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

Progress on my goals

Car issues resolved

After a lot of thinking – mainly about the 95k miles on the clock, all on the Channel Islands – we decided that our car isn’t worth saving. We’re going to scrap her on Monday and let her retire to the big reclamation yard in the sky.

Today we agreed to buy a used Ford Fiesta with a lot more miles left to run. She needs a clean inside and a drive around, but it’s a 2016 1.0ltr eco boost model. Will do us for the foreseeable future and should be fairly tax and fuel efficient.

We generally like Fords because they’re cheap to repair, hit a tolerable balance between “cheap” and “well made”, and they get heated windscreens because that’s a Ford patented feature. No frills vehicles that are “good enough”, albeit not particularly exciting in any sense of the word.

We… aren’t car people. Regular readers might have guessed already.

I’d like to take credit for fixing the car problem, but actually this one was all Lady SierraWhiskyMike. She did good.

Self-employment/ start-up dreams

Submitted all my paperwork for my personal services company, so that should be incorporated next week all going well. Eeek!

Our first big client has taken the next step in negotiations so that’s a serious one. Our service is unique on the island so I think it’s game on.

We also have a second (but related) business in the works. That’s a more ambitious project, and the idea is that if we get success in the current consultancy business (which is looking ever more likely!) then that will then feed into the services/ product business.

Interestingly, we’ve had a lot of interest from people who want to “invest” in the second venture, people who want to supply tools to us, and people who are thinking about hiring us but aren’t ready to commit yet. It’s way too soon to do any of that but that’s always a good sign, right?

Appreciate I’m being deliberately cryptic with the industry and my explanation of what’s happening. There are a few reasons for that, mostly linked to confidentiality provisions that I’m bound to. Maybe in the future I’ll be able to be more forthcoming, but for now I thought it was good to give you a loose idea without specifically identifying the business.

Trying to fit this in around work has been difficult and basically the only any I’ve managed is by simply compromising my job with my current employer. I’m not proud of that, but if it comes to building my own business versus earning more money for a firm that I got burned out in then there can only be one choice really.

Distractions and detours

Staying in a house

We’re extending our stay at the mother-in-law’s by another week. I’m not particularly keen, but it’s administratively easy because of things we have to fit in and around work this week.

Lady SierraWhiskyMike is sleeping like a baby, but I’m restless and missing the boat. I sleep so much better on the boat than on land now, it’s crazy.

The good thing though is that my commute to work is reduced, so I can spend more time doing stuff for the start-up in the evenings.

Holiday planning

I have some hiking boots to break in.

My old military boots came out of the storage unit where they’ve not had a great time, all crispy and unconditioned leather.

I might try and revive them, but my gut feeling is that they’re suffering from the temperature changes in the storage unit, even though I’d put them in all polished as I should do. The leather has definitely shrunk.

So for this holiday I paid out for a pair of Meindl wide fit hiking boots. These are suede/ nubuck and Goretex, so they aren’t as hardy as the leather winter boots I have but they’re going to be more comfortable for the kind of holiday hiking I’m actually going to be doing. Having worn them around for a couple of days, they might become my default winter casual shoe, too. Pretty damn comfortable and practical.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

This week we started on Limelight by Rush. It’s a conceptually easy song, but the feature of it is that there are a lot of time signature changes.

There are three different time signatures before the first chorus.

It’s what gives the song its changing rollercoaster feel.

My dad was really into Rush and I got into them back when I was still playing drums. Neil Peart was just too good, the drummer’s drummer. We ended up seeing them three times!

Limelight is a great song – and one of my favourites – but it’s so difficult to get right and the subtle things additions to the chords and timing changes are vitally important to getting the sound, even though conceptually there’s not much in the way of playing fast or finding difficult techniques. I reckon this will take a few weeks to nail down in any kind of quality.

Fitness

I managed to clear a bit of space in my mother-in-law’s garage, and have found a set of parallettes/ dip bars that my brother-in-law had left behind. This means that I’ve managed to get in some pretty decent calisthenics sessions during the week, and it’s showing.

OK, so I’m a little doughy with all these drinking sessions and my current lazy approach to cardio, but I’m simultaneously just as fat while now showing some pretty good upper body muscle development.

This week’s highlight was smashing out a set of 20 good form dips. I miss training with the rings, but the convenience of being able to train indoors in this weather means I’m actually training, and with the calisthenics routines I’m actually training pretty damn effectively.

Final thoughts

This week’s guitar project is pretty punchy! I reckon that’s going to take me a few weeks to get remotely good at.

The start-up business seems to be taking off already. Some big client calls coming good in the near future. I don’t know if it will be a success, but I completely expect this to be one hell of a ride while we give it a damn good go.

I’m glad we made a decision on the car. Happy with the purchase, once that’s all finalised and registered we’re sorted. I still kind of want to switch to e-bikes, but when we had a look around at our options it just didn’t make economic sense to do that yet. Still, we should get a good fe years out of the new vehicle, and we paid quite a reasonable price given the low mileage it has seen.

All going well and good, we’ll be back aboard the boat full time from the end of next week. Fingers crossed!!!

My financial independence campaign continues!