Very soon I am going to be moving my davidhuang.org website to a new platform and hosting server. It’s not that I really want to do this. It’s more that the software it is running on is SO old, out of date, and no longer supported that it’s going to break as soon as the server gets the update that should have happened many months ago. So I will be rebuilding that site from scratch in WordPress here on the account that is hosting this blog. Unfortunately what that also means is that most of what I’ve built up on the davidhuang.org site over the many years will simply go away and be lost. There is no easy way to transfer it all. I do hope to reconstruct some of the more popular sections as time permits.
Continue reading “AC1 – Making a Living”Category: Money
posts related to money and finances.
How I get 1000% to 3000% more interest with my emergency fund savings
Being a self employed studio artist as my full-time job is a pretty awesome thing. I feel very blessed to have been able to make this my life! However, there are some challenges involved. One that I learned early on was that my income is just going to be highly variable. Some months hardly any work sells. I think my worst month I had a grand total of $10 in income! Thankfully this is offset by months of monster levels of income way beyond what I ever made when working a normal wage type job. Over the course of a full year things seems to average out and remain fairly constant year to year. However, due to this wide income variability I would be a financial and nervous wreck if I tried living paycheck to paycheck. I’ve found I really have to have a significant stash of liquid funds to ride out the low points with stress free ease.
Continue reading “How I get 1000% to 3000% more interest with my emergency fund savings”When Things go Awry
So the other day I got up and was raring to get out into the studio and start hammering. I feel like I’ve been slacking on my metalwork, getting pulled away in too many other directions. I really need to be getting some hammering done, both because it’s what pays my bills and I’ve got several galleries needing to be restocked! I’m feeling the pressure and guilt of not getting enough done. So I’m ready to head out the front door and go to the studio. “Oh, that doesn’t look good.” “Hmm…” Yep, the front door won’t open!
Continue reading “When Things go Awry”The 3 E’s part two: the micro/personal level view
In my last post I explored the 3 E’s (the Economy, Energy, and the Environment) from a wide scale macro viewpoint. This time I want to look at them a bit from the micro view, or that of my own personal household. It might not be a bad idea to reread the previous post, but as a brief recap we have economic systems that require continuous exponential growth to function well. Continuous exponential growth requires a continuous exponential extraction and consumption of energy resources, in particular fossil fuels, as well as a continuous exponential consumption of environmental resources. In other words, endless growth on a finite planet. There are strong indications we are at peak extraction rates for our planetary fossil energy and environmental resources.
Continue reading “The 3 E’s part two: the micro/personal level view”The 3 E’s: Economy, Energy, Environment
This afternoon I was outside splitting firewood in preparation for winter heating. As my body worked my mind got some exercise as well thinking about how to approach this post about the 3E’s, those being the economy, energy, and the environment. I’ve been promising to write more about this pretty much since I started this blog a few months ago because it is such an important framework I use to understand what is really going on around me and to help guide my decisions. The aim is to better take advantage of the opportunities available to me now and leave me better positioned for our likely future.
Continue reading “The 3 E’s: Economy, Energy, Environment”Trigger Point Therapy: a surprisingly effective, cheap, easy, drug free way to deal with most pain
Twenty some years ago, not too long after I bought my little homestead I was fully engaged in a project to raise the roof on what was the first metals studio here, now known as the old metals studio and becoming known as the wood shed. I had a rust bucket contraption of a mini pick up truck and was loading asphalt shingles into the back of it at the home improvement store. With just a few more packages left on the cart to transfer over one of those bend, lift, twist movements resulted in crippling back pain. “Is this what people mean when they throw their back out,” I wondered? It seemed to take a herculean effort to stand up fully and then still somehow manage to get the remaining shingles in the truck and drive home.
Continue reading “Trigger Point Therapy: a surprisingly effective, cheap, easy, drug free way to deal with most pain”Mind the Gap – It’s where the magic happens
I’m challenging myself to reach a bare bones level of wealth needed for me to retire early within the next three years. Naturally that has me considering the nature of wealth, security, and money. With regards to money I tend to fall into two different mental habits, neither of which really serve me fully. The first is to focus on increasing my income. I realized the other day this is almost completely irrelevant on its own. The other habit of mine is to focus on cutting expenses. Again this is almost as irrelevant as increasing income. Reducing expenses does tend to reduce consumption of energy and resources, thus reducing my ecological footprint, but with regards to wealth and security unless I can sustainably reduce it to zero this too is completely irrelevant on its own.
Continue reading “Mind the Gap – It’s where the magic happens”Can I have fresh salad greens grown at home year around?
Spring fever has hit, along with its annual increase in work load. It seems like I’ve always got a ton of metalwork to do in order to meet deadlines around this time, compounded by the equally time sensitive pressures to get the garden prepared and planted. This year I’ve added the task of composing posts about these activities for this blog. I’m struggling to figure out how to handle it all.
Continue reading “Can I have fresh salad greens grown at home year around?”What’s for Dinner?
What’s for dinner? It seems like a simple enough question, yet the answer to it can have profound impacts on my personal economy, my health, my energy use, and our overall environment, not to mention the living capital of my little homestead. So it’s a question I’ve been putting more thought and effort into, trying to shift my answers with the goal of improving all these elements. I imagine some of you are cringing already, fearing I’m going to break out with some militant screed instructing you that MY diet is the BEST diet and you must follow it too or you’re some morally inferior poopy head. Don’t worry, that’s not me. I feel like what you chose to eat is up to you, just as it is your own responsibility to determine what sort of diet your body functions best on. I’m merely offering this up as information about my personal journey in the realm of food in the hopes it might help you too.
Continue reading “What’s for Dinner?”Building a Better World in your Backyard instead of being angry at bad guys
Final Update (I think). The book is now done and available in print, ebook, and as an audiobook. If you are interested in purchasing a copy you can do so here.
Update. The campaign just ended with phenomenal success! A total of 2768 people supported it with $153,983.05! Thanks to all of you who joined me in helping make it all happen. If you missed out I’ll be sure to make one more update to this post when the book has gone through the final editing processes, been printed, and is available for anyone to purchase. Odds are good I’ll do another blog post too reviewing the book after I’ve got my copy and read the whole thing.
So I’ve known the Kickstarter campaign to get this book printed was coming up for months now. I’m excited to see it finally happen! Paul Wheaton and Shawn Klassen-Koop have been working on this for over a year. I’ve read a few sections they’ve shared in various threads on the Permies.com forums and it looks like it should be an excellent book that is essentially right along the lines of what I’m aiming to do with this blog.
Continue reading “Building a Better World in your Backyard instead of being angry at bad guys”