It’s that time of year again where I look back on the successes and frustrations of the past year of my financial independence campaign.

Gimme the details!

As with the previous years, this is being broken down into my three big pillars.

However – as I learned last year, it turns out quite a lot happens in a year.

So, to make for easier reading (and typing), I’ve split the three pillars out into three separate in-depth posts.

For those of you who just want the headlines, there’s a snapshot of what happened below.

Beware! There be spoilers below. If ye don’t want any spoilers, read the linked posts first. Ye be warned!

Quick highlights

  • I learned a ton of new skills – sailing, swimming, guitar playing, wire swaging and crimping.
  • Socialising at work paid off!
  • Best investments in myself were either guitar or swimming, possibly both.
  • My savings rate was around 50% for the year
  • I managed to invest £22,000 into Wealthify, plus a further £5,250 in workplace pensions, plus smaller allocations elsewhere.
  • The emergency fund is pretty much where it needs to be for the foreseeable future.

What’s ongoing?

I’m writing this in mid-December, so hopefully by the time this has published we’ll have transitioned to liveaboard life on the boat and won’t be paying an extra £800 pcm to live in a basement room on top of our mooring fees.

That’ll really speed the investments up!

Things to work on for next year

Fitness

Fitness training around law/ family commitments/ guitar is hard. The time you get to do it is never the right time to actually train, and the time you want to train in is never the right time around everyone else’s routine.

I’m going to need to prioritise this a bit higher. If I don’t, I’m going to reach FI but have an uphill climb to re-condition well enough to actually do anything with my freedom.

Sailing

Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I are going to get the boat ready for sailing and try her out as a short-handed crew around the Channel Islands.

Short-handed sailing is pretty hard and you need to adapt a lot of normal sailing tactics to do it, so we need a bit of practice in local waters over the next year or two.

Optimising spending

Partly because I’ve had a massive wage uplift and partly because I’m lodging in someone else’s house, I’ve been eating out or buying convenience lunches way too frequently.

This needs to be wound in a bit.

It would be nice to shave a bit off my food spending. Food is comically expensive in the Channel Islands (I reckon 50-100% on top of UK prices overall).

My discretionary spending hasn’t been too bad, but it’s far from perfect. I reckon there’s some efficiency savings to be had there without impacting my happiness levels.

2023 was a year with a lot of success in it

Sure, there were frustrations. I was hoping to be on the boat way before the end of the year, but I guess that wasn’t to be.

Overall though, serious ground was made this year, and I’m in a strong position to crack on for 2024.