It’s that time of year again where I look back on the successes and frustrations of the past year of my financial independence campaign.

Reminder: pillars of my financial independence campaign

As with the previous years, this is being broken down into my three big pillars.

  • Investing in myself
  • Spending intentionally
  • Investing my money

Investing in Myself

What I said I wanted to do…

This year, I said I’d:

  • Learn how to maintain my boat’s hull
  • Sail to northern France
  • Learn how to use a spinnaker
  • Run a marathon
  • Reduce my body fat to sub-20%
  • Maintain a weekly blog post
  • Keep up with monthly fiction writing club

That was quite a lot to be honest and probably, with hindsight, a little ambitious.

What I actually did…

Sailing

The only one I didn’t tick off from the sailing goals was use a spinnaker.

This is mostly because it took me a lot of time to do the hauling out and we wasted a lot of the summer sailing season because of it. Didn’t help that Lady SierraWhiskyMike didn’t really assist with the bottom scraping and painting like she said she would, but whatever. At the time she was looking to build connections in the local archaeology world and an opportunity came up to get involved.

How convenient…

We made it in time to get to France for our summer holiday though! That was pretty awesome. A whole week away for £600, eating in restaurants every night. What’s not to love?

Fitness

This failed epically.

With mere weeks left before race day, I completely screwed my knees up. Like: couldn’t walk screwed up.

There was just no way the marathon was coming back after that!

Despite this, I think I was getting pretty good with the body composition goal after I switched to calisthenics. I’ve let that go in recent weeks though and now I have no idea what my body composition is.

I don’t feel particularly lean, let’s put it that way, but I can see my top sets of abs reasonably clearly without tensing up. Dunno if that’s a measure of anything mind you, I was aiming for a health benefit.

Writing

I think I’ve missed 3 weeks in total of this blog’s updates – but in contrast, I’ve written a few non-weekly update posts, so I think I’ll let myself off.

By no means a good pass, but a pass nonetheless.

On writing club: I’ve missed one session total and that was due to sickness, which I don’t think I could be blamed for.

So I’m a writer! Fact.

Spending Intentionally

What I said I wanted to do…

  • Minimise my clothing expenditure
  • Limit the time I actually spend on nights out
  • Eat less meat during the week
  • Spend on a sailing trip
  • Go to my brother’s 30th
  • Readdress my fitness spending from my £100-a-month gym

Actually did pretty well here

Minimised clothing expenditure

I did do a few bigger clothing shops. Firstly, I switched my work clothing and t-shirts to merino wool that I found on sale at Sportpursuit.com.

Then, I replaced some overshirts because I’d ruined a couple in the launderette. A few holes, a fair bit of fading…

Finally, I spent money on Loake boots for smart casual and office wear and hiking boots for casual wear.

This doesn’t look great, but the long term upside is that these things are expected to last a few years. Or at least, they were.

The merino wool experiment was to reduce the time spent on washing and ironing. That actually did work, but merino wool isn’t (I confirm) even remotely hard wearing. I’m not sure how long some of these are going to last.

The boots (both kinds) I’m actually happy with. They’re performing as expected so far. The Loake boots are my go-to with jeans or trousers regardless of social situation, with the hiking boots being great for anything that’s got a risk of mud or rock involved.

So I shouldn’t need any new footwear in 2026 (he says) unless it’s sports kit.

Limit my time on nights out

I reduced my numbers of nights out but I totally failed to keep them short.

No excuses. I’m just a sociable guy I guess.

I did everything else!

Yup. Did it. No question.

The only one I’m going to re-revise is the gym spending. Training outdoors is cool until it’s winter and it’s raining all day every day. Obviously I knew this when I switched to training in the Fort, but thinking something through is not the same as actually doing it.

I don’t have a solution there yet because I haven’t been working for myself really. There’s no telling what my pattern of life is going to be yet. It might be totally fine.

I’ve also taken back possession of my kettlebells now that my brother-in-law has emigrated. Need to figure out how to make those line up with living on a boat. You’d think it would be obvious until you realise that I’d be precariously moving a 24kg cannonball over fibreglass when I’m climbing aboard.

Scary stuff but might just have to do it.

Highlight of the spending year: sailing to Normandy

Nothing makes you feel like a badass quite like sailing to another country and playing around with dolphins.

I could be a Disney princess!

This was a cheap holiday (at around £600) and also a learning experience. An exceptional use of cash, premium return.

Investing Money

What I said I’d do…

  • Pension match only with employer contributions
  • Invest £1,200 per month into equities.
  • Invest £600 per month into gold until it hit £600 per gold sovereign.

I changed this half way through when I hit CoastFi

The mid-year update explains why.

I didn’t quite make the investment goal. Pensions? Sure!

I only paid in £6,900 in equities on top though. This is because I resigned my job in September and suddenly having cash to invest in my own business/ feed me was *much* more important!

I was on track to hit target though- easily.

On top of that I paid in around £2,500 into Bitcoin. (Yeah, yeah, I get it, it’s not for everyone – I am CoastFI though!).

Gold smacked me out of affordability pretty much straight away so I didn’t buy much of that. This said, I now have pretty much hit my gold stacking target (emergency fund for a boat engine), give or take, so I probably won’t need to add to it in future years.

Because I had a mental health near miss incident and quit my job, I’m a little off track for the last three months. I have held that in cash, fully expecting to live off it for next year while I try to get some money in.

Including pensions it’s about a 33% savings rate, excluding the cash savings. Excluding pensions and cash buffer it’s about 18.5%.

If we include the cash buffer I guess we’re on 38% as per standard but I plan to spend that cash buffer, so take from that what you will.

CoastFI changed my perspective

Basically I stopped caring about overthinking my investments, because essentially my goal could be as simple as survive 30 years and my retirement plan should have worked.

So even though I thought I’d sell Bitcoin, I didn’t. My overexposure doesn’t bother me.

And when I thought I was about to have a mental breakdown in the office… I just handed in my notice. No stress.

There are consequences to every decision and I’m sure I’ll miss the big ticket salary, but it turns out other law firms are ready to offer me jobs under the table if my startup ideas don’t play out. Apparently having FinTech startup experience is a highly prized CV builder for corporate lawyers.

Bizarrely, my former employer wants to be a client. That’s pretty cool.

Anyway: I would love to keep the pace of investing up, but with a healthy start having been made I’m going to try to create my own income instead of relying on the job market. I fancy having more control over my daily routine and I can accept responsibility for my own actions.

Investments performed strongly

All investments grew above 6% this year, so beating inflation and making an unrealised gain.

I’ve now got a slight UK bias in thanks to my fund choices. It’s not hurting my returns because of the strictness of the quality factors index the fund uses, albeit it’s not making stellar gains either. I like that my portfolio doesn’t rely on Meta, Amazon and Google, and that my money does at least benefit my home economy in some small way.

Bitcoin and gold made huge unrealised gains. I haven’t bothered to measure the percentages, but gold market value grew something like 65% this year and my Bitcoin holdings doubled (ish) in cash value over the year, so I guess that’s a good performance.

The reason I don’t know the performance specifically is that I periodically simply add up the mid market prices of all my assets and work out against the 4% rule if that’s enough to provide an income if all things are constant. It’s not an exact science, but predicting the future is famously unreliable anyway and I have 30 years until state pension age, so it’s good enough for now.

End of year assets position

Public sector pensions: c.£8k/yr from age 68

Private sector pensions: c.£48k invested, mainly equities (like 90%).

Combined equity investment accounts: c.£68k.

Gold: c.£10k

BTC: c.£22k

So c.£136k invested plus public sector pension.

This excludes anything Lady SierraWhiskyMike has invested, which is substantial in its own right but I don’t keep a live track of it.

We also have an emergency fund and money to pay for next year’s mooring fees.

Basically: a solid financial foundation has been built, and now I can afford to be a little reckless.

Things to work on for next year

Investing in myself

Building income streams (god damn but Finance Bro YouTube makes me hate that phrase!!!) is going to be the main effort for 2026.

This means that I need to get the startup working and explore some other options.

I’m actually thinking about going back to writing on Amazon. Would love to say high-brow content, but it’s almost certainly going to be erotica or steamy romance again (a great side hustle!) because sex sells and there’s always a market.

It’s still my ambition to be a writer of some kind because I love the creativity and freedom of expression, so this makes sense as a side income.

On top of that: moonlighting for a startup while working a day job meant that I let myself go these last three months. I’m going to need to do a fitness regain… again. Might not go for a marathon though as it seems my ex-military knees aren’t really up for that kind of abuse anymore. Will have to set a more realistic conditioning goal for 2026.

Spending intentionally

Nothing demands intentional spending like having no income at the start of the year!

I suspect meals out are about to take a back seat. Probably going to need to learn more about vegan cooking, too, because plant-based meals are so much cheaper than meat-based.

I kind of feel bad because this is how I have usually made quality time for Lady SierraWhiskyMike – as you might suspect from this blog, I’m that guy who’s always overcommitted. I guess we’ll need to find other ways to get the same quality time in.

We have a trip to Download Festival booked in, and I have a stag do to attend in April.

I’m going to look into our sailing plans, too. Maybe I can tie up another sailing trip with a learning experience?

Investing my money

My money is going to be invested into my own business ideas for the most part.

I’m probably not going to have spare income in 2026. I might even be operating at a loss in 2026(!). That said, if I do manage to make spare cash, I plan to leave it in my company for now and avoid drawing it down. This is because of the way tax works in the Channel Islands: I don’t count as having income while the assets remain in the company.

I hope to avoid drawing down from my existing investments, but I have allowed myself up to £10k of drawing down in 2026. Excluding any potential unrealised gains, that would leave me on c.£126k invested plus public sector pension, which over 29 years should still be OK to CoastFI albeit I would want to make up for lost time sharpish.

2025 may have been a turning point in the FI Campaign

We realised that we love living on a boat and can definitely sail to other countries.

From there, we worked out that we’re already CoastFI. Not glamorous, maybe never buying a property in Southern England, but as long as we’re happy living aboard we should have enough.

This meant that when I finally had a mental health issue from working a corporate law job, I was able to resign and protect myself.

Using the springboard of cheap living (carried slightly by Lady SierraWhiskyMike) I have been able to set up my own company and join a startup.

Because of this, I can explore other income streams too.

The upside? I might be able to become a digital nomad in a couple of years, meaning that I can get special visas and live on our boat in the Mediterranean for a bit as an option.

The downside risk: if it fails, I have to find another job – but because we’re CoastFI already, it doesn’t have to be a corporate law job. I could get an entry level bar or waiting job and be just fine.

So bags of potential upside and a totally survivable downside risk. What’s not to love?

My financial independence campaign continues…