Articles by Mr SSC

Fall Clothing Evaluation: Let the purge begin!

I have a problem. A clothes problem. I hate ironing, and I don’t like doing laundry. Actually, I don’t mind doing laundry, but I don’t like putting away the clothes afterwards. Generally, I wait until it reaches critical mass before I break down and put my clothes away. That’s okay because I have a system in place that supports this behavior. Generally, I have enough clothes to not have to put away clothes for close to a month if I time it right. Yep, that’s a lot of clothes, and that’s what led to my Spring Fall cleaning this past weekend.

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Our Money Went Where? September 2016 Update

What a month September was for us! It was our lowest monthly spend so far this year – with daycare reduction being a YUGE part of that (couldn’t resist…). Beyond some minor one-offs everything still seems to be on track with usual or even below last year’s benchmarks and the plan is still a go for Summer 2018 for at least me to quit anyway. I’ll discuss how that plan is evolving and more details of our last months’ spending. Enough of that jibber jabber, let’s get into the details!

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Can I Really Tell Work “No”?

Just yesterday afternoon I got a call from an HR person in my company. They asked if I would be able to go to my alma mater and do some interviews for new hires and the upcoming intern season next summer. This all sounded great. I would get a chance to go back to Colorado, it’s probably not still in the 90’s there, I could see the old campus, and maybe even catch up with an old friend while in town. Then I found out the details and their answers made me spit out my tea – I literally had to clean my monitor… Suddenly, the trip seemed way more hassle and way less positive, no matter how I could spin it. I realize glorifying work trips is easy to do (not really, they mostly all tend to suck) especially when they involve getting back to CO even for a few days. I wrestled with what impact this would have on my career and what kind of exposure I would miss out on by not going. Mrs. SSC’s suggestions even had me second guessing the supposed benefits of going. Through all of this debate, I came to a few career conclusions that were a little shocking even to me.

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Suicide Never Goes Away

With it being Suicide Prevention Day recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about my experiences surrounding that topic. It’s worse than an earworm of a bad/not bad song (Tom’s Diner anyone?) that you hear a small snippet of and sure enough, pretty soon all you keep hearing is the droning melody of all the events that have played out over the past 8 years. Yeah, you’ve dealt with it, and sure, those emotions are settled, but it sure as shit still feels like it just happened yesterday. This isn’t really about suicide prevention, because I don’t know how to stop it, and telling someone to “talk about it” is akin to telling an alcoholic to “just stop drinking…” This is me finally getting this story out to more than just a few close friends.

Disclaimer, there’s no PF spin or $ talk today, so feel free to delete and move on if you’re not interested, my feelings won’t be hurt a bit.

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August 2016: Our Money went where?

August, what a great month! It’s my birthday month, yeah Leo’s, it starts the slow trend toward cooler weather around here (it’s still supposed to be 92 today), and now we have school starting to add to the list for August since our oldest started kindergarten this year. How did all this affect our spending though? There were some minor upticks in spending due to kindergarten, life, and oh yes, the allure of a new grocery store. For the full report out and comparison spending chart read on.

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Fresh Roasted Coffee: Delicious and Cost Effective!

We drink coffee, a lot of coffee, I mean it is even in our blog’s name, Slowly Sipping Coffee. All of this coffee consumption over the years has led me to trying to find a good balance between “good” coffee and “low cost” coffee. In Denver, I would go to Sunflower Market to their bulk bean bin and pay ~$6/lb which was good at the time. We’ve tried buying in bulk when we still had our Costco membership, we’ve tried the bulk bean route at the grocery store, and those worked well to cut down on costs but the best savings and flavor balance I’ve found so far is – wait for it – roasting my own coffee!!

I know right?! How would roasting your own coffee at home be cost effective and easier than just buying it at the store? Don’t you need specialized equipment, a grand knowledge of coffee roasting principles, and somewhere to buy the beans? The short answers are No, Meh, and the internet. For the longer answer, keep reading and let me explain.

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Will your retirement have an ikigai?

Until Mrs. SSC left her old job to teach, she was miserable. Her company continually reminded her she was just a number by dragging her and others through long protracted layoffs. Even though she didn’t get let go, the whole process left her with zero job satisfaction, and ultimately she lost all drive to work there. I felt very similarly working for that company my last year there, and after failing to get moved to a better position, I also left that company.  We had both lost our ikigai…

What’s ikigai? Ikigai (pronounced icky guy) is a Japanese term that translates as “the reason to wake up in the morning.” In other words, it’s your driver in life, what keeps you going and motivated. Does that mean we really need a reason to get up in the morning if we’re retired?

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How we got FIRE’d Up!

Recently, Nick over at The Money Mine put out a challenge for people to describe how they got “FIRE’d Up” and what were the catalysts for your change in life to achieve that goal.

“What if everyone in the Personal Finance community could write about how they found their goals? Maybe newcomers would relate to one of these stories and decide to make these goals their own? What if that could help someone FIRE?”

Since this blog has been around for a while now and we may have newcomers that haven’t read some of our initial stories, here’s our version of how we got “FIRE’d Up.”

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Do good fences REALLY make good neighbors? And who should pay?

We live in a master planned community of ~3000 homes and as such, we have a fairly thorough set of HOA covenants. They’re not idiotically written, but they can be a pain at times when you want to do something simple like put in a playset in your backyard. Recently, they sent out their monthly newsletter notifying everyone that they would be “focusing on fences”, as there have been some homes that are staining their fences (not approved – sealing is fine, staining is a no-no) replacing their cedar fences with non-approved woods other than cedar (gasp-the horror!) and have rundown fences that need repair or replacing. We didn’t think anything about it as most of our fence is in good shape. Although Mrs. SSC and I disagree on this, because our views of “good shape” are highly divergent. However, one of our neighbors want to replace their fence and split the cost to replace the side we share with them. Now we’re arguing discussing which one of us is right. Oh brother…

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