The year-end audit 2023

Struggling with the question: Why do I have so much and others so little?

In October and November 2021, I had a series of mystical experiences. While I was sleeping, I would feel like I was being electrocuted¹ and I would head towards the Light. I would wake up, shaken, gasping for air. It happened about 5-6 times.

I asked my spiritual teachers and mentors about it. My friend Matthew Engelhart simply said “Good! It’s happening to you. The death of your ego is starting.” Haha Matthew, don’t you understand it’s a really uncomfortable to go to bed, not knowing if I was going to be electrocuted that night? My Franciscan spiritual director teacher, Eileen Parfrey, who didn’t know what it was, but wasn’t surprised it was happening in the fall, around Day of the Dead, when the veils between the physical world and the Other World are thinnest.

When I first brought this to my own spiritual director, Mark Lesniewski, he simply said, “I don’t what’s happening, but something is happening in the world right now and I don’t think it’s only happening only to you.” A month later, back in spiritual direction, I told him it was still happening. He told me again something is happening in the world and I wasn’t the only one. Then he told me a story: he had another directee, a 70 year old woman, who was going something similar. She had been talking in her sleep, and it was someone else. Finally, she had the wherewithal to record herself in her sleep. She brought the recording in to Mark. Mark said the voice was the voice of a man speaking Hebrew. And this woman knew no Hebrew.

That November, I was in Oaxaca. I would see the disabled people begging on the street. I would give them money. I found myself weeping in the streets, asking why do I have so much and others so little? I walked to the St. Francis Church and sat in the pews, deeply disturbed at the injustice of the world, and my particular place in it. Why was I traipsing along, traveling here and eating at nice restaurants while others were suffering? I wanted to give away all my money.

Death of the ego indeed.

My 2023 budget

I wrote last year about the importance of a year-end audit: no only for your journey to financial independence, but as part of having a relationship to the truth. We tell ourselves lies, big and small. And that maladjusts us to life.

The end of year audit is not only having a relationship with the truth, it’s about having a relationship with reality. It’s your relationship to the environment. A relationship to your own values. Are you who you say you are? Are you even who you think you are? What are you giving time and attention to?

My belief is that when you’re telling the truth, you’re close to God. — Anne Lamott

So starting with my credit card spending, here’s my EOY spending for 2023:

• $19,534 of credit card expenses this year.¹ About 10% more than previous years. One level deeper dive:

  • Services are mostly household stuff: electricity, water, internet, cell phone bill, car and home insurance. Also business subscriptions for School of Financial Freedom like Discourse, Squarespace etc., so some of this is deducted as business expense.

  • Restaurants: my major “fun” expense. I spent about over $100 a week on restaurants? That sounds crazy to me, but that’s the point of an audit: to see the truth of yourself.

  • Merchandise: I spent $73 a week. Mostly groceries. Some Amazon purchases, some of that for the house, some of it pure consumerism.

• $500 per year on on another credit card which has trash autopayments on it.

• I amortize my annual home maintenance as $3,000 per year.As FF alumni know, I don’t have a mortgage, thanks to younger Douglas saving and buying a home in cash. But if you have a house, you need to pay for homeowners insurance, property taxes and utilities. You need to reserve money for home maintenance, even if you don’t have a mortgage. I spent very little on the house this year, mostly hardware store purchases. The universal recommendation is budgeting 1-4% of the value of the house for maintenance, which does not include renovations, which is consumption.² This means if your house has 5% “home appreciation” every year, but you have to spend 3% in maintenance, after 2% (or more) of inflation, you probably are not gaining any “value” in the house. That's why you need to be careful about “appreciation” as you account for real estate in your nest egg. It’s worse if the housing market stays flat or drops.

• I paid $5000 in property taxes this year. This keeps going up.

• I donated $2,000 to Homeboy Industries, run by one of my heroes, Father Greg Boyle. The organization brings compassion and emotional reintegration for formerly incarcerated and formerly gang-involved people in Los Angeles. Father Greg’s books have had a profound effect on me, my actions, and this newsletter; if you are looking for inspirational spirituality, I recommend you pick one up.

• I spent $5,000 on surrogate partner therapy, which is a whole other conversation in itself.

This is a breakdown of what the average American household spends, $68k a year, and, because I’m single, a breakdown of what the average single person spends, $61k. All in all, I spent about $35,000 in 2023, about 25% more than 2022 and 2021. I would attribute my 25% increase in consumption on a few factors:

1. Inflation in the last two years was a total of 13%, so that’s half of it.

2. 2021 was a pandemic year and 2022 was a torn Achilles year. So consumption was bound to go up in 2023 as I wasn’t sitting on my ass on the couch and out in the world more.

3. Influenced by ideas from the book Die with Zero, I made the long-delayed decision to address my issues with intimacy, body image, and sensuality with surrogate partner therapy. Again, this is a conversation in and of itself, that deserves its own post one day. Suffice to say, spending money on therapy was not only a challenge for what it unveiled, but also my relationship to frugality, self-denial, and money.

But still alive

A couple of stories back from that Oaxaca trip in November 2023:

In my Airbnb, I had my last of those sleep electrutions. Knowing that it wasn’t solely happening to me, and the electrutions weren’t solely about me, that maybe it even was serving a larger purpose, helped me accept the electrutions. As I did, the experiences became less electrocution and more heading toward the Light. The night after struggling with the question why do I have so much and others to little? in the St Francis Church, I had my last mystical experience. This time, there was no electrution. Without my resistance, there was no pain. As Richard Rohr would say, everything belongs. In letting go and accepting death, I became simply being aware of heading towards the Light. In the liminality between dream state and wakefulness, I was to breathe in the crisp air, and breathe it out saying over and over the phrase I learned in Franciscan spiritual director training: “This is God’s Love.”

This is God’s Love.

If you could naught yourself for an instant, indeed I say less than an instant, you would possess all that this is in itself. — Meister Eckhart

On my flight back to Portland, I was still in a mystical state. I remember being on the plane at nighttime, gazing out over the lights of Los Angeles. I started shaking and crying, whispering repeatedly, “I’m dying, I’m dying” (To this day, I still laugh thinking what the passenger next to me must have been thinking haha).

And at some point, I hit the bottom and started coming back up. I started realizing, “But I’m still alive. I’m still alive.” The thought of it revived me. I realized yes, I’m dying and I will die. But I’m still alive. All the things available in this life were still available to me, who knows how long for: sex, intimacy, joy, connection, service, growth. Would God want these for me?

This is God’s Love too.

Would an all-loving God want me to spend money on myself? I’m dying. But I’m still alive. I guess that’s why I started spending money on myself.

“Our true home is the present moment, the miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment.”  - Thich Nhat Hanh

Kierkegaard writes: “To be entirely present to oneself is the highest thing and the highest task for the personal life.” Was my frugality, clothed in “voluntary simplicity,” enabled by my ability to disassociate from and avoid my own life? So much of FIRE philosophy is about a certain detachment from material possessions, convention, and the opinion of others. But did I need to spend more to be entirely present in what was happening to me? The definition of integrity is not only a relationship to truth; it’s a relationship to wholeness.

I don’t know why I have so much and others have so little. Or what I should spend on myself vs. others. Or what I should spend now (die with zero!) or preserve for later. I don’t have answers to any of this. As the Quakers say continuing revelation.

But I learned something on that plane ride back in 2021. Yes, I’m dying. But I still an ego.³ I still have desires. To deny them is a rejection of grace, the particularity of my grace. The grace in my life will be not only what I received, but I desired. This too was God’s love.

Yes, I’m dying, but perhaps the better way to put it is I’m evolving. As the Tibetan Book of the Dead puts it, this life is simply one bardo (transition) from one place to another. Everything belongs.

The great mystic and social activist Dorothy Day believed that we are called to the “duty of delight.” We must watch for that which gives us joy, that which warms our hearts, that which makes us giggle, that which makes us feel alive in our bodies.⁴ In my first meeting with my spiritual director Mark, he asked me what my deepest desires were, for in my deepest desires, I would find God.

Become detached to the superficial stuff we’re conditioned to want from this pathoadolescent society, the attaining, performing, pleasing, winning, and succeeding. Death of the ego indeed. Find yourself in the soul-level longings that you’re afraid of voicing to anyone, even yourself. There is story of God entering into your secret grief, your secret sorrows, your secrets joys.⁵

This is God’s Love.

A how-to guide to a 10 minute personal audit

• If you have a life partner, grab them. Pour a couple glasses of wine, hold holds for a moment, make it romantic. If you’re single, put on your PJs, and get under a blanket on the couch.

• Pull your laptop out and go to your credit card website to check your spending. There should be place where it categorizes your spending over the year.

• Figure out where else you spend money. Do you have automatic withdrawals for things like your mortgage or rent? What checks do you write? Paypal or Venmo? Cash withdrawals? All these things are tracked, somewhere.

• Total all of that and you should have your total spending. Now you have the truth. Does it match your values? Are you living in integrity?

One level deeper

• Look at your bank balances. How do they look compared to a year ago?

• Look at your investment accounts. Forget for a second whether the net worth has gone up or down. (If you have indexed, the S&P500 went up 25% this year, after being down last year, and up the previous three years). Instead check how much you put into your account for investments. That’s your savings rate!

• Think about what your goals are for next year. Hint: hold the line on your spending while increasing your income. You need cost-of-living adjustments from your employer. Can you look for a promotion, increase your skills, get another credential, or ask for a raise? Most of that should go to increasing your savings rate.

Happy new year everyone! As the Chinese would say, have a prosperous and healthy 2024!

Offering FF1 January-March 2024

I would like to teach another cohort of Financial Freedom 1 to start the year, but don’t have any registrations yet. If you’ve taken FF1 (half of this mailing list), spread the word? Almost everyone comes from word of mouth from you.

If you haven’t taken it, consider it! Or share with others who you think might benefit (your adult kids?). Thank you!

1. Other people with similar experiences?

2. Previous years: new refrigerator, washer, and dryer, also plumbing issues, new roof, repainting the house. See my previous post Home Renovations: Cost or Investment?

3. As Bill Richards, psychedelic researcher and mystic, once told me: “God loves egos.”

4. And then, eventually, what delights others as well.

5. Kat Armas