Where’s the snowball – why you’d better save if you want to FIRE

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 The Miracle of Compound Interest.

In brief Compound Interest, sometimes also called the snowball effect, is at its most basic just interest on interest.  A trivial example.  Let’s say you have £1 and can get an investment return of 10% per annum (those were the days).  Choose that option and after a year you’d have £1.10 which is your £1 plus ‘interest’ of £0.10.  If you reinvest that for another year you’d have £1.21 which is your £1, last years interest of £0.10, this years interest of £0.10 on your £1 but also £0.01 which is interest on your £0.10 interest from last year.  Interest on interest...

So that’s the lovely theory but as someone who is now Financially Independent and so has been there, done that, got the t-shirt, what’s my view on it.  I’d now say care is needed.  Let me demonstrate with three simple examples.  Let’s go back in time to the end of 2007 where I’m going to give each of our punters seed capital of £50,000, I’m going to assume a real (after inflation) return of 4.1% (what I’ve achieved on my portfolio of trackers after expenses) and I’m going to assume their each looking for wealth of £800,000 (which is not far off what I thought I needed back then although inflation since has ensured I now need 2 commas) before packing in the day job.  From here their journeys will vary:

• TheRIT will crack on with working hard, focus on quality of life and so annually squirrel away £58,728 per annum (which is the average annual savings I’ve achieved since I’ve been on my FIRE journey, equating to a post tax Savings Rate of 82.4%) earning a real return of 4.1% per annum (my actual real annualised return thus far).  I know that will include inflation adjusted savings but please give me a little slack here as it’s not important to the point I’m trying to make today so won’t bother with inflation adjusting.
• MrAverage will also crack on with working hard but instead focuses on standard of living.  This means he can only save 5.1% of post tax earnings which has been deliberately chosen as it’s the current UK household saving ratio according to the ONS.  Like TheRIT, MrAverage achieves a real return of 4.1%.
• MissInvestingSuperstar follows in the footsteps of MrAverage but boy does she know her stuff when it comes to picking winners.  So much so that every year that she invests she manages double the return of the others and so achieves a real 8.2% per annum.  Ask yourself how many people actually achieve that and would you be prepared to back yourself to achieve that with severe disappointment many years hence if you don’t?

Click to enlarge, My after tax Savings Rate over the long term has been 82.4% 

Herefordshire or bust?

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 desk research and then boots on the ground.  All I can say is that Herefordshire is everything we remember from previous visits.  An absolutely beautiful part of the world but then again at this time of year in the UK, with the leaves yellow to red and starting to fall, ugly parts are probably the exception so some care is needed.

Click to enlarge, Kingsland, Herefordshire (source)

Of course our trips have not been all about roaming around country paths, lanes and villages  although we’ve done some of that.  They’ve also initially focused on looking at the possibility of building a modest warm home.  Don’t get me wrong, we love an old historic grade II listed home like the next man or woman, but as a FIRE’ee we don’t very much like the energy performance or maintenance costs that go with them.

9 months into 2016 – The plans they are a-changin’

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 wealth passed 7 figures, I became financially independent (FI) and the rate of change in my wealth has been like nothing I’ve ever seen before or could have imagined when I started on this journey.  To put that last point into perspective by the end of quarter 1 I had added £55,000 to my wealth, by the half year mark that had become £142,000 and by the end of quarter 3 it had become an almost unbelievable £220,000.

However, this is not what is making things memorable.  That’s coming from me slowly realising that because my FIRE strategy makes me an outlier it also makes me vulnerable and exposed rather than invincible.  This was nicely demonstrated by the Brexit vote.  As a ‘young’ retiree looking to head to The Mediterranean within a year I’m sure it doesn’t take a genius to guess that I voted Remain in the Brexit referendum.  If everyone else had have been on my trajectory that would have been the result.  Instead my demographic had no influence, as the numbers of people looking to FIRE to The Med are probably not much more than one, so democracy took over and we ended up with Leave for many other reasons.  So far that result has resulted in pound devaluation (which on its own I could have coped with) but also discussions of Hard Brexit which has turned my plans from 95% The Med to 50%.  I’m a minority affected by politics and populism and because I’m not part of a significant demographic my vote just won’t make a difference.  What if the next populist democratic step is to start taxing capital and providing relief to the indebted...  We’re almost there via interest rates anyway but what if it becomes an overt policy...

Post financial independence, post Brexit, what next

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 more extreme than others but I have now started to see a distinct pattern that separates them into at least two categories.  The first are those where reaching financial independence in just a few short years was a doddle and where life since early retirement has been a bed of roses with low spending, plenty of international travel, new cars, new homes and nothing ever going wrong.  Then there are those where stuff, including negative stuff, happens.  The journey to FIRE maybe takes determination, maybe their company gets bought out with redundancy coming relatively soon after, maybe their company simply doesn’t agree with their lifestyle choices causing a rethink or just maybe early retirement was not for them so they have returned to work.

I’ve started to call the first the blogs that are selling a life and the second the blogs that are living a life.  I’ve also pretty much stopped reading the former as they no longer resonate with me as my journey has and continues to be much more like the second type.  If you however prefer the first type then I’d suggest you move onto your next piece of Saturday reading as this post will likely disappoint.

I’m now coming up on 3 months of financial independence (FI) and the one thing I’ve been trying to leave via FIRE (financially independent retired early), work, has already become a very different place.  My workplace and the career I chose is one that is very focused on the financial top and bottom lines.  This means that it’s no secret that as soon as my job can be done by somebody else cheaper or more efficiently in the world then I won’t have a job.  It’s also one where if you perform well you can do well financially, and I have, but also one where even average performance will result in you quickly finding yourself without a job.  For me this has helped with my rapid progress to FI (of course it’s taken a number of other choices as well) but it’s come with the sword of Damocles always in full view.  3 months ago that sword was taken away and it’s made a big difference.  It’s firstly just simply removed a weight from my shoulders as out sourcing or average performance will now just result in a nice pay off, which I negotiated some time ago when I seriously looked to move on but was still a golden child, which will further bolster my wealth nicely and result in me simply sailing off into the FIRE sunshine.  Additionally, to ensure continuous success one technique I’ve used over the years is to work very hard which gives me extra time to drive the risk out of every decision I make.  The ramifications of this are pretty long days but it did help with surety of tenure.  Since FI I’ve started to take now take more risk as there are now no downsides personally.  So far this has me back to peak performance, having dipped for a few months following extra work load, but I’m also working slightly less hours and that 0.5 – 1 hour less work per day has put a spring back in my step.  It’s still not the place I’d choose to be Monday to Friday and FIRE is still very much in view but it’s a lot better post FI then pre.

Checking my credit report (and it’s not great news)

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 worst just in case kind of guy. Incidentally, the end result of which is usually a nice upside surprise but you just never know.

So with this in mind I decided to finally, having never checked it previously, check in on my credit report and score.  I used noddle.co.uk as its ‘free for life’ but there are a few of them out there including Experian and Equifax who offer free 30 day trials.  Just don’t forget to unsubscribe with those or you could be paying up to £14.99 per month for every month you forget.  Not an insignificant amount.

If I’m being honest I was expecting a nice credit worthiness upside and the actual result surprised me somewhat.  So let’s look at what they have on me:

• Personal Information.  They have my date of birth and history of addresses.
• Financial Account Information.  They have my American Express Platinum Cashback credit card which shows a long and perfect history of repayment as I direct debit full payment every month.  They show my current account but have no record of my cash savings accounts.  Unfortunately they also show a store card with a missed payment of £4 which is not even mine.  I’ve disputed that which they say can take 28 days to resolve.  So checking my credit report has already been of value.
• Short Term Loans.  I positively get “YOU HAVE NO OPEN SHORT TERM LOAN ACCOUNTS ON YOUR REPORT.”
• Electoral Roll.  I’m showed as being registered and the details are correct.
• Public Information.  I positively get “YOU HAVE NO BANKRUPTCIES OR INSOLVENCIES RECORDED ON YOUR REPORT” and “YOU HAVE NO JUDGEMENTS RECORDED ON YOUR REPORT.”
• CIFAS (the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service).  I positively get “THERE ARE NO CIFAS WARNINGS REGISTERED AT YOUR ADDRESS(ES).”