Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat life
WE GOT THE TANK OUT!
Well, actually, we hired a nice chap called Nigel to build us a steel frame that could support a 1.5 tonne rated ratchet pulley and then all three of us used various bits of rope and persuasion to lift that bastard out of its grave.
Given that we strained the pulley to its limits and even bent the stainless steel tank, I don’t feel too bad any more that I couldn’t dead lift it out of the hole. I don’t think I could’ve added over a ton of force in that enclosed space with just my legs and lower back. A bit optimistic.
Anyway: she’s out of the hole. Now we need to get her out of the boat and measure up. Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I will attempt this feat this afternoon.
Wish us luck!
Bitcoin boost
Convicted felon and orange fan D. Trump will be the next US President. The Citrus-in-Chief. The Man, the Myth, the Mandarin. The Toupee’d Tangerine at the Top. I could go on…
However, it has been fantastic for the Bitcoin price.
Ironically, Bitcoin prices (and all risk-on assets for that matter) tend to rise after major elections regardless of who wins.
The time is soon coming where I’ll rebalance some of that into other portfolio assets. I still want to believe in the Bitcoin project, but I also don’t want my capital overweighted in single unproductive assets, like Bitcoin and gold.
What do I mean by that?
Well, BTC by itself doesn’t do anything. It’s a medium of exchange, it’s up to the users to do something with it. The only reasons that its price increases in fiat cash terms are that (a) it hasn’t found a settled position as a global medium of exchange yet, so demand is variable, and (b) fiat cash has been incredibly inflated in recent years so the price should naturally increase anyway if demand remains constant.
Meanwhile: if I add liquidity to capital markets, companies find it easier to get money (whether by new share issues or borrowing against their share capital) to do things like make goods, provide services or employ people.
I truly believe that there should be an element of non-productive assets in my portfolio and that my wealth shouldn’t be reliant on an increasingly narrow and globalised stock market. But, ethically, I feel like investment is a good thing to do because of the broader economic and social benefits, so I tend to favour investments in companies and/or public debts and skew my assets to reflect these beliefs.
Distractions and detours
Interesting client call…
Part of my work involves me building a tech startup-up and digital assets legal practice. Look: if I’m going to grind at law, I’d prefer to have sexy clients with interesting problems than be doing yet another set of articles for a millionaire’s gambling company.
The gambling company is a real example. There are genuinely people in the world whose horse racing bets and casino habits warrant them setting up a company with a couple of buddies in the Channel Islands to manage their collective gambling slush fund. And here’s me trying to grind to the next £100k like a chump.
Anyway: I had a call with one guy who is bootstrapping a legal tech project that would actually be a value addition to that particular part of law. His problem is that he can’t get investors to hit his ideal target market unless and until he can prove concept.
Turns out that I know enough people on the Channel Islands now that we might be able to help him use us as a pilot project.
So I’m going to do some digging and see if the concept is viable and if I can help him set up here. If I can’t, then at least it will fail early and it won’t hurt my reputation as a lawyer to be seen as someone who tries to get stuff done.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
This week we revised Bon Jovi and made a start on War Pigs by Black Sabbath, which is an awesome song and I’m just about good enough to play the main verse and chorus riffs.
Actually it’s so cool I might put some effort into learning the solo and intro later.
I also linked my teacher up to my Spotify account and I’ve shared with him my “aspirational” guitar playlist. These songs are probably way out of my depth now, and the idea is that he can start to put me through some kind of plan to eventually get to the standard where I can start to play along with them.
So that’s cool!
Fitness
Got to the gym three times, cycled in once. Not ideal but not bad. OK.
I’m going to attempt to lift the tank shortly and that might kill my long distance run for the weekend because I may be knackered after that. If that happens, my plan is to get the distance run in during the week on top of my usual weekend run.
Fitbit reckons I’m getting over 12,000 steps in pretty consistently. Monday was an exception to the rule because it doesn’t factor cycling into your activity counter. So, on the whole, my activity levels are pretty damn good.
The running might be a concern because I have this marathon booked in for April rather than for any real concern. Fortunately, I won’t actually disappoint anyone if I fail to hit the marathon time I was aiming for, since no-one really knows or cares about it. That’s the great thing about personal goals.
Final thoughts
Getting the tank out is huge and we can now make the improvements to our home by replacing it with a better solution than the jerry cans and water carriers we’re using.
So that’s a massive value add.
Bitcoin has performed ridiculously well for me over the last couple of years and I’ll enjoy the ride for now, but I’m not buying for the moment and will probably look to sell a portion of my holdings near the end of the year or the start of 2025.
I’ve got some interesting opportunities coming up that might lead to good things whether they succeed or fail. That’s a cool position to be in.
Guitar is still awesome. I still suck at it but I get better each week and the lessons are definitely worth the money.
Fitness is kind of on the back burner this weekend as we wrestle the tank, and yet my baseline level of fitness is quite high so I don’t think I’ll suffer too much provided that I get the running in somewhere else.
A pretty great week!
Next week, we’re flying to Paris for a long weekend for our 10th anniversary. We’re all paid up for the trip, all budgeted for, and we should have a great time. I’m excited already!
My financial independence campaign continues!
