Thoughts and reflections from the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Car clutch died!
We have been using an old Ford Focus Mk2 to get around the island with our elderly dog.
He’s the only reason we have a car. During the week, when we’re both at work, we drop him off at the mother-in-law’s house which is on the other side of town.
This week the clutch basically gave up. It goes into gear – sort of, reluctantly – but not first time every time.
We’re now in a bit of a dilemma as to what to do next.
We could just buy another cheap used car and crack on. That’s the conceptually easy option.
Alternatively: cargo e-bikes have come down in price by a lot since we last looked at them two or three years ago. They’re quite affordable now. Could that be the option for us?
There’s an amazing cycle lane that runs from our marina along the coast to the town centre. Every morning when we drive to work, sat in traffic, we look at that empty lane with envy as cyclists shoot past us.
The obvious downside is that the Channel Islands get some horrible weather over winters. Then again, with me moving into self-employment, this might not be an issue if I just choose to work from the boat in bad conditions.
Self-employment
I sent my proposed draft of my consultancy agreement to my future business partners yesterday. Exciting! We’ll see what they think.
There are a few regulatory hurdles I have to overcome to keep my practicing certificate as a solicitor. Most are easy enough, but the biggest one for me is that I live on a boat and solicitors need to make their practicing address or their employer’s address public.
If I was in a house, it’d be easy: I can just freelance from home and declare that.
It’s a bit of a faff, but what I can see so far is:
- If I am a consultant in my own name, I need a practicing address that’s an actual physical office and not just a hot desk. They don’t like virtual offices.
- If I am employed by a company, I am instead recorded against their registered office – which could be one operated by a corporate services provider.
The only quote I’ve had back for offices is for £15k per year. Not insane, but still quite a lot. A co-working space comes in at £600 for the year.
Suffice to say I’m leaning towards the registered office approach. That way I can just rent a co-working space when I’m not doing super-confidential stuff, and rent a meeting room for calls and consultations (or just go to client offices).
I’ve had to ask the Solicitor’s Regulatory Authority about it. We’ll see how it goes.
Tried to get professional indemnity insurance as a self-employed solicitor and was told by a recommended insurer that the insurance industry has decided not to insure people unless they have more years’ experience than I have, even though the regulator only requires you to have been qualified for 3 years. That means I’ll need to self-insure, i.e. set a low liability limit in my contracts that I could afford to pay or risk bankruptcy if I make a mistake. I’m going to suggest the lower of whatever a client has paid me in a year and £10,000.
Ironically, I totally can get insurance as a risk advisor to do the thing I’m going to do anyway. The main business is fine, it’s just in case I want to side hustle doing contract reviews.
That’s right: I am more insurable without any qualifications than as a regulated and qualified person.
Fortunately, legal services are going to be a tiny part of what I plan to do, so insurance isn’t that big a deal to overcome.
Distractions and detours
Holiday planning
With the car on its last legs and the prospect of some heady start-up costs looming, Thailand and/or Malaysia are on the back burner. We’re now looking at walking holidays in the Canary Islands, which is a bit more affordable to get to.
Ultimately if we get a break then we’ll be having fun, wherever it may be.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
We did Christmas favourite Killing In The Name Of by Rage Against the Machine this week. I know the song really well and I’ve gotten most of the parts down already, just need to tighten up on timings and get some of the flourishes in.
Pretty happy with that!
Fitness
Got a calisthenics session in after last blog post and will probably do the same again today.
I’ve also taken the opportunity to do a couple of runs to or from work back to the boat when we don’t have a dog with us. That’s just over 4 miles. Not particularly impressive, but I’m carrying a backpack and it’s at least recovering my cardio base.
If we had an airing space at work I’d jog in and back, but we just have showers and I don’t fancy squishing into pre-sweated kit that’s been left to mature over 10 hours. I’m not that keen, I’m a civilian now!
Fitness has been somewhat undone by two boozy nights. The brother-in-law is emigrating to Australia, so we had a fake Christmas dinner on Friday and his leaving drinks last night. Didn’t over-indulge on the alcohol but I’m very aware of overshooting on empty calories.
Final thoughts
Lots of admin and costs coming up. Ew, gross.
Still, I’m excited about branching off on my own. People I talk to about it seem genuinely excited and most are offering helpful advice or to link me to their business contacts. I didn’t expect that to happen!
It seems people I’ve worked with are genuinely interested and keen to help me, which is really cool, and even though part of me is like “What are you doing?!” every day there’s a decent chance that this actually works.
So yeah: some expenses coming up that make me a little nervous, but if this all works out I’ll have taken control of my earnings and that ought to give me the freedom I want from my financial independence campaign.
My financial independence campaign continues!
