FISH | Financial Independence Seeking Happiness

FIRE Budget

2023-09-06T08:50:00.005+01:00

This is a post asking the question what would a "balanced life" budget look like and a discussion
on that ultimate personal question of what makes someone happy.

To give some context to this post I start with outlining our unique mindset and how it influenced the path we took - FIRE. Then how we have had to adapt.

I finish with some questions anyone can ask themselves about their money psychology.

Our Money Psychology

My wife and I started living together we setup a joint account and split the bills 50:50. We knew what each other earned and neither of us were extravagant spenders.

I had modest car (bought new but used for 20 years) and student loans of 10K which I was just about to aggressively pay off even though the interest rates were low. I did not like debt. Both of us had avoided spending more than we earned and had no credit cards nor personal loans.

What we did do is spend a lot of our income. We lived in London, went out a lot and enjoyed a holiday yet were disciplined to always pay for these activities in advance.

Our money psychology was aligned. What we did not know at the time was how fortunate we were to be this way.

Another trait was our approach to retirement. Both of us had maxed out our retirement contributions in work.

After a couple of years living together we started consider the dream of house ownership and started to understand how much of a commitment it would be. This pushed us into saving a proportion of our income towards a deposit.

At his point we started forming our values / vision and realising were we chasing the wrong goals. We valued time together and achievement over money not keeping up with our peer group which we believed had different values and associated costs.

As we started to understand our combined income and growing wealth we created a joint income, spending, saving and investing budget.....then we stumbled upon FIRE. The full story can be found here.

Our Current FIRE Budget

I was inspired to write on this blog again by my last post of the Netflix Series "I will Make you Rich" and have another look at our budget allocations. The main ones being:

Energy % (Heating, Elec & Transport)	12.8%
Food %	27.2%
Housing Costs %	11.6%
Fun (hols etc.)	19.5%
Savings	7.7%
Education	11.7%

We are a family of 4 so Food is the largest cost we have - teenagers! As everyone is aware this cost has increased a lot in the last year due to "inflation".

We pay for "private" education which is funded very differently in France where the state still pays for the staffing hence the costs are considerably lower than the UK / US for example.

Our housing and energy costs are low as we own our property and have energy efficient solutions for our heating (wood boiler and solar panels) and transport (natural gas car).

We make sure we do spend on fun / holidays and have allocated 19.5% to these areas.

The saving is what is left over each month - we don't mind if we spend it on activities.

Income

All of the percentages are based on our income which is CASH income, some earned income from a side gig and the majority passive income.

We do not base our spending on our total assets including future pensions. We do not apply the 4% rule. We are very conservative in this sense.

We could use the 4% rule by selling some of our liquid assets each year while we wait for access to our pensions.

FIRE Trade off

So we VALUE TIME and decided to forego EARNED income. This is the basic premise of FIRE owning your TIME. It is then up to you how you want to spend it instead of someone else deciding for you.

TIME / LABOUR is given up for INCOME versus FIRE is giving up LABOUR for TIME.

TIME is one of those things money cannot buy. I cannot buy the TIME back with the kids yet FIRE has given us TIME with the kids. As a family we have VALUED this more over SPENDING OUR TIME FOR MONEY / STUFF.

So what is a RICH LIFE?

This is such an interesting question raised by the NETFLIX show Living a rich life. Does consumption / spending versus being a cheapskate impact happiness? Does SPENDING = HAPPINESS. What is a cheapskate? does that = UNHAPPINESS?

There have been numerous studies on what income is required to be comfortable / happy after which point the returns diminish. Say for arguments sake that is a number like 40K. Does this mean if you hit this passive income you can stop?

Does stopping / FIRE take away purpose from you life / lack of meaning = less happiness?

If you have money should you spend it our should you wait for a reason to spend it?

Does spending and accumulating stuff make your life happier or more complicated, cluttered, expensive, what defines good spending?

These are all very personal questions that are unique to each individual.

After reaching FIRE did we change habits?

So have we changed our habits from the FIRE accumulation stage?

Quick Note: we did not miss out on life during the saving and investing years. We did not go full on save every penny, we just lived below our means and made what we consider smart choices with our spending and holidays... perhaps we sticked to that 40K spending happiness level.....

To be fair we have had to make changes / force change in some way:

You cannot foresee what your future life will be and what is thrown in front of you - naturally our goals and habits evolved with our new FIRE lifestyle. Throughout our lives we were accustomed to change and have the natural tendency to embrace change.
We make sure we allocate free money to happiness activities and spend it.
We have accumulated enough stuff to now repair and replace instead of add.
We now want to make sure we de-clutter / de-accumulate.
We still like to save a bit even though, based on the 4% rule, and our current budget we don't have to << FIRE hangover habit.
We still risk plan and keep a large emergency fund another FIRE hangover habit

Are we denying ourselves?

We can spend more
We are time sensitive to spending - what I mean by this is we have projects which we WANT to do but will wait until we have the liquid funds available and they do not risk our safety pot.
We have responsibilities as parents to raise capable adults so we spend on education instead of nicer holidays.

I can easily justify our lifestyle, I can easily lie to myself, I can easily change the way I see my life philosophy - all unique and there is no right answer. Yes we are denying ourselves in some ways and are fully aware of that fact. Yet.... we have priorities and goals, we fully understand you can never have everything you want and must be grateful for what we do have. You have to align with your goals and life philosophy to be content. If you are not happy you have to do something about it.

Conclusions and Actions

It is important to have goals and a vision of what you WANT
It is important to know what your NEEDS are this allows you to differentiate NEEDS vs WANT and vice versa. We do not want basics to turn into luxurious goods where for example:

We overspend on fashion for fashions sake out of WANT. Too big a house for our NEEDS. We NEED to spend on personal development. We WANT a fancy car when we REALLY WANT a nice holiday and no debt.
Do not snap purchase, always take your time and have some criteria for a purchase - ask oneself is this a WANT or a NEED. e.g. Do I need the fancy expensive car?
Avoid LIFESTYLE INFLATION - if you are honestly happy (have a discussion with yourself 😃) with you current lifestyle why inflate it yourself? Keeping up with the NEIGHBORS / PEER GROUP shows a lack of confidence in yourself.
Always run a budget. Know your incoming and outgoings - allocate a percentage of your income to saving and investing and some to fun. Many fun things are almost free - play time with the family, visiting friends and local trips / being in nature.
Be very careful when shopping. Know what you want and stick to your allocated spending budget - it is easy to be lulled into an expensive purchase. Impulse purchases are often a short term dopamine rush providing little long term happiness.
LIVE THE DAY with an EYE ON THE FUTURE - we OWN OUR TIME because we avoided LIFESTYLE INFLATION the insecurities of not fitting in with our peer group.

TIME CANNOT BE RE-PURCHASED

Peace, prosperity and happiness

Rich Times

2023-09-04T08:32:00.004+01:00

Ramit Sethi - "I will Teach You to be Rich" can be found on his youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@ramitsethi/videos and has been featured on a Netflix series raises lots of great psychological money questions and addresses all types of people.

He has evaluated the FIRE approach to money and highlighted how you can get sucked into a way of living / create a set of habits that are hard to change.

As discussed on this blog the FIRE approach has a large amount of focus on the reduction of living costs. This makes reaching financial independence much easier as a rule of thumb you need 25 times your living costs to have a good go at being financially independent. 25 times 20K is much easier to save and invest than 25 times 100K. Reducing costs can become an ingrained habit.

The second aspect to FIRE is increasing your income. Again this can become a habit. Invest more for more income, work longer hours for more pay, start a business or have a side gig. When you hit your FIRE number why stop?

My / Our experience

We reached our form of financial independence 10 years ago. Settling in the South West of France with at the time your young children. We have maintained our standard of living in a number of what can be considered FIRE / frugal ways (not minimalist). This has been done by:

Invested to reducing living costs - we bought what would be considered a small farm giving us options to add hot water solar panels, wood heating and grow some of our own food.
Continue to invest in different asset classes.
Continue to track our spending
Continue to maintain a spending budget

Is this a Rich Life?

Are we living what Ramit would consider a Rich Life? Are we enjoying our freedom, do we use our time in a way that makes us happy or are we denying ourselves a Rich Life?

This has sparked a bit of a debate in our household - thanks Ramit!

Have we denied ourselves anything?
Do we live in undesirable circumstances?
To we consciously scrimp and save on everything?
Are we using financial freedom in the right way - to have happiness?

Self Denial

This psychology of money is also a psychology of life and one of those intangible questions - "The pursuit of Happiness" - what is it? What is it to us / you and other people? What are your values, what makes you happy, what is important to you?

Throughout our FIRE journey we learnt a few things about ourselves:

Perfection makes us unhappy - it is unattainable
More stuff = clutter
Cheap stuff = broken / waste
Experiences are had with people not technology - spend on people experiences freely
Financial security does limit some of the projects we would LIKE to do yet we know we do not HAVE to do them and we can WAIT to do them.
We will always have priorities and different goals

So what questionable / negative habits have we had - related to the FIRE building years:

We purchased some cheap tools that have not lasted a long time. We have now switched to purchasing expensive tools.
Due to extra free time we had our head turned by technology - all too easy to look at the news / repetition which impacted our mental health / happiness.
We have been too cheap with our food shop - the local market food is far superior to the supermarket food.
We have not splashed out on fancy holidays... yet we have lots of small holidays as the South of France is full of "holidays"
FIRE has made us stand out - the question "what do you do for a living" leaves many people confused and un-interested in us.... this has led to us avoiding who we are sometimes. I still find it odd how people are not interested in what FIRE is and what you can do with parts of it.
We have not made our property a perfect show home.
We have lost lots of old friends by moving to another country.

Are these things denying ourselves a Rich Life? Are we in self denial in some ways?

There are always trade offs in life - as the list above highlights - yes we could have done things differently. We have had to attack and change some habits. We have to undertake self reflection and embrace change. We must stand back look at ourselves and ask - "I really am like that, I don't like it and have to change"

Keeping an open mind, listening to other peoples points of view, taking criticism and evaluating it then considering the trade offs is key to personal development.

Seeking perfection is a pipe dream in our opinion and striving for perfection brings other negative traits / habits. Acceptance, gratitude, truth and transparency help reach what the stoics call tranquility.

Are we practicing self denial? Sometimes you need someone to point it out to you!

We do have a Rich Life?

We have had to make trade-offs. We continue to adjust the way we live and spend. We know perfection does not exist. As per the stoics we just want a tranquil life one where we are in control of our own lives, do not endure financial hardship / owe other people money. We want to pay our own way and not be a burden on anyone.

There is no doubt to us we have a rich life. We are incredibly grateful for the time we get to spend as a family - time is spent we cannot buy it back.

We live in a fun place with a rich history of the good life, alfresco living, great food. We are approximately 2 hours from the Mediterranean, Atlantic ocean and Pyrenees Mountains for the ski season. We have a comfortable house with no neighbors which provides some of the resources we consume.

Ramit's reminder to live a Rich Life is a very good point - you only live once make the most of it!

We need to accept FIRE is a tool, one of many, to take control of your life escape debt serfdom and wage slavery - it is a "short term fix" in a long haul game. The tables can be turned against us at any point - but we cannot be fearful. We have to find a balance but accept change will always be with us.

Peace, prosperity and happiness

CoNTeNDeR

Welcome New Readers! Please take a look around.Click here to find out more about THE.TriBe and the blog is or perhaps browse the all posts list, Please feel free to play with the planning tools and checklists. If you liked this post can you please spare a few seconds to share it? The information in this blog is distributed on an "As Is'' basis, without warranty of any kind. It is intended for entertainment purposes only. Information might not be completely comprehensive and some readers may want to consult additional sources. This blog does not contain professional advice. For professional advice, consult a professional. By reading this blog you acknowledge full responsibility for your actions with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly in connection with the blog. The value of investments can fall as well as rise and any income from them is not guaranteed. You should be prepared to lose your investment. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. Never base any investment decision from information contained in this website. It is not intended to be, nor should it be construed as an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell securities, or as a recommendation to purchase anything. I take no responsibility for any decisions you make based on the information in this site. If you are in any doubt as to the risk or suitability of an investment or product you should seek advice from an independent financial adviser \ professional. No infringement of copyright is intended from any of the images and links to videos on this site.

Permaculture, Resilience and Financial Independence

2017-10-14T09:23:00.001+01:00

We have been financially independent for four years now. In that time we have not rested on our laurels. We have changed country and renovated an old farmhouse.

We continue to use our financial independence free time for multiple challenging projects. The main ones being:

- Make our farmhouse as resilient as possible.
- Setup our own businesses
- Continue our family education on diverse topics.

I touched on a few of the things we have been working on in my last post Fragiliska Part 2.

In this post (and subsequent posts) I am going to talk about Permaculture - living as local and sustainability as possible. I am going to relate this back to financial independence and its resilience. I will cover why I believe the two should go hand in hand.

Why Permaculture?

As part of our financial independence journey we drove down our cost of living relentlessly. We really enjoyed it. It helped us realise how wasteful we actually were..... and still continue to be.

These cost savings have freed up our cash to have more fun, Able to buy useful items and entertainment, invest more, set up a business, education and our house. We have split our money between these areas and are currently focusing on one in particular - Permaculture.

Why? Permaculture aligns with our values of healthy living, an outdoor lifestyle, driving down our cost of living and reducing the waste we produce.

What is Permaculture?

Permanent - culture is a way of observing our surroundings and using them to provide for our selves with little to no waste. There is no right or wrong way just how you personally want to implement it.

For the purists it may be living off the land with little to no external goods and services. For us it is respecting and using the resources we have available to us.

Permaculture: meeting human needs while preserving and increasing ecosystem health - Rafter Sass-Ferguson

"Integrated, evolving system of perennial or self-perpetuating plant and animal species useful to man" Bill Mollison and David Holmgren

"Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fibre and energy for provision of local needs" - David Holmgren "Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability"

I have included a book list at the end of this article.

Permaculture and Financial Independence

Thankfully a lot of work and research has been carried out to help us understand and implement sustainability changes in our lives.

Permaculture is a way of maximising, whilst using responsibly and sustainably, the resources around us. It encourages trial and error. It is one thing reading about something to actually trying. It takes practise and perseverance to learn how to do it effectively.

This is the same as striving for financial independence. There are plenty of blogs and personal finance websites out there that give ideas on how to do it - what works for you is a bit of trial and error and lots of perseverance.

The financial independence community can learn lots from the permaculture movement. Permaculture has principles covered later in this post that align with good financial management, communication, observation and putting it into practise. Permacultures way of looking at what we have really helps to put in perspective what we actually need to be happy, healthy and sustainable over the long term.

Permaculture is a reflection that our current society is all about material things and energy intensive experiences which we are all aware is unsustainable in the long term. We as human beings are better than the next sugar high, flashy gizmo.

is our personal skills, our thinking processes and our own definitions of happiness. Permaculture teaches us that we already live in abundance in the West so why do we over do it to no real benefit to ourselves. Taking on debt for stuff and never being able to "retire" or have significant free time to ourselves.

Permaculture and us

My main interpretation of Permaculture is that we can be better guardians of the land around us. We stop wasting so many valuable materials by throwing away and buying new. We reduce our reliance on piped in utilities (nuclear, water and gas in our case)

Our family are lucky to have resources to hand which would be irresponsible to ignore. We have good farmland by the house, a water source, fruit trees and hot summers.

We have the local culture of SW France which has been kind enough to take us in. We help neighbours and they help us. We have been given plants, fruit, vegetables and eggs. We have had socialised with them at home and at community events.

The culture is one of market towns and quality fresh produce. Celebration of the harvest. Protection of its heritage (buildings and museums). Love for its language spoken on all of the cafe terraces.

We are in constant trial and error mode. Constantly learning how to re-generate our commercially farmed land. Understanding how to integrate in the local community and be accepted as its members.

What Permaculture is doing for us

Permaculture principles are beginning to enrich our lives. From financial, health to mental well being positive changes are happening

Financially

Our base living costs continue to drop
We are growing quite a bit of our own food and the food miles are just from garden to door.
We are generating some of our own energy (fire wood, solar water and electricity)
We are paying less tax (VAT on food and energy)
We are insulating ourselves from price and tax rises
We have learnt how to do household repairs ourselves.
We have spare time to pursue paid work \ our own business ideas aligned with our values

Health

A large amount of our vegetables and fruit are being grown organically in the garden. They travel all of 10 meters to our table keeping their freshness and nutrients intact.
Our diet mainly consists of vegetables, pulses, grains, beans and fruit now - there is no cholesterol in vegetables!
We have to work outdoors a lot. This is regular exercise. I get much more vitamin D from the sun in the process.

Mental Well Being

The whole family are learning new skills
We are far more resilient to external shocks (we could quite easily fend for ourselves for 6-12 months).
We are are far less stressed. We no longer have firm commitments to be at a place of work at a specific time each day or have to do business trips or appraisals.
Being able to live on less, do a little bit of paid work and continue to save we can be confident in our financial independence.
We have much more spare time to get our heads in order. Appreciate the world around us and play.

After starting on this Permaculture journey last year we can see how this is a very valuable tool in our financial independent life.

Reducing our living costs is prosperity. It reduces complexity in our lives. It reduces our need for money and a large "pension pot" to buy stuff and services that we can provide for ourselves at little monetary cost.

It is not all about the money.

Money makes your life comfortable but after a point it introduces opulence into your life. Opulence is not a good thing for yourself and especially when raising kids.

From a personal standpoint opulence can be about showing off, living beyond your means, having negative traits and thoughts. Engaging in non productive activities.

As for the impact on kids - being brought up with everything on a plate is a huge dis-service to them. Core skills such as having grit and determination, inquisitiveness, creativity and thoughtfulness are not nurtured. Ignoring the importance of these skills will keep them dependent on the system and will reduce their ability to achieve their dreams.

I have unfortunately seen this with several people I have met down the years where they have been mollycoddled all their lives. As a result, in my opinion, lacked any sort of drive or questioning of the way the world works. They live average lives, in debt, servitude to a job and the bank instilling the same traits in their children, surrounding them by "entertainment" junk. Engaging them in "entertainment activities". Hardly developing skills to excel in life that are valued by others.

Instead of buying junk or thrills we are using our ability so save and re-invest 40% of our passive income in our projects and our kids. Our goal is to be productive everyday - not wasting our valuable and limited time on trivial activities.

Engaging in productive activities is far more challenging, beneficial and satisfying - "I did that!". This approach is providing a real world education to our kids and skills that are valued by others such as honesty, grit \ perseverance, problem solving, manners and inquisitiveness.

We are protecting them from passivity, being beholden to technology, false opinions, the out of date education system and the media scaremongering. They are being taught to be free standing individuals capable of achieving their dreams and.... Permaculture Principles fit nicely with this outlook on life.

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Permaculture Principles

A set of permaculture principles has been laid out in the book “Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability” by David Holmgren co-originator of the Permaculture Concept. I highly recommend the book as it is a high level thinking approach to living and observing the world around us. The overview of the principles are as follow:

Observe and Interact – Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
Catch and Store Energy – Make hay while the sun shines
Obtain a yield – You can’t work on an empty stomach
Apply Self-regulation and accept Feedback – The sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the seventh generation
Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – Let nature take its course
Produce No Waste – A stitch in time saves nine. Waste not, want not
Design from Patterns to Details – Can’t see the wood from the trees
Integrate Rather than Segregate – Many hands make light work
Use Small and Slow Solutions – The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Slow and steady win the race.
Use and Value Diversity – Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
Use Edges and Value the Marginal – Don’t think you are on the right track just because it is well beaten
Creatively Use and Respond to Change – Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be

Most of these principles can easily be retrofitted to financial independence principles:

Observe and Interact – Collect information about your spending habits and learn about finance
Catch and Store Energy – Have a high savings rate and invest in resilience
Obtain a yield – Put you hard earned cash to work to create a CASH FLOW. This can be an income investment or something that eliminates your spending.
Apply Self-regulation and accept Feedback – Track all spending and saving and review on a regular basis. Discuss plans and finances as a family - agree spending plans and the investments you want to make.
Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – Continuous personal development information is freely available on the internet, at the library etc. Buy second hand, Freecycle etc.
Produce No Waste – Ditch wasteful spending (items that will only be used infrequently and are unlikely to be resellable), buy quality, re-usable items such as shopping bags.
Design from Patterns to Details – What is the detail of your spending, why do you do it and when? Do you need to build new habits (e.g. shopping only once a week) to eradicate bad habits? How do you save and invest? Do you automatically pay your savings account each month. How is the money being invested is it the most cost effective way?
Integrate Rather than Segregate – be a team player and get involved in as many things as possible, you do not know where they will lead you.
Use Small and Slow Solutions – invest regularly and do not put your capital at risk (invest in solid companies)
Use and Value Diversity – Spread your assets around. Different currencies \ countries. Alternative investments (forestry, art, stamps, jewelry, antiques etc.)
Creatively Use and Respond to Change – What do you think the future will look like? Does this impact your thinking about where and how you should live? What do you think the opportunities for a business are in the future?

I do hope this raises your interest in permaculture and resilience. For someone looking to retire early there are so many unknowns that can impact your cash flow and rapidly change a dream into a nightmare. Being resilient in early retirement is a must. Whether it is a paying hobby, continuous reduction of unnecessary waste and continuous learning and investing. Whatever you do I do not recommend sitting on your laurels in early retirement. Life is for living and experiencing. These need to be challenging to be fulfilling. Don't settle for less.

Learning about Permaculture

We have been reading up about permaculture for several years and are now in good place to have a really good go at it. I have read the following books:

"Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability" - David Holmgren
"Permaculture Two" - Bill Mollison
"The Permaculture Way" - Graham Bell
"Permaculture Design - A step-by-step guide" - Aranya
"The Resilient Farm and Homestead" - Ben Falk
"The Market Gardener" - Jean-Martin Fortier

"The Transition Handbook" - Rob Hoskins
"Zen in the Art of Permaculture" - Stefan Geyer
"The new complete book of self-sufficiency" John Seymour

Peace, prosperity and happiness

CoNTeNDeR

Welcome New Readers! Please take a look around.Click here to find out more about THE.TriBe and the blog is or perhaps browse the all posts list, Please feel free to play with the planning tools and checklists. If you liked this post can you please spare a few seconds to share it?

Fragilista - Part 2

2017-06-07T08:01:00.000+01:00

Low cost fuel and no moving parts - a robust heating solution

Have you ever wondered how some people get rich and are able to grow their wealth?

In part 1 I covered the principles of financial independence and shared a planning tool to work the numbers. I highly recommend you check it out here before reading this post.

Today it is all about taking "Talk the Talk" about wanting to be financial independent, happy and resilient to reality by "Walking the Walk".

I gained an interest in wealth accumulation through a very dynamic friend Chris in university. He would read every autobiography of a successful person he could get his hands on and say that was going to be him one day.

My take at the time was to get a good job work really hard and work my way up the ranks. Little did I know at the time that this actually takes a long time. After a few years I started to read up about rich people like Chris did. My general take at the time that they were not afraid to invest and take risks. So I changed jobs and started investing badly. I had a severe lack of financial knowledge and was letting myself to be guided by speculative investment newsletters.

My first breakthrough was coming across the blog "Early Retirement Extreme" which turned on the light bulb of frugality = increased investments and a few blogs on dividend investing. Eventually I joined the dots to frugality = increased investments = increased passive income => financial independence + increased freedom.

My second breakthrough was understanding the need to build resilience. This was triggered by two topics. First the blog LATOC - Life after the oil crash website (which no longer exists) which highlighted that the world is not infinite so some self sufficiency is a good thing.

The second topic was the tech boom and bust followed by the sub prime meltdown and oil price crash which moved our investments all over the place. Importantly we waited it all out teaching us to be long term investors. We are unable \ lack the knowledge to "trade" short term effectively.

Finally I started to read about "Black Swans", "Business Cycles" and "Capital Flows". This made me realise that we needed to be serious about resilient living. This allows us to continue to live frugally and use the savings to re-invest in even more income investing assets. This is to help us ensure we can keep the financial independence dream alive indefinitely.

So today this post is all about what we are doing to keep the FI dream alive:

A look at some potential risks we want to counter (several graphs)
Our "Walk the Walk" anti-fragile changes we are making to our lives (financial and at home)

Personal - Family education \ health
Sustainability \ Antifragility - reducing our reliance on outside help
Community - Engage in the local community and with friends
Financial - building diverse assets and income (Our latest financials)

Inter-generational wealth building
How you can start on the road to antifragility

Why we want to be Resilient

Over the last 10 years I have read, learnt, been lost by and perplexed by economics and life. My lifestyle has been cajoled by consumerism, dazzled by technology and awed by my ability to travel. Our modern world is great and we want to participate in it.

We are looking at a substantial period of time without "jobs" and have two kids to raise. We need to make sure our standard of living remains the same or improves by:

"Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst"

In hoping for the best: we are waiting for battery storage to make the next step, solar panel efficiency to go to the moon, nuclear fusion, 99% recycling and an iRobot to do all our heavy lifting.

While we wait for this Utopia we should "hedge our bets" and "plan for the unexpected". I want to point out we are not Doomers but Realists. Risks may be small but we are well aware black swans can appear. For example having some alternative sources of lighting if a storm takes out the power lines for a few days is appropriate and cheap to implement.

Other risks are harder to mitigate. Here are a few risks worth considering:

Source http://populationpyramid.net/

Source http://populationpyramid.net/

Society is now rapidly ageing\ retiring in the west and dependency ratios are rocketing.
Pension funds are massively underfunded and assume large percentage YoY growth. Risk: large liquidation of stock and housing by boomers paying for their retirement. Tax rises to pay for services and entitlements that are underfunded by the tax receipts caused by a drop in the workforce to retiree ratio?
Source: www.economicvoice.com

Debt has been piled on at staggering rates. It is only really backed by the faith that some poor fools will foot the bill (us the tax payers). Risk: Debt jubilee, high inflation, currency devaluation, new currency?
Assumptions on property prices are

Is it time for interest rates to rise.....The million $$$$ ?

potentially widely wrong - low interest rates and credit have driven prices sky high. They are unaffordable to the young who can not get the high paying jobs needed to even get a deposit together. Risk: Onerous under water mortgages suppressing property values and rental incomes or a period of high inflation eroding their real value?

Source: Newscientist click to enlarge

We all live on one planet and consume more of its resources each year than can be replaced by equivalent alternatives. Liquid fuels, metals, fish, lumber and soil. This is just another form of debt we are piling on and the bill will become true at some stage. Risk: Lack of resources to build out our technological society of the future?
Source: seafriends.org.nz

It is about time food production is re-thought to re-build soils that have been degraded by the green revolution. Organic farming (including pest and weed control), low tilling soil and replanting hedgerows and trees are gaining ground around the world.

Perhaps the days of the 6000 mile lettuce has almost had its day - you can easily grow one in your basement with the right setup. Risk: large increase in cost of food as more resources are dedicated to its production?

What Resiliance means to us

My personal take on resilience is OPTIONS. Lots of them. Options to move, different income streams and multiple ways to provide the basics (food, water, shelter and warmth).

As early retirees we have a likely 40+ years ahead of us. A lot of things can and will happen in those 40+ years. Most of them will be surprises good and bad. OPTIONS will either allow us to take advantage of these changes or ride them out.

Staying financially independent = fix up our place, be 50% + self sufficient and build excess income streams.

We need to be able to offset the risks we have listed above (and others) and setup our investments to to take advantage of any opportunities.

This "work" has taken priority over this blog in the last year. We have been super busy but the benefits have been amazing for us. We are so happy that we have taken steps to anti-fragile our lifestyle which has relieved some of our anxiety of going it alone.

First up here are our Anti-fragile / Resilience goals:

We want to provide a normal middle class up-bringing for our kids and afford them opportunities to grow. This requires us to at least maintain our inflation indexed income and ideally grow it. We need to be able to ride out any large unexpected bills and save for the kids education.
Not to be a burden to the state \ provide adequate funding for our lifestyle through low living costs, excess passive income and a small amount of paid work. We will pay our fair share of taxes on time and limit our impact on local amenities (e.g. less waste, support fund raising for the school etc.)
Reduce our reliance on external resources - we will source as much of our food, building supplies and fuel locally.
Look after our health (again reducing the cost to state) eat our own organic food and fruit, cutting wood, cycling instead of driving etc.
Engage with other people, to share resources to help with maintenance issues for example.

4 action areas

We have decided to consolidate our actions in to 4 main areas

Personal - Family education \ health
Sustainability \ Antifragility - reducing our reliance on outside help
Community - Engage in the local community and with friends
Financial - building diverse assets and income

Starting with our Personal Gaols

Adult Education - We continue to read up on wide ranging topics (Super-forecasting, Logic, Perma-

culture \ Market Gardening, the 1930's, Solar Energy to name a few) and most importantly put these into practise. An example of this covered in more detail below is our ability to grow our own food and generate some of our own energy. This improves our finances and health.

Kids education - we continue to encourage the kids to learn through play and experience.

The TV has long gone. This been a brilliant thing to do as their play is more beneficial helping them to develop personal / communication skills, anger and conflict management. The both take judo classes which we hope will help with confidence, control and respect.

We take them to museums (locally we have a school and a bee\ honey museum, down the road we have the Airbus museum).

We engage them in day to day activities, cooking, gardening, cleaning, painting etc. They are learning 4 languages.... wowser! I struggle with English let alone French.

Lifestyle - An added bonus is lifestyle here in the south west of France. It is a holiday for us. Our local town has just been added to the Michelin guide. In fact our whole area is a hot tourist area with lots of things to do. We have easy access to the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts as well as the Pyrenees mountains.

We continue to improve our house and land. We are renovating, planting, repairing and cleaning. We love our flowering pots around our terrace, the picturesque views and starry nights.

Sustainability & cost reductions \ savings

Our preserves from the garden and batteries for
off grid solar system

eco-worthy.com wind solar off grid system

We have built an intricate gravity and solar fed irrigation system - reducing our demand for mains water and allowing us to grow lots of lovely veg.
Done as much renovation work as possible by ourselves saving thousands
Replaced lots of damaged roof tiles
We have started to build a perma-culture garden, permaculture mounds, a couple of ponds and a poly tunnel.
We have invested in manual garden tools.
We have invested in preserving equipment and Mrs C has been really busy canning (Bocals)
We have purchased a sun oven to cook and preserve our food
We have planted more fruit and nut trees
We have started making our own compost without fuel and fertilisers. It has no requirement for machinery only hand tools.
We have installed an off grid solar and wind system and are currently adding the option to run the whole house off it as required. It is a 1.4KW system (1KW solar and 400W Wind) with 4*130AH batteries.

This system running at 1/3 of capacity daily = 1.4KW * 1/3 * 24 = 11.2 KWh per day
Our average house consumption we believe is around 8.3 KWh per day (350 AH per day @ 24V)

The only issue is that the battery bank (the 4 batteries give 260AH @ 24V) is not large enough for a prolonged period without the system running at 1/3rd of capacity.

Our Permaculture "mounds"
which have now been planted with fruit bushes

Benefits

We can save and invest more each month increasing safety nets and future options
We are growing our own organic food - this is exercise, provides healthy meals (Vegan) and saves money
We are able to use resources on our land (we have solar electricity and hot water, a gravity fed water source, trees for firewood, fruit and nut trees, and we are developing good soil).
Our kids are learning real world skills with us such as solar system installations and calculations, water flow and management.
We are not buying loads of rubbish "entertainment" for the kids - they play outside making their own games.
We can repair things ourselves which is satisfying, saves time, money and stress.

We have reduced our necessary living costs (2 adults and 2 children) to ~£900 (1,050 EUR, ~1,170 USD) per month (property tax, food, utilities, school fees and cars) as of Sept 2016. We can live on much less if needs be.

From an Antifragile standpoint - we are able to provide for ourselves in an emergency and have reduced our "fixed" living costs. We have learnt additional real world skills that allow us to do things for ourself.

Friendships & Community

We have abnormal living arrangements in a normal community of hard working individuals. The "abnormal" part is that we do not have "normal" work and "normal finances". Talking about financial independence and resilience building seems almost taboo... We try not to talk about unless someone specifically asks.

Financial independence is a bit like talking about how much you earn (ironically it is fine to talk about how much you spend;) see the following article. I often wonder why this is the case. Surely it would be beneficial to know if you are being paid fairly? Wouldn't a discussion on money, budgeting and investing be beneficial for people to have? So talking normal finances or investments is not really touched either.

Work has become so hectic and all encompassing most people do not have time to have a go at sustainable living. After all it is a lot of additional "work". Do you have the energy to dig the garden, chop some wood or insulate the house when you get home late and exhausted from work?

Promisingly on this topic we are finding that people are more interested in this area and are taking small steps.

Sport, weather, holidays, kids, homes and mainstream hobbies are all in the easy bucket. A good way to chat over a beer. We live in an outdoor party area so BBQ's are great places to catch up and make friends.

Ultimately friendships take time and a lot of work. We can definitely do better. We want to have fun and relax with friends so it is important we build rapport by talking about stuff they are interested in. So KISS (Keep it simple stupid!) really works here :)

Financial

Our financial plan is quite simple - take part in the ownership of productive "cash flow" assets. Have skin in the game. Our trading accounts are invested in individual companies. Our pension choices are limited to funds. We have part ownership of some commercial real estate.

Thankfully building income is easy and can be done in small increments over time. We do this primarily through share and bond ownership. Lending clubs have also become popular.

Unfortunately very few people we know actually"invest" perhaps due to the risk warnings written across all financial products. They rely on earned income. Any spare cash is generally not put to work but "saved" as cash or spent.

Inflation means cash "value" is eroded instead of growing and providing an income through positive interest. Investing in dividend stocks opens the door to capital gains and cash flow.

Admittedly you need to hold some cash - it gives you quick access, options to deploy the cash to an opportunity.

Ownership can be expanded to other assets such as forestry, agricultural land, commercial property, private company investment etc.

Our financial actions to increase our assets are as follows:

We have opened tax efficient share savings vehicles in France (PEA - stocks and shares)
We are saving cash in multiple currencies (GBP, EUR)
We continue to re-invest dividends
We are investing in alternative diversified real assets (Sustainability projects, REIT (commercial real estate))
Mrs C's has setup as a small business
We have been saving for the kids who both have savings plans based on the permanent portfolio approach. (25% fixed income, 25% Shares, 25% Cash, 25% Commodities)
We have made our wills

Our preference is a take on the permanent portfolio approach.....at the moment we are overweight global stocks and underweight bonds and cash and commodities due to historical reasons and the way our pensions work (limited choice).

Pensions

Global Stocks (EQ)
Bonds (BN) - Final Salary Pension Scheme mainly high quality bonds
Commodities - (GLD)

These have seen phenomenal gains on a small investment 500%+ since inception due to matching contributions from employers and the power of compounding. Both Mrs C and I joined our schemes as soon as we started work. We cannot access this money for 25 years......

Income

Dividend growth stocks (EQ)
Commercial Real Estate Investment Trust (PR)
French PEA tax exempt stock and share account after 8 years of holding (EQ)

Cash

GBP and EUR (small holding as neither currency is great at the moment) (CA)

On the EXPENSES front our current budget is 1,709 Euros per month (~£1,450, ~$1,828 - FX is moving all over the place).

This includes 300 Euros per month for holiday and entertainment, school fees (150 Euros) and after school activities (70 Euros).

Our "bare bones" costs if we had to extreme economise would be 730 Euros per month.

We have ample safety nets, live a comfortable middle class lifestyle and do not go without anything. Our activities make us more robust and able to be in control of our lives.

Now Build Your Resilience

There are major benefits of building resilience and many steps will actually get you to financial independence earlier.

You will reduce your living costs (hence save more)
Learn to do things for yourself such as basic plumbing, gardening
Start to adapt to a new way of life - a financially independent way of living
Be risk aware and adapt your plans accordingly

Considering these points (and some of the above risks) I believe that building resilience is an absolute must. Again

"Hope for the best and plan for the worst"

Considering the needs of resilience building this means early retirement is MUCH more than just investing to replace earned income to retreat to the beach.

You can't leave all your eggs in one or two baskets or leave them to chance. I suggest you need to continue to live well within your means. Consider emergency planning (which usually requires more money than you think). Be able to look after ourselves in a time of difficulty such as a natural disaster.

Additionally we need to take opportunities when they come our way (such a a bit of paid work). Use our new found freedom from debt and wage slavery to develop new skills to keep our mental skills sharp and hopefully gain a cash flow from them.

Some resilience building strategies that come to mind are:

Aim for low "fixed" living costs and continue to drive them lower - we have below average bills for utilities, cars and fuel.
Some self sufficiency in water, energy and food - make sure you live somewhere where you can provide some of the necessities of life on your own.
Easy to get a job if you need to (CV up to date etc) - can you work from home \ setup an on line business - give it a go and perhaps it could become your job.
Diverse income streams - Property, Shares, Work, Interest, Bonds, Capital gains.
Continued monthly saving - 10% per month as a minimum?
Have a large rainy day fund - 6 months + of living costs?
Speculate to accumulate (have 5% of your savings going for big gains at high risk)
Do stuff you enjoy - if you are not happy perhaps early retirement was not for you?
Continual learning - great for spotting opportunities and problems.

I believe this is a good balance between opting out and keeping a good foot in the real world. Isolationism we believe is a dangerous approach to take when you need the help of others and want to have normal relationships. Extreme frugality (without excess cash flows) leaves you vulnerable and open to shocks. Lack of resilience could have you back to work to recover a capital \ cash flow shortfall quicker than you think.

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Peace, prosperity and happiness

CoNTeNDeR

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Fragilista - Part 1

2017-01-15T11:55:00.001+00:00

Our very fragile sink - we are chucking everything at the
kitchen sink of 2017 to make it as successful and
anti-fragile as possible

Welcome to a New Year of new opportunity ladders and slippery snakes.

This year I am kicking off with the basics on how to achieve Financial Independence with a link to my updated Financial Independence Timeline planner that allows you to create a basic budget, track spending and create a financial independence plan.

I will cover a bit of media bias (plenty here;) in the wold of fake news and risk planning especially focus on becoming anti-fragile (Courtesy of Nassim Taleb)

In part 2, that will be released later, I will
discuss our anti-fragiliska actions and what you can do.

Early Retirement does not have to be a dream - maths 101

I have read a lot of articles from the FIRE community and mainstream media. Some are very good at highlighting how it is possible to save what can bee seen as a daunting wad of money. Some talk of extreme "sacrifices" made at a young age to do this. In reality it is sensible to choose somewhere in between.

A happy financial independence is possible with a reasonable wad. It is possible to avoid extreme living arrangements to get there. We "retired" at age 37 and still managed to have a great time along the way. How?

Simply - we worked (at education to get good jobs where we put in the required effort) and saved hard all our lives (50%+ of our after tax income) - See the book Grit. Secondly live with a good standard of living but nothing extravagant which is the premise of the book "The Millionaire Next Door".

A middle class lifestyle is a luxury and there really is no need to overstretch yourself with "luxury goods" trying to keep up with the "Joneses" or "Showing Off". A middle class lifestyle in this day and age means access to cheap world travel, indoor toilets and central heating. These are luxuries in their selves and were not available until recently. Obtaining financial independence just means understanding and applying the following maths:

The MAGIC of COMPOUNDING and the RULE of 72. Divide 72 by the rate of return you obtain and this gives the time for the initial amount to double. If you have 50,000 saved and get a 10% return in 7 years you will have 100,000, 14 years 200,000, 21 years 400,000 etc. This is with no additional capital added! Sprinkle some in and this process speeds up dramatically.

The secret is that at first you don't see the nest egg grow much - the power of 72 is hidden. Add in a sprinkling of the ups and downs of the business cycle and it is easy to see this as a deterrent - it is not working....persistence is the key.

Secondly how much do you need to live off in FIRE 15,000 per year? This requires an investment pot of around 214,000 returning 7% a year........(too aggressive for me - but it is quite startling)

15,000! This surprisingly goes a very long way when you house is paid for, you live in a country that has good health coverage (providing you pay your taxes) and you have low living costs by SMART living choices.

BIG IDEA: Do not be part of the heard, save as much as is reasonable and make sure the money is put to WORK providing an INCOME (not a speculation or gamble).

To help you visualise how this all works I have updated my financial independence time line planner with new budget and spending tracking sheets (excel spreadsheet).

Click on picture to download expense tracking, review, budget and financial time line*

Can it really be so easy - if so why don't more people do it?

First up were are told it is not possible - daily. Retirement has been dolled up over the years as golf, beach, cruises. All of this is a massive sales job. Before you now it big bucks are needed in your pension plan (a million dollars or more in today's money). Don't believe this PROPAGANDA.

These numbers are a natural brake on people retiring early. You get your pension projection in the post giving a pension estimation at 65. Usually falls short of your expectations and encourages you to add more funds.

Message: Just keep on contributing (and paying all of those lovey fees that drive the pension industry)! This leads to

Behavioural change: This perception management encourages irresponsible spending.

"I am paying into a pension so I will spend the rest - this is fragile thinking"

Saving slowly and squandering the rest on a consumerist lifestyle, of junk whose value generally returns to its intrinsic worth of zero over time as it becomes broken, worn or obsolete, keeps you on the treadmill of salary, taxes and fees. Don't FALL for it!

This vicious circle sets high spending expectations in retirement hence the need to save more. We live VERY comfortably on what is deemed a poor family income in France as we have NO DEBT, NO LIABILITIES and LOW FIXED COSTS.

Whats even worse is there no real guarantee of a good pension payment at the end of your working life (think low returns, unfunded liabilities and inflation). I firmly believe this will leave a lot of people in a bad position in the years ahead as we are starting to see in the US with state pension funds in crisis.

BIG IDEA: Everybody needs to be an active manager in their own pensions. Have a plan and a set of pension goals and accept these change over time.

Unfortunately this skill set is not part of the education system which is a topic for another day. I will just question why were are pushed out of the education door, to get on with it, without some basic life skills such as budgeting and planning.

The only way you get these skills are if you are lucky enough to have parents who have filled in the gaps (financial and emotional intelligence to name but two). You have a fascination with making it big or have a mentor of some sort. Knowing the GAME early makes ALL the difference to your future.

Hyper-Normalisation - is there a retirement trap brewing?

To compound the issue that returns are not knowable in advance.

Things could dramatically advance just think of free renewable energy for all, new industries crop up overnight that revolutionise the world economy and we all get an iRobot each, eliminating the need for hard work and the ability to fund a living wage for all.

On the flipside to utopia we need to consider a few stumbling blocks (until we get our robot;).

One potential issue is that current asset prices and projections are based on perpetual growth calculations. We buy productive assets to pay for our pensions whose price is determined by predicted growth as measured in GDP and profits. These projections are based on historical "norms".

As we all know from history classes and current problems in countries; Argentina, Greece and Venezuela - upheaval can occur in any country devastating the "normal growth mantra", currency value and pension pots very quickly.

Secondly we have no real leadership in the world - challenging the status quo and changing our path to a brighter future. Leader holy grail is to keep inflation (confiscation) around 2 percent and growth in GDP of 3 percent and debt growing into an even bigger Godzilla than it is now......?). Nothing really changes.

Growth has been great but time is running out on this model - back to the rule of 70 (divide 70 by the percentage growth rate to give the doubling time) - at 3% growth the GDP would double in 23 years. Twice as much of everything...!!! yet we live on one planet and there are some serious restrictions to this thinking.

Considering most pensions are based on tracker funds which "diversify" risk buy owning a bit of everything surely this is a problem when we can't have everything when scarcity kicks in. Will luxury goods companies be top of peoples shopping lists? Will people pay for stuff they don't really need in this circumstance? Will society change where conspicuous consumption and keeping up with the Joneses is no longer seen as socially responsible? What happens when cheap debt is no longer available?

Another potential car crash for pension promises is that we are all living longer. Demographics are terrible in major economies (ageing society, less workers per retiree). Populations are highly unlikely to grow at 3% a year....

People stop spending in later years. They sell investments and assets to pay for their living costs - no GDP growth here then either.

But wait we can just print GDP right.....It's just logical - we currently have already bankrupt public finances and pension entitlements to pay just QE it (the law of supply and demand does not apply), NIRP it (negative interest rates what the!) it to make people spend and soon to be helicopter it (give people the money directly).

There is no real growth here just accounting tricks and boon dongles to keep us hyper-normalised. Slowly boiling the frog.

We are looking at a step change in humanities approach to retirement and entitlements. A new deal will eventually be forced upon us.

Future retirees need to be smart and understand their investments instead of a docile awaiting a check at the age of 65+. Their wad has to be structured in such a way to ride out risks and change to real future conditions of an ageing society consuming one rapidly depleting planet. It need to generate surplus instead of being "drawn down" only then can you be confident to splash out.

This is even more important for people considering FIRE (or FISH :)). Empires rise and fall, companies collapse and new ones are borne. We need to be informed, nimble, reactive, critical and opportunistic to have so many years not reliant on our labour.

BIG IDEA: "Hope for the best and plan for the worst" Financial Independence must have INCOME above OUTGOING with continued SAVING and INVESTING.

Seeking Happiness means RESILIENCE building and RIGHT SIZING ones LIFESTYLE to a changing society to survive many years free from working for the man or looking. HAPPINESS is NOT looking over your shoulder each day.

I have a couple of people I want to mention who are doing great work in thearea of building resilience:

Fragile, Rhobust, Antifragile - Nicolas Taleb

Source: Amazon

I have been a fan of Nicolas Nassim Taleb since reading his "Black Swan" book. He has followed thisanti-fragile. As I have read it it implies being able to make good by embracing risk and making sure shocks don't really hurt you.
up with a book on a form of robustness which he calls

I have a few takeaways from his work

Specialism can be very dangerous - what if your job becomes obsolete - can you do other things \ have other skills?
Having all your eggs in one basket is just waiting for someone to knock it over - "safe index low cost funds", stocks, bonds etc.
Being part of the herd will lead you over the cliff - leading a debt based consumerist lifestyle makes you fragile
Taking calculated risks makes you stronger

Peak Prosperity - Chris Martinson

Source: Amazon

Secondly I have followed the work of Chris Martinson and his Crash Course which I highly recommend you watch on his website Peak Prosperity. This shaped our thinking on early retirement, investing and the need for self sufficiency. After all stopping work at 37 and providing for our family until we pass can be a very long time and lots of "Black Swans" can be lurking in the shadows.

Chris covers risks from the three E's. Economy (massive build up of debt). Reliance on depleting fossil Energy supplies (and resources in general) for day to day life. How we need to look after the Environment we live in which provides us with our nourishment (soil building, wildlife (bees) for pollination, water etc. His latest book "Prosper" is a great resource.

More reasons to be ANTI FRAGILE in Retirement

External Surprises - Life has a funny way of punching you in the face. All is fine then wham - the car is written off, you break an arm or lose big on your investments. There can be an external shock completely out of your control such as war, demographic crash, capital flight and times of deflation and inflation.

This is relying on MULTIPLE DIVERSE sources of income is a must.

Challenge and happiness - Taking FIRE to live in a modern villa with no way to be a bit self sufficient, the bills just covered and a rosy outlook for investment returns is anti fragile and can get you in deep trouble quickly. Sitting in the sun and going for your daily swim can become stale quickly, as humans we need to keep moving or wither.

You make your own luck and happiness through hard work, continuous learning, making the hard choices. All of these must continue throughout life - its what life is about, makes you want to get up in the morning and puts a smile on your face. I did that!

Retirement - use it to build inter-generational Wealth

Our aim is the continuous accumulation of wealth. We want to be able to pass on the knowledge we have to our children so they can do the same for their own. Why? Well the ability to control your freedom is in my opinion a major part of happiness - choosing what you want to do. Money and assets allow you to take risks, build a business out of a passion, make value for the people around you.

Having a framework that makes sure you have real title to assets, legally avoid inheritance taxation (think farmland, 100+ year old antiques, passing assets on before they get taxed) is a real legacy for FI seekers. Building a business to hand over or sell in "retirement" provides a spark to your life, a reason to get out of bed, challenge yourself and keep your self healthy (heath is mental and physical and is WEALTH)

Draw down of assets in retirement is what the state wants - not what you want! That way the next generation have to get to work for the man to pay their taxes.

Why should we just accept this? This type of FIRE is not leaving a legacy behind. It is giving it to the state to squander on its latest pet project. By all means pay you fair taxes I have no problem with that but WILLINGLY give up your CAPITAL at the EXPENSE of your family is another issue all together.

BIG IDEA: Financial independence is about leaving a legacy of inter-generational WEALTH and KNOWLEDGE.

In part 2 of this post I will go through the modest steps we are taking to be anti-fragile and build inter-generational wealth for our family.

Create a FI plan today*

Peace, prosperity and happiness
CoNTeNDeR

Welcome New Readers! Please take a look around.Click here to find out more about THE.TriBe and the blog is or perhaps browse the all posts list, Please feel free to play with the planning tools and checklists. If you liked this post can you please spare a few seconds to share it?

* Inevitable legal disclaimer. Everything on this site is intended for entertainment purposes only. I take no responsibility for its use.


Source http://populationpyramid.net/