New year, new stage in the campaign. Here’s my financial independence campaign plan for 2024.

Forwards!

Key considerations for 2024

We’re a lot better bedded-in than we were at the start of 2023.

Long-term readers will remember that in the 2023 Campaign Plan I was struggling to work out how to approach the problem of living in a high cost of living area.

Well, we know a bit more about ourselves and our way of life now.

The main considerations are:

1. We live on a boat, so while our cost of accommodation is low we have to factor in ongoing maintenance costs for her.

2. We don’t have a solid idea of exactly what our costs are day-to-day, but we can safely presume that they’re not going to increase now that we’re not trying to pay lodging at the same time as mooring fees.

3. Our emergency fund has been beefed up, so (TOUCHING ALL THE WOOD) we shouldn’t need to add to emergency funds this year.

Lessons from the 2023 FI Campaign Year

So much was achieved in the 2023 Campaign Year that we weren’t expecting at the outset, and so much changed within the year.

The lesson here is to remain flexible and pounce on opportunities as they arise.

1. Investing in myself

Investing in myself last year meant that I made huge advances towards my Why of FI and the life I want to live post-full-time work.

I’m going to pursue this further, but as I write this I’m still developing a plan for exactly how I want to do things.

For now, I’m setting up some general task lines and hoping that the big picture comes into better focus as the year progresses.

Time to get better at sailing

We’re both qualified as sailors, but this year we need to cut our teeth as a short-handed sailing crew.

Fortunately, the Channel Islands and northern France make for an ideal playground to do just this.

The plan this year is to take some long weekends to explore the surrounding islands and build ourselves into a more polished crew.

While there is a cost to this, it should also have the benefit of being quite a cheap and fun use of our foliday time, too.

Reading this year

Last year, I wanted to get back into reading fiction.

Which I did!

This year, I’m going to maintain reading as a habit, but I think I can start dripping in some more non-fiction and educational/ thought piece reads again.

I had a good break, but it’s time.

I’m always open to suggestions for good reads, so if you have any ideas of books I should try out by all means drop them in the comments sections on this blog.

Writing

Obviously, this blog has been written on a near-as-dammit weekly basis for the past year, after slacking in the second year of my FI campaign. Long-term readers will spot that the tone has changed quite a lot.

There are some good reasons for that, but generally it’s because in the early days I used the blog to develop my own ideas and review books I’d read. Now that I’ve got a bit more FI campaign experience and have made measurable progress, I’m a bit more comfortable discussing my experiences, good and bad.

Anyway, ramble aside. I had a point here.

Recently, I watched this Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal video. It’s… long. Anyway, the guest on the show – Nathan Barry – was talking about how writing 1,000 words a day will change your life.

Ignore the clickbait-y thumbnail and title. I don’t believe that writing 1,000 words per day will make anyone a millionaire.

But it got me thinking that maybe writing more frequently could change my life in some way, and I’m willing to give that a go.

1,000 words per day might be extreme given the other things I want to prioritise in my life. I’m probably not going to do that, because I also want to play my guitar most days.

Still, I’m going to commit to writing every week, and make a point of writing my thoughts down more frequently.

Guitar

Guitar has been changing my life since I first took it seriously back in March with lessons.

I’m going to keep practicing five times per week, with maybe permission to relax on holidays.

2. Spending intentionally

Food planning

Now that we’re aboard, I can effectively manage our lifestyle to be more cost-efficient.

Looking at my finances, one of my biggest costs is food. To be fair, with my share of mooring fees being about £320, food might become my biggest cost if I keep spending the way I do.

However, part of the reason for this is that we’ve been lodging with a family member. When you don’t have a way to segregate your food, that convenient packed lunch thing you bought tends to disappear before you can use it.

As a result, buying a lunch at the shop or sandwich van has become more of a norm than I’m happy with. £5 represents terrific value for a premium baguette in the Channel Islands, but I can’t help but feel I could make this for less than half of that price.

Now that we’re in our own place again and have control over the fridge, I’m going to return to packed lunches.

Holidays

We’ve got two family weddings to attend next year, and we want to take the boat around to the other Channel Islands.

On top of that, I think a city break would be cool.

We haven’t fleshed this out yet, but I keep some of my discretionary spending in a separate savings account anyway, and I think that a short break away would be a good use for some of that cash this year.

3. Investing money

In 2023, I aimed for £800 per month as a regular investment contribution… then hit closer to £2,000.

So, for 2024, I’ve automated this to £1,600 per month, with the intention to add manual top-ups.

On top of that, my pension contributions between my employer and I should add in £7,000.

Wait, what?

I’m now a qualified lawyer working in an offshore jurisdiction who isn’t paying offshore rental prices.

It’s the geo-arbitrage and deliberate earnings maximisation that makes this possible.

My fund choices

I’ve switched from Wealthify (which I’m leaving invested) to Lloyds Share Dealing.

Wealthify is a great product and if you’re just getting started with your own financial independence campaign, I’d still recommend it. Getting started and putting money into investments is infinitely better than delaying things while looking for the best deal, and you can be fairly confident that a sensible-ish portfolio is available to you via the platform.

The fees are a lot sharper than simply picking funds yourself, though.

For this new pot, since I’m starting from scratch and I’m looking to build up an initial short-term portfolio that might evolve when it hits critical mass, I’m choosing to invest in two funds:

I’m still not a fan of government bonds/gilts in general, but yields are looking better. The point of this 20% allocation is to allow some kind of rebalancing within the account to take advantage of market swings.

I considered adding more allocations to the portfolio, but I don’t think Lloyds supports any kind of fractional fund units purchase and I want the invested money put to work straight away.

Bitcoin/crypto

I’m fairly heavily exposed to crypto markets, due to decisions I made early on in my financial independence campaign when I knew my investment contributions as a trainee solicitor were going to be tiny compared to when I qualified.

This has served me well – and I’m expecting it to continue to do so in the short term – but I’m conscious that while the technological and regulatory risk is still present, the potential for dramatic gains is likely to shrink in the future.

The risk:reward ratio is becoming less attractive.

In 2023 I committed £100 per month to Bitcoin. For 2024, I’m going to maintain that £100 per month regular plan unless and until either:

  • My holdings massively increase in value during the next bull market, in which case I’ll look to downsize what I have and move the gains into my traditional investments portfolio; or
  • My exposure clears £10,000, in which case I’ll simply stop contributing.

The £10,000 figure is purely arbitrary. It’s just the number that I think I could shrug off taking a 90% loss to, and that’s only because most of this is made up of the gains I made from various trading and side hustle strategies during the COVID lockdown periods.

Gold? Venture Capital?

I’m not intending to buy much gold or invest in many startups on Crowdcube this year.

Exceptions to this rule:

  • If I have too much in my slush fund/ discretionary pot without a particular purchase or project in mind
  • If a company I’ve already invested in is showing great progress and is issuing further shares

The logic in each case is slightly different.

I’ve already gotten a bigger exposure to gold than I’d ideally want, so taking a slow year should sort that out. This is mainly due to the huge gains in gold price over the last couple of years.

If living aboard the boat works out this year, I could be achieving my goals sooner than expected. VC investments are both long-term and illiquid, so if you need short-term liquidity you’re stuffed. This makes further VC investments unsuitable for my goals, which is perfectly fine.

I’d take a different approach to investing in VC via a venture capital trust, but the liquid fund structures with preferential tax treatment aren’t available to Channel Islands residents. That’s me out, then.

Strengths and weaknesses of this Campaign Plan

Here’s a short summary of the strengths and weaknesses of this plan, as I see them.

Strengths

This plan should double my investment pot by the end of the year in traditional investments.

So that’s good.

By setting a deliberate project line for sailing the boat we now live on, we’re taking deliberate steps towards our FI dream of setting off on a voyage.

Overall, I’m pretty content with my plan. It’s less exotic than the 2022 Campaign Plan, and almost two years in since the formative 2021 Campaign Plan I can see the kind of progress I’m making. The goals are now much clearer than they were in the previous years, and that’s because of the deliberate, campaign cycle approach I’ve taken to my financial independence campaign. I know what’s achievable and I now have a bit more experience of both investing and building wealth in general.

Best wishes to all of you in 2024!