New year, new stage in the campaign. Here’s my financial independence campaign plan for 2025.
Forwards!
This is a long read – feel free to use subheadings to skim the details.
Hey – this is my fifth year!
Here are my other campaign plans:
So much has changed!
Back in 2021 my goal was to hit CoastFI within nine years.
“CoastFI” meaning that I could effectively go back to earning exactly what I need to survive day-to-day and letting capital growth take care of the rest.
I think I’m over halfway there.
But I’m a different person now to who I was back then. In 2021 I was still paying off a mortgage on a potentially forever home in Southampton. One of my best performing posts ever was about hitting 60% LTV on that mortgage due to overpayments.
Since then, I’ve qualified as a lawyer, moved to the Channel Islands and now live on a sailing yacht.
If I’m feeling posh, it’s a yacht. If I’m feeling honest, it’s a boat.
But some things have stayed the same
My values and beliefs haven’t really changed.
I still…
- Want to be free to pursue my own projects without the fear that I’ve somehow burned out any hope for Old Age Me.
- Prefer minimalism and intentional living to big spending.
- Think that saving and investing more is better than chasing an optimised portfolio.
- Want to be a writer one day.
- Believe that fitness/health and financial wellbeing are linked.
Start state for 2025
Pension assets
I’ve got a half-pension from the military which makes up the bond-like component of my pension portfolio. It’s worth something like £8,000 a year, but I haven’t run the figures on it in three years now.
Between my UK SIPP and workplace pension, I have around £20,700 saved up and accessible at UK pension age, plus a further estimate £15,000 in Channel Islands pensions.
Using the 4% rule on the shares and adding it up with the military half-pension, I reckon I have about £9,428 pre tax income per year from age 65 already.
I’m assuming no UK state pension because it’s better to be surprised than disappointed.
Non-pension assets
I have around £80,000 in invested assets that I could realise at any time, plus an emergency fund. If we use the 4% rule as a wet finger estimate, I reckon that’s £3,220 a year ready to drawdown.
Of note, around 25% of this is Bitcoin due to the recent price action in 2024. Not ideal for working out what I actually have put away, but the gains have been good to me and even a 50% price crash would still leave me in profit on that side.
Campaign planning is showing results
Progress to date has been insane!
I truly believe that this is because of the campaign plan approach. By having a plan, Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I have been able to coordinate all of our activities because we have a direction of travel.
The plan breakdown also helps do things that aren’t just “grind away”. We’re still having fun and doing things we love, like learning new skills and learning to sail as a crew, we’re just approaching it in a structured way that fits into the overall goal.
Recap… the three pillars of my financial independence campaign:
- Investing in myself
- Spending intentionally
- Investing my money
1. Investing in myself
The focus this year is on preparing myself (and Lady SierraWhiskyMike – we’re a team) for the eventual sail into the sunset and life post-CoastFI.
Sailing level up
We’ve done the courses and we’ve sailed to other Channel Islands. We’re working as a team!
This year will be the first time we haul out, so we’re going to learn how to maintain the hull ourselves.
On top of that, the goal (and holiday ambition) is to sail to northern France in summer. This will let us learn how to approach ports and marinas we’ve never visited before, as well as give us a fairly cheap adventure holiday.
Depending on how rusty we are in the spring, we might also learn how to use the spinnaker. That’s a downwind-only sail that pretty much forms a big bag to catch the air in and pull the boat over the waves.
Guitar
I still suck at guitar, but I’m going to persevere. It’s easier to get practice time in the summer because my job is a bit quieter in the middle of the year, but it would be cool to press on.
I don’t have a measurable or specific goal for guitar at this time. That might change as we go. The benefit to me is that it relaxes my mind after I’ve been playing, much more effectively than meditation.
Fitness
I’m booked in for a marathon in April, so that’s the big goal for the year.
After that? I’m probably going to look to reduce my body fat to sub-20% by June and maintain it until the end of the year. I think that’s a reasonable goal for me.
I’ve been fluctuating between 18-23% body fat for years and it would be good to actually address this as a “problem”, especially now that I have a desk job and can’t expect the big calorie deficits from training. On last weigh-in I was at around 21-22%. For planning, noting it’s now post-Christmas, let’s call it 22%.
Look, this isn’t exactly a “problem” in that obesity in men is expressed as a body fat of 25% or greater. I’ve got a couple of kilos I could put on without the medical problems associated with being that overweight.
However, most health journals suggest that sub-19% is the healthy metric for a man under aged 40. That target doesn’t seem far out of my reach, so it’s a reasonable goal to aim for 3kg of fat loss in 6 months.
I reckon that there’s something habitual that’s causing my weight fluctuations. Either that or some weird psychological thing, maybe a hangover from when an 8-mile run with a weighted backpack was a normal Tuesday at work(!). I’m hoping to solve whatever that is as the “problem”, then just relax and let the process happen.
Writing
Continue to maintain my weekly blog post rhythm. That’s been really helpful for keeping me on track with my financial independence campaign plans.
I’m also going to make sure I keep up the monthly fiction writers’ meetings we’ve kept up since the course I did last year. It’s fun, it’s social, it makes me a better writer, and it’s cheap to maintain.
2. Spending intentionally
This year I’m going to do things a little differently.
I’m going to try a Ramit Sethi approach to spending and identify the things that I can spend guilt-free on and the things that I want to minimise expenditure on.
Minimising expenditure
Clothing
I don’t really care about designer clothing, but I do care about technical clothing and hard-wearing kit.
Therefore, I want to minimise my clothing expenses by continuing to wear stuff as long as I can, until it wears out.
When I have to shop or replace clothes, I’m going to keep to classic styles that tend not to go in and out of fashion. Jeans and a t-shirt, maybe an overshirt or a classic fit shirt.
Beers out
Dude – I love a beer out in town. One of my many sins, on top of swearing.
The problem is that it’s easy to spend £100+ on a fairly mundane night out at today’s prices. I can’t bring myself to do that regularly.
I’m going to limit the time I actually spend out. Do I need to do a full night, or can I just have one or two at the pub then leave?
Better yet, can I do something else to socialise?
Food in general
Last year we made a big push to include more veggie-based meals and reduce our meat consumption.
Then, at the back end of the year when work went mental, we drifted back into having a lot more meat, mostly for convenience.
Thing is: I felt better on the veg-heavy diet.
It’s also a fuck ton cheaper. I wrote a post about veggie meals back in 2021, but in the Channel Islands the difference is significantly more drastic.
Suffice it to say that bean burritos are more cost effective than chicken fajitas.
So I plan to eat less meat during the week, especially low-quality meat for everyday feeding.
Guilt-free spending
Obviously this comes with whatever is “spare” after investments and my fixed costs/ survival needs.
Guitar lessons
I presently pay £160-£200 per month on guitar lessons, at one hour per lesson every Wednesday.
I get a lot of personal growth out of guitar, it’s a great stress reliever and it’s one of my personal development goals.
Writing
An expensive notepad might set me back £40 a go (also, Moleskine paper sucks – if anyone has a better brand, let me know). Writing with a Parker pen might cost me £8.99 per refill.
I could do this cheaply or at almost zero cost by typing everything, or by stealing the cheap notepads and pens from work to write with. But, you know what? Writing with a good pen into a posh-looking notebook makes the experience feel better. I love it.
Ultimately, even with the expensiveness of the materials, it’s still pretty cheap.
Reading
I have never regretted and will never regret spending money on reading.
Big expected additional spends
Holiday 2025
We’re going to push out on a sailing trip this year, hopefully to northern France. Not sure yet if that’s going to be Brittany or Normandy, it will depend on things like the weather at the time.
I already have enough in the tactical slush fund to cover this, so I don’t need to set aside any money specifically for it.
Family events
It’s my brother’s 30th birthday this year and I’ve already paid for the flights to London and the tickets to the venue. I reckon there’s going to be accommodation and food on top of that, which will be my big expense in January 2025.
At the end of January we’re also planning to return to the UK for a weekend to regroup with friends from university. That hasn’t been budgeted in yet, but it’s important to me so I’ll use some of my slush fund to pay for it.
Gym membership
My gym is a total ripoff and has just announced an increase in membership fees to c.£100 per month.
The only reason I use this gym is because it’s next to my work, so it means I definitely get training time. However, we’re settled at the boat now, and I wonder if simply doing an outdoor workout after walking the dog in the morning/ before dinner would do the same thing.
Hell, at this price, I could probably afford to take a sports class or two. Even if I rarely make it, it’s going to be cheaper than £100 per month!
You know what? I’m going to look at my options here.
Haul out
The boat has her own budgeting account to cover this, but she’s coming out of the water for routine maintenance this year. I’d imagine that we’re just looking at new anodes and a repaint of the anti-fouling layer, but there’s always a possibility with boats that more needs to be done.
3. Investing money
Pension contributions
My workplace pension is a 5% payment match. Like in the UK, it’s a pre-tax payment.
This means I’m expecting to invest £7,600 into pensions (plus any wage increase).
I’m not going to overpay into the pension in 2025. We don’t have higher rate tax brackets (flat 20% income tax), and I suspect that with the UK looking to mess around with pension rules there will eventually be a similar appetite to do this in Guernsey. The tax benefits don’t seem worthwhile compensation for the disadvantages at this time.
My pension investment is a single ESG filtered global equity index tracker. I don’t diversify out of equities because at pension time (which is still decades off) I have the defined benefits pension from the military to smooth out volatility.
Non-pension assets
I’m aiming to invest £1,800 per month (assuming no pay rise this year), split across my Lloyd’s Sharedealing account and physical gold.
Investment account portfolio
The main engine powering my campaign. I’m expecting to deposit at least £1,200 per month into this, plus any benefit from any wage increases.
That’s £14,400 expected to be paid in this year. Across this and my pension, that should be £22,000 into equities and bonds funds.
More money than I used to spend in the UK, saved in a year. Mental.
I’m going to continue to split 80:20 into the following funds:
- Vanguard ESG Developed World All Cap Equity Index Accumulating GBP fund (ISIN: IE00B76VTN11).
- Vanguard UK Government Bond Index Inc GBP (ISIN: IE00B1S75820).
The reason for the bond allocation is, as last year, because I want the option to rebalance if the “everything bubble” pops and prices panic-crash.
Physical gold
Alongside this, and to diversify into other asset classes, I’m looking to invest in one gold sovereign or one quarter ounce gold coin each month.
Gold price fluctuation impacts this a bit more than market prices for public shares does, because I am buying physical and have to make up any shortfall. This means I could be spending £480-£600 any month.
So I’m expecting to invest around £6,000-£7,000 into gold across the year.
Gold prices keep rising. In 2021 I paid £350 (I think) for my first gold sovereign. There may be a time when I can’t buy a whole sovereign or a quarter ounce without cutting the other investments, which I’m not willing to reduce any further.
My break limit is £600 per coin. When prices mean that coins cost more than that, I will buy a coin every two months by setting aside a monthly £350, using any surplus cash from that monthly budget for other investments.
Bitcoin/crypto
For now, I don’t intend to add more into Bitcoin unless there’s a significant market correction. Depending on how my conventional investments go, I plan to revisit this in 2026.
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 is a simple and easy-to-follow plan.
The guilt-free spending is a new approach to me. I’m not sure how valuable it will be, but I’ve pretty much set out what I’m not going to track up front. Being disciplined takes a bit of brain capacity and having a few areas selected where I just don’t need to worry about it is fine by me.
My personal goals for the year also seem fairly achievable (he says in December 2024…).
Weaknesses
None of the personal objectives are likely to help me earn money or otherwise grow my income. Instead, they’re all designed to help me prepare for a far future or to sustain me in the high-stress career field I’m working in.
That means that I’m unlikely to grow my earnings beyond anything I do in my day job this year. Or, at least, I’m not planning on making any ambitious moves.
I’m also a little concerned that my fitness goals are quite undefined, except for the body fat goal which is simply a goal without a detailed plan yet. More thinking required there.
Overall though, this has all the ingredients to be an effective 2025 Campaign Plan. I’ll get back to work.
Best wishes to all of you in 2025!
My financial independence campaign continues!
