We did it!
Our story so far
When I started this blog, the plan was to hit CoastFI within nine years. I was early in my career transition, we were living in a reasonable house, and COVID was just about to hit. I was, what? 31 at the time? 32?
Fast forward to 2025: we live on a boat, I work in corporate law in the Channel Islands, and Lady SierraWhiskyMike works 2-3 days per week.
Aaaand this week at age 37 we worked out that we’re basically CoastFI.
How CoastFI works
I don’t know who originally coined the term, but the idea is that you squirrel away enough into investments that you can leave them invested and, hypothetically, they ought to compound or aggregate uncrystallised gains sufficiently over time that you can ignore them until pension age when they’re a full-grown pension waiting for you.
It’s kind of a weird milestone because there’s nothing absolutely tangible about what this means. However, we’re 30-ish years away from an actual retirement age. Based on a reasonable average annual portfolio growth of 5% above inflation over 30 years, we should expect that our pot today would quadruple in real value.
So we only need to be a quarter of the way there today.
Why did I pick CoastFI?
The Boat Plan was always our reason for doing this. We’d been talking about it for years, but never really thought it was a real thing. It was just something people talked about doing, right?
Wrong.
During COVID, things hit home. We were in a nice enough house that we’d just renovated (largely ourselves), I was most of the way through a training contract in London that I could commute to, Lady SierraWhiskyMike had a well-paying public sector job. All we had to do is sit there and continue as we were and the money was likely to roll in. We had it made! We’d achieved the Millennial Dream!
Aaand yet the prospect of a life without adventure beckoned. Like the last people available in a nightclub at 2 a.m., it didn’t look attractive at all.
No shame – I’ve been one of those people. I didn’t look attractive then, either.
So we figured that we needed to plan to sell up and try sailing away. But we couldn’t bring our dog, so we couldn’t go just yet (I refuse to leave him behind, he’s a good boy), and we had that nagging fear that if we just upped sticks at 40 we’d finish our sailing adventures probably in our sixties with no pension and no way of earning.
That’s when I first discovered FIRE through The Humble Penny blog and YouTube.
Yeah, but why CoastFI?
We figured that we had some confidence in our ability to earn enough to meet our survival needs when we were going to sail away. Whether that meant working six months and sailing for six months, doing remote work, or picking up casual work we weren’t sure.
The problem is (and was always going to be) when we got too tired to sail, or bored of it. We needed to feel confident that there would be some kind of safety net. Otherwise, we’d be going from one lifestyle trap to another, and that’s just not cool.
Actually hitting FIRE was probably going to take a long time, which might mean we’d never actually go sailing until we were too frail to seriously do it. CoastFI however would only require a few years of focus, then afterwards we could look at growing into the people we want to become.
How our numbers work
While we’re in our current marina, our spends come to something like £3,000 per month.
Of those:
£200 is guitar lessons, that I won’t be paying for when I’m travelling.
£400 is our dog’s food and vet bills, which (sorry dude) we won’t have when travelling because we’re going to see out the rest of his days before we go.
£120 is operating a car that we only have to ferry the dog around the island, mainly on work days. We won’t have a car after him, whatever happens.
£150 is gym memberships (Channel Islands suck for gyms) that we won’t need.
£300 is a budget for date nights… but we’ll be full-time boat people, so that’ll come down.
£1,000 is mooring fees and contribution to just operating the boat, which we could reasonably expect to halve across a year when travelling.
£80 is electricity, which we can use less of if we’re not trying to do things like iron clothes for work.
£50 is a charity contribution, but that’s discretionary.
£600 is feeding because food in the Channel Islands is just so god damned expensive. There’s no reason it wouldn’t be half that in the UK or even less.
So we reckon that we could survive and be reasonably cared for at £1,500 per month, or thrive on £2,000.
Using the 4% rule, we’d need something in the region of £500,000 invested to be FIRE, assuming that we’re still living aboard or our residence is taken care of.
Oh, and I have a half-pension from my military service that works out to be something like £8,000 per year, adjusting with inflation. That actually reduces our target by a third from age 65 (or maybe 68… I forget).
If I can hold out until 68ish to make any draw-downs then we’ll only need something like £335,000 invested.
How long do we have?
As a rough rule of thumb: to work out how long it would take for your money to double in value at a particular compounded growth rate, divide 72 by the growth rate you’re expecting.
So a 10% real growth ought to double the size of the investment in 7.2 years. A 7% real growth in a little over 10 years. A 6% growth rate? 12 years.
We plan off a 5% real growth rate, which should lead to money doubling every 14.4 years. Let’s call it 15.
We’re 37 at the time of writing. Pension age is 68. We can expect our money to double twice if we can achieve that rate, or multiply by four (because 2 x 2 = 4).
Which means that if we had a quarter of our £500k target today – £125,000 – we’d be CoastFI, excluding the top-up from my military pension.
Our number
Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I keep segregated accounts. There’s no tactical advantage to doing that, but we’re both the kind of people who like to have a feeling of control over the process, so it works for us.
Well, we did an audit, and (ignoring our emergency fund and allocated money) we’re on something like £180,000 invested between us.
All of this means that, provided we try not to touch that invested capital (or at least not too much), we just need to leave it invested and well enough alone for the next 30 years and we’re golden.
What to do with this knowledge?
All we need to do now really is work out how to survive for the next 30 years.
Which, you know, is fine: because that’s the plan for literally everyone else in the world.
If we want to buy a house again then sure, we’d need to save up for and pay for one. However, it’s the only thing we’d really have to worry about. We could stop investing altogether and just focus on paying that down.
Or, much more likely, we could simply sail off when ready and just expect to do some temporary jobs sometimes to pay for our boat repairs and travels.
Our plan now
We’re comfortable where we are for now. We want our dog to have a good life, and we’re bringing in more money that will kick off our journey in a few years’ time.
However, we’re probably still in the same position where reaching FIRE before we travel is going to be a big ask. The planning assumption there hasn’t really changed.
What we can do now though is take our foot off the investment gas pedal slightly and start to prepare ourselves for travel and potentially earning as we go.
This means that my plan to invest in myself is now going to change tack slightly (heh, sailing pun).
Instead of focusing on how I can boost my job earnings, I need to think about how I can gain skills that could allow me to earn while travelling.
We’re still investing every month, but slightly less is going into investments and slightly more is going into cash so that we can explore training courses or gain new capabilities. Things like that sewing machine we bought last month that might allow us to do a canvas repair service. More time writing and trying to sell books, because I don’t need to be anywhere in particular to do that. Maybe some qualifications in things like fibreglass repair, electronics or engine maintenance.
Risks and assumptions
There are some pretty big risks and assumptions with our assessment. I’ll set the main ones out below. However, the key thing to bear in mind is that for pretty much all of them they’re either (a) universal problems or (b) things we can just plan around if they appear.
What if markets don’t perform and you get a lower average rate of return?
We go back to work for a bit and top up the pot.
The plan isn’t to take our foot off the gas entirely. We’re still planning to contribute to investments, it’s just the rate that changes. Having gone so hard early on, there’s no real pressure to contribute a set amount.
Plus, you know, we’re in the habit of investing now. It would be weird for us not to invest a portion of our income. That should even out some of the risk of a lower rate of return.
What if capitalism as we know it changes and the planning doesn’t work anymore?
We’ll be in the same boat (HA!) as everyone else in the world. No worse off really.
What if you get bored of sailing?
Our plan is – when we go – abandon-able at any time. We can sell the boat and and use that cash to do the next thing.
I’m open to that being another sailing boat, a narrowboat, a floating pontoon home, a customised van (van life is actually pretty cool), tenancy in a pub that we could run, a bit of land somewhere remote to build a homestead, or even just a deposit on a small flat.
At today’s prices we should confidently be able to get £50,000-60,000 for her in her current condition. We’re improving her all the time, but the yacht market prices fluctuate quite a lot. I’d be surprised if she was ever worth less than £30,000 given that she’s being maintained.
What if something unexpected happens?
We’ll deal with it. Might have to go back to the career ladder. However, if we’ve learned more skills then we’re probably going to be more adaptable to change than most.
Final thoughts
When I started this year, I thought I’d still gotten a long way to go. I really didn’t think that 4 months in would mean that I’d hit CoastFI.
In fact, when I started to review my budget, I was sad that Lady SierraWhiskyMike’s decision to reduce her paid employment in favour of pursuing her own projects was preventing me from maintaining the c.50% savings rate I’d gotten used to.
Little did I expect that running the numbers again would mean that, yes, we’re basically fine. We’ve overshot the original goal and we’ve been in “mission creep” instead of re-evaluating our priorities.
Bizarrely, we still can’t afford a home in the Channel Islands. At £400,000-500,000 for a 2-bed flat, the interest alone is completely unaffordable for us. Lady SierraWhiskyMike would have to go back to work full-time and that would be just to cover the mortgage. So, if we do settle down, it’s probably not going to be here. It’s weird to deal with that.
Until now, if I ever found “spare” money at the end of the month it would go into investments as additional contributions.
Now?
It probably needs to go into tactical cash savings pots for upgrading the boat or going on training courses. Which is a pretty fun use of money. I can live with that.
My financial independence campaign continues!
