FIRE update: fourth year anniversary

What’s better than FIRE-ing once? FIRE-ing twice, baby!1

This time last year I was effectively working full-time again, after opt-in house renovation costs evaporated The Accumulators’ coffers like a reservoir in a heatwave.

The best remedy I could think of was to put my FIRE dream on hold, replenish our reserves, and then resign my post once again.

And happily, that’s just what happened.

I re-entered the FIRE fold in February. My happiness levels ticked up as follows:

Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration.

But I am happier. Mrs Accumulator, too, as I understand it. (Hopefully you’ll get an independent update directly from The Organ-Grinder soon.)

Work-strife balance

My FIRE hiatus was purely about the money. It wasn’t about buyer’s remorse or trying to fill a void.

There was no post-career void to fill. I don’t miss my old life. I don’t need it, I don’t want it.

That isn’t to say ‘work’ doesn’t have a role to play in my version of a fulfilling life. I’m completely happy to accept Visa, Mastercard, or cash for doing a few things I’m not terrible at.

Sometimes I even enjoy these tasks, provided they don’t:

• Consume my every waking hour
• Involve a deluge of ‘comms’
• Require me to invent a nonsense reason about why I want this role. (It’s for the money, obviously)
• Attend ‘ra-ra’ team days that constantly invoke a set of ‘values’ that should, let’s face it, be a given

On the other hand, challenging work – that’s easy on the BS, and fits into a sane fraction of the week – is absolutely fine by me.

There’s not much to beat the feeling of goofing-off with Mrs Accumulator after a day of slaving over a hot laptop to produce an Earth-shattering Monevator post!

I’ve got to have light and shade in my life. I can’t operate without a base level of eustress.

Think of me as a dog who loves his walkies or chasing a ball in the park. It’s that basic.

The reality gap

A lot of FIRE blogs are (or were) filled with fabulous post-work feats.

You know the kind of thing:

• Here we are on our world tour, drinking mezcal margaritas served by a shaman
• Here we are again! Now we’re hand-rearing an abandoned baby dolphin that we rescued from a secret US military program

It makes sense. We all need inspiration – including the readers of FIRE blogs. Sometimes only the sight of an enormous, juicy, prize-winning carrot can spur you on when you’re doing the hard yards.

A middle-aged couple eating jammy scones in the garden on a Wednesday afternoon probably won’t cut it. It can’t be many people’s idea of living the dream.

But it is mine.

Many happy non-financial returns

The problem when you arrive at the destination is your new life can’t be all shamans, dolphins, and carrots.

For the joy to stick, life cannot be about making every day extraordinary.

It’s got to be about finding the extraordinary in the everyday.

So when I lean back and think about the past year’s ordinary days that were just lovely, I remember…

…the day we had a power cut. I had no excuse but to take off into the countryside on my bike. Eventually I found myself on a bench, with a beautiful valley for company, eating a pasty. What a day.

…being able to say “yes” when my brother suggested a road trip to see my Dad in Scotland. It was the longest time we’ve spent together since we were kids. It was a great trip, notable for Pro Max tomfoolery, catching up with the oldsters, climbing hills, and ribbing each other without mercy.

…meeting old friends for a Full English – but only after I’d earned it. That meant a wonderful morning pedalling the arteries of Britain’s industrial past. Threading together reclaimed railway lines and canals. Up and over an imperious aqueduct, mighty like a power-pose in stone. Passing by paddleboarding youngsters following their leader. Sooty tunnels. All a gorgeous backdrop for a human pinball game of families, couples, dog-walkers, and joggers.

…being able to say “yes” whenever Mrs Accumulator says, “Let’s go for a walk.” (She always warns me she can’t think what we’re going to talk about. And then we yak our heads off the whole way around.)

…a brilliant autumn day yomping with The Investor. More top-tier yakkery about anything and everything. All the better for being grounded by the kind of mickey-taking and BS-calling you only get from someone who knows you very well.

Perhaps the link between my memories is connection. Whether with myself, the world, people I love, or total randoms that I’ll never see again but who still made the effort to make a fleeting moment go well.

The other link is time.

It’s not that these things couldn’t happen when I was working or, more accurately, ‘careering’.

But they did happen much less frequently, and with persistent interruptions (“Sorry, I just gotta take this call”) or under an anvil cloud of looming stress.

Spend now, maybe pay later

We lost another close family member this past year. They were 85 and decided to discontinue the drugs that were holding down their cancer.

For Mrs Accumulator and I that’s an entire branch of the family swept away in two years.

One moment they were roving around Europe, loving their retirement, loving each other… Next, they’re gone.

I can’t help but pay attention to what that’s telling me.

I’m a planner at heart. It makes sense to me to think about what happens if we make it to our nineties and beyond.

However, I’m actively muzzling that impulse now in favour of spending more to have a better time while we can.

I’m not talking about asset-allocating 30% of our portfolio to a supercar.

But l think it’s okay to loosen up on stuff that makes a real difference to our quality of life here and now.

Granted, it puts upward pressure on our long-term failure rate. I’ll manage that as we go.

But we’re eating out more than we have for years. Binning off the socks that are more hole than sock. Buying the occasional piece of furniture that makes us smile every time we see it.

This is harder for Mrs Accumulator. She’s a born worrier and austerity merchant.

I don’t have those genes. I had to learn how to become a hardcore saver.

The purpose of that phase was to become financially independent. Now we’re here, what’s the point of not enjoying it?

Purposefully passive

I’m paying relatively little attention to our portfolio.

Drafting in some volatility dampeners like gold and broad commodities has improved my confidence in our strategic balance. (I love the way those assets knocked the bottoms off some of history’s greatest drawdowns.)

Inflation is covered now I’ve got to grips with index-linked gilts.

If anything goes hideously wrong I’m sure the news will find me pretty quick.

My media feed is full of threats, of course. AI, populism, deglobalisation, the Climate Crisis, Putin, Britain sinking beneath a tide of debt, despair, and decline… You name it.

But it’s all outside my circle of control.

I care about it. I pay attention. I could talk to you for hours about it – but I’m not going to let it menace my every day.

The next 12 months

I’m probably going to need another long-term project or two to keep me feeling like I’m part of the real world.

At the moment, I’m regaining the fitness I lost when Covid and then FIRE stopped me cycling to work five days a week. I’ve struggled to find a non-negotiable exercise slot ever since.

That’s the problem with being your own boss. I’m too soft on my employees!

Beyond that, I would like to do something with a community focus. It needs to be IRL. Ideally it will require me to collaborate with lots of new people and not have much to do with a laptop.

I’ll report back on progress – if any – next year.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

P.S. Our FIRE budget for 2024-25 was £28,400 for two. Actual spend minus one-off renovation costs: £28,750. Bad TA!

1. FIRE is shorthand for Financial Independence Retire Early. In other words quitting work and living off your investments – or at least having the option to. [↩]