Only Achievable Things

 That's my theme for this year, I decided recently.

There are so many reminders of my old way of thinking and doing things. Without a metric, I just feel lost.

In the spirit of My Perfect Year, I'm just putting a moratorium on unachievable things. 

This definition is fluid, but I just want to have a good, predictable year.

Being sick for the 18th day in a row isn't helping, but I soldier on.

Some things I've been ruminating about:

- travel to Egypt - now or later? exoticca or Gate1? fly from NC or NYC?

- look for a second remote job (this is recent development)

- dating - Sean or Dan or casual?

- Seattle - what to do when I get there?

- travel hacking

- remediating travel hacking potential

- Chase $900 bonus

This weekend was weird. It started out fine but between Sunday and Monday, I got weepy and a little down. I think I just lay down in the same position most of Monday. I didn't even want to get up and play on my computer. 

The Chase bonus seemed really fun and I wanted to interrupt some of my processes to make it happen. Just for the thrill of it I guess. But I'm spending more time observing myself when I have these intense desires to do things. Often, disruptive things. 

It's almost easier just to let the feeling pass then to try to rationalize or justify things. Now that I have this general feeling of living on borrowed time with minimal deathly consequences, it's a bit easier to let things go... by like a fraction of a percent. 

I don't have any goals for this year, so I just look at my loose plans of achievable things.

For the Chase bonus - the main appeal in doing it now is trying to position myself favorably to reapply for one of their travel hacking cards. While trying to reduce/ optimize was a goal for this year, aggressive travel hacking was a new development. I don't know if I'm being too flexible or too rigid. 

But I tried 7 cards, and this was not something easily achievable, so I'm deciding now it can't be a priority. 

So for now, I just want to wait until I have enough money in my accounts to easily make the Chase bonus happen. I don't have 15k in any one account that's easily accessible. So while it would be a few clicks to pool the money together, the urgency isn't really there in reality. Yes, the bonus might get pulled and it's hard to turn your nose up at $900, but I need to stop thinking that everything is a once in a lifetime thing - who cares. It's not an essential life activity.

The gaming of it is fun though, so if I decide that, I might do it. But I'm tired of thinking about it.

I watched two shows and read a romance novel that triggered old romantic notions. I even very lightly thought about rejoining a dating app. But it's a no for me. So I thought about Dan and Sean quite a bit yesterday. I tried to daydream about them. 

I'm on this kick of trying to figure out what I enjoy/ what I want my life to look like. When I tried to picture a future with a partner, my normally wistful imagination came up short. I couldn't really come up with anything achievable.

I was thinking even if I make it to a million and FIRE, $40k/yr is not a good wage to live alone in Seattle.  Purple did it on $20k/yr but I don't see this intense expense tracking and budget goals as being longterm parts of my life. I think award travel would be a fun hobby but I want my regular life to be easy too. 

But I'm doing my best not to think too far into the future, I just want to have one good year - where everything goes according to plan.

And the least number of items I have in my plan, the better. 

(Also - I emailed my friend Max to test a theory I have against my therapist. He said not to contact Max, but he's been wrong about a few things, so I'm curious what will happen next. I guess nothing really. I just told Max to keep in touch. So no expected response. No feelings.)

Have I written here about my 3 fund portfolio shenanigans. Basically, I adjusted my 401k to reflect the 3 fund portfolio from the boglehead wiki. They were right, that's exactly what my target date fund was doing! I just eliminated the bonds since I have my FIRE Cash Stash.

It boosted my confidence to understand what was going on and to make the change.

It's nice to see my portfolio trending upwards. The fees in each of my old 401k are nominally more than my current job's, so it would be optimal to just roll them over, but I still have pause for some reason.

Now that I understand more about tax loss harvesting and the 3 fund portfolio, I feel even more confident to end the relationship with my robo advisor. I liked seeing all the different ETFs they were investing in. 

But I think, yeah for the sake of simplicity, it will be nice to have just the 1 401k account; and the 2 brokers - utilizing a 3 fund portfolio (but my iBonds will be my bonds instead of the bond fund). And then after that, I'm done with active management of my accounts. Just set it and forget it until 1 mil.