Thoughts and reflections form the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
This post is obviously quite quick after my last update, but I’m trying to get back into the battle rhythm of writing an update every weekend.
Progress on my goals
Boat plan
All is calm on the boat since our return.
We have an issue with the seal/gasket on one of the main hatches, in the saloon area. We’ve found that the Vetus hatches use a rubber that gets sticky in the heat, and that this means they prefer to stick to the bottom of the hatch when you pop them open rather than stay seated in the grooves in the top of the hatch where they belong.
Endless fun!
So we’ve left it shut and we’re venting the saloon out by other means.
I have done what I can to wedge the gasket back into its rightful place but it’s under a bit of tension and doesn’t want to stay in at the corners.
Minor annoyance, but probably won’t fit a Vetus hatch again. I’d like to sail to warm places, and a properly working deck hatch is a must.
As problems go though, it’s pretty minor and I’m just going to ignore it for the time being. I’m still on a high from our big sailing trip!
Payday!
Payday comes, investments are made, payday goes.
I’ve got two big expenses coming up this month:
- Booking transport and accommodation for my mate’s wedding in November; and
- Going to see my sister – her request – after she’s hopefully had her baby, at a time To Be Confirmed (obviously).
These are both big expenses that I really want to find the money for, so I guess that’s where all my slush fund money is going this month.
My bank has offered a higher rate “regular saver” product, so I’ve started paying my moorings contributions into that then topping up the normal account with the surplus. It’s not much, but £400 a month of the £1,000 we put aside for moorings, maintenance and operating costs of the boat should give us a few extra quid in interest at the end of the year if we pay it into the regular savings account. We’re putting the money aside to pay annually anyway, might as well make a couple of pounds extra on it. That’s another shackle or tin of anti-foul paint every year that we don’t have to find budget for.
Should probably move our emergency fund…
Realistically, I need to be a bit smarter with our emergency fund. When we set it up, savings interest was basically zero unless we bonded it for a year or more: in which case it was less than 2% per annum. We don’t get the same savings products in the Channel Islands that you might get in the UK and the difference shows up when UK savings interest rates increased and ours didn’t.
Anyway, things have improved, but to get a joint account with Lady SierraWhiskyMike we need to book some appointments with bank staff, fill out a massive form and then turn up with physical proofs of identity and address, because the Channel Islands may be low on paying tax but they’re ruthless on anti-money laundering procedures.
So suffice to say I haven’t solved it yet and it’s probably costing us a few hundred pounds per year, now that interest rates have reluctantly improved for savers.
I miss being able to open accounts online back in the UK. My bank doesn’t let me do that here. That little bit of friction really does make things needlessly harder!
Distractions and detours
Meshcore and LoRa devices
I stumbled upon LoRa devices and a system called Meshcore a couple of weeks ago. The premise is essentially a low-bandwidth internet that’s built on peer-to-peer radio wave transmissions. Think e-mail and text messaging using BlackBerry devices that rebroadcast each other, so there’s no phone line operator and no internet service provider.
It’s kind of cool. The developers are obviously CB-radio enthusiasts who have developed a slightly more elaborate system.
Meshcore isn’t the first or only variation on this theme, but its more established competitor Meshtastic is allegedly a bugger to use because of how the team designed the messaging protocols. If two people send at the same time on LoRa, it buggers both transmissions up., but Meshtastic works by sending all transmissions out to all users all the time. Meshcore tries to be more directed, so in theory interference should occur less frequently.
Why do I care?
- Decentralised telecoms are inherently cool. Screw you, phone network providers!
- If and when we eventually set off on our travels, having a 3-5km comms range (and we could rebroadcast from the boat as a booster hub) means we could basically cut around any port town independently while sharing our locations and not needing to find a local SIM card.
- If this caught on in sailing, it would allow a different means of comms as an alternative to unencrypted VHF radio. I can think of a few applications of it already. We already receive Navtex weather information through essentially the same technology, but boats don’t have many devices that can transmit over it.
This is entirely a massive distraction, I just thought it was cool. Let me enjoy my nerd moment.
Surge in advertising queries
I’ve been getting a lot of queries for things like link swapping, advertising slots, promotional posts and that kind of thing.
In some ways this is kind of cool – I’d like to be able to use my blog to give me some kind of income one day! – but the quality of requests has been… poor.
I will gladly advertise decent products and services to my audience, but dude I’m not going to advertise a new ISA offering that has monthly fees of £20 when I know damned well there are a lot of much better options already established in the market. That was a genuine query, by the way. I have politely declined that offer.
Regular visitors to the home page will see that there’s a new page on the site menu explaining what my position on adverts and sponsorships is in simple, easy to understand plain English.
I may one day re-enable adverts from Google Adsense, but I don’t feel as bad about those because (a) they’re not pretending that I support the products and services being advertised, (b) most people don’t pay attention to them in the modern era and (c) I would expect most of my audience to use ad blockers anyway. The reason I took these down was because they messed with the user experience and they paid me something like 3p per month.
Screw that, it’s my blog, I’m not trashing it for pennies. I like doing this, it’s not a for-profit enterprise.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
I probably should’ve been playing what my teacher said to, but instead I’ve been messing around with other songs on my own.
Last night I learnt the Nirvana cover of Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World and started playing Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing. Both are cool songs in their own right, so I don’t feel too bad going on a couple of side quests instead of practicing pages of exercises when I’m on holiday.
Next week is meant to be my first lesson back. I should probably nail at least one of these songs so that I have something to show for myself really! Eh, guitar is meant to be played and enjoyed. I have no remorse for going rogue on my holiday.
Fitness
We went bouldering this week and I followed it up with my rings routine. Suffice to say, my forearms aren’t loving me right now.
Not as bad as Lady SierraWhiskyMike, who went to Hyrox when I was doing rings! She may have overtrained… and I might be enjoying her DOMS a bit too much.
I also trialled out rope flow. I haven’t gotten the hang of the Dragon Roll, but it’s fairly intuitive to pick up the overarm and underarm rotations and the transition using the propeller movement to change direction.
Unsurprisingly, it loosened off my back muscles a treat. I’m probably going to put this in as a cool-down exercise at the end of my normal rings and calisthenics stuff, because it’s not overly tiring but it gets you to open your core up to different planes of movement.
If you want to start with rope flow or you fancy falling down a rabbit hole for a bit, there’s this podcast between Tim Ferris and Nsima Inyang on YouTube and this tutorial by YouTuber Tim’s Gym that I looked up to get the basic movements down.
Oh, by the way: it’s much cheaper to just go to a chandlery (or order a length of rope from one) and buy nylon braided rope than it is to buy any branded “rope flow” ropes. We used waxed whipping cord to whip the cut-off ends of a frayed nylon mooring line we had, melted the ends over a gas hob, then just tied the handles ourselves. If we’d paid for new line it would have been cheap. This stuff is £3.25 per metre in 12mm and would be totally fine, although we’ve used 16mm because we have it. You definitely don’t need to pay £50 for the exact same rope but with a branding on it. Screw that!
Final thoughts
A pretty relaxed weekend, ready for the true carnage that is returning to work after a single second of leave and trawling through 500 e-mails that didn’t need to be sent to you. Ah, the punishment of taking your leave entitlement in the modern workplace!
Actually, I’m going to stop there before I stress myself out. It’s been so relaxing having this time off, I don’t want to ruin it.
Tonight I’m going to prep my work clothes and play some more guitar, see if I can get more of these songs down.
I’ll need to think a bit more about getting a better account for our emergency fund. It doesn’t make sense to miss out on interest now that there’s some to be earned. If I can find a time for both of us to visit the bank and jump the many hurdles then we probably should do it.
Well, leave has been fun, but all good things must end. Back to the grind I suppose.
My financial independence campaign continues!
