If you're new here, this blog will give you the tools to become financially independent in 5 years on a median salary. The wiki page gives a good summary of the principles of the strategy. The key to success is to run your personal finances much like a business, thinking about assets and inventory and focusing on efficiency and value for money. Not just any business but a business that's flexible, agile, and adaptable. Conversely most consumers run their personal finances like an inflexible money-losing anti-business always in danger of losing their jobs.
Here's almost a thousand online journals from people, who are following the ERE strategy tailored to their particular situation (age, children, location, education, goals, ...). Increasing their savings from the usual 5-15% of their income to tens of thousands of dollars each year or typically 40-80% of their income, many accumulate six-figure net-worths within a few years.
Since everybody's situation is different (age, education, location, children, goals, ...) I suggest only spending a brief moment on this blog, which can be thought of as my personal journal, before looking for the crowd's wisdom for your particular situation in the forum journals.
Maybe when oil reaches $200 in a few years as predicted by the same Goldman-Sachs analyst that predicted $105 dollar oil by 2009, part of the freeway system, which is now overpopulated by cars and SUVs(*), will be converted into bicycle paths. One can dream, right?
(*) I can’t help but compute (with a certain schadenfreude) that it should cost about $250 to fill up an Excursion or an H2 at that time.
Meanwhile in preparation or perhaps just prove a point take a look at the video below that I found on bicycle commuters.
(I do believe that riding a bicycle on the freeway is illegal – something about slower moving traffic – maybe there should be a law against cars during rush hour?!)
Speaking of rush hour – have you ever tried the car pool line. It’s a total rush going 60 in the outer lane and passing cars in the other lanes. It is also somewhat depressing to realize that there is only one occupant in each of those 2500 pound steel hulls. Perhaps there is a business opportunity here – volunteer to sit on the backseat so that people in a hurry can use the pool lane and get there faster. OTOH I notice that people in a hurry just tend to break the law.
In really awful traffic even the carpool lanes stink. Actually, those people who just ride exist. It is called slugging: http://www.commuterpage.com/slug.htm
I’m too afraid of being squashed to bike (on the freeway??) but i purposely have a short commute
Traciatim said,
It just looks to me like they are A-Holes that don’t follow traffic rules.
DJ said,
Holland has a system of bike routes that let people go everywhere in the entire country without riding in traffic. If they can do it, why can’t we?
Obviously, there are vast distances in the American Southwest. A path from LA to Veges would not be well used.
We should start by having bike paths in major metro areas. Each metro area is like a small country and could have it’s own system of bike paths.
Then, just for kicks, we could connect the cities.
Adrienne said,
Riding a bike on an LA freeway is probably illegal because it’s a suicide mission. But the theory works the same with a motorcycle no?
Great video. Sure they are breaking the law, but I bet at the height of rush hour in the major cities (LA, NYC, DC, Chicago, Dallas) they can beat everyone of those cars to their destination. Plus, when they do ride in cars, they probably don’t need a rope and pulley system to get their fat ass out of the car.
I don’t see how this is different than the lanesplitting done by motorcycles, which I believe is legal in California and many other states. I suppose if traffic miraculously clears up then a bike wouldn’t be able to speed up to the rest of traffic.
I bet the CHiPs would eat his lunch…if they could catch him!
What happens when one of those cars suddenly opens its doors? Wham-Oh!
Jacob said,
@Jacob – Maybe many of those car commuters should just get motorcycles? BTW some air-cooled motorcycles don’t have a fan and depend on the airflow from moving to prevent their engines from overheating. Therefore cars should never block the middle when they see someone riding up.
Steve Austin said,
ERE, I like that thought. Taking it to an extreme, set a minimum speed limit on the expressways. If you get caught in a traffic jam, you get a ticket. That’ll fix the problem quickly: either people will stop driving during rush hour, or they will unscrew their various local, state, US guvmints to improve traffic capacity such that everyone who drives can maintain the minimum speed (at a cost of higher highway construction and maintenance costs, of course). Conversely, bicyclists may use the freeways as long as they can maintain the minimum speed.
CyclingInvestor said,
Cycling is illegal on all LA freeways at this time. The closest
freeways where cycling is legal is on I5 north of Lake Hughes Rd, a stretch of I5 running south through Camp Pendleton, and a stretch of I15 between H138 and Cajon Pass.
sarah z said,
legal in TX . . .
steve said,
They do that (take people for free in cars to get access to the HOV lane) in Baltimore and Washington DC. They call it “slugging”. People wait in different spots (each spot associated with a particular destination) and cars just come by and take them in so they can use the HOV lane.
Too late Jacob,
The business op you mention that is… 😉 It’s already in vogue in various SE cities 😉 The “professionals” 😎 are called ‘carpool jockeys’ – and they help solo driver cars circumvesnt traffic jams without necessarily taking on extra passesngers.. Here’s the NYTcoverage on the phenomenon!
LOL. Love the comments. The phrase, “only in LA” comes to mind. 😉
I would love if we were bicycle friendly like Holland. Sadly, even the outskirts of LA are not bicycle friendly. Cars love to try and run us over.
HSpencer said,
As I see it, the problem is not freeways, bicycles, or Cars, Truck, SUV.
The problem is overcrowding. Where I live there is no overcrowding on our roads like that shown in the clip.
You say, “Well, gee, it don’t take no rocket expert to figure that out”!
I agree, it does not.
Maybe it does, however, take a rocket expert to learn to live somewhere else and lower your stress.
Or you could go with the Illuminati solution to overcrowding—AKA “Population Control”.
Where is a good place to begin population control? How about a major city? yeah, more bang for the Illuminati buck there.
I am NOT a rocket expert. Just offering this up for your consideration.
Jacob said,
@HSpencer – Are you saying that the babies that people go around congratulating each other on are ultimately responsible for clogging up the freeways? No, say it can’t be!
HSpencer said,
Jacob that would be equating population control to birth control. Depending on one’s mindset and beliefs, and whether your buying or selling, that is either:
a. A good idea
or
b. A bad idea.
I prefer to solve the problem via geography.
The US of A is still very large and pristine in it’s offerings.
Wow, crazy video. I almost jumped out of my seat when that BMW came up the carpool lane on-ramp, I thought it was going to hit them.
I get nervous in a car most days during my commute, I can’t imagine being on a bike or even a motorcycle.
I like the idea though that we could eventually use existing roads for bike paths. Even here in St. Louis there is a pretty decent “greenway” system of bike paths to get you around. Not perfect, but it seems like new paths are always being added.
hickchick said,
@HSpencer – you don’t push your city people out here, and I won’t send my manure lagoon your way.
et said,
Population density per sq mile:
Netherlands: 1,036
United States: 83
Los Angeles: 7,876
It is illegal in Australia to ride your bicycle on the free way. Which i thik is immoral. Effectively bicycling is the only “free” way of moving around the country and if you can’t ride on the freeways, when they’re the only way of getting around the country isn’t that saying you can only travel if you can afford to have a car? Didn’t they abolish poors law in englad like 150 years ago?
Tommy said,
Great idea. Lets put more people on the highway, but make them small, silent and very squishy. Nope, no problems there.
Jacob said,
@et – That’s a huge argument for eliminating cars in the middle of LA. The problem with the bikes in the US is that everything is spread out. Rather than building concentrated living with lots of green space between the cities, suburbia happened, quite possibly due to cars + cheap gas. The problem is that gas is no longer cheap and there are so many cars thanks to affluence and population increases that the infrastructure can’t keep up. The US transportation system took a chance and dug itself into a hole.
For ERE purposes: Do not buy a home in suburbia — biggest mistake ever. These houses will lose value over the next 20 years because of their inconvenient location.
HSpencer said,
I certainly agree with Jacob on not buying a suburban home in the outer reaches of a metro area. Transportation will be the problem. Much better to invest in a small community where if need be one could walk to needed resources. Think “Little House on the Prairie”. Remember when Michael Landon would either walk into town, or drive his team of horses if buying lumber and supplies? That’s where we need to get back to.
Can we not face facts that the stereotypical “American Dream” was dead on arrival as of 09/08?
The trend back to self sustainability has to replace the McMansion. SUV, and greediness of that so called “American Dream”.
I personally do not believe in the well packaged “peak oil” campaign. I feel this is a control issue to influence oil prices by the powers that own the oil. However I do believe there is a finite amount of oil in the earth, and we are heavily depleting it. I believe there are many resources available to the US citizen, but greed will control those as well.
We must become citizens of community, not independent empire builders of self-serving motives, if we are to survive and live well into the future.
HSpencer said,
I pulled the following article off the ATS website. It is “at least” interesting in nature, and supports what I wrote in my last post:
—We all remember BP’s original statement that they were losing 5,000 bpd from the well. Then scientists said it was more like 100k bpd. Then the government said that it was about 10k bpd – not 100k. A few weeks later, they said “Ok – maybe it is 100k bpd.”
Now we’ve got new figures of 350k bpd spewing out of the wellhead, (ATS Link) and a total of 420-840 MILLION barrels leaked so far. (ATS link)
To me, it all seems to point to one thing – BP was lying from the outset about the amount of oil this well was producing before the explosion. If they’re lying about this one, they’re probably lying about ALL of the ones they own, as are the owners of every other oil well on the planet.
Why would they lie about it?
For starters, everyone here knows about the “peak oil” theory. If the petrocompanies say that oil is getting harder to get out of the ground, they charge more for it and we end up getting hosed. Meanwhile, they continue to set record after record in regards to company profits.
What do you think would happen if instead of having to pump like hell to get oil out of the ground, that oil was practically GUSHING out of their wells? Better still – that the wells were not “running dry” as we’ve been told, and were instead being replenished via a chemical process near the core of the earth (abiotic oil)? That the oil companies were shutting down “dry wells” just to keep the lie alive?
The answer is that the world economy would crash and crash hard.
By and large, most nations are deeply vested in petrodollars. Were oil to suddenly drop in price to $5 a barrel, many countries would simply implode – mainly the OPEC cartel and our pals in the big oil companies. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by propagating the myth of peak oil.
I think the smoking gun is in plain-sight – surrounded by little unmanned subs and blowing hundreds of thousands of barrels a day into the gulf. ——–(end article)
This is just someone’s opinion, but it seems sensible to me.
That video is amazing… and totally illegal. I think you have to be able to go over 40 mph to get on the highway. Maybe if you got one of those motorized bikes? But that would also kind of defeat the purpose I guess. How funny would it be to see a bike passing you on the highway though 🙂
Jenna said,
Isn’t it legal to ride between two cars on the highway on a motorcycle in CA? Seems like if you want to do that it would make more sense to do it with a motorcycle rather than a bike. Our city just put in bike lanes on all the major roads, however, it’s still illegal to ride a bike on the highway. I say take public transportation, safest / cheapest option.
Jacob said,
@HSpencer – On the other hand, you’re arguing for a massive conspiracy of effectively all the oil companies. A single company would be able to increase profits simply by undercutting the “conspiracy price”. After all, it is not just the price of oil that sets the profits but the volume that is sold. Even OPEC had problems with individual members pumping over quota.
Now, one thing which is a problem with oil company reporting is that they like to state numbers conservatively. Later, they can revise them upwards. This is called reserve growth and has typically nothing to do with finding new reserves but much more with initially coming out and saying that the field is small and then later saying, well it’s slightly bigger. Shareholders like upward revisions as do the managers who can hire and fire the engineers who make the predictions. The problem with this is if you take “reserve growth rates” and project them into the future, you will get massive reserves. USGS used to do that. IEA used to do it too. I think IEA has revised their method to the more reasonable one of backdating the numbers e.g. You discover a field in 1985 and say it contains 20Gbbl. Then in 1995 you revise that number to 40Gbbl. Now without backdating, that would be two discoveries of 20G each ten years apart. With backdating, it’s a discovery of 40Gbbl in 1985. Backdating kills the growth and claims that growth only happens because of conservative estimates. The peak oil theory follows from that.
Rachel said,
Riding on the freeway in Texas is legal. Austin Critical Mass got up on I35 on day without arrest. The official response was that it is legal, but they highly suggest you don’t do it. Lucky for us, the traffic in Austin never seems to be going much more than 15mph on the highway.
@Jacob – I wonder – could telecommuting or location independency (is that a word?) take off and effectively offset the inconvenient location of homes in suburbia?*
When gas prices spiked a couple years ago we saw some progressive companies and governments going to 4 day workweeks or encouraging working offsite. If things got really bad – like $10/gal gas this could be a solution. Seems like commercial real estate could be the real loser.
*Of course there are always some occupations that physically need to show up for work – like manufacturing & retail.
Jacob said,
@Kevin M – That’s where the zoning laws come in [to interfere]. Maybe they’re overridden if you’re still an employee working from home. Oldschool management says to keep an eye on salaried employees lest they goof off, so I think telecommuting is mainly for contractors. [I have no stats to back up that claim.]
Q said,
Telecommuting, etc will rule the day. So will centralized manufacturing zones like in Thailand and other countries.
As far as the freeway, they need to go double-decker, take away the carpool and turn it into high-speed rail, and then make the double-decker section pedestrian and bike. Crazy and radical, but it will work.
I’m not sure zoning laws apply to work from home people – I’m pretty sure the cities just don’t want lots of traffic and customers parking in residential areas. Perhaps we should just become contractors instead of salaried employees? Pay for results instead of just showing up – what a novel concept!
I think Q has some interesting ideas as well. Perhaps cities like Detroit should encourage these manufacturing zones and build affordable housing around them (within walking or biking distance).
Britz said,
Great video!
It feels quite similar to how I daily bike commute, 11miles of which is on the highway – though in the nice and wide emergency lane, safely away from the traffic.
I often zip past mega-long traffic queues like in the video, and I can’t help but be a little smug. It’s a good game too, fixing on a car and counting the number of cars passed, subtracting if they pass you again. I’ve got up to about 400 cars and trucks passed in one go so far 🙂
@Benjamin Bankruptcy: It’s perfectly legal to ride on the highways here in NSW, and safer than on normal roads. You just ride in the emergency lane; they have bike icons painted on, here and there. Cars and trucks are even considerate and careful in general, except, sometimes, young and stupid L- and P-platers.
There’s a good bike trail system that lets you do about everything the highways do around Seattle (there’s a bridge you have to get on a bus to cross, but the bridge is old, has no shoulder, no bike lane, and it floats).
As a cyclist I’d be concerned about the noise of biking next to a freeway and the air quality.
Outside Birmingham, Alabama the highways are very flat and wide and the speed limit is 70 MPH. Outside Pittsburgh, pa the highways are some-what hilly and the speed limit is 55 MPH.
All Highways have the same standards on width and length and grades and stretchs for hill sides or flat levels. Every 5 miles, 1 mile must be straight in case of War time for Airplanes to land.
Now with all this said. I break the law and travel 80 mph on avg on all highways throughout America. Unless i notice the Curve (55MPH-) sign, or see a tunnel comming up, traffic, accidents, etc.
Now I also obey to the T the “guideline” for every 10mph at least give a car length of space between you and the car in front of you for braking. Most people don’t obey this and they fault crash everytime.
Which one is the more important to Obey? Our traffic rules’ priorities are messed up in this country. But it’s alright we all have mandatory car insurance. Well money can’t replace lives lost, and Earnings to a company matter not to how they are recieved even if via blood money.
I work from home but don’t have any customers at my residence so I skirt the zoning that way. I assume that would hold if you’re telecommuting. In Philly someone was smart enough (I can’t believe I said) to put rail train stops in the suburbs to keep them viable I suppose. Or keep the values artificially inflated.
prodgod said,
It’s my understanding that if the only way to get from point A to point B is via a freeway/highway, then it’s legal to ride a bike on that stretch of road. Not sure if that’s correct, but I’ve known of cross-country cyclists who have followed this rule.
Radeonic said,
Everyone looks at Netherlands for bike heaven, but really no one looking at the other side of the fence, i.e. China and Taiwan, they are a country full of bicycles and motorcycles too, and there’s till traffic jams everywhere.
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