Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.

Progress on my goals

Boat life

Water tank update

Yesterday, I sat in the lazarette (big storage locker at the back of the boat through which lots of pipes run) getting rained on while connecting the new water inlet pipe.

Boat yoga skills are growing strong.

Today, after my run, we dry fitted the tank to see where we need to pad it out at the bottom.

That was pretty important because the boat will rock and roll on the sea and if the tank isn’t snug and secure then we’re adding a 200kg missile into the mix when we hit rough weather.

I really don’t want to be hit by that, so we’re taking our time on the fit – but it’s progressing.

We need to work out how to raise it about 3cm and I need to cut a slightly bigger hole for the inlet pipe, but it’s a solid fit which is reassuring.

Distractions and detours

“Surveillance Consumerism”

I read an interesting complaint in The Escape Artist’s blog this week [emphasis added]:

“recently I noticed something new…I was talking on the phone about going away for winter sun.

After the call I start seeing travel agent ads on my phone / desktop.

Conclusion: your phone is always listening and beaming your private conversations back to Mega-Tech Grift HQ. They are screwing with us all.

I did some research. Apparently this has been going on for several years. 

And apparently many phones can do this even when the phone is switched off (wtaf?) It’s only when you take the battery out that you know there is no way for the camera / microphone to operate.

I have never seen Mr Money Mustache or any of the tech-oriented frugality bloggers mention this…why not??”

At this point I have to wonder what rock The Escape Artist has been living under. Yours truly has mentioned tech being used against us several times in weekly updates.

In fact, I’ve refused the same cover photo from this previous post specifically talking about smartphone addiction.

Well, if you’re new around here, I guess I’ll mention it again and say a bit more about targeted advertising. In fact, I’ll do one better and give you some solutions.

A point of order

The Escape Artist is an interesting blog. By and large, the points they make are fairly uncontroversial; but every so often there’s some weird borderline-conspiracy-theory nonsense snuck into the posts.

If you think there’s a “Mega-Tech Grift HQ”, you’re mental. Don’t know what to tell you. Companies are all in competition with each other for market share and they only co-operate sporadically.

But every good conspiracy theory has enough connection to the truth to make it believable.

Your smartphone probably is spying on you… sort of

If you’re using a smartphone, it probably has a virtual assistant feature that’s offered to make life easier for you. To do that, it listens to your conversations for “wake words” – like “Hey Google”, “Hi Siri” and so on.

Except of course if it can do that then it can obviously be asked to pick out other words.

Like the kind of buzzwords that would be really good for targeting adverts at.

It’s also true that Android is owned by Google, who make their money off, well, adverts. Amongst other things. And it’s probably true that you have given consent to several phone apps to access your microphone, so it’s not as if it’s illegal if someone with permission were to use your microphone to work out what ads are most likely to be relevant to your life at any given moment.

There’s no proof – or at least, I haven’t seen irrefutable proof – that your phone is definitely spying on you for any malicious reasons. But, even if Apple and/or Google are trying to be helpful by trying to link you to products and services that meet your needs at any time, it’s not good for your wallet if you get some targeted marketing sent at you every time you check the attention machine in your pocket. You can only have so much resolve.

What you can do about it

So what The Escape Artist doesn’t seem to mention is that it’s actually quite easy to solve this issue. There are varying options ranging from “super simple” to “marginally inconvenient” to overcome targeted advertising cookies.

If you’re on Apple, by all means turn Siri monitoring off.

If you’re on Android, turn off the personalised advertising and Google Assistant.

Consider switching to a privacy internet browser, like Brave. It’s got an ad blocker built-in and you can use it on your desktop and your portable devices. I’ve been using it for years, and can confirm that it also blocks ads on YouTube.

Be more mindful about what apps you download and what permissions you give them.

Consider using a VPN. Not essential, but they’re not expensive anymore.

Or just go back to a dumb phone. I use one Monday-Friday and it’s fantastic for avoiding crap like adverts.

Here’s a useful article on how to change your smartphone settings.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

This week went a lot better. We did a lot of smaller exercises and practiced She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult.

I don’t have a guitar session next week because of a work travel trip mid-week, so I’ll go back and rehearse some of the stuff we’ve already played.

Fitness

I’ve been upping the running ready for this marathon that I’m ostensibly doing in April.

This week I ran two 10km sessions on the treadmill, got in a specific stretching session and then did a half-marathon distance on the weekend.

My pace is about right for the half. I plan to do the first half marathon at a reasonable pace and then slow down over time until I’m basically crawling the last couple of miles.

Pro runners would say: “don’t do that, conserve energy and pace properly”. However, my problem is going to be staying motivated to run for four hours. It’s going to be easier to keep pace when I’m still fresh than it will be when I’m on hour no.3 and all I can hear is my own panting.

Well, that’s my theory anyway.

Final thoughts

Getting close to having running water back on the boat. You know how much I’ve missed that!

I guess it’s been a week of just grinding. Not the most fun reading, but hopefully reassuring to those of you who are also in a bit of a grind phase.

This week coming up I’m flying to London on a work trip. I’ll make the most of being wined and dined on the company tab, but it means I’m missing out on my guitar lesson and having to squeeze in my fitness training around it.

C’est la vie.

My financial independence campaign continues!