This property and this view is too beautiful not to share. We now have a HipCamp listing so you can join us for a sleep over!
We’d love to have you over some time, whether you’re passing through or getting away from it all. Our place is off the beaten path, but not in the middle of nowhere. At night you can enjoy a sky full of bright stars in all directions. The mornings have big bright sunrises and endless views of multiple mountain ranges surrounding Anza Valley.
Eleven minutes off Highway 371 brings you to peaceful quiet on 20 acres where you can park your RV and pitch a tent for extra space. We have power, water, and septic. T-Mobile offers excellent cell service and we have a fiber Internet connection too.
Getting back to civilization is easy if you need a quick fix for ice cream at Dairy Queen or dinner at Pizza Factory. We often enjoy the Taste of Asia restaurant for delicious dine-in or take-out. In the mood for a little nightlife? The Cahuilla Casino and Hotel is right around the corner for gambling, drinking, music, and food.
Each month we improve the land. Little by little we’ve cleaned up and cleared out places to walk and stretch out. You can hike around, ride a bike, or sit back and relax. More strenuous hikes are nearby. For those looking for adrenaline-fueled adventures, the Cahuilla Creek Motocross track is a major destination for professional offroad motorcycle riders. If you’re not ready yet, you can take a motocross course at MotoVentures or just watch from the sidelines.
The possibilities here are endless. Bring your imagination and find an adventure.
Reach out through HipCamp to inquire or make a reservation.
The kids told me I have to record video vertically. So naturally it had to go on TikTok. Only a couple years late to the party!
While I aspire to create long-form videos on YouTube, the thought of editing has been a formidable barrier to publishing. By contrast, publishing on TikTok without overthinking editing has helped me get started. When I have 30 or 60 minutes, I try to string together the footage I’ve taken into a story and short video.
Check out the first 5 or 6 videos available and let me know what you think!
Living in an RV full time has been a never ending series of system failures and repairs. Our experience jumping from a stationary home to the RV has been exhausting and nothing prepared me for just how emotionally destabilizing it can feel over time. Perhaps if I hadn’t been trying to work a full-time job while developing the land or if had more experience with RV systems, it would have been easier.
I expected a certain amount of maintenance after following the lives of sailors, vanlifers, and RV full-timers on YouTube for the past couple years. The constant motion of a sailboat in the ocean, for example, accelerates wear and tear faster than a typical home on land. This leads to frequent breakdowns even with regular maintenance.
Our situation is not as critical as a sailboat crossing the Pacific, though it sometimes seems just as delicate. We bought 20 acres of vacant land back in June, 2022 and moved into our trailer to live while developing structures to protect us from the high summer heat and the low winter cold.
We left our home in San Diego where everything just worked, including us. We still work from home and I don’t mean we’re travel bloggers, farming our land, or ghostwriters, and we’re not in the gig economy.
Both Levy and I work full-time jobs where we are online constantly interacting with co-workers, customers, and systems. I spend at least 6 hours a day on Zoom calls, often in bigger group meetings of 6 or more people where I am actively contributing if not leading. There is hardly a time to grab a bite to eat or use the restroom in between. Levy is taking and making calls where constant, consistent reachability is a must.
Working from home is difficult, however, when the systems that power life here fail. And it’s noticeable! It becomes pretty obvious when you’re on camera and the whole RV starts to shake from the strong winds. It’s hard not to be distracted when the power goes out and I scramble mid-call to troubleshoot and restore power to my second and third monitors.
This has been a pretty challenging and new experience for me since I was never into working with my hands like my dad or brother, or even my mom who took on more than her share of remodeling and furniture refinishing projects. They were always doing something and learning as they went. I picked up a few things, fortunately, but my projects were more focused on taking apart a vacuum or putting together a robot on the living room floor in front of the TV.
As an adult, fixing something around the house after work or spending a Saturday cleaning gutters has been something I do begrudgingly when procrastination was no longer an option. With Levy’s encouragement, though, I grew to take pride in fixing things after watching a video on YouTube and ordering a part from Amazon.
I’ve fixed our dishwasher several times, replaced the garbage disposer, demolished our kitchen and bathroom, and installed the wiring and lighting in a new closet wall in our oversized bedroom. It was Levy, though, who remodeled the bathroom and built the new wall from scratch in our bedroom. I still gravitate towards fixing the electronics stuff, like replacing the failed circuit board in our 55″ LED TV or replacing the air conditioning relay in our 2009 Ford Escape SUV. I do enjoy using my soldering iron, after all.
Here on our new property and in our little trailer, never have we had a day where the chores weren’t significant, a development project wasn’t on the docket, and no systems failed. We’ve been in the RV continuously for 6 months now. You would think I would have a good handle on how everything works. I don’t, though.
My own ignorance became clear to me when we plugged in the washing machine and popped a GFCI socket breaker. I can troubleshoot an AC breaker issue, but why didn’t my DC accessories work?! I still don’t know, but I reset all the breakers and GFCI sockets and jiggled enough wires to finally get it all working again. In hindsight, I think my understanding of what systems here use DC power was incomplete on that one. Until you think it through, the interplay between DC and AC systems in the RV seems a total mystery. Convoluted as it is, it makes sense when you realize the goal is to camp off-grid.
The variety of failures has been perplexing, but what has been the most tiring is the near daily frequency and sometimes multiple system failures simultaneously. Anyway, without further adieu, I’m going to keep track of what breaks for a while to give everyone a sense of just what goes on in here. The insights for myself could be useful too. Let’s find out!
Date
Issue
Notes
Pre-Sep-2022
So. Many. Issues.
I didn’t take detailed notes before September 16th, but plenty of things had gone wrong which prompted me to keep track. 1. The water heater pilot light went out with increasing frequency. 2. We lost grid power in the height of the work day possibly due to an overheating extension cord when it was nearly 100º F with relentless sun for weeks on end and the air conditioner running non-stop. 3. My 4000W inverter would shutdown and restart for 10 seconds at a time for no reason during a live meeting. 4. We lost the cover to one roof vent. 5. A stray dog arrived then three more. We had packs of dogs cross our property a couple times, but these four were with us more than a month and all were very loving. 6. A stolen water truck was parked outside our property and I thought there might be a dead body inside. 7. The massive Fairview Fire consumed 30,000 acres and we had to evacuate.
16-Sep-2022
Harold was killed
There aren’t really enough words to say all the good things about Harold or all the sad things about his untimely passing. Unfortunately, the stray dogs did what animals do and killed Harold. Maybe someday I’ll write more when it hurts less.
21-Sep-2022
No lights and refrigerator out
Levy was home alone while I was on a business trip when the lights and refrigerator stopped working. I talked her through some troubleshooting and the next morning she hooked up the solar panels. The solar charger didn’t seem to work and eventually the cell modem stopped. We never were able to fix it remotely, but when I got home, I confirmed that one of the battery’s built-in battery management system (BMS) had gone into a protection state, refusing to produce power or take a charge. The A/C battery charger had stopped working weeks earlier and I hadn’t fixed it, so the solar power hadn’t been enough to keep them charged that night. To get them charging again, I had to trick the one battery back into operational mode using a car jump starter battery pack. Connecting 2 lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO) batteries in parallel can trick an automatic charger into sending current when it won’t if it detects that the battery is not taking a charge. Receiving a charge resets the BMS back into operational mode…and solar charge the next day carried us along until January.
2-Oct-2022
Keyboard
Carmen the cat threw up on my keyboard. I tried to wash it out and left the power off while I let it dry. Now it won’t stay connected (Bluetooth).
6-Oct-2022
Kumar was out all night #2
Phew. My heart rate is coming down. My 2nd cat was out all night, chased and surrounded by the dogs under the crackhouse. My wife couldn’t sleep and was walking around at all hours of the night. I got up before 6am to look and she didn’t really work at all distracted, walking, calling for him, and finally crawling under the dilapidated mobile home. She got me excited at 2pm saying she found him only to have not seen him, only heard him. Then finally saw him. I spent 2 hours digging holes to get under more of the crack shack while she waded through garbage, mouse or rat droppings, and God knows what under there. My wife scared the dogs away with pepper spray and I lured them away with food. When Kumar, our cat, came out next to my head (I was laying on my stomach wearing only shoes and underwear to keep my clothes clean), my favorite dog came cuddling up to me. Shit! I had to quietly escort her away. With his favorite smelly food in my hand, I coaxed him into coming down from the flooring of the marijuana grow house one more but he got scared away by thunder from the dark clouds that had appeared from nowhere. Third time’s a charm, though, and he cautiously walked out paused and walked the 20 feet to our open trailer door. Dirty paws and stuff sticking to his tail, but he’s eating like he hasn’t eaten in days. I hope he learned his lesson. His brother Harold was unfortunately killed by the dogs just a few weeks ago.I’m gonna go drink the rest of the night, but will be more attentive tomorrow. Sorry to Michael on my team at work since I had to cancel our 1:1 at the last minute when the fun really began. Never a boring day here on the hill.
13-Oct-2022
First Dog Taken Away
I can’t really bring myself to write much about this event or Harold’s passing. We had called the county animal control officer previously and even had the first stray dog loaded (before the other three ever arrived) until we found out that they will definitely kill the animals. We had been under the assumption they wouldn’t based on our experience with San Diego Animal Control. When the officer said they would, Levy and I couldn’t send her with him. We let her out with the intent of keeping her, but after Harold’s death and having four dogs, it became clear we didn’t need the extra responsibility and distraction. We didn’t have a safe, warm place to keep them out of the rain, cold, or away from other animals. It was a very, very difficult decision to call animal control again. It was very emotional to trap them and load them up to be taken away. It was not easy for them or us. The first one to go was the first to arrive. We called her Dr. Gray as in Gray’s Anatomy.
14-Oct-2022
Two More Dogs Taken
Just as emotional as the first one. We called these two Dr. Shepherd (another Gray’s Anatomy reference) and Baby Mama.
17-Oct-2022
Fourth and Final Dog Taken
This was really sad because this last dog was the baby of one that was taken away a few days earlier. She just paced around our property looking for her mama and her friends who had all disappeared. We called her Baby Dog.
25-Oct-2022
Low Water Pressure
Our water pipes froze…or became frozen-like until it warmed up. I walked around outside in my underwear troubleshooting for 10 minutes, checking the various other faucets to confirm it’s not just our filter or indoor plumbing. It affected all the hoses (all above-ground) from the well head, including to the trailer.
3-Dec-2022
Fresh Water Tank Dropped
Fresh water tank supports broke. The welded “cage” supports the weight of the fresh water tank broken under the weight, perhaps exacerbated by the cold temperature? Anyway, I propped it up with the small jack from our Toyota Prius. Gotta get that thing fixed…
7-Dec-2022
Water Hose Froze
We had already removed the in-line filter that seemed permanently damaged from a previous freeze, but the narrow metal-clad hose and even the thick rubber farm hose seemed to freeze tonight somewhere around 32 degrees (the car said 29 and my iPhone says it’s 35–can’t wait to get a little Internet-connected weather station hooked up).
13-Dec-2022
No DC Power
It snowed the day before, so we ran out of battery capacity without any sun to generate power from our solar panels. Incidentally, the A/C to D/C battery charger failed months ago and I didn’t replace it. So, we also couldn’t charge the batteries from the grid power we have. Nice.
15-Dec-2022
Water Pipe
For no specific reason, I decided as I was walking by that I would just look at the water pressure gauge. It read 0. It never reads 0. It’s usually like 40 or 50 depending on the amount of water in the pressure tanks. So, I checked the water flow from a nearby valve and the water came out…also from the side of the valve that had apparently burst by the freezing of the water during our recent freezing snow day.
16-Dec-2022
Water Pipe
Another water valve was discovered to be busted open from the side as I was shutting off the water for our month-long vacation. Luckily, these both should be easy to replace myself at the lowest possible cost due to their accessibility and (sadly) their recent replacement which leaves no rusty threads to unseal.
6-Jan-2023
Batteries are Dead
Once again, the solar power wasn’t enough to keep the batteries charged. We had left on a long drive to Houston for Christmas and then to Peoria, IL for New Years Eve. Without an A/C charger, with a few rainy days, and with the heat on consuming D/C power on the fan, the batteries finally ran down 3 weeks after we left. The biggest concern this created for me was that we lost security camera feeds and Internet access. The Wi-Fi lightbulbs and sockets had also been turning lamps on to dissuade would-be burglars. Interestingly, the batteries did not recharge the next sunny day either due to a cascade of conditions that kept them drained. Assuming the BMS hadn’t disabled a battery, the load from the furnace fan, cellular modem, cameras, and assorted devices kept them drained despite any power from the solar charge controller. Perhaps on a really sunny day, the panels could have generated enough power to feed all the demands, but as soon as enough power was present to turn on the thermostat the furnace fan immediately drained it all and the cycle just repeated until the sun went down. I was fortunate enough to have a good friend named Chris drive out to the country from San Diego a couple days later and reset the BMS. It worked great until the sun went down. It never worked again until we got home a week later when I could charge it manually.
24-Feb-2023
Prius Battery Died
The Prius has been a retreat for Jaizel while Levy and I have endless Zoom meetings all day. Unfortunately, the Prius has a very unexpected behavior where it keeps the headlights or interior lights on. For example, the lights stay on if you stop driving and stay in the car without opening the doors, even if you use the remote to lock the car. Unbeknownst to the driver, the lights stay on the battery drains. Jump starting the Prius is easy enough, but a pain. Glad I have a small portable battery pack to jump start each of my cars.
27-Feb-2023
Toilet Clogged and Water All Over the Floor
The toilet in the camper has a lever to flush that also opens a cover to the waste tank. Below the opening, before the tube down to the tank, is a bit of a shelf (no idea why). The “shelf” is an unfortunate spot where waste get get held up before heading down the tube to the tank. The clog caused water to get backup and flow out over the bathroom floor.
16-Mar-2023
Ran Out of Propane
One tank was unusable recently due to a bad valve, so we have been living on a single tank. After a night away for work, we didn’t have time to get a refill before bed when we got back home. So, around 1am we ran out of propane and started getting really cold. The electric heaters were in the shed too, so we spent the morning freezing until the sun came up. Using the electric heaters with the microwave also popped the circuit breaker, so we had to deal with a variety of issues on top of not having hot water for a shower. What a great start to the day!
16-Apr-2023
Truck Won’t Start
Just when things are going fine, the truck died. It took longer and longer to start beginning on Friday and by Sunday it died after a stop for gas. We had to take an Uber to AutoZone to get some starting fluid which fortunately worked. We were able to start the car by spraying the starting fluid into the air intake. It got us a few miles before it died one more time in the middle of traffic at a stop sign on the way home. Fortunately, I was quick on the starting fluid and got it running again in a minute. That week, we scrambled to get a rental car then go look at a used car. By Wednesday we had a new-to-us used car. A 2017 Subaru Outback. Our dirt roads and winter weather require 4×4, so this was a good choice for a second car.
17-May-2023
Killed a Rattlesnake
Casually talking in front of our trailer, I noticed a strange shape out of the corner of my eye. Mid-sentence I decide to let my mind wander. Lo and behold, it was a snake. It wasn’t angry or aggressive, but it was a rattlesnake and we agreed that we could not let it continue to hang around our property. I was genuinely sad to kill it. It wasn’t threatening us and it didn’t have to die, but it was the only way we could feel safe for ourselves, the cats, and our guests. Rest in peace, rattlesnake.
24-May-2023
Dumpster Delivery Torn Down Our Gate
To dispose of the melted metal that was a double-wide mobile home on the top pad, we ordered a very large bin. It was delivered on a big, big truck from a metal recycler out of Oceanside. Our interior road to the top pad had been blocked a week earlier by a load of gravel we had delivered for another project, so the only way up to the drop-off point was out our side gate and back into the top gate. The truck was so tall that the top of the bin hit the very large circumference wooden telephone pole that formed the top crossing beam of our entrance (like you might go under as you enter a fancy ranch). The driver stopped while the pole rested across the bin and I just shrugged it off and gave him the signal to proceed, damage to the gate be damned. It knocked over one of the vertical poles holding it up along with the crossing beam, so now I gotta fix that. We always seem to make more work for ourselves…
30-May-2023
Tried to Repair a Road
After we spend two days loading up the metal meticulously into the bin with a number of scratches, bumps, and back aches, we called to have them pick up the bin. It was only then that the dispatcher told us the driver wasn’t sure it could haul the full bin out because of a very uneven section of the main dirt road to our property. The even took a screenshot from Google Maps and drew a big red arrow identifying the hazard. If we didn’t fix it, they said we would have to unload it! I CANNOT believe they wouldn’t have told us that the very same or next day when the driver had come to this conclusion, rather than waiting for us to fill the bin! So, Levy and I went out after work (we’re always busy after work) and used our shovels, pickaxe, hoe, rake, gravel, and water to try to repair the road. 3 hours later and called on account of darkness, it’s still not good enough. We delayed the pickup and now are going to have to hire someone with a tractor and a load of gravel or dirt to do more work at more cost to us.
26-Apr-2024
Robbed and Truck Stolen
There will have to be a much longer post about this shit. I’ve got some pictures and video, but disappointingly few due to the nature of how they broke in. I’ll update this page with a link as soon as I can get the whole story written down. There will be extensive lessons learned.
14-May-2024
Squirrel in Trailer!
I’m sitting in a meeting, out of town, when my camera inside the trailer sends a notification. I’m notified there is a pet detected–on the inside camera! Little bugger snuck up an opening on the bottom of the trailer where plumbing and wires enter. Got himself up on top of the cabinet and found my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
This is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down when we bought vacant land
New Me, Who Dis?
I’ve always liked the idea of reinventing myself. Each transition from middle school to high school to college seemed like a chance to be someone new. I dreamed about what my life would be like when I grew up. Reading BMX magazines about life in California, and later listening to Jimmy Buffett sing about tropical locations, fueled my Illinois childhood dreams. This shaped me so much that in my senior year of college, I exclusively interviewed with companies located on the West Coast.
After graduating from the University of Illinois (UIUC), I moved to Northern California. In the Folsom area (yeah, the one with the prison), a great job afforded me the time and funds to try new adventures. I left behind the version of myself that played soccer and swimming for a new mountain-man version of myself into whitewater rafting and kayaking. This was like my ideal combination of danger, adventure, athletics, and skills in a single activity. How had I never done this before?
I was in a weeklong guide training camp as soon as humanly possible. Just like that, I was guiding professional rafting trips on weekends. I like to think this was my side hustle before side hustling had a name. Every weekend was a new adventure–arriving before dawn, paying (and tipping) customers, and floating down beautiful canyons. There was a real man-versus-nature feel to running the class III and IV rapids of the South and Middle forks of the American River. It was the first real new me.
The opportunities to reinvent myself continued as a young adult working and traveling solo. My first international trip was to Israel. A year or two later I began a new role that had me traveling to more far flung places I had never even dreamed of visiting. For over a year I was traveling every other month for a month at a time to Malaysia, India, South Korea, China, New Zealand, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Travel was so heavy that when by chance I met my bride-to-be, Levy, I easily pivoted to living abroad. After spending just two weeks getting to know each other, I moved to the Philippines in 2002 on an extended business trip. It was actually cheaper for my company to fly me from that home base than to fly me from the U.S. to Asia so frequently. So, I made a quick trip back home to put some stuff in storage and three weeks later I arrived to start my new life in Manila. That was the third new me. That whirlwind is a story for another time.
In hindsight, I don’t think I ever reinvented myself so much as made incremental improvements. A manager of mine and an important figure in my life once remarked that I had kept my values while embracing new cultures. I was proud of that. I felt like I was becoming more of my true self. Each evolution felt just like a new me to me.
Looking back, I lived and learned and was never bored or fell into a tedious work life. Not every step was as much progress as the others and some transitions were slow, but each was an adventure and a chance to be something different. So, after a decade in the same place, I guess a big change was somewhat predictable.
Moving to the Country, Gonna Eat a Lot of Peaches
For those older than me, it was probably predictable how my tastes would mature with time. Riding a motorcycle and going to the beach was great when I was younger, but I feel drawn to rural areas now as I approach 50. The COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine might have also played a role. We were fortunate to have a comfortable home with outdoor living space and hiking trails nearby, but it was time for a change after the vaccines were available. The kids have all moved out for school or to start their lives as adults now, making us empty nesters.
A typical southern California front yard
Our open floor plan
Springtime view from our balcony before remodeling
Fall view from the remodeled balcony
Levy hikes into the sunset on our neighborhood trails
I never thought I would willingly move away from the San Diego coastal area, but our place was never really close enough to the beach. The suburbs were very nice and many young families were clamoring to move into our home in a great neighborhood in the North County when we listed it for rent. For me, though, it had just outlived it’s charm. It was empty without the kids…and if I was going to reinvent myself, it wasn’t going to happen there.
Somehow in all our dreaming of #vanlife and brainstorming passive income ideas, we landed on buying vacant land. We needed to stay in California for in-state tuition and wanted to stay close to our youngest attending UCLA. We love the idea of being on the road, but we have cats and need reliable Internet to work from home. Plus, we’re total newbies and gas is expensive. We wanted a home base first. My rationale was that we could travel frequently, without guilt if our home base paid for itself.
Though home prices were the highest they’d ever been in the Spring and Summer of 2022, we decided not to sell our house. Our area is still developing and prices will no doubt grow with great schools and San Diego’s famous weather. Even if there were to be an economic reset, we were confident that prices would recover within a few years, well before we needed to sell for retirement cash, if ever. Plus, we could always move back if we wanted. Living there for the last two years before we sell it would reduce our taxes too. We’ll probably just keep it forever and pass it down to the kids in our trust. (My latest idea, though, is to create a family empire that retains ownership so that assets don’t get sliced up and distributed into less-valuable pieces.)
A small home for the two of us with some land would be easy, but those deals were still above our budget. So, we started looking into lower-cost vacant land. This was based on an assessment of our advantages:
Refinance our current home to get cash, making purchases faster and more attractive to sellers
Rent our current home for more than the mortgage to generate a small monthly income
Buy something cheaper than our current mortgage to further free up cash
Move into our trailer quickly, even on vacant land without utilities
Handy enough to build small sheds to use as offices to expand usable space beyond the trailer
Our 18 foot toy hauler is an office and home on wheels, ready to travel
You Got Lucky, Babe, When I Found You
Our property search was narrowed by our desired location, budget, and several other criteria we decided after looking at many properties. Although I recently had success installing solar power in the trailer, we prioritized land that already had grid power, among other things that we felt were too expensive, difficult, time-consuming, or risky with vacant land.
Budget: less than current mortgage, ideally much less
Location: safe and close-enough to a city that potential overnight guests could make the drive
Power: grid power wasn’t mandatory, but it was a strong plus; solar was always the backup plan, but a generator was a short-term safety net
Water: a working well with safe, tested water at a decent flow rate
Septic: permitted septic comes with a filed home design or land use plan and usually has an address assigned which would make our life easier all around
Grade: level enough to be usable, but not boringly flat without any interesting topography
Size: I got hooked on the idea of larger and large plots until I wouldn’t accept less than 20 acres
All of these criteria raised the value because they were previous investments a new buyer could avoid. It also made the property accessible to more buyers, increasing our competition. For us, having these things in place reduced the risk as first time land buyers and would-be developers.
After bouncing back and forth between inaction and total commitment, we finally put our house on the rental market in May. Within minutes, a dozen interested renters had submitted their application through the Zillow Rentals app. It was so easy to list the property to a wide audience, create a contract, perform background checks, and receive monthly payments unlike the previous times we advertised in the newspaper or hired a property management company. The demand was high, too. We had over 100 applications to rent our place.
In hindsight, our home had a lot of amenities being in San Diego–a great school district, a cul de sac location, larger square footage, outdoor living space, and a balcony overlooking the green space backyard, etc. Before listing, we thought the rental price was unbelievably high, but now we knew we had actually set the price too low. Still, we thought a fair price would help us find tenants who would treat our family home well. The trade-off seemed fair for a good, long-term tenant.
After an open house and struggling through the selection process, we finally had tenants moving in on July 1st. At this point in my life, I had moved homes something like 17 times. All this experience and more than a month of knowing the deadline didn’t prevent us from scrambling on the last day. All the big stuff had been loaded for weeks into a 10 by 20 foot, $275/mo storage area or a dilapidated mobile home (aka The Crack House) on our new property. The last couple of weeks were spent stuffing boxes of clothing and odd-shaped objects higher and higher onto the Jenga game we were playing in our storage garage. We invited the tenants over for a walk-through at 5pm, but we didn’t leave until nearly 9pm.
We arrived in the dead of night to our 20 acres of untended terrain. We didn’t even have a basic driveway. We had to overcome the high edge of an easement road to a makeshift driveway Levy and I had shoveled flatter ourselves days earlier. The high clearance of both the F-250 and the toy hauler trailer ascended the transition easily and we dragged the trailer up the front of our property under a starlit sky.
Exhausted, we shuttled the cats from truck to trailer and slept among piles of disorganized clothes, boxes, and odds and ends.
It’s a Thin Line Between Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
We saw a frog. Of all the wild animals I thought we might see around our new home, a frog was not in the top 20. Rattlesnakes, for sure. Rabbits, squirrels, coyotes, and off-leash dogs, definitely. Lizards and ants are everywhere. There has even been talk of bears in the area coming down off the mountains to check us out in the foothills.
Seeing a frog hop under the dilapidated mobile home we affectionately call the Crack House was totally unexpected. I mean, it’s been 90 – 95 degrees during the day with very little shade and nothing but dry dirt. It’s like a desert here. Where did a frog come from?
Obviously frogs can survive somewhere here. We are at 3800 feet elevation and get cool evenings, but the days were sunny, shadeless, hot, and dry in the summer. They aren’t the first surprise we found since moving here a month ago. Maybe they live in the bathtub I found hidden amongst the shrubs. I bet getting the well running again brought him out.
The summers in Anza are 10-15 degrees warmer than our home in north county San Diego. There, less than 10 miles from the coast, we didn’t have air conditioning and still had single pane windows. Here, we are in the middle of 20 acres of vacant land living in an 18 foot trailer. It’s been a big adjustment. We left behind a lot of comfort and convenience to downsize.
The kids are all moved out yet college tuition costs aren’t getting any cheaper while retirement is supposed to be getting closer. Our sacrifice is saving us nearly $1600 a month in living expenses, maybe more from lower utility bills and the excess rental income. We plan to roll that difference into capital projects to develop the land.
Development Dreams
A small house, of course. We need a small home for shade as soon as possible. Despite the searing summer sunlight, it’s actually quite nice in the shade. There is a breeze all day and the nights are cool even on the warmest days. Snow is a real possibility in the winter, so a proper home will be a respite then too. Smaller houses have cheaper taxes, insurance, and utilities. You can afford to put in upgrades, like nicer floors and counter tops when you have less square footage.
Separate, small buildings will be good enough for our work-from-home offices. We don’t need much space to work in peace. A few He Sheds or She Sheds can easily be solar powered and positioned in any of the many spectacular viewpoints around the property. Moving among them every few weeks sounds like a nice way to introduce a little variety and perspective into the workday.
There’s plenty of space for a hot tub, a pond with a fountain, nature trails, and any other things we want to do or comforts we might want to build in time. I’ve created a list of ideas a mile long.
Kite flying
Golf driving range
Disc (frisbee) golf course
RC cars and planes
Drone racing course
ATV and dirtbike riding
Mountain biking
Stargazing
Running and hiking
Geocaching
Archery and shooting
Camping
Ninja warrior course
There’s even some good spots for renting living areas. That’s our dream: to have enough income from the property to offset our own living costs. Or, maybe even more than enough. 20 acres is big enough to offer us space and privacy while still hosting 2, 3, or more temporary or permanent guests. A relatively simple RV rental space could fetch more than $500/mo. Just a few spaces could completely pay for the cost of borrowing the money and start to fund our living expenses or development cost.
Dreaming is easy, but building it all is the hard part. We know that. Our first few months here have clearly reinforced that. Many who know us can’t believe we made it this far. At least not without divorcing each other.
Levy is handy and has pulled me along over the years in various home remodeling projects. She was usually the general contractor and foreman while I was the hired help. YouTube sure helped a lot too. I’m less apprehensive now when thinking of tearing down a potentially toxic marijuana grow house or a rusty pile of a burned down double-wide trailer. Just for example.
Levy has an eye for things too. She taught me to see the potential in a run-down house and can turn a pile of broken boards into a backyard bar or a couch. I got the bug and together we egged each other on when looking for property. Bigger property was just calling my name. Perhaps it was an escape from the years of fatherhood living in a neighborhood with great schools and neighbor kids. It could have just been an overcompensation from COVID-19 quarantine.
The Ability to Pivot
Choosing a property, and developing a plan to downsize for that matter, was informed by the tools in our toolbox. Our goals, on the other hand, were pretty vague and there were many paths to achieve them. So, we assessed what we could do with what we have. We aren’t rich with unlimited resources or ability, but we had advantages over other land buyers.
An ability to build things and a willingness to figure out what we don’t know
An RV in which to sleep, live, and work — an instant solution to a variety of inhabitable situations
Money or the ability to raise capital at least
Health and time — time after work or on weekends and an ability to proceed at our own pace
A willingness to sacrifice our standard of living, at least for a while
Ultimately, I think it came down to our willingness to actually do something. We were able to find inspiration in others who shared their stories on social media. Everyone, it seemed, could explore the world and make more of limited means. Still, taking action and making a go of it was far from mainstream. Our willingness to take a leap of faith with some calculated risk was our real differentiator.
So, we bought vacant land and moved into our trailer. It’s not possible to anticipate every issue, so we are going into this knowing there will be a bit of trial and error. As we encounter setbacks, we’ll iterate. If it all goes bust, we can always move back into a traditional home.
Look for updates here as we develop our new property. We’ve got lots of work ahead of us cleaning, building, planting, and living in the country. Saddle up–let’s go for a ride!
This story about the decision to downsize, buy vacant land, and move out was written in July, 2022 and published in January, 2023.
Check out Jaizel’s latest episode of her podcast Not That Simple. Episode 6, College Students IRL: Bryce Carson, features student body president, DJ, and artist, Bryce Carson. Subscribe and get notified whenever a new episode is released!
WFH, Working From Home, or otherwise remote jobs afford an amazing freedom. Now that I’m designated as a permanently remote employee, I’m finding ways to balance productivity with mental health.
Going to the office was always fun for me. I’m a relatively outgoing, extroverted person most of the time. Meeting with people and having the buzz of activity around me gave me energy. The physical office has also provided a natural barrier between working time and personal life.
I’m in tech, so that’s not strictly true. I am constantly connected and have answered my share of middle-of-the-night support calls from home. I often worked “late” at the office too, but I could always work more from home if needed or, more often, if I was still motivated after the drive. The physical separation was effective.
That’s all gone, though. Now that I’m fully remote, I have to be more intentional about getting out of the house and even taking breaks. Taking breaks isn’t actually difficult because there are loads of distractions at home, from cats to the kitchen. It’s dangerously easy to shift too far towards not staying focused. Who can resist a belly rub when this sweet girl sleeps right under your monitor??
Carmen San Diego
Getting out of the house is something I’m lucky to be able to do. I have friends with more urban locations that aren’t really pandemic-friendly. My friends in apartment buildings in Pune, India didn’t provide enough social distancing for millions of people to get outside, so the government just quarantined everyone inside. I’m fortunate to live in a suburban neighborhood in San Diego with more open space per person, lakes, and well-maintained public trails.
Still, I don’t take full advantage of it either my location or my flexible working arrangement. Most days I wake up and go to work at a desk in my bedroom. It’s honestly hard to give up my sit-stand desk and 3 monitors even when it’s possible to work from a coffee shop or my balcony. I’ve been meaning to work outside the home more, but have been held back by several factors:
Sufficient Internet connectivity
The right balance of quiet and activity
A free location that doesn’t mind me sitting there for hours
Power is important, but a decent battery can last me most of a day. Most locations offer power now anyway. Monitor real estate is a loss, but I manage by planning ahead. Most days I work outside are for a handful of focused activities and less about bouncing around on a variety of little tasks. I specifically avoid any heavy comparison and analysis work with spreadsheets. These are often so much better with two or more larger screens that I won’t even attempt them on the tiny screen.
Internet connectivity is readily available around towns, but I live near the beach and mountains! They are just too tempting to pass up. I’ve always had this weird childhood fantasy of working high tech from an extremely remote location, like a forest. There’s just something about the dichotomy of it all that calls to me. I’m deep in nature while connecting with servers and people around the world. It sounds so peaceful to me.
I experimented with working remotely when working in the office was the norm. I found myself getting more focus time by working at the library. There was just enough activity of people moving around to keep me energized, but I didn’t know anyone so I never got distracted. This was perfect for writing annual performance reviews or preparing a presentation. In between spurts of clarity, I could lean back and watch strangers meander through the library while my mind milled over something difficult.
While my wife was traveling back to the Philippines without me, I once made the food court at a local shopping mall my office. For a few weeks, I would drive carpool for my youngest daughter to gymnastics in the middle of the day. She was home-schooled (or a hybrid of online and in-person) which allowed her to spend more than 36 hours a week training on a competitive gymnastics team. That really shaped our family life for about 10 years, but that’s a story for another time.
The food court was actually a fun place to work. It was noisy! Random people would walk by, making it a perfect place to people-watch. I would take meetings there despite the background noise. It was a necessity for a few weeks, so I kinda had no choice. I picked a nice tall table area with bar stools that allowed me to stand when I wanted. Besides getting me off my butt, that was a great way to change things up to keep me energized. I like to pace a little when I think, so this also helped me think in its own way.
This all sort of prepared me for today. I find myself writing this on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. He was a prolific speaker, giving over 2500 speeches in just an eleven year period in the crusade for civil rights. Fortunately, this day has been designated a national holiday in honor of his contributions. My company has also given all employees the day off to reflect or serve or recharge. With this in mind, I let go of my to-do list at home and made it a priority to get out of the house.
View from a Balloon
The San Diego Zoo Safari Park is just a few miles from my home. I love walking around there. The animals, the trees, the buzz of activity, and the quick access to a churro are big reasons why I’ve wanted to try working remotely from there. Well, today I was able to get there and it feels great.
San Diego Safari Park
My wife, Levy, and I had previously spotted a quiet spot near the top of a hill–a picnic bench under a palapa roof in the new California native landscape area. With a modest view through the trees, it is away from the animal attractions and, because of this, beyond the steady flow of visitors. The few visitors that amble past are quieter adults enjoying the plants and moderate exercise of climbing the dirt trails.
There are no power outlets in the immediate vicinity, but the spot has good Internet signal and bandwidth. My cell phone hotspot worked well enough during a dry run last week, but today I’m using my MoFi 5500 cellular router. I chose this router for working from the trailer we bought last year. Since we both work remotely, we plan to travel around the country while working without waiting for retirement. Internet access is the most important, and difficult to obtain, utility we need to work from the road.
The MoFi 5500 has dual CAT7 cellular modems for diversity and redundancy. The model I bought does not support the rapidly developing 5G network. Beyond a minimum bandwidth, reliability is the most important capability for us. Another time, perhaps, I will detail my trailer setup with external telescoping antenna. Today, however, I am just using the small cellular and Wi-Fi antennas provided by the manufacturer. The signal and bandwidth (~30Mbps down and ~11Mbps up) on my T-Mobile SIM card were excellent. I was easily able to have a full Zoom video conference with Levy at home.
The ambiance is so nice here, I almost wouldn’t change a thing. If I were advertising for the Safari Park, though, I would offer a remote working package. Fifteen dollars a day could get you free soft drinks, Wi-Fi access, and power.
Another excellent feature of working at the Safari Park is the substantial walk from the entrance to my retreat at the far end of the property. The 15-20 minute walk gets my blood pumping and gives me that little bit of physical separation I used to have coming home from the office. Unlike my old office, the animals here are behind bars!
Levy on a benchLevy at a tableSD Safari ParkPlenty of seatingTranquilityTink gets no respect!Road warrior setupEntrance to the quiet zoneBridge to TerabithiaSweeping viewsNice place to loginEvening reflectionsEvening lightsCrouching tigersTiger god?
I spent a fair amount of time interviewing not too long ago. In the months of emotional ups and downs, I refined a methodology that increased my confidence as I better communicated my experience and value.
Even as an experienced candidate comfortable with interviewing and with plenty of examples to share, I was rusty. Being out of practice was the least of my challenges, though. I wanted to pivot back to a more technical role after feeling I had lost touch with the hard science I loved early in my career. Leading people was rewarding in its own way, but we were mostly solving process problems while working on mainstream technology. It was a far cry from the expression of art I found appealing when brilliant minds solved intricate challenges at the low levels of networking protocols and software programming.
I needed to modernize my skill set if I were to have any luck getting the role or into the types of companies that fascinated me. As frustrating as interviewing for months on end can be, this time was an important opportunity for me to modernize my skills to match the new roles I wanted.
Personal growth. It was easy enough in my field to gain concrete skills through online training and do-it-yourself practice. I didn’t go back to school, though that would have been really awesome. (In hindsight, there was so much I had forgotten or never had the time to learn in college that would have been great to revisit, years later.)
YouTube was a surprisingly effective training resource. Specific topics could be learned directly with a simple search, but I really found out what I wanted to learn through a variety of company presentations. Large tech company employees could often be found presenting at a user group or a conference. These companies were on the cutting edge of technologies that interested me. They had overcome challenges with high availability, scalability, performance, security, and backwards compatibility and shared their experience with the world for free. This was a huge advantage in interviews at these very companies–I could speak directly to a problem they had or would have, and at least hypothesize about possible solutions in some detail.
Communicating value effectively. A surprise to me was that new solutions often recycled old concepts. Although my experience on a topic might have been 10 or even 20 years prior, the principles of computing didn’t go out of style. I found old solutions were similar to new problems. Maybe most importantly, I started to confidently use the modern terminology and patterns that interviewers were looking for. I learned that I had to put in the effort to speak their language because they certainly weren’t looking too hard for a diamond in the rough.
Company values, job description with highlights, recruiter-provided focus areas, and STAR methodology.
Another critical part of communicating my value was adopting the STAR methodology. When responding to interview questions, many tech companies have settled on this approach. It’s no secrete either–interviewees are explicitly told they should use it! STAR is an acronym for Situation, Task, Action, Result. It’s a concise way for candidates to share the basics of an experience without rambling on or leaving out key context. A short answer allows the interviewer to ask follow-up questions that take the interview where it interests them in the most direct manner. I have the ability to provide excess context, so this was a big help for me and the interviewers.
Preparation and practice. It’s hard to get started, but so important. I am never really finished with my resume, but that’s a relatively easy one to polish up to get the ball rolling. As you do, you’ll be thinking of all your great experience and stories. These are key because a good interview response is real–something you really did. It’s easier to share and answer questions about it because as you’re talking in an interview you have this little movie playing the memory in your head.
With a little review and some critical thinking, I was able to identify the lessons learned and behaviors demonstrated. This made it easier to select a particular story on the fly to answer an interview question. It also made it easier to provide context in the STAR format without being verbose.
One difficulty of interview preparation is anticipating the topics. However, it’s relatively easy to find the 10 or 20 most common questions then prepare and practice answers for them. Honestly, my confidence increased significantly just by knowing I had answers ready for these questions.
To get the specific jobs I wanted, I also researched them directly by role and company. The company’s own web site and their recruiter can be great places to get very clear expectations. The best companies know interviewing is stressful and an imprecise process, and it’s expensive and time-consuming for them too. They truly want to take all the distractions out of it so they can get a clear signal about whether you would be a great fit. Just be sure to take the hints and practice answers for questions specific to the job.
I made note cards. Yep, just like when you might practice a speech or memorize vocabulary words. I made note cards to help me practice. On the front was a question or a topic and on the back was a story starter. Usually a single word or short phrase that triggered my mind to tell a story. I carried them with me everywhere and flipped through them whenever I had a few minutes of down time. That sure reduced my stress of feeling like I had to study and practice for several hours straight.
My secret to building the cues for each prompt was to write up an interview cheat-sheet. I wrote it up in a spreadsheet: a keyword or phrase on the left and a STAR response on the right. S, T, A, R in a vertical column with a few turns of phrase or talking points for each one. This really helped me refine each response to the common questions and the role-specific questions. At first I wrote out paragraph-long responses to remember my experiences in detail. Then, each anecdote was refined to be more concise and effective until the keywords were short enough to remember.
My interview cheat sheet!
This cheat sheet came in really handy during video-based interviews where I could keep them just off-screen. I could casually glance over the printed reminders naturally when I got nervous or my mind went blank. I had stumbled upon this technique about 10 years earlier when I was being phone screened for jobs that required relocation. It was like an open book test! As an interviewer myself, I don’t consider this cheating, though. It’s about being able to share the real you quickly and effectively on the spur of the moment. That’s not every tech candidates specialty, so having a little reminder is fair. Besides, the organization and pre-work demonstrates other great characteristics you bring to the job.
Despite my preparation, there was an emotional toll from repeatedly not getting the job. It seemed opportunities would come (and go) in threes every couple weeks. Three recruiters would contact me on nearly the same day to get something started and I’d go through the process for a couple weeks. Just as coincidentally, I would be rejected for all three around the same time.
For each opening, I would reluctantly envision myself in this new role at this new company to better help me relate my experience to their needs. Losing the opportunity was like getting a miniature layoff each time–ending the career I had there, however fictitious. Exercising proved to be a good outlet to counteract some of that loss, though. I would walk, run, or swim at the beach then spend an hour on further study and practice with my note cards and interview cheat sheet.
I managed to persevere. Like others before me, I found 99 ways to fail before I found one success. Afterall, don’t they say that people who work hard for something seem to have better luck?
The topics are implicitly in the form of an interview question, like “Tell me about a time when you delivered a project faster than planned?” These behavioral type of questions encourage the candidate to describe a specific experience. These are thought to be a better indicator of future performance because it really happened. The interviewer can drill into specific aspects as the candidate tells a coherent story of what really happened. This minimizes generalized answers candidates give about what should be done which are easy to describe but difficult to execute.
My responses even include examples where I failed in some way. While you may be reluctant to share any short-comings in an interview, it’s better to serve up a failure conversation of your choosing than to be pressed into one unexpectedly by questions for which you’re unprepared. This way, you get to prepare your answer in the form of lessons learned.
As an interviewer, I always ask questions to find the boundaries of a candidate’s skills. If I don’t ask any questions they can’t answer, I haven’t found their edges. Finding limits do not eliminate them from consideration–quite the contrary, it gives me a better assessment of them as a candidate which is a critical step in finding a mutual match between candidate and role.
This must be a real web site now–we just received our first spam comment!
Author: Vapor Quest (IP address: 185.185.132.99, 185.185.132.99)
Email: mgould1536@icloud.com
URL: http://dermatologist.com.ua/user/cbdinfuse4893/
Comment:
Has anybody ever shopped at Vapor Stix Vapor Store located in 1707 Bayshore Road?
Luckily, WordPress has a very cool moderation feature that requires approval for an anonymous user’s first comment. So, this spam bot’s work never made it to the page. (Anyone know where 1707 Bayshore Road is located?)
Putting yourself “out there” (here?) sure invites a lot of feedback, both good and bad. I look forward to engaging in conversations with the public. Normally, I would avoid them as they seem unproductive, but I hope to encourage some real, thoughtful conversations on topics I might some experience to share and could also learn a thing or two.
While you’re here, enjoy this comedian’s response to an email spammer, presented in a Ted Talk. I once heard someone say a good way to fight back against spammers is to waste their time. Maybe I should write a battle bot that turns around and fights back against spammers using their same technique. We used this technique once when I worked at Intel. Someone had written bad code that “forked” a process continuously such that it consumed all the system resources. We couldn’t manually kill the process fast enough, so we wrote another program to find and kill all those processes by forking itself over and over again. It worked! Eventually, it killed the other process before the server crashed because of the OOM (out of memory) killer.
Yesterday I bought some cryptocurrency, hoping to get lucky before some of the many, many coins go to the moon.
USD$2.61 worth of Ethereum ($ETH) at $3,715.71 on Robinhood
USD$4.02 worth of Bitcoin ($BTC) at $47,493.05 on WeBull
I am trying to learn from a mistake I made last year. I should have held (or sold for a massive profit) my Dogecoin ($DOGE) investment from July 2020. It went from $0.003216 to over $0.69 per coin. I spent $402 to buy 125,000 shares and sold in November of that same year at $0.004 for just under $100 profit. If I had held, I would have earned over $86,000 by selling at the peak.
Ah well, try not to make that mistake again. Instead, I’ll make all new ones!
I’ll put a few thousand into a variety of cryptocurrencies. Not enough to bankrupt me, but enough to have skin in the game should things take off.
So, I started doing some earnest research into the field. Lots of good resources out there, but I first referred to comments from much more experienced co-workers about which coins they are investing in, which wallets they use, and which exchanges they use. They suggested to check out Reddit’s Cryptocurrency subreddit. They also watch some unbiased YouTube videos and read the project whitepapers.
Immediately, I realized I don’t have my money in the right accounts. My traditional brokerage doesn’t offer direct investment into cryptocurrency, so I will have to move some savings into other accounts. I will use Robinhood and WeBull because I have accounts and a few spare dollars there. I am also looking at buying through Coinbase, which is popular.
My traditional brokerages do allow me to invest indirectly through mutual funds:
funds that directly own coins, such as Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) or Orsprey Bitcoin Trust (OBTV)
funds that own futures, such as ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO)
equity in companies related to cryptocurrency, such as Coinbase (COIN) or PayPal (PYPL)
I am also interested in storing my coins in my own cryptowallet, but that’s just a technical fascination for me. Co-workers seem to like the Ledger Nano X hardware wallet or Keplr software wallet. Security / investment safety is important, but I will trust those companies until I make my millions. By that time, I will probably know more and have the discipline to properly manage my cryptocurrencies.
WeBull has some quick and easy videos to help new crypto investors. Coinbase gave me some free cryptocurrency for watching some targeted ads (framed as educational materials) about Amp (AMP), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Fetch.ai (FET), and The Graph (GRT). They aren’t worth much, but we’ll see.
It seems like most people are bullish on these coins:
Bitcoin (BTC)
Ethereum (ETH)
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Cosmos (ATOM)
Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB)
Algorand (ALGO)
Avalanche (AVAX)
Solana (SOL)
Along the way, I found a couple lighthearted videos I want to share too:
The interviews with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are hilarious. Those guys are so right–there is a lot of risk and the coins themselves have no intrinsic value and produce nothing. I like to think of them more like currency, though. They are a means to an end. I’m no expert at trading on fiat currencies, though, so…I am really out of my element here and this is all a gamble at this point.
Remember, do you own research and make your own decisions. I am not a financial advisor and this is not an offer to sell or recommend any investments. If you use my referral links to Robinhood, WeBull, or Coinbase, I may receive a small monetary reward when you sign-up.
I love talking with friends about managing their spending, saving, and investing. In doing exactly that recently, I wrote down some notes as a follow-up to help some friends get started. Look for more posts to replace as I elaborate on each topic.
Google or watch YouTube videos about terms you don’t understand
Start with a $100 investment in an easy to use Brokerage, like Robinhood or WeBull
Using my referral link above I get a free stock and so do you when you sign up
I actually really like the desktop browser trading experience at WeBull, but Robinhood is probably easy enough for newbies using their mobile device
Having accounts at Vanguard and Fidelity gets you access to funds that they created, such as VTSAX and FZROX, which might not be available at other brokerages
You can find any number of other brokerages, but some popular ones are:
Ally
M1 Finance
TD*Ameritrade
eTrade
Invest in some stocks and/or index funds
You should watch the performance of individual stocks more frequently to ensure you are not losing too much value or to capture gains
With index funds or other types of mutual funds, however, you don’t have to watch or manage them day-to-day; just check-in on your investments a few times a year to make sure you are reinvesting dividends or capital returns
Contribute and keep buying as you can
Popular index funds to consider:
FZROX – no fees and no minimum, but not all brokerages allow you to purchase it (might have to have an account at Fidelity)
VTSAX – low fees with $3000 minimum initial investment; Vanguard claims to be the most focused on giving capital back to their customers…Jack Bogel was founder or CEO and was the inventor of index funds or something
There are other strategies for investing in dividend stocks, managed mutual funds, diversifying across industries or globally, etc., but you can explore that later
This will help you prioritize how to spend your money from basic subsistence to investing for retirement
Make an inventory of your accounts/money and how are you saving, spending, and investing
Personal Capital is used by almost every person I know who is trying to become financially independent because the free level allows you to consolidate all your info into one place (budgets, spending, investments, etc.)
Additional resources for ideas/research, tracking, advice, and encouragement
ChooseFI is a web site, podcast, email newsletter, and group/community on Facebook. I recommend them all. The podcast is interesting, the newsletter has timely tips, and the Facebook group is where you can interact with others trying to become financially independent.
Yahoo! Finance is a quick, free, comprehensive summary of most investments and current news; it includes some information from MorningStar, a good resource for research (can also be used and bought separately)
JL Collins is an author and has a quick and useful summary of what he owns–simple, right?
Track Your Dividends helps me calculate my actual return on cost (how much I personally received in dividends or increased value) based on what I actually bought and when (free sites without knowledge of your portfolio just give you a theoretical return rate based on the price at the beginning of the year, quarter, month, etc.)
We’re a Filipino-American family living in San Diego, imparting knowledge based on our experience in personal finance, living abroad, careers, marriage and family.
Come along on our journey. We write or record something every few weeks that you can use in your life. Or, it could just be fun to follow-along.
Recent Comments