Mr Fu and I are both in our late forties and seriously lament our late discovery of financial independence. What hope did we have, though, considering our non-existent education in all things financial?
In the UK news this week it has been reported that, for a comfortable retirement, people need to save a ‘pension mountain’ of £260,000.
Cue the doom-mongers and naysayers. ‘Who could ever hope to save this amount of money?’
Using the 4% rule this would give an annual income of £10,400. Doesn’t sound very comfortable to me.
So, how do we climb this ‘Mountain’?
Continue reading
I was listening to Jonathan and Brad on their ChooseFI podcast all about coding this week and found it really interesting. They were interviewing Ryan Carson from Treehouse, an online coding tuition course website, who considers coding to be a trade rather than a professional qualification achieved at college/University. TreeHouse originated from a desire to make coding education available and financially accessible to more people, and students can try it for free before committing to a course. One point made during the podcast was that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted that there will be 1.4 million new jobs in tech in the US by 2020, and only 400,000 will be filled by college graduates, so presumably the positions will be taken by those who’ve either studied elsewhere or topped up their qualifications somewhere other than college.
Fingers crossed Little Fu#1 will benefit from a similar scenario in the UK after he found college and University wasn’t for him right now.
He attended our local grammar school and was planning to continue in the Sixth Form there to do A-levels. At the time he’d no idea of a career goal, or the path to it, so he chose subjects he’d enjoyed at GCSE. Things started well, but by Christmas, the sheer workload of A-levels started to take its toll, and, at the suggestion of school (who were very supportive) he dropped one of his four chosen A-levels.
For us as parents, though, this made us think deeply about whether he was doing the right thing at all. Continue reading
Recap – This is step 3 in the process to set up a plan for my son, FU#1, to buy a property and reach FI before he is 40 years old.
In step 2 of the plan, we set up an initial budget for him to implement. The main part of this budget was to automate his savings to enable him to achieve a 50% savings rate.
Now we come to step 3, which is to devise an investment strategy to attain the goal of the plan. Continue reading
Five Little FUs go crazy at Tarr Steps, Dulverton, Somerset ….A great place for a family walk
It’s not an exhaustive list and I expect to add to it, but please send me any of your favourite places to visit that won’t ruin the path to FIRE and I’ll add them to the list.
In my last post I mentioned how a National Curriculum can’t ever hope to keep up with the current rapid advances in technology, the workplace (AND LIFE!)
Left to their own ‘devices’ (no pun intended 🙂 ) the Little FUs will spend 24 hours a day plugged into one type or another, so it’s only natural to look to computer/tablet-based apps and websites for learning, too.
As life has gravitated online even we as adults waste while away many a rainy afternoon clicking from one interesting YouTube video to another, and children can whizz through a whole year’s worth of science videos in a couple of hours in just the same way.
But online learning needn’t be expensive. It needn’t cost anything, in fact.
The sites and links I’ve listed below are free to access and we have no affiliation or link with any of the companies or websites mentioned – they’re merely a collection of things we use and find useful, or have had recommended to us. Continue reading
Who would like a tax-free birthday present of £250,000, for free?
Me please, whats the catch? How much is it going to cost?
The cost to you, my friend? – Zilch, Nada, Zippo, Zero, Nothing!
This is a scam, right?
No.
So what gives? Continue reading
I’m putting in place a quite simple budget plan for FU#1 that doesn’t need a lot of tracking and doesn’t require every little transaction to be logged.
I have broken the budget down to 3 main areas. These are Savings, Essential Expenses, and Non-essential expenses.
The goal of putting a budget in place is to enable FU#1 to save enough to buy a house in approximately 5-6 years when he is around 25 years old, and also to become FI in his 30’s. Continue reading
From what I hear and read, people of the FIRE community are really keen to not just retire early or become financially independent, but to buy back time. The freedom created when you no longer need to work means you’ve the time to enjoy what makes you happy. Continue reading
‘…by 2035 there may be almost no one giving up work before the age of 65. That would mean nearly everyone born after 1970 will work beyond their 65th birthday.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5529841/By-2035-no-one-work-turn-65.html#ixzz5AW0RWNwo
Looks like we’ve had it then 😉 !
