2023-03-11 05:48
I was not going to write this 4 years of FIRE post but I’ve had a number of requests for it which made me do a little thinking. In the end I thought it might add a little value a… Read More
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Save Hard, Invest Wisely, Retire Early - My strategy for financial independence and early retirement (FIRE)
2021-12-10 15:28
2021 has been my third year since I took that initial leap into the FIRE unknown and for me it’s been my biggest year ever for change. Some good and some not so good. So wi… Read More
2021-01-01 05:41
Usually at this time of year I publish a year in review which covers a little of the qualitative and a lot of the quantitative. Given the year we’ve just had, along with qua… Read More
2020-05-08 09:20
I’m not sure if it’s the COVID-19 lockdown affecting me, or whether this is really a thing, but over the past month or so I’ve started to really notice companies stretching… Read More
2020-03-28 13:50
With us now being only a single working week away from the new UK financial year and the investment world still feeling the impacts of the COVID-19 situation I thought it might be worthwhile… Read More
2020-03-15 12:22
A chart of the monthly FTSE 100 price looks something like this:
Click to enlarge, Monthly FTSE 100 Price
This is the chart that you’ll see on all the mainstream media channels a… Read More
2020-02-29 08:41
If you were a trader on the financial markets, I’d think that you’ve probably had quite an interesting week. After all the S&P500 is down 11.5% (an official correction… Read More
2020-01-10 16:49
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” – not Albert Einstein as I always thought but actually Rita Mae Brown
2019 represente… Read More
2020-01-01 13:50
It’s now a little over 8 years ago that I started to build my UK High Yield Portfolio (HYP). It was a much talked about strategy back in the Motley Fool forum days and today stil… Read More
2019-12-14 13:42
I was recently reading a FIRE blog post, from a couple who are still very much deep in the swim phase of the FIRE triathlon, where the post was exploring who in society has the opportunity t… Read More
2019-11-23 17:55
November 2019 marks a couple of significant anniversaries for me. The first anniversary is that it’s now 10 years since I started this blog with this first very amateurish post… Read More
2019-10-25 18:54
If you’re a UK based investor who’s interested in keeping investment expenses low then it’s highly likely that you’re using Vanguard index and exchange traded funds (… Read More
2019-10-04 12:47
At the end of June I concluded that a potentially positive step forward on my FIRE journey was to focus on being a ‘human being’ rather than a ‘human doing’ for… Read More
2019-08-02 14:51
A few months after returning to my industry, albeit in a different role in the pursuit of meaningful work, I’ve left the company and am back to FIRE. Soon after joining it became… Read More
2019-07-20 13:30
Another year has passed for our UK early retiree. A year ago I wrote that in the worlds biggest economy, the United States, Donald Trump was starting trade wars and the S&P500 cycl… Read More
2019-07-14 10:01
Personal Finance is a major hobby of mine. I’ve now been absorbing everything I can about saving, investing and financial independence since late 2007. In November this yea… Read More
2019-06-08 13:24
6 months after taking the FIRE (financially independent retired early) leap I can confirm that (for now) I’ve reverted back to FI (financially independent) mode. That’s rig… Read More
2019-02-08 16:53
As a 46 year old now in Early Retirement it seems worthwhile to now share more detail on how I have as tax efficiently as possible tried to build my wealth so that I run out of life bef… Read More
2019-01-14 14:00
The fourth quarter of 2018 contained the pivotal moment of my FIRE journey so far – FIRE day. Financially it represented the transition from rapid wealth accumulation to hopefull… Read More
2019-01-01 09:20
A little over 7 years ago (late 2011) I started to build a UK High Yield Portfolio (HYP). It was a much talked about strategy back in the Motley Fool forum days and today still gets pl… Read More
2018-12-23 10:29
The organisation I up until recently worked for closes its year at the end of December. With shutdowns between Christmas and New Year it meant that the run in to the Christmas bank hol… Read More
2018-12-17 12:47
It hasn't been all bureaucracy
It’s been 3 weeks since I FIRE’d (financially independent and retired early) and we are now logistically pretty much settled in Cyprus. I th… Read More
2018-12-09 15:18
When I started my journey to FIRE (financially independent, retired early) in late 2007 there wasn’t much on the topic in the public domain. To my knowledge at that time the term… Read More
2018-11-24 18:57
“Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. ... Retirement is generally considered to be "early" if it occurs before the ag… Read More
2018-10-27 10:27
In recent weeks there appeared to be a glimmer of hope appearing that I might be able to get a little more interest on my cash and cash-like (NS&I Index Linked Savings Certificates) hold… Read More
2018-10-13 12:22
Latchi, Cyprus at dusk
With my work notice period now nearing completion I’m actually a little surprised at the calm in the RIT household. Hopefully this means we believe w… Read More
2018-09-01 13:22
It’s no secret that Personal Finance is a hobby of mine (498 blog posts help reinforce that) and within that hobby I’ve done a reasonable job of DIY investing myself to FIRE usin… Read More
2018-08-25 10:38
Even if you’re not into your Greek mythology then you’ve probably heard of Aphrodite, the Ancient Greek Goddess of love and beauty. The legend goes that she was born from t… Read More
2018-07-29 11:44
During the week I was asked by a family member how much we’re paying for our contents insurance annually. I replied that we don’t have contents insurance to which I was ask… Read More
2018-07-21 08:27
As I write this post the S&P500 cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio sits at 32.0 against a long run average of 16.9, Donald Trump is starting trade wars, the US market has been in a… Read More
2018-07-14 09:20
A little over ten and a half years ago I started to accumulate wealth with a vague notion of work becoming optional in a relatively short time. At the time I was calling this Early Ret… Read More
2018-06-15 19:40
Recently I’ve been having doubts about taking early retirement. What I’ve found particularly interesting is that since becoming financially independent back in July 20… Read More
2018-05-19 08:18
By now it’s no secret that I dislike investment expenses and continually work to minimise them in the most cost effective manner. I’ve also written previously about how my… Read More
2018-05-05 07:43
At age 45 I’m beginning to think I might just be falling behind all the cool kids. Let’s use grocery shopping as an example. Throughout the week as we use up (or get… Read More
2018-04-28 12:04
A search on Google for passive investing vs active investing yields 1,330,000 results with plenty of support on both sides of the fence. In brief passive investing is a method where yo… Read More
2018-04-07 11:44
A lot of very thoughtful comment last week so I thought it might bring some value to the collective if I expand on my musings a little more. Wandering Star I think hit the nail on the… Read More
2018-03-30 14:36
Time since my One More Year call has passed by incredibly quickly. In fact so quickly that if I’m to stick strictly to it resignation day is now just a few a short weeks awa… Read More
2018-03-10 17:35
It’s not always sunny on The Med
The past few months have seen me pass through my annual work performance review, my annual salary review and a new HR initiative which seems to have b… Read More
2018-02-10 10:59
Well it looks like asset prices don’t always go up. Of course I’m not surprised by this revelation but the mainstream media did seem surprised with headlines such as &ldquo&hell…Read More
2018-01-13 13:14
This annual review is usually a very quantitative personal finance review and for those readers looking for that please bear with me I’ll get there I promise. I’m firstly g… Read More
2018-01-06 13:06
Back in late 2011 I started building what is known as a UK High Yield Portfolio (HYP). It was a much talked about strategy back in the Motley Fool forum days and is still being discuss… Read More
2017-12-29 13:11
FIRE to a Spanish Island?
Just where has 2017 gone? It seems like only yesterday I was eating One More Year (OMY) humble pie and I now find myself nearly half way through the mos… Read More
2017-12-10 10:10
Paphos Forest, Cyprus
In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum result my immediate thoughts were has the door to our dream been slammed shut. An initial review suggest… Read More
2017-10-14 10:58
10 years ago I took a step back and looked at where my life was going. Family life was great for which I was and remain incredibly fortunate. However when I looked at my career I… Read More
2017-10-07 07:58
...and the pounds will look after themselves. A reasonably well known proverb that simply
means if you focus on saving many small amounts of money you'll soon amass a
large a… Read More
2017-09-30 07:46
To set the scene it’s now been 14 months since I achieved Financial Freedom and it’s been 3 months since we decided to put a year between ourselves and FIRE. Usually t… Read More
2017-09-02 13:52
For those chasing FIRE I’m sure that the 4% Rule will be well known to most. In short it says in your first year of retirement you can ‘safely’ withdraw 4% of your we… Read More
2017-08-12 17:23
Over on the excellent Monevator site the following question was posed by Gregory today:
“You are an early retiree and have a portfolio of £875,000. You don’t follow the 5/… Read More
2017-08-05 08:04
As each week of Financial Independence (FI) passes, particularly the last few weeks, I can feel quite a bit of change occurring within myself. The stresses of work just seem to continu… Read More
2017-07-29 08:49
I’ve written previously that one of the reasons I’ve decided to do one more year is because we’d like to let the dust settle a little more on Brexit and in particular… Read More
2017-07-16 12:37
The first half of 2017 required a few decisions to be made and we spent a bit like drunken sailors to make them. Average monthly spending was £2,404 which is well up on 2016&rsqu&hell…Read More
2017-07-01 11:43
So when are you taking early retirement I hear you ask? Before answering let me first provide some musings of how the world of somebody who has been financially independent for just sh… Read More
2017-05-27 21:17
Vanguard has recently announced that in addition to the ETF’s and mutual funds (OEICs) currently offered, they will now offer a selection of wrappers to hold them in. Given one o… Read More
2017-05-13 14:14
One of the negatives to using a Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) model, such as the 4% Rule, to predict when early retirement is possible and to guide spending in retirement is that if history rep… Read More
2017-04-29 15:24
When trying to figure out whether or not I can FIRE I’ve needed to understand just how much I spend (along with a few other numbers). To calculate this properly I started a few y… Read More
2017-04-14 18:18
I couldn’t have asked for a better start to 2017. From a Mediterranean home research perspective we spent some time on the Costa del Sol exploring from just east of Marbella thro… Read More
2017-03-25 09:15
Over a lifetime of investing we’re going to see a lot of things happen. The more obvious events will likely be the continual bull and bear markets that have occurred in the past… Read More
2017-03-11 12:30
2017 so far is starting to feel like I’m in a bit of a holding pattern. We’re starting to feel excited about the new adventures we are going to face in FIRE, I feel like a… Read More
2017-02-11 11:17
When we left my credit report story I had a credit score of 618 out of 710 and what I thought was a store card that had just gone into early arrears, which wasn’t even mine, but w… Read More
2017-01-21 18:29
My self assessment tax bill has been paid and the final dividend laggards have paid up meaning I can now financially close out 2016. This will hopefully be the third last quarterly sum… Read More
2017-01-14 09:40
To be able to successfully FIRE I think two things need to occur:
You need to be financially ready; and
You need to be mentally ready.
If you’ve planned well then the first one is ea… Read More
2016-12-31 14:16
My mature overall investing strategy is these days not much more complicated than a diversified collection of low expense, physical (as opposed to synthetic), income based (as opposed to acc… Read More
2016-12-17 09:29
Over my 9-year journey to financial independence (FI) I’ve had a number of readers of both this blog and the fora that I frequent ask me if I’d write a book. If the truth b… Read More
2016-12-10 10:15
I continue to find pension wrappers are a powerful tool for building FIRE wealth quickly. Let me demonstrate with a couple of quick examples:
Over my FIRE journey I am fortunate to ha… Read More
2016-11-12 09:45
You don’t have to travel far into most personal finance sites before you find the obligatory compound interest post. Even I did one back in 2012 where I was so bold as to call it… Read More
2016-10-29 09:00
In recent times some focus in the RIT household has now switched from A Place in the Sun to what about Herefordshire? As with any of our crazy ideas our approach is always plenty of de… Read More
2016-10-16 13:26
With the back of 2016 now largely broken this year is fast shaping up as one of the most memorable of my FIRE journey thus far. Personal finance wise it’s been great. My we… Read More
2016-10-08 09:23
FIRE in Cyprus?
There are now literally hundreds of personal finance bloggers out there in cyberspace with many of them blogging about trying to reach financial independence. Some are… Read More
2016-09-24 08:03
From the fortunate position I currently find myself it’s unlikely I’ll ever need or want to take on any form of debt ever again. That said I’m also a plan for the wor… Read More
2016-09-10 08:41
I have had a YouInvest (formerly Sippdeal) SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension) wrapper since 2011. It came about when I first started transferring expensive insurance company based S… Read More
2016-09-03 06:53
Grant Thornton has completed some research (free FT link or Google “How much do you really pay your money manager?”) which concludes that someone entrusting £100,000 for 10… Read More
2016-08-27 06:26
Putting the scores on the doors reveals that I progressed to my Financial Independence number at a rate greater than 0.9% per month. In hindsight this wasn’t because of any… Read More
2016-08-13 07:16
Naive (adjective) – (Of a person or action) showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgement. Source
Irresponsible (adjective) - not thinking enough or not worrying about the possib… Read More
2016-08-06 09:32
My financial independence and early retirement (FIRE) planning has been a pretty negative affair so far, with me always trying to focus on the worst case what if scenarios. I’ve… Read More
2016-07-30 09:27
July has been a month I will never forget. Firstly, I joined the 2 comma club and then soon after joined the ranks of the financially independent (FI). In all the excitement… Read More
2016-07-23 10:03
Wealth warning: This post should at best be taken with a pinch of salt and at worst should be likened to crystal ball gazing. I’m posting it because this blog is about retirement… Read More
2016-07-16 08:10
“Financial independence is generally used to describe the state of having sufficient personal wealth to live, without having to work actively for basic necessities. For financially ind… Read More
2016-07-09 19:06
Unless you’re one of the lucky ones sitting on a defined benefit pension (although it’s likely you’ll also need some other income source in the early years if you’re… Read More
2016-07-02 13:58
Today, as I have done pretty much every Saturday morning since October 2007, I again sat down and updated my wealth and progress to FIRE (financially independent retired early). This m… Read More
2016-07-02 07:00
The 4% Rule gets bandied around pretty loosely (I sometime think dangerously so) in the personal finance (PF) world these days and on some of the forums people seem to believe in it almost r… Read More
2016-06-26 20:47
So the UK has voted, Article 50 of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty will soon be invoked and over the next couple of years we’ll negotiate (hopefully sensibly) our way out of the European Union… Read More
2016-06-18 17:09
With FIRE now on the doorstep it’s time to finalise what my early retirement drawdown strategy and portfolio is going to look like.
Firstly, let’s look at the strategy and… Read More
2016-06-11 07:30
In my view (and unfortunately) house prices in this great country are driven by Affordability, which is one’s ability to service debt at current interest rates, and not by Value.  &hell…Read More
2016-05-30 09:19
Life is really busy. No, that’s not right, let me try again. Work is consuming me. I’m pressured, stressed, exhausted and for the first time in my life that I c… Read More
2016-04-09 18:09
Quarter 1 has been what can only be described as one where the rocket boosters fired and subsequently propelled my personal finances forward at a rapid rate of knots. I passed the one… Read More
2016-04-02 08:14
Back in late 2007, at about the same time as I was starting to think about saving hard and investing wisely, I seriously considered buying a home in London. We were still planning to l… Read More
2016-03-19 09:00
My early personal finance records are sparse at best; however I was undertaking a bit of (pre)spring cleaning this week and came across an early retirement planning spreadsheet that was last… Read More
2016-03-05 18:15
There were plenty of articles in the mainstream media this week musing about the potential changes that were coming to private pension’s in this month’s budget. Would Osbor… Read More
2016-02-27 12:13
12 months ago I suggested that I might only have 18 months to go before FIRE (financially independent retired early). The caveat placed on this bold statement was “from here… Read More
2016-02-20 08:32
I don’t think there would be much argument that millennials have it pretty tough financially with their plight now starting to make it into the mainstream media (FT link or search &ldq&hell…Read More
2016-02-13 08:52
Amlin was added to my High Yield Portfolio (HYP) back in August 2014. At the time I purchased 963 shares at a price of £4.4986 paying £34 in stamp duty and trading fees for… Read More
2016-02-06 11:07
In my travels I regularly come across 2 types of people. The first are those that will set themselves a stiff challenge and then go for it. The second are those that won’t… Read More
2016-01-30 13:41
When it comes to spending I sweat the small stuff.
I’ll never buy a National Lottery ticket, even the £2 minimum, as I know that the probabilities say that I’m more likel… Read More
2016-01-23 09:34
In recent years it feels like every Spending Review, Autumn Statement and Budget presented by our wonderful government includes pensions tinkering which is usually detrimental to what I and… Read More
2016-01-18 20:19
Looking back on 2015 and I have to conclude that it was a good year for building wealth at a rapid rate. All in I was able to increase net worth by 14% or £105,000! That sa… Read More
2015-12-12 14:40
The largest country equity holding within my portfolio is my home country, the United Kingdom, at 20.4% of total portfolio value. This is then followed by Australian equities at 10.1%… Read More
2015-12-05 10:27
Here on Retirement Investing Today I talk about a lot of different themes and learnings. As I learn I also then update some of those themes from time to time. This might make it… Read More
2015-11-28 10:12
All this Black Friday talk has given me flashbacks to my last consumer experience a few weeks ago. Now before I go on I do need to warn you that this might be a little biased in i… Read More
2015-11-14 12:49
Firstly, an interesting article in the Financial Times today – Retirement experts campaign for pension freedom age to rise to 65 (should be a free click through or alternatively G… Read More
2015-11-07 11:52
I am a disciple of Tim Hale who in my humble opinion is the investing granddaddy for UK investors. From the emails I receive it’s rare that I can’t refer a reader to his bo… Read More
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