In one of my last FI campaign notes, I ended the week with some sort-of half-developed ideas about hobbies being important for financial independence. Here’s a (slightly) more developed version.
I get the impression that anxiety and frustration about making progress are very real issues for a lot of people on the financial independence campaign – for me, too. If you’re one of these people I hope you find some value in this post.
It’s easy to get obsessed by data
Everyone loves “numbers go up!”. It’s a huge dopamine hit that keeps both casinos and social media giants in business.
I’m serious about that last part. If you get a chance, check out The Social Dilemma on Netflix.
You know what? Here’s an embed to the trailer for it on YouTube. It’s a bit off-piste, but it’s my blog and I can go rogue if I want to.
If only we didn’t measure investments and budgets like that!
Anyway, the financial independence campaign is literally about tracking numbers. For many people, and I’m no exception, the numbers tell the story.
Our budgetary successes. Our portfolio growth. Our savings rate efficiencies. A 4% rule based on spending. Return on investment.
But there’s also a Dark Side to the numbers: they show investment losses. Mistakes. The knowledge that one night out has cost you 10% of your investment contributions that month. Your distance to the finish.
Then there’s the fact that it looks so easy to compare your numbers to someone else’s.
Everyone likes a dopamine hit, but no-one likes to feel behind.
There’s always a bigger fish…
If you were to go to a financial advisor, you’d hope that they’d help you find a plan that’s tailored to you.
Your circumstances. Your earnings. Your priorities. Most importantly: what you’re willing to compromise to get there – volatility, spending, liquidity, you name it.
So why would we all have the same financial independence campaign plan?
Why should we even compare ourselves to others?
Something that has stuck with me was a comment from an anonymous person who wished bloggers would be “more transparent” about earnings, savings and investments. They were mainly talking about money made from blogging; but that wasn’t just it.
People love comparing the numbers.
A guy I met in Kabul used the phrase “dazzle ‘em with data porn” when talking about his presentation to his commanders, to make his plans look more persuasive. He wasn’t wrong. It’s probably no surprise that my most successful post to date – by a factor of 5 – was when I said I’d hit 60% LTV on my mortgage.
It’s too easy to get fixed on the tracking, and that ain’t healthy
Tracking your progress is important. If something isn’t measured, it isn’t really managed.
But it’s too easy to just watch numbers and obsessively track balances.
And if that’s too easy, then it’s too easy for a bad statistic to screw up your mood.
Nothing good ever comes from over-analysis.
This used to be me.
I started writing the Financial Independence Campaign for a lot of reasons, but one of them was because I needed to do something other than watch my investment pot increase by a measly £200 a month.
Seriously. As a trainee solicitor, that was all I could manage in the first year of this blog. And, if you look at my early posts, I was really going for it to top that up.
Look at the side hustles I tried just to get this rate. I enjoyed trying them out, they were great fun, but that’s a lot of extra energy and I’m not sustaining them now.
Part of that was because I was also renovating a house which, at the time, I wasn’t going to sell; I was also overpaying the mortgage. It was a finite project that meant I’d be able to reduce the overpayments and enjoy a low-cost rent by the time my traineeship ended. When I made my plan at the time, I looked at the overall benefits and accepted that to start with the numbers wouldn’t be going up as fast.
For a short sprint or if you want to learn something new, a side hustle is awesome. I still keep my eyes open for them, it’s like a mini-project you own. The difference between me now and me then is simply that I’m in a much better place to contribute to my financial independence without needing a supplement than I was before. I’d now only do a side hustle for interest, not because of necessity.
Realistically though, it’s going to take years to hit FI
Even if you’re going to Millionaire Fastlane life and sell a business you built for phat dollars, this is a multi-year financial independence campaign. I don’t know of anyone who built and exited from a business that set them up for a life of optionality within a year.
Here’s where hobbies come in
Chances are that you read this post title and thought I was being patronising.
I’m not. I’m being deadly serious.
You can’t focus on the numbers, the length of the timeline, your current earnings or anything like that for too long. That isn’t healthy. There’s a known bias toward loss aversion in assessing risk, giving rise to the idea that the emotional impact of a loss is greater than that of a win.
This was a Kahneman and Tversky theory, but rather than link to that paper here’s a cool blog post I found summarising the idea.
Anyway, as I was saying – there has to be something else. Something that you can obsess over that you can also control, and that’s enjoyable for its own sake. You need a hobby, and it can’t just be Netflix.
Wait, what?
You might think this is an odd point.
I’m trying to promote the idea of a hobby that is actively engaging, one that you would actively pursue and be interested in for a sustained length of time, and ideally with some way for you to think about progress.
Technically Netflix is sustainable, but it’s passive. You scroll for ages, click on a series, binge for a while mindlessly (maybe even search the web on your phone at the same time?) and then a few hours have gone and you’re marginally entertained. Nothing wrong with a bit of zombie time, I get it, but that’s not going to stop the number-checking. It won’t satisfy.
It’s totally fine not to have a big hobby if you love your work!
And that’s OK. I’m not here to judge. You do you, don’t let some internet random tell you any different.
The problem is: what if you don’t love your work?
I’m guessing that, like millions of disaffected employees around the world, you’ll probably daydream about other things. Things you care about. Stuff that you get obsessive over…
…aaaand we’re back to obsessively checking the numbers. All the time. At work, at home.
Even then, this would be fine if you could do something about them, but if you’re working for a regular wage you can’t actually do that much. The pay comes in monthly in set amounts. You can’t hurry it up, so you’re just waiting for weeks for the next instalment.
If only you had something to obsess over that you could control.
An investment in your quality of life
The way I see it, having a hobby is an investment in your quality of living.
If you can find something to focus on that you can control, preferably something enjoyable for its own sake rather than achievements, this investing lark is probably going to go a lot smoother.
Think about it: if you’re enjoying your time, you’re not counting it down. It’s not that you’re somehow not focussing on getting to FI, it’s more that you’re accepting the journey and making the most of life pre and post-FI.
Selecting hobbies for Financial Independence
The ideal hobby will have the following traits:
- A reasonably low initial capital expenditure and ongoing cost
- The ability to do it solo as well as with other people, so that you can satisfy your need for community but aren’t reliant on someone else turning up
- Something you can do most days or at least most weeks
- Some way for you to measure or witness progress
Flow state?
There’s a state of mind observed in humans called “flow”. You can technically get this from your work, but it’s not always true. I rarely get into flow during the workday, my e-mail constantly trips me out of it and lawyers aren’t allowed to ignore the inbox. Shame.
Anyway, it’s a state of mind where you are so engrossed in the activity that you don’t notice the passage of time or what’s going on around you. It’s a feeling where your body and mind are working perfectly together to the same outcome.
An ideal hobby has a large flow state component.
To get there, you have to be doing something where there’s an element of play, an element of challenge (but not too much challenge) and an element of duration.
I generally find flow during a run, but I don’t find it during weight training (which is enjoyable but not really a flowing activity). I can really get into flow when playing guitar, but I’m a beginner so it doesn’t last too long before I exhaust my ability. I can get into flow playing video games, but this is becoming less easy as I get older.
I don’t think flow is essential in a hobby, but it’s ideal if you can get it.
What I’m doing
To be fair, I have a lot of hobbies and pastimes. Not all of them are ideal for financial independence! I’ve set them out below with a short critique.
Archery
Not ideal, since you can’t do it alone really unless you live in a rural location. I can only do it at the local archery club.
On the positive side, club sports have a social community element that’s hard to beat. It’s a lot cheaper to go and shoot the bow you already own than it is to spend your whole night in the pub. I mean, you might also go to the pub, but an hour after range time is a lot cheaper than four hours’ pub-only socialising.
Cost
£400 for initial equipment outlay. £180 per year in club membership. Might cost £100 a year in consumables and/or replacement items.
Blogging
Actually quite good. You can just about do it for free, there’s a cool thing to sharing your thoughts, it’s great when people reach out to you as a connection.
Really good for learning how the internet works and getting sucked into basic HTML/CSS. Less good for being active. There is a community element to it, but it’s mostly online communities that you have to actively seek out.
Cost
You need a device to type on, but that could be a mobile phone. I’m drafted this post on the Jetpack App for WordPress but a laptop is much easier.
Hosting is a bit pricey because you pay it up front. I think mine costs £15 a month, but you can definitely get it a lot cheaper. There are “freemium” hosting options but I like that I can control what’s on my patch of the internet.
I pay around £20 a year for a domain name. Again, you can get free or cheaper ones, but I like the choice and control.
Dog walking
Hear me out!
We have a dog, so dog walking is a twice daily ritual that involves very little kit. Most people, especially if you rent in the city, can’t quite justify the commitment.
*But* people are always looking for a dog walker. Even if it’s just helping someone out for a day, someone somewhere and probably nearby would love for you to walk their pet once in a while.
Dog walking is light exercise in itself. There’s a bit of a walk, an excuse to be out in the sunshine, and the cost is picking up poop in a bag and binning it. Generally, although not all the time, it’s a pretty chill experience.
What’s different to “just walking” though is that people chat to you. A lot. Unless your dog is Rex the Destroyer of Worlds, you meet a lot of people. It’s like the dog vouches for you. Dog walkers form a community of their own, people stop you as you pass by and ask to pet your dog, whole new connections get made with total strangers without anyone feeling the need to start small talk.
Cost
Dogs can be pricey, but you can do this for free if you just wear old clothes and get your name out there. If you decide it’s your thing, you can even get insurance cover and do it for money, but then you’re straying into side hustle territory.
If you don’t know anyone with a dog or don’t want to approach people you know, you’ll be amazed at the charities who want volunteer dog walkers for a couple of days per month. Do a web search for “volunteer dog walker” in your area and you’ll find quite a lot. Dogs Trust are often looking for helpers.
Guitar
I’m really into this, having started about three months ago. I was a drummer for years before the practical considerations overcame that and playing music is a great feeling.
I’d tried to teach myself guitar years ago but it just died off. Can’t stress enough how useful lessons are: it holds you to account and your teacher can help you in ways a website can’t.
Cost
£200-400 is a reasonable electric guitar or a very good acoustic from new, cheaper if you buy second hand. I pay £40 per hour for a lesson once a week, but most teachers will offer 30 minute lessons if you can’t stretch to that budget.
This seems pricey until you include all the practice time (which gets good in itself after about a month of intense learning curve!). I reckon that £40 is about 5-8 hours of enjoyment a week, which is pretty good value.
I did try out Guitar Tricks.com, which has a pretty decent beginner course and is a lot cheaper than a teacher. I don’t think it replaces a real life teacher though, the experience just isn’t the same.
Kettlebells
Cheaper than a gym! Hard to do indoors but when the weather is good it’s a workout on its own.
Not great for socialising and you can’t do it for very long, but you can focus on your results and not think about FI for a bit. Undoes some of the desk job damage.
Cost
Should be able to get a good cast iron kettlebell for under £50. I also have a £5 set of old leather weightlifting gloves because my palms get sweaty and I blister really easily. 16kg will probably last you a year or two. Here’s an affiliate link to a decent kettlebell if you’re keen to start, but you could probably go to a specialist kettlebell class at a local gym to dip your toes in.
You can find all the resources you need on the internet. The Reddit sub r/kettlebell is a great resource.
Running
I don’t do this as a social activity but I know a lot of people do. There are options everywhere.
Back in the day I ran rain or shine. Nowadays I do it on nice days with an old iPod nano for company.
Great for improving cardio fitness and shifting weight, but you need to condition properly and it’s easier to injure yourself running than you’d think. Ignore warm-up and stretching off at your peril.
Cost
Trainers are probably £100-150. This can be the hardest part to get right, too. I run in barefoot/zero drop now (I actually run in these…) but if you’re starting out then a specialist running shop is the best answer. Socks, shorts and the rest will probably add £50 to this, but to start with you can improvise those parts with what you already own.
Trainers last 6-12 months for most people, a bit longer for barefoot/zero drop as you’re not compressing the soles because there’s no padding to compress.
Sailing
As FIRE goes, sailing is a terrible sport. The kit is super expensive!
If you treat a sailing course as a holiday, it opens up options later and the costs are a lot more reasonable. More reasonable, mind you, not objectively reasonable. Of the hobbies I have, this is the least accessible to anyone.
Cost
OMG so much. Cheapest way to do this is to join a dinghy sailing club or be the crewman on someone else’s boat. If we weren’t going down the route of living on a boat, I’d probably not bother.
The basic RYA competent crew course for yachting will set you back £600-1000 for a week. I did mine at Solent Boat Training, which was good value.
Swimming
Swimming as an adult isn’t the most sociable hobby – too many people in the pool actually makes it harder to get into a rhythm – but you do start to see some familiar faces after a while.
“Wild swimming” is also A Thing now. I’m not sure how I feel about branding it, but if that helps people get active and build some sense of community then that’s cool by me.
Cost
£20 will get you a good set of trunks. Ladies might pay a bit more. £10-20 will get you some goggles and then you’re flying.
I took a three month “beginner’s front crawl” remedial swimming course, meeting once a week, for £84. That was really helpful and now I’m confident enough to continue on my own, but if you’re a natural talent then you won’t need that.
£250 for the year in pool membership seems reasonable. If you can find a beach/lake/river where “wild swimming” is a thing you might reduce this cost down, but I think those guys have more kit.
Video games
I wasn’t sure whether or not to put this in. It’s not far off from Netflix, but the difference is the active participation of the player.
The great thing is the astonishing value for money. A £50 brand new game might last an adult gamer with a full-time job 6 months to a year or two. The weakness is that there’s no way to see progress, apart from playing through a whole game and moving onto the next.
I have an older PS4 that’s on its last legs after almost a decade of service and an N64 that’s great for having some people over and playing Mario Kart. Everyone loves Mario Kart 64, and as a social gathering goes then a few beers, oven pizza and N64 is cheap entertainment for four people (or more if you take turns).
The secret is to wait until games are older to buy them. I really enjoyed the remake of Doom and I paid the total of £7 for it. PC gamers have a better time of this as most PC games don’t actually die off: you can still buy and play the original Doom and most other games on the Steam store.
Cost
Depends. Games consoles have a cheaper entry point and you can usually buy them second hand for two-thirds of the price. A used N64 is around £100, but there are much newer and some cheaper consoles out there. On the other hand, if you already have a laptop and are happy playing older games (I am!), then Steam store and £10 could find you a great few months of entertainment.
I recommend the Reddit sub r/patientgamers for reviews of games that are older and therefore a lot cheaper. If you don’t need the latest toys, you’ll be able to pick up a lot of gems really cheap based on reviews from that group.
To be fair, my approach probably isn’t right either!
At the risk of looking like a “do what I say, not what I do” advisor, I’m going to criticise this broad approach to having lots of concurrent activities: I won’t make much progress if I keep spreading myself so thin.
That’s fine, I’m happy with knowing a little bit about a lot of things, but you might not be. I reckon the optimum amount is probably two big hobbies if you want to make progress and become a master of them.
Final thoughts
I’m glad you’re taking the time to think about your finances. It’s awesome that you’re following a deliberate financial independence campaign plan. I’m grateful that you take the time to read my blog and follow along. This is all great stuff!
What I don’t want you to do is become so obsessive about the numbers that you get stressed or your mental health suffers. That’s not good for anyone and it’s the kind of thing that makes you abort your own financial independence campaign out of sheer desperation.
So my suggestion is that if you’re finding yourself sucked in to data tracking, refreshing your portfolio obsessively and so on – might be time to invest in a hobby.
