Reddit user u/Enlightened_Brummy recently created a post effectively looking for inspiration/ ideas for investing in yourself/ oneself. The discussion seemed to be pretty well-received and I thought I could add some value by presenting my ideas in a fuller detail on the Financial Independence Campaign.
Some of these ideas I’ve actually done, some I’m considering. To make this more helpful, I’ve put in some links to show how you could take these forward.
Obviously, not every idea will suit everyone.
One other thing: I write a lot on this blog, Reddit etc. about stuff I’m doing or have tried and seem to be trying a lot. I’m not the Energiser Bunny (Duracell Rabbit?) or whatever though – I don’t do all this stuff all the time, I don’t spend my entire life hustling and trying to get ahead like a psychopath. This blog is about that kind of stuff, so it’s disproportionately represented, but it’s just the version of me that I’m presenting.
I don’t write about times when I just want to sit in front of the telly or play video games or whatever, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have days when that’s all I can do.
You have to be kind to yourself and enjoy the ride.
13 ideas for investing in yourself in 2022:
- Study for a qualification with the Open University.
- Take a Futurelearn micro-credentials module.
- Learn a bit about basic web development.
- Try some functional coding.
- Learn to sail a yacht.
- Learn some DIY/ maintenance skills.
- Grow your own vegetables.
- Take a foraging course.
- Take up a fitness course or attend a fitness class.
- Get your Diploma for Financial Advisers.
- Pick up the basics of a foreign language.
- Get music lessons.
- Learn to cook.
1. Study for a qualification with the Open University
| Commitment | 4-16 hours per week, for 1-6 years |
| Cost | £1,614 for a 30-credit undergraduate module; £3,228 for a 60-credit module |
| Points to note | A full undergraduate degree is 360 credits, but intermediate “Certificate” and “Diploma” levels exist if you only want to do a bit of the degree course |
I studied Law through the Open University on the Graduate Entry model, which meant that I could use my undergraduate degree from my residential university (back in the day…) as credit to skip the first 120 credits.
Studying while working is quite hard. It’s a big time commitment, so I completely understand why a lot of people don’t want to do it. However, I used this degree to career change into a pretty well-regarded London law firm, so I can say with confidence that employers value the degree.
You do need a lot of focus to get the most out of this. I know a few people who started a degree and didn’t finish one. The costs are quite high, too, so I reckon it’s a good option for people who want to change careers or who didn’t have a degree previously, but it’s probably not something to do on a whim.
2. Take a Futurelearn micro-credentials module
| Commitment | 2-5 hours per week, for 1-12 weeks. |
| Cost | Depends on module choice, but from £0 to £000s. |
| Points to note | Not all courses have a recognised certificate at the end. However, some courses can be combined into recognised certificates/ diplomas, even Postgraduate ones. |
Futurelearn is a cool platform. The concept is that a lot of universities, professional institutes or whatever design micro-credentials – mini-courses – that you can take up as-and-when by distance learning. Some of them are industry specific, too: there is an Institute of Leadership and Management Level 3 course on there if you’re looking at your first steps in management.
I’ve spotted this cool Introduction to Data Analytics for Investment on there, which might interest some of you. £54 for using coding to data-test an ETF portfolio. Might be worth a look?
If you’re looking for formally-recognised qualifications, Futurelearn may not be the place. There are MBA courses on there, but it’s not really what the general platform offers. Still, I know a few people who have had good experiences with the platform and I can’t fault its value-for-money.
There’s an “unlimited” subscription service for £19.99 a month. It’s obviously not actually unlimited for degree courses, but it’s maybe a reasonable investment if you want to gain a few theoretical skills.
3. Learn a bit about basic web development
| Commitment | Whatever time you want to commit. |
| Cost | Free. No catch. |
| Points to note | Lots of resources you can pick and choose from. |
Web development isn’t the lucrative field it used to be. Still, there’s enough work out there for it to be a career for some people, and it can be quite fun to do.
I’ve used and recommend The Odin Project and FreeCodeCamp. These are both free platforms on the internet that you can use to get to grips with the basics of web development.
The Odin Project is a web dev course. It weaves parts of FreeCodeCamp into its curriculum. There aren’t any exams or whatever, it’s just that throughout the curriculum you will create a portfolio of work saved on GitHub that you can direct recruiters to as evidence of your skills.
FreeCodeCamp works slightly differently, in that there is an assessment piece to submit (optionally) at the end of each module. However, it goes beyond web development and into functional coding, and I think they give you proof of completion badges for LinkedIn if you’re into that sort of thing.
I’ve used both. I didn’t complete the Odin Project as my legal career is just kicking off and I wanted to give the Project more time than I had available. However, I did complete the HTML and CSS basics module, which has been enough for me to customise some of the stuff I put on here… for better or worse.
4. Try some functional coding
| Commitment | Whatever you want to commit for as long as you want to. |
| Cost | From £0 to £00s. |
| Points to note | Quality of courses not necessarily linked to price. |
I’ve mentioned FreeCodeCamp and Futurelearn, but another cool resource is the free-to-read stuff by Al Sweigart.
The book I’ve started with is Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. That link takes you to his book, which is free to read under a creative commons licence, but I’m doing the course on Udemy which cost I think £15 or something for unlimited lifetime access.
If it’s free, why not take a look?
5. Learn to sail a yacht
| Commitment | One-week residential modules |
| Cost | From £400, but expect about £1,000 |
| Points to note | Lots of courses required to gain new skills, but easy to get the basics. |
Hear me out on this one!
If you’re not seasick, learning to sail a yacht at a basic level comes with access to a whole host of subsequent perks… like networking with people who can afford yachts and cheap holidays.
Crewseekers is a website that connects boat owners to potential crew. If you have a basic level of competence, you can sign up to help people deliver their boat (i.e. sail it) from one place to another. Some of these are in nice locations, like this advert looking for a couple to help sail from Corfu to Sicily and Italy. They would want you to pay for flights out and share in food, which is pretty normal, but there are also some professional/ paid delivery jobs on there.
If you find that you like a bit of sailing, that could be a lot of cheap holidays in the sun.
The basic standard for this is the RYA Competent Crew course. I did this one with Solent Boat Training that lasted 5 days and cost me £699 plus food for the week, but there are others and it’s possible to do them in sunnier places. If you’re an active, adventurous type, the course is a holiday in itself.
Disadvantages include the expensive equipment and courses at the start, inconvenient times, being at the mercy of the weather and potential seasickness, but it looks like a cost-efficient way to get to take some nice summer breaks and learn a few things on the way.
6. Learn some DIY/ maintenance skills
| Commitment | Tools, courses of various lengths, materials for own projects |
| Cost | From £325 for a non-residential course, plus tools and materials |
| Points to note | Not a replacement for a tradesman, but great for reducing minor maintenance costs |
This is something I did when I left the public sector.
Now that I work in an office job, my impression of the “skills gap” has changed. When I worked in public service, the talk was always of a “digital skills gap” or “education gap”, which seemed to be code for a difference between people who had degrees and people who didn’t.
My impression now is that there’s a less-glamorised but much more important skills gap: between people who have practical skills and people who don’t. My colleagues in law would genuinely call a plumber out to change a kitchen tap, despite this being quite a simple (if potentially messy…) task that doesn’t require you to waste a professional’s time.
A lot of basic DIY skills can be learned for free on YouTube, if you have the time and the patience to do the research before starting a task. Another great resource is the Reader’s Digest DIY manual, which I pretty much relied on to help renovate my house. Here’s an affiliate link to the book on Amazon:
I did a five-day plastering course with Trade-Ability, and later a bricklaying course. This was partly to use a learning credit, but it turned out to be great value! While I suck at skimming ceilings and would call in a professional for those, I can put a pretty decent skim finish on most walls now and do a lot of patch-plaster repairs myself, which is pretty cool.
The thing about these kinds of courses is that the skill itself isn’t the investment: it’s what you do later with that knowledge that makes the money back.
For example: we’re probably going to buy a house on relocation to the Channel Islands, but doing these courses has given me the confidence to identify what jobs need doing on a property that others overlook. We could buy a cheaper house, one that needs renovating, with a rough idea of which jobs we would do ourselves and which we’d call a professional in for.
This also does wonders for your confidence. Once you’ve had a bit of hands-on training in one area, you’re less intimidated by learning in another area.
7. Grow your own vegetables
| Commitment | After the initial preparation, can be as little as 10 minutes a week plus harvesting |
| Cost | To suit budget – could easily start on £20 |
| Points to note | Harder than it looks… or I just suck! |
At its simplest, growing your own food means you’re somewhat less reliant on civilisation to feed you. OK, to start with, you’re not going to be self-sufficient living off microgreens, but you’re at least doing something.
I believe that food security is going to become increasingly uncertain over time due to climate change, overpopulation and other macroeconomic factors. Not scarily so, but enough that a responsible person should consider some degree of independent food production to take on some of the burden.
I’m aiming for financial independence, it probably isn’t surprising that I’d want a degree of self-sufficiency at a basic level.
You don’t need a ton of space, either. Suttons seeds has a whole selection of vegetables for windowsill gardening. They also have a cool blog post on small spaces gardening that’s a great read.
We sucked at this. I grew the Suttons’ speedy veg mix quite successfully a few times (harvesting a salad every couple of weeks is kind of cool); managed to grow potatoes in bags once, but they wanted a lot of compost for very little yield; but we only had a few courgettes before blackfly absolutely destroyed them, couldn’t get kale to do its thing, murdered a lime tree and our spinach was lacklustre at best. French beans were quite easy, though, and I recommend them as you get absolutely loads off a few seeds.
We’re moving home shortly so I haven’t bothered to grow anything this year, but this is a low-cost investment into skills that I’m keen to put a bit more time into.
8. Take a foraging course
| Commitment | A one-day course and whatever time you fancy |
| Cost | About £50 per person |
| Points to note | Regional differences in wildlife mean it’s probably best to take a course locally |
Foraging is something I haven’t yet tried but I’m really keen to give a go.
In modern times, we’ve become accustomed to domesticated fruit and veg, washed and packaged for us. If you’re a bit more independent, you might supplement this by growing your own (see above). However, our pre-industrial ancestors used to supplement their farming even further with things that grow naturally on the land and in the sea that we’ve largely forgotten about because of time and convenience.
However, this food is still available, and there’s a small community of people who have kept the foraging tradition alive and well.
Example providers include the Foraging Course Company, Live Wild and Totally Wild, and there’s a list of smaller companies on the hilariously-named Eat The Planet website.
I guess fishing would fit here, too, but that requires a bit more kit. Foraging meanwhile is, well, cheap.
9. Take up a fitness course or attend a fitness class
| Commitment | Varies, but classes tend to be at least weekly |
| Cost | Depends on sport |
| Points to note | Benefits depend on choice |
Exercise tends to lead to improved fitness, and fitter people tend to survive longer and be prone to fewer health problems. You should exercise in some form anyway, however in this section I’m thinking more about doing a course or a class rather than simply hitting the pavement or pumping iron on your own.
Fitness classes can be a hobby in their own right, but to make the most of “investing in yourself” in this context there should be come collateral benefit above-and-beyond simply looking good.
By doing a fitness course (as opposed to any other hobby course), you’re stacking the benefits of healthy living on top of socialising with people across a host of backgrounds who you just wouldn’t meet otherwise. As the world becomes increasingly digitised, I’m noticing that networking in real life is becoming more valuable as face-to-face meetings become, well, increasingly rare, making them more memorable.
Obviously, networking isn’t a given, but if you don’t put yourself out there no-one else will ever find you.
I’m looking at doing adult gymnastics when I don’t have an hour-and-a-half commute, which will probably replace at least one weight training session per week. If I can join a local sailing club, that might be 60% of the exercise I need during the week.
This summer, my partner and I will be learning to freedive with Freedive UK in Newquay on a two-day course. We might meet someone interesting during the course. Even if we don’t, we’ve had a mini-holiday and come away with a new skill, which is a lasting benefit.
10. Get your Diploma for Financial Advisers
| Commitment | 8 hours per week for 9 months |
| Cost | £990 |
| Points to note | Significant commitment, but directly related to financial independence |
I’ve written before about my Diploma for Financial Advisers. You, too, could get one via distance-learning with the London School of Banking and Finance.
This level 4 qualification is the one you need to become an actual financial adviser, should you want to, so you could career change off the back of it. I’m not going to do that, but it’s cool to have it as an option.
The course isn’t specific enough to tell you what to invest in, but you will learn how to match the needs of a customer to potential products that would suit them. You’ll also gain an understanding of what you should consider in a traditional finance sense, depending on your vulnerabilities and risk appetite.
11. Pick up the basics of a foreign language
| Commitment | As little as 5-10 minutes per day |
| Cost | From £0-£00s |
| Points to note | Fluency is hard to achieve without immersion, but a little goes a long way |
I’ve learned little beginner bits, at various times, of: French, German, Mandarin and Dari. Skill fade is very real, so don’t ask me to come out with big coherent sentences (and certainly don’t ask me to write in Chinese characters or Arabic script!). However, knowing a little tiny bit, being able to introduce myself in someone’s own language, has often opened doors for me.
My German is pretty shaky, but is my strongest language. My others all suck, but I given them a go and every time I’ve used them it has been well-received. This month I needed to gain the assistance of German and French colleagues, and being able to write the introductory sentence in their language meant that I received almost immediate and friendly replies back, to the surprise of my London colleagues.
I strongly recommend the Duolingo mobile app. It’s pretty effective, I like the way it gamifies learning (yes, “gamify” is a word – effectively, to turn something into a game). It’s also freemium, which is good for trying stuff out without committing.
Eurotalk is also OK – I used the Eurotalk Dari software to teach myself a few phrases and some vocabulary for a six-month stint in Kabul. You won’t become fluent by any means, but it proved to be a good way to break down barriers.
I hear good things about Rosetta Stone but I’ve never used it. The lifetime deal for £189 seems like great value though as it’s meant to be quite thorough with a pronunciation algorithm to coach you.
Why not give language learning a try?
12. Get music lessons
| Commitment | At least an hour per week, but can break this into bite-sized chunks at first. |
| Cost | An instrument (£200-600?) plus £20 per session per week. |
| Points to note | This is a long game |
I learned to play the drums the hard way: with a drum kit, a lot of tapes and CDs, a VHS introductory lesson tape, and a lot of failing. As a kid, I didn’t have spare money for lessons and I don’t think my parents were convinced I’d keep the playing up.
However, a much easier way is to go on a guided journey with a music teacher.
Whether you become the star of the London Symphonic or you just plain suck for a decade, learning to play an instrument has been linked to improved executive function. Yes, in theory, learning to play music makes you smarter. Here’s a Psychology Today blog post all about that.
The trick with this is to accept that you’re going to suck at the start. Well, I say the trick, but really I’m a barely mediocre drummer. Who cares? After a while, you become average enough to play live gigs (or concerts if you learn something more traditional), and I can tell you that it’s an awesome feeling to play live and for people to enjoy it. Yes, even drunk people. Especially drunk people.
You can find music teachers for adult lessons on the aptly-named MusicTeachers.co.uk .
13. Learn to cook
| Commitment | Mist days for at least one meal! |
| Cost | Your normal food budget |
| Points to note | Saves you money after a few weeks |
This is a strange thirteenth addition, but hear me out.
According to Statista, 34% of surveyed Brits aged 25-34 agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that they lack the skills to cook from scratch. It’s not just us millennials, either: while the trend is that older generations are more confident at cooking from scratch, the percentage who can’t cook doesn’t drop below 17%.
Cooking from scratch is both a) a ton cheaper and b) significantly better for your entire body than eating pre-prepared meals. It takes time, and I’ll freely admit to the odd takeaway or restaurant meal most weekends as a date night, but if you’re serious about saving cash and don’t want to compete for World’s Fattest Man then you should consider learning to cook.
The best thing of this is that your costs decrease as you learn, until a certain plateau of efficiency. The investment is in your time, which you’ll hopefully gain back by investing the difference and thus powering yourself closer to financial independence.
Wait – why didn’t you include “travel” or “making memories” on this list?
I like both of those things. However, the point of investment is that you delay the benefits of using resources now to commit to something in the expectation of getting bigger rewards later.
“Travel” and “making memories” are important, but to me that’s not investment: that’s just regular living.
Actually, I guess “travel” is on the fence. Travel necessarily exposes you to the risk that you end up in an unplanned situation from which you need to escape. At its simplest form, this could be navigating an unfamiliar town; more complex might be trying to backpack your way across East Asia speaking none of the languages and being really conspicuously western.
However, I felt that the point of a lot of this list was to give up some comfort in favour of later benefits, whereas these two things are simply an immediate use of resources for a rewarding activity that then has a long tail of second-order rewards. One of the great things about writing your own blog is that you can put whatever you want down on the screen, so I’m going to draw the line here.
Final thoughts
I probably could have come up with more than 13 ways to invest in yourself, but this has been a long enough post already!
My ethos with this blog (and, I guess, generally) is to try to do things a little differently to the mainstream and see if I can’t bring anything new to the party. Hopefully this list was a little different to the generic Pinterest/ Instagram/ Twitter threads about investing in yourself by “living, loving, laughing”/ “building a Spartan mindset, bro”/ “manifesting”, and ideally it would be cool if I inspired anyone to try something from this list themselves.
Until next time!
