Thoughts and reflections from the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.

Apologies to regular readers about how late this one is! When you read it, you’ll understand why.

Progress on my goals

Boat plan

After all the hype and planning, we picked up the boat… to learn that the 20-year-old engine had completely died.

I don’t just mean “broken down”: it had completely died.

We knew she would need replacing in the near future, but we had hoped we could get away with a year or so. Boat engines are effectively consumables and you’re expecting problems after the 10-year point. Unfortunately, a basic service killed off whatever layers of crap and congealed goop were holding the engine together during survey and sea trial, and there was just no way to plug all the holes that had rotten through in almost a decade of neglect by the last owner.

So, now she’s with a boat mechanic getting a new engine, and we’re hoping to be ready for Attempt 2 in four weeks or so.

Financially, it’s a big cost. Think £16k. However, it’s still fleetingly small compared to 6.05% interest on a £400k of mortgage for 30 years, which would buy us a small flat in the Channel Islands. Fortunately, we have the cash to dedicate to this problem, so we can continue with the plan.

On the plus side, we got to live on her for five days and do all sorts of basic maintenance that is rapidly bringing her up to speed. She’s not far off being like new, and living on her is a lot more comfortable than living in our current lodging room.

Investments

After whingeing about the performance of my investments last week, equities recovered and now my Wealthify portfolio is nicely in the green while my Trading212 portfolio is breaking even.

Actually, that’s something worth writing about.

I wasn’t sure last week whether or not to write down how I felt about my different asset performances.

What I really don’t want to do with this blog is put someone off doing their own financial independence campaign. Equities weren’t doing great, and it’s sort of an unspoken rule on FIRE forums to never talk about poor stock market performance.

In the end though, I figured that being honest about how I feel about investment performance was of more value to people who are maybe starting out on their FI campaign and aren’t sure if they’re doing the right kinds of things. It’s daunting to see your assets depreciate, albeit temporarily. Seemed better to share the experience so no-one feels alone.

If you ever get down about your portfolio: don’t sweat it. We’ve all been there.

Distractions and detours

Boat repairs dominated this week, which was a pretty huge distraction.

I completed a deal this week at work, which is always a nice feeling for a corporate lawyer. No rest for the wicked, mind you: straight on to the next one.

Headspace continues. I forked out the £50 for the year. I’m still not sure why it’s having an effect, but meditating seems to make stress more tolerable. Not “making it good”, just “making it more tolerable”. A lot more chill this week.

Non-FIRE goals

I missed guitar and archery this week due to being stranded with the non-moving boat.

There hasn’t been much fitness training, either. Then again, I’ve been a lot more active due to having to make all the boat repairs and maintenance, so maybe my fitness hasn’t suffered too much.

This weekend is looking to be overcast and/or wet, so I’ll put in more guitar practice.

Final thoughts

To round this post off: my biggest takeaway from this week is how quickly an obstacle to one aspect of life can completely de-rail the other aspects.

Boat plan hit a pretty major obstacle this week, and now:

  • We’re down £16k that could have been put to FIRE, because we need to replenish the emergency fund
  • My hobbies have been neglected for a whole week
  • Fitness/ deliberate exercise has completely fallen by the wayside for a week

Obviously, things aren’t as bad as they seem. It’s a temporary setback, and in five years’ time I’ll be joking about it. Can’t get upset, it’s just one of those things.

Getting back to the point, though: that one issue caused a chain of issues on other lines of effort. If I could have anticipated and prevented it – by changing the engine out when the original repairs were done, perhaps? – I could have avoided the other issues entirely.

For FIRE, I think that’s the great advantage of the emergency fund. Technically, you don’t need one. You could just sell more investments and get emergency cash flow that way. Give it 3-5 days and you can get cash back in your bank account from the sale of shares.

But having a slack pot of cash to throw at a short-term obstacle should stop you being de-railed on all your other lines of effort. Nip a problem in the bud, stop a situation escalating, crack on with routine.

My financial independence campaign takes up a fair bit of my thoughts. Of course it does, it’s a deliberate operation. But I want to continue with my hobbies and other goals, too, and the emergency cash pot works as a system for me to do this.

My financial independence campaign continues!