theFIREstarter

Totally random picture

Hi folks!

First of all I’ll get the obligatory apology out the way for all of those who have been on tenterhooks (lol) for an update all of this time – I am sorry! Despite it apparently being the year where no one could do anything, time has been in surprisingly short supply and the months have flown by, it was a classic case of weeks without posting turning into months, then pretty much a whole year! WTF, I can barely believe it myself.

A fair warning before we start, this is a long and rambling post and I may repeat points a few times as it’s been written over many sessions and a couple of months, and I can’t be bothered to edit it any longer. I may even be repetitive and rambling about it being rambling. I think I’ve just invented a new category – Meta-Ramblings.

Now you are forewarned, let’s start with a few potentially trivial sounding things, but that have been causing me much headache and part of the reason I’ve hesitated posting for so long ¹

What is this anyway?

One is what I am calling this phase of my life. It’s awkward because:

• I’m not actually Financially Independent.
• I’m not fully retired, and still “working” in some capacity albeit entirely as and when I decide (more on that later).
• So I can’t say I’m FI/RE or FIRE’d
• I’m also not really self-employed so hard to call it that.

Leaving aside the viper’s nest of explaining this to friends and family who are even less likely to comprehend what the hell I do now, for the purpose of this blog I decided to call myself semi-FIRE’d. In this way I hope to not offend any hardcore MMM/ERE type fans and also not to mislead anyone into thinking I am something that I am not.

Covid19

Barely 250 words into the post and we’ve already mentioned the C word. Well it was inevitable really wasn’t it!?

Every time I’ve been thinking about what to write up in an update I’ve come across a few different covid related writer’s block issue.

Almost anything I might write about my “new life” that could be either good or bad to update you on, could be actually due to covid related changes to my life rather than the quitting my job change, it’s hard to say. I don’t want to spend an entire post with 50+ points on how things are going, but after nearly everyone have to have a disclaimer. A concrete example to illustrate more clearly:

Since quitting I’ve found myself spending much more time with the family, which is great. However this could just be down to covid and if that hadn’t have happened maybe I would have spent 4 days a week playing golf and never seen them. Also, most people I know spent most of the year either furloughed or working from home anyway, so they would have also seen their family a lot more as well, so maybe I would have been better off staying with my job anyway and getting paid to doss around at home and pretend to be working.

As you can see the disclaimer is 4 times longer than the original point, so it could make for a very long and boring update if I go down that route!!!!

Just to be clear this is not the way I’m actually thinking in real life, just about how to write this post. I don’t want to just present the rosiest (or on bad points the worst) view of how my year has gone without acknowledging that I have no idea how it would have gone better or worse had covid not happened, or likewise had covid still happened and I did not quit my job.

The way I think about this normally is that while the above example disclaimer, and all the numerous others you could apply, are all true, I realise there are no A-B tests in real life, and also I tend to have a “no regrets” style attitude anyway. As long time commenter The Rhino often says, “does it pass the deathbed test”? Would you regret that decision (for example quitting your job) on your deathbed? After a year I can say almost certainly it’s a NO, so there is not much point in tying myself up in knots thinking this way. So, damn you blog post for even getting me to go down that rabbit hole 🙂

Anyway, to make things far more readable whilst keeping this post as honest as possible, if after any point I make, I think a disclaimer similar to the above example could be made, I will put C19 after it. If you want to fill in the blanks yourself then, it should be pretty obvious, but if not I may still elaborate slightly if necessary.

One other thing is that it seemed wrong to either toot my horn about how I’m having a great time now I’ve quit my job when so many are going through hardship with job losses, furlough and even losing friends and family. Conversely, me bitching about relatively trivial things such as home-schooling might also have been a bit hard to swallow for those going through much tougher times. Things seem to be nearly back to normal now so I can hopefully write more freely without offending anyone either way.

Baby Baby

Final reason for not posing: we welcomed TFS Jr II into the world last August. Things have been manic as they always are in the first year of having a baby and productivity in all other matters has dropped through the floor. Luckily being Semi-FIRE’d this doesn’t really matter all that much and is surely the whole point of this whole FIRE business in the first place. Anyway, once again it’s really hard to tease apart effects of not working (in theory having more time etc) with having a new baby (having much less time etc).

In summary, life over the last year has just been this big hodge-podge of ever changing and often counter-acting effects so it’s been really hard to actually write anything coherent about what life has been like and how being Semi-FIRE’d has affected that to either the positive or negative.

Anyway… procrastinate no more, I will give it my best shot, now we’re onto the update proper!

Let’s play the comparison game

There are a few people in the scene who have posted retirement progress updates recently so rather than write original content I thought it might be good to compare their points with what I’ve experienced over the last year to begin with. Just to be clear, I don’t think it’s good practice to compare with other people in terms of life outcomes or material stuff, but doing so with experiences can give us insight into how we really feel about things, which is surely beneficial.

Let’s start with the obvious one from the indomitable and very recently retired The Accumulator:

In his post he notes some of the benefits of FIRE, and I’ll comment on whether my experience agrees on them:

• Better sleep – Agree!
• Not worrying about money – Partial agree, as I am still earning, but am hardly ever worried about money like I used to be 5-10 years ago.
• Better physical health – No improvement but no worse, I was ok in this area anyway really.
• Feel carefree again – No, but having 2 young children is most probably due to this.
• Staying in touch with people – I already did a pretty good job of this before.
• No fixed routine – 100% agree. Apart from getting TFS Jr ready for school the days are very varied so far.
• Mrs is happier – Partial agree, both major lockdowns were pretty stressful but now things are going back to normal I think we’re finally getting into our groove with this new lifestyle.
• Finally he reports on Waking up excited every day – I’m sorry to say this is a big disagree from me. Maybe it’s due to the fact that previously I was already part time and now I am still working there really isn’t that much difference to my overall lifestyle? It’s amazing owning your own schedule, I cannot deny, but it’s not enough at the moment to have those giddy feelings he has reported. The seismic shift from full time work to zero work surely has much to do with that, for TA.

Next up we have FireToThe9to5 who retired around 2.5 years ago! You really should read all of her final posts but she unfortunately looks to have stopped posting now:

One year of FIRE  – This pretty much echoes much of TA’s post above, including the reports on waking up smiling every day. Guess I really struck out on that one 🙂 . Additional points include getting to know neighbours better, which although we did OK on before I have to agree I do see them and chat to them more now which is great. I’ve borrowed many tools from the retired man across the road in the last year which has been very handy 🙂

The Dream vs Reality – What it Really Felt Like to Walk Away from Work – I cannot empathise with this post enough, it’s almost as I’d written it myself barring the obvious personal situation differences. I definitely went out like a bit of a damp squib rather than in a blaze of glory as well. It kind of annoyed me at the time, for a good few months. But looking back now I could not give less of a shit, genuinely. I don’t even think about anything work related any more (I mean why would you, right? But still, it’s worth confirming this to you guys) apart from who I want to keep in touch with. I ask them how work is going when I see them but my eyes tend to glaze over when they start talking. When I worked there we’d spend half the time in the pub talking and bitching about work related stuff, but I just can’t get into it anymore, even though I know exactly what it was like just a year or so ago.

How to Fail Spectacularly and Still Retire Early – Part warning of unexpected events, part optimism gun that you can still make it even despite huge setbacks.

A final word – An absolutely heart warming send off post. Not much to say here but please read it. Just remember to come back here after 🙂

The final update is possibly the best, and definitely the longest:

LivingAFI 6 year update(!) – This is a 10,000 word monster and so it’s hard to pick out many points made. But I would strongly suggest you read it if you have not done so already, it’s a fascinating and quite emotional read at times. The main takeaway here is that shit happened, and he has had to go back to work, but is perhaps happier than ever. A real lesson on trying to fudge your numbers too much and not considering unexpected life events. But on the other hand, things happen for a reason and I don’t think he ever regrets leaving his job when he did. The quote of the post for me is probably this one:

Still, I learned that having freedom in and of itself didn’t automatically bring me happiness.  Happiness is more complicated than that.

Ok that’s quoting other people enough, now I will try to pen down some of my “original” thoughts.

FIRE/Blogging

Needless to say blogging took a huge backseat but also I have found myself not really keeping up with any FIRE related reading, barring a couple of “always read” blogs such as weenie’s and Saving Ninja’s who will always have a special place in my heart (sorry you’ll have to provide your own sick bucket 🙂 ).

Sorry if this was a boring one to start with but it’s kind of an interesting point that once I “completed my journey” I did kind of start to lose interest in keeping up to date with other’s blogs and general financial content. I still scan Monevator weekend updates when I can but maybe read 5 articles at most, when it used to be nearer 20. It’s been a steady decline in interest as the years have gone on to be fair though so maybe it was a continuation of that slide rather than a big leap just because I actually reached the semi-FIRE goal.

In any case, I will still keep dipping my toe into the FIRE blogosphere from time to time to see what’s going on, without being as obsessive about it as I was 5-6 years ago. I’d like to think that I will start to write a bit more regularly again as well as I do enjoy, but it seems pointless to make any promises at this stage, given what’s happened previously 🙂

One final point of interest relates to something Jacob from ERE said in his podcast interview with MadFIentist. He made the point that as he got older he started to appreciate that there are many other points of view, ways of life, and ways to handle money and they can all be relevant depending on one’s own circumstances. He said that if he had written his book now it would be a lot longer, rambling, and less concise, and probably be a worse off read for it. I totally get this. When I started blogging I didn’t really know much about FIRE and so all the main points, counterintuitively, seemed quite simple in my mind. I just had no nuance on the whole thing (or life in general really) and to be fair I’m sure I am still lacking in this area, but far less so than when I started the blog. When you have too many things going round in your head on any given point, it’s really hard to actually write something that is readable that people will stick with ² till the end.

It’s that classic thing of you don’t know what you don’t know when learning a new subject and you are certain of the small number of things you do know. As experience increases, you end up with more questions than answers and it actually makes you more uncertain on anything rather than the other way around.

Anyway. Now I’ve got this main catch up post out of the way, maybe my mind will start clearing for some shorter and sharper subjects once more. We can only hope and dream (haha).

Parenting

As mentioned we are now a family of four, and it is without any reasonable doubt that being semi-FIRE’d has made parenting in general a lot easier (C19).

We are also lucky that Max (I’m just going to call them Poppy and Max now, RIP the TFS Jr and TFS Jr II pseudonyms!) seems to be the easier baby out of the two of them with the vital things such as eating, sleeping and not crying. Combined with the fact we know slightly what we’re doing this time round ³ stress levels are much lower. Put it this way, I am glad we had them this way round otherwise we would not have known what hit us the second time around 🙂

Obviously stressful shit still goes down, babies still get ill, cry for seemingly no reason, play up, refuse to sleep, throw up, dribble all over you, teething happens. That’s just life though, no amount of FIRE’ing can stop any of that, and would we really want it to anyway? It’s part of being a parent after all, those struggles make the good moments worth it, do they not?

But I cannot deny, having slightly more sleep due to no commute (C19) and not worrying about a day job makes it 10x easier.

I don’t know how parents of young children/babies have been coping through the last year with jobs on top of all this (or even worse those with only one parent left in the picture for whatever reason), but my heart goes out to you all!

We had no children when I started this blog but the end goal always had one eye on having lots more time to see any potential future children grow up more than most parents experience. This has definitely been the absolute best thing so far about having no job, and I feel like I’ve seen far more of Max’s first milestones than I did with Poppy, and get to help Mrs T far more than I did the first time around with all the daily “chores” like nappy changing, plus the fun bits of interaction etc… On top of that I’m there when Poppy gets home from school (C19) as well now so I am also getting to see her much more than I did before.

Time===Money

Seeing how time is money and vice versa, it makes sense to group those in their own little subheading. How have we been spending both?

As mentioned time has been short despite me not having a day job. Reasons:

• TFS Jr II was born last August. Obviously keeping us on our toes 🙂
• 2 bouts of full lockdown meant looking after our own child / children whilst trying to homeschool and me trying to squeeze in work when I could.
• Home improvements – We had a new driveway put in, plus new boiler in loft (neither of which I did but these projects are a time suck anyway). Also converted the old boiler cupboard into a nice looking pantry. Also bought a huge trampoline during lockdown 1 and had to move loads of the garden about as our garden is tiny. Plus new garden fences earlier this year. Oh also I made a fence bar ⁴ near the end of lockdown one to chat to my sister and family who happen to live over the back of our house 🙂
• Home improvements II – Since I started writing this post I’ve also extended the patio area in the back garden for a nice bench to go on, and made a new decking area under the bar mentioned above, and also improved the bar from a bit of waste wood attached with a few screws to a nice solid and painted bar you can actually lean on without worrying you’ll do a Del Boy when it collapses.

Other things we have spent our money / I have spent my time on:

• We bought a new car in February, a plug in hybrid Mitsubishi Outlander (hence needing a driveway so somewhere to charge it). Still need to sort out an outdoor charging point as we are currently hanging the charger out the window, not ideal! I love the thing already and am sold on EV’s being the future. Once the charging infrastructure is a bit better maybe in 2-3 years, and there are some more affordable family EV options out there, we’ll definitely convert fully. At the moment though the PHEV is working great, so far we’ve driven it 900 1300 miles on £85 £100 worth of petrol. This includes 2 caravan holidays (Isle of Wight (natch), plus Kent) where we couldn’t charge the car at all. When we are at home I would guess 80% of our miles are driven on the battery. As we have solar panels and try to charge when sun is out, it feels like we’re getting a fair bit of “free” locomotion with this set up.
• A shit tonne of crap from Amazon (other online retailers are available and have been Blitzkrieged as well) – Not very FIRE minded I know…. but C19 and all that.
• Leisure – I’m not sure I’ve had more leisure time than before, I was already working part time before I quit after all, but I certainly have not had less. Now things are nearly back to normal I’ve been playing a bit more golf and squash again. I want to join have joined the local squash club, might be good for a bit of social interaction as well.
• Handy man – I have read this a lot from other FIRE-ee’s and it’s true. When people know you are not working you get called on a lot more to help relatives out. And do you know what, I don’t mind at all. I’ve sacked off plenty of days I had scheduled in to do my “work” to go and do a dump run, build decking, lift some paving slabs, check a leaking radiator. Etc etc… It’s great to be able to drop work whenever I want to help out.
• My 40th Birthday – Ended up spending a fair bit on 2 celebrations, one family garden party, one glamping trip both of which we provided food and booze for so ended up costing a fair bit. 🙂
• “Work” (See next subheading)

Some pics of the action so far:

Me and the boy enjoying the new bench

Decking in progress…

Decking finished!

Met this guy while Glamping

Bar area spruced up a bit (Obligatory mention of it’s coming home…)

People (including me) often say a main driver to seek FI is about having more free time. What the hell is free time though? Does it just mean you are sitting around doing nothing, playing video games or watching Netflix?

That sounds pretty boring to me. And here is a clear warning for that sort of lifestyle from the FIREUK Sub Reddit:

FIRED a couple of years ago. Now I’m totally bored and my mental health is suffering.

I’ve come to the conclusion that free time is not really a thing in my life, at least for now. I will always schedule in stuff to do if there is any possible actual free time (where I would literally be left sitting around with not much else to do). Having young kids eats up so much of your time anyway you still need to cram in some of the fun extra-curricular stuff when you can. Maybe in a few years time when both are at school, I will not mind so much killing time reading a book for a few hours on a Tuesday afternoon, but for now that kind of lifestyle that many ER’s report seems miles away.

Work

As mentioned as I am actually only semi-FIRE’d which means I still have to work for money to pay for the lifestyle we want.

However, the way I have set up my life/work I can pretty much do this any time I want to, which certainly beats the 9-5 and being at the beck and call of numerous managers above me, and email pings and slack channel alerts stressing me the fuck out 24/7.

It’s also extremely liberating having total control of exactly what I decide to work on and individual decisions within each peice of work.

One downside worth mentioning is that I finally realise how much dossing I did in my old job. I used to get loads of computer based admin tasks and sometimes even just downright blatant blog reading, friend messaging or youtube watching done at work. I would imagine that most people with PC based work have a similar deal and maybe do not realise that it’s actually quite a good deal you are getting when you consider the amount of actual hours you are putting in. Still not worth the trade if you don’t need to do it, but worth mentioning if you are still with your nose to the grindstone. During my first 10 or so years in my job I genuinely think this was not the case and I would barely do anything non work related at work, but the last 5-6 I was definitely taking the absolute piss coasting (and in the main getting away with it), looking back with the honesty filter on.

I think I’ll go into more depth on what I’m actually “working” on in another post but it’s essentially being a professional gambler. I’ve moved on from matched betting entirely now and am just punting value bets (and occasional high risk casino offers) and riding out the variance like a Boss ⁵.

When I left University my Dad asked me what I wanted to do now then, Son. I said I had two life plans. One of which was to become a professional golfer, and the other was to become a professional gambler (I guess I just liked professions beggining with G?). I can’t quite remember his response but I’m pretty sure it involved the words “f***ing” and “idiot”. It was just a joke to wind him up at the time, funny how things work out!

One final thing worth noting is that there is no such thing as passive income (investing into index funds via auto-invest settings notwithstanding I guess). I’ve made my processes as passive as possible but the game is always changing, I’m always making updates, restarting servers, opening accounts, tracking deposits and withdrawals, and so on. Having said that, in the last 4 weeks I’ve probably worked about a sum total of 10-15 hours, and money has continued to trickle in nicely, although admittedly now I have a tonne of things to catch up on I’ve left in limbo for ages. So I’ve got pretty close to the 4 hour work week ideal, close enough for me at least.

Goals

I had a look over some old posts on here recently and it seems I used to be pretty mad on setting goals, and “smashing them”… err, I guess?

Once again I’ve mellowed in this regard, could just be due to getting older though. Or it could be in part due to not being around a bunch of corporate go-getters with that mindset.

Having said that, I am still doing things like running fairly regularly, I just haven’t written any goals down for it. I guess with that at least, something like Strava does all of it for you as it’s all in the app. I’m just as fast as I was 5 years ago, so I am pretty happy with this.

Maybe really all it is, is that as I haven’t been blogging I have stored my goals internally in my head rather than writing them down?

Or maybe it is the year of having a baby and everything else goes out the window. Or maybe just C19?

This was an awfully rambley and shite sub heading. Apologies to anyone who has read this section 🙂

Finances & Investments

As you may have got the feeling from a few comments above, our financial discipline has kind of just gone out of the window.

To be honest, I feel like we’ve done the hard yards of getting our financial house in order, making sure we earn more than we spend and building up a nest egg, and now it’s time to kick back and chill out on this front a bit.

Despite this, I’d guess we are still well in the black since I quit my job, I just don’t know quite by how much as I’ve stopped tracking our out goings properly. I know roughly what our income has been, and the outgoings just cannot be more than that, it’s pretty much impossible. I am happy with this situation. I now totally get the “Tanks and the taps” analogy that Andy from liberate.life wrote about after he became semi-FIRE’d/self employed (RIP liberate.life but you can still read it here thanks to the wonderful Wayback Machine), I never really understood it when I first read it but now I do, if I feel I haven’t made enough in a given period or we are spending too much (e.g. dropping 12K on the new car) I just crank my work motivation up and try to make a bit more. If I am feeling comfortable, then I ease of the peddle and can stop to smell the roses for a bit longer that month.

Investments wise here are the headlines:

• I stuck another 10K into an ISA just before the end of the last tax year. I tried individual stock picking in a Trading212 account. It’s not going great at the moment as I mainly picked tech/growth stocks just before the big rout on those. Market timing FTW! I’m confident it will come roaring back in 2-3 years time though (errrm….). Update: it’s already pretty much back to parity now.
• I need to move my company pension into my SIPP to keep things simple but have not done this yet
• I need to open a JISA for Max as we did one for Poppy so seems unfair to leave him out 🙂
• I have claimed quite honestly a scandalous amount of tax from all of my SEIS/EIS Crowdcube and Angel investments back. It seems wrong somehow, but it’s perfectly legal and I guess actually encouraged to get investments into those early stage companies otherwise not many people would want to take the risk. Somehow, all of my crowdcube companies are still trading, which is a surprise. I definitely regret a few though but others I am very happy with, I guess this is the nature of the beast! This could easily be expanded into another post as well so I’ll leave it there for now.
• I sold some Bitcoin and Ethereum from my last forray into Crypto when it went mental, but in no way caught the top (i.e. I sold way too early). I was happy to get out with a bit of money to be honest as I had written it all off. Clearly I should have waited for the clear sign we’d hit the top of the bubble which was when The Escape Artist finally got involved 😉

Life in general, final ramblings

Unfortunately I am now well into the time of your life where people you know and even are close to passing away is not uncommon. Add onto this a few friends calling it a day on their marriages (C19!!!!!), and me turning the big Four-O soon a few weeks ago. This really does start to make you think that you mustn’t take a very long life for granted like most youngsters in the FIRE community seem to do (myself included a few years back, most certainly).

It’s all about that balancing act of saving for the future but you must, must must have some fun today otherwise what is the point of it all?

Luckily for me my current “wants” are pretty low key which is simply spending time with the family and kids, plus friends now we’re allowed to, playing a bit of golf and going on some UK based holidays (and maybe close by in Europe if we’re allowed to any time soon!).

This may change in future when the kids get older, maybe I’ll have another mid life crises ⁶ and start to want a yacht or something ridiculous but being a (pro) gambler I wouldn’t put money on it 😉

We live in a very chilled cul-de-sac with only 10 houses in it, and most of the people are either a bit or much older than us. I’ve gotten to know a few of them a bit better over the last year and they are all very friendly and seem to have a great outlook on the work/life balance thing ⁷. It’s made me feel even more at home where we are and even though it’s a pretty crappy 3 bedroom terraced house, I am not sure I’ll ever want to move from here, like genuinely ever ⁸.

One of my other friends has just moved into a £1.2 million house he had built from scratch and another lives in a £6 million house up in Wimbledon, and by all accounts their neighbours sound great as well (I guess it’s easy to be friendly and generous when you are that loaded, although I’d be highly doubtful those two traits are that correlated in larger sample sizes!) but I can’t help thinking it’s not quite the same as just walking out of your house and having a chat as someone is out on the road washing their car, or whatever.

Anyway, I’ve said it long ago before, I don’t think I would ever actually want to be mega rich, for one thing it would seem silly not to move out of this little corner of the world we feel right at home in and that would be a real shame to throw that away just because you had enough money to buy somewhere bigger and therefore (in general) more cut off from the world.

Going back to the marriages breaking up point earlier, and C19 has forced many couples into spending much more time with each other, in the same way that FIRE’ing would do. This has in many cases widened those already weak cracks and broken them apart. I would imagine that FIRE can in some cases end up with the same end result, which is sad if/when it happens. Mrs T and I had our fair share of tense moments over the lockdowns period which was surely partly due to C19 but also just adjusting to seeing far more of each other. I feel like we’re well past the worst of it now and have pretty much adjusted to our “new normal”. (Phew!)

Happiness is that ever moving chimera we are all chasing and I can’t say for certain that I now feel happier, but I am pretty sure I do.

Crikey… this is getting to be nearly half the length of an average Ermine post so I think I’ll stop there.

A final summary of key points:

• Has it been a blast of a first year of not working? YES!
• Would I make the same decision again with what I know now? YES – although there have definitely been many doubts over the year at various points!
• Has it been exactly how I imagined? NO – although mainly for reasons out of my control so not worth worrying about.
• Does FIRE/Semi-FIRE solve all your problems? Of course it doesn’t, dufus. And I already knew this going into it, as I’m sure you already know as well.
• Are you more rested and now have an abundance of time? NO – I’m still knackered most of the time, and have little spare time, but this is likely due to new baby (and I’m still getting more sleep that would have otherwise)
• Tell me more about the pro-gambling stuff – That’s another post for another day my friend!

If anyone has any questions about anything I’ve not provided info on please let me know and I’ll reply in the comments. If there seems to be a lot of stuff I’ve missed that is of significance I’ll collate some of them and put it all in a “Part Deux” for you all!

Bye for now, and let’s not leave it so long next time 🙂

TFS