Disclaimer: All salaries and bonuses in this post -- even those based on real paychecks -- are entirely fictional. All financial information is paraphrased.....poorly. The following post was written by a 23-year old man who lives in a truck entirely of his own volition and holds a degree in something wholly-unrelated to both business and finance. As such, its content should not be viewed or seriously considered as advice by anyone.

Now that that's out of the way, let's begin.

In The Beginning

There's a laundry list of reasons why I do what I do, but one of my bigger goals was to clear out my (fairly unburdensome) student loan debt quickly, certainly more expediently than the 10-year plan my loan servicer was trying to spoon-feed me (with a healthy $3,000 of interest). And despite spending months planning out the various intricacies of truck-life and trying to anticipate all possible eventualities, I had spent virtually no time formulating a proper financial plan. Sure, I had used some broad hand-wavy gestures coupled with the word "investment" before, but apart from a brief experiment using Acorns in college, I hadn't the faintest idea what I was doing. With my loans dwindling with each incoming paycheck, it's time to seriously evaluate what my long-term goals are, and how I plan to reach them.

Motivation

This post serves two mostly-orthogonal purposes:

1. Letting people know what I'm doing with my money. Hopefully, some of the ideas here (which I've poached aggregated from a variety of sources) will be useful in some shape or form to one or more people in the future.
2. Forcing my own hand in figuring this stuff out. I do a lot of rough-estimate, back-of-the-proverbial-envelope-type calculations, but now I have about six months of my own real-life financial data. I know how much money is coming in, and how much is going to the various things that allow me to live a happy, healthy life…sometimes with less of an emphasis on the "healthy" part.

Brief Preface

There's this (distinctly American) taboo concerning salary discussion, which I've never quite understood. I mean I get it, capitalism dictates that your sole source of worth in this life comes from how much money you can rake in (and then how grandly you can dish it out). As such, discussing salaries will always be very touchy and emotional a colossal dick-measuring contest. Also, knowing the salaries of your peers would give you leverage when negotiating your own pay (which is why sites like Glassdoor exist). But that clearly doesn't interest the bottom line of an employer. Since this is a monologue and not a discussion though, we're going to throw the taboo and stigma out the window: it's counterproductive, especially when trying to do some frank, no-frills financial planning. Not that the taboo-ness particularly matters to me, I'm clearly not a staunch defender of social convention anyway.

The Money

At work, I mash keys on my keyboard and swivel my mouse around until the pixels on my screen arrange themselves in a pattern that pleases me and those around me (nod to XKCD). For doing so, I'm compensated by my employer, and this compensation is broken into roughly three categories:

• Salary. My base salary is $105,000.
• Bonus. Once a year, I receive a bonus roughly equal to 15% of my salary (give or take a performance multiplier). 15% of $105,000 is $15,750.
• Stock. Every year, I get a certain number of shares of the company. Because stocks are prone to the whims of a bunch of anxious men in fancy suits, I'm going to take about 10% off of the current value of the stock, which means roughly $40,000 a year in stocks. I know I said we'd be staying away from estimation, but this is one of those inherently nebulous things. If there was anyone who knew where the price of a stock was heading, they'd either be arrested, filthy rich, or some combination of the two.

So my total before-tax earnings are (approximately) $105,000 + $15,750 + $40,000 = $160,750.

Where's The Money Go

It's clear what money I have coming in, but where is it actually going? The way I see it, there are two categories to explore. There's the money that I'm never formally introduced to, because it's absorbed into a vast web of legislation and tax-advantaged accounts, and then there's the money that lives to see the light of day my checking account.

Death and Taxes

Since bonuses and stocks are distributed yearly on their own schedules, the money I get in my paychecks naturally comes from my base salary. So $105,000 divided over 26 pay periods would mean $105,000/26 = $4,038.46 every two weeks. And sure enough, that's the number I see at the beginning of my paycheck. From there, we have two types of deductions: Death and Taxes.

• Death. This portion consists of my 401k contribution ($1,200), my HSA contribution ($293.75), and my downright ruthless dental and vision insurance ($3.57). These things go under the "Death" portion because they're health-related and I can't access any of that money (without penalty) until I'm 59.5/65 (as of the present day's legislation for the 401k and HSA respectively). And who knows what I'll be like when I'm 60 (assuming a truck-related incident doesn't take me out of the game before then)? I can only assume I'll be dead inside, hollowed out from years of engaging in such soul-sucking adult activities as sitting in traffic and having mindless conversations about the weather.
• Taxes. This portion consists of the money I distribute among various government cubicles: a Disability Tax ($36.31), State Income Tax ($164.34), Medicare ($54.34), Federal Income Tax ($412.93), and Social Security Tax ($232.33). I've capitalized all of these terms because they sound Very Important™.

After both Death and Taxes, my biweekly take-home pay is $4,038.46 - ($1,200 + $293.75 + $3.57) - ($36.31 + $164.34 + $54.34 + $412.93 + $232.33) = $1,640.89.

Woah woah Brandon, hold on for a second. The yearly contribution limit for a 401k is $18,000, and $3,350 for a personal HSA. Crunching the numbers, your paycheck contributions are way too high!!

You'd normally be correct, over-eager eagle-eyed finance-savvy reader. The discrepancy is that I started working in May. I didn't start contributing to the 401k until June, and I didn't get my act together and start dumping small fistfuls of money into the HSA until September. The great thing about this is that starting at the beginning of next year, these two contributions are going to drop pretty dramatically (because they're spread over a full year), adding about $900 to my bi-weekly bottom line.

The Leftovers

We've established that 60% of my salary is gone before I see a cent of it (which is fine for reasons we'll get to soon), where does the rest of it go? If I were living in an apartment and paying the rate of $2,180 I estimated here, >65% of my after-tax money would go to that. But that, as we're all well-aware at this point, is not the case. So where is that money going? I was actually kind of curious myself, so I opened up my various credit card/bank statements and have itemized everything that cost more than $100 and was purchased on or after May 26th.

Non-Exhaustive List of Big Expenses

That accounts for most, if not all, of the big things, but naturally there are hundreds of smaller purchases that paint the picture more vividly: the (slightly) more reasonably-priced meals out, the movie tickets, the too-frequent Starbucks visits, the weekly Home Depot trips, etc. It'd be silly to have gathered all this information if we weren't going to draw some meaningful conclusions from it though. One thing I noticed is, though I haven't included the dates for the expenses, most of my earlier expenditures can be characterized by one mindset, while the later ones subscribe to a different school of thought. When I first adopted the truck life, my financial thinking was along the lines of, "I don't have to pay rent, that's ~$2,000 a month I can blow on whatever I want!" That mindset, as I'm slowly figuring out, is the wrong one to have. The new mindset is, "Consumption alone doesn't make happiness. Find what really brings you happiness, and invest your resources into that." I know, I know, I sound like a damn fortune cookie, but let me explain how that maps to my real-life plans.

The Plan

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I didn't really know what I wanted aside from freedom from debt. It wasn't until the Internet became privy to my life and started feeding me new perspectives and resources that it really clicked: I'm in the perfect position to retire early, and it aligns precisely with my goals. The more I thought about it, the less I could believe I hadn't seen it earlier. My motivation for all of this had always been "to travel the world", but what I didn't realize was how that was only a small piece of the bigger picture.

Making it a Reality

It's easy to say, "I want to retire early". But we all know talk is cheap, so let's start acting. More than a few people had pointed me towards Early Retirement Extreme, Mad Fientist, and Mr. Money Mustache, none of which I had ever heard of before. Mr. Money Mustache (MMM), in particular, has tons of ideas and philosophies that I'd been applying to my own life totally independently. His concept of "Mustachianism" centers on how to think about happiness, conscientious consumption, and life-hacks to cut unnecessary expenses, which normally circles around to his love of bikes. One thing that MMM had that I did not (aside from 20 years of extra life-experience) was a solid investment plan.

Investment

How early you can retire correlates with how much of your money you save. When you save money such that you can live on ~4% of the principal balance a year, you can retire. And by "save money", I mean take it and invest it in things that appreciate in value by, on average, >7% a year. This is something that was missing from my original plan, because I had banked (no pun intended) on maxing out my 401k for the next 35 years and then retiring on that money. Getting started with this huge shift in plans was surprisingly easy. My company uses Vanguard to manage our 401k accounts, so it was dangerously easy for me to open up a personal investment account through them and throw some money in there.

But Brandon, you know nothing about investing, how could you possibly have made a reasonable, balanced portfolio?

Because index funds are magical. I have no interest in buying individual stocks, I'm no Warren Buffett. I want something that averages out the market, smoothing over dips in different sectors and provides fairly consistent returns over long periods of time. But which index fund do I pick? I have no opinions on what direction the dividend market is heading (price-earnings ratios and their meaning are complete voodoo witchcraft to me), so I didn't put any particular emphasis on whether or not the index included dividend-paying companies. I didn't want to get too fancy with international companies, that's another area where I'm not nearly well-versed enough to make reasonable, informed decisions. I also knew that I wanted something with a low-expense ratio, so that my returns actually make it back to me and not to some hotshot banker putting a down payment on his third Lambo. All of these things led me to VOO - Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, an index fund from Vanguard that tracks the S&P 500 Index. It has a super low expense ratio (0.05%), and there's nothing too crazy or exotic about it. So I took $1,000 that I was going to use to pay down my loans, and I used it to buy a few shares of VOO.

But Brandon, I thought the goal was to pay down your student loans quickly so they don't accumulate interest?

That was (and still is) the goal, but there are a couple things to consider. First, I've paid off all of the higher interest (6.8%) student loans I had, the remaining loans all have a (dirt-cheap) 3.4% interest rate. And though past performance is not an indicator of future results, VOO has had annual returns of >10%. Even accounting for inflation, throwing my money at VOO and letting my loans accumulate interest is likely a profitable plan. That said, it's hard to put a value on the peace of mind you get from being debt-free, so my plan going forward is to split my savings-money between investing and loans, with about a 60/40 split leaning towards Vanguard. Once I get my bonus in a few months, I'll likely use that to put the final nail in the coffin of my short-lived student loan debt.

But Brandon, if you plan to retire so early, why bother with your HSA and 401k at all? It's not like you can use that money.

Good question, straw man alter ego. There are a couple perfectly valid reasons, but the biggest one is free money. My company matches 50% of my 401k contribution up to the $18,000 limit, meaning they hand me $9,000 a year extra just because I'm looking out for future me. Similarly, they drop $1,000 into the HSA every year as part of my health insurance plan. Another good reason is that I'm putting before tax money into these accounts, so they decrease my tax burden as well. On top of that, I learned that I can invest my HSA money, effectively turning it into a second retirement fund. One of the options for HSA investing was VIIIX, which is basically the same thing as VOO above, just in a different type of account. All of this means that even when I retire early, both of these funds will continue to (hopefully) earn money and compound, and I get magical cash windfalls for my 60th and 65th birthdays. Plus, with a trick I learned about here, you can actually take tax-free money out of your HSA before 65.

Lifestyle and Looking Forward

I'm already on track to make this a reality, and retire at 30 (or earlier, who knows), but going into it with the right mindset will make it even easier. I've been on my soapbox talking about how true happiness, for most people, isn't hiding in shopping malls or the crevices between the fresh leather seats of a new car, but I haven't been living my own credo to the fullest. Looking back at the past six months and my expense list above, I had more than my fair share of expensive nights out that only served to fatten me up and slim my wallet, leaving me with a few fuzzy memories and a productivity-ruining hangover. I get so much more lasting happiness from taking quiet bike rides down the Bay Trail, or even just sweeping out the truck on a lazy Sunday morning, opening the back gate to let the sunshine in and the gentle breeze twirl my dust pile around. It's just a matter of training myself to look in the right places.

As for my actual "early retirement", I probably shouldn't even call it that. When I say "early retirement", I really just mean the freedom to do what I want, and not have to work to survive. It's very unlikely that I'd actually stop working; I have sketches for grand plans that involve spending months on beaches in southeast Asia coding up whatever projects cross my mind. The only tricky thing for me now is figuring out how much money I'd need to retire on. My current life is heavily subsidised by my employer, and retiring would necessarily take that away from me. Luckily, I have a few years to figure it all out. For now, I'm just going to enjoy the interesting technical challenges I'm presented with on a daily basis, and watch my future unfold.

Note: I've never seen Game of Thrones, but I'm pretty sure the title is a reference to it.

When I was a kid, I used to watch my dad plow driveways and parking lots. He'd be out in the middle of a blizzard, wearing a sweatshirt (at most), carving out huge scoops of snow and heaving them over his shoulder. In moments like those, I thought he was a true-to-life superhero. So naturally it's no shock that I inherited his lust for needless feats of masculinity and macho-ness. As fall turned to winter every year, I'd resist transitioning to a more climate-conscious wardrobe, clinging on to my T-shirts and basketball shorts until it was borderline painful. I chose to "brave" some of the coldest, snowiest winters in Boston history wearing only a UMass hoodie and some well-worn jeans. And even when I wasn't being unnecessarily obstinate, I still spent four years with a roommate who loved keeping the windows open on frosty nights, and that's basically like sleeping outside, right? I'm well-aware that these weren't the smartest decisions, but there is an upshot: I was, without realizing it, conditioning myself for my current situation.

The Realization

As we creep closer and closer to winter, I've been noticing my reluctance to leave the warm embrace of my bed for the frigid world beyond.* Luckily, this is more my own hypochondria than actual hypothermia. After all, how bad can it really be when the record low for the area barely breaks freezing? Remembering the bitter -17° F morning I experienced last semester in Amherst, where I could literally feel my nose hairs stick together with each breath, the current climate is a comparative cakewalk. That said, there is still a big difference between it being 45° outside versus 45° in your home, where you sleep. So what am I to do about it?

The Game

The name of the game is heat control. When you step back and take a good look at the situation, a couple simple facts are pretty clear:

1. The truck is not insulated.** The only thing separating me from the outside world is thin sheathing, made out of a material that transmits energy (or a lack thereof) very well.
2. There is only one source of heat in the truck. As it turns out, it's my own body ripping apart the quinoa and chicken I had for dinner so it can maintain homeostasis.
3. I can only perceive the temperatures around me. As a human being consisting of nerves packed into a tangible, physical form, I can't sense anything beyond my own body.

Brandon, are you high? Don't get all existential/Astral projection-eqsue on me, what's with that last bullet point?

Don't worry, we're getting there. Now that we've established our few basic truths, we can come to a nice logical conclusion. Since the truck is so poorly-insulated, attempts to keep it warm are going to be futile and wasteful. So really, what I have to do is make sure that the sweet, sweet heat I'm producing doesn't go far. And that's exactly what I've been doing. I picked up a bulky, patchy jacket from Goodwill, a pair of cozy sweatpants, and an extra blanket (all pictured above). That way, as my body works off the extra plate of fish tacos I opted for, I'm taking that heat and making a comfortable little cocoon out of it. I can't help but be reminded of a piece of my father's advice, uttered while expressing his relationship with the cold:

You can always put more layers on, you can only take so many off.

-My Father

Testing It Out

It's been cold enough at night for a few weeks now to warrant putting this plan into action. Each night, after I've finished unpacking and repacking my gym bag, I throw on tomorrow's workout rags, then toss on the sweatpants and sweatshirt, and top it off with a jacket. I also throw on socks for good measure, which I've found make a pretty big difference in my eagerness to get out of bed in the morning. I then waddle into my bed like the Eskimo that I am, pull the respective sweatshirt and jacket hoods up, and proceed to sleep like a small child for the ensuing 7-9 hours. As for the effectiveness, I've noticed it doesn't take a ton of mental self-coaxing to get myself out of bed anymore, even when the temperature dips below 40. In fact, I'm sleeping better than ever, though I still need a little more data before I'm ready to do a full-scale analysis.

Isn't That Bad For You?

During my fifteen minutes of fame, I received many a comment letting me know that exposure to the cold causes any and all of the following ailments: pneumonia, herpes, polio, fetal alcohol syndrome, irritable bowels, death, being placed on Santa's naughty list, etc. Though these claims were dubious at best, I certainly was curious as to what I'm doing to my body. Thusly, I did some research. And when I say "research", I really mean "Googling a phrase aligning with my preconceptions, then reading the most reputable link". As far as my "research" shows, cold weather being the cause of sickness is a total myth. From the linked article:

Cold weather also does not cause colds -- at least not directly. Despite its name, the common cold is not caused by cold. "It doesn't have any effect at all," says Tallman. "There's no correlation." In fact, you may be more likely to "catch your death of cold" indoors, where it's warm and crowded than outdoors in the chilly air.

-Matt McMillen, WebMD

They go on to explain that cold air causes people to be in closer quarters, which in turn causes less-restricted spreading of illnesses. As long as I'm sleeping alone in the truck, which is usually the case, the cold air doesn't appear to be any worse for me. In fact, sleeping in cold weather can increase your brown fat stores while you sleep, which actually burn calories in colder temperatures. So not only does living in a truck-shaped freezer not hurt my health, it actually boosts my metabolism and makes me even warmer over time. Plus, a combination of reasonable genetics, proper diet, and exercise has graced me with a formidable immune system that drops its guard less than once a year. All things considered, I think I'm in good shape for the winter. The worst case scenario I can see is that it's colder than I'm expecting. If that's the case, I'll follow dear old Dad's advice and get some more jackets, or maybe even spring for a sleeping bag. Bring it on.

_{*As a rough estimate, I spend about 3 minutes longer in bed for every degree (Fahrenheit) below 50°.}

_{**And I have no intention of insulating it, though weatherproofing is a different story.}

I'd like to start with a eulogy.

We're gathered here today to mourn the loss of a close friend. His duration in our lives was swift and fleeting, almost ephemeral. His presence was electric, his absence left a hole in my heart, not to mention a deficit in my transportation abilities. Yes, I'm talking about the passing of our beloved friend, my corporate Specialized Turbo.

Before I say anything else, let me just acknowledge that this was entirely my fault. Okay, so remember that awesome electric bike I got through a company pilot program? It turns out that a big stipulation of the program is that the main usage of the bike has to be commuting. Naturally, living on campus, my "commute" doesn't quite qualify, and so I, with a heavy heart, had to return the bike. In my defense, I was "commuting" to my mailbox (~10 miles away) 3-4 times a week, but that's still not quite in the spirit of the program.

What Now?

I was just starting to explore the immense mobility the bike provided me. It liberated me from two equally-unpleasant travelling options: spend all my time walking or drive my clunky, inefficient house (it's barely a car, as far as I'm concerned) around. I had bought a really nice helmet for use with the electric bike, which I'd hate to see sitting around the truck, going to waste. I knew I couldn't go back to my old life Before Cycling (BC for short). I also knew I wasn't going to spend $3,000+ on a fancy, brand new electric bicycle. My current priorities dictate that I split that money between my remaining student loans and my fancy new investment portfolio (to be detailed in a future post). So I started looking around for gently-worn, non-electric road bikes.

The Haggle Battle

I was raised Jewish, though I haven't regularly attended services in nearly a decade. It follows that, if you believe in stereotypes, I should theoretically be good at haggling. But experience has shown that I'm just not good at it. In fact, I'd go as far as saying I'm flat out bad at it, somehow forking over more cash than if I had said nothing at all.

But Brandon, what does your inconsistent, lackadaisical approach to Judaism have to do with bicycles?

Well impatient reader, allow me to explain. On this past Monday evening, I sauntered into a quaint used bike shop in Palo Alto, and casually laid down my demand.

"I'm looking for a used road bike", I said, "Nothing fancy, just to get around town. My budget is $300." Notice that I didn't say "about $300" or "around $300". This is important because 1) I'm usually a huge, subconscious advocate for that type of imprecise language and 2) it sets the groundwork for what took place next.

The bike shop salesperson grabs two bikes for me to try out outside. The first one is a "vintage" bike, which is just bike-speak for "really old". I get on it and it starts to spasmodically shift gears without any input from me. Assuming demonic possession, I bring that bike inside and grab the next one. This one doesn't appear to need an exorcism, but I'm not particularly wowed either. It's a bit rusty, and I feel like I'm putting in a disproportionate amount of effort for the snails' pace that I'm moving at. Those bikes were $250 and $300 respectively. I go back inside, and the salesperson says to me, "Here, try this one out, I think you might like it." It feels like that scene in Harry Potter where he's picking out his first wand and he finds the perfect match in the pair wand to Voldemort's. I get on and it just feels right. Taking it out for a spin, it's smooth and the gears shift nicely. This is the one, I know it. I bring it back inside, the smile on my face lets the salesperson know I've found my bike.

"This one", he says, "is $400."

My heart sinks a bit: though my $300 limit was arbitrary, he doesn't know that, and I intend to stick with it. I let out a sigh, "that's really unfortunate. I like the bike, but $300 is my limit here."

He furrows his brow a bit, "I can probably do $350".

At this point, I realize that my first successful haggle is underway, and I stand firm, "Sorry man, I set aside $300 to get a bike, I really can't go over that." Sure it's not entirely truthful, but $300 is my target.

"It's only a year old and was hardly used. If it were brand new, this bike would cost…", he pauses for a second to look it up, "over $500. The best I can do is $320." It's pretty close to what I wanted and he seems serious, I should take it. It's a great bike and my past day's research says this is a good deal. But I keep pushing.

"That's too bad, I was hoping to take this bike home today. Do you have any other bikes in my price range I could look at?"

He cracks. "You know what, I'll give it to ya for $300".

I take him up on the offer immediately, and I buy a $50 lock too, because I feel bad for subjecting him to my games and appreciate his flexibility. I also genuinely needed a lock. He throws in a kickstand, and attaches the bike lock for me as well. The total, with tax, comes to ~$390. Not bad, not bad at all.

I load it into the back of the truck, and secure it to the bike rack I had built for the electric bike. Because this bike is so much lighter (20 pounds versus 50 pounds), it feels much more stable.

Quality Time with the Bike

Hagglefest 2015 was last Monday, so I've had almost a week to get familiar with my new fat-powered race car. I didn't do much riding until yesterday, mostly just short trips into town, which the bike complied with handily, without question. Yesterday however, I did something crazy.

The Big Ride

My cardio is generally awful, as I've mentioned before. Jogging a mile requires an act of divine intervention, and I've never cycled more than ~20 miles at once. Even when I did, those 20 mile trips were on the electric bike which, on "full power" mode (the default setting), does most of the work for me. But I'd really been enjoying the bike so far, and I was itching to take it on a real ride. It just so happened that there was a truck-people meetup happening in Oakland on Saturday (which will definitely get its own post). So I resolved to bike to Oakland, a ~50 mile, four hour odyssey from where my box-truck home is parked. I had no idea what I was getting into.

This post is already getting pretty long, so I'll skip most of the tiny, inconsequential details that I love to ramble on about (like how I still had two hours to go when I thought I was "almost there"). The gist is that the ride was punishing, but beautiful. I rode across long swaths of the Bay Trail, crossed over the Dumbarton Bridge, and saw plenty of gorgeous, sprawling land and seascapes. It was well-worth the chapped lips, sweat-soaked clothing, and sore, bruised butt bones (which I now know are called ischial tuberosities). Plus, it's gratifying to know that I biked a distance that's likely distinguishable from space. I still can't feel my legs, but that'll probably get better (right?). I'll definitely do similar rides in the future, once my body forgives me.

One last note that I thought was interesting: If I had still had the electric bike, it's very likely I wouldn't have biked the distance. The battery range is only 25-30 miles, so 60% of the way through my trip, the bike would have died and I'd be left with a 50 pound bike and 20+ miles to go. Not ideal. I would have had to either drive (environmental homicide/generally awful) or Caltrain/BART (lame and inconvenient). So I'm actually getting more use out of a less-fancy bicycle. Life is all about your willingness to make lemonade.

Insurance.

I've ducked and dodged dependence on electricity and other utilities, and I definitely don't have a home phone or Internet service. Insurance is the one recurring truck-related expense I'm stuck with.* Given how little I drive the truck and my squeaky-clean, accident-free track-record, I would totally ditch that too if it weren't mandatory in California.** And while I may have dodged a bullet with the license situation, that frosty Boston speeding ticket was still looming overhead. So naturally I wasn't ecstatic when I got a letter stating it's time to renew my insurance policy, until I took a good look at my old policy.

Some Backstory: May 20^th, 2015

This was the day I drove my current home off the lot. I was pretty anxious during the purchase, I've never before had to put on a pokerface that says, "Trust me, it's normal that a 22-year old guy is independently buying this decommissioned Budget truck, and I definitely, definitely have no intention of living in it." By hour 4 of negotiating and signing papers, I was itching to leave. To speed up the process, I pretty much accepted all of the defaults for the insurance policy with very little resistance. One of the things I didn't check carefully enough was the "Current Estimated Annual Miles" section, and here's where the fun begins.

The "Current Estimated Annual Miles" field on my insurance policy was entered as 8,000 miles, which I couldn't help but laugh at. I know some of my decisions could be considered questionable, but the idea of driving that rusty, screaming metal death trap for 8,000 miles a year is downright suicidal. It's already been around the block over 158,000 times (assuming "the block" has a circumference of one mile), driving it any more than I need to is like poking an unstable, already-ticking time-bomb. As with all vehicles that are quite literally powered by explosions, it's not a matter of if it'll break down, but when it'll break down. And who knows how catastrophic the breakage will be? Maybe I'll be lucky enough to experience a simple tire blowout or a quaint engine fire, but what if the back gate just falls off and strews my few possessions all over the road for terrified commuters to run over? I'm not trying to re-create a scene from Final Destination, so I drive only when totally necessary. Plus, you can practically hear the screams of future generations coming out of the exhaust pipe as I idle in traffic, getting 8 miles per gallon while I star in Al Gore's nightmares. An estimate of 8,000 miles a year was clearly too high, but how much had I actually driven in the past six months of owning this thing?

Digging out the paperwork from when I bought the truck, I could see that the odometer reading was 157,500 miles at the time of purchase. Taking a quick look at the dashboard on my way out this morning, I saw that I was sitting at a cool 158,514 miles. Putting my engineering degree to work here: 158,514 - 157,500 = 1,014 miles. That's for six months though, so my yearly mileage estimate is ~2,000 miles, give or take a trip to San Francisco. But that's pretty good! Certainly better than the 8,000 estimated miles I'm currently paying for. And fewer miles means less driving, which means spending less time on the road, which (hopefully) means fewer accidents, which (hopefully) means lower insurance premiums! After a (surprisingly quick) call to my insurance agent, I found out that I could bring in the truck, show them the odometer and truck-sale-paperwork, and get an updated quote on my renewal. Sounded good to me

The Trip

We've talked about how traffic is everything bad about the world, right? Like, how cars idling on a long stretch of highway are the physical manifestation of evil? Well I let out my dark side today by leaving work at the height of rush hour and sitting idly on the 101, which I would classify as a Bad Move™. Instead of a reasonable 15 minutes, which is what the drive would normally have taken, I had 55 glorious minutes to lament over what a terrible invention the automobile is while repeatedly bashing my head against the steering wheel to pass the time. Seriously, I don't understand how people can commute like that every day and still claim to have a soul. Anyway, I eventually arrived at the insurance place, where they took pictures of my odometer and bestowed the new quote upon me. As a reminder, my payment for the past six months was $727.88, or ~$121 a month. Taking into account the freshly-minted speeding ticket on my record, I wasn't sure what to expect. Drum roll please:

… drum roll sounds …

$421.88!

That there is downright reasonable. My monthly "rent" for the next six months is going to be ~$70, a pleasant 40% reduction from the past six months. Plus, because I showed up two weeks before my policy needed to be renewed, they're going to refund me the difference on my current policy, prorated for these next two weeks. That adds another $26 to my rent-savings, making my monthly bill ~$116 a month for the past six months. I'll update the savings calculator formula once I get the exact numbers in the mail, and I have a new algorithm that can handle my changing insurance costs, which I'll upload soon. I have a few other fancy-shmancy updates (like working search functionality) on the way as well, so watch out for those.

But Brandon, you got a speeding ticket, shouldn't that have made your insurance, like, a BILLION DOLLARS?

I would have thought so too, but then I remembered a speeding ticket I got about three years ago. It was two years and nine months old when I started my policy six months ago, which means that it still counted against me and drove up the rate on my original policy. But tickets only count against you for three years apparently, so it "expired" about three months ago. And if I hadn't promptly replaced it with a new speeding ticket, it's very likely my new policy quote would have been even lower. There are other factors too, my age and marital status makes insurance more expensive, but my Good Driver discount (that I somehow get???) and Science Degree discount (I love how that's a thing) help to balance it out. In any case: 55 minutes could save you 40% or more on car insurance.***

_{*I do have a music streaming subscription and some monthly server costs, but since those aren't truck or house-related expenses, I didn't feel the need to mention them.}

_{**It's mandatory in 47 other states too, with the mavericks being New Hampshire and Virginia.}

_{***Or however that jingle goes.}

Note: Throughout this post, I use phrases like "yesterday" and "last night". In reality, it was two nights ago, but I'm slow to get my thoughts onto (digital) paper.

The Bay Area is a fairly dry place. In the past six months of my living out here, it has only "rained" a handful of times. I use the term rain lightly, because it's barely ever more than a passing drizzle. In spite of the precipitation's timidity, people have become so adjusted to the area's micro-climate that they act (and drive) like it's a flash flood. Yesterday, it rained. But it didn't "rain", no, this wasn't Your Dad's Rain™ at all. Yesterday, I experienced my first Californian downpour.

A Rude Awakening

Falling asleep to the sounds of a light drizzle has actually proved fairly relaxing. The measured, metallic taps of gentle raindrops on the thin box roof haven't been cause for much concern. Unfortunately, that doesn't hold true when showers become full-on rainstorms, a la last night. The metallic taps turn into a two-year old's one-man pot-and-pan all-percussion band, a perfect maelstrom of discordant tones. It was more than enough to wake me up a few times over the course of the night: groggy, confused, and wondering if my life was in danger at the hands of the monsters pounding on my walls.

The Problem

I've mentioned "The Hole" before, a looming Home Improvement project I've been trying (lackadaisically) to figure out how to address. It hasn't really been an issue, the pecking crows I get every so often aren't a big deal, and the few sporadic spurts of rainfall I've seen so far never let more than a few drops of water inside. Last night, my relationship with rain took a turn for the worse. Dwarfed by the din of rain using my roof as a bongo drum, I could faintly hear a metered drip sound, maybe once every few seconds. This is a Bad Thing™: a drip every few minutes I can ignore, but at this frequency, I'm dealing with a pretty substantial amount of water. Too much water potentially means mold or mildew, or rotting away the wood, or making the truck extra humid during the day, which in turn makes it a breeding ground for sadness (read: bugs). So I begrudgingly rolled out of bed (at 3:26 AM) and took a look at the situation. Sure enough, the area around the hole was providing a slow, but steady stream of water droplets, and aggressively placing them on my floor. Time to spring into action.

The (Very Temporary) Solution

I'm no stranger to leaky roofs; my childhood home had its fair share of drip spots. The living room and my bedroom were particularly bad offenders, but we'd just grab a few pots from the kitchen, gingerly place them on the carpet, and not think much more of it. As it turns out, I don't have many pots in the truck. I did however, have an empty tub of protein powder that I hadn't had a chance to throw away yet. But alas, the drip was in the corner of the truck, and water was splashing all over the wooden railings before it hit the ground. I first attempted to tape the tub to the wall/ceiling, but all I had was carpenter's tape and the angle was all wrong anyway. I needed a way to divert the water away from the wall, and funnel it down into the tub.

Then I remembered about the new clothes rack I've yet to finish. The hollow metal rod is ever so slightly longer than the width of the truck, and I've been taking my sweet time cutting it with a hack saw (which takes forever). As a result, it's been sitting on the ground for approximately two months, clanging obnoxiously to remind me of its presence anytime I drive anywhere. Anyway, I maneuvered one end of the rod up to the leak, jammed the other end into the tub, and then used a bin full of random stuff to hold it in place. The end result is pictured above, and I like to think that MacGyver would be proud.

It was still raining when I woke up again at 5:30 AM, and the makeshift bucket had actually collected a fairly impressive amount of water. Was the stopgap a success? I like to think so.

The Longer-Term Solution

Even though it doesn't rain here much, fixing the leak is a much more attractive option than just managing the leak. Theoretically, I could just rig up the pipe/tub combination every time it started raining, but that's more of a cop-out than anything else. What happens if I'm away for a few days and it rains? I can't keep the pipe there all the time, it's not stable enough to stay in place while I'm driving. Plus, do I really want to keep an empty tub around all the time? That's just clutter, and I'm not one for clutter.

The issue is that the damaged area isn't just one material. The outside looks like sheet metal, and the inside is some sort of fiberglass composite. I could just throw some epoxy putty over the wound, but I have my doubts about how well that would hold/keep out water. I'll have to call a few different places (mechanics, glass companies, Ford-certified maintenance centers, etc) and see if anyone can fix the whole thing at once. And if it takes them more than a day to do it, I have to find a place to stay. Not a big deal, but the combination of all the aforementioned obstacles probably explains why, after six months of owning the truck, the damned hole is still there.