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

Progress on my goals

Boat life

A couple of minor problems have made themselves known:

  • The tap in the galley is leaking, so needs replacing;
  • There’s a minor leak in the heads that looks like seawater, so there’s a connection somewhere that needs tightening up; and
  • The automatic bilge pump switch doesn’t seem to be functioning, so it’s probably gotten disconnected during last year’s rewiring.

All of these are minor grumbles rather than big headaches, but I reckon each is going to be 1-2 weekends’ work.

The standard thing with boat jobs is that everything takes much longer than it should. Hypothetically I could fit a household kitchen tap in about 30 minutes; but I reckon the exact same tap is going to take a couple of hours and I’m probably going to need to modify something in the process.

We’re probably going to attempt the galley tap first.

In happier news, we’ve now had a couple of days of excellent sunshine, so sailing season will soon be upon us. Lady SierraWhiskyMike is already talking about reattaching the sails, ready for a good spring-summer shakedown.

Finally, winter is coming to an end!

Start-up work

The consultancy business has signed a significant client this week so that’s now revenue-generating. Who knows: I may see some positive return on my buy-in this year?

Another client settled their invoice so I got paid this week. It’s not a massive amount and my personal services company is still underwater, but getting paid for valuable work is a great feeling when you’re effectively self-employed. There’s something about it being all your own efforts that makes that payment more fun, even though I could earn more just doing basic lawyer stuff. In a regular job.

I’m thinking about adding another income stream somewhere, but it’s early days yet and my priorities are with the business ventures we already have.

Distractions and detours

Bought a new Bitcoin hardware wallet

If you don’t like the Bitcoin project – skip this section.

It’s cool, I know lots of my readers don’t understand why I do this bit. We can still be friends.

I’ve been using a Ledger Nano for years now. It’s a multi-crypto hardware wallet that’s easy to set up, easy to use and offers a reasonable degree of security without too much user complexity.

Here’s an affiliate link to their store if you’re curious. The budget Ledger Nano S is just fine for an individual, but if you want flashy things like NFC payments they have some cooler options out there now.

In fact: for a beginner just looking to dabble in the space, I still think it’s a good option. The Nano series wallets are about £43 for the basic version now and you don’t need much if any knowledge to set them up and use them. I had the Nano X, but the Bluetooth isn’t necessary it turns out.

However, I now have a bit more Bitcoin than I’m comfortable with having on a Ledger wallet.

The concerns with Ledger

Ledger is an interesting company. It produces wallets whose code isn’t public and can’t therefore be verified/ threat assessed by third parties, which is both good and bad depending on how you think about risk, but their hardware has the broadest compatibility with third-party crypto wallets compared to basically any other wallet manufacturer.

This means that Ledger was perfect for me when I was dabbling in DeFi because (a) I didn’t have a lot of money anyway, so convenience was king, and (b) I could use it with the biggest number of DeFi platforms.

Like I said: great for learning.

This turned out to be really helpful for my legal career, because I was able to advise businesses who use crypto for cross-border payments in a way that more experience lawyers weren’t actually capable of doing on their own. It was a pretty good niche to be in and if you’re in a crypto-adjacent industry it’s a worthwhile investment in your learning, especially if you’re looking to use Ethereum for anything.

However, over time my crypto purchases have become almost entirely Bitcoin. And, over time, the value of my holdings has grown.

I’m now looking for something that’s Bitcoin-only, to minimise the technical vulnerabilities of it and so that if the company producing it goes bust I have on-chain security.

So while I will keep the Ledger to send/receive payments in BTC or USDC for my company, I don’t think it’s what I want to use for my personal Bitcoin holdings.

Replacement

To replace this, I ordered a ColdCard Mk5 wallet from Coinkite. This is probably a more advanced wallet than anyone needs, but I like that it has some highly advanced Bitcoin-only features that I can implement and develop with.

I enjoyed paying with BTC to buy the wallet, too.

My own views

Look, I believe in the merits of the Bitcoin project. If a business offers me the change to pay in Bitcoin, I tend to say “yes!”. If a pub or restaurant offered to accept Bitcoin, I would choose to go there over somewhere that didn’t.

I also get paid in BTC. People worry about price fluctuations of BTC:GBP, but that doesn’t really affect a consultant because I can just cash out in GBP if I want to to cover bills. It’s a lot cheaper than operating the Revolut Business account I have and one of the pains of self-employment is that you can be de-banked on a whim.

Maybe it’ll never catch on, but if I want to see a change in the world then I should support the changes I want to see, and that means transacting in BTC where able.

This all being said: I wouldn’t invest entirely in Bitcoin. I have never advocated for doing that and I don’t do that. If I didn’t have conventional assets to fall back on then I don’t think I’d have the luxury of being so involved in the ecosystem. I want this to work and I have decided to actively promote its use but I don’t put my eggs in one basket of any kind.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

This week we started with The Unforgiven by Metallica.

The theme is basically that my instructor dug up one of his songbooks for the Black album, so we’re working through those to develop my skills. The Unforgiven requires me to practice fingerpicking, which I almost never do, so it’s a good training song.

That being said: it’s hard. I’m still very novice and this album put Metallica on the mainstream charts.

Will probably need to do a bit more practicing this weekend.

Fitness

Fitbit is telling me that I’m actually far from being the lazy sod I thought I was. Turns out I walk a lot on any given day. So my non-exercise activity is pretty high.

I haven’t gotten in a structure gym session this week. I managed to cycle into town for meetings like I said I would, I just didn’t get to the gym. That’s probably something I need to find time for tomorrow…

Lady SierraWhiskyMike and me spent much of today walking because the weather was awesome. You have to make the most of the sun when it’s out.

After publishing last week’s post, I went and did some training in the Fort. My handstands are massively improving! I’m still facing the wall to do them but I’m basically vertical now so I can start building up the core posture and getting ready to kick away from the wall entirely.

The progression is probably to switch to kicking up with my back to the wall. Sounds weird, but I’m kind of nervous about that. It doesn’t make sense to be, it’s just an unnatural feeling to be upside-down.

Final thoughts

Chores again – classic boat life!

Business is starting to bring in some money, which is a great feeling.

Realistically I just need to keep doing what I’m doing and heading in the general direction I’m already moving in. Keep delivering for clients, bringing in the money, setting up the business(es).

Maybe I’m being too hard on myself with the fitness. The stats suggest that my best bet is probably to just keep walking and reduce my calories by a very small amount to keep weight down. I don’t think I can be athletically fit while letting my knees recover and trying to build start-ups, it’s a bit much to expect. I should probably just calm down over it and enjoy that my handstands are starting to come along nicely.

My financial independence campaign continues!