Summer!

Cripes, the first of May was the last time? Oh dear.

Well, it was a wet, dreary spring here. But, at last, it has gone - summer has come, and we're in fully bloom.

The garden is currently just about under control. I found a squash plant trying to climb a broccoli one day, and everything is a little close together (begginer's mistake!), but apart from that.. well, and one large tree making the 'back garden' a bit too shady for anything other than nasturtiums - it's all good.

So far, we've had:

Radishes
Spinach
Parsley
Chives
Courgettes (baby ones!)
Beetroot (we've eaten beet greens; there are a few roots in the fridge now)
Lettuce
Peas (mangetout, or snap peas, I think they are the same)

Plus a couple of raspberries from plants I bought and planted.

To come:

Dill
Sage
Rosemary
Tomatoes
Squash
Cucumbers
Sweetcorn
Potatoes
Beans
Peppers - maybe
Nasturtium flowers/leaves in salad (actually we could have those now, but I prefer the flowers and they are so pretty I don't like picking them! D'oh!)

Our neighbour has an apple tree that comes over the fence; she told me that anything over my side is mine. I think it needs thinning (a lot) as apples have been dropping, unripe. So on Saturday I thinned my side, and collected the unripe apples.

Then on Sunday I made probably 500ml of apple juice, plus a tupperware of.. what was supposed to be apple butter, but is probably a bit watery and more like apple sauce.

I was worried about how much the reducing would cost, on the stove, but actually it doesn't seem too bad - 20c or so. Plus I baked bread for the first time in ages! Om nom nom.

At The Farm, things are less happy. Despite an electric fence, we have multiple incursions. Firstly and foremostly from wild turkeys, which can fly over the fence. Secondly, from groundhogs which I inadvertently trapped *inside* the fence when I did one large rectangle rather than two smaller ones (there is a central wild area between the two fields) - not that it seems to matter, because they go under the fence, too.

Thirdly there is grass. We had a broken rototiller plus a very wet spring on very clay soil, which meant.. we're behind (plus I spent a couple of weeks in France working). Weeds have taken over roughly half the fields entirely, and all of the walking rows, and are trying to take over the beds too.

We're persevering. Un/fortunately we were hoping to sell 20 shares, and have so far only managed 11 1/2. It's fortunate in that we wouldn't have had enough for the first two boxes if we'd sold all 20; it's unfortunate because it means there isn't actually enough money to pay us for the whole season. Tricky.

The larger stuff is coming. A few of the squash plants look sickly. I'm concerned the groundhogs will be at the courgettes soon.. in fact I might rig something over them tomorrow. But my partner in gardening rigged up a whole load of netting and wire over the vulnerable stuff (things that weren't already under row cover) on the weekend, so.. fingers crossed.

I'm (still) pining for a house on wheels. Freedom, life on the open road, etc. With a baby due at the end of November.. well, it could work. Next year, while my wife is still on maternity leave. We'll see.

Oh, and, I'm kinda-sorta FI/RE! Woohoo!

Green Things

My house has been full of seed trays for the past several weeks. Mostly for Tucker House's CSA, but some pots for me, too.

So far we have aubergines, winter squash, tomatoes (lots!), broccoli, cabbage, and a few herbs. Some older seeds of mine didn't come up - asparagus and pepper.

Outside, the rhubarb looks wonderful, and a couple of asparagus plants I put in last year are poking up. I have planted peas, beans, spinach, radishes, lettuce, and broccoli. It might be a bit risky - last frost is on the 8th of May or so, traditionally, but it's quite warm now. Lows of 7 at night.

But the dandelions... ah the dandelions. They love it here, just as they do in England. Amazing amazing plants, really they are, but OOOH so annoying.

Spring Hasn't Sprung

Not here, at least. We're still in negative (degrees) (Celsius) here. A fairly steady snowfall yesterday, and a light fall today. Oh, it's certainly "getting warmer" - we're looking at lows of -5, -6 rather than -20.

Which is good!

But still - the garden is covered in snow. Ho hum. Still, we've got to be planting seeds for the CSA soon - looking through the many, many packets we've got today, it seems that some of them want to be planted up to 10 weeks before being transplanted outdoors. The last frost date here is sometime mid-May, so actually those few plants (most of the tomatoes, squash, courgettes, aubergines do not say they need this long, just a couple of varieties) really should be going in... now!

So tomorrow Lindsay, my partner in, er, gardening, and I are going to buy potting mix, trays, and all sorts of other things that we need. Then I need to get a seed-starting setup installed here at home - some shelving with fluorescent tubes.

In other news, I decided I really don't need a $35 phone plan... luckily my wife DOES need a plan ($70 in fact, ugh), and so she took my phone, and converted the plan. So now I'm back on Wind Mobile - $45 for 6 months. I have an older Android phone for that, and it's... slow. So slow that it doesn't seem to want to work with three email accounts on it, for some reason. Deleted one account... still doesn't work. Oh boy.

And, after probably ten years of going "without" television, today I got an HDTV aerial/antenna. This thing is about as big as two handspans. Aaand.. thanks Amazon, it came in a box about as big as me.

Seriously. Invest in AMZN? Not if they are going to spend what must be $10 to send a ginormous box containing something that small in! There was enough brown paper padding to write SEVERAL novels. Honestly!

I would post photos but, alas, this phone doesn't want to let me have the pictures.

I am coming to terms with my vice. My vice is electronics - computers, pretty much. I bought a new laptop to scratch the itch - but I bought a very sensible, second hand laptop. It's great actually - it is much more suited than my old one. Buuuut.. I don't want to let the old one go as it is also very good. I currently own 4 laptops, 1 desktop, 2 tablets, 4 game consoles... It just seems to stack up. I hoard them.

It could be worse. The laptop cost me $180. I was looking at ones for $600+. But it's not very "reduce reduce reduce" now, is it.

This month is tax month, which is *hideous*. But the good news is that I should pretty much be financially independent, come November or so. Coming in to land - trying to, well, not hit the runway. Land comfortably. Not blow too much cash on hookers, booze and... laptops.. so I miss the runway!

So it's all good. Just need the snow to go. Go, snow, go! The weatherman said this is pretty normal though. I don't feel too good about that.

Moving Along Nicely

So, what's new, eh?

Well. I've received our shipments of seeds for the CSA this year - lots of goodies to grow. It's going to be a fun summer, that's for sure!

It's been.. cold here, but today has been snow, snow, snow (so not too cold - only -9 degrees C apparently!). Parts of the US are getting up to 1m, apparently. Just when I thought we might be through the worst of it! Next year I'll be... somewhere else, come February, I think.

Last weekend we went out for a nice walk - about 4km, out on some country roads in the middle of not very much. Part of the walk was on an "unmaintained road" - and I had trouble getting up it in places. But it was nice to get out, great on the stretches of flat where the snow was cleared!

What about financial independence? Coming in to land gently on that. Inching closer. I'm not quite there, but I think that, come October or December I might be - with a *very* modest monthly budget. So I'm trying to rein in my spending habits (this month: about $25 on Amazon, $60 or $80 on ebay, but mostly on things that can't be had cheaper elsewhere, and that provide a lot of value for that money. Like British comedy series for $15 - many evenings of enjoyment, for less than the price of a cinema trip.). I have books reserved with the library so my general spend is low.

Buying a car in December was a little foolish. I could've waited til March, or April. I might just keep it for the year, or not insure it through next winter. But I like it.

Investing? Yes, I'm doing some of that. Canadian brokerage firm Questrade has decided to offer commission free ETF purchases - meaning, buying index-tracking ETFs (preferably those with a really low MER, like Vanguard's ones) is - effectively - free to do!

My aim is to increase my percentage of wealth that's in CAD from GBP as, well, my bills are all in CAD. It's not that easy to do when most of my assets are... a house in the UK, though! Oh well. Hopefully the predictions of a(nother) poor year for Sterling are, um, wrong. Very wrong.

Actually, the tide probably *is* beginning to turn. Canadian personal non-mortgage debt is about $27,000 on average. That's credit card debt, loan debt (new car, whee!). Crazy. *Average*. Some of that is borrowing to invest, I'm sure (HELOC at 3%? 4%? Vs stocks at 3% dividend + capital growth... Or perhaps on an investment property?). But mostly it's probably Shiny Lump of Depreciating Metal (car, or truck) debt. Because, um, old cars are scary (??).

Anyway. We're planning a short holiday, perhaps to some mountains in the US, in April. I can't wait for the snow to melt *and stay melted*!

All too soon I will be having trouble sleeping at night due to the heat, and trying to remember what "cold" feels like. Funny.

Android rant

Dear Twitter, dear Skype, dear Facebook:

Why can't I move your sh*tty "apps" from the internal storage of this phone to the SD card? The phone only has ~140mb of internal storage, and your bloated junky replacements for webpages (excluding Skype) take up too much space.

Install to the SD card. Imbeciles.

The perfect laptop...

Here is what the perfect laptop would have:

1. Instead of a battery pack, a battery bay where the complicated bits of a battery (the power management unit) is built in, but the rechargeable cells are easily replaceable. Laptop batterys consist of a number of Lithium Ion cells (usually 3, 4 or 6, but can be 9) - and guess what? They are AA battery profile. There is no reason laptop manufacturers should be able to charge $100 for a new battery when you only need to replace the *cells*, and the cells are not that expensive.

2. A not-too-widescreen. The way we're going, it'll be 1600 * 50px before long! For reading, a greater depth is better; 1366 * 768 is a step backwards (from, say, 1280 * 800).

3. A slight hump/lump/bump on the bottom to raise the laptop up, to allow airflow into the CPU.

4. Replaceable CPU.

5. BIOS that allows you to charge your battery to 80% instead of 100%; this will dramatically increase the lifespan of the battery (charging to 100% and draining to 0% kills a battery very quickly!)

6. Power connector at the back; USB on each side towards the back and 1 or 2 on the back; network cable on the back; HDMI at the back of one side or on the back; nothing on the front of the sides, within 3-4 inches of the front

7. Two speakers that aren't completely tinny (tinny is ok, but really tinny is bad!)

8. Power button on the side - so you can power the laptop up in "clamshell" mode (ie with the lid closed).

9. Two mini-PCIE slots - one for the usual WIFI/bluetooth, one for 3g or whatever else, and with the ability for it to be a graphics card (!).

10. And to round it off - not too heavy. Preferably 13.3 or 14.1 inch.

Obviously a non-crap keyboard, trackpad and so on would also be nice!

How to buy a Corvette C7 for $10,000!

Strange blog post for a guy who is supposedly into minimalism, you might think. I'd agree. Call this a piece of whimsy.

First, you need $10k. Earn this.

Go to the USA and buy, in the state of your choice, a house for $40,000 that will rent for $700-800 per month. Use the 2% and 50% rules - in order to cashflow $100 per "door", a property should rent for roughly 2% of its purchase price a month; and you can assume 50% will be eaten up by (non-financing) costs - property tax, management fees, repairs, vacancies, and the like. The 2% is probably high, as it is designed for multi-unit properties, and mortgage rates are low, historically speaking.

With a 30 year mortgage at 4%, the monthly payment will be about $150, so at a rent of $700 you will get $200 cash a month! Remember that this is income and must be reported, and tax paid on it. Tax must also be paid on the "repayment to capital" part of the mortgage payment. If you are lucky, you will laugh at the 50% rule and find a sensible, solid tenant who will stay in your property for 5 years while fixing the small problems themselves.

Anyway, let's assume after taxes you are taking $150 a month.

So how do you convert $1800 a year into a shiny new Corvette? The C7 has only just been unveiled (and it is a beautiful car). It'd barely be enough to cover loan payments for 3 months!

Firstly, don't buy it here in Canada. The base model is $60k here, but only $50k in the States. Crazy, considering the US and CAD$ are at par.

Secondly, well, you're saving up, right? You have your $1800 a year. Invest it in two low cost ETFs - 70% VTI (if you are American), XIC.TO (Canadian), or VUKE.L (British); and 30% XBB.TO (Canada), VGOV.L (British), or BND (US). Put the bond money into some kind of tax shelter; the stocks not being sheltered is less of an issue, as home-domiciled companies tend to have tax breaks associated with them.

This is a really basic "couch potato" investing strategy.

I know, I know, you want your Corvette. Well... stick the kettle on, make a nice cuppa.

Every few months, take your rent and use it to rebalance back to the same percentage split - 70/30 - of stocks vs bonds. So, if bonds are doing well, you buy more stocks; and vice versa. It forces you to buy low, which increases returns over time.

Wait.

Normally the Couch Potato strategy is used for retirement purposes, or early retirement if you're smart. But as I said - this is whimsy!

Ok, after about 4 years, you should have:

1. A nice house, worth maybe 10 or 20% more than you paid for it.
2. A nice increase on the money you've put in to the stock and bond markets.
3. A much lower mortgage than when you started.

Even better, the $50,000 Corvette has depreciated nicely, to about $25,000!

So, sell the house for $50k, less the remaining mortgage of $27,000 = $23,000; plus $8500 from your savings. Total: $31,500.

If you wait just one more year, you'd have enough for the Corvette and still have enough over to do it all again.

So, ladies and gentlemen, that is how you buy a Corvette for $10,000. Personally, I'd just let the money grow, and retire early by repeating many times.