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Thread: Making time for the hobby

  1. #31
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    Hi Luke
    As you say there are two main parts to retirement planning, financial and everything else. Financial is best started as early as possible. Everything else can wait, you're only 34.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Richard Hutchings View Post
    Jason, you hit on a couple of things that ring true. I'm in the middle of building a deck, which I really don't enjoy doing.
    I do find then when I am tasked with things that I don't really enjoy like painting the porch or fixing a deck my enjoyable woodworking seems to suffer as well. Certainly keeping the shop area clean and ready to go will inspire me more to do things at the bench than if I have to spend time cleaning up just so I can start.
    "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg".


    – Samuel Butler

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Richard Coers View Post
    Hope of retiring? I've been retired 8 years now and even have that unheard of thing called a traditional pension. I'm very grateful!
    The chances that anyone from my generation will recieve a pension, Social security, or even get out of their 401k's what they put in, is rather unlikely, to say the least. 401k's might possibly come out ahead after a lost decade or two, though I'm skeptical that money won't be effectively stolen in one form or another, directly or indirectly.

    About the only thing we can hope to do is invest and manage our own money, but these are the most perilous times to invest since the just prior to the Great Depression -- perhaps even more so. Even the most prudent professional money managers are struggling to figure out what is a prudent way to protect -- let alone grow, their client's savings.

    That's what 50 years of falling interest rates and monetary expansion will do, I guess. One generation benefits at the cost of the next, as all debts come due in one manner or another, no matter how cleverly you kick the can down the road.

  4. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Richard Coers View Post
    What's to be in a funk about? Let's see, a World War, pandemic with loss of friends, laws and all political decisions have to be decided in courts, you are likely going to more funerals than any other time of your life, and you are in the last couple decades of productive work. I only know one guy who is still highly productive in my group of woodworking friends, and even he has slowed. Just a stage of life Richard, I'm 69 and had an echocardiogram today. As that productive guy I told you about always says, "life is like a roll of toilet paper, it goes faster as it nears the end."

    I've been on the phone more than several times in the last month with our financial advisor,yesterday I noticed his name is just above my suicide prevention# on my phone contacts.


    ....likely the dumbest shit youll ever read but... Be Positive!


  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Luke Dupont View Post
    The chances that anyone from my generation will recieve a pension, Social security, or even get out of their 401k's what they put in, is rather unlikely, to say the least. 401k's might possibly come out ahead after a lost decade or two, though I'm skeptical that money won't be effectively stolen in one form or another, directly or indirectly.

    About the only thing we can hope to do is invest and manage our own money, but these are the most perilous times to invest since the just prior to the Great Depression -- perhaps even more so. Even the most prudent professional money managers are struggling to figure out what is a prudent way to protect -- let alone grow, their client's savings.

    That's what 50 years of falling interest rates and monetary expansion will do, I guess. One generation benefits at the cost of the next, as all debts come due in one manner or another, no matter how cleverly you kick the can down the road.
    I'm a gen-Xer and well.. I gave up on retirement in the 90s. The 00's cemented it. I'm content to just work until I die. Unfortunately, my kids (which includes both millennial and gen-z) are left with this same mess too.
    ~mike

    happy in my mud hut

  6. #36
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    Do you like to read? Shopclass as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford, I highly recommend it (no relation).

    Second, I would fast from youTube. You have to break habits. Personally I observe Lent every year and ~40 days minus Sundays is about the right time to either kick a bad habit or start a new one. This has successfully worked for me in a variety of ways - when I was younger, to stop playing video games. At some point I fasted from talk radio on my commutes and never went back. It got me reading novels again. For woodworking its long enough to start a finish a decent size project.


    If you can drop it cold-turkey for 6 weeks do it, if not set aside a dedicated day or block that you watch it, and other days its off limits. There are apps that can limit your time on certain websites, set that up as a reminder or if you don't have the self-control give someone else the password and then you are locked out.

  7. #37
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    The chances that anyone from my generation will recieve a pension, Social security, or even get out of their 401k's what they put in, is rather unlikely, to say the least. 401k's might possibly come out ahead after a lost decade or two, though I'm skeptical that money won't be effectively stolen in one form or another, directly or indirectly.
    A rather dystopian outlook in my opinion, it may be the future, hopefully not.

    Upon my retirement money was a bit tight. Buying and rehabbing old tools brought in a little extra money. Making items of wood and selling them at the local farmers market made a little more. We also propagated and sold plants.

    If someone is motivated there are ways to increase one's income, or make time to enjoy a hobby. Even if one has to use the time enjoying their hobby creating items to sell.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    A rather dystopian outlook in my opinion, it may be the future, hopefully not.

    Upon my retirement money was a bit tight. Buying and rehabbing old tools brought in a little extra money. Making items of wood and selling them at the local farmers market made a little more. We also propagated and sold plants.

    If someone is motivated there are ways to increase one's income, or make time to enjoy a hobby. Even if one has to use the time enjoying their hobby creating items to sell.

    jtk
    This IS my retirement plan. December 8 2023, or sooner :-)

  9. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by Richard Hutchings View Post
    This IS my retirement plan. December 8 2023, or sooner :-)
    There isn't anyone who is going to extend your days for working longer. One of my supervisors told me about a study showing people who retired early lived longer than people who worked a few more years before retirement.

    Too many of my coworkers died before retirement or shortly after retiring. That is why my plan changed from working longer to retiring sooner.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  10. #40
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    For me there's so much to do that shop time often suffers. Woodworking tends to be a foul weather hobby for me as when it's nice out I'm doing yard work, enjoying the outside, etc. The bulk of my woodworking gets done on rainy days or in the winter. My basement shop is a nice cool respite from hot summer days though.
    Sharp solves all manner of problems.

  11. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob Luter View Post
    For me there's so much to do that shop time often suffers. Woodworking tends to be a foul weather hobby for me as when it's nice out I'm doing yard work, enjoying the outside, etc. The bulk of my woodworking gets done on rainy days or in the winter. My basement shop is a nice cool respite from hot summer days though.
    That may be much the same for many of us who have home and yard maintenance duties.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  12. #42
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    I may not be right on this. A hobby is something that you can do for enjoyment after you have fulfilled your obligations. I try to get as much enjoyment out of obligations as hobbies. For obligations I try to have the best equipment I can afford to make work easier and many times faster. The obligations become faster and easier allowing me to get back to more enjoyable things. There is nothing worse than a mower or string trimmer or some other task tool that is hard to use. If the equipment is good the obligations seem like hobbies sometimes.
    Jim

  13. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    A rather dystopian outlook in my opinion, it may be the future, hopefully not.

    Upon my retirement money was a bit tight. Buying and rehabbing old tools brought in a little extra money. Making items of wood and selling them at the local farmers market made a little more. We also propagated and sold plants.

    If someone is motivated there are ways to increase one's income, or make time to enjoy a hobby. Even if one has to use the time enjoying their hobby creating items to sell.

    jtk

    Well, I really hope I'm wrong. I try to stay humble and don't think for a moment that I know what is going to happen -- noone does, and even the best investors and macro-economists can only speak in terms of probabilities. But, that said, I've been spot on with my "most likely case" forecasts, often against the consensus, and that's starting to scare me. I really want to be wrong more often.

    My advice is not to peek under the hood. One should never, of course, expect it to be pretty under there. But "not pretty" and "impending systemic failure" are two very different things.

    Of course, many back in the 70's were convinced we'd see hyper inflation in the U.S., and that things were going to come crashing down, when they didn't. We were able to kick the can down the road, and everyone benefitted greatly from 50 years of falling interest rates after that. So I often ask myself "what would I have thought back then, and what might I be missing now?"

    There's a lot to learn from History, and the cycles that play out, and this is a really good tool for checking your own thinking and keeping perspective.

    Anyway, despite my very negative outlook, I actually intend to stay positive. I like your examples. I'm hopeless at business endeavors and side hustles, but I have a good while before retirement to learn!

  14. #44
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    I suffer from depression and often have trouble getting into the shop even though I usually enjoy the time I spend there. One thing that has helped me is to just decide to spend five minutes in there at a set time (At 8:15 I will go into the shop and stay there for five minutes). It does not matter what you do: sit and think about the shop, clean up and organize a bit, work on a piece, look at some wood. Usually by then something will have picked up my interest and I will spend longer doing something or other. Regardless, I keep doing it to make it a habit. I will often then let got of the habit and have to start again. You may find the book Atomic Habits useful in regard to making (and breaking) habits.

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