David Sawyer didn’t read the small print. Having written a guest post for us a year ago after publishing his debut financial independence bestseller, RESET, we’ve harassed him into writing a follow-up. You know, like The Godfather 2. Only with (slightly) fewer flashbacks.
These days it’s all about the data. Or so they tell us. But what part-time author has time to get into all that?
When you finish writing a book, the last thing you want to do is work on the manuscript full-time for another six months before it’s ready to publish. And the very last thing you want to do is spend aeons writing the index and doing the Notes section. Many don’t bother.
However, I’m glad I did with my own book, RESET – albeit 511 footnotes over 28 pages was perhaps taking it too far.
Tracking reader curiousity
Of the thousand-odd messages I’ve received from readers post-publication, one common thread has emerged.
“Thanks for all the references, Dave, they’ll keep me going for months.”
People like knowing where your thinking comes from and finding sources of further reading.
It’s proved handy for me, too – or at the least intriguing.
I employed short URLs to make it easy for paperback readers to type in the links, which means I can track how many people click each one.
Which brings me to that data and the other reason I’m glad I included a Notes section.
Around 6,500 people have clicked the 500-plus links in RESET’s Notes. That gives us a unique insight into the UK financial independence seekers’ hive mind.
Click for more: The top ten references in RESET
RESET is aimed at people aged 35-60 who are stuck in a bit of a rut and looking to reset their lives halfway through.
It’s a UK take on US financial independence. Although some topics might not seem core to financial independence (such as decluttering or going digital to future-proof your career), I’ve found the majority of the book’s readers are drawn from the FIRE1 community.
So, with this lengthy preamble over, let’s look at the top ten most popular links – ranked by click volume – and reflect on what it tells us about the UK’s FIRE enthusiasts.
(After that I’ll throw the data overboard and outline the top ten things I’ve discovered about the FIRE community since writing my book. And in between there’s a special intermission, so look out for that!)
1. Candid Money’s ‘How long?’ investment calculator
An online calculator where you can plug in figures to find out when you can retire/reach financial independence.
Purpose, values, vision, decluttering your home, mind, and technology are all topics covered in RESET. But when it comes down to it, the primary concerns of most mid-lifers is: “When can I stop working. When can I put my feet up? When does day-to-day reality not include 9-5?” This is no surprise.
2. How rich are you?
An article looking at how rich you are compared to everyone else living in the UK.
We’re human. We want to know where we fit in the world. And we often measure our success – our rank in the pecking order – by how much money we earn. In his excellent book Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton writes: “…the hunger for status, like all appetites, can have its uses: spurring us to do justice to our talents, encouraging excellence, restraining us from harmful eccentricities and cementing members of a society around a common value system. But, like all appetites, its excesses can also kill.”
3. Pakt
An expensive life/travel bag produced by The Minimalists.
People like the idea of owning one bag for all needs. It’s the holy grail of travel. We chase efficiency, and will pay a bit extra for something endorsed by the kings of minimalism.
4. Osprey Porter 65 travel duffel
A less expensive and more durable travel bag produced by Osprey.
Err, people really like the idea of one-bag-for-all-needs. This is the one I use. Seriously, I’m scratching my head here! I’m all for minimalism and use this bag a helluva lot, but why it and Pakt come out ahead of other links in RESET, I don’t know.
5. How much will you need to retire?
Which? magazine’s annual reader survey to find out how much annual income after tax the average UK couple need to retire on.
FIRE is a lot of things to a lot of people. But boiled down to its essence, you need a firm grasp of your numbers. This link is popular because it’s a shortcut to the in-depth planning and future-gazing one would have to do with one’s partner to come up with an annual retirement spending figure for yourself. Which? magazine is a trusted and reputable source and the fact it has surveyed 6,000 of its members makes the research robust and believable. (You can complement with this data with the recent study by Loughborough University.)
6. Tim Ferriss’s Five-Bullet Friday
A weekly newsletter by all-round self-help guru, podcaster, and author Tim Ferriss.
We’re all searching for something, and followers of the financial independence movement more than most. Tim Ferriss is an anomaly. Through hard work, dedication, and being in at the ground level when blogs and podcasts were becoming a thing, Tim Ferriss has grown his email list subscribers to more than a million. He’s an anomaly because there are tens of thousands of people trying to become the new Tim Ferriss, working their socks off, but only he has succeeded. Every Friday he issues his Five Bullet Friday newsletter, sharing what’s on his mind. I seem to remember first reading about the Osprey bag here. Ferriss gets the world’s best thinkers on his podcast, notably including Mr. Money Mustache, Marie Kondo, and Walter Isaacson.
7. Blogs don’t tell the full FI story
A blog post written by US blogger and author Tanja Hester exploring how US FI bloggers make money from their activities.
Many people who read RESET are already familiar with FIRE. Others are exploring the concept for the first time. Either way, if it grabs you, if you start viewing the world differently, or even if it just gives you a conceptual framework on which to pin information you already understand, it’s only natural you want to pick holes in it. After all, we’re only human, eh? This blog post scrapes the surface of an interesting topic that divides FIRE bloggers, podcasters, and authors on both sides of the Atlantic. There are scores of people in the US who make a tidy living out of FI-blogging, what with product referral fees, affiliate advertising on their blogs, books, appearance fees, coaching practices, and so on. Fewer do so in the UK – and none, as far as I know, fully fund their lifestyle off the back of it. I don’t object one bit to people making money from their creative work. But I do think people have a right to ask whether they’re preaching mung beans on air but eating caviar off it.
8. Global Rich List
A website where you can type in your annual after-tax income and see where that places you in the global rich list.
Back to that status anxiety again. We want to see where we rank, and it’s a nice and surprising feeling (for those living in the UK) when we find out.
9. The Feynman technique
A technique to enhance learning, named after Richard Feynman: once you learn something, explain it to someone else. This helps you retain the information.
Seekers of information apparently revere Nobel prize-winning physicists. Have you read Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!? A great man, clearly, but also an arrogant bore. Or an alternative explanation would be that people find it difficult to remember information, and Feynman’s technique is one I use, usually on the kids, or unsuspecting friends over a pint of Brewdog’s Elvis Juice.
10. Emotional value headline analyser
If you do any kind of writing and want to make a snappy heading/title/email subject line, this tool rates how emotionally appealing it is.
People love a good tool and like communicating well. Everybody writes these days, and this tool is useful. It’s also intriguing. Imagine if you could write an important title in ten different ways and then pick the one that’ll work best.
Intermission
How are we all faring? In need of a pause that refreshes? A cup of tea? A comfort break?
Suspecting as much, I’ve smuggled in an excerpt below from my new audiobook version of RESET. It’s eight minutes long and is taken from Chapter 21: Financial Independence and F.U.Money.
And yes, that’s me narrating!
[Note from The Investor: If you’re reading via email and no SoundCloud player is visible above, you can listen to it by visiting this post on the Monevator website.]
Conclusion
And back to our story – and to the conclusion. What, in a nutshell, do those 6,500 clicks really tell us about RESET and UK FIRE? What does the data reveal?
Well, aside from a couple of outliers (travel bags!), there’s a fair bit of crossover with the Monevator post I wrote at the turn of the year, which was also about tools.
People love tools and it seems that even we FIRE enthusiasts can’t resist using them to compare our lot with others’.
Data, schmata?
Perhaps data can only take us so far in understanding the needs and wants of FIRE pursuers in the UK, why they read books like RESET, and what the UK FIRE community looks like as we reach the tail end of 2019?
In the last part of this post then, I’ll list 10 observations from someone who 15 months ago knew no one in the UK FIRE community but has immersed himself in it ever since.
These observations reflect my own experience. They’re also based mainly on the thousand-plus conversations I’ve had with RESET readers – in person, through LinkedIn, on Facebook and most of all via email, where people feel most comfortable sharing what they really think.
- Investing is simple, but you have to learn such a lot of information to make it so. Investing knowledge among the UK populace is still woeful.
- The single most important quick win for anyone living on these isles is to max out their employer match and intentionally pick which fund/s their workplace defined contribution scheme invests in. Then consolidate the rest of their funds into one SIPP, and, again, invest the money intentionally. Despite all the information out there, the amount of people who’ve thanked me for giving them a process and detailed step-by-step instructions to “sort their big money” is unbelievable.
- People in the FIRE community are bright, knowledgeable, adaptable, and open to new ideas.
- While not mainstream as yet, FIRE is now definitely a recognised thing, as the smattering of UK national newspaper and broadcast coverage over the past 15 months attests. There are around 20 decent bloggers, a (European, but based in the UK) podcast, a handful of extremely active Facebook groups (most notably ChooseFI London, Financial Independence London and Financial Independence UK) and regular meetups across the UK (not just in London).
- Most FIRE enthusiasts are different from the norm, and dissatisfied with what society/media/advertising holds up as success. Some have just discovered FIRE but many RESET readers I chat with are a fair way along the journey and are just looking for a bit of reassurance that they’re on the right path and haven’t missed anything.
- Financial independence can be a solitary pursuit – there’s all those spreadsheets for one thing! In Quiet, Susan Cain reports that two-thirds of the populace are extroverts, one-third introverts – but I believe you can reverse this for followers of financial independence.
- There’s a swathe of FIRE enthusiasts living in the UK who follow all the American blogs and have read all the American books but haven’t connected with the UK FIRE movement. As a bare minimum they should follow Monevator, The Escape Artist, join the Facebook groups mentioned above, and read or listen to my book.
- Of the 1,000-plus messages I’ve received, three words stand out: resonate, connection, vision. FIRE enthusiasts want to be connected with others, they want people to articulate the way they are feeling, and they want a clear holistic path of how to change their lot. The messages I remember are the ones that connected with me: the guy contacting me through LinkedIn while at Center Parcs with his kids, the woman who’d stayed at the same place on Loch Coruisk in Skye where I’d bivvied-down with my brother-in-law 20 years ago, and the many people who spend some of their year in one of those white towns in Andalusia (the vision my family is aiming for). In this yearning for connection we are no different from other members of the human race. Yet if there’s one thing the past 15 months have taught me it’s that making online, email, face-to-face, phone, and Skype connections with like-minded people is far better than lurking in the background. You learn more and it’s fun, too.
- Financial advisers/planners are not to be avoided at all costs. There are exceedingly good ones out there. Some, such as Pete Matthew and Andy Hart at Maven Money, have covered FIRE extensively on their podcasts in 2019.
- My final observation is this. The more books, podcasts, blogs, seminars, coaches, meetups that spring up this side of the pond, the better. Compared to the FIRE community’s size in America, we’re a barnacle on a whale’s nether regions.
The more people put their heads above the parapet and share their brand of FIRE, the more others will find stories and life experiences that resonate with them – and so the more UK folk will pursue financial independence.
David Sawyer (47 this month) is a United Nations award-winning PR man and author, who has written several posts for Monevator. He lives in Glasgow with his wife, Rachel, young kids (Zak and Jude) and pet – Hamsterdam. RESET: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money is priced £0.99 for the Kindle version this month only. If you buy the Kindle version you can also get David’s newly published audiobook at just £3.492. AND THERE’S MORE! David is giving away 10 copies of his new audiobook to Monevator readers who can answer the following question: David’s pet is named after a European city. What is the name of the city and what sort of animal is his pet? Email your answers to dave@zudepr.co.uk (subject line “Monevator Competition”) by midday Friday 22 November – stating whether you’re from the UK or overseas – and he’ll be in touch if you’ve won. Or perhaps even if you’ve lost? A maverick, is David.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Hi Dave
Thanks for sharing your data analysis.
I really appreciated all the research and the links/footnotes you provided in the book, though I must say I didn’t click on the Pakt link at the time of reading – now I wish I hadn’t because I feel like I need to own one!
It was heartening and reassuring to see that my own guesstimate of how much I needed for retirement was not too far from the number provided by Which magazine’s annual reader survey. Before that, at the back of my mind, I had some doubt as to whether I was just making up a number and sticking to it, with no real evidence to back it up but I’m more reassured now my plan is fine.
“preaching mung beans on air but eating caviar off it.” – love this!
Finally, I missed the Emotional value headline analyser link the first time – looks like it’ll be useful, thanks!
I am ashamed to say I immediately went off and researched Osprey backpacks. Who would have thought there was a blog devoted to reviewing backpacks. US people can get enthusiastic about anything it seems. Price tempered my curiosity.
I have an Osprey Fairview now because of David and Tim Ferris LOL. Great post though might go back and visit some of the tools now.
I am easily led.
I am looking for a travel bag, but buy cheap, and prepare to buy again, or go expensive ????
What I really want is a lightweight 60 litre backpack with wheels(getting old!).
As you get older you see many things that could be improved by wheels!
Meanwhile his pet is called ‘Marie Kondo’ and is a barnacle send my audio book on 4 track cassette (matron discourages new technology, I only got this tablet as she thinks it an etch sketch).
Agree with Weenie, having combined various guestimates to come up with a desirable retirement income it was reassuring to find Which? came up with such a close figure. And even more reassuring that now with myself and my wife both retired, our net joint income actually achieves almost exactly that number.
Is it a coincidence that people who take the trouble to research a proper retirement plan take similar care when buying backpacks? I had never thought the fact I have bought an Osprey daypack could be linked to the fact I am retired.
@All, the mysterious power of the one-bag-to-rule-them-all concept strikes again.
@Weenie and @Jonathan, yeah the Which? research is great, and the recent Loughborough Uni research tops it off. Which? seem to be redoing the reader survey each year, which will be handy in terms of updating stash target in line with inflationary pressures while doing the new year rebalancing.
@Mr Optimistic, I particularly like the “Osprey Porter 65 travel Duffel” YouTube review by the long-bearded guy.
@thecurioushebridean, glad to hear it.
@Gary Cooper, old wheels break. If only Amazon would have let me do a cassette version, the medium of choice for all 1980s audiobook-lovers.
@Jonathan, I think you have identified the missing link: obsession, in the good sense of the word.
So according to the Which article £215,450 is “How much you need in your pension to get £27,000 a year from income drawdown”. Please explain that one, a withdrawal rate of about 12.5%?!
Great set of links David – thanks for sharing.
Re. #2 on the list – the wealth data is now a little out of date but the ONS will be releasing its latest survey figures next month correct to March 2018 ( https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/wealthingreatbritainwave62016to2018 ). Will be interesting to see how household assets have fared in economically stagnant Britain.
@semipassive I agree the Which article is poor at explaining withdrawal options and the risks associated.
I wonder if it is assuming one or two state pensions as part of the £27k?
@SP I too didn’t understand the maths, but I *think* they’re talking about a couple *after* state pension has been factored in. But for sure, nothing is explicitly stated. It’s a crap article. They’ve probably done a lot of work but totally let it down with a poor editorial.
@rhino/sp – having had another careful look at the article, it seems as though they’ve deducted the average state pension received by a couple (male/female) before calculating the pot size. That gives a withdrawal rate of about 4%.
Imo the worst aspect is the side by side comparison of the costs of drawdown vs the costs of annuity – no explanation of the apples/oranges nature of the comparison, no information about annuity features or age at purchase, and no information about the risks of drawdown. Just an unqualified implication that drawdown provides a higher retirement income.
re: which how much will you need
As a single man, no dependants, house paid for I was looking at £10K holidays and £4k to a new (smallish) car every 3 years. I wasn’t really considering this luxurious living !
Still it was nice to see I am on the right track… roll on 2021.
I’d like to say the gov pension website is misleading, on the main page they state I will get £168.60 a week, then click through to contracted out and it will reduce by £48.70 a week !!! (this will be included as part my company pension payment) .. oh well 2033 is a long way off and the country may have scrapped pensions or extended the retirement date by then.
@gary re the State Pension forecast, yes it’s not set out very clearly.
The big figure at the top (the £168) is the amount you are forecast to get, assuming that you continue working until state pension age. (It will be more than that due to inflation linking, that’s the current maximum, so you are on course to get the maximum amount applicable when you reach 2033.). It won’t be reduced by the COPE amount, that’s a notional additional amount assumed to be reaching you your contracted out pension (you can for practical purposes ignore that figure, it doesn’t provide useful information).
The two numbers on the forecast that ARE worth paying attention to are the smaller figures after the forecast. One should tell you how much you have accrued towards the State Pension based on your NI record to date. The other one tells you how many more years you need to contribute to achieve the maximum state pension (it may say you can’t improve your forecast, which means you’ve already made it). This is the most useful figure for planning, because if you are hoping to stop work, and NI contributions, before state pension age, you should make sure that if you still have a shortfall at that point, you think about making voluntary NI contributions to achieve the full state pension (you have to live about 3 years after sp age to make it cost effective).
Hope that helps.
Disappointed you’re advising folk to read The Escape Artist as a bare minimum (various issues with it, discussed in comments here and elsewhere previously.) If you read that blog and can’t see what’s wrong with it, that tells us something about your critical faculties.
Well thanks @TI. Now I feel poor and it’s all thanks to the 12% of Jones’ who have more than me. 😉
Please do tell? I remember TEA endorsing an American chap who sold courses on bitcoin to his victims. That was pre-boom. We know how that went.
Hi guys, I’d rather we didn’t get into a gossipy thread about a fellow blogger here, especially as it’s really apropos of nothing much. Your point has now been made, if readers want to keep your thoughts in mind and do their own further research — or not — then they can.
Cheers! 🙂
Please elaborate Scott, I must say I’ve enjoyed his writing over the year
@vanguardfan
The gov pension page
‘This will not affect your State Pension forecast. The COPE amount is paid as part of your other pension schemes, not by the government.’
Which I presume means take the Contracted out pension (cope) away from the forecast since your company pension is providing it.
‘ In most cases the private pension scheme you were contracted out to:
will include an amount equal to the COPE amount
may not individually identify the COPE amount’
either way ‘you cannot improve your forecast any more.’
To be honest I have discounted the government pension from my planning…if I get it, it will be a bonus.
Gary. ‘This will not affect your State Pension forecast’. That means, do NOT deduct the COPE from the £168 forecast. (I am correct about this, trust me).
‘You cannot improve your forecast any more’ – this means, you have already accrued enough NI credits to be entitled to the maximum new state pension. So, regardless of whether you continue working you should receive the max at state pension age.
(If you are due to receive state pension in 2033 you must be around 53 now – how long have you been working and how long were you contracted out?)
By all means ignore state pension if you want to, but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t continue to exist. Pensioners vote. That’s not to say there might not be further changes, but I suspect you’ll find it a valuable bonus.
I too spend an inordinate time looking at bags
Over the years I have come down to a John Lewis small suitcase with wheels and a extendable handle (that gets me to the hotel)
I also carry a Samsonite backpack over one shoulder from the hotel to work – and when travelling it slips over the extendable handle
Things that go wrong – busted fingernails after slipping your hands inside the backpack to get things, zips.. they go all the time fraying at the edges but normally coming off the rails when you hold the bag up by the zip in order to get something out (Oyster card etc)
I did look at the new anti theft backpacks (as somebody swiped a laptop out of the bag when I was carrying it and I didn’t notice)
I get through the small suitcase around every 12 months (a rip around six inches on the inside caused by smacking the bag against London kerbs) and the wheels go anyway after miles of carrying it between railway stations
The laptop bags – about once every 18 months.. but then I also do load them with stuff over the years you find you need – the Mu fold flat USB-C laptop charger (check it out its fantastic) , shoelaces, pack-a-mac (lighter than an umbrella), sewing kit, small medical supplies and loads of cables etc
Yes – I retire in 11 months time.. so no more bags for me..
@Gary. Just to confirm @Vanguardfan’s comment: I contacted TPAS to answer this very question and they replied: “This figure of £168.60 per week will not be reduced by the indicative COPE figure you received of £8.70 per week. ”
Cheers,
Michael
@Michael Harper, @Vanguardfan
Yet my company pension (Transport for London) puts my state pension at £6,234.8 (159.9 per week).
Either way it will not matter too much as I should be on a net income £37k.+, and may not even live the 12 years after retirement to reach pension age.
@gary, whatever . You will clearly continue to believe what you want to believe.
However, your employer doesn’t provide state pension forecasts – that’s the government. Also, £159.90 x 52 = £8314.80.
Anyway, as you say, you are very well set up, so I suggest you don’t waste any more energy complaining about your state pension. Just enjoy retirement. Please.