This month’s spending is a little different because the balance for our Africa trip was due. As you can see, this meant we shelled out over £6,000 on this alone! We’ll go into more detail on this below.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – May 2019”‘Life Design’ is something we’ve mentioned in a few posts now. But what do we mean?
Since we started this journey, we have hugely improved our lives in a lot of different areas. This hasn’t happened by luck. It has been a process of research, planning and execution. As we like to say, we have learnt to CHALLENGE EVERYTHING!
This whole process was kick started when Mr Way discovered the world of personal finance. The first step was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. This started a money journey including property investment seminars, individual stock picking and (thankfully) finally discovering the FIRE world through Mr Money Mustache.
Continue reading “The Skill of Life Design”The biggest barrier to productivity is finding the motivation to get started. Motivation can often be hard to come by in a modern world, full of distractions. This is particularly relevant to those of us still working full time. Juggling hobbies, alongside a full time career, can make it seem almost impossible to keep on top of the most simple of tasks in life.
In order to ensure progress is made in all aspects, I find it important to have a productivity system in place. This allows me to keep track of my short and long term goals.
I’ve always had a relatively poor long term memory. This means I find it difficult to remember outstanding tasks and goals. This can quickly become overwhelming. Because of this, it is vital for me to have a logical and easy to use system for keeping track of this information.
Continue reading “Productivity Systems”As Miss Way mentioned in Frugal Fitness, bodyweight fitness (BWF) is a form of strength training. I wanted to create this separate post to give you a bit more detail on BWF, because I love it so much!
Essentially, BWF involves using your own bodyweight to perform resistance training. This type of training can accommodate anyone – from absolute beginners to Olympic level athletes. Exercises range from simple push-ups, squats and dips to advanced movements like the planche, front lever or one arm pullup.
Continue reading “Bodyweight Fitness”This is another one of those aspects of life where we have challenged the ‘norms’ of society. We decided to forge our own way of doing things by keeping our finances separate.
The accepted norm for couples is to merge finances, particularly when you own a house together as we do. In our opinion this would have led to unnecessary conflicts between us. We are both naturally frugal and would have resented any spending by the other which we felt wasn’t necessary!
Continue reading “Why We Keep Our Finances Separate”In March we produced our first ever monthly spending report. Here is our second!
Despite going away this month we have managed to stay very close to our March spending amount. We’re really happy with this and hope we can keep up the £2000 per month average!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – April 2019”Continue reading “What a Difference the Sun Makes”Ode to Sunshine
S.A.D vanisher
Negativity banisher
Energy creator and motivation shaker
Reinvigorates smiles and unused miles
Of muscles that wake as you shine
The slate is wiped clean
As faces beam at rays that rain down from the
Blue, cloudless sky, bringing twinkles to eyes
As collectively spirits are raised!
Miss Way
The 4% rule was created based on historical market returns data. Simply put, it showed that a typical retiree could withdraw 4% of their portfolio while keeping the initial pot intact. The withdrawn amount would increase by inflation each year.
The rule came about from work by Bengen and later, the Trinity study. Both were based on the same data.
This rule of thumb has been widely adopted in the FIRE movement as a way of calculating the required pot to fund early retirement. It is the basis of Mr Money Mustache’s famous article The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement
There have recently been a lot of articles criticising the 4% rule. I still think this rule provides a great initial estimate for anyone considering FIRE. That’s why I wanted to create an article giving the other side of the argument.
Continue reading “In Defence of the 4% Rule”This is the first time we’ve participated in one of SavingNinja‘s Thought Experiment posts so we’ll add a little explanation.
This is an idea to get bloggers to immediately respond to a question and all post their answers on their blogs. You have to write the first thing you think of and can’t pre-plan or do any major editing.
We’re joining in at Thought Experiment 5 because we only recently started our blog! If you want to see previous versions see SavingNinja’s archives.
Continue reading “Thought Experiment 5”Staying physically fit is something that is important to both of us. It fits really well with those who are seeking financial independence. If you aren’t at your physical best, you won’t be able to enjoy the retirement you work so hard for!
As mentioned in A Way to Less……. Spending! we are always looking for more ways to be frugal and found that reducing our fitness costs was an easy way to do this.
For many, the cost of fitness can be huge! The fitness industry must make so much money out of all those people with unused and unwanted gym memberships! Don’t get me wrong, there are many people that use their gym membership in a cost-efficient way and really benefit from it, but there is a very large proportion of the population that don’t!
Continue reading “Frugal Fitness”