (although I think the word itself has been borrowed from Arabic). I planned to make a fairly straightforward roguelike, without too many bells and whistles.
I’ve found a wonderful tutorial on rogueliketutorials.com, which introduces libtcod
– a library to simplify the mundane: drawing on screen, handling input, field of view and lighting, pathfinding. I’ve struggled through all of the above before, and knew that getting deep into the mechanical details would slow me down.
Alas, I didn’t finish the game. I’ve gotten maybe half way there, before my focus slipped away from the project. But not before getting some screenshots and documenting some interesting ideas I had!
The only contains a dozen dungeon levels, with a short story being told through item descriptions. The player is an adventurer who’s sent by their village to a nearby cave to retrieve the last flame - a placeholder MacGuffin.
Every item and monster posses a fantasy-sounding name, contrasted with a short, but colorful description hinting at a science fiction nature of the objects. Think magic scrolls with touch screens, or injectable health potions.
Each monster type has a unique behavior - with goblins running away and regrouping, ogres snacking on goblins to restore health, and so on.
As the player descends down the dungeon, they encounter multiple bosses guarding the staircases. The bosses drop unique armor pieces, which tell a story of a group of adventurers descending into the dungeon, but succumbing to traps, greed, and treachery.
Finally, a dragon guards the last light on the final floor. The game ends with the player becoming a dragon, and a cycle becomes anew.
I know, I know: edgy, uninspired – but I enjoyed the premise.
The combat is focused on tactical movement and avoiding damage, and the player unlocks new moves – like kicks, jumps, or faints – as they progress through the dungeon.
I wanted to experiment with the health system. Inspired by FATE tabletop roleplaying system, I attempted to use health pools. The system was meant to keep combat dangerous and entertaining throughout the game by making even the goblins dangerous throughout the game.
My biggest experiment came from a health system. Inspired by FATE tabletop roleplaying ruleset, the health consists of multiple pools (as opposed to a single bar). The goal of the system is to make combat deadly, and create a sense of danger even for trivial encounters, while still leaving room for error.
Let me try to explain. For example, a player might have three health pools - for 1, 2, and 3 hit points each. Each time a player takes damage, the smallest pool is used to absorb that damage. For instance, a 2 damage hit voids the 2 hit point pool. A second 2 damage hit clears out the 3 hit point pool. A third 2 damage hit is fatal.
You can see the voided health pools marked as red on the screenshot below, and the full health pools in green:
To complicate thing further, I give players some leeway by slowly draining partially damaged pools over time. For instance, if the player uses their 5 hit point pool to absorb 2 points of damage, I’ll slowly drain that pool over the next three turns. This would let the player take another 2 damage hit (or a few 1 damage hits) “for free” immediately after being hit. You can see those hearts marked as yellow on the screenshot above.
Needless to say, the system turned out to be very convoluted to explain in game (and on paper too – I don’t think the above is clear enough). I still think it’s a great idea, but it desperately needs better user experience design to make it accessible. In fact, FATE itself got rid of confusing health pools in it’s latest “FATE Condensed” release, simplifying health down to binary hit markers.
Despite not finishing it, putting together Hikaya was a fun experience. I’ve had a great time working on the prototype: I’ve learned a lot, and maybe I’ll lead my next video game project to completion given everything I’ve learned!
]]>A lot of the advice I’m familiar with is US-centric (or covering Canada, Australia, EU countries, and so on). I couldn’t find adequate resources for pursuing financial independence in emergent economies. I tried to research this subject, and here’s what I came up with.
This one’s mostly for you, Myriam – as a follow-up to our conversation.
I refer to “developing” economies in this article. I’m using this term interchangeably with low and middle-income countries, countries with emerging markets, or pre-industrialized countries. None of those classifiers are strictly defined either. This can be a controversial term, but I hope the reader will bear with me and focus on the primary goal of this article - financial independence outside of countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, UK, and others.
Before I dig in, I want to shine light on my credentials for this article: I don’t have any. I immigrated to the US at age 18. Before that I lived in Russia (which is often considered a developing economy). However I’ve never gotten a chance to become financially savvy in the country. Never held a full-time job outside of the USA.
My wife an I diversify into developing markets (and it’s less than 20% of our portfolio). We don’t have any inherent knowledge or in-depth understanding of emerging markets.
And I sure as hell don’t know what it’s like to live in a pre-industrialized country.
I’m bringing a perspective of a person who’s familiar with financial independence and early retirement in the United States (and vaguely Canada). This piece is a compilation of about 10 hours of research (give or take), with my own context applied to it.
This is not a professional financial advice, and I’ll be making culturally or economically ignorant statements about many countries. Read while having a tub filled with salt nearby.
There’s a strong reason why the United States is a birthplace of FIRE movement as a media phenomenon. Limited worker protections, no government mandated vacation days or holidays, no maternity leave, low social security pension – you name it.
In fact, according to 2018 ITUC worker rights index, the United States is placed in “Systematic violations of rights” category. But this is where the first caveat comes in. A major chunk of emerging economies hold a “No guarantee of rights” or a “No guarantee of rights due to breakdown of the law” rating. Make of that what you will.
There’s the cultural aspect to an overwhelming desire to escape workforce: it’s common to live for the weekend in the States. Culturally life is often put on pause Monday through Friday. Enjoying life two days out of seven can be draining.
In the EU, one might take two months off (okay, not quite: 28 legally mandated days off + 7 weekends in between = 42 days). In the States (Canada, Australia, etc) you work to death, and getting out of the rat race is a priority.
This is where I need another disclaimer: I quite like living in the United States. I just think it’s worker protections are shit and should be improved.
Of course the United States and the likes don’t have a patent on working long hours or having workers protection. But there’s a reason why FIRE is prevalent in the industrialized world (in contrast to developing nations). One word: “stability”.
Despite the popularity of FIRE in the United States, similar formula applies for achieving financial independence in the rest of the industrialized nations. And there’s a constant across those countries: stability.
It’s as simple as that. To ensure your financial future you need to plot and plan ahead. You can’t plan effectively in an unstable landscape. Currency hyperinflation or hyperdeflation, risk of regime and major law changes, corruption and nepotism.
When considering financial independence within developing nations, it’s important to acknowledge and asses the stability of the economy, currency, and political regime. These constants are treated as somewhat of a given in many FIRE conversations, but most recommendations and arguments quickly fall apart when faced with a lack of stability.
There’s no recipe for dealing with a lack of stability, but hedging against it would likely have to be a key part of one’s financial independence strategy. I found a few things that are worth considering – and I’m sure there are many more aspects that escaped my surface-level investigation.
In it’s core FIRE comes down to three principles: increase income, decrease expenses, and invest the difference.
Decreasing expenses is simple, but not easy. Increasing income is hard work that pays off if successful: drastic income increase helps speed FIRE along. Investing the difference carries significant risks due to aforementioned lack of stability.
I’m going to dive into all three principles, but regardless of plans for retirement, building up an emergency fund is always the first priority in nearly every financial conversation. Let’s talk about that first.
The first question you might get asked when talking about FIRE is “do you have an emergency fund?”. There’s always a straightforward recommendation of having N months worth of living expenses in a savings account. Of course this blanket advice breaks down the moment we discuss developing economies.
Lack of faith in the currency or the government puts savings accounts under question. Granted, banks in the developing nations are quick to offer high interest accounts. You might get a 20% return on investment, only to realize that the currency lost 25% of its value in a year.
If the country allows for holding foreign currency, foreign currency could be used to hedge against that. The United States dollar is the most widely held reserve currency. Euro is pegged by 19 countries, making it a relatively stable bet as well. Japanese Yen (JPY) is the third most commonly used reserve currency.
I titled this section “Parking cash” and not “Emergency fund” because I wanted to mention an alternative to savings accounts often used in developing economies. Real estate.
While not a place for storing emergency funds, longer term reserves are often held in what’s perceived as the most stable asset – real estate. Due to a significantly lower cost of labor it’s common (and is often sensible) to purchase land, and then build on that land.
Although lower risk than other asset classes, it’s worth examining potential for asset seizure. 1980’s land redistribution in Zimbabwe is the prime example of this. Less stable political systems are at a higher risk for similar events.
Non-primary residence (that is: a house you don’t live in) can be used as an investment – either through having tenants, or through an act of reselling. Investment through real estate is work, and it’s the type of work I don’t think I would enjoy. I haven’t researched anything on the subject and will zoom past real estate and onto another topic.
Increased income is an important pillar of reaching financial independence. This is where you say:
I work in a highly specialized (and therefore well paid) field. I can talk all I want about saving and investment, but without the high earner salary, stock grants, and financial benefits my job provides - it would take me decades to get where it takes me years.
It’s possible to ensure your financial future with a lower income. It’s much, much harder.
There’s a significant luck element involved, and I’m not interested in peddling the “work hard and you’ll be rich” narrative. Load of bullshit if you ask me. There are however concrete steps one can take. These steps could open up the right opportunities.
Increasing earning potential is a massive boon in the FIRE world. Directing energy towards this goal might be a higher priority step compared to everything else I wrote about.
The most straightforward way to increase earning potential is through education (either formal or informal). College, university, books, online courses. If formal education is problematic, some industries (e.g. software engineering) are more open to self-taught professionals than others. Yours truly is a good example of that.
Networking is another avenue to pursue. It might be more difficult in certain nations due to inherent nepotism and lack of opportunities.
In fact, many developing countries make vertical mobility problematic due to corruption. In an increasingly connected world, earning internationally could be a feasible way forward to increasing income. That is if you have skills that are worth paying for.
Another “duh” topic, reducing your spending in proportion to income is crucial in achieving any type of financial freedom.
Expense reduction is very much a country-specific topic. In fact, it’s highly specific to individuals. Analyzing expenses and putting together a budget is a strong first step. Thankfully, reducing expenses is something commonly covered in media, with plenty of literature available around the globe. That, and this is something financial professionals frequently focus on.
A blanket advice I heard for expatriates living in another country is to avoid expat-friendly stores. Those often come with a premium, and shopping locally might reduce expenses significantly. That’s an extent of my knowledge on the subject.
“Earn more, spend less, invest the difference”. Generally “invest the difference” portion of the advice implies investing in mutual funds – a mix of stocks and bonds for a set of companies. But as you’ve come to expect in this piece, this advice comes with caveats when living in a developing nation.
General advice for investment into mutual funds is holding a 60/40 split of US/international assets. This represents the weight of the US-based stock and bond market in respect to the rest of the world.
But some countries might not allow for international investments. Some countries might introduce additional taxes on foreign investments. Or investments into certain markets could be made difficult due to local regulations. US in particular makes it more difficult for non-Americans to invest, introducing a number of hoops to jump through for identity verification.
To dig deeper, let’s investigate Cote d’Ivoire as an example - a country Myriam is living in.
Quick history recap of Cote d’Ivoire, a former French colony in West Africa. After gaining independence in 1960, the country enjoyed relative stability until 1999. A military coup led to an economic downturn, and two civil wars followed in 2002 and 2011. 2020 presidential election has resulted in unrest.
From those dates alone, political stability in the region at the moment seems problematic.
On the flip side of the coin, Cote d’Ivoire has the benefit of being a member of ECOWAS: Economic Community of West African States. This increases economic stability of the country, by pegging it’s economy (and currency) against it’s neighbors.
This is a nice bonus to economical stability of the region.
We’ve established that blanket investment advice might not exactly work with developing economies. A few questions come to mind:
Let’s dig into each one.
For financial independence, we’ll want to reduce risks where possible. This means hedging against a single country’s economy.Supporting local economy by investing in a regional stock market is responsible (please do!), but diversification is the name of the game. For a complete portfolio you’ll likely want to hold international stocks and bonds.
Certain countries either might not allow, or make it extremely difficult to hold foreign investments.
In Cote d’Ivoire, there doesn’t seem to be any restrictions on holding foreign assets. That’s a plus. Quick online search didn’t bring up a history of restrictions on ownership of foreign assets either.
Finding a broker that operates in the country of choice (or allows for investment from said country) would be a next step here.
Cote d’Ivoire uses West African CFA franc – a French treasury backed currency with a fixed CFA/Euro exchange rate. Political controversy aside, Euro pegged currency offers stability that many developing countries might lack.
To look at currency stability, we can look at an inflation rate or an exchange rate against other currencies. For instance here’s how many CFA a single USD would buy (from 2003 to 2021):
In contrast to that, some quick research surfaces official discussions for introducing “Eco” – a non-French backed currency for the West African region. While this could result in higher economical growth potential for the region, it comes with more risk.
Tax laws change how you invest. Our FIRE strategy is carefully crafted to leverage every tax-advantaged account possible: a good third of our assets is held in tax-advantaged accounts. And of course tax laws vary by country.
This is definitely the place where you want to bring in a professional. A quick search (and that’s the keyword: “quick”) indicates that Cote d’Ivoire has 1.5% salary tax, and 1.5% - 10% “national contribution”. Cote d’Ivoire taxes capital gains, dividends and securities. There’s pension both your employer and you pay into, which is nice.
There are likely country-specific tax law peculiarities one can take advantage of to optimize asset growth. This would require much more in-depth research.
Financial independence becomes a completely different beast in developing nations. Whatever little financial knowledge I have is challenged if not outright rendered useless when applied to emerging markets.
Yet there are a lot of directions for future research, and this piece only presents a view through a very much United-States-tinted lens. It could be that FIRE in developing countries might leverage creating a business and using more active forms of income generation.
Many of my findings are superficial, and I touched on a lot of different topics without going in-depth into any one of them. I can dedicate more time to this topic if there’s interest - let me know in the comments.
]]>I know that doesn’t sound exciting, but for someone who loves putting together spreadsheets this is a treasure trove of information! Well, maybe not a trove, but a sizable chunk of data. I only have two numbers for each month – income and expenses. But that’s just enough to calculate my savings rate!
(income - expenses) / income = savings rate
With this number I can trace a broad outline through the past 8 years of my financial life! I present my savings rate charted over the past 8 years:
It’s smoothed out using a 6 period rolling window, as it’s near impossible to see trends when plotting raw numbers.
This chart tells a life story: starting with a near 0% savings rate in early 2014, a dip in 2017, and a steady 75% from 2018 onward. Let’s trace my major life events!
By the end of 2013 I lived in downtown Philly and was working as a freelance software developer. Per-project pay was decent, but the gaps between contracts reduced the overall income. That, and being a sole breadwinner for a family of two – the funds were running dry and we were living paycheck-to-paycheck.
My then-SO and I had different financial upbringing. My ex-wife and I were both young when we got married, and we’ve never sat down and talked about finance – so I could only guess as to what her relationship with money was. I came from a household of a frugal single mother – we were never short on cash, but the expenses were low. In a rural community food was grown in a large garden, milk bartered from a neighbor, sweaters knitted.
I distinctly remember my partner not having more than a couple of hundred dollars in a bank account when we moved in together. On the other hand, by the time we got married I amassed a nest egg - nearly $20,000. Granted, it’s small in the grand scheme of things – but these were the savings I put together from working low wage jobs – before I learned software development.
You can see us deplete that fund by the end of 2013 and into early 2014. And paycheck-to-paycheck we lived.
In January 2014 I was offered a position with a software company in the Silicon Valley. Things were looking up for our financial life! My then-wife and I moved to a Bay Area suburb.
It took some adjusting after living in downtown Philly. Both our income and expenses increased. Thankfully with the new job we found it harder to keep up with the increasing income: that’s where we settled for the 25% savings rate. A balance between frugality and spending habits.
A marital disaster struck at the end of 2015: my now ex-wife and I split up. What was a downturn in life turned out to be a financial upturn for me. My ex moved back with her parents, and I stayed in the apartment we were renting.
In a bout of coincidental timing, the apartment complex I lived in was scheduled for demolition. I had to move out and look for a new place. Instead, I decided to move into my car. I wrote about that in detail before, if you’d like to read about that.
This is when I became interested in the FIRE movement. If you’re not familiar, “FIRE” stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early” (I like to think everyone is aware that this is a terrible acronym). The idea is to increase income, drastically decrease expenses, and invest the difference into index funds to live off of indefinitely.
Now that I had an idea where my money can work best, I had an easier time justifying increasing my savings rate. FIRE also turned increasing savings rate into somewhat of a game.
Finally, I negotiated a chunky raise at work. I was underpaid by the Silicon Valley standards, and “I like working here, but I need to be paid X or I quit” tactics worked. Having a reputation for being a high performer no doubt helped.
It’s not surprising that as a culmination of those events, this is where you can see my savings rate beginning it’s climb to a respectable 75%. Occasional spousal support would bump up the expenses, but not having rent to pay and a higher salary made it easy to absorb those expenses.
By the end of 2016 I got my dream job at Google, and moved into a new studio apartment. No, the big dip isn’t just a new place, but it’s strongly connected. I decided to make up for a year of living out of a single suitcase. There’s furnishing the new place from scratch, top of the line gaming PC, a VR headset, and so many things I didn’t need! I definitely went on a bender.
It took me a year to slow down. This is also where my then-girlfriend and now-forever-housemate became more open with me financially: I happened to meet another FIRE enthusiast out in the wild, completely by chance. She reignited my desire to live frugally. End of 2017 was marked by me donating and selling an ungodly amount of things I accumulated over this year, and returning to comfortable living within (or below, depending on how you look at it) my needs.
We moved in together by the end of 2018 and married in 2020. We still keep separate accounts for ease of accounting, and this chart only displays my data for the sake of my partner’s privacy (it’s less work to chart too). Overlaying my SO’s data after combining our finances doesn’t meaningfully change the numbers you see above.
It’s not realistic for us to push the savings rate higher without sacrificing the luxuries we enjoy - like travel or occasional high end dining. So here we are, at a comfortable 75% to 80% savings rate.
My wife and I earn 7 times more than I did when I was a sole breadwinner. Our joint expenses are 60% higher than what my ex wife and I spent 8 years ago. Both my wife and I are in a priviliged position to be high earners in a high paying industry. We’ve gotten extremely lucky where many wouldn’t have.
There’s no real purpose to this post other than sharing my journey. Hope you found something of interest!
]]>I worked from the early morning and deep into the night at that desk. Sometimes I would look out of the window behind me. I would see an uninspired urban picture of roof tops of other four story colonial homes. And after a moment of respite it was back to work for me.
This was my first major foray into the world of self-accountability: I meticulously tracked the time spent working, billed the client per hour, provided in-depth breakdowns. The more I worked, the more I could bill the client – I had the incentive to put in as much time into work as possible.
So I did. I clocked in 80 to 90 hours of billable time a week. The checks with a before unheard of hourly rate kept coming, so I kept putting in the hours. Neither I nor my significant other had major professional experience. (To be completely honest we didn’t have much in the realm of like experience either). We kept on keeping on.
I thought about work during lunch. I was agonizing over the details when walking through the neighboring Rittenhouse Square. I would jump into late night coding sessions. As a young professional, I didn’t see the need to draw lines between my work and my life – my life was my work. There was no “me” without work.
That is until I burnt out. I woke up one morning, and something inside me snapped. I realized that I couldn’t spend another minute in front of the screen. I took a day off, and the feeling wouldn’t pass. I felt numb and overwhelmed at the same time. A day filled with my favorite video games - and I still felt that way. A day at a museum - nothing. I didn’t get better.
I invoked a force majeure clause in my contract. I transferred all the materials, sent the final invoice, and stepped away from the project.
I won’t talk here about the ways to fight burnout, because I didn’t know how to. I quit, took a break, and eventually moved onto another job. By the virtue of this happening early in my career, and me being rather young - I managed to “snap out of it” between jobs.
I wish I could share “the one thing” I did that helped - but there wasn’t one. I don’t remember how I took care of myself, and how I managed to get my head straight. All I remember that I felt discombobulated for weeks. And at some point the feeling went away. I couldn’t work during that time.
Time passed. I moved across the country to the San Francisco Bay area for a job with Google. My now ex-wife and I split up – it was a civil, but nonetheless a difficult divorce.
Around that time, I spent a year traveling across the United States. I lived out of my car and stayed in hotels while working remotely on my own terms. I established strict working hours and routines.
I would start my work around 8 am, without paying mind to the timezone I’d be in. I’d work out of coffee shops, coworking spaces, or even campgrounds. I’d always take a break for lunch. I’d wrap up work at 4 pm, and not a minute longer. Constant travel and change of scenery encouraged me to keep to my work hours. I had to weigh in staying past my end of workday versus going out and sight seeing a new city. The wanderlust always won.
The work was out of my mind after 4 pm. That was easy to do with an adventure afoot, but years later and the habit stuck with me. I don’t let thoughts about work slip into my day to day. My mind is my own outside of work.
That was a transformative experience, and it changed the way I see work. I know it’s trendy to say this, but I don’t live to work: I work to live.
Today, I work with some people who have never worked remotely before the pandemic. And I often hear a similar sounding sentiment: “never again”.
It makes me think about the time I was self-employed for the first time. Putting in 80 hour work weeks, and not having the awareness to understand how I was affecting myself and people around me. It created distance between me and my partner. I let the work spill into the time I had. In a way it made me less of an employee and less of person.
When the pandemic started I looked back to these memories. Google moved to continuous work from home model in March 2020. And I made a conscious effort not to slip into my early remote work days. I established a strict routine. Breakfast and lunch with my significant other (here’s some closure to my divorce). No deviation from “9 to 5”.
I established an area for myself to work in – I bought a sturdy desk and a chair from a used office furniture reseller. I make an effort to create not only mental, but physical separation from work. I wear office clothes during the day, and change once I’m done with work. I cook to distress after a long day. My partner and I adhere to scheduled date nights (we do leave room for spontaneity too).
That isn’t to say I didn’t slip over the past year: many times I stayed past an established time. I often started earlier than planned. And some days I would let work occupy my mind space as I’m relaxing with my better half. We’ve spent the past year working out of a one bedroom apartment. A bigger one than I worked out of 7 years ago, but still a one bedroom. It was difficult, and some days it still is.
But time and time again, I corrected the course and resumed my routine. During my soul searching adventure remote work was fun. Because this time working remotely is much harder. There are no sights to see. No new places to stay in. No novelty to look towards at the end of the day. Working from home in the middle of a pandemic is oh-so-difficult.
To be honest I can’t wait to be back in the office. But I’m also excited to work from home on my own terms. Because this isn’t what remote work is like.
]]>It was a stressful endeavour, with a publisher rushing to meet internal deadlines and eventually sending an unfinished draft to print. There were many highlights too, like actually cranking out 300 pages of material, or getting to work with Bram Moolenaar – the creator of Vim himself. Now that a few years have passed and the book is at its 3rd edition, complete, and re-released – I’m a lot more happy with the result.
I can write a whole other essay about my experience working with the publisher, but that’s a horror story for another time.
I didn’t write to make money, but it’s nice seeing a couple of hundred dollars trickling in every quarter. Putting together spreadhseets is my favorite past time, so here’s a breakdown of my earnings from the time I wrote a book with Packt.
As of April 2021, the English version of my book has 14 reviews on Amazon averaging at 5 stars (that’s more than I would hope for), which likely helps keep the sales at a somewhat of a steady level.
I was signed into a default “16% of net receipts” contract, with a $2,000 advance given out to me. The advance was split into 5 milestone-based installments: the first preliminary draft, 6 preliminary drafts, the remaining preliminary drafts, the final drafts, and the publication. Although I didn’t urgently need the money, and the publisher may have just sent it as a bulk $2,000 payment after the publication.
Eventually I received a PDF for the first quarter of my book being sold… And here are the financials for Q4 2018:
Print # | Print $ | E-books # | E-books $ |
---|---|---|---|
10 | $55.50 | 274 | $307.70 |
A whopping 363 dollars and 20 cents in royalties! I didn’t really think anyone would be interested to read the book, so seeing 284 copies sold I was pretty ecstatic!
Selling printed books seems to pay $5.55 per copy, while e-books only bring me $1.12.
Now I didn’t see any of that money, since I would have to “pay back” the advance. I know it’s called “the advance”, and I knew that I won’t be getting that first check in the mail – but it sucked a bit nonetheless.
After that I received some great news – my book was going to get translated to Japanese! During my last trip to Tokyo I made some friends who were interested in Vim as much as I was, and one of them - Masafumi Okura - decided to translate “Mastering Vim” into his native language. The legend found close to three dozen mistakes in my book too, and is solely responsible for the third edition of Mastering Vim!
Turns out the translation rights are expensive, and I’m getting my cut as well – $1,586.26! That’s more than the first quarter of sales!
Packt advertised my book for a few months or so, but they seemed to have quickly lost interest. I received my first 5 star review on Amazon though, which was great! I spent the next month refreshing Amazon reviews daily, after realizing that to be a path to acquiring a mental illness.
2019 came, and here are my next 4 quarterly statements:
Quarter | Print # | Print $ | E-books # | E-books $ |
---|---|---|---|---|
2019 Q1 | 29 | $141.89 | 202 | $337.49 |
2019 Q2 | 15 | $77.53 | 71 | $194.26 |
2019 Q3 | 19 | $100.09 | 57 | $207.68 |
2019 Q4 | 23 | $118.55 | 117 | $255.17 |
I sold 86 print books and 447 e-books in 2019. You can see the higher numbers correspond to seasonal sales. Notice the prices for Q3 and Q4. E-books sold in Q3 pay me as much as $3.64 per copy, while in Q1 it’s a meager $1.67 per book. Print edition payout stays much more consistent.
Altogether, I earned $1432.66 from my first full year of selling “Mastering Vim”.
Here are my 2020 earnings:
Quarter | Print # | Print $ | E-books # | E-books $ |
---|---|---|---|---|
2020 Q1 | 26 | $131.61 | 112 | $414.12 |
2020 Q2 | 22 | $106.67 | 77 | $379.61 |
2020 Q3 | 26 | $141.17 | 74 | $325.97 |
2020 Q4 | 45 | $236.69 | 166 | $458.07 |
That’s $1,533.38, a $100 more than in 2019. The patterns seem rather predictable, with Q2 and Q3 being slow, and Q1 and Q4 displaying a noticeable spike.
Finally, Packt offers service subscriptions – I believe the subscription is for the courses they offer, but I can’t say for sure. Payout per subscription is small, and I’ve earned $158.10 over the 9 quarters since publishing “Mastering Vim”.
Across $3,329.24 in book sales, $1,586.26 in translation fees, and $158.10 in subscriptions, this adds up to $5,073.60 over the 2+ years the book has been in print. Looks like it can make for a decent supplemental income if you write enough books, but I’m saying that based on a sample size of one.
Throughout this time, my earnings per copy average at $5.16 for a print, and $1.93 for an e-book (using weighted averages for quarterly sales).
And here’s the last number in this post – this one purely for fun. Based on the 16% royalty rate, Packt probably earned $31,710 from “Mastering Vim” so far.
]]>And then a colleague of mine shared “The Feedback Fallacy” (published in the Harvard Business Review), which points to some research and outlines a few key problems why focusing on negative feedback might not be the best choice. Research shows that:
Like many pieces of business literature, it reads like an “all-or-nothing” approach (“negative feedback - bad, positive feedback - good”), and the most effective approach is likely somewhere in the middle. There’s a place for positive and negative feedback, and it’s the focus on positive reinforcement that I see as a primary takeaway from this article.
I’ve noticed that my assessment of others’ performance changes over time. It often depends on what self-help book I’m reading at the moment if I’m being entirely honest.
This piece made me think of the portrayal of successful people in media: there’s an inherent cultural belief that successful people know what makes them successful, and all you need to do is to follow in their steps! What is often omitted is a mix of luck, some talent or hard work, topped with another serving of being in the right place at the right time. Warren Buffet can probably tell you what’s the smartest thing to do with ten thousand dollars you have in your savings account. It’s unlikely that his advice alone will get you to his 98.2 billion dollar net worth.
It seems like once you get past basic competency, success identifiers seem unpredictable.
I attribute part of my professional success to having a reputation of a person who “gets shit done”. I naturally value qualities associated with that style of work. It’s only natural that I prioritize on communication and organizational skills when assessing the performance of others.
In fact, the article made me think about how I landed with the reputation as a problem solver. Every time I accomplished a project on time, owned the problem space, involved the right parties, or raised alarms early – I received positive reinforcement. People I worked with valued those qualities, and years working with those people shaped what I perceive as an effective work style.
Yet, this work style is effective for me, and is not a solution for my peers.
Since reading “The Feedback Fallacy”, I started focusing on the outcomes I like, as opposed to qualities I believe are valuable. Where before I would say “Great comms on project X!”, now I focus on specifics: “I know what you’re up to on project X, which helps me communicate with stakeholder Y and plan resources for the project Z”
]]>For once, there are less face to face interactions, which makes me feel removed from whomever I’m talking to. The interactions that happen over video chat feel a lot less personal, and despite regular deliberately scheduled 1:1 time it’s harder to connect with colleagues on a personal level.
Then there’s the lack of water cooler interactions between meetings. A colleague of mine correctly pointed out that before the era of video chat meetings, we’d have the time to decompress and process content between meetings with those micro-interactions. Having just a minute or two “off the record” after a large call helps process, frame, and align prior interaction. And just sharing a laugh or being able to say “well that was stressful” helps reduce the inevitable daily stress buildup.
Finally, all of the above is true for everyone else - and we’re already in a melting pot of individuals with different communication styles. People are getting frustrated, making other people even more frustrated. It’s a frustration chain reaction!
All of this led to me into a cycle of sending some snappy responses, feeling terrible after time would pass, setting up time to profusely apologize face to face, and wowing to never overreact to work stress sources again… Until the next encounter that is. It all culminated with me getting entirely too frustrated between 8:00 and 8:05 am last Thursday and taking a day just to decompress.
And that reminded of something I’ve learned years ago, and I something I would practice with rigour - until the background frustration level rose that is.
Early in my career I’ve been taught to cool down before sending that angry ping or an email – type it up, leave it in my drafts - come back to it an hour or two later.
In 9 out of 10 cases I end up deleting the message feeling relieved that an incoherent stream of hatred never saw the light of day. Most of the time when I’m angry I don’t really have a goal I’m trying to accomplish (other than inform all the parties involved of my feelings), and that’s not a great basis for professional communication.
In the remaining case, I would end up completely rewriting that email to remove the hostile tone and focus on the source of the issue instead. There are problems that are worth addressing with candor – but candor is too often conflated for the lack of tact.
And it’s hard to take a break at work - because there are often so many things to do, and so little time to do them. Which makes taking a minute to breather feel like a waste of time, when it’s one of the most productive things you can do in the long run.
So here I am, putting these thoughts into writing to remember to take a break before initiating aggressive communications – hopefully the more I think about this, the easier it gets to remember to pause, self-assess, and disconnect.
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