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

Progress on my goals

Wait… are we CoastFI?!

Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I operate separate investment accounts. I’d love to tell you that there’s some tactical advantage to this but I suspect it’s because we both like to have measures of how we’re contributing to the team and this is an easy way of doing it.

This week, we did a status check. Between us, we’re a lot better off than I thought we were. Later in the week, I did a budget calculation to keep track of where my wages are being allocated.

It turns out that we’re basically CoastFI.

There’s a lot of assumptions and deductions in that so I’ll write a whole separate post on it.

Boat plan

Haul out is planned for Tuesday.

This weekend’s task is to go source some anti-foul and replacement anodes. Lady SierraWhiskyMike has done some research and reckons that if we’re painting ablative anti-foul paint over ablative anti-foul paint we might not need to do much sanding.

If that’s the case, we could be back in the water within two weekends, tip top and ready to sail. Fuck yeah, full sailing season this year.

Obviously there’s a lot of weight being carried by the “if” in that segment above. It’s also possible that we’re going to have to grind out osmosis blisters and be up there for a month or two. Fingers crossed!

Payday!

The best time of the month happened and I allocated my investments in.

My baseline assumptions are somewhat changed, so I’ve had to make adjustments to my budget. I’ll cover those in the mid-year review when that time comes around. For now, though:

  • Gold has shot up in price and my plan from the start of the year is completely screwed. I’m not far off where my predicted allocation cap was going to be, though, so I don’t think that’s a big deal.
  • Having hit CoastFI, I’m putting slightly less into investments (but still 25-35% depending on how you factor in pensions) and putting aside slightly more cash in “tactical” savings. More in the CoastFI post, but this is basically investments in ourselves.

Pretty much the whole investment allocation went into equity index funds of the nature specified in my previous posts. No real changes there.

Distractions and detours

Ghost – Skeletour

Dudes, it was awesome!

Speaking of which, the new Ghost album Skeletá came out yesterday and I’d pre-ordered it, so I’m going to download that today for my iPod.

Despite the faff it caused, I really appreciated the no-phones policy. You had to put your phone into a neoprene pouch that was magnetically sealed, albeit you still carried it with you. I’d missed what crowds were like before smartphones. Some of my buddies were a bit caught out by suddenly losing access to their smartphones, which they found weird when they kept wanting to take photos of things and suddenly couldn’t.

I was surprised that only one song from the previous album made the set list but I liked the bravery of playing a tour before the album had been released. It was like getting something new, something surprising, because only two of the new songs had been pre-released as singles.

I’m a big fan of the project.

Writing club

We assembled for writing club in our usual meeting place: the workroom in the library. As always, the meeting was called to read out and discuss our homework from the previous session.

Our homework? Read a page from any book, ideally one you haven’t read, then continue the story.

Like an idiot, I’d picked Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas. I hadn’t read her books but I kind of knew that they were popular and maybe a little spicy. I figured that it would push my writing, so I went for it.

I didn’t really think through that I’d be reading this out loud. In a library.

Look, I’ve written erotica before – but that was anonymous, right? I’d never read anything like that in person with my own face shown on it.

I was terrified.

But, you know what? They loved it. It’s one of the best pieces I’ve written.

To be fair, it wasn’t a sex scene. There was a semi-erotic bit of tension in it, but the page I’d written was set up to be a predictable enemies-to-lovers trope, and because I’d wanted to do something a little less obvious I had changed it to a power-domination scene. So, you know, a bit spicy but not really sexy.

Turns out that building tension works pretty much the same way in erotica as it does in regular storytelling. So I learned a thing, got over my fears slightly, and used my formerly pornographic writing practice to develop my less sticky writing skillz.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

So I put in some serious practice time last weekend, but this week (and without a lesson) I haven’t had much guitar time. Maybe I’ll get some serious sessions in this weekend.

We’ll be relocating to the mother-in-law’s next week during the haul out. There’s nothing to do there and it’s a short walk to my work, so I reckon it’s prime practice time.

Fitness

Fitness is still going well. Progress is slow, but it is happening. Visibly.

I feel like it’s the combination of changing my diet to up the protein with the heavier calisthenics movements. I might be onto a winner here.

My knee is still giving me grief, but I’ve started to add short treadmill sessions in. It doesn’t seem to matter how much incline I add, but if I hit a pace above 8 minute miles too early in the session it lets me know about it! I’m presuming that’s an impact thing, but it could be an issue with some small supporting muscle or ligament that needs to warm up before I can stretch it out.

It’s a little embarrassing to go from running 8 minute miles for half a marathon to stumbling through 9 minute miles over 30 minutes. I’ve been adding a lot of progressive incline to make up for this, but I just need to park my ego and let it rehabilitate.

We’ve made a point of going for a long walk on a weekend. That’s become a pretty good habit. It’s not the same cardio training as the long runs were, but it’s good quality time for both of us and we can go about our day afterwards because it’s not too draining. I like it.

Final thoughts

A big week! I linked up with the gang and we went to see Ghost again and we worked out we’ve probably hit our CoastFI goal. What’s not to love?

I guess the bigger lesson from my writing class is that I need to keep taking risks if I want rewards. Taking a risk and moving onto the boat early seems to have paid off financially and improved our quality of life. Taking a risk with my writing for this assignment pushed the boundaries of what I had been doing and gave me a massive step forward in my creative writing skills. I wonder what else might give me an outsized reward for small risks?

I’ll write up the CoastFI bits separately. There are a thousand thoughts running through my head about that and I don’t think they’ll fit into this field note.

My financial independence campaign continues!