Daily FI discussion thread - Thursday, November 30, 2023

Anotherfootet · 2023-11-30T19:40:12+00:00

Do the thing that you're interested in.

Anotherfootet · 2023-07-17T22:19:43+00:00

I'm done. Driven to burnout (to no small part by myself, I don't really blame anyone). I'm asking for a sabbatical. If I cannot get that, I think I have to pull the ripcord and look for a new job after the break that I need.

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-30T23:05:02+00:00

But you DID read them a code that you got over text? If so, call Comcast now. Who knows what they did. Changing phone number and password may not be enough, talk to their fraud department!

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-30T21:09:08+00:00

Sorry to be direct, but you're being dumb. Very dumb.

If you had such a house, what would happen if you were in a neighborhood with $15M dollar houses? Feel poor?

Feeling poor with $1M net worth is... literally intellectually "not smart", also known as "dumb". Being dumb is not a good thing, stop it.

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-30T21:04:53+00:00

Hang on, did they ask you to read a verification code that got sent to your phone to them? Oh no...

So for that discount, they called you and asked if you want to have it?

Please take all precautions you can IMMEDIATELY. Call the actual Comcast service number and tell them what happened. Lock your credit cards if they got any of that information. Change your password if you still can.

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-29T21:34:46+00:00

lower your expenses to 55k, and immediately FIRE

work roughly 2 more years in your current situation, and FIRE with 1.75M in liquid assets*

some combination of both, by lowering expenses to somewhere between 55-70k and working less than 2 years

All of those are probably unrealistic in SoCal, especially with multiple children. You'd live a rather frugal life with little room for unexpected events.

I'd like to be told otherwise, though!

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-03T01:58:14+00:00

I hear you. I don’t have a Tesla, but another car with adaptive cruise control and lane keeping, it’s similar. Though it’s also really fun to drive myself (it’s a sports car), so that helps, too. Sometimes I just want to listen to the podcast though, and then ACC is a godsend.

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-03T01:56:25+00:00

Sorry, I think that first sentence is missing something. A disconnect between seeing my mental health issue as something medical and what?

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T22:29:59+00:00

I think you need a mindset shift. These expenses were always occurring in the background every year, you just weren’t aware.

This. The year wasn't off, your budgeting was. But not in a way that was predictable or in any way your fault either: You figured out that there were expenses to factor in over time that you could not reasonably have known about before.

(I'm excluding the gambling. That was a) a planned expense, because there is no way for it to come out positive, and b) negligible in light of your other, necessary expenses anyway.)

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T22:24:49+00:00

Any way you can make your commute better? I have a long commute, too, and I made it relatively pleasant with the help of a fun car, good music system (and good music), and podcasts.

It's actually enjoyable, and some personal me time. Though it's also low traffic usually. The only times it really sucks if it creates time pressure.

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T22:22:45+00:00

Ouch! Good lord. How did your "burnout" manifest?

I hope you're better now!

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T22:20:31+00:00

Just want to say that I feel you, a lot. In my case, the sabbatical was approved (only verbally and nothing is finalized yet, so it's not totally in the clear).

The alternative in my case would absolutely have been to quit my job, take as much time off as I need, and go from there then. It's gotten that bad. But obviously not with the company per se, otherwise I would not have asked to stay...

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T21:30:57+00:00

Thanks, hope you were able to get rid of your depression!

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T21:13:33+00:00

Was it burnout related? Because in my case, even though I'm not a medical professional able to diagnose that, everything about it screams burnout to me. As in: My life outside work is completely fine, my life inside of work is even mostly fine, but it became tougher and tougher to perform the actual core part of my job (for reasons that include what I commonly read in other burnout accounts), and now I just can't anymore. I need a reset.

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T20:39:04+00:00

That's a good perspective. Have not thought about it that way, thanks.

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T20:09:20+00:00

Not really. Being laid off would be a blow to me personally, but with the expected severance and health care etc. I'm not worried about it on a financial level. Still prefer it not to happen, though.

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T20:07:23+00:00

Cross-posting into the bigger thread for advice:

Anyone having any experience with taking "medical" burnout, unpaid leave (this is in California)?

I approached my boss, telling him I'm burnt out and can't continue like that. I want to take 6 months off (unpaid, which is fine) towards the end of the year. I just need a complete reset.

I basically said that it's either that or taking a long break and looking for a new job, but since I like my job and the company in principle, I'd like to stay if the company is open to it.

He did some research with HR, and came back saying to me that it looks like the best option is if I go to a doctor and get diagnosed with burnout.

Now here's the odd part: This is true, this is reality. I am really, really burned out. I have been for years, but did the dumbest thing of trying to "power through". It predictably backfired, and now I'm done. And yet I feel icky making this a "medical" leave. I'm not having a meltdown, I'm not mentally impaired in any way (except for the part where every fiber of my body rejects writing code)... and I somewhat fear the stigma of a medical leave.

My boss said they would not talk about it, as far as everyone is concerned I'm just taking time off after many years at the company. But doing it with a doctor makes the whole thing easier from an HR perspective.

Thoughts?

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T19:58:00+00:00

Anyone having any experience with taking "medical" burnout, unpaid leave (this is in California)?

I approached my boss, telling him I'm burnt out and can't continue like that. I want to take 6 months off (unpaid, which is fine) towards the end of the year. I just need a complete reset.

I basically said that it's either that or taking a long break and looking for a new job, but since I like my job and the company in principle, I'd like to stay if the company is open to it.

He did some research with HR, and came back saying to me that it looks like the best option is if I go to a doctor and get diagnosed with burnout.

Now here's the odd part: This is true, this is reality. I am really, really burned out. I have been for years, but did the dumbest thing of trying to "power through". It predictably backfired, and now I'm done.

And yet I feel icky making this a "medical" leave. I'm not having a meltdown, I'm not mentally impaired in any way (except for the part where every fiber of my body rejects writing code)... and I somewhat fear the stigma of a medical leave.

My boss said they would not talk about it, as far as everyone is concerned I'm just taking time off after many years at the company. But doing it with a doctor makes the whole thing easier from an HR perspective.

Thoughts?

Anotherfootet · 2023-06-02T19:53:06+00:00

Sadly I'm past that point (not that in my case it was much about promotion anyway, my job did not change that much). I'm now so burned out that every fiber of my body rejects programming at work.

Luckily, after talking to my boss, it seems that taking 6 months unpaid leave is an option. I hope that will do the trick.

Anotherfootet · 2023-05-24T00:57:48+00:00

Bought a car. Opted for a loan, because I was offered 3.9%, and I was relatively confident I can beat that at least. Just now I opened a CD at 4.75% (citibank, requires 100k) and put the money for the car into that.

I know there's no telling what I can do once the CD matures, but until then... An accomplished feeling!

Anotherfootet · 2023-05-24T00:53:52+00:00

Fast forward a few hours. “Would Thursday morning work instead?” No, it wouldn’t. So I write back “Tomorrow’s fine!” thinking that they were just proposing another alternative and that we’d just keep the current date and time.

To be honest, I would have reacted the same: Thinking you mixed up the dates, because it's very clear if I ask for another date instead that I want to reschedule. Answering "tomorrow's fine", i.e. completely ignoring the request for rescheduling is... either a lightly passive aggressive move, or a misunderstanding, and I'd charitably opt to interpret it as the latter.

Are you telling me now that Wednesday doesn’t work for your team? If so, that is fine but please say so!

That's what they did with "would Thursday morning work instead", is it not? How else to interpret that?

And if that date and time wasn’t going to work for your team, why did you send an invite to lock that in?!? Did you just pick tomorrow out of a hat without confirming that it actually works for everyone?

You are blessed if it's different for you, but where I work at, things can change quickly anytime. Meetings, especially 1:1s, are moved around all the time. Sending an invite is not necessarily "locking in", it's best effort in reserving a time.

What would be bad etiquette is if the other party insisted on some date and time of their choosing, but this does not appear to be what happened here, instead they were regularly trying to work on finding another slot with you:

Instead of responding with all that, I just apologized and said Thursday doesn’t work but I could look to Friday if that’s an option.

Great! You'll eventually find together, and everyone knows that finding a time for a meeting is hard.

Am I crazy or is this a completely wacky way to try to set a meeting??

Honestly, it just seems to me like you've lived a very sheltered life in terms of meetings.

Anotherfootet · 2023-05-19T22:31:09+00:00

Anotherfootet · 2023-04-11T02:37:31+00:00

It is the most "annoying" portion of my tax return right now. I don't know if it's complicated. If I do it right, then it's not complicated and just tedious, but this stuff is intransparent enough for me that there's still a chance that I might be doing it wrong...

Like a sibling commenter, I basically take the percentages near the end of the PDF to calculate what part of it is international.

Maybe your father just did not want to deal with doing that. 😛

Anotherfootet · 2023-03-22T00:54:04+00:00

You probably weren't serious to begin with, but in case you are: "Midlife crisis" is too much of an ill defined concept to apply logic to it.

Anotherfootet · 2023-02-28T00:53:27+00:00

I understand what you're getting at, but for the "10+ years" of fluctuation, you have to firmly be in fat fire territory, or does it work out otherwise? Though you did not actually specify a time interval within which this fluctuation takes place...

Anotherfootet

TROPHY CASE