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

Progress on my goals

Boat life

This week has been a blur in my professional life, with long hours being par for the course. The “island work-life balance” is a massive myth that should die along with your boss saying “we’re a family here”.

Lady SierraWhiskyMike has been told that the engineers who serviced our engine the other week to maintain our warranty have been ordered by Volvo to replace our water pump. I’m guessing that changing one part out now is a lot cheaper than the risks that they need to replace a whole engine under warranty. I’ll take it.

We’ve also been told that the reason we can’t get the fresh water tank out is that it probably weights c.150kg as well as being stuck to the deck. A local steelworker has offered to make us a frame that will allow us to ratchet/winch it incrementally over time. Ugh. Still, the bugger needs to come out. Can’t live off jerry cans forever.

Tried working from the boat for my late-night tasks this week but quickly found that Lady SierraWhiskyMike can’t sleep if I’m using the main lights in the saloon to do my work on the table. That, it turns out, is a massive problem. Winter late-night working is probably going to mean that I’m in the office then.

Today we finally succumbed to seasonal change and have broken the radiator out of storage. We’re saying goodbye to cheap electricity bills for the next three months but it’s worth it to be warm and comfortable on our floating home.

Distractions and detours

Work sucked balls

It seems that everyone in England and the Channel Islands rushed to beat the UK budget announcement this week, and as a result I spend the first half of the week in late-night sprints to get things done. It sucked so hard.

This is a classic reminder of why I want financial independence: I have had zero control over my time this week. Things have happened to me and I haven’t been a willing participant in any of them.

House party!

Rounded off the week with a Saturday night house party at a friend’s home, who Lady SierraWhiskyMike has known for a while but I’d only met on my writing course. It’s a small island. Anyway, we didn’t know many of the people there and it was nice to mix in with a different group.

I say “party”, but it was more of a “gathering”. We’re all in our mid-30s and no-one seemed keen to throw on a hard house playlist or set up for beer pong. We did get to do fancy dress for late Hallowe’en though! On a related note, we now own face paint for future fancy dress events.

D.I.Why?!

Lady SierraWhiskyMike also ambushed me today to assist her mum with some DIY. I’ve spent Sunday ripping up decking from balconies that I don’t even own. We party hard, here!

This isn’t a real moan, I just wanted to spout off. We’re in the Channel Islands specifically to do things like help out old people related to Lady SierraWhiskyMike, so I can’t really be sad that I’m doing the thing that brought us here. It’s literally the whole point of our relocation.

Still: dude. Could’ve at least warned me before I covered my good jeans in mud from the many (many) plant pots I had to move and the soil that had seeped beneath the wooden decking boards to create a worm farm. They aren’t smelling great as I type this, but the crud should wash out. Lady SierraWhiskyMike has compensated for dropping me into this by making the tea.

Budget came out

Budget announcements don’t directly affect us in the Channel Islands, but there was a lot of indirect response as every Brit with a reasonably high net worth rushed to open an offshore trust as soon as they possibly could.

My business contacts in private wealth teams around the islands are ludicrously busy. I guess offshore finance will be around for a bit longer.

Well, we were considering a real property investment in the UK, so that we had a buy-to-let property for the short-term and a post-boat-life home in the longer term. However, the rise in Stamp Duty Land Tax and the apparent economic decline makes me unwilling to do that in the UK right now. I mean, I could live anywhere.

I’ll think about a budget announcement blog post. For now though, we’re just going to push on with equities as our main investment and gold as a commodities purchase.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

My guitar teacher cried off lessons this week because it was half term and, understandably, he wanted to spend the time with his kid.

I can’t really blame a dude for that.

In the meantime, have continued with Bon Jovi, albeit halfheartedly because of the pace of my working week.

Fitness

Achieved two gym sessions, two bike rides to work, and this weekend started with a 7.5mile run. It’s still a lot less than four weeks ago, but it’s building back up to conditioning.

I usually give myself about a month to recondition after a break, but I also haven’t spent a full three weeks relying on walking to tick over before. Ideally I’ll be back up to 13-mile runs over Christmas, subject to the inevitable impacts of Corporate Christmas on many waistline as a result of the “networking” (I.e. heavy drinking) that’s still a major part of corporate legal culture.

We can talk for hours about whether corporate law is right or wrong to promote heavy drinking as the basis for doing business. However, the few time I’ve been involved in corporate activities that didn’t involve alcohol, the struggle to stay away was very real. I’d rather just drink the wine and the beer than deal with another high-brow discussion where uninterested people kiss arse around a table headed by a King’s Counsel whose definition of “interesting” includes trivial inconsistencies of international business tax rates.

I find it’s best not to rock the boat on this particular socially-ingrained habit.

Also: hanging around lawyers is pretty tedious. They’re a career-obsessed bunch for the most part and regular readers already know that ain’t me. Mind-altering substances are very much welcomed in those particular circumstances.

I managed to get back to archery on Friday night. A few people made comment that it had been a long time since I’d last come down but nothing was spiteful about it and I’ve been welcomed back to the range. The club are making more effort to open later on Mondays and Fridays so I’m fairly hopeful that I can do Friday nights a few times per month.

It’s a fairly cheap hobby at this point and it keeps me active. I’m not going top strive to become a tournament-level archer, but I’m happy to turn up and stretch the bowstring a bit.

Final thoughts

This week has been dominated by being thrashed at work.

I’ve got mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, it means I’m fairly unlikely to get fired and my job is a well-paying career that funds my investments. It’s also what’s allowing me to carry more of the slack while Lady SierraWhiskyMike investigates self-employment opportunities. Law is still a fairly well-paid career, notwithstanding that the Channel Islands isn’t as lucrative for lawyers as London is.

On the other: I really hate the level of commitment this job demands. If it was, say, 30-50% reduced it would be an excellent job to have. As of the time of writing I haven’t found a way to achieve this desired balance.

Sadly, I don’t have any better prospects (at the moment), so I’m going to have to embrace the suck for now.

I once made this point on a forum and someone piped up with “AcCoUNTantS hAvE iT wORse!” or some similar crap. Dude, it ain’t a competition. Saying that being punched in the nuts is better than having double limb amputations doesn’t take away from the fact that I don’t want to get punched in the nuts.

It’s not wrong to want a better situation.

Getting back into archery was a nice end to my working week, as was going to meet some new people.

Right: need to wash this mud off, get into my pyjamas and snuggle up in front of the radiator.

My financial independence campaign continues!