I'm thinking of this as a period of investment, somewhat akin to the Masters degrees I never quite did ([1](https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-mlitt/), [2](https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-social-science-internet)). ## October 2021–March 2022 The [Effective Altruism Long-Term Future Fund](https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future) has given me a six month self-development grant, which will cover my salary and expenses. This is very enabling—I'm grateful to the grants committee, and most of all to the donors. Also to [Peter McIntyre](https://mcntyr.com/), who encouraged me to apply. ## April–September 2021 I am funding my work through: - Ongoing income from [Inbox When Ready](https://inboxwhenready.org) and consulting for a longstanding client. - Freelance income from [80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org). My living expenses are unusually low at the moment. I recently broke up with my long-term partner and am in the process of "breaking up" with 80,000 Hours, so I no longer have a strong reason to live in Paris or London. This means, it's unusually easy to have a cheap, nice life by renting short term in rural France, spending weeks or months at my parents place, and keeping my city visits short. Fundamentally I'm in a great position: I expect to spend less than I earn this year, even though less than 30% of my work hours will be paid, and I will continue to [[Buy time]] fairly aggressively. I also have several years of runway from personal savings, and solid backup plans. Despite all this, I notice that I sometimes feel nervous about my personal finances, mainly due uncertainty about how much I "ought" to be saving at this stage in my life. I suspect this is mostly unjustified, so I've pencilled in a day or two of personal financial planning for June, which will hopefully be reassuring. If it isn't, I may seek to increase my earnings in 2021H2, either by developing my micro-SaaS projects, or via some other means (consulting? grants? crowdfunding?).