FIRE-side chat: secret squirrel

Monevator reader ‘Squirrel’ is only partway through her rather rocky path towards financial independence, so today’s postcard is from the journey rather than the destination. Be warned, it’s another lengthy – yet very readable – FIRE-side chat.

A place by the FIRE

Hello! How do you feel about taking stock of your financial life today?

Honestly, I’m thrilled!

I’m a lone personal finance enthusiast in a world of people who live on their overdrafts. Even those I know who are financially stable believe that ‘the stock market is gambling’, and interest on savings is ‘fun money’ for holidays.

This may turn out to be a very long chat, as I release years of pent-up obsession!

How old are you?

Didn’t your mother teach you that there are some questions you shouldn’t ask a lady? But since I’m anonymous: I turned 44 this month.

I’m not married. I was, for over a decade, to someone I’ll call X (for obvious reasons).

We met in our early 20s at university. By the time we were 28 we were married and looking for our first house.

X came from the same background as me – working-class parents, simple upbringing (no foreign holidays, no car), first person in the family to go to university.

We were both pretty frugal, too. We’d each show up at the supermarket with a pocket full of vouchers. But his dad died shortly before I met him, and this shaped his perspective on financial decisions. He developed a philosophy of ‘you can’t take it with you’.

Any money left over was spent. Saving was against his philosophy – unless it was saving for something he wanted. Even then he’d rather borrow.

That wasn’t why I divorced him – the real reason had high heels and a sports car – but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a factor. I derive the same satisfaction from contemplating my savings that Scrooge McDuck gets from diving into his pile of gold coins. It was almost physically painful to watch them disappear.

Several years on, I now have a partner (‘boyfriend’ sounds awkward applied to someone old enough to be worrying about pensions) who is a much better match.

He’s ten years older than me – although he asked me to mention he’s also handsome and charming – and he’s outgrown his splash-the-cash phase. (Though he’ll never outgrow his love of LEGO.)

Is he pursuing FIRE in his own right, or more not getting in your way?

He’s only just discovered FIRE and he’s like a kid with a new toy!

I don’t know if it will stick. But I’m happy with him not getting in my way! That’d be a big improvement over last time.

Do you have any dependents?

My son is 12, and growing so fast he’s costing me a fortune in shoes. Or he would be if I wasn’t a regular at outlet stores and Everything5Pounds.com.

My partner’s kid just turned 18. We’re learning our way around the university loan and fees system.

Where do you live?

I live out in the sticks, in the Frozen North of England.

My little town is ex-everything – ex-mining, ex-shipbuilding, ex-tourist-hotspot.

Living here has its ups and downs. Property is cheap still. The cost of living is low, and the scenery is gorgeous once you get past the betting shops and sticky-floored bars.

But there are no jobs. The schools aren’t impressive, and there are lots of tracksuits around.

On balance, I feel like I’m winning. I can live on next to nothing and have still been able to give my son a great life, with fresh air and places to play.

How close are you to Financial Independence?

I’m not there yet. I won’t be for another eight to ten years – with a good following wind.

By the time I’m 50 I hope I could possibly pull off a super-lean FIRE.

By 55 I should be completely comfortable about walking away from all my work commitments.

So early retirement is the plan?

Well you could say I’m already semi-retired, even though I haven’t got the FI element nailed yet.

I’m down to two days a week at work, and have been for a year. My line manager thinks it’s temporary, but it isn’t. Unless something goes horribly wrong, in which case I’ll have to get back into the rat race. Or my version of it, which is more of a hamster race.

If I’m honest, I haven’t relaxed into my partial retirement. I spent three years aiming for this and throwing everything at it. But changing gears has been hard.

I find myself sitting at my computer almost as much as before, only now I’m looking for interesting opportunities – and keeping up with Monevator – rather than working.

Assets: mostly under one roof

What’s your net worth?

I’d estimate that on my own I’m worth between £400,000 and £500,000.

I know that to those of you with millions in the bank that doesn’t sound impressive, but it amazes me every day.

Seriously, I really get a kick out of it. (Is this a sign of some kind of syndrome?)

I’ve actually considered investing in gold – even though I don’t really believe it’s sensible – just for the joy of rubbing my hands and contemplating my gold.

Maybe I’m part-dragon.

What are your main assets?

I have a house. It’s worth about £250,000  – maybe even £300,000 if the sun is shining when I put it on the market. I paid off the mortgages when I turned 40.

X and I bought this house shortly after we were married. He paid the regular mortgage payments, with his more consistent salary. My work fluctuated, so I overpaid when my salary allowed. He thought the overpayments were stupid but tolerated my quirk.

I wasn’t entirely convinced that paying off the mortgage was the smartest move either. Balancing it against the potential returns from investment, it may not have been.

But it was the smartest move I was allowed to make. Every time I saved money in the bank, X would say something like, “The front door needs replacing, and we can afford a good one since you’ve been saving!” So money I saved always vanished. But the overpayments mostly went under his radar.

X threw a pretty big spanner in the works at one point. He decided we needed to take out a second mortgage to build a kitchen extension. I argued we could save aggressively for three or four years to pay for it outright. He dismissed this. There was room in his salary due to a recent promotion for additional payments he said. He wanted a better kitchen NOW, not in four years.

So, as usual, I gave in. Obviously that was not a good call, because when he took off he left me holding two mortgages as well as the baby.

Yikes! Where did that leave you financially?

Essentially I started again from scratch. No savings in the bank, a pension that wouldn’t pay for a chocolate bar a month, and a job that didn’t cover two mortgage payments.

But I had the house.

Thanks to my ten years of dedicated overpaying, the first mortgage was nearly gone – and overtime was available. I knocked off that first mortgage as quickly as I could, then turned my attention to the second one. I paid them both off in less than two years.

Then I could breathe again. I was free – of a bad marriage, an unwanted second mortgage, and that first mortgage that was my project for a decade.

That was four years ago. Since then I’ve had a wonderful time. I don’t have much money to spare each month, but I have great fun playing with it.

There’s around £65,000 in ISAs, divided between cash and shares. I pay voluntary contributions of 12% (taking the total to 20%) into my workplace pension through salary sacrifice. And I occasionally invest in more random stuff.

What’s your main residence?

Sorry but I can’t help laughing at the term ‘main residence’!

I have a house, and I live in it. I doubt I’ll ever find myself in a situation where I’ll have a ‘main residence’.

Having said that… my partner also owns a house. He’s renting it out while he lives with me. The rental income helps his child with university costs. That seems fair enough.

My partner pays half the bills in my house every month, so I have more financial headroom now. Though I was sad to lose my single person Council Tax discount!

My house is big. It was a fixer-upper, and finally it’s fixed up. It’s no mansion, but it has three floors and four big double bedrooms.

If you stand in the bay windows and look sideways, you can see the sea.

It’s not in the best area – our street has HMOs and antisocial behaviour – but that’s standard in my town.

Do you consider it an asset, an investment, or something else?

I’m glad you asked, because it’s recently become a key part of my future plans.

I’m frustrated that most of my wealth (don’t laugh – it feels like wealth to me) is locked up in this house. So recently my partner and I decided to sell it to buy somewhere together.

He has some savings, and I’m going to put in £100,000 from the house sale. This should leave me with at least £150,000 to feed into my ISA and pensions.

Maybe it’s a daft idea. But after so many years of money stress, it would mean a lot to have funds right where I can see them.

Your journey is unusual for Monevator, with that especially stressful beginning…

Yes, and this is a good place to point out how much easier things are when you’re not a single parent.

I was single for over three years, between kicking out my ex-husband and meeting my current partner. Financially it was horrendous. There was no safety net, no wiggle room, no help if I was ill.

Being with my current partner gives me options. We can pool our resources and work together to achieve things. We’re not at the point of having joint finances. Maybe we never will be – we’ve both been burned before. But regardless, it’s so much easier.

I absolutely believe women should be able to be independent. But the reality is if you’re a single parent on a low income, you’re screwed. So to any other single mothers out there, reading Monevator wistfully because they hope something will change someday, I’d say: hold on.

Time keeps moving, kids grow up – I’ve heard some eventually even help with the chores – and you may find allies in unlikely places.

When I was dating I found first-date questions about jobs and income off-putting. What advice would you give to readers looking for a financially like-minded partner?

Conversations like that never go well, do they? I met a few guys when I was single who were clearly fishing to find out whether I owned my house and whether I could support them on my salary.

I think questions about income and jobs are best avoided. Those things are subject to change anyway, and they don’t tell you all that much about a person.

But conversations about spending philosophy might have a role: “You’ve just won a million quid on the lottery – what’s the first thing you do?”

I’d find a man with a plan for a nicely-diversified investment portfolio pretty attractive!

What do you think of prenuptial agreements?

Divorce has a way of changing your views on things like that!

These days I’m in favour of prenups. When I went through my divorce I couldn’t afford a solicitor, so I had to act for myself on the financial settlement. It gave me sleepless nights for two years.

Of course, a prenup wasn’t even a consideration when my ex and I started out. We didn’t have much and you don’t think like that when you’re in your 20s and broke.

But if I did it again I’d be more open to the idea.

A prenup is not the most romantic way to approach marriage. But being trapped and financially dependent is even less romantic.

A prenup that protects both parties is an expression of love (although gentlemen please note: jewellery is too!)

Earning: notsoloadsamoney

What’s your job?

I tutor adults from home. I used to do more conventional teaching, alongside the tutoring. But when I became a parent I had to make changes.

My child was born with a disability. There was no chance of childcare, so I had to work around looking after him.

I’ve always enjoyed tutoring, actually. But I’ve been stuck for over a decade in a job with no promotion opportunities, at the bottom of a ladder with no rungs. It’s frustrating.

For me, the RE element of FIRE is not really about retiring – not yet, anyway.

It’s about the luxury of being able to walk away from guaranteed work without being irresponsible, and then taking time to re-skill or to look for more exciting opportunities.

What is your income?

Right now I’m not even paying tax, so that should give you a clue! But of course I’m only working two days a week.

However even at my peak, when I was working full time and doing as much overtime as I could scrounge, I wasn’t earning more than £38,000.

Talk of higher-rate tax brackets goes over my head, I’m afraid!

How has your salary progressed?

I didn’t earn a wage until I was 25. I did a PhD, which extended my student idleness by an extra four years. And then I had a studentship. They paid me £10,000 a year to research something I was interested in. A sweet deal!

After I graduated, I built what they nowadays call a ‘portfolio career’. I thought of it as a patchwork of jobs. A bit of invigilating, some exam marking gigs, a bit of teaching in local universities, and a small income from my drawing and graphic design hobby.

None of it brought in much. But I’d been living on a shoestring budget for years, so I didn’t feel the pinch. Anything above £10,000 a year felt like riches.

It was a very precarious life, though. So the idea of financial independence always represented safety and stability to me.

Did you learn anything in developing your career that you wished you’d known earlier?

Nope. I’ve never unlocked the secret of making money. I’m the person who ends up doing piles of unpaid work, because nobody else is going to do it. I say yes to things I should say no to.

People have told me to grow a backbone for years, but it’s hopeless!

My dad worked at a very low-paying manual job all his life and retired early due to ill health caused by workplace wear and tear.

My mother took odd jobs – cleaning, childminding, doing people’s ironing – for cash to supplement the little my dad made.

I grew up believing I would never be able to earn much money, so it was better to manage without. That philosophy has helped me resist the lifestyle creep that so many fall victim to. But it’s also limited me.

I’ve never had the confidence to pitch for high-paying jobs, because I can’t shake the belief that those jobs aren’t for people like me.

I’m trying to reprogram myself, though. Maybe someday I’ll figure it out!

Do you have any sources of income besides your main job?

I receive some Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for my son. A few years ago, when X took to his heels, that extra money was a lifeline. Without it, I think I would have lost the house.

But since I got back on my feet and don’t rely on it any more, the DLA money has become what we call the Magic Money Tree in our house. I opened a Vanguard S&S Junior ISA (heavily equity-weighted, between LS 80 and a Target Retirement accumulation fund with a very long date) for my son. All of the DLA money goes in there.

I get him to help me check its progress every couple of months, and we watch as the Magic Money Tree magically grows more money. We talk about compounding, saving, and investment. He’s learning about interest rates too.

It’s never going to be a huge pot – it’s sitting at around £13,000, and I’m aiming to reach £30,000 to £40,000 by the time he turns 18 – but it’s not a bad start. Hopefully he’ll have picked up enough financial awareness to manage it competently, or at least not blow it on something stupid.

I have the occasional side hustle. The legacy of an early ‘portfolio career’ is the confidence that you can always pick up a bit of extra money from somewhere.

At the moment I make a little passive income from selling designs on platforms like Redbubble – usually less than £500 a year. And sometimes people pay me a bit for designing logos for them, or making them a book cover, or writing some blurb for their website, or doing some research. It’s just pocket money and it’s not reliable. But it’s better than a slap in the face with a wet kipper, as my mother would say.

I enjoy it. One of my goals in chasing FIRE is to have more time for illustrating, because I’m never happier than when I’m curled up on a sofa with my sketchbook.

Illustrations by Squirrel

Has pursuing FIRE got in the way of your career?

There were times it kept me going.

One thing I have in common with lots of other Monevator readers, I’ve noticed, is I tend to struggle with authority.

I don’t like to be told what to do – especially by managers who don’t know the job like me. I don’t like training courses run by people with less experience than me. Or to be monitored as a box-ticking exercise.

I am, in short, not suited to employment. I should be in a Brideshead-style country house, eating delicate cakes and trying to decide whether to wear the blue hat or the green.

But since I do need to work, and since I need to tolerate a hierarchy which often makes very little sense, FIRE is my bright and twinkly light at the end of the tunnel.

Saving it: highly-rated

What is your annual spending? How has this changed?

I spend between £8,000 and £10,000 a year, and I always have done. I know that seems implausible, with the rises in the cost of living – and having a child to support – but it’s true.

In my early days of Being A Grown-Up there were mortgage payments, house renovations, trips to visit in-laws 200 miles away… Life was more expensive, even if a loaf of bread wasn’t.

But now that I’ve paid off the mortgage, done most of the work on the house, found myself a job that doesn’t involve traveling, and don’t have a car, things have stabilised and I’ve been able to cut costs massively. So my annual spending really hasn’t budged.

Do you stick to a budget or otherwise structure your spending?

No. And being able to not do those things is a luxury to me. I’ve had to do so at various points, and that was fine and necessary. But now that I have a bit more wiggle room I find it a pleasure not to keep track. Sometimes I just buy something, without thinking about it for months!

I’m instinctively conscious that if I make an unplanned purchase one week, I shouldn’t again for another few weeks. But I don’t feel the need to check my bank balance obsessively.

What percentage of your gross income have you saved over the years?

Oof, that’s a tricky question!

There have been times when I’ve saved probably about 80% of my income, if you count overpaying the mortgage and pensions.

It’s never really dropped lower than about 40%.

Saving, for me, is one of the main reasons to earn. I’ll cut back on other things before cutting saving.

I made some tough choices to enable that. One was not to pay for childcare. When I was a kid my mother chose to stay home, look after the house and bring up my sister and me – and accepted the financial consequences. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. But in the event, that choice was made for me: first by my son’s needs, which made childcare pretty much impossible, even if I could afford it; and second, by becoming a single parent, which narrowed my options even further.

So I juggled working from home and full-time parenting, and I’m still doing that.

Even though it’s been an exhausting 12 years, I’m grateful I was in a position where I could work from home when necessary. Childcare would have eaten up any disposable income. There would have been no possibility of saving anything.

It seems odd to say I’ve been lucky. Most people reading this might not consider it lucky to spend years as a single parent, working through every night, and desperately hoping not to get sick and lose income.

But I was lucky. I had a workable option, and enough knowledge of financial products to take advantage when I could. Gradually my snowball started to get bigger.

Most people in my situation find themselves with much scarier problems.

What’s the secret to saving?

If you start out with good habits then don’t lose them, no matter what anybody says.

It doesn’t matter if they laugh at you. We’re a nation of eccentrics, so just roll with it!

I shop in charity shops. My clothes come from market stalls. I wear a pair of boots until they drop to bits – then I go to the market cobbler and get them re-soled. I put jumpers on instead of the heating. Multiple jumpers – and I’m not very tall so I definitely have a Wombles aesthetic.

I started like that because my family had no money and that’s how we lived. But I keep going because it makes me happy. I like rooting for bargains and buying second (or third) hand designer gear that’s out of fashion.

I don’t actually want to change my habits. Lifestyle creep makes no sense to me. I get more fun out of stashing money away than spending it.

If your salary goes up, keeping your cheap ways will make a huge difference – or at least I’d imagine it would!

My salary didn’t go up, but my financial obligations have gone down. That has a similar effect.

Any hints about spending less?

Walk a lot! It makes such a difference to my financial outgoings.

I walk everywhere I need to go. Where I live I’m lucky enough to be just a short walk from the shops, bank, beach, park (with squirrels), and pretty much everything else I need. Sometimes I do need to go into a city, which requires public transport. But I can go months between trips.

Find yourself a walkable town, and you’ll be saving more money than you know what to do with.

Do you have any passions, hobbies, or vices that eat up your income?

I do – but I choose to see those more as investments than vices.

I love to collect things, and I love a bargain. When I was younger I had a passion for antiques. I knew a great deal about them, so I could spot a bargain a mile away.

My house is full of what my neighbours call ‘old stuff’. Victorian beadwork, mahogany sideboards, Japanese lacquered cabinets, old Persian rugs.

But as the bargains have dried up over the last 15 years, my interests have narrowed. Instead of ‘old stuff’ I now pick up old books and art.

My antiquarian book collection is worth a lot. I don’t know how much, because it seems rude to put a value on friends. But a lot.

I rarely spend more than about £30 on a book. And old books are getting harder to find, so the value of my collection will only go up. That makes me feel less self-indulgent!

As for art: buy what you like, and buy direct from the artist when you can.

The most I’ve paid for a painting is £1,000. The painting was from the 1980s and it was used as the cover art for one of my favourite fantasy books when I was a teenager. When I saw it up for sale on the artist’s website, about four years ago, I had to have it. But still I spent a year thinking about it and trying to justify it to myself.

I reckon that if you buy what you like, someday you’ll be able to sell for profit to someone with similar tastes. In the meantime you have the joy of owning something you love.

I’m in the joy phase now. I fully recommend it!

Investing: steady as she goes

What kind of investor are you?

Passive. Absolutely, all the way – and that’s your fault!

I discovered Monevator early in my FIRE journey. I didn’t know anything about investing. The whole idea seemed impossible, like entering the world of the rich people without permission.

But the rationale of passive investing struck a chord. I’m not an expert in anything, but I do have determination. A buy-and-hold strategy played to my strengths. I knew I could ride out market fluctuations, as long as I was confident of my strategy.

What was your best investment?

Time will tell!

Maybe life will throw me a curveball, and my best investment will end up being my son. He might turn into a financial idiot in adulthood, of course, but I’m investing the time to teach him all the things I had to discover for myself through blogs and serendipity.

I learned them far too late to benefit fully. But he’s learning them as a child. Who knows what possibilities that might open up for him?

I’m not counting on him doing amazing things with his life – but there’s a chance he might…

Did you make any big mistakes on your investing journey?

Many! Didn’t we all?

My property was bought just before the 2008 crash, and it took ten years to get its value back. I started to fill my ISA allowance many years ago, but ended up taking the money out and using it. It took me too long to understand the power of compounding. And I didn’t opt into the work pension scheme early, at a time when I could have gained a defined benefit advantage.

Yes, I would like to kick Younger Me for all that. But I don’t blame her. She had absolutely no finance or investing education, no role models, no crystal ball, and no access to advice. She was stumbling and learning as she went. The right instincts, but none of the right tools. As soon as she picked up information, she applied it as best she could.

I wish I’d been around to help her, but I can’t blame her for the choices she made at the time.

What has been your overall return, as best you can tell?

I don’t really keep records. Maybe I should start? It’s always seemed irrelevant to me, because I’ve just been stumbling through and doing the best I could with limited options.

Overpaying the mortgages clearly saved me tens of thousands of pounds, so there’s that. And my house has gone up in value by about 60% in the 16 years since I bought it.

Investment-wise I’ve done okay. Things have gone up pretty steadily.

I’ve also been enjoying the 5% I’ve been getting on my cash over the last couple of years.

But overall return? Not a clue. There have been too many moving parts.

How much have you been able to fill your ISA and pension contributions?

I’ve prioritised ISAs over pensions in the last few years. My goal is to max out my ISA allowance for the next eight to ten years. Hopefully that will put me on a solid footing for drawing what I need until I hit state pension age.

Yes, there’s an argument for prioritising pensions. But financial safety nets are not to be sniffed at. I’ve been desperately in need of money at times. Anything locked in a pension is effectively out of reach. So I prioritise ISAs because in a pinch I can access the money.

To what extent did tax incentives and shelters influence your strategy?

Completely. I don’t have an accountant or any special financial expertise. I don’t have the faintest clue about the tax due on investments. The thought of trying to figure it out sends me into a cold sweat.

I have no way to mitigate tax, other than through tax shelters. So that’s what I use.

How often do you check your investments?

I check my savings and investments monthly – or more often if I need to cheer myself up.

Yes I’m a dork, but everything about passive investing makes me happy. I get a kick out of watching the graph go upwards! But I also like it when the market drops. I’m nowhere near cashing in my investment chips, so a market downturn means cheap bargains for me.

I make regular payments so I don’t have to think about anything. That makes me comfortable. I’ve set my course and now all I need to do – apart from very occasional rebalancing – is hold steady. That’s what I’m good at.

Wealth: nutty about saving

We know how you made your money, but how did you keep it?

When I was a kid, my little sister used to cheat at Monopoly by hiding £500 notes under the board. I often feel like I’m doing the same thing with life. I’m tucking my Monopoly money away, hoping nobody notices. Hoping I can win somehow.

It feels like cheating. And I have to keep it quiet.

I have a good friend who comes from the same sort of background but who has a much better-paid job than I do. She lives in a shared house, never climbs out of her overdraft, is always worried about money, and sees the future as impossibly bleak.

When my friend insists on buying me lunch because she earns more than me, how can I say that I’ve brought sandwiches from home because I’m saving my spare cash for a rare 300-year-old book – now that I’ve maxed out my ISA for the year and paid off my mortgages?

I have to fly under the radar, otherwise nobody in my current life would speak to me again.

I think of myself as a financial squirrel, scrounging nuts and hiding them for when the weather worsens. There’s no real plan. I just run on instinct and the small amount of knowledge I’ve managed to pick up, aiming for a level of financial stability that will allow me to work only when I feel like it.

Which is more important, saving or investing?

For me, saving is the fundamental thing. Ever since I was a kid, I knew that was the way out, the way to change my life. Discovering compound interest was like fireworks going off in my brain.

Investing is obviously the way to turbo-charge those savings but I’m conscious of the vagaries. Investing is like the camel that might carry you through the desert – or it might dump you on the sand, spit on you, and sneer at your gullibility. I love that Investment Camel, but I’m not going to give it all my savings. So I follow the savings interest rates and always have a sizeable proportion of my portfolio in cash.

Please note I’ve never seen a camel in real life. All camel analogies are based on Carry On Follow That Camel, and may not be entirely true to life.

Was achieving financial freedom ever a goal with a timeline?

I may have mentioned my ex-husband, who was the single biggest obstacle to everything I wanted to achieve.

Becoming a parent got in the way, too. Babies cost a lot!

Sometimes I think you just have to put your financial goals on hold for a few years and go into survival mode. I’ve done that twice – once when my son was born, and once when X left.

Yes, those times set me back considerably. But they were necessary and I don’t regret them. Financial freedom is important, but sometimes other things come first.

Unlike most FIRE-side chatters, you’re very much still growing your pot…

Yes, and I’m hoping that the next five years will be the time when my pot grows the fastest.

I’m saving as much as I can into my ISA. I’m also saving into my son’s ISA, and into my workplace pension. And I’ve talked my partner into prioritising his ISA too.

House prices in my area have been going up, so if I sell my house I might do well enough to give my pot a substantial boost. This is my moment in time, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away. (I learned to play that song on the keyboard when I was eight, and it stuck).

Do you have any further financial goals?

Don’t laugh – but I haven’t given up on the idea of someday making proper money.

Yesterday I applied for the Perfect Job that, as well as being exactly in my wheelhouse, also happens to pay £150,000.

I’ll never get it. I won’t even get an interview. I’ve been here before.

But maybe one day the stars will align, and an opportunity will open up. If it does, I will jump at it like a rat up a drainpipe!

What would you say to other Monevator readers pursuing financial freedom?

Financial freedom seems like a big final reward – like when you’re playing Pass the Parcel, and you get to the last wrapping.

But actually there are lots of little rewards along the way. It’s more like the modern-day version of Pass the Parcel, with a lolly in each layer of paper so the kids don’t burst into tears.

First I was able to stop working extra hours; then I could invest in some things that I love; then I could cut down a bit at work. The last few years have been one little reward after another.

So I’d say remember to celebrate the small wins as well as the big one.

In the weeds

When did you first start thinking seriously about money and investing?

Oh, I think it’s always been there. When I was a little girl I had a Halifax money box in the shape of a house, and I would hoard my pocket money. A bit older, I discovered bank accounts paid interest – quite healthy interest, if I remember correctly, in the late 1980s – and I poured over my bank book to see the free money. Even doing my PhD I was also saving. I dreamt of owning a little flat with books and plants and a cat.

Then my ex-husband came along and everything got complicated. I’m pretty persuadable, and it was easier to let his preferences overrule my instincts.

But one day I picked up a free Kindle book for holiday reading. It was called How to Own the World, by Andrew Craig. All of a sudden my old obsessions came roaring back.

I needed to own the world! I needed to own inflation! And to put 20-30% into gold!

As I started to look into the things he mentioned – and stumbled across Monevator for the first time – I gradually developed my own take.

No, I didn’t really want to own gold, even though it sounded nice. Yes, I did need to start investing in equities and bonds – and I needed a Stocks and Shares ISA to do that.

That was where I ground to a halt.

I knew from reading Monevator (religiously, for months) where I wanted to start, to match my risk tolerance and my level of knowledge. I wanted to start with a Vanguard LifeStrategy 60/40 product in an ISA wrapper.

But how on earth could I do it?

There were platform fees and transaction fees and different brokers, and there were Financial Advisors but you shouldn’t really use them. The simple portfolios managed by the banks were too expensive, and everyone on the internet said ‘Do Your Own Research’…

I was on the way to concluding that a working-class girl like me – who didn’t know anyone in the world with an investment portfolio – might as well just stick to hiding money pound notes under the mattress.

Then something changed. Vanguard came to the UK, and opened its low-cost online platform for regular folks to invest directly.

That was the missing piece! Suddenly I could see how to do it.

According to my dashboard I opened my Vanguard account in 2017. I was very enthusiastic – too enthusiastic. I made the mistake of talking about it.

Two years later my ex-husband took everything I had in my accounts when he left, including the funds I’d built up in my S&S ISA. I was back to the start again.

But now I knew how to do it, and a few other things too. I was starting with knowledge, and a little bit of confidence. I read more widely, came up with a savings strategy for my son, figured out my appetite for risk in my changed circumstances, and I got back in the game.

Did any particular individuals inspire you to become financially free?

I suppose, if I think back, a dead guy called George.

In my mid-20s I was working at a university, and I shared an office with a huge stack of books that had belonged to George. I knew his name because I went through his books, and found lots of professional correspondence from editors and reviewers.

George had been a professor in the department before I got there. He’d retired, then he died soon afterwards and left his books to the university.

The university didn’t want them.

Nobody ever talked about George, except to roll their eyes and complain about the unwanted books. It was like he’d never existed. But he did, and he did everything right. He climbed the ladder, published his research, got promoted, made it to the top. He ticked every academic box and then some. Then all of a sudden he was dead, and his books were homeless.

Nothing George had done seemed to matter. Life just rolled right on over him.

I spent a lot of time sitting in my office, marking essays behind this giant stack of inconvenient books, and wondering what it was all for.

Yes, I could spend the next 40 years working evenings and weekends, going the extra mile, writing books that nobody would read. Pushing through one promotion board after another until I got to the top, like George had and then died.

But why? Would I be happy? Was George happy?

That year inspired my quest for financial freedom. George represented my alternate reality, in which I did everything by the book and threw all I had at my career. It turned out I didn’t want to be George. I wasn’t sure what I did want, but freedom was definitely going to be part of it.

Do you think George would do anything different next time – or are the likes of us just born this way?

I reckon he did exactly what he thought he should do. Given the chance, he’d probably do it all again.

Plenty of people around me are climbing the same ladder. But I’m not – and maybe that’s what attracted me to FIRE.

I remember when I came across the concept of F-U money, it hit me like a lightning bolt. That was what I needed! The freedom to walk away.

I don’t know what makes me different, or what makes any of us ‘FIRE people’ different. But I have a feeling we’ll survive the zombie apocalypse!

Can you recommend your favourite resources for anyone chasing the FIRE dream?

Monevator, obviously – and I’m not just saying that because I’m talking to you!

Specifically, I love your compound interest calculator. It’s my happy place. It’s done more to make the possibility of financial independence real to me than anything else.

The MoneySavingExpert weekly newsletter has also helped me a lot. In the days when things were really tight, I had to chase the discounts, vouchers and the best rates just to keep afloat. I would read that on my phone in the dark when I was trying to get my son to sleep, and make plans based on whatever was free or discounted.

I don’t read or watch a lot of FIRE-specific things, because mostly they don’t map onto my situation. Anything London-centric or Fat-FIRE is a world away from me.

But I do like to read the stories of people who’ve made it, regardless of how different they are. I feel like celebrating every time somebody makes it to the end of whatever challenge they set themselves.

What is your attitude towards charity and inheritance?

I shop in charity shops, because I like the little money I have to benefit both me and a charity.

I buy furniture secondhand. My cat is a rescue cat from a charity. I put my change into a charity pot when I see one. I believe in charity and in helping out where you can.

But I wouldn’t leave anything to charity in my will, I don’t think. There’s my son to provide for, and my partner’s child to consider (both are disabled in different ways, so they might struggle to find work when they’re older).

I’m an aunt too, so there are other little ones to look out for. Things are tough for the younger generation, so I always have one eye on their future.

What will your finances look like towards the end of your life?

I see myself, at the end of my life, looking out of the turret window of my castle at my descendants playing together in my beautifully manicured gardens as the sun sets behind the distant mountains of my Empire, and saying to myself, “I have done well”.

Failing that, I’d settle for having a bit to leave the kids – and the very-much-hypothetical grandkids. Although I’m not a big fan of inheritances. I’d be looking to give them what they need when they most need it, rather than encourage them to look forward with enthusiasm to the day I shuffle off this mortal coil…

My thanks to Squirrel, and to you for hearing us out. What do you think of this ‘work in progress’ FIRE-side chat? A nice change? Questions and reflections welcome, but remember Squirrel is a reader sharing her story, not a gnarly old blogger like me. Constructive feedback welcome. Personal attacks will be deleted. Do check out our other FIRE studies.