tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28759158904151256552026-03-27T00:34:44.092+00:00UK based Financial Independence and Early Retirement (FIRE) Blog. The tools and techniques I used to become financially free in less than 10 years. Next stop early retirement in the Mediterranean.RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.comBlogger518125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-51408059546339166052025-06-07T03:54:00.001+01:002025-06-07T09:15:05.646+01:00

It has been more than 2 years since my last post.  Maybe more importantly in round numbers it has also now been around 18 years since I started on my FIRE journey, 16 years since I started this blog to hold myself accountable to that journey, 9 years since I became FI and 7 years since I first FIRE’d (and then quickly went back to work).  Looking at those timings I’ve been set up to&

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-43164068917680022952023-03-11T02:34:00.001+00:002023-03-11T05:48:17.135+00:00

I was not going to write this 4 years of FIRE post but I’ve had a number of requests for it which made me do a little thinking.  In the end I thought it might add a little value as it’s no secret that my FIRE journey has been a roller coaster of ups and downs around the personable side of FIRE with the financial side in hindsight actually being the easy bit.  This is in stark contrast

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-32798139050083951652021-12-10T14:07:00.006+00:002021-12-10T18:17:25.450+00:00

2021 has been my third year since I took that initial leap into the FIRE unknown and for me it’s been my biggest year ever for change.  Some good and some not so good.  So with the sun fast setting on 2021 I thought it was time to take stock and write some of this down.  Warning: If you don’t like blog posts that jump around this one may not be for you but if you want to know what

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-17887367225076269722021-01-01T02:59:00.001+00:002021-01-01T05:41:28.892+00:00

Usually at this time of year I publish a year in review which covers a little of the qualitative and a lot of the quantitative.  Given the year we’ve just had, along with quantitative needs now being significantly lessened given the stage of my FIRE life I’m currently in, I feel it’s worthy to flip that weighting as it really has been a year to both remember and to forget. 

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-75071205834926889412020-05-08T10:20:00.000+01:002020-05-08T10:20:31.402+01:00

I’m not sure if it’s the COVID-19 lockdown affecting me, or whether this is really a thing, but over the past month or so I’ve started to really notice companies stretching their take on integrity.  Maybe I was just in a bubble before but for me if you don’t have integrity I don’t want to be anywhere near you.  Let’s look at a few examples that I’ve personally come across. BT this

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-85653027790068965932020-03-28T13:50:00.001+00:002020-03-28T13:50:31.481+00:00

With us now being only a single working week away from the new UK financial year and the investment world still feeling the impacts of the COVID-19 situation I thought it might be worthwhile sharing a little about how my portfolio and life is changing given where we currently find ourselves. Let's start with what my investing strategy, something I first shared way back in 2009 but wasn’t really

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-89743201279437609852020-03-15T12:22:00.004+00:002020-03-15T12:22:56.257+00:00

A chart of the monthly FTSE 100 price looks something like this: Click to enlarge, Monthly FTSE 100 Price This is the chart that you’ll see on all the mainstream media channels and it shows that the FTSE 100 still has about 32% to fall if it’s going to match the worst of the global financial crisis (GFC).  This sounds like a long way until one thinks about a big failing with this type

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-66699463660469016992020-02-29T08:41:00.000+00:002020-02-29T08:41:28.551+00:00

If you were a trader on the financial markets, I’d think that you’ve probably had quite an interesting week.  After all the S&P500 is down 11.5% (an official correction without even going back into the declines of the previous week), our FTSE100 is down 11.1%, the Nikkei225 is down a more modest 9.6% while the ASX200 is down 9.8%. Word on the street is that this has been caused by fear

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-39921813670608574322020-01-10T16:49:00.000+00:002020-01-12T10:09:14.460+00:00

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” – not Albert Einstein as I always thought but actually Rita Mae Brown  2019 represented my first full year of FIRE, albeit with a slip-up back to FI during the year, which was then later corrected.  Despite a lot of my pre-FIRE posts being financial in nature finances actually occupied very little of my

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-70184335889212317462020-01-01T13:50:00.003+00:002020-01-01T13:50:47.713+00:00

It’s now a little over 8 years ago that I started to build my UK High Yield Portfolio (HYP).  It was a much talked about strategy back in the Motley Fool forum days and today still gets plenty of attention on the Lemon Fool forums today.  I built the portfolio between November 2011 and July 2015 by which time I’d amassed 17 shares across multiple sectors.  That included a token

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-53965490748441395942019-12-14T13:42:00.000+00:002019-12-14T13:42:19.502+00:00

I was recently reading a FIRE blog post, from a couple who are still very much deep in the swim phase of the FIRE triathlon, where the post was exploring who in society has the opportunity to FIRE if they so choose.  Of course as many of us FIRE bloggers love a good spreadsheet, the weapon of choice for exploring this was an Excel model and a whole pile of assumptions.  Two of these

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-19220306939838791782019-11-23T17:55:00.000+00:002019-11-23T17:55:18.370+00:00

November 2019 marks a couple of significant anniversaries for me.  The first anniversary is that it’s now 10 years since I started this blog with this first very amateurish post.  As far as the FIRE movement goes, particularly when we compare it with the number of FIRE blogs today, these were very quiet days.  Notably Early Retirement Extreme wasn’t quite 2 years old while Mr

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-64826123604699485082019-10-25T19:54:00.001+01:002019-10-25T19:54:45.373+01:00

If you’re a UK based investor who’s interested in keeping investment expenses low then it’s highly likely that you’re using Vanguard index and exchange traded funds (ETFs).  If that’s you then on Wednesday there was some good news with Vanguard lowering many of the annual expenses associated with these funds.  Full details are here which contains a list of the OCF reductions. In

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-1910797286876059622019-10-04T13:47:00.000+01:002019-10-04T13:47:06.380+01:00

At the end of June I concluded that a potentially positive step forward on my FIRE journey was to focus on being a ‘human being’ rather than a ‘human doing’ for a while.  No action plans, no agendas, no need to be busy...  During this time I woke when my body was ready, enjoyed a non-time limited breakfast, took advantage of the British summer by spending as much time outdoors

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-23970616913338177652019-08-02T15:51:00.000+01:002019-08-04T06:41:38.999+01:00

A few months after returning to my industry, albeit in a different role in the pursuit of meaningful work, I’ve left the company and am back to FIRE.  Soon after joining it became very obvious that while there were some pieces of meaningful work (where I define work as something you do for purpose) the vast majority of what I was going to be doing was just a job (which I define as something

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-9320536620558494572019-07-20T14:30:00.000+01:002019-07-20T14:30:19.730+01:00

Another year has passed for our UK early retiree.  A year ago I wrote that in the worlds biggest economy, the United States, Donald Trump was starting trade wars and the S&P500 cyclically adjusted price earnings (CAPE) ratio was sitting at 32.0 against a long run average of 16.9.  A year on it’s almost déjà vu with the trade war with China still rumbling along and the S&P500

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-29710437073206440462019-07-14T11:01:00.001+01:002019-07-14T11:01:40.811+01:00

Personal Finance is a major hobby of mine.  I’ve now been absorbing everything I can about saving, investing and financial independence since late 2007.  In November this year I will have also been blogging about it for 10 years!  When I go on holidays I’m also the one reading Wall Street Revalued  and not that latest John Grisham novel In my last post I mentioned the Ikigai

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-64046778414343383112019-06-08T14:24:00.000+01:002019-06-08T14:24:21.815+01:00

6 months after taking the FIRE (financially independent retired early) leap I can confirm that (for now) I’ve reverted back to FI (financially independent) mode.  That’s right, we’ve left Cyprus, are back in the UK and I’m working and/or have a job.  More on that in a minute. It’s been a long time between posts and a lot has happened so to try and get the story out in a succinct

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-63694885908733059992019-02-08T16:53:00.001+00:002019-02-08T16:53:34.223+00:00

As a 46 year old now in Early Retirement it seems worthwhile to now share more detail on how I have as tax efficiently as possible tried to build my wealth so that I run out of life before I run out of wealth.  For some time now at a high level I’ve used the following approach, which of shared on a number of occasions, to know when to pull the trigger.  Track my spending

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-1392087217865127882019-01-14T14:00:00.000+00:002019-08-03T23:31:30.254+01:00

The fourth quarter of 2018 contained the pivotal moment of my FIRE journey so far – FIRE day.  Financially it represented the transition from rapid wealth accumulation to hopefully well managed wealth decumulation or drawdown.  As I write this though more importantly it also represented the start of what seems to be called the decompression phase of retirement and I’ll freely admit

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-76539366047408999112019-01-01T09:10:00.000+00:002019-01-01T09:20:30.033+00:00

A little over 7 years ago (late 2011) I started to build a UK High Yield Portfolio (HYP).  It was a much talked about strategy back in the Motley Fool forum days and today still gets plenty of attention on the Lemon Fool forums.  I continued building the portfolio until July 2015 by which time I’d amassed 17 shares across multiple sectors.  That included a token amount of Royal

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-54489823609203842902018-12-23T10:29:00.002+00:002018-12-23T10:29:30.602+00:00

The organisation I up until recently worked for closes its year at the end of December.  With shutdowns between Christmas and New Year it meant that the run in to the Christmas bank holidays were always absolutely manic.  It meant long hours and little time to soak up the Christmas spirit until the physical bank holidays were upon us. Christmas 2018 is my first FIRE Christmas and

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-232283488592266132018-12-17T12:47:00.002+00:002018-12-17T12:47:28.031+00:00

It hasn't been all bureaucracy It’s been 3 weeks since I FIRE’d (financially independent and retired early) and we are now logistically pretty much settled in Cyprus.  I thought it might be worthwhile to capture some learnings for those that might want to someday follow in our footsteps as well as showing a little of how it’s all fitting into the principles that I’ve been espousing on

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-56179661042335855932018-12-09T15:18:00.001+00:002018-12-09T15:18:28.157+00:00

When I started my journey to FIRE (financially independent, retired early) in late 2007 there wasn’t much on the topic in the public domain.  To my knowledge at that time the term FIRE hadn’t even been coined and the US based Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme was just getting going with his blog. When I started this blog in late 2009, which was predominantly aimed at holding me accountable

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2875915890415125655.post-83924437027196193742018-11-24T18:57:00.002+00:002018-11-24T18:57:51.688+00:00

“Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. ...  Retirement is generally considered to be "early" if it occurs before the age (or tenure) needed for eligibility for support and funds from government or employer-provided sources. Early retirees typically rely on their own savings and investments to be self-supporting, either

RetirementInvestingTodayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03088383743670046657noreply@blogger.com40