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

Progress on my goals

Boat plan

We may have solved our boating issues, but I don’t want to add to the rollercoaster of boat plan working – boat plan failing – boat plan working again… posts, so I’m going to simply say this: if it works, we’re hopeful of a better setup next weekend.

We spent this weekend aboard and re-re-confirmed that this is what we want to do and how we want to live. At least, in general terms. Winter aboard isn’t as hard as it sounds, and the boat is actually warmer (and much cheaper to heat) than most of the houses and flats we’ve lived in previously.

Change of investment platform?

I’ve written many times about how and why I’ve been using a robo-investing platform, Wealthify, this past year.

I’ll stand by my statement: you could do a lot worse than using a robo-investor to get started.

This week however I learned through my bank, Lloyds International, that Halifax Sharedealing is open to offshore customers like me.

This news is groundbreaking, for two reasons:

  • Fees are a lot cheaper – around a third of the cost, including fund fees.
  • I can set it up to automate the same way that Wealthify is automated for me, since Lloyds and Halifax are the same banking group and won’t dismiss my offshore current account.

The automation point is a big deal to me

Even though I’m earning a lot of cash here – perks of being offshore – and my savings rate if comfortably over 50%, I’m still early on in my investment journey. Any additional amount I can contribute to my investments at this point dwarfs any gain I’ll see from investment performance, so my priorities are earning and saving.

Simply put, in the early game optimising investments isn’t as big a deal.

This year however I’ve set myself up to be investing £25-30k per year, through a combination of the boat plan, setting up a comfortable but reasonably frugal lifestyle and maximising my earning capability through my career field.

I’m due to clear £100k across invested assets in the next 18-24 months. Suddenly, it’s becoming more important to me to make my investments more efficient, since that efficiency will soon start to become worth my time.

Nonetheless, my main focus has to be on bringing on the money and keeping other costs low. I can’t waste too much mental capacity on paying into my investment account (and so on) to manually move my money when my time is better spent doing things like preparing my own lunch for work or doing my own repairs on the boat.

Or, you know, doing a hobby and/or meeting people.

Distractions and detours

Christmas is coming, let’s all get fat

It’s about that time of year where parents everywhere tell their kids not to be concerned that a jolly fat old man smelling of whisky and pastries is sneaking into their bedroom and leaving them gifts.

I’m happy to say that I’ve sorted all the Christmas prezzies this year! Job done. All I have to do is wrap them in a fit of blind panic in two weeks’ time.

We’ve got a selection of work-paid-for socials this month. On the one hand, that means a lot of forced networking; but on the other hand, it’s a free (or at least heavily subsidised) night out on town.

The last part is important, because for me that’s a few cheap weekends of socialising. On the Channel Islands, it’s a pretty inescapable fact that most of your colleagues are also your neighbours and friends, if nothing else because there isn’t much option to escape them on these tiny islands.

So if work wants to pay for us to hang out for a bit, I’m actually fairly happy with it.

What does a FI Campaigner want for Christmas..?

This year, I’ve asked for things that would comfortably fit on the boat or otherwise be consumed with great delight:

  • Whisky – never a bad gift
  • Coffee
  • A fancy chef’s knife, as I use it for all my cooking and the cheap one I have doesn’t sharpen up very well

Actually, the chef’s knife is a big deal. I do most of the cooking (at least, I did in our former house and do on the boat). When Lady SierraWhiskyMike looked at me like I’d asked for the Most Boring Thing Ever, I decided to elaborate:

“A fancy chef’s knife, one that I can use for basically everything. Like, ludicrously fancy. Maybe it has some not-very-famous-outside-the-catering-world chef’s signature on it, maybe it has patterned steel, maybe it was forged like a samurai sword. Who knows?”

Suddenly that seemed much more exciting and I’m reasonably hopeful it has become an option. As far as she is concerned, it’s a gift that gives back.

Either that or I’m getting coal in my stocking again.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We’re doing Iron Man, also by Black Sabbath. I see a lot of Sabbath and Ozzy in my future.

It’s going quite well. I’m not the gods’ gift to guitar, but I’m making solid progress and we’re stretching out into playing longer, more complex music.

Don’t get me wrong: my “complex” at this point just means songs of 2-3 minutes with more than a couple of parts to them and a bit of a simple solo.

Still happy, pushing on with it. Great use of money.

Fitness

A swim and a run this week. We’re at the busiest time of year in my department at work, so it’s getting harder to break away to exercise. C’est la vie.

Final thoughts

Boat plan may or may not be looking up. It’s an emotional rollercoaster.

Finding the cheaper investment platform that will allow me to automate my investments to the same degree is a big win. I’m planning to incorporate that into my campaign starting in the New Year.

We’ve got a couple of weeks of not-Christmas-but-basically-Christmas on the island to enjoy. It’s a shame that it’s also our busiest time of year at work, but you can’t have everything.

Guitar has been my favourite use of money so far this year. It might make it onto my end of year review for 2023…

My financial independence campaign continues!