-
Why I Prefer Not Having A Backup Plan
Life is full of surprises. Many things are not really in our control, yet we live life like we have control. Take driving for example. We do our best to practice defensive driving to avoid accidents. Yet we have absolutely no control over the others and how in spite of being most defensive, we could end up in an accident. There is no backup plan here. If an accident happens, we have to deal with it as it comes. Most times a plan B helps, but in some cases, there is no plan B. Strangely, I have taken some decisions in life intentionally without a backup plan. These are no small decisions. They are some of the most difficult and riskiest ones.
...continue reading -
Failed To Repair An Android Tablet
I tried to fix an old android tablet and I failed. If you recall, a few posts ago, I mentioned how I failed to repair my TV. Later I figured out the issue and eventually was able to fix it. I hope the same can happen with the tablet. But as of now, after many attempts to recover it, I was unable to bring it back to life. It was working fine until the battery has gone bad and the device would not turn on without a battery. A few weeks ago, the battery of this cheap android tablet bulged like a balloon. The bulge was so big that the back of the device opened up. In the past, when some of my old android phones had a bulged battery, I could remove the battery and still run it using a USB charger. That does not seem to work with tablets though.
...continue reading -
Time To Revisit My Expectations?
Most of my finance related numbers for retirement were based on an inflation of 6% and investment returns of 10%. Going by the recent data, neither inflation nor returns are inline with my expectations. We are in a high inflation and low returns period of a market cycle. The worst part is that the returns from both equity and debt are low at the same time. While it is not as bad in India, elsewhere in the world, that is causing a lot of pain. Since the rest of the world will affect India at some point, I thought it was time to revisit my numbers and see if they still make sense in the future as I continue my long retirement journey.
...continue reading -
How I Waste My Time
You know, in a typical year after retirement, I noticed that I have been working on some repair or pet project at the rate of 1 or 2 per month. I don’t like to explain all of them, otherwise this blog will be just that – my repair/project blog. But once in a while I feel like I should write about these small projects. Otherwise many keep wondering what I do after retirement and how I am able to spend time. Generally I just tell these folks that I am busy with my family especially my daughter since she does not attend school (unschooled). After hearing this, most stop asking any more questions. It is not that I am working on any top secret projects. Just that these small project don’t qualify as something to write or talk about them.
...continue reading -
Personal Finance Is Not Always About Money
We attribute personal finance to so much about financial planning, but it is really not just about the money. There are various other aspects which don’t feel like they are related to personal finance, but they are. Take for example the quality of life aspect. It is not related to money, but it could be part of personal finance for some. How? Let’s take this example – say I was offered a job with Rs. 20L per year where the work does not involve any travel, and say I have another offer which pays be Rs. 30L per year but with lots of travel. I would choose the former offer. Because the quality of life would be far better without travel. I don’t care for the extra Rs. 10L per year if it is going to take me away from family for prolonged periods.
...continue reading -
Android Tablet As A Second Monitor
In one for my earlier posts I mentioned about using an android tablet as a second monitor for my laptop. I wanted to explain how I did that in case anyone is interested, although I am not sure how useful it will be. First of all, let me explain my setup. I almost always use Linux and my current favorite distro is Manjaro. I dual boot to Windows 11 for the occasional gaming fun. On top of using Manjaro Linux I am on the bleeding edge usually. So instead of using X11 I am actually using Wayland as the display server. If I already lost you, then don’t worry. Continue reading because you may still find something useful in here that works for Windows as well as for Linux with X11.
...continue reading -
Vehicle Inflation
Since I recently purchased a new car, my insurance has shot up quite a bit. I thought this would be a good time to look at my vehicle insurance inflation before the major jump. As I always say, it does not matter what the government published inflation numbers say, the question is how much is your personal inflation. Your corpus, the safe withdrawal rate and thus your financial independence depends on your inflation. So it is always a good idea to know your inflation numbers. In the past, I’ve written a few posts on our inflation of a few things. Here are some of them if you are interested:
...continue reading -
Savings Due To Solar Panel
Last year, around this time, I wrote a post on how much money my solar panel was saving us. I was supposed to write a follow up to it after one year, but I completely forgot about it. Thankfully, a reader reminded me to give an update and here I am. Unfortunately even after one year I still did not finish the software that was supposed to instantly tell me how much I am saving each month. I should be able to get that information because I have a bunch of sensors monitoring my solar panel system. They measure the power generated by the panel, the amount of power we are using at home and how much power we are drawing from grid. All that data is stored in the cloud in Firebase. Yet I did not finish that part of the software. And to think I am actually retired. Wonder where all my free time goes. Anyway, in this post I will give a guesstimate using our electricity bills as a proxy.
...continue reading -
Reusing Old Android Tablets
Before I retired, I used to work as an Android engineer in a reputable company. One of the benefits of working in an android team is that we get access to a lot of devices and form factors so we can test our products (the android apps that we build) on various devices. As a result, I have a bunch of android mobile devices and tablets. I will show off the collection in another post some day. After I quit, we were allowed to keep some of the old devices and use them for personal work. However, we are not allowed to sell them or give away to non family members. So I thought I need to put them to good use.
...continue reading -
Tools I Use To Repair Stuff
A few posts ago, I started writing about the tools I use to repair various things at home based on a request from a reader of my blog. Here is a continuation of that series. I already covered what tools I use to repair and build electronics. In this post I want to cover the tools I used to repair some mechanical items such as cycle or washing machine etc. I won’t go into too much detail explaining every tool that I have. I just want to show you what I have to do some basic repairs. I still feel like I don’t have enough tools, so this is not a comprehensive set that you need. These are somethings that worked for me and perhaps will work for you too.
...continue reading
