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

Progress on my goals

Update on the boat

Engine is apparently fitted and the boat is waiting to to be launched into the water for testing. Exciting times!

Huh. I thought I’d have made more progress this week, but apparently not! Oh well.

Distractions and detours

“Accidental” landlords?

There is a chance that we will need to use a substantial part of our money to bail out a relative who inadvisably bought a house with someone else and then split up with them shortly afterwards.

Sadly for the relative, they can’t carry the mortgage on their own – probably because they were leveraged for a bare minimum deposit for two people. The housing market has suddenly stalled due to the interest rates, and the swarm of potential buyers has tapered off without success.

The option being considered is to turn this into a rental, but the relative owns so little equity after the split that it’s comical. Think less than 10%, even after all the price gains in the last couple of years.

There are a lot of hurdles here, like the requirement for the rental yield to be 125% of the interest payments on the mortgage (which, with the rental markets and the mortgage interest, might not work out). It may not even be an option.

I’m not completely comfortable about this plan, assuming that it would pay off, as it would tie us into a property in the Channel Islands – which is only one financial crises away from not having any industry – that we don’t control ourselves. We’d also as a group start off over-leveraged for my comfort. We’ll see how the situation evolves.

I left Trading 212

I had been using Trading 212 for the self-managed side of my equities portfolio. It was fun while it lasted, but I’ve had better results by trying to simply automate my investments, maximise my income and spend intentionally than I have done by trying to over-optimise my investment pot.

It happens that the potential-co-landlord plan requires me to free up cash anyway, so I decided that it was time to call it a day on that particular distraction.

I may come back to T212 in the future. It’s a great platform for setting portfolios up and rebalancing them as you see fit, it’s purely that I haven’t been using it the way I meant to when I started with it.

This means that my equity investments are now split between: a GIA with Wealthify; my last workplace pension with Scottish Widows; a Vanguard SIPP that I’m no longer allowed to contribute to; and my present workplace pension with Blue Riband Channel Islands.

I wanted to amalgamate the pensions further, but it turns out that if I add UK pensions into it by transfer my awesome Channel Islands pension loses its Channel Islands perks and basically becomes a UK SIPP, which has a worse age restriction.

Bragging point: Channel Islands pensions can be drawn down from age 50. Cost of living might be greater than London, but I can subsidise it with a pension at age 50 – so there’s that!

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

I’m still on Back in Black by AC/DC. this week’s task is to learn the first part of the solo.

There’s a three-week hiatus on actual lessons as my teacher is going on holiday for two weeks, followed by me attending a Day Skipper sailing course the week after. I just need to practice every day and progress it along.

Fitness

Squeezed in a swim, two runs and a resistance session with kettlebells and resistance bands this week. I’m dead chuffed about that to be honest, it’s almost like old times.

Final thoughts

The potential accidental landlord situation is irritating, but potentially another strand of investment in the long run that might pay off. I’m not happy that this would (a) reduce diversification and (b) involve an asset I didn’t want, but you can’t choose family.

Well, it’s a family I married into, so that’s technically not true. All the same, divorce is an extreme measure versus potential downside risk of making a loss on an investment.

One of the things I’ve noticed now that I do these weekly updates is that the weeks where I make loads of progress I have had very little to write about for distractions and detours. This week, I’ve had loads to write about in distractions and detours, and very little to put into my goals. Coincidence? I think not!

My financial independence campaign continues!