What’s piqued my interest this week?
I bang on about it a lot, so I’ll make this post short. I’ve spent a lot of my working life treating people who are knocking on death’s door. That’s not just the old and the sick, but also people who have had the worst day of their life. They woke up thinking that day was going to be like any other, and they end up lying in the bed of A&E Resus. A lot of the themes of what they tell me come through that influential book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (1). TL:DR, the top five are:
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life expected of me
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
- I wish I had let myself be happier (2)
Hard lines. Many echo in the motivations for early retirement, as we hope to reconnect with friends, find happiness and express our feelings in new hobbies and activities. At it’s core early retirement allows us to live a life true to our hopes, dreams and interests, and not based upon the expectations of the man.
All this post aims to do is to challenge the weightings mentally applied to the above. The trade-off made between working hard for the future, and enjoying the now. There is a temptation to work twice as hard to reach an early retirement future in half the time. That relies upon the certainty of your future. That certainty is a risk that needs to be thought about and managed, by taking care of yourself. Having a million quid in the bank is useless if you’ve given yourself scurvy by eating nothing but porridge and rice. I’ll end this with two short examples pulled from the Reddit vaults (3, 4):
Have a morbid great week,
The Shrink
- Starling launches a euro currency account at no cost, offering interesting For-ex options ahead of Brexit (5) – fanboi hype
- FI makes the Beeb (6)
- The BoE has cut it’s growth forecast and is holding rates (7)
- JLR posts a fairly epic loss (8)
- House prices fell in January (9)
- Ofgem raises energy price cap due to rising energy costs, with knock-on effect for consumers (10)
- Italy is back in recession (11)
Opinion/ blogs:
- Physician on fire muses on the future of the FIRE movement (12)
- DIY Investor UK takes a look at what Green Bonds are available (13)
- YFG discusses alternative assets (14)
- John at UKVI discusses making mistakes and learning from them with N Brown (15)
- The Eagle wonders what’s in a name? (16)
- The Cashflow Cop lays out his guiding life principles (17)
- TEA analyses life choices through the medium of Britney (18)
- MsZiYou updates her net worth for January (19)
- RIT discusses the practicalities of managing their retirement drawdown (20)
- The Caveman reviews his January (21)
- The Frugal Cottage looks at their dividend income for January (22)
- FireVLondon has a pretty good January (23)
- As does Weenie (24)
- DrFire lays out their investment strategy (25)
- Indeedably runs the numbers on a potential high yield portfolio as an alternative to further work (26)
- The Accumulator updates Monevators Low Cost Index Tracker Index (27)
- And updates the online broker list (28)
- While TI wonders whether Brexit is a sign of deeper problems with capitalism (29)
- Firethe9to5 takes the plunge, pulls the plug and retires early (30) – Congratulations!
The kitchen garden:
- Tanya at Lovely Greens shows how to DIY wood chip garden paths (31)
- Richard at Sharpen Your Spades takes a look at a new independent, eco and organic seed producer, Vital Seeds (32)
What I’m reading (now affiliate links):
Tombland – C.J. Sansom – I love the Shardlake series, detective novels set in the Tudor period with a crippled lead character. Beautifully written.
Food Of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution – Terence McKenna – An ethnobotanist explores humanitys’ fascination with hallucinogenics, and the role of altered states of consciousness on the development of human society.
SowHow: A Modern Guide to Grow-Your-Own-Veg – Paul Matson & Lucy Anna Scott – I’ve been reading this in the evenings ahead of the sowing season. Simple, neat and effective in both design and instruction.
Enchiridion by Epictetus – Bedside reading for a bad day
References:
- https://amzn.to/2TOczPu
- https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying
- https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/8vwc8l/consider_that_you_might_never_enjoy_your_nest_egg/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREUK/comments/amfmuv/ahso_ive_been_mitigating_the_wrong_risk/
- https://www.which.co.uk/news/2019/02/starling-launches-euro-currency-account-could-it-save-your-cash-from-brexit/
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-47164882/what-would-you-do-if-you-were-financially-independent
- https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/07/bank-of-england-holds-interest-rates-cuts-growth-forecast
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47155145
- https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/07/uk-house-prices-fall-in-january-as-brexit-puts-off-buyers
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47133564
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47068401
- https://www.physicianonfire.com/fire-movement/
- http://diyinvestoruk.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-look-at-green-bonds.html
- https://youngfiguy.com/just-because-you-can-doesnt-mean-you-should/
- https://www.ukvalueinvestor.com/2019/02/n-brown-dividend-cut.html/
- http://eaglesfeartoperch.blogspot.com/2019/02/high-yield-portfolio-whats-in-name.html
- https://cashflowcop.com/my-stone-of-life/
- https://theescapeartist.me/2019/02/05/work-bitch/
- https://www.msziyou.com/net-worth-updates-january-2019/
- http://www.retirementinvestingtoday.com/2019/02/managing-retirement-drawdown.html
- https://ditchthecave.com/january2019update/
- http://www.thefrugalcottage.com/dividend-income-january-2019/
- https://firevlondon.com/2019/02/03/january-2019-many-happy-returns/
- http://quietlysaving.co.uk/2019/02/02/january-2019-plus-other-updates-2/
- https://drfire.co.uk/investment-strategy/
- https://indeedably.com/shortcut/
- https://monevator.com/low-cost-index-trackers/
- https://monevator.com/find-the-best-online-broker/
- https://monevator.com/is-capitalism-in-crisis/
- https://firethe9to5.com/2019/02/03/its-official-i-fired-the-9-to-5/
- https://lovelygreens.com/create-wood-chip-garden-paths/
- https://sharpenyourspades.com/2019/02/04/incredible-crops-im-growing-in-2019-vital-seeds/
The FIRE Shrink 
Well that’s cheery. I’m off to read the obituaries
Seriously though definitely worth an article. For me it simply brings home what’s important to me i. E. I’m ditching my stupidly expensive leased bmw which will free up 600 a month nearly but I will continue spending on travel and indeed hope to go part time and do more of this in the future
LikeLiked by 1 person
Welcome to the joys of my daily work, there’s a reason for the black humour!
The leased BMW sounds like a good plan. That’s an AirBnB for a long weekend every month straight away!
LikeLike
Morbid but a big reality check.
There are probably things which I could have done more of or less of but there’s nothing I regret – I’ve pretty much always had a good work/life balance, have a great group of friends and on my journey to FIRE, don’t think I’m making any sacrifices.
Interesting that the risk of money running out is likely to be tiny compared to the likelihood of you being dead!
LikeLiked by 1 person