Reset – how to restart your life and get F.U. money is a book for the mid-life crisis financial independence campaigner by David Sawyer.
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What’s the book about?
The premise of RESET is that the author hit his fifties and suddenly realised that their job just wasn’t doing it any more. David wasn’t getting the satisfaction from their life that he’d hoped for (more on this later). David sets this out brilliantly in the opening chapter: without spoiling too much, he paints the picture of a fictional man in a mid-life crisis. His job takes up his time, he’s on call without being paid to be on call because that’s expected, he’s missing his own family growing up because he’s working to keep the family, his money comes in and goes out to support a lifestyle built around working the job to support the lifestyle… it’s really well done.
I thought that the storytelling parts of the book were exceptionally well done. David might want to try writing some erotic fiction as a side hustle one day. His characters are expertly brought to life, you can tell that he works in public relations.
…and that’s where financial independence comes in
If you’re reading this blog and/or are interested in this book, you’ll guess the punchline within three pages. Which is good, because you don’t buy a book called RESET: how to restart your life and get F.U. money expecting mystery, do you?
David doesn’t disappoint here. He outlines his motivation (something about nice wine somewhere pleasant with a book), then continues with the stuff we know and love.
Well, sort of.
Marie Kondo, minimalism and financial independence
This was a pretty cool section of the book and not something I’d seen so explicitly in a financial independence book before. Much like Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez suggested at the start of Your money of your life, RESET starts with an audit of the stuff you have. However, unlike Vicki and Joe, David suggests Marie Kondo-ing the clutter out of your house. Yes, that Marie Kondo, and yes – she’s now also a verb.
I’m a big fan of this. Much like the Minimalists, David talks about getting rid of stuff you don’t need and freeing up clutter so that it doesn’t drag on your consciousness. If you haven’t read the Minimalists’ blog before and have a Netflix subscription/ free trial, see their documentary for a quick summary. David does it the Mary Kondo way, though: room by room, get rid. He also suggests doing it alone to avoid too many people suddenly attributing sentiment to belongings.
This bit makes a lot of sense to me, and it’s something my partner and I have been consciously doing for a while now, but we do it slowly and try to sell unused stuff on Facebook marketplace, which sometimes works. David clearly can’t wait for patience and destroys a room at a time. Good for him I guess!
The RESET financial independence campaign
Here’s where my review of the RESET book gets a little critical. David, I’ve never met you, but I’m sorry – I disagree.
David’s proposal is to earn your financial independence through investing in ETFs. So far, so logical: anyone can do it and it seems to work (eventually). I don’t have any complaints so far.
The bit that I thought went beyond though was that David sets out financial recommendations for what you “should” invest in. Despite the disclaimer, I thought he went a little too far by recommending a portfolio balance rather than presenting options, but that could just be me. The biggest thing for me, though, was that he suggests quite a heavy weighting into UK equities.
Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of diversification. I’ll go as far and wide as possible and even jump ship into REITs, gold and sometimes crypto to reduce concentration risk. I do have a UK bias in my ISA portfolio, as I hold mainly UK REITs in the real estate part. However, the UK makes up about 4.1% of total world equities. Putting as much into UK ETFs as David suggests doesn’t make sense, not least because your other assets – your job, your home (more on that in another review…) and your cash – are all concentrated in the UK by default.
Otherwise, I can’t complain too much about the strategy; it’s the specific investing chapter that I’m not convinced about.
Self-employment and financial independence
Fortunately, the RESET book continues on to a high. David left his job to set up Zude P.R. and he points out the many advantages of being self-employed towards the end of the book. I’m a long way from being self-employed (well, except for side hustles) but it’s something I aspire to myself, for many of the same reasons. Tax efficiency, control of your own destiny, freedom of location and clients… It’s not a bad idea.
Who is this book for?
Reset is a book aimed at the mid-life financial independence crowd. It has some good ideas, but it assumes that you’ve been unhappy for a while then suddenly decide to change your life to fit financial independence. I mean, it’s called RESET, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. It’s hardly START.
I’m a bit younger (I suspect a good 20 years younger) and some of this is smart but hard to relate to. I don’t have kids, I worked out quite quickly that I was better off without a car instead of deciding not to buy an executive car, and I haven’t needed twenty years of soul-crushing public relations jobs to break me down before learning to invest. I guess technically I’ve had ten years of public sector work, but that’s a story for another time. As a result, when David presents his financial independence target, I couldn’t help but feel that he could have hit it sooner if he hadn’t accumulated so much stuff so early on.
What RESET does well though is tell the story and set out the basics of financial independence. If you’re having an existential crisis in your career, it’s definitely worth a quick read.
Final thoughts on RESET
Honestly, I’m unsure about this one. It’s recommended by Monevator (who have now officially achieved financial independence… good for them!) but I got the sense that it wasn’t really aimed at me. Apart from disagreeing with the investing choices presented in the book, I got the impression that David and I have slightly different ideas of financial independence. I want to be unburdened and free to do what I want, he specifically wants to be relaxed and comfortable. Still, that’s OK. Financial independence can look like whatever you want it to.
If you decide that this might be something for you, have a look via this affiliate link to contribute to this site (at no cost to you). I’ll confess: I used a free trial of Kindle Unlimited to read it, which you can also get via this affiliate link. No, you don’t pay more for clicking the link, I just get a share of Jeff B’s pension pot. He doesn’t need it, don’t feel guilty.
