theFIREstarter

After 3 months of funemployment, I thought I better write about the touchy feely side of this and give some of my thoughts and emotions that I’ve been going through. Seeing as this is perhaps the most important part of life and happiness it obviously needs to be addressed at some point!

This is not your traditional FIRE of course ¹ so my thoughts here could be completely irrelevant if you are going down that traditional route.

However I believe that there are many people out there attempting to do this in a similar way to myself . In fact many of the FIRE crowd who went the traditional route do seem to recommend quitting before you have 25x savings and just working for yourself anyway.

Also the Corona situation has clearly not helped. If you quit in 2 years time it could be a lot easier to deal with, but I would imagine that many of these feelings

Anyway, here is a summary of my thoughts!

doubts, panic

I am constantly doubting myself and having pangs of panic:

• Have I made the right decision here!?!??
• I seem to be working more than when I had a job! Sometimes I code from 8pm-12pm then get up at 7am and code for another 3 hours.
• Why didn’t I stay on at work to keep the pay check and carry on working on my side hustles, that was working well for me?
• I would have been working from home all this time anyway so wouldn’t have been in much of a different position anyway! (Obviously this disregards the fact that I am not an all-knowing omnipotent being, but try telling the irrational monkey brain that when it gets going!)
• I’ve “only” made roughly 3k/month since lock down started…. it’s not enough to fund our lifestyle!!!
• You are essentially still gambling! What if you lose more and this goes down!? What if bookies withhold payments?! What if something changes and all of the money making techniques stop working!? You haven’t got any solid reliable income!?!?!? *Head explodes*
• We are eating into the nest egg, I still want to be saving… What will this do to my end of year savings rate results!? Paaaanic!
• Am I happier doing what I am doing now compared to before? Can someone please tell me!?

perspective

I try to then be rational and look at these things with some better perspective:

• I’ve had 3 months to work when I want, where I want. When I was in the office I would often code in the evenings on side projects anyway so that’s not that much difference. During the day times I am probably only averaging 2-3 hours a day of “work” and the rest is spent on family time and DIY projects, which I would not have had time for otherwise.
• I am actually enjoying writing code for myself and massively improving the projects I started before I quit, and starting new ideas. I am whizzing through all of these ideas at super fast speed which I would have struggled to find time to do if I still had a real job, or at the least it would have taken me 5 times longer to get through it all.
• Working from home during lock down would have been mega stressful. What would we have done on the days when Mrs T was working, we could not have sent TFS Jr to Nanny or Grandma’s house so it would have been juggling work and a 4 year old! Instead it was (relatively – all the other lock down downsides notwithstanding) a bit of a breeze.
• Just listen to yourself you whiny git!!! Only 3k/month!?!?!? What?? I think if you offered yourself this amount 3 months ago when Corona first hit, you would have bitten your own hand off, pal. Also if you take out April in which there was pretty much zero activity at all, I’m averaging over 4k/month which is definitely enough to fund our lifestyle without drawing down any capital. Hopefully you can build this up from here but even if not that’s still a decent wage for sitting in front of a laptop and opening a few bookmaker accounts here and there. And you still plan on selling some of this software so there is potential for much more income down that route as well!
• Matched betting and related techniques have been around years and will continue to do so for at least another 1-2 years (I’ve been saying this for the last 5 years though and it’s still going strong). Things change but there are always new techniques to learn and ways to earn a dollar here and there. Plus as mentioned above you are also starting a software business which should start pulling in regular income as well. You only used to earn £2300ish/month after tax and commuting costs so it won’t take many software sales to replace this more solid part of your income! Yes you may lose some money in the next day, week or month but you’ve been doing this stuff for enough years to know that a bad patch is almost inevitably followed by a good patch and you end up even better off than before the bad patch hit.
• The nest egg has gone down slightly but that is only because of the expensive house improvements you have decided to do this year. These are all finished now, so even 3k/month should barely put a dent into
• Happiness is just such a weird thing it’s really hard to pin down how happy you are. I think I feel happier in general now, but obviously there are still the ups and downs of daily life. This is inescapable and will always be there no matter what you do. In any given moment I may feel pissed off, but to attribute that to the fact I’ve quit my job is plainly more than a bit silly. The grass always seems greener and of course there is no way to run an AB test on your life where you could see what happened if you made the other decision. I think all things considered there is no way I would have been happier by not quitting my job on a day to day basis (experiencing self) and also looking back in say 1 or 2 years time even if things go pear shaped I think I would be proud of my decision rather than always thinking “What If” if I had stayed in my job (or indeed just tried to switch to a different but very similar office job).

As usual this is a rushed out, brain dump of a post, so apologies if it’s incoherent, but at least it’s a short one this time 🙂

Any questions as usual please shout and if anyone else is going through similar times please get in touch, I feel like we all need as much support as can get through these mentally tough times 🙂

Cheers for reading as always