Thoughts and reflections on the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.

Progress on my goals

Boat plan

Little to report from last week. Money is in the process of being transferred to the broker’s account, we’ve tee’d up the boatyard for essential maintenance (pending actual purchase), we’re pretty much set for this week.

Investing/FI pot check

With the upcoming lifestyle change I had to recalculate what would make sense as an emergency fund, what we need as an “abort” fund to put down a house deposit if this doesn’t work out, and what we have towards the financial independence pot.

The short version is that if we exclude the pensions, emergency provision, the “abort” fund and any illiquid Crowdcube investments, I have a pot that could sustain me for two years without curtailing my spending. Not bad!

Between my partner and I, we reckon we’re about 25% of the way to our Coast FI goals. Plus the pensions (both non-contributory and invested) and we should be well on our way.

Distractions and detours

This week has been one of ups and downs at work. We’re at a situation where our client wants to buy a company and the other side wants to sell a company. The thing is, buying a company has lots of side-issues that need to be agreed as part of it, and neither buyer nor seller seem to have the same view.

Which means the seller’s lawyers and me are pretty much arguing every day when we should be working together by now. It’s quite irritating.

Having done my check of what’s in the pot (see above!), it’s a little frustrating to be dealing with it when technically I don’t have to work here.

I’m still enjoying my job overall and it will get me to financial independence if I keep it going, but this is one of those events that inspired my post on distractions a few weeks ago.

This is just a passing rant at the machine, nothing serious. Hopefully soon that matter will be dealt with and I can work on less contentious situations. I’m just whingeing.

Non-FIRE goals

I’ve been reconditioning for running after a series of minor foot injuries and a broken toe at the start of the year.

Apart from the accidental broken toe, these injuries were due to a combination of age, not warming up properly and pushing too hard without properly building up to it. It’s almost entirely my own hubris that caused this!

Well, I’ve been building back up to distance and this week I managed a 7.5 mile route, which is a pretty reasonable distance for someone like me who just does running as a cardio and stress release exercise.

I’ve got no designs on marathon or ultramarathon distances any more. Done that, it’s not my thing. But I’d still like to have the option of 5-10 miles at a reasonably steady pace because that’s 30-90 minutes of time out. I live on an island with a lot of coastline so on a sunny day an hour’s running feels pretty good.

Happy with this achievement!

My financial independence campaign continues!