This week economists were surprised when inflation was lower than expected at 2.4%. And this started me thinking about inflation as a concept, was it good, bad or even necessary? As a child I used to think inflation was all good – I assumed everyone has a bigger mortgage than their savings. And yes, that’s […]
Nature or Nurture: a tale of two housing stories
I’ve shared with you my housing buying story when I bought my first property at 19. After my first home purchase I traded up a few times and the property market has been very good to me financially. However, I know this is not everyone’s experience. My brother is also on his third property – but […]
Correlation between money and happiness
Lately, I seem to be writing a lot of posts about money. I’ve covered net worth updates for June 2018, my investment portfolio and why $1m net worth is not enough for me to retire. But despite all those words about money, I don’t actually believe money is the key to enjoying life. Money doesn’t equal […]
I’ll show my investment portfolio – will you show yours?
So as I settle into FIRE blogging, I realise I haven’t actually shared the nitty-gritty investing details yet of what’s actually in my investment portfolio. As in the actual investment instruments I hold and the amounts allocated to each. And more importantly, why I’ve made those decisions, and what I did to get comfortable with […]
Net Worth and other updates – June 2018 (+£3k)
And the first of the month rolls around; time to do my company books and my personal balance sheet. And they are both looking not bad this month, certainly not as good as the weather, but you can’t have everything.
More-Better-Different-Less – A Goal Evaluation Framework
Holler, where has the year gone? Can you believe we are exactly halfway through the year? Me neither, as I get older time seems to fly by more quickly. And being a field marshall – ENTJ personality type, I love to plan and review progress. Lately, I’ve been liking the more-better-different-less framework to evaluate progress, as an […]
Lost art of compromise – the troubles and politics today
After visiting Northern Ireland over the bank holiday, I have been thinking about the art of compromise a lot. Learning more about the troubles in there, a tribal time with unthinkable violence, brought to home how violence was the end result when people were not able to work together and compromise. Then I think about […]
Travel as a child – Experiencing Countries 1 to 5
One of my favourite pastimes is travel. I travel to see and feel the world first hand and learn how other people live. And to get a look into other cultures and understand how privileged I am. Here I tell the tales of my travel as a child, the countries I have visited, and my […]
Bag Lady fears – why $1m is not enough for me to FIRE
As I mentioned in my April monthly update, I was a dollar millionaire in net worth. A few people asked me why I was not then FIRE’ing, and what my FIRE number was. Henceforth I lay out my bag lady fears, and why I feel I personally need more than $1m to FIRE while also attempting […]
An accidental environmentalist gets more devout
I never thought I’d be the person to become an eco-warrior. Yet nowadays I frequently am concerned about the environment and the legacy we are leaving future generations. It was not always this way. But somehow, over the past years, I’ve become more and more worried about our impact on the earth. Perhaps I could be […]