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

Progress on my goals

Boat Plan

Marine diesels

Completed an RYA Diesel Engines course yesterday at the local college.

It’s weird how little you actually know about the things you use every day. Until I did this course, I barely knew anything about engine operations, and I’ve been driving cars for 18 years at this point.

Crazy!

Anyway, the RYA course is a bit pants, but the college added on some hands-on time with different engines and had lots of cross-sections of various engine types that we had a play with. The instructor really brought the subject to life, and now I know a lot more about my floating home’s powerhouse.

I’m a little nervous because essentially none of the monthly fuel system checks have been done on this boat for the last five years. Am I going to break my new engine? Is it too late to prevent the damage? Honestly don’t know if the instructor’s cries of this will damage your engine that seemed to accompany every bad habit are sincere or a bit melodramatic.

We’ll see..?

Payday!

Got paid and instantly deposited 50% into my investment account with Lloyds Sharedealing.

I’ve opted for 80% into my preferred equity index fund and 20% into a reasonable gilts fund.

There’s a way to set it up so you can automate the purchase orders by percentage of cash in your account and thereby avoid all dealing commissions on funds, but since I’m investing in standard funds (as opposed to an Exchange Traded Fund) the commission was a mighty £4 anyway, which I’ve absorbed as a cost of doing business.

I’ve actually evolved my thinking on ETFs. In the early days when you’re getting started, the low cost and high liquidity (near-instant during market hours) makes ETFs a solid choice. You can also get ETFs on most budget trading platforms, and I used to have a big exposure to them on Trading212.

However, as I’m not committing substantially more money from my pay, don’t need the liquidity due to a healthy emergency/cash savings pot, and now think the scale of my holdings is such that this can be invested for a long time – I’m using regular funds structured around indices.

The perk is that I avoid the market dynamics of having an ETF whose value doesn’t – purely because of how exchange orders are being placed – reflect its underlying holdings. 99% of the time this doesn’t really matter, but having now graduated through a banking crisis, been to war and survived a pandemic, I’m starting to think that these 1% chances happen quite often and I don’t see why I need to mess about with them if I can easily avoid it.

I still think ETFs are awesome, I’ve just gone with a slight preference.

Wait, weren’t you saving in cash..?

Yes. I was saving in cash to fund a business idea I’d had. However, the market research didn’t go the way I’d like, so I’m back to making investments.

First world problems!

There are much worse uses of money than simply investing. Who knows? If another business idea comes up or I change my life to a lower-stress job to pursue my creative hobbies, then I’ll build up the cash buffer again; but as I don’t have any better ideas right now and haven’t built any side income streams up enough to make a jump, I’m best off making the investments.

I can always cash out later if I get that world-changing brainwave.

Distractions and detours

Writing class

Having bought a new writing notebook and pen refills I’ve had zero time to actually write.

I mean, I could prioritise it over, say, this blog or my guitar – but not going to do that.

If only I had more time to pursue these things…

…which is of course the point of financial independence,

Steal like an artist! By Austin Kleon

So I was on the cross trainer on Friday (see my fitness changes, below) and had a scroll through Spotify for some thought-provoking listening.

I’m a big fan of podcasts like Philosophise This! when doing machine-based cardio. Breaks up the boredom and keeps you honest.

This week I discovered the audiobooks selection and listened to a book I’ve been curious about for a long time, but never quite pulled the trigger on buying.

Steal like an artist! is a great read and I’d recommend it to anyone.

The premise is effectively that all art is somewhat unoriginal and its originality/creativity is largely inspired by what the artist has consumed and collated to create an original combination of features. That’s a gross over-simplification but I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone who’s curious.

Despite being written by an artist, it’s not a book aimed purely at creative types. There is a bit of a manifesto for being more creative at the end of the book, but almost all of the observations would apply to basically any human endeavour.

As an aside: didn’t realise that Spotify has a substantial selection of audiobooks that are actually books I’d have chosen to read. This might be a big discovery and my gym/ chores are about to be a lot more productive.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

Week 3 of Can I play with madness?. We’re on to the solo, but I haven’t really gotten the chorus down yet so it’s well premature.

My teacher seems to realise that this might have been a bridge too far at my level, and has suggested we might revisit some of the older stuff we’ve already covered to work on improving timing.

Eh, I’m not going to beat myself up about not nailing Iron Maiden within a year. This is my hobby, I need to enjoy the process.

Fitness

Bit the bullet and signed up to the more expensive gym that’s immediately next to my work.

I’m not keen on paying so much for a gym, particularly not when there’s a much cheaper and better one 15 minutes’ walk away. However, my law job being what it is, that’s 30 minutes of travel time before you factor in showering and the actual session, so working out during the day just extended my work day by about 2 hours.

With the new setup, I can get a decent 40 minute session into a lunch break.

I’ve found that if I wait until around 1330hrs, the gym empties and I can have a squat rack to myself. That’s pretty awesome!

The gym itself is tiny, but ludicrously posh. The showers come with towel rental and coconut shower gel – no, really – and wouldn’t be out of place in a luxury hotel. There’s everything you want, but pretty much only one of everything.

I hurt my calf running on the treadmill after doing barbell squats earlier in the week. That sucked.

But on the other hand, I used the Friday session to do some active recovery with a 45 minute cross trainer set and an audiobook. This was cool, especially in the middle of my workday.

Final thoughts

Got paid, made my investments, learned some things.

Pretty good week!

Using my Spotify account to improve my learning while I do chores is a big deal. This should also save me from buying stuff on Kindle Store, which is my preferred method of reading on the boat due to space and lighting constraints.

Spending so much money on my gym membership is a bit of a pain point, but if I get the use out of it then it’s worthwhile. Fitness is far more important than optimising savings rates beyond a point, and I’m pretty confident that my 50%+ savings rate means I can spend a few shekels on not dying of heart failure in a decade.

My financial independence campaign continues!