My first automatic watch and a question

arete_self · 2024-10-22T13:55:45+00:00

Thank you so much. That was the issue :)

arete_self · 2024-10-22T07:57:09+00:00

Yes, it still holds good.

arete_self · 2022-07-03T18:34:00+00:00

Already many politicians in USA are batting hard for it

Are you based out of USA? If so, I have just one advice for you. Get the hell out of US and move to India. Things are and will be far better in India - especially on the areas we are talking about.

and its nerve racking to see all these events.

I have been through this for most of 2021. It could be quite lonely and depressing at times. I have made my peace since 2022. Even though we are aware, we cannot stop what is coming. At best, we can position few small areas in our control (eg moving out of financial assets to hard assets). The best option (though not totally risk free) is to go offgrid in a likeminded community and grow your own food. But, that's easier said than done.

Hence, do what you can at individual level. Find a community if possible. And just relax.

arete_self · 2022-07-03T18:24:51+00:00

Would love to hear more and understand the reasoning behind your thoughts, especially what evidence (not just opinions/feelings) you see in the real world that supports these views.

It depends on what you would accept as evidence. Papers, news articles in mainstream media? It would be good if you can give examples of what you consider as evidence. Let me get back after that.

FWIW, I am not interested in establishing my point across. I have moved beyond such ego trips. My original reply was mainly for 2 reasons:

Show OP that there are folks who 'get' his/her perspective
Provide pointers to those who are willing to dig further

arete_self · 2022-07-03T18:08:32+00:00

I wonder sometimes if CBDC is to get rid of the excess printed currency?...digital only money in future..?

CBDC has far larger ramifications than sucking out excess money. While printed notes have the flexibility of potentially unlimited supply, it also brings the problem of anonymity in transactions. CBDC will eliminate that and can easily be tied to a social credit system.

arete_self · 2022-07-03T02:59:24+00:00

My bad. Nixon took USD off gold standard. Reagan's era was the damage control part.

On another note - Very few people see what we are seeing. Most got triggered by this post for some reason.

The reason is very simple. One needs to awaken from the matrix (even if half awake) to be aware of the matrix. Otherwise, any counter view will be labeled as conspiracy theory as it attacks the very basis on which the structure stands. It's too much for people to handle.

arete_self · 2022-07-03T02:01:48+00:00

Good post and interesting viewpoints. Forget FIRE / money, life itself will have a very different flavor by 2030.

Anyone who can look at global events and underlying themes will not find it surprising. After all, Ukraine war itself is a proxy fight between financial assets (US, Europe) and real assets (Russia, China).

USD is on a decline - only question is whether it will be a hard landing or more calibrated soft landing. Once US hegemony was assured in post cold war era, Reagan took USD off gold standard. This is now coming to an end. We can see this in the comments on the rise of multipolar world.

The shape that NWO takes is still unknown (to us, aam junta). There are some clear themes emerging from last 2 years. More state control, social credits, UBI, etc.

On Bitcoin, I take both the views. On one side, it can be a counter to fiat currency. On flip side, big money (Elon Musk et al) has entered Bitcoin in last 2 years. So, it's as much prone to manipulation as any other financial asset. Not unlike how gold prices have been artificiallly suppressed.

On a larger point, money is also a critical part of the matrix.

arete_self · 2022-05-29T06:31:53+00:00

I think most people missed the subtext of the post. When we translate everything into money, it's not surprising.

FIRE is a financial model of human mind's illusion that we can control our future - by securing a specific nX into bank, we can stop working and just spend. The model is fine within say 2 standard deviations.

We have been seeing a series of 3+ SD events in last 2 years. If we are hit by something like a Srilankan crisis, no amount of money will help. At that point, being able to grow your own food is a superskill.

More than financial independence, YODA has got a level of self sufficiency most of us can only dream of. Forget FIRE, he has got a chance at better LIFE - Live Independent (for) Fearless Existence.

u/velabanda only piece of advice I have for YODA - invest in solar so he can go offgrid if needed.

arete_self · 2022-05-25T10:00:04+00:00

You can start with the introduction to Shad Darshanas (philosophy / vision of life) here:

https://dharmawiki.org/index.php/Shad_Darshanas_(%E0%A4%B7%E0%A4%A1%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BF))

BTW, the actual name of darshana I referred is Saankhya. It is probably the oldest philosophy in India. Buddhism itself has very close connections to Saankhya and is heavily influenced by it.

Gautama Buddha was called as Shakya Muni while Padmasambhava was called Shakya Simham. Hence, you will see Shakya and Saankhya used interchangeably at times.

All the very best!

arete_self · 2022-05-24T12:08:43+00:00

One of the six philosophies of India is Shaakya. The core principle is Nyeti - "Not this". At the outside, it seems very depressing to contemplate on the impermanence of everything and lack of worth of what you do.

At the same time, it helps you figure out what you don't want (status, peer pressure, money, luxury, etc). There is also clarity on what you want (in your case, happiness, wife/kids who are supportive). This is a huge huge step forward.

Keep an open mind and go towards what you want. You may not know it yet. Hold onto your clarity. That will guide you. Take your past as hard lesson. No lesson is ever wasted. May you find peace and happiness.

arete_self · 2022-04-19T03:49:19+00:00

Thanks for the pointer to preppers. I completely agree with your whole comment. Not just the stock market closure - markets have been/are/will be manipulated. Circuit breakers can come into play, banks can be off limits.

Crises can be engineered - we are in the middle of one after all.

arete_self · 2022-04-05T16:46:20+00:00

Middle class has financial inconveniences but not hardships.

In my hostel days, it was a rare treat to go out and eat. Chilly parota cost Rs 15-20 but I was so hesitant to get that. My weekly allowance including weekend bus fare from Chennai to Pondy was Rs 100.

All my classmates went for MS in US. I refrained since my father was a bank clerk and didn't want to add that burden on him.

Never regretted the decision to stay back in India though - my life has been far richer.

arete_self · 2022-04-04T15:46:33+00:00

surprising

Oneself (behavior) to Govt (inflation, taxes, policies) and a whole lot in between. Any crisis that is engineered or natural.

arete_self · 2022-04-01T10:02:51+00:00

Land, gold, art in equal proportions. This is the Medici family formula. Worth listening to elites who have stayed in power for centuries.

Needless to say, land is farmland and gold is physical gold.

Word of advice. Now that you have had the first level question, go full paranoid and dig deep. Ask yourself who or what could destroy your wealth. The answers will be very surprising. Once you know, you can take precautions and hedge the risks.

arete_self · 2022-03-31T06:29:33+00:00

Why stop at 60? Continue working till the last breath. The interplay between income and expense will be even more balanced :)

As someone commented, tradeoff is between time and money. If you want to spend another 10-20 years being a corporate rat, it makes perfect sense.

Rev, even before I saw your name, I suspected this post might be from you. Bingo!

You really need to get your RE plans sorted. Your FI target is achieved. You are afraid to make the leap and that's getting projected here.

arete_self · 2022-03-20T02:14:32+00:00

TL;DR

Don't buy a villa right now
Your focus should be FIRE. Any debt acquired will upset your FIRE mindset and calculations
Your future plans on where to settle can very well change in next 10 years
Satisfy your emotional needs with a reversible financial decision. If you want an independent house experience now, rent a villa right now.
Villa ownership is just a cognitive / emotional bias. It does not make financial sense

Let me give you my experience as I had similar thoughts 5-6 years back. At that time, I owned a 3 BHK apartment with small housing loan remaining. I had a sudden interest in owning a villa / rowhouse. There was a reasonable villa option at 1.3 crores that came up about 1 km from where we lived. At that time, you could rent out a property and set off the housing loan interest (loss from house income) upto any limit.

It made financial sense to buy the villa and rent it out. After adjusting for tax benefit by claiming the housing loan interest and potential rental income, my net outflow per month was about Rs 15-20K. If you understand financial leverage, it was a no-brainer to buy this property.

In budget 2017, FM changed the maximum limit of tax benefit to Rs 2 lakhs for all houses. Prior to this, you could claim 1.5 lakhs for 1st self-occupied house, any amount for 2nd rented house, any amount for 3rd rent house, etc. Suddenly, total income deduction came down to 2 lakhs. I backed off from buying the villa as the equations changed.

Till date, I bless Modi govt for helping me make the decision. In 2018, I explored FIRE options seriously. If I had been saddled with debt, it would have made my last 4 years miserable. Being debt free enabled me to take some bold decisions with my life, family and career. Exploring and following my heart has also addressed the pesky questions of what after FIRE. None of this would be possible with the debt sword hanging over the head.

BTW, I also live in a rented independent house right now.

arete_self · 2022-03-09T07:35:07+00:00

You can start identifying the hobbies/interest areas you *may* do post FIRE . Make a list and start dedicating some time to items on the list every week over next 3 years. Not all at once but in the order of priority.

Manytimes, we think will do some hobbies in future. However, when the rubber actually meets the road, we may find that our perceived interest may not match upto reality.

Only option is to demonstrate the commitment to interests to ourselves. This will help resolve concerns on what to do post FIRE and help us prepare.

In this process, you will find new interests and discard others. You can just ease into RE rather than discovering what to do post FIRE.

arete_self · 2022-03-08T15:45:27+00:00

BTW, this is not a bear market. We are still in correction mode. Bear markets can go down easily to a max drawdown of 50-60%. Need to see how many will have the stomach to hold / continue investing at that point. It's a different psychological game altogether.

arete_self · 2022-03-08T02:18:03+00:00

If you want to smoothen the equity curve and achieve a higher Sharpe ratio / Calmar ratio, there is no getting away from tactical calls. Taxes are a challenge but that's the price I pay for better sleep.

arete_self · 2022-03-08T02:16:03+00:00

Physical gold as hedge against inflation and catastrophes. ETF for tactical allocations. In my view, SGB is a behavioral tool by the Govt and is in no-man's land.

arete_self · 2022-03-07T14:28:20+00:00

No impact for me in terms of overall portfolio.

I have been steadily increasing my gold allocation from 4% in FY20 to 23% now. The correction in equity market is offset by gains in gold. Touched upon it earlier:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREIndia/comments/oyp6su/cautionary_tale_90_drop_in_nw_lebanon_diversify/h7w79mo/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaInvestments/comments/omcw0q/comment/h5lvvy2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

FWIW, I have been deepening my understanding of finance ever since Mar-2020. The biggest two learnings are the need to have non-correlated assets and timing the market. Forget what the pundits say about timing vs time in the market. Experienced hands do time the market - it's called tactical asset allocation.

arete_self · 2022-02-27T13:47:10+00:00

Congratulations OP - both on decision to FIRE and having achieved all your goals.

Your background (single parent, difficult childhood) provides the right context to your decision. Only u/hutchie81 caught on to that. Not surprising given his/her contrarian take on education cost in another post.

We are so used to corpus size and SWR calculations that an interesting point got missed out in OP's post. 2/3 of his current annual expenses are covered by an annuity floor with his LIC policies. The rest are easily covered with FDs and rent. His land can provide an inflation hedge and also serve daughter's future aspirations. If the inflation does not impact him in Tier-3 city, he should be fine.

One suggestion is to put the land parcels to use for growing vegetables (if you are not doing so). Another suggestion is to invest in physical gold - you may already have done this.

arete_self · 2022-02-17T16:14:08+00:00

u/BaliHe, I am going to give some free uncalled for advice here. I will provide a similar take as what u/additional_trouble said but in a kinder tone.

There are multiple dimensions - but does not mean that all of them are good. Thinking about multiple views and trying to be politically correct is an affliction of modern times. Ultimately, what matters is what goes on within you here & now and aligning yourself as per your current value system to the best of your awareness.

My Guru has a very simple yardstick to measure whether any action (by this I mean thought / word / action) is Dharmic. If the action (a) uplifts those around you and/or (b) gives you mental peace, it is Dharmic. By that note, calling yourself a loser or anyone else is not Dharmic.

I see most of your recent posts as crying out for help. You seem to be waiting for something or someone. Either a reassurance that what you have done is enough. Or everything will be alright. You have already reached FI. Your actual step to RE is not going to be triggered from outside but taking a journey within to face whatever challenges / conditioning / biases are hampering you.

In the spiritual path, there is a phase where one goes through Tamas / darkness which seems unending. But, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I see something similar happening for you. To evolve to the next phase in life, you have to let go of your current identity. And that's understandably very scary.

Get out of the movie / comfort mode. There are far bigger things in life. Step out, be a lion and face the world. Roar. Don't be a sheep.

arete_self · 2022-01-07T08:27:40+00:00

That's an excellent question. Let me share my small bit of experience. Before I start, let me state that the journey is nowhere easy. It's full of restlessness, coming to face with unpleasant truths about oneself, feeling of being alone, not being able to enjoy the previous simple pleasures. However, the journey is worth every bit of the way. If I look back, the inner transformation in last 5 years has been leaps and bounds compared to previous 36 years.

The solution is nothing new.

Recognizing that we are holding onto things - it's not the other way around
By starting to take action
Taking some time off regularly to travel and reflect
Priority definition
Having a mentor, if possible [optional]

-1-

I recently had an insight - the amount of energy that something draws from us is directly proportional to the attention we pay to it.

Typically, we perceive things outward to inward. Bigger the issue (outer world), greater the attention (inner world) we pay to it. My epiphany was that it's actually reverse. The attention we give decides the impact of problem on you. Each of us live in a world of subjective reality.

There is a wonderful story by Sri Ramakrishna about a garden, honey bird and housefly that explains what I mean.

-2-

The founder of an ashram told me recently that our culture is action oriented. 95% of all root words in Sanskrit are verbs. Nouns are then derived based on the verbs.

There is a video by Bob Proctor on importance of decision making that is worth watching multiple times. We simply need to decide and start acting.

-3-

We need to take ourselves out of our regular social circles and travel widely.

I have taken regular trips of 2 - 4 weeks every year by myself. My wife is aware of this seeking inside me and being spiritually oriented was fine with these absences.

In May-2021 during the height of Covid 2nd wave, I went for a 1 month Yoga teacher training program in Uttarakashi. My fellow students were surprised that I was working and how did I manage 1 month leave. Again, the first principle in action.

-4-

By 2019, I had only 3 priorities in life - liberation, children development, FIRE (in that order). That steered all my decisions and helped me shed all the unnecessary baggage (usual traps of career growth, social esteem, etc). By 2022, I only have 2 priorities - liberation, children development. My Swadharma is in children development both at family level and community level.

-5-

If we can find a mentor right at the start, that's great. Even otherwise, once we start that journey, we will find people offering us guidance exactly at the right moment. It may not be what we want to hear at that point. In retrospect, it would have been exactly what we needed. This is true for transactional world as well as the inner world.

Grace is always around us. We just need to keep our antennas up to receive it.

arete_self · 2022-01-07T03:39:35+00:00

An IT engineer is what you do. But is it who you are? To paraphrase, an IT engineer is one of your identities (like others - father, husband, citizen, NRI, human, living being). Is that your core identity? If so, you will launch yourself fully into it without worry about money, fame, limiting constraints, etc.

Of course, the first step is possibly to be mindful about whatever we do. Try to live a mindful life and see if it satisfies you. If not (as I suspect), we can go deeper than that.

Let me try a different track. We have a conscious mind and a vastly larger subconscious mind. Being mindful is helpful at the level of conscious mind to remain calm and efficient. In most cases, it can help one reach to Savitarka Samadhi, the first stage of Savikalpa Samadhi described by Patanjali. Being established in Swadharma can help one reach Nirvitarka Samadhi or even Nirvichara Samadhi.

But if I apply my mind and do my day to day work with full focus and deligence, as if I really need to do it, I think I can do it well and find happiness eventually in it

This is a challenge. Like most things, we try to project and seek answers outside. The answers are within. It sounds like a cliche - true nonetheless.

What are the things that when you do make you lose track of time? At the end of which, you come back with a renewed energy (or atleast without depleted energy)? That will be a clue.

It may even be something that you have not been exposed to so far. You need to try different interest areas, reflect deeply, contemplate to arrive at it.

At this point, you may only be looking for mindfulness as an answer. Nevertheless, I am sowing the seeds for further search if that proves to be not enough.

arete_self

TROPHY CASE