u/IHadTacosYesterday

I have health coverage through my employer that would cost me zero per month if I stay in the employers state.

I was hoping to do "slow travel" while in leanFIRE or FIRE mode. I didn't want to pay for a home base. I wanted to live on the road like a vagabond. Unfortunately, if I leave my state, I have to pay an extra $500 per month (roughly). Also, this amount is likely to increase by anywhere from 17% to 35% each year!

This feels like a huge penalty that I have to pay for leaving my home state.

One good thing though, if I decide to live in some international locations, I can buy an international health plan that would probably be cheaper than paying the $500 a month. But I was hoping to travel more domestically at first

Just thinking out loud

When people plan out their retirements, they often try to anticipate future costs as accurately as possible. If they don't have exact numbers, they will often try to come up with a decent guesstimate.

For those of you that have tried to figure out how much your health care premium (the deduction that gets subtracted from your pension check) will cost you per month in retirement, have you some sort of expected yearly increase in the cost to upgrade to PERS Platinum?

Like, year over year, you think it will increase by 20 percent or something?

Imagine this is a retired California State worker that has the full 20 years of service, they get 100 percent of the monthly health stipend, it's just them by themselves, no additional family members, but this person is not going to live in California and would unfortunately need to get PERS Platinum.

Back in January of 2025, I was pretty miserable with my weed addiction. Actually, it wasn't really misery, I was fucking pissed off. Like it really pissed me the fuck off. The fact that the only high of the day that was worth a damn was my very first smoke of the day. My very first smoke, I might get high for 35 minutes, which was amazing, compared to the rest of my sessions that would follow.

Back then, I'd smoke like 6 or 7 times a day. The first time was good, but diminishing returns like a mofo after that. What pissed me off the most was the "running time" of the weed high. I could always remember back to my high school and college days when I'd smoke some weed and be really, really, really high for like 2+ hours. But many of my weed sessions, when I was a heavy user, I'd only get high for about 25 minutes. I mean sure... there's the come down and all that, that lasts longer, but I don't consider that part of the "high". I'm talking about the actual high part of it.

This reality, pissed me off so much, that I decided to do my longest T-Break ever. I took off 82 total days. I cleared my system out pretty good.

Anyways, when I started back up, I started to do it very slowly. I'd allow myself one smoke session, only a few hits, four times per week. 3 of the days I'd stay fully sober. The other 4 days I'd allow myself to hit it one time, but that was it.

I did that for a couple of months.

Then I changed it to allow myself to smoke twice on my 4 smoke days of the week.

Did that for a couple of months.

Then I changed it to 3 times on my 4 smoke days per week.

Did that for a couple of months.

Then I changed it to 3 times on 5 smoke days per week. This was a pretty big change, because I was only taking off two days per week. I discovered after awhile that this wasn't working well. I was coughing up too much weed flem here and there. Way more often than any of the previous times.

So, I went back to 4 days of smoking and 3 times per day, with 3 days of sobriety. I've now stuck with this for many months and it does seem to work quite well. I don't smoke on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I workout on all those 3 days, so basically I abstain on my workout days. The beautiful thing about this, is I have 3 days per week, where I haven't smoked in about 39 hours, when I finally get to blaze up. For example, on Sunday evening at around 7pm, I probably have my 3rd smoking session of the day. But I don't smoke again until 10am on Tuesday morning. It's a 39 hour mini T-break basically. But the good news is that I get high as a mofo by abstaining for 39 hours. That first session is really easy. I only need to take a handful of hits. Even my second blaze up of the day on those days is easy as well. Maybe only one or two extra hits compared to the morning version.

The other good benefits is that my weed lasts FOREVER now. I'm hardly ever buying anything, because I smoke so little of it. It just lasts and lasts and lasts. I'm also saving some good $$$ by doing this.

The MASSIVE downside is that Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are somewhat of a struggle. My workouts help a lot, because I'm distracted during my workouts, not thinking about how I can't smoke weed. When my workout is over, it's more of a struggle, but I manage through.

I was really depressed at one point (still am to some degree), and I had this motto of "6 to 10". I'd wake up each day around 6am, and go to sleep at 10pm or so. So, I'd just tell myself... "6 to 10.... that's all you have to do today... Just 6 to 10".

Basically, just make it to 10pm, then you get to go to bed and hopefully the next day will be a better day. That's all I could focus on during the darkest days of my depression. So, I sometimes will have that attitude while working my way through my sober days.

It is weird though.... because I feel like I'm almost two different people. I feel like I can't really "enjoy" life on my sober days. Like I'm just in prison for those days, but at least I get let out of prison the next day.

Saturday and Sunday are amazing, because I allow myself to have those two days back to back. Then Monday.... back to the grind... ugh.

I currently take 3 days off per week. Monday's, Wednesday's and Friday's suck for me, because I abstain from all herb.

I enjoy 3 discrete dank sessions on my smoking days.

Out of the 4 days I smoke each week, I allow myself one day to blaze up 4 different times, if I'd like to.

So far, this has done a great job of several things:

1. Kept my tolerance in check. I get really high each time.
2. Kept spitting up loogies in check. I rarely do, and if I do, it's a small amount
3. My weed lasts WAY longer
4. I save a lot of money because of #3

Having said all of this, if I didn't notice any downsides to blazing up like 7 times every single day, then I'd absolutely do that, but I notice a lot of downsides. To each their own of course. Just wondering if there's any other peeps like me that absolutely adore cannabis, but you deliberately hold back from using it too much for various reasons

I'm just wondering if what I did is a real dick move, or just a normal part of the dating experience.

So, I met this girl on an app. We started talking back and forth. Eventually we met for a lunch date. We went to lunch and had a pretty good time. At the end of the date, she wanted to exchange phone numbers, so I gave her my number.

A couple of days after our date, we texted each other back and forth a little bit.

At a certain point, I just stopped texting her. I came to the realization that I just wasn't interested in her anymore for certain reasons.

Anyways, I don't feel like I actually "ghosted" her, because she could have taken the initiative to reach out to me and if she did, I would have answered her text and I would have explained my feelings as to why I wasn't contacting her.

But, she never contacted me. She has my number.

I don't consider this a "ghost".

I would consider it a "ghosting" if she text me something like:

*"Hey David.... You haven't texted me in a long time, I'm just curious why you don't contact me anymore?"

If she texted me something like that, and I never responded back, then yeah, that's 100 percent a ghosting. However, I personally don't feel like I need to text her and explain that I'm not going to be contacting her anymore for x,y or z reasons. I mean, I could have done that. That might be the more gentlemanly thing to do, but I don't feel like a person needs to do that, because the other person can still reach out if they really care to do so.

What do you think?

I was over in the Arden area today, and I was driving towards Nordstrom Rack, I saw a billboard that mentioned Kico's Mexican Food.

I remembered that they're related to the family that used to run Luis's on Alhambra. Some of the family members also ran Pancho's Cocina on Broadway for awhile.

Anyways, I love their refried beans and tortillas and I got nostalgic for that classic Luis's taste and I went there today. The beans were about 80% the same as Luis's. A little bit different. I think they use too much red sauce in the beans. I told the guy there about it. The salsa was also not the good salsa that Luis's and Pancho's both used. I told him about that as well.

However..... the tortillas and chips taste EXACTLY the same and it was a nice burst of nostalgia. I love their tortillas. I know they're hella infused with lard, but oh well...sue me.

The beans are lard city too, but we already knew that.

The prices are a bit high, so there might be some sticker shock. The only thing I got was an order of beans and tortillas and it was $9.50 for that. Got 3 big plops of beans, a little bit of salad with dressing, and four fluffy and thick tortillas.

I asked the guy how much the beef taco lunch was (which I used to get at Pancho's all the time), and it was $16.99 or something, which seemed a bit high to me, but maybe that's just their normal price, while Pancho's used to have a lunch special if you ordered it before 4pm or something.

Edit = Accidently spelled it Kiko's. My bad.

I gotta modernize my fashion sense, but I don't really know what I'm doing. I lost some weight and my old jeans don't fit. I need to buy some new jeans, but I feel like all the jeans fit me really weird. These modern jeans don't seem to have room for your junk? You gotta squish one side of your nuggets on one side of the pants, and your other nugget on the other side, lol.

Life is just weird now

For the most part, I'm fine with living in what I consider to be "cheapo" apartments. These are usually older buildings, multiple tenants, bad parking situations, etc. But... you save some good money. If you're living on the grid, it's possible to find a one bedroom as cheap as $1275 or so, if you walk around the neighborhoods and write down phone numbers. You're only getting a $1275 type price if you find an independent landlord that isn't using any paid services to find tenants. Also, they might be slow to fix things, like pulling teeth to get them to do things, but hey... it's a cheapo apartment, what are you going to do?

Then, you got the cheapo 1 bedrooms that are in the $1400 to $1800 range. Some might say $1800 isn't that cheap, but it's all relative I guess.

Here's my problem... While I got really lucky with a good price on a nice two bedroom, the summers are absolutely brutal. I moved to this midtown spot in July of 2021. $1350 for a 2 bedroom. Sounds like an insane value, but the building was made in the 1930's, and the walls are paper thin. I literally will hear neighbors doing their thing, because the walls are that thin/uninsulated. Also, it's cold as hell in the winter because of the lack of insulation in the exterior walls. In the summer, it's absolutely brutal. The wall unit AC does a decent job, but it really only cools the living room, and you can't enjoy the TV while it's on, because it sounds like a jet engine.

The bedrooms have no AC, and the AC wall unit in the living room is worthless for the other bedrooms, because the cold air doesn't make it over there, so no use in running the AC during the night if I'm not in the living room.

I'm planning on actually moving my bed from my bedroom into the living room in mid June. I will leave it in my living room till about mid October, then switch back. (I'll be moving my sofa and TV and stuff to that bedroom during this 4 month period). It's my only option to be able to sleep comfortably when the Delta Breeze isn't working. Basically the bedrooms were designed to take advantage of the Delta Breeze, with really big windows and it does work great when the Delta Breeze is doing it's thing.

The landlord here has only raised my rent once, which is awesome. I'm paying $1425 instead of $1350, so a very minor bump.

So, my big problem is that I'd love to upgrade my situation to a different apartment that is more modern. Something built in the late 90's or early 2000's. I definitely don't want anything less than 15 years old, because then AB 1482 isn't applicable. So, I definitely want to stay under the umbrella of AB 1482 so that my rent can't be raised more than 10 percent in a single year.

Anyways, I feel like I'd need to increase my rent amount from the current $1425, to $2500, to get the kind of apartment that I'd want to have. This would be an increase of 75 percent. I'd be paying an extra $1,075 every single month, just to not get murdered during the summer. Also, I'd probably be downgrading from a 2 bedroom like I'm in now, to a 1 bedroom. There's also some extra storage in this apartment, aside from the extra bedroom, so my storage space would drop precipitously. I got divorced a few years back, was previously living in a normal 3/2 house and had a lot of stuff that accumulates over time. It's really nice to not have to pay any extra money to a storage facility. If I get a new, more modern one bedroom, I'd either have to throw away or give away a ton of stuff, or rent a storage space somewhere, which means my costs are going up even more.

Thus, I'm basically just stuck in this predicament. I'm just curious if anybody else is in a similar situation, where you'd love to upgrade your living arrangements, but the cost of the upgrade just doesn't make it logical at all.

I'm sure somebody will probably mention trying to find another person that wants to get a nice two bedroom, but I value my privacy and just there's a lot of drama that happens when you're sharing space with somebody. I don't see myself sharing my space with anybody other than a girlfriend if I ever find one. So, getting a roommate is a non-starter for me.

I've literally never done a FWB thing in my entire life. So, this is new to me. I'm a guy, and I normally will pay for all dates. However, if I'm going to do the FWB thing, then I'm thinking I'm never paying for everything anymore. She's just a friend. She's not girlfriend material.

Not sure how women feel about this. Do you still expect the guy to keep paying for shit?