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

Progress on my goals

Boat life

We’ve wrapped the boat in some LED Christmas lights that have little solar panels on them. I haven’t seen how they’ve come out yet, but we have a multicoloured lighting band around our top guard wire.

It’s a little token effort, probably could have tried harder to be honest. Good enough!

Will update this with a night picture if the lights all work. We tested them before and they were great for a cheap Amazon purchase but the batteries have since drained and I don’t know for certain that they still work.

End of year review

This post is a little shorter than normal because I’m putting the effort into the end of year review for 2024. That’s always a hard post to write, so bear with me!

Distractions and detours

Christmas parties

We had our department’s Christmas do on Friday and I may have shown less restraint than the firm wide one. Still, a bit of dancing like I’m still 20 isn’t a bad thing. That’ll do until next year.

Gap Yah

We’re obviously happy with our boat life. It’s coming up to a year since we first moved aboard and it’s the biggest thing in my life that I wouldn’t change.

Both Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I are keen that for the next couple of years, while our dog is still with us, that we’re going to maintain our life aboard and enjoy the summer sailing. The pattern is likely to be: work/ live aboard/ get a good sail in each year/ save and invest heavily.

However, we’re getting pretty close to CoastFi. Not rolling in it, but it’s reasonably foreseeable that just by maintaining the current rate of investment for two more years we can switch fire completely and just let the investment pot do its thing in the background while we work out what’s next for us.

So we’ve had some pretty cool conversations recently about what we do with this hard-won freedom.

The boring thing to do would be to grind for an other decade and then call it an early retirement. If we had kids, that would be the obvious answer. It’s a good option (and worth considering), but we don’t have kids. There’s no reason for us to do the same things as other people.

Obviously the Boat Plan is still high on our list. That’s going to happen in some form. But we’re also looking at intermediate options, such as taking a year out to do something random and then come back to work a year before we push the boat, literally and metaphorically, out to sea.

For example: we could take that first season to the Caribbean, then return, temp for six months, then go backpacking for a year. That kind of thing.

Anyway, we’re just playing around. It’s easily two years before that’s the thing we do. For now though it’s exciting to consider the possibilities.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We played harmonies in the A major scale in this week’s lesson, which means I got to play along with my teacher.

Music is so much better when you’re playing with other people. I quite like guitar when I get into playing, but there’s a whole other dimension when you play with someone else. It’s one of the best feelings in the world when it works out.

Law is kind of a massive time suck so I’m not ready to commit to a band yet. With my learning curve for guitar still being a vertical ascent, I can’t find the time to both play in a band and also improve my skills in the background. Ain’t no lawyer got time for that!

Fitness

I’ve been lax this week, with only one run of 8 miles in so far. Actually, when my late breakfast has gone down, it’s time for me to go out on a jog.

Bad SierraWhiskyMike!

Final thoughts

A week of working ended by beers. That’s basically my week.

What a boring read, must try harder!

The Gap Yah thing is interesting. I hadn’t seriously considered that this would be an option to us until Lady SierraWhiskyMike asked if (post-dog – I’m not leaving our dog out, we love him) she would be able to do something like the Clipper Race or the Globe Race and just take a year out to do them.

Now: I’m not interested in doing a year long boat race. I like living aboard because it’s a comfortable adventure travel, but three to twelve months at sea (easily a year with build-up) not actually stopping to see the sights doesn’t interest me at all.

I sail to get somewhere enjoyable, I don’t want this to become the hard thing to do!

But if she wants to scratch that itch, there’s nothing to stop me from doing something weird for that year while she does that, right? Maybe backpacking. I fancy going to China to do Kung Fu for a year, mostly to have the experience of having done it rather than with a view to becoming a martial arts master, but I don’t see Lady SierraWhiskyMike being even remotely interested in that kind of thing. Honestly, could try anything really.

We’re a long way off doing anything like this but it’s cool to have that kind of discussion.

My financial independence campaign continues!