The end of the year is a fine time to reflect on the successes and lessons learned on the 2021 financial independence campaign.
My financial independence campaign plan
The 2021 financial campaign plan was based on the three pillars of my strategy, and this review will fit those same themes.
These themes are:
- Invest in myself.
- Spend intentionally.
- Invest my money.
Sound familiar? It should do – it’s on my home page, and it’s in the tag line above. Hey, consistency is key!
1. Invest in myself
I completed my Diploma for Financial Advisors
OK, so I technically can’t be a financial advisor just yet. To do that, I would need to achieve something called competent advisor status and register with the FCA. I’m probably not going to do that.
Still, this year I completed the level 4 Diploma for Financial Advisors, using a bursary from a previous career. Can only be useful moving forward.
I didn’t complete The Odin Project
I started The Odin Project around January this year, then did the diploma, then my traineeship at work really ramped up.
While I’m reasonably confident in making minor amendments to this website’s HTML and CSS, I’m not really on my way to tech coding superstardom. Might not be a career change in my future.
If you’re not in a job you’re happy with though, The Odin Project is great programme for learning web development. I can’t fault the programme, only my commitment to it. It’s free, by the way, and you can start with just a computer and no prior experience.
I read quite a few books
I read a lot of finance, investing and related books on economics in 2021. Some of these were reviewed on this blog, others I haven’t gotten round to writing up yet. Here’s a short summary of all of them!
Reset – how to restart your life and get F.U. money
Starting with one of the weaker books I read this year: Reset.
While the storytelling was good, I’m hesitant to recommend it because the author – who is not a financial advisor, nor an expert – actively makes a financial promotion about their recommended portfolio for any UK financial independence campaigner.
This book is generally a financial independence lifestyle guide. If index fund investing, hitting financial independence in 25 years and generally refusing to compromise a middle-class lifestyle appeals, this is quite a nice read.
The Millionaire Next Door
A study on US millionaires in the 1990s, a lot of the principles of what the authors learned apply to financial independence. The highlights for me were that the millionaires interviewed tended to deliberately plan financial independence and had simple tastes to keep expenditures less than income.
A New Case for Gold
This was less of a financial independence book and more of a criticism of fiat money. It’s a low priority read, but I appreciated the chapter on the US central bank’s balance sheets.
Money – Know More, Make More, Give More
Rob Moore’s book is an interesting read. Rob primarily made his fortune in real estate, but this book follows a few good ideas such as successful sales tactics and flashbacks to his youth of cleaning the family pub. It’s an entertaining read and worth a go. I don’t own a real estate portfolio (although I’m a big fan of REITs and REIT funds) but it’s a solid tactic nonetheless.
The Four Hour Work Week
Tim Ferriss’ classic. The main thrust of this book is to consider outsourcing tasks wherever possible, focus on the few things that matter, and consider geo-arbitrage to get more from a strong currency in a cheaper location. Again, a great read, although I completely accept that I’ve not used any of Tim’s advice yet!
Maybe that’s something for the future…
Skip the Line
James Altucher is a serial entrepreneur who advocates for taking risk to get ahead in business, life, projects… anything.
This was quite accessible, but despite Penguin Books pitching it as a financial independence guide it wasn’t particularly suited to a FIRE audience.
One of the things that James does well is what he calls “experiments”. Essentially, he measures pretty much anything he does, then tries to work out what the variables are to make it successful. It’s a bit weird that he takes this approach to planning stand-up comedy, but I guess to each their own.
The Intelligent Investor
Benjamin Graham was reputedly Warren Buffet’s mentor. He wrote this book as pretty much a guide on value investing and not getting sucked into over-hot markets.
This book inspired some of my early posts, like my post on how to read p/e ratios. It put a lot of stuff in perspective and helped me to pick funds in the beginning.
It’s a heavy read, don’t expect a lot of excitement. There are also references to 50% government bond portfolios. US investors get a variety of exciting government bond options that we don’t get access to (or even the equivalent), so you can’t blindly follow the recommendations, but it’s still priceless knowledge.
I watched a lot of YouTube
I tend to watch (or rather, listen to) YouTube when I’m doing stuff around the house. It makes chores more bearable and turns Tedious Time into a Learning Opportunity.
I’ll do a whole other post in the New Year about my favourite YouTubers. If you’re impatient, one or two are on the FIRE recommended resources tab of this site.
2. Spend Intentionally
My end of year appraisal of my spending has been pretty good.
We did order more takeaways during lockdown that I’d like, at one point hitting a weekly takeaway of some kind. I’m not overly worried though, as that was pretty much our entire social time in the SierraWhiskyMike household over that second lockdown.
We saved a fair bit by eating veggie meals
Our food budget, even with all the inflation on food, is around £150 per month (excluding going out for dinner or whatever).
A lot of this is thanks to eating veggie meals a couple of times per week. Honestly, it’s been a game changer.
That said, we did have an unexpected few mistakes…
We spent a lot more on wine
During the pandemic, we noticed our drinking increasing. Fortunately, not to alcoholic levels, but the odd glass of red started to creep into regular evenings.
Wine is quite expensive, so this took up a lot of the money savings from everything outside being shut. Oh well, I guess we’re not perfect financial independence campaigners!
We bought clothing semi-responsibly
The pandemic reduced the dress code at work, from “business suits” to “dress for your day”. Magically, £30 chinos became my go-to office staple for the few months we were in the office.
Chinos are machine washable rather than dry-clean, and they’re pretty hardwearing – at least, compared to tailored suit trousers.
I reckon this saved me a small amount of cash.
We’re also buying a lot of our casual clothing from Rapanui [that’s not a referral link, by the way!]. They make sustainable clothing, which you can return to be recycled. Their basic colour palettes all match, so if you buy a mixed pack of basic t-shirts there’s a damn good chance that it will match with any jumper or overshirt or coat that they sell.
Importantly: it’s cheap and reasonably good quality.
We saved lots by not having a car
We got rid of our car last year. That has saved us a small fortune.
I have rented two different cars this year, one of which was with the Enterprise Car Club and only cost me £90. The other cost me around £300 for the weekend.
Otherwise, we have used bicycles, Uber and bus routes to get around. Well, or just walked.
We don’t miss having a car.
3. Investing my money
I have maintained a consistent savings rate of above 35% this year, which is pretty cool. At one point, it was closer to 60% when I wasn’t commuting to work.
This was invested mainly into my SIPP and workplace pension, which I paid into through salary sacrifice. Between the two pots, I am heavily weighted towards equities, with a dash of corporate bonds and real estate investments.
I have also boosted my ISA with Trading 212. I wrote a post about my ISA previously. I have since updated the contents of my ISA because of my job means that I might have possible insider information. As a result, I must ask permission to buy or sell the individual company/ REIT shares in advance. That proved too much effort, so I now mainly invest in funds within the ISA.
I have been adding money to Anchor Protocol, generating a healthy 19.5%-ish return. I will probably keep investing in this next year.
The small amounts of crypto I bought skyrocketed in value. I believe that the hype around the crypto market will fade out over the year, probably until the next Bitcoin mining reward halving in 2024. Anchor is now one of my main investments in the crypto space.
I also did a few side hustles this year, some of which I put money into. I was lucky that most of them saw *a* return on investment, which was pretty cool.
Preparing for next year
I’m going to take it easy for the Christmas period. I’m still investing this month’s pay, but it’s time to kick back and relax after a successful year on the campaign.
I’ll also read a bit over the break and reflect.
In the new year, I’ll release my 2022 financial independence campaign plan.
