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Welcome to theFIREstarter! If you are interested in themes such as Financial Independence, Retiring Early, Downshifting, or simply just working less and living more then please stick around, I think we’ll get on just fine 🙂
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How was everyone’s January? Pretty boring as usual? Ours was actually pretty hectic for a change, in terms of spending at least, as we geared up for a winter sun holiday and a few other bits and bobs needed doing. Let’s see how it all panned out…
expenses
It’s a new year so I’ve made a couple of new tabs on my Uber* FI Tracking Spreadsheet for Income/Expense tracking and Net Worth tracking, as well as updated some of the summary sheets as well. Exciting stuff 🙂
*Please note this is nothing to do with actual Uber the car sharing company.
Despite the new year, we are sticking with the same format as always, so the figures below represent: £Current Month (£2018 Monthly Average / £Monthly Average Target)
The Mrs T and I have sat down and “agreed” 😀 on a yearly budget so the average target is based on that, I’ll go through it in a bit more detail in a future post.
I’m currently going through that phase where you first discover something new and exciting where you just absorb an absolute shedload of information, every waking minute of your the day. I’m sure you all know what I mean as you are reading a blog about FI, that lovely honeymoon phase where you can’t get enough information!
As a quick side note, that’s the reason why I haven’t done any yearly update posts yet! I will endeavour to get at least one overview of 2017 done once I’ve run out of steam on the Crypto info! And also one looking forward to 2018. Anyway… back to the main post…
However, with Cryptocurrencies, it seems there is even more information out there than most subjects that is either totally rubbish, or deliberately misleading. The barrier to entry to be a “crypto guru” nowadays is so low (i.e. click on YouTube, open account, film some crap with your phone camera) and the incentive to mislead people so large that this fact is not really all that surprising.
I’m still learning so my bullsh!t detector is probably still a bit off, so please take some of these recommendations with a pinch of salt, but here are a few YouTube people that seem to be shooting slightly more straight than your average ‘tuber. Also, I’ve got a bunch of links to some other websites you might find useful when doing some crypto research. Hopefully this will shortcut some of you just getting into the space and save you some time having to find all this stuff yourself!
TFS Jr being very helpful with the Christmas Decorations
Merry New Year folks (sorry, bit late on this one! Some things never change I guess 🙂 )
I hope you are trudging through the muddy puddle of a month that is January with as much aplomb as I am. Just to be clear, the title of the post refers to the fact that this update will be very short and most likely a bit rubbish rather than the fact that my actual month was rubbish. December was actually really great, had some time off and saw many friends and family. Text book Christmas. Right, onto the financials…
Mega Disclaimer: This is simply telling you what I’ve decided to do with Cryptocurrencies, as an experiment more than anything else, and why and how I did it. Do not take anything in here as advice. I will try not to express any views but any that are expressed are merely my (largely uninformed) opinions, so please do your own research before deciding if you are going to dabble with the devil that is: cryptocurrencies!
They are the talk of the town, and for better or worse I’ve decided to stick some money into them. My thinking behind it was pretty simple:
Fact: In (say) 1 years time, Cryptos could either have stayed the same, crash horrendously, or be another 10 bagger
Question: Which of these scenarios would piss me off more:
A) I stuck in (say) £3000 into Cryptos and they crashed to zero
B) I stuck in £3000 and it roughly stayed the same
B) I didn’t stick in £3000 and they increase by a factor of ten
The conclusion was that I’d be more pissed off in scenario C so it makes rational sense to put some money into it and see what happens. Yes, this is FOMO1 in action people. I also figure that a few grand is essentially play money in terms of our current net worth so losing it won’t hurt the overall FI effort.
It’s also worth pointing out these important facts before we go on:
I fully realise this is speculating, not investing. Anyone who says they’re investing in cryptos right now is deluding themselves.
I am almost certain that a great crypto crash will inevitably come, and I have no idea how bad that will be or what cryptos will survive and which will die out completely. The gamble here is to get in and out before it does.
Or maybe I’m wrong even on that account and there will never be a big crash!? But from my perspective it certainly looks like a bubble waiting to pop, it’s just will this be tomorrow (hopefully not!), in 3 months, or in 3 years. I think there are plenty of greater fools out there to keep it going for quite some time, but again what do I know?
First of all, apologies once again for such a tardy update! I had this half done in the drafts folder then the December silly season hit and chaos ensued, both by being extremely busy and by everyone in the house getting ill (multiple times) at some point of another throughout the whole of the month. We were pretty much all OK by Christmas so that was the main thing!
Second of all, and it sounds weird saying this in an update from November but I hope you all had a nice Christmas and Happy New year! I look forward to reading everyone’s NY resolutions and financial plans etc in the coming days and weeks.
Anyway, here is the late late edition of the November update.
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Disclaimer
I am not a professional anything, and you should treat all the words you read on this site as ones that exist for your infotainment only. Even the ones in this disclaimer. I will not be held responsible for any kind of outcome from you following the advice or hint of a suggestion made on this blog, and will not be liable for any emotional damage inflicted by the stinkingly bad puns contained within. Read at your own risk. Some of the links on this website may be affiliate links, if you support me via these links I will be forever in your debt, not in any monetary sense of course. Like I'd actually put that in the disclaimer! Hah!
Windy!
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