Regular readers will know that I have historically published this blog weekly, with the odd break. However, blogging about the financial independence campaign has to take second place to actually doing it, which has meant that my updates have been a bit sparse.

Here’s what I’ve been up to – hopefully it will explain why I’m neglecting the blog a little.

Quick recap on the 2022 FIRE Campaign Plan

The full campaign plan for this year had quite a lot of detail, but here are the main points for this update:

  1. I was planning to emigrate to the Channel Islands when I qualify as a lawyer; and
  2. I had a crypto investing strategy for the first half of this year, while my investible income was low, which I planned to switch out on relocation when I learn about the local tax accounts.

I’m not going to follow those two points exactly, but the loose scheme for this post explains a bit about the emigration and gets to a crypto update a bit at the end.

I qualify soon!

I’ve career changed into law, and I’ve now secured a corporate and investment funds legal job in the Channel Islands, which I’m pretty happy about.

Pay wise, my income will almost double. Our costs will probably increase, but I’m hoping that this will accelerate the campaign plan. More importantly though, I won’t have an hour-and-a-half commute to London each way, which is awesome.

This means that I’m in my final four months at my current law firm. It also means that I have to move home around August-September.

Relocation and a house sale

We ran the numbers on the house after hitting 60% LTV this year, to see if we should rent our this place or sell it – or remortgage it to free up some equity for the move.

After careful consideration, we’re going to sell it. This is because we might be taxed in two jurisdictions (i.e. England and then in the Channel Islands) and because this house requires a bit of maintenance, as it’s an old Victorian property, so we think that a tenant will expect repairs. We can’t effectively manage that overseas, so our home has to go.

Here’s the thing, though: I hadn’t planned to leave so soon, and we’re still renovating – which means we’re now sprinting to finish so we can get this place on the market around end of May. I’ve spent pretty much every weekend with my partner filling, repairing and painting. As I write this, all our possessions are in the dining room, as we’ve cleared the other rooms ready for carpeting next week.

This is the main reason for my lack of updates. Working hard, commuting to the city, then DIY weekends really takes it out of you.

Rethinking the investment strategy

I’m still happy with my in-principle investments in crypto so far. However, to free up liquid cash for the move, I’ve been diverting the majority of the investment contributions to cash for now. It’s looking like I will have to go a couple of months without pay as part of the relocation, so this seemed like a good plan.

My last post was on dividend investing considerations. The reason for that is that ISA’s don’t exist on the Channel Islands, so I’ve been revisiting all investment options (including buy-to-lets) to see what I think will be better for success.

I’m not ready to commit exactly, but at the moment we’re considering an alternative lifestyle on arrival which I’ll update separately… if we go ahead with it!

At the moment we’re looking at some kind of buy-to-let and equities combination.

I’ve also made some changes to the crypto investment side for now.

Crypto investment changes

So I wrote about the 2022 crypto investment allocation earlier in the year.

TerraUST was my biggest priority allocation at the start of the year. I used the Anchor protocol to earn around 20% AER for most of the year, which was awesome.

However, the Anchor protocol’s reserve fund to cover interest has already been topped up once this year and is looking a bit light again at the time of writing. This has given me a few doubts about having so much exposure to it.

I’ve now removed quite a lot of those funds. Instead, I’ve distributed them into BUSD, which is a dollar-asset-backed stablecoin that’s operated by the Paxos Trust Company, a New York regulated financial institution, and the Binance crypto exchange. This is as close to a “regulated” and “safe” stablecoin as can be, although I must stress that crypto is *never* safe.

I’m testing a few CeFi services at the moment, notably YouHodler and Nexo. I’ll write a review on each when I get to grips with them.

To be clear: I haven’t pulled all my funds from TerraUST. I still think it’s a good project, but it’s a risky option and I felt that the likelihood of the risk becoming real was becoming a little bigger, so I have rebalanced my assets to reduce it.

Update frequency

At the risk of upsetting everyone and alienating my audience: I’m going to reduce my posts to one every two weeks, at least for a little while.

There are quite a lot of moving parts to this career move and physical relocation, which have to be the main focus for now. I enjoy writing the blog, so it’s a bit of a pain, but I don’t think it can be helped.