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

Progress on my goals

Boat plan

This weekend has been spent with just Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I on board the boat in the marina. We haven’t quite moved aboard yet, but she’s kind of our home. So close to ready!

The wind was a bit much and we didn’t get to take her out, but it’s still nice to be in a peaceful space that we control.

Turns out that the iPad is perfect for boat living. We’ve tethered off a mobile phone hotspot to watch Netflix in the evening, and I’m currently typing this blog post on it from the deck, sat out in the sun. The iPad hosts our navigation/GPS too, so that’s a combination of cool things.

Is this progress? Not sure. It’s nice though!

Dog steps arrived from eBay and we’ve confirmed that it will allow the dog to get in and out of the main saloon/ living area of the boat, so as soon as we turn the girl around in the marina then we’re going to be dog-accessible. Sort of. Probably.

Stock market seems to be down this month

Like many financial independence campaigners, I check my investment pots quite often. It’s probably a phone addiction reflex to tell you the truth, because it makes zero sense to check your portfolio more than quarterly in most instances.

Well, my Wealthify account seems down, my Scottish Widows UK pension seems down, my Vanguard SIPP that I can’t contribute into any more (no Channel Islands customers allowed!) seems… OK. Overall, stocks and bonds not doing great.

In my first year of the FI Campaign I probably would have been nervous about this, or written some long-form article explaining why this does or does not matter.

A couple of years in now, I just view the number fluctuations with a passing disinterest.

My plan is still to go big on the investments and live a happy but cost-effective lifestyle, and the monthly fluctuations in the stock markets mean very little to me. I’m saving something like 50-60% of my income per month across pensions and my normal investment account at the moment, being temporarily up or down £200 doesn’t really change anything.

It begs the question why I’m still checking the numbers. I don’t have an answer that survives even gentle scrutiny to be honest. In my head, each £10k is like a mini-milestone, and even though I get paid monthly and automate my investments – so I should know, logically, exactly where I’m at! – I like to see the progress towards it.

Distractions and detours

Guitar amp temptations

I’ve been playing with a portable battery-powered practice amp called a Blackstar Fly 3. While it does the job, sort of, for home practice it’s less than inspiring to play without headphones as the tiny speaker sounds like my guitar is shaking up a jar of bees.

With headphones plugged in it sounds okay-ish. Not inspiring, just tolerable.

Still, it was £45, portable (so boat-compatible) and I didn’t know if I’d still be playing guitar 6 months after buying it. £45 was an acceptable degree of risk.

Fast-forward to having had seven months of lessons and I’ve pretty much outgrown it. There’s a world of difference in enjoyment between playing on my teacher’s 15W Marshall mini-stack and playing on my Fly 3.

It’s a tone thing.

I can’t justify having a stack on board my boat, and a chunky 200W valve amp (be still my aching heart…) isn’t marina-friendly, but it turns out that if I just spend a bit more on a better quality practice amp I can replicate a similar tone and hopefully get the same kind of experience but still in a portable amp with a boat-friendly size and low power needs.

We’ll see if I pull the trigger this week, but I might be spending £229 on a Positive Grid Spark Mini. My guitar teacher uses the bigger Spark, and his tones sound pretty close to the student Marshall mini-stacks, sometimes even better. I also like that there are auto-chord features and that you can record backing loops to play along to, or stream backing tracks to it via Bluetooth from a phone or this iPad.

FI Guilt

I feel like this is a future buzzword-in-the-making.

You know what? If you’re on a forum or writing your own blog or whatever, feel free to steal this term: FI Guilt.

FI Guilt

When you can afford to spend money but feel like your investment portfolio is judging you for it.

I play guitar easily five times per week and I have an hour long lesson every Wednesday that I even book into my work calendar as an appointment. It’s only holidays, sicknesses or one-off events that get in the way of this line of effort.

Even archery gets told to do one if it clashes with my guitar lesson.

I think about my guitar quite a lot. Even when I don’t want to practice, I put in a cheeky 20-30 minutes. I’ve been known to practice late at night and generally upset my partner by coming to bed late.

And yet the FI Guilt of upgrading my amplifier, using cash from my guilt-free spending pot, is very real.

It’s possible that by building good FIRE habits I may have put myself in a position where I’ve learned bad psychological behaviours. Still, I’d rather be in a position of spending intentionally but having to doubly-justify my spending to myself than recklessly spending like I used to in my 20s.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

It turned out that I smashed out Supersonic in about a week, so this week I’ve been given Don’t Look Back in Anger, again by Oasis. It will probably take a couple of weeks to get to grips with, it’s a harder level, but there’s a decent improvisation section in the grading syllabus version.

Fitness

We were offered the chance to do some indoor rock climbing and bouldering this week as a corporate entertainment event. That was pretty cool, I’m keen to get exercise squeezed into work time.

I had a bit of an ego-stroking moment when I realised that even in the wrong side of my 30s I’m still keeping up with and generally outpacing colleagues in their mid-20s.

This momentary ego boost was slapped back into reality when I realised that it’s because I’ve only had a serious desk job for about three years or so and these guys/ girls/ others have been stuck behind a desk since age 21. Of course they’re not going to be the fittest athletes on any pitch. Desk Life is horrendous for the body.

Final thoughts

I’ve basically spent this week obsessing about my guitar hobby. That’s OK.

I’ve written before about the importance of having hobbies for FIRE. It’s an unlikely connection: hobbies are, financially speaking, an absolute liability. Given that a penny saved is worth more than a penny earned, it makes sense to keep discretionary spending to a minimum.

However, you know what I haven’t done? Become concerned about this stock market and bond market downturn. It hasn’t phased me, because I have other things that are more enjoyable to think about.

I believe that it’s absolutely vital to have sound money management principles. For FIRE, you really do need an investment plan. Ideally though, it should be automated – and you should find something much more enjoyable to spend your time on while this builds itself up.

Because isn’t having control of your time the whole advantage of FIRE?

My financial independence campaign continues!