So I mentioned in my goals post that one reason why I wanted to keep my goals simple and familiar was because my life (as I know it) was going to be turned ‘upside down’.
Not in a bad way, I was being a little melodramatic there but certainly, there will be a big change happening later in the year.
So what’s the big change? Continue reading
Before I go into my goals, I will mention that I intend to continue to throw my cash into investments in the face of probable continued turbulent markets, uncertainty due to Brexit and whatever else happens around the world which might cause share prices to go down (or up).
I don’t intend to hoard cash because I don’t know how to time the markets and wouldn’t want the anxiety of trying to decide when to invest so I’m just going to continue investing monthly regardless. Keep calm and carry on and all that.
I need to ensure that my emergency cash funds are topped up (having dipped into them recently to fund some holiday excesses) – my aim is for them to cover 3 x monthly expenses for now.
Anyway, back to the main topic…Goals!
As with recent years, I find that setting only a few goals works well for me, allowing me to focus, with little room for distraction so I’m going to do something similar exactly the same for 2019.
Not every exciting, I know and perhaps not really stretching either but there’s another reason why I want to keep things simple and familiar, which I will go into later.
So without further ado, here they are:
Just thought I’d take this opportunity to share a few brief updates before I sign off for the year.
I’ve finally shifted my excess poundage and have reached my notional ‘desired’ weight. It’s taken a couple of months and whilst I can’t say that Huel was the sole reason for the success, incorporating the ‘liquid food’ into my diet has certainly helped.
Not just in terms of calories but focusing on portion control of my meals and upping my weight training. I’ve also incorporated strength exercises which have really helped with my on-off shoulder problems.
At the gym, I decided to try out the newly reinstalled Boditrax machine, a machine which measures your weight but also (via a small electric signal through your body) measures your body composition.
Physique
So according to my body measurements, I’ve got a very muscular physique! Haha, I nearly fell off the machine with laughter because the description just conjures up an image of a bodybuilder, which I most definitely am not!
The category has been calculated using data for my age and gender and based on my muscle score (which is apparently higher than normal) and fat percentage (lower than normal).
My metabolic age is 15 years younger than my actual age, which I’m really happy with – oh if only that were my actual age! 🙂
At least this gives me an indication that I’m doing alright in terms of my training and diet, although I still feel that there’s always room for improvement.
Toilet Twinned
Here’s the framed certificate confirming the twinning of my toilet, to a school block toilet in Afghanistan.
I want to continue to support the Toilet Twinning charity but have now run out of toilets in my house to twin!
I’ve not decided what I want to do yet with my charity giving next year but I think I’ll do something whereby some lucky reader(s) of my blog will get their toilet twinned (for free).
Award
The works Christmas party was the usual drunken affair for many though not for me, as I had been feeling a little under the weather leading up to the night. Anyone else would have not bothered to attend but I’ve pretty much always turned up at such events and enjoyed them. Plus it’s the only time of year I get to put on a party frock and have a bit of a dance! I had a couple of free glasses of bubbly before moving onto soft drinks for the rest of the night.
So it was without the glow and courage of inebriation, that I stumbled on stage to collect one of the Employee of the Year awards at the annual ceremony!
Wow, I am so very chuffed to have won, it’s great to be recognised for my efforts. I’ve learned a hell of a lot this year, which has enabled me to put in a more than decent shift. That said, I still feel like I’ve not quite hit my top gear yet with this company.
Out of Office
And to my final point, which is that I’m off to Hong Kong shortly to spend the festive period with my family. I’ve blown my budget buying gifts for them – will check the damage upon my return but I reckon I’ll probably have to dip into my emergency fund (will be paying back in, of course).
I don’t have any scheduled posts for the blog and haven’t even thought about what goals I need to set for next year. I’ll get round to them (and reading people’s blogs) once I’m back online.
Zippy’s back!
So, I’ll sign off by wishing everyone a safe and happy Christmas/holiday; eat, drink and be merry, and I look forward to joining you all for an eventful and prosperous 2019!
I first heard about David Sawyer’s book, RESET: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money‘ (RESET) when it was featured on Monevator.
David contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in reviewing his book, and I agreed, especially as I needed to read one more non-fiction book by the end of the year to hit one of my reading goals. A signed copy duly arrived in the post.
Parts I & II
These parts were all about self-evaluation, establishing what it means to be happy, the meaning of life, your purpose. Once you’ve decided on these, it went into what you can do to improve things.
This included a guide on how to future-proof your career (embracing digital) and how to set up an escape plan should you need one.
I was surprised to see the recommendation to start a blog but perhaps that’s because I run my blog for a totally different purpose than that suggested in the book.
So thus far, whilst very easy to read, I hadn’t discovered anything new in the book that would help me or be of use to me.
Part III
And then I came across the section ‘Declutter Your Life’.
Whilst it’s absolutely true that I’ve bought very few things over the past few years, aside from being frugal, one of the reasons is because I am surrounded by things I bought during my ‘spendy’ years.
My house is full of what people would call clutter, my stuff. Yes, my friends think I live like a student and my family think I live in ‘organised chaos’!
I would say I’m fine living like this but I recognise that there might be benefits to reducing the amount of stuff I own, so this section of RESET was of great interest to me.
Sawyer talks of how he and his family tackled getting rid of their stuff and I think I could come up with a similar plan myself. I don’t intend to become nor do I want to live as a minimalist but cutting back on things has got to be a good thing.
As well as decluttering physical items, Sawyer also mentions digitial declutter and mental declutter, ie mobile phones, social media – I think I’m ok there, I can go for hours without looking at my phone without FOMO!
Part IV
This section was the financial bit, the ‘how to get your F. U money plan’. Although I’ve already got my own plan, I still like to read how other people plan, in case there’s something I’ve missed or there’s some good idea which I can learn and use myself. This section talked about budgeting, frugality/efficiency and investing.
There were mentions of the brief history of FI and the essential disciplines of FI. Numerous references throughout the book to MMM and Sawyer has done a huge amount of research and curated a lot of useful and helpful links and references for further reading about FIRE (there’s a big bibliography and notes section at the back of the book).
This section encouraged me to revisit my numbers, to review what I would need to live a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. I’ve made a few tweaks and adjustments but nothing too radical so if anything, it was a good affirmation that my plan is the right one for me (until my next review, haha!).
RESET recommended accumulating the much-mentioned ‘spending x 25’ and advocated a safe withdrawal rate of 3.5% as opposed to the oft-guaranteed rate of 4%. It made the assumption that readers were not starting from zero, that at the point they pick up this book, they had some fairly significant pensions savings from previous employers or their own savings/investments.
Parts V & VI
Part V detailed some core principles to guide you through work and life, including the importance of ‘deep work’. One of the recommendations was to not work in an ‘open-plan office’ – easier said than done for most people these days however.
Part VI was a handy list of Do’s and Don’ts, dealing with all aspects of life.
Conclusion
As the blurb says, ‘the unconventional early retirement plan for midlife careerists who want to be happy‘.
RESET I think is aimed at people, not exclusively but predominantly, who are earning a decent salary (higher tax bracket), have a successful career but who are unhappy with their lives, possibly because they’ve often put their careers first.
Sure, I fit the ‘midlife’ bracket (midlife in the book means anyone aged from 35-60) but at times, I felt as if Sawyer was just talking to couples with children, couples who were slaves to their mobile phones and emails (for work and social media) and who were somewhat miserable, whose lives were unfulfilled.
I’m already nearly five years into my own FIRE journey and am content with where I am, happy with my plan, so I didn’t think I was perhaps part of RESET’s target audience.
However, that’s not to say that I didn’t find the book a good read and useful.
I enjoyed reading about FIRE in physical book-form, refreshingly from a UK point of view and written in a friendly, personable and engaging way and I reckon it would be a good introduction for people who may have come across the recent news articles about FIRE in mainstream press, who want to know more and who were not put off by the colourful but mostly negative comments which accompanied most of those articles.
The chapters are blissfully short, many with ‘actions’ for the reader to do. The section about investing included some basic investment plans which would be useful to my non-investing friends, although I would encourage them to do their own research (RESET recommends going with Fidelity or Vanguard – good choices but not the only ones to check out).
Running is referred to throughout the book (Sawyer being a marathon runner) but I guess you could just replace that with some other exercise/fitness regime where you are aiming to better yourself (that’s what I did anyway).
It’s likely that I’ll be picking the book up again, particularly to flick through the bits about decluttering but also I guess it doesn’t do any harm to reread some of the core principles and remind myself about the do’s and don’ts of life as well as aiming for FIRE.