Category Archives for Financial independence

FIRE Journeys

One of the aims of this blog is to talk about the journey to FIRE – Financial Independence and Retiring Early.

The first part of this is simple: when your passive income exceeds your average spending, you no longer need to go to work and you are Financially Independent.

The second part is optional: at this point you don’t need to work, but many people choose to carry on working because they like it, or to change jobs to something that is more fun. Or alternatively, you can Retire Early and give up work altogether.

The first interview should be up soon and will be with a friend who has a property portfolio comprised of residential and student lets. If you have any questions about his journey, please raise them in the comments and I’ll try to include them in my chat.

Thanks.

 

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Yachtbuilding – Early Retirement and Financial Independence

Part of this blog will be my efforts to become financially independent before the statutory retirement age. How quickly this happens will depend on a number of factors but moving here was about getting more life out of the work/life balance and working less is a big part of that.

For me, the priorities are:

  1. Build up a substantial pension pot
    To generate income for day to day living and to use the 25% tax free lump sum to pay off outstanding debt
  2. Reduce outgoings
    Living here has already helped reduce our outgoings but the house needs a lot of work so in the short term our outgoings will be high
  3. Build up passive income sources
    At present this means our buy to let property but we also intend to invest and use the income to pay some bills

I reckon ten years ought to be enough but there’s a lot that can happen in the meantime. Interest rates, investment returns and other unexpected events may get in the way or help.

Part of the reason for this blog is to report on progress. I’m not alone and there are a lot of people out there doing the same thing, like Monevator, Retirement Investing Today, Afford Anything, Early Retirement Extreme as well as the sites linked on the left.

The title is a reference to financial institutions and their customers which will be the subject of another post.

What this blog is about

This blog will cover a number of areas related to life, work, money and probably a bit of gardening and DIY too. Hopefully over time these areas will start to coalesce into something approaching a focus…

Country living – living down here is different to living in London, but not always in the ways you think. We think it’s better otherwise we wouldn’t have moved and we’ll be looking at exactly how those differences affect our day to day lives.

Working from home – this is what made our move possible. We’re very dependent on somewhat shonky broadband at the moment but there are ways to start working from home and ultimately to become ‘untethered’.

Financial independence – although it may seem as if we’ve taken on a lot of risk by letting out our London house this risk is balanced by various strategies and options available to us. Obviously financial dependence depends on both reducing your costs and investigating your earnings and we’ll be doing both.

DIY – our house needs a lot of work and I need to get a bit more handy, both to save money and to become more resilient. We’ll also be looking at growing more food in the garden and we’d like to plant an orchard.

Investment planning – a big one and there are plenty of financial blogs out there. I’d like to ‘retire early’ in that I choose when and where I work, although I’m not there yet. I’d like to discuss some ideas and concepts and no doubt Vanguard trackers and B2L property will feature heavily.

That’s about it for now. If anyone has any suggestions or questions please use the comments section below.