Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat life
Tried to take the boat out this weekend, but works at the marina mean that our gap to escape is super narrow (about two thirds of a boat length) and with the wind blowing us into the gap from our pontoon birth from the get-go we were probably going to get blown into it before we could turn the boat.
That’s hard to picture – but the short version is we’d get stuck sideways and bridge the gap between the two boats at the end with our boat.
There are ways to do that, but we needed either:
- A bow thruster
- Another couple of people and some good synchronised line releases
- Docking lines that were a lot longer so we could coordinate lines from one point in the boat.
Basically we needed to Tokyo Drift the boat as soon as she left the mooring. It’s possible, but even the marina staff said things like “good luck”.
Our pontoon will be adjusted soon so the gap will open up again.
We’re going to order longer lines, too, because when you’re in tight confines you can use rope, cleats and engine power to spring the boat off at weird angles. The only problem is that we’re a short-handed crew of two, so we need all the springy lines to reach back to me. The current ones that came with the boat just don’t.
Big investment surge
My employer came to me with terms that work for both of us. I’ve told them that we will review the situation in December, but the new scheme (if it works) promises a lot less stress and might make the job more sustainable. We’ve agreed to rescind my notice for now.
Which is good, because law pays – which is one of the reasons I career changed into it in the first damned place!
As a result, my war chest of cash savings has been loaded up into my Lloyds Sharedealing account and allocated to my portfolio. It’s a big uplift because it’s essentially a treble payment and by sheer fluke the timing seems to suit the markets.
I’m hoping things work out so that I can maintain my 50%+ savings rate, but ultimately the stress management is worth more to me than the ludicrous savings rate.
Distractions and detours
Settled things with my employer
Lawyers get assessed (and, therefore, payment, retention and promotion is determined by) “billable hours”. We record time on a stopwatch and the literal time spent that could be charged to a client matter is what determines how good or bad we are.
Interestingly, this isn’t necessarily the same as our value to the firm.
We tend to discount matters if the time becomes unreasonable – for example, if something becomes prolonged because we have to gain new research knowledge, or an internal policy means we get three people reviewing a controversial bit of advice. The client shouldn’t be paying for all of that, so it doesn’t get charged. We earn less for our time.
In my case, I’m worth a lot of money to the firm because I’m efficient (Evernote is really useful for keeping research notes) and the clients tend to pay for everything I work on… but if I was less efficient the firm’s bonus scheme would pay me more.
Go figure. Law is a silly profession.
My beef was that we’d started creating a myriad of unnecessary procedures that were completely unbillable and also pissed off the clients.
We weren’t helping our brand reputation, client care, or our bottom line – and as the person facing the client I was personally being made to look stupid for something I can’t control.
Oh yeah – and my working day would extend as a result, since I still need to do the billable hours. My time was being wasted due to stupidity and I couldn’t do things that were valuable to me.
If you want to lose staff, add in unnecessary bureaucracy in an employment market where there are more jobs than people.
Anyway, turns out that my unique skill set is valuable enough that the firm has now formally commenced a project to reduce all the bureaucracy and process that it put in place, with results due in December. It has also been agreed with my firm that “no bollocks after 1700hrs” is a standard operating policy. If we’re doing valuable stuff, happy to put in the extra effort – but I’m not having my time stolen because of crap internal management.
We’ll see how it goes…
I’ve also been bribed with an opportunity to develop my own practice area across the offshore jurisdictions we work in, two of which are in the Caribbean. That’s a nice carrot to dangle in front of me, and it also means that if I get that running I’m probably secure in my job.
Anyway, this is a good outcome if it works as promised. I could do with maintaining the ludicrous savings rate, provided I get time to do my other pursuits.
Dumbphone test – second week
Readers will remember this photo from last week… and the week before…:
Yeah I’m definitely less distracted. In fact, we went to a restaurant/ gastropub last night and I didn’t bring either phone with me. It’s freeing.
I find that when I get home I obsessively pick up the iPhone, which is weird! It’s still eating my free time, but my working day is less stressful and shorter, so it’s definitely good for my health.
I reckon that if I found a solution to international calls I could basically do without the iPhone.
Music
I’m using an old iPod Nano to play music. I’d bought it second-hand for £30 because they’re the optimal size for the gym and the sound quality with £10 Sony earphones is better than Bluetooth earphones and Spotify.
I miss having the infinite storage of streaming and listening to newer music that I haven’t bought, but I really enjoy owning my music instead of renting it. Plus, it’s a better curation of albums than Spotify.
Apple doesn’t really support iPods anymore so I don’t want to buy more music from iTunes. ITunes also doesn’t let me use the iPad to download to the iPod, so I have to start up my near-death laptop to get music. It’s not an ideal result.
I’ll have a think about replacing this. Sony Walkman has a decent offering that combines the best of both worlds, but it’s something like £350 and it’s not really a gym-friendly size. I’m certainly not taking that (or my old iPhone) for a run with me!
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
This week is Sad but True by Metallica. There’s a strong hammer-on-pull-off bit in the intro that I need to nail for Wednesday.
We did a bit more work on improvising. I really enjoy it, because although I still suck I can hear that I’m getting better at it all the time. It’s probably only a matter of time before I can start jamming with other musicians, which is how music needs to be made.
Fitness
Running in sandals
I’m still getting blisters in one spot from the Luna sandals, but I’ve mastered the strap adjustments to cradle my heel and that’s taken the friction off a lot of the other contact points.
Sadly, I destroyed my final pair of Vivobarefoot shoes, so I’ve bought a replacement for those while I transition across. They’re definitely the better shoe, but the lack of durability is a constant nause.
If you want to try Vivobarefoot, here’s my referral link for a 15% discount. They are the best barefoot shoes I’ve tried but they’re not the cheapest, so at least get a discount of 15%. I don’t think I get a benefit.
I recommend the Primus Lite series but I haven’t had great experiences with the others.
I reckon it’ll take me a couple of months to get transitioned into running in huarache sandals full-time.
They work really well on flat surfaces like roads and gentle trails. The rubbing starts when I run across lumpy grass or technical trail – that makes my feet slide laterally against the footbed as my ankles roll and adjust.
I think it’s a matter of my feet hardening up rather than the design of the sandals.
Plant-based diet
It’s the weekend and we’re cheating – I had a burger on Friday and fish yesterday – but we’ve switched to a plant-based diet during the week.
I’m not vegan, not on any ethical grounds. I can’t reconcile not killing animals when I was military before. The environmental argument works for me because there’s a solid argument that farming animals is a major contributor to global warming, but I’d be a liar if I said I thought this was a primary consideration.
However, there appeared to be a lot of information suggesting that a plant-based diet is less inflammatory than an omnivorous diet and therefore should help with recovery, especially for endurance athletes.
I’m trying to increase my running mileage so I figured we’d give this a go!
So far it seems to work, but it’s a little early to be sure and we cheat on weekends. In positive news: according to Lady SierraWhiskyMike’s fitness tracker the new diet is profoundly improving her sleep and stress levels.
Basically all indication so far is that the plant-based diet thing is working for us. I have to take the world’s biggest vitamin supplement, but other than that it’s a net positive.
This is also brilliant for our wallets. Meat is super expensive compared to pulses. Even if we buy posh veg (you know, weird stuff and organic) we’re on track to save something like £30-50 per week on food.
Final thoughts
Would have been nice to go sailing, but we’re taking steps to make this happen. There are always other days.
Fixing things with my employer is promising, and frankly I’m relieved because if I can at least gain more control of my time and my stress levels then it’s a pretty sweet gig. Office work sucks in general, it’s nice to have a huge savings rate as a result of it, and if I can reduce the parts that suck then that’s ideal.
I didn’t think the dumbphone experiment would be as successful as it has been so far. That’s a big game changer.
Music is still enjoyable, fitness is going well. Actually, the fitness and diet thing seems to have given me an immediate cost-saving benefit (alright, I bought more footwear, but I would’ve needed to do that anyway!). I’m wondering if there’s more to be explored here if I look at things like genetic markers and hormone analysis. Maybe there’s something in diet that I need to know about?
My financial independence campaign continues!
