Thoughts and reflections from the past weeks from my own financial independence campaign.

Progress on my goals

Boat life

Haven’t been sailing, haven’t been boating.

We did fix the navigation lights, though. These had failed over time and meant that motoring in the dark wasn’t something we could legally do.

A bit of replacement, some heat-shrink electrical connections and a judicious use of sikaflex adhesive sealant and we’re good to go!

Fitting these was a bit of a challenge because it was pretty rolly in the marina and the only way to fit the one on the bow of the boat was to lean over the the bow railings. Lots of opportunity to drop some very expensive tools and/or the light unit itself into the drink.

Start-up work

It’s looking like we have two clients who want to sign on in the next few weeks, and a handful of serious enquiries.

Oh, and a ton of not-so-serious enquiries and curious timewasters. Yay!

I’m in the middle of arranging third-party penetration testing/ ethical hacking of the products I’ve built, but the requests for more features keep coming(!).

We’ve foolishly agreed to spin off one of the tools I had to build for ourselves into a joint venture side business. That’s cool, but now I need to tidy up the code for a broader audience (it currently fits our exact database rather than a generic input) and write joint venture documents with my lawyer hat on. Yes, I have time for this…

Self-employment work

On top of the start-up, I’ve had my first paying request for my freelance legal services, drafting a shareholders’ agreement for a UK startup.

I’m doing this one at a heavy discount because it’s my first gig as a freelancer. I’m treating it as a learning and brand-building exercise.

Distractions and detours

iPod died!

My iPod’s hard drive gave up. Not unexpectedly, given that it’s 20-odd years old and I bought it expressly to modify it.

I’m a little nervous that in modifying it I could be just breaking it… but now it’s a necessity to make the attempt!

I’ve ordered an iFlash quad microSD card adapter to replace the hard drive. For now, I’m going to put a single 128GB microSD card in it, but if this works I have the option to convert the iPod to have terabytes of storage if I wanted to!

Realistically I should replace the battery while I’ve got the case open but exporting lithium batteries to the Channel Islands means getting dangerous air cargo imports, so I’ll probably wait until I’m in the UK to pick up a replacement battery. Let’s see if changing the hard drive out works, first.

A buddy at my last job gave me his old iPod with a broken screen so I’ve got a spare to cannibalise for parts if I mess it up.

Writing club

Writing club got cancelled this month on the day, which was partly helpful because I’ve been cutting about like ten men trying to get things bug tested to share with potential clients. Unfortunately, I’d also pulled a midnight shift trying to write that month’s short story which – due to the need to set it in a decade before I was born, as part of the theme criteria – meant I’d foolishly set it in East Berlin.

Historical research is a massive drag. I see why fantasy is such a popular genre; actual historical research is just endless rabbit-holes.

Well, this months’ homework is done.

API and side hustles

The biggest lesson I’ve learned from trying to build a fintech business so far is that API micro-businesses are massively underrated.

An API is basically an internet address that computers, other web applications, and servers can call to get information. They’re great because they have a set format/ protocol to make that call, so it doesn’t matter what code languages are used by the API itself or by the computer calling it. This means a JavaScript programme can call a Python-coded API and get information back that it can use.

This is a horrible explanation but it’ll do.

Pretty much every sexy-looking app, platform and service is a lot of user development but aggregates lots of data from third-party services called APIs. And, with a very small amount of Python knowledge and the FastAPI module, it’s now quite easy for me to build fairly sophisticated APIs.

I think there’s something in that skill that could lead itself to building lots of weird data APIs, especially in the Channel Islands where tech adoption is quite far behind mainland UK. I’m sure there’s opportunity in collecting otherwise manual data and selling an API endpoint for things that people can’t get in easily used digital form.

For example: house sale price data is public information and printed in newspapers, but as far as I can tell no-one is collecting it and putting it into available property price trends, like you see in the UK with Rightmove. The listing data is viewable, so prices see rapid inflation, but very few people seem to know what the actual market values of properties are.

I’m going to keep an eye out for other things like this where there’s an easy knowledge asymmetry that could be opened up.

API businesses are cool because they can be entirely automated after you’ve set them up and you don’t need to do front-end development, which takes me a lot longer than data processing and API endpoints. This means you can sell the endpoint pretty cheaply (like £10-20 a month) and still make profit over time, moving onto the next business and building the next API endpoint.

Needs more thought but there’s a germ of an idea there.

Solidity

I started learning the Ethereum smart contract language, Solidity, on Cyfrin Updraft. It’s a niche that;s going to be big in finance over the next few years, so it’s a capability I want to have. Hiring in a smart contract developer in the future would be (a) difficult in the Channel Islands and (b) probably be very expensive.

Strongly recommend. It’s not been too hard so far coming from Python to Solidity. There’s actually a Python language mod that works on Ethereum, Vyper, but I wanted to learn Solidity because that’s kind of the brand name in Ethereum coding.

Ethereum works well with Python because the Ethereum Foundation that maintains the coding language has released a python-specific interoperability module called “Web3.py”, so I can build on skills I’ve already learned to make some cool projects.

If you didn’t get any of that, don’t worry. Basically, I’m investing in the new skills I had to learn to launch the startup with my business partners and trying to explore new opportunities learning those.

I think there’s a niche for me here, whether as a lawyer with some knowledge of coding or as a coder who knows how real-world contracts work and what’s needed to satisfy regulations. Not sure yet. For now, playing around with it.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

This month’s project has been Orion by Metallica. I… haven’t been practicing much, as you might have guessed by the missing blog posts over the last few months.

Probably need to change that. Can’t get better without practising.

Fitness

Have been maintaining the fitness training but I haven’t been consistent about the activity or the days I train on. So, good, but not excellent.

Actually I’m typing this knowing that I should really be in the gym on this drizzly Sunday.

I’ve gotten the larger kettlebell out of storage now that we’re camping in the mum-in-law’s basement room again. At least with that I can get a meaningful 20-minute flow workout in and prevent too much conditioning loss.

I’m glad to report that the weight I’d put on in the first half of the year with our licensing and coding sprint has started to fall off. A lot of this has been just getting control of my diet. I’ve been having a protein shake with my porridge in the mornings and it stops me bingeing throughout the workday now we’re not doing high-tempo high-stress work. Fat loss is never as fast as you want it to be, but I’m making good steps in the right direction.

Weight lifting has been recovering. My pull-ups are frankly embarrassing, barely getting three sets of five in. Makes sense because I’m now both less fit and heavier than I was when I was doing sets of 8-12 at the start of the year. On the other hand, I’m working with sets of 105kg back squat, 100kg deadlift, and 75kg bench press on top of bodyweight stuff. That’s not world-changingly good, but it’s far from bad.

Final thoughts

I’m still busy and it isn’t stopping(!).

Despite the fear that AI will come to dominate everything, I think there’s still money in applying coding skills to solve problems. I’m quite optimistic about APIs and the possibility of setting up micro-software businesses off the back of them. Even AI agents need to call something.

I’m not earning big lawyer money anymore. My investments aren’t getting bigger themselves. This is part of the reason I’m looking at side hustles and passive buisnesses again. If I can’t buy investments right now, I could possibly create some or find some way to add supplemental income.

I’m glad that I’m starting to get back into a semi-reasonable shape. I’ve not enjoyed wrestling my diet under control again, so it’s good to start seeing even a small payoff for starting to do that already.

My financial independence campaign continues!