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

Progress on my goals

Self-employment/ start-up dreams

Incorporation of my personal services company should be confirmed next week! The application forms are all in with the Companies Registry, so when that’s done I can start setting up properly.

I’m technically still in my notice period until mid-December, but I may have been skiving off to attend business meetings with potential new clients. They, in turn, may have gone pretty well and we’re hopeful for a decent 2026.

I think “success” at this point would be taking home about £12,000 for the year. The services are fairly big ticket purchases so that’s doable, but £12k is my share after costs and after splitting with my business partners, so that feels like an ambitious goal as of today.

If I manage it, though, I’m basically carrying my own bare minimum expenses. Alright, it doesn’t give me a lavish lifestyle, but I’ll be supporting myself through a venture I’m pursuing.

If I get half that: I’m basically supporting my share of food, my guitar lessons and a little bit of discretionary spending.

If I get double that: I’m able to keep making investments. Maybe not big investments, but my asset pot will be growing.

Workplace pension

Had to nag my employer’s chosen pension scheme provider for updated log-in details because the system they use has different field names to the ones on the handout that explains how to log into it.

Anyway, there’s a good £24k in there as of today’s date, which isn’t bad given that this was 2.5 years of contributions(!).

This means that, including pensions, I have about £110,000 in equities today to my name. Plus the gold, plus the Bitcoin, plus whatever Lady SierraWhiskyMike has to her name.

Exceptional news!

I think that with my military pension and Lady SierraWhiskyMike’s partial civil service pension, we’re on track to have a pretty workable retirement at pension age, which is in about 30 years’ time.

Not like a fancy retirement, we’ll be rattling around in a one-bedroom flat in a commune somewhere, but at least we are reasonably likely to get some kind of retirement.

Brief next steps

I’m going to draw down £10,000 and add it to the meagre £5,000 in cash I’d put towards starting this business. That should get me through 2026 without too many cash worries.

I’ll put more detail into the 2026 Campaign Plan, which is due in January.

Distractions and detours

Back to the ship!

We move back aboard tomorrow morning.

In our absence, over the course of this week our winter cockpit canopy stitching failed and the canopy shredded itself in the wind. I suspect my January (in and around the new business) will involve some significant sewing machine activity.

It’s probably patchable.

We’ve also bought some battery-powered Christmas lights which you can see in the photo. Some of the boats in our marina really go all out for Christmas, the least we could do is light up our guardrails.

Holiday planning

The old military boots are definitely dead. I relegated them to the bin this week. It was kind of sad to see the last bits of my military kit go away, but similarly it’s cathartic: it’s like I’m moving on with my life rather than pining for an ex-girlfriend or something.

Actually, I met another ex-military guy this week who is basically doing a military-adjacent job. Poor dude is definitely struggling to come to terms with civvy life.

Have a midlife crisis and live on a boat, mate! It’ll be good for you!

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We moved quickly onto The Trees, also by Rush, to look at fingerpicking techniques… but I’m not done with Limelight yet and I’m going to stick with that one.

The Trees is a good song, but it’s hard and I’ve not actually done much fingerpicking. It’s a bit of a bridge too far! I think my teacher realised that about thirty minutes into the session because we then moved to a much easier song for the last ten minutes.

My plan is to just pass that by for now as a cool intro but a bit of a detour that I’m not ready for yet.

No shame or frustration at my teacher by any means. I’ve advanced quite far in some areas and I’m still lagging behind on others in my playing, so he’s trying to work out where the weaknesses are and where my level is at on different playing techniques.

Fitness

‘Tis the season for many beers and work parties. I’m not expecting massive progress this month.

That said, while I’ve been staying in a house I got three decent calisthenics sessions in this week with parallettes. That’s the hip-height freestanding dip bars thing you might have seen on fitness YouTube.

I actually got to a sort-of handstand at one point – then kicked the ceiling, collapsed until the parallettes smacked me in the shoulders, and rolled hard to my feet.

So graceful, so elegant!

I think I have a bit more strength work to do before decent handstands are going to be part of my regular fitness routine. For now, I’ll have to settle for pike pushups and handstands against a wall.

Final thoughts

Setting up the new business is taking up most of my time at the moment – and rightly so. There’s a lot to suggest that this is going to work… however long it takes to get working, which is another thing.

I’ve said this before and I’m sure I’ll be saying it again: it’s the years spent doing our financial independence campaign that has made this whole thing possible. We’re at CoastFi because we followed our overall strategy and set a campaign plan each year with actionable objectives.

My guitar is going… meh. My fitness is temporarily decreasing from good to fairly mid and is going to need a regain in 2026. My writing has temporarily taken a back seat.

But, in spite of all of this, I’m feeling a lot better already.

I have a couple of weeks left in my current job. I’m going to get thrashed until the finish line, but whatever. I have a holiday to recover over, I can burn hot for the last couple of weeks.

My financial independence campaign continues!