What caught my eye this week.

A decade ago the UK had barely come down from the buzz of the 2012 Olympics. Riding high on the global stage, we attracted bright young things from across a moribund Europe. A start-up culture was catching fire in London that finally offered an alternative to decamping to Silicon Valley.

The UK was not without problems, but it was easy to feel lucky to live here.

Sadly, for every advance in this life there seems to be a counter-reaction.

Within a few years, the US had followed the triumph of electing its first black President by sending to the White House a dangerous blowhard better suited to the side of a box of fried chicken.

Meanwhile, a slim majority of Britons were convinced by a Band of Bullshitters into voting for Brexit – the most bone-headed policy since that Roman Emperor made his horse a consul.

And slowly, surely, the economic consequences of leaving the EU have been coming through.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Falling investment, perpetually slower growth, dire politics, and what is starting to look like the return of Britain’s age-old inflation problem.

Cost of Brexit: over £100 billion a year in lost economic output and counting.

All bad enough. But it seems some people now want to throw our pensions onto the bonfire too.

London’s gurning

Stepping back, there’s been lots of talk recently about the plight of the London Stock Exchange.

The LSE seems unable to win big new listings. Most recently chip design giant ARM said it will float in New York – despite direct pleading intervention from successive UK Prime Ministers.

Other London-homed companies are moving their listings. There appears to be a gloomy acceptance that the LSE should give up on having a listed tech sector at all.

In November the London Stock Exchange’s total market capitalization fell behind Paris for the first time since Bloomberg began crunching the numbers in 2003.

We’re also losing much of the less-glamorous but highly functional activities that helped the City boom for 30 years, with euro banking and clearing operations migrating to the EU.

Brexit fans may snicker at London’s plight. But City salaries help support a higher tax base and more generous welfare state than would be possible if London were “taken down a peg or two”.

As I’ve noted before, Britain is relatively poor for an advanced economy, on a per capita basis.

Yet for nearly a decade we’ve been making decisions like we’ve money to burn.

Dad’s barmy

Faced with this slow puncture draining the vitality from our economy, the rational thing to do would be to try to reverse it.

The Windsor Framework for Northern Ireland was a small step. But as Rishi Sunak revealed in championing that region’s advantages in having a foot in Europe, we’d be better off going whole hog. Reversing our hard Brexit and re-entering some combination of the Single Market and the Customs Union could staunch the bleeding. The politics of EU membership may still be impossible, but we need the economics.

Alas we’re not there yet. Brexit benefits may be as thin on the ground as Brexiteers who haven’t yet left office in disgrace, but the UK isn’t a Mad Max wasteland  – which is apparently the high bar set for judging the benighted project.

Instead, in what would be a doubling-down in Britain’s lurch into Banana Republic governance, there is talk of corralling British citizen’s pension assets into investing in British companies.

Apparently some people look at Britain’s diminished status since 2016 and scratch their heads.

What on Earth happened to turn global capital against us?

Has the weather been particularly bad? Was it the death of David Bowie?

Wait! What about Brex… traitorous UK pension funds!

From the Financial Times:

The proportion of all UK pension fund assets invested in equities was 26.4% in 2021, down from 55.7% in 2001, according to the OECD. By contrast, Canadian funds had 40.6% in equities and Australian schemes 47%.

“We have trillions of pounds sitting in pension funds that are not being used to invest in companies, drive growth or do a whole range of things that the economic viability of the country depends on,” says Immuncore’s Sir John Bell. “We need to find ways to release this capital.”

Please read the full article: Britain’s ‘capitalism without capital’: the pension funds that shun risk. It gives a good and balanced take on the malaise.

I pulled the quote above simply to illustrate that there are credible voices – inside government and out – who see your pension not as your buttress against an uncertain old age, but as a pot of loot to be raided in order to prop up an ailing British economy.

I’ve heard it suggested in the past few weeks that pension tax reliefs should be apportioned relative to the share of UK assets that a pension fund is invested in.

And that Local Government Pension Schemes should be compelled to invest in British equities, as well as in expensive long-term infrastructure problems.

This is all bonkers.

Bye Britain

The way to encourage investment into UK assets is to make Britain an attractive place to invest. As opposed to giving the world the impression we’re being run by a bunch of senior prefects at a public school for the banter.

As for British pension funds, we should solely want them to invest for our collective financial futures wherever they see the best risk-adjusted returns.

Not where some government diktat demands they put their money. That’s the economic policy of a military junta, not the birthplace of the industrial revolution.

Perhaps UK pension funds should own more equities. We saw with the LDI crisis during the Mini Budget (yet another showcase for global Britain) that index-linked gilts at all costs is no panacea.

But equally, not owning UK shares was absolutely the right move over the past two decades. British pension fund managers who shunned the UK stock market did their charges a favour. They dodged a market that went nowhere for 16 years, before the Brexit vote tanked the currency to boot.

Now, I happen to think British shares may do better going forward.

That’s not because Britain is about to boom thanks to our bureaucratic borders and crown stamps on pint glasses. More than 75% of FTSE 100 earnings are generated overseas.

Rather, UK shares still look unloved – that is, cheap – and successive mid-sized British companies are being taken over by overseas competitors, helped by a still-weak Sterling.

(No, I don’t recall seeing that in the 2016 literature either. Ho hum.)

At the same time, a more normalised regime for interest rates and inflation would be a better backdrop for the more defensive style companies that remain on the shrinking UK stock market, which could help returns too.

Our pensions are not their playthings

Barry and his mates down the golf club are welcome to invest their own ISA and SIPP money in UK companies if they want to.

No doubt they’ll be buying a round of G&Ts whenever a quality British company they own is acquired by an overseas predator by night, while fuming at breakfast over another story about Britain selling off the family silver in The Telegraph.

Blimps gonna blimp. But they can keep their hands off our life savings, thank you very much.

Have a great weekend.

[continue reading…]

The trouble with bull markets is making money can seem too much like fun. Meanwhile plunges in a bear market at least get the pulse racing. But investing is boring when markets do nothing, month after month.

Welcome to the investing doldrums.

There’s a section in the Russell Crowe nautical adventure Master and Commander which finds Captain Crowe, ship, and crew literally going nowhere.

Listless on the ocean, day after day, the drama of a sailboat clipping across the seas has been forgotten. A storm would be a relief. Fatalism descends. Dying of thirst on a floating island in the middle of nowhere is not what anyone signed up for (or was press ganged into.)

If the ship doesn’t get going again, they will all go mad or cannibalistic.

Wait, was that a breath of wind? No, just another sighing sailor.

Eventually one of the younger officers is branded a ‘Jonah’ by his superstitious shipmates. The unlucky fellow is harried into jumping overboard, clutching a cannonball.

Grim, but just like that the sails bloom and the ship gets going.

Correlation is not causation? Tell that to a parched seaman when the wind is at his back again.

There be dragons

Of course we’ve all read – or even written – about how good investing should be boring. Get your excitement from your PlayStation or a skiing holiday.

Right, right.

Except you’re reading a blog all about investing. I think it’s fair to say we’re all a little bit more… invested about investing here.

Also, as enlightened 21st Century folk conversant with behaviourial economics, incentives, and ‘nudge theory’, we know the most important thing is to avoid the inner urge to throw anything – or anyone – overboard, just to relieve the tedium.

But just because we know what we should do – stick to our best plan until the breeze picks up again – that doesn’t mean we will.

Some of you are still shrugging. So much, so obvious.

Good for you! Read on for reinforcement, or head out with the other swots for an early break.

However my emails, comments on Monevator, and our Google Analytics dashboard tells me people are getting a bit fed up.

Newer investors ask if it’s fatal they missed the gains from the low interest rate era. Older hands wonder if an unpleasant sequence of returns is derailing their early retirement schedule.

Savings accounts look juicy. And cash doesn’t put the willies up you by lurching into the red. Should we prefer that to all this investing malarkey?

Or what about Bitcoin? The crypto-cockroach is up 75% since New Year’s Eve.

That’s more like it! Maybe this index tracking thing has finally run out of road?

Bonds? Don’t talk to me about bonds. Sixty-farty portfolio more like.

Batten down the hatches

I understand the discontentment. Depending on what you invest in and how, your portfolio may have gone nowhere – or worse, down – for a year or more.

Not much in the grand scheme of things. But also not nothing in a 30-year investing window.

My own portfolio got within a couple of a percent of its (short-lived) all-time high as far back as March 2021. More than two years ago. Despite a bounce in the past six months, I can well imagine looking back at returns that tread water for four or five years from that giddy 2021 spring.

I don’t expect it, but it’s possible. Especially given the regime change to higher rates and inflation.

So don’t be dismayed by macho commentators saying they’re not bothered. Their stance is 100% correct – but there’s no need to be pig-headed about it.

Nobody gets into investing without wanting to make money. It’s better to admit that it sucks when investing is boring or worse. Feel the frustration. Then take counter-measures that keep you going, rather than chucking in the towel.

No doubt we all have a famous investor, money blogger, or economic pundit who we’d have walk the (metaphorical) plank to get our portfolios advancing.

But enough about Nouriel Roubini. What are some practical approaches you can take when you’re mired in a similar going-nowhere market?

Let’s consider a few things that might help, depending on whether you’re a passive investor or a naughty active sort. Followed by some general pointers for all of us.

Passive investing isn’t meant to be exciting…

…but it can be even more challenging when it’s dull as dishwater.

If you have a simple portfolio – a LifeStrategy fund, say, or a two-fund equity/bond split – then checking in when markets are drifting for years can make you feel like a hamster on a wheel.

You’re working hard. You’re stashing away your savings. You see very little to show for it.

You can’t force the market higher. But here are some things you could do.

Look at long-term charts. Remind yourself indices can remain underwater for years. A long trough is not unusual. Doing this won’t help your lousy returns, but you’ll take them less personally.

Count your blessings units. Your portfolio value might be frozen in amber, but is there a more positive metric you could track? Maybe how many units you’ve bought of your tracker funds or how many shares you’ve racked up of your favourite ETF? Or even just the total amount you’ve saved to-date. It is all laying the groundwork for gains when prices surge again.

Remember you’re invested in companies. Now and then I edit my co-blogger The Accumulator’s copy because his talking about ‘Value’ doing better than ‘Small Cap’ gets too much for me. I understand why we talk about baskets of shares this way. But as an old-school stockpicker I think of my investments as companies first, even when in a fund. Why is this relevant? Well, you may struggle to see why an index should rise again. But you might find it easier to imagine that entrepreneurs will keep striving, scientists innovating, and economies growing. These1 are the reasons why markets go up over time. It’s not just numbers.

Recall the worst is probably past for bonds. I will repeat myself on bonds. Yes they had a terrible 2022. If you owned them then you’d probably rather you didn’t. But that is water under the bridge. The fall in bonds last year set the stage for higher returns going forward – or at least made more deeply negative periods less likely. Bonds should help your overall portfolio return from here.

Don’t forget about income. Talking of bonds, they now sport higher yields. Dividend yields are up too. The mainstream indices may go nowhere, but income will trickle in. Reinvest it. The FTSE 100 index was all-but-flat over an interminable 20 years from 1999. But with dividends you still more than doubled your money. Not amazing, but far better than nothing.

Consider complicating your portfolio. A last – heretical – idea. Most people will do best with an all-in-one fund precisely because such funds hide how the sausage is made. The investor won’t know what is doing well – or badly. So they won’t take wealth-damaging actions in response. However it’s possible you’re somebody who would actually do better seeing a circuit board rather than a black box. An advantage of our Slow & Steady model portfolio is we can monitor the workings. It’s not lifeless inside, even when on the surface nothing is happening. Maybe you could break out some of your equity allocation to a value and/or momentum ETF? Or follow an even more explicitly diversified approach? Or set aside 10% as a speculative sub-portfolio? Doing so may reduce your returns. But if it keeps you interested in investing, it could be a price worth paying.

Active investors can always do something

I stopped prevaricating with a foot in both camps and became a fully active investor early in the 2007-2009 financial crisis. I discovered ‘doing something’ best-suited my personality. It also gelled with my deep interest in economies, innovation, and the markets.

However the greatest strength of active investing is its biggest weakness. In theory you can trade your way around the worst and own the superior stocks in any market. But in practice most fail to do so. They make matters worse.

For instance last year has been dubbed an annus horriblis for UK fund managers. After moaning about ‘dumb’ money pushing prices higher in the long bull market, a majority of active funds failed to beat their index-tracking equivalents when the music stopped in 2022.

So most people will make things worse by stock picking or market timing. But we’re different, right? Or you’re having more fun investing actively. Fair enough, as long as your eyes are open.

Look below the surface. Indices don’t matter nearly as much when you invest actively. There’s always lots of commotion at the company and sector level, even when markets are flat. Last year was great for energy firms, for instance.

Monitor your watchlist. It’s surprising how much any company’s share price moves in a year, between its highs and lows. In confused and direction-less markets, you may find a favourite and typically expensive firm trading cheap for a bit. But you have to be looking all the time to spot these opportunities.

Rotate or recycle. Most of us have shares we know aren’t going to shoot out the lights, but we keep them for their steady qualities. Often they’re interchangeable for another. Procter & Gamble flying while Unilever languishes? There might be a good reason. Or it might be fickle fashion. Consider a swap. The same can hold true for whole sectors.

Look for anomalies. Things get normalized in bear markets that would seem odd when investors are confident. Massive discounts on riskier investment trusts, for example. Or housebuilders or gold miners trading contrarily to the goods they produce. Often there will be cyclical factors to take into account. But sometimes if you correctly judge which signal is superior you can find a bargain.

It’s always a bull market somewhere. I forget who said this, but it’s true. Obviously be mindful of flitting from fad to fad, and being the last buyer left holding the bag each time. But if you can alight on a durable bull market and you know your onions, it can be hugely helpful to have a big whack of your portfolio going up when everything else is doing nothing. Bleeding obvious I know, but you would be surprised how many active investors keep plugging away at the same crumbling coal face for years, rather than seeking a more promising seam to mine.

You probably want to keep thinking long-term. Most successful active investors seem to be long-term players, not frenetic traders. So while I think these trading strategies can be useful, I’d employ them within a framework of trying to tend towards my best portfolio of my best long-term ideas. Unless it’s your strategy and you’ve evidence you’re good at it, beware of ending up with a basket of crappy cheap companies that you have no faith if (/when) things go south. Remember, winners win. Most of the market’s return comes from a handful of great companies. You should be loathe not to own them.

How we can all keep the momentum going

However you invest, the big picture is as eternal as an avocado bathroom suite in Swansea.

Try to be happy. Expected are returns up. Yes you’d rather your portfolio’s prospects had risen for good reasons – higher company earnings or a booming economy – rather than because everything fell a lot last year. Nevertheless those falls blew away a lot of the valuation froth in shares and bonds. It’s reasonable to hope for better returns over the next ten years, compared to 2021.

Save more. You can’t make the market dance to your tune, but you can laugh in its face and throw money at it. Stagnant or even declining markets are a saver’s friend. They let you buy more assets for your money. If you’re under-40 you might even hope global markets drift sideways for 20 years.

Think long-term. The past 12-18 months doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Save and invest for another 20-30 years and you’ll struggle to see the wobble in your records. True, this is harder if your time horizon is shorter. All I can do is remind everyone that’s why your portfolio should be appropriate for your age (or perhaps your relationship with regular paid work).

Make money through cost reduction and tax mitigation. You can’t control the markets. But you can make sure you’re investing efficiently. Check out our broker comparison table for starters. If you own expensive funds, at least know why. Being optimally-efficient with your taxes, too, can move the dial. Defuse capital gains, for example, if you have unsheltered assets.

Check your portfolio less frequently. An easy way to feel better about a portfolio with a slow puncture is not to know what’s going on. Check in once a year and at worst you’ll get one shock a year. More often you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Most readers will want to look at their portfolios more often, but remember the more frequently you do, the greater the odds of being upset.

Check your portfolio more frequently. Do I contradict myself? Of course! Only recommended for investing nerds who feel out of control when losing money. Proceed with caution, but it’s possible seeing daily gyrations will help you grow a tougher shell, and also further stoke your resolve to put more fresh money to work. That’s what happened to me.

What’s the worst that can happen? It may help to run some numbers on how bad things can get. Look at the most rubbish markets of all-time and apply what happened to your situation. Could you live with it? You wouldn’t be happy – but it probably wouldn’t be the end of the world. Facing your fears can rob them of their power. Imagine if your portfolio was cut in half. How would you feel? The answer may prompt you to take action – but before you do, try the same exercise tomorrow. It may lose its sting, whilst also making run-of-the-mill gyrations of 5-10% feel piddling.

Hold fast

Getting through a miserable period in the stock market is not rocket science. Most of the pointers above may seem obvious to you.

However good investing is simple but not easy.

Very few of us will look back and see brilliant decisions or insights as the making of our investing fortunes. Rather it will be sticking to it through the good times and bad – adding new money, gradually compounding it over the decades – that will deliver our financial freedom.

Choppy markets can make you seasick. Frothy markets can blow you off-course.

When investing is boring, the biggest risk is it can all seem rather pointless.

Do what you can to remind yourself why you’re investing, why you read Monevator, and where you’re hoping to end up.

I’m confident that sooner or later we’ll be going that way again.

Whether you’re a passive or active investor, let’s hear how you’ve been facing the mediocre market of the past 18 months. Even if I suspect for most loyal readers it’s been business as usual. (Quite right too!)

1. And inflation. [↩]

Today we bring you a stop-the-press Monevator exclusive! Mrs Accumulator has wrestled the keyboard away from her other half to smuggle out her side of The Accumulator’s Financial Independence Retire Early story. Is she really living the FIRE dream, as TA has always implied? Or did she just play along with it to stop him going on about synthetic ETFs?

Hello, this is Mrs Accumulator. (I would prefer to be known as The Organ-Grinder but apparently I have to let this outdated anonym slide.)

In case you and/or your biggest asset class are interested, I present here a one-off counterpoint to The Accumulator’s loooooong-running blog saga.

I think you’ll find it interesting. After all – I am the ultimate passive investor.

The early days

I have fond if distant memories of once being in charge of both my own and TA’s money.

We lived as part of a complicated renting community back then. In fact, in those days, I collected rent from The Investor too. Great times. (The things I could tell you! Are those beads of sweat on TI’s brow?) 

Due to what I shall term ‘burn out’ a few years later, the mortgage and bill-paying reins were handed over to TA. And that was the moment that a money-investing monster was born.

Over the next couple of years, I remember our walking holidays were constantly accompanied by the soundtrack of TA repeatedly explaining ISAs, diversification, and the inverse correlations of gold and Tamagotchis. Along with plastic (?), artificial (?), imaginary (?) ETAs.

Or were they ETFs?

Anyway, I was definitely listening.

TA fielded my questions about risk and sound-boarded me with options until we had a plan.

From then on, my role was simply making sure that TA knew that if all went the way of the Truss – or, in those days, Lehman Bros – I would never blame him. Much.

There were only a couple of questions I repeated over the years: “Can’t we invest in houses? I like houses” and “How many more years till FIRE?”

It seemed to me that TA gave the same answer every year, for however long was left.

I hit on the idea of sticking his projected date into a Google calendar to cross-reference as evidence – forcing him to be more realistic and enabling me to sound less like a petulant teenager.

Why was I on board?

I like cars, houses, holidays, and buying presents. None of which are conducive to FIRE.

Luckily, a couple of formative experiences made me an easy mark for TA’s ‘get a bit rich eventually’ plan.

1. Catastrophising as a child about the horror of a lifetime working 9-5; cold Wars turning hot; ageing demographics. These all put pensions ridiculously high up the list of my ten-year-old priorities. Albeit a few rungs below wanting a pony.

I really did worry about those things growing up! Thank you Mr A. Senior. (I feel like we’re pushing the pseudonym sitch further than anyone wants to go?) 

2. Then, oh so briefly working with my father in an Independent Financial Advisor’s office taught me a few rules: don’t bother with anything other than an index tracker, minimise investment costs and, no matter what – Covid, Putin, China – capitalism eats everything.

The markets always win – excluding a Godzilla-sized black swan or the Four Horsemen of the Environmental Apocalypse. It’s only investors who sometimes lose – when the scary black duck-thing lands – and then we’ve got other worries. 

The ups and downs

These life lessons primed me for the path TA plotted for us, and my memory is that I immediately signed up.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing / amiable dawdling.

Downs

Inevitably, on this journey the emotional bear market arrives first.

The annual, dreadful, first day back to work after the summer holiday. The only slightly less awful equivalent at the start of January. 

The tightly holding onto each others’ hands when careers were particularly demanding, and our time together was all too brief.

There were periods when it felt like a very long road. Was that a speck of light at the end of the tunnel? Or just another migraine coming on? 

Ups 

The joy of paying off the mortgage – or having the money in the bank to pay it off, anyway. Only slightly dented by the lack of reaction from close family members as we whooped the news down the telephone. (I’m still surprised, although I think I now understand why.)

Finding a house that made us relaxed and happy just by being there – despite the 1980s kitchen and bathroom, and the Stranger Things-style portal in the corner of our bedroom.

That house might have played a bigger part in smoothing our journey than either of us realised. Nature and the fun of city life are both an easy bike ride away. Despite the input of friends and family, it never felt like we were sacrificing anything with our shaky sash-windows.

The day to day

It’s easier when I remember all the things I am grateful for. (Mainly freedom from DIY dentistry, killing the family pig, and giving birth to a football team’s worth of kids.)

Then there’s the wonder of living in Britain and next door to the miracle of a united Europe (which I hope we’ll once again view as a net benefit versus the mythical sovereignty we currently enjoy).

Also, the family and health. All those things.

It’s harder when I worry that we might be living too much for the future and not enough for the present. 

In the early days, we possibly did do that. But no longer.

Crucially, we constantly checked in with each other about our choices. Often one of us would play devil’s advocate for the high life. Sometimes it resulted in us adjusting our aims.

Consequently, we have enjoyed fabulous holidays and fine-ish dining, own specialist biking kit, and we’ve never put off buying something we really wanted.

(Apparently I don’t really want an Aston Martin Vantage V600.)

Easier for me than others?

My job doesn’t require much in terms of appearance, which helped. Although I am perhaps pushing the outer limits of their expectations!

Hate clothes, love messing about with TA. 

No kids – although I would absolutely recommend FIRE for people with kids. I teach, and it’s an amazing thing to give kids the confidence to not judge themselves by the standards of others or social expectations. Even if they only manage to distance themselves a tiny bit.

The FIRE approach is compliant with our risk-averse mentality. A mindset that prevents us from setting up in business, true, but which does motivate us to take on the responsibility of researching, understanding, and choosing our own investments. 

How successful is our version of FIRE?

If retirement means no longer working for The Man – or woman in TA’s case ­­– then we’ve nailed it.

If it means no paid work at all… well it hasn’t turned out quite like that.

Our FIRE is being in charge of our own destiny. Which is wondrous, and partly why we did the freeze for fun challenge this winter. It was another chance to question convention. The presumption that:

• We should be warm as we are well-off
• We should be warm as we are in a technologically advanced society
• We should be warm as everyone else we know is
• We need to be warm to feel happy

All BS, surprisingly.

For us, FIRE is work that is not alienating. It is retiring from the marketplace to work for fulfillment. Consequently this feels better than retirement (redundancy, hanging about, time-wasting, haunting the world?) It is comparative heaven. 

We tend our garden in our own sweet time. Purpose with balance is contentment.

Happiness is fleeting. Doing nothing for no reason feels like death, or perhaps hell. You can’t even blame your unhappy restlessness on someone else. Unless you read The Spectator.

You may not need any work to achieve this purpose. But for us, right now, it helps.

In truth I’m not sure we’ve found the perfect balance yet, and I’m guessing that any such perfection is illusory. Nonetheless, we are cheerfully filling the hours before inevitable heat death by coming up with our bespoke answer to life, the universe, and everything.

And that answer swirls around the idea of belonging, not belongings.

We did it our way

I do not regret a single choice we have made – as far as I can remember anyway. We made them all with full knowledge of the risks.

The biggest fear I had was saving for a future that we couldn’t guarantee we would live to see. Even this niggle evaporated once we worked out how to spend our money and time in a way that didn’t feel like a sacrifice.

In fact – as I guess many people here already know – there is collateral salvage from pursuing FIRE. Namely, a firm grasp of your finances, of your values, your non-negotiables, and of yourself.

You don’t even need to spend a fortune sitting cross-legged in L.A., self-consciously humming while an ethereal chap disparages your aura.

It may say too much about TA and I that we prefer charts to chakras when it comes to plotting our independence. But the point, if there is one, is that a bit of enlightenment, a bit of distance from the daily struggle, and a greater connection to those at your side – these are the main reasons I’d recommend FIRE to anyone. 

It isn’t all about the future. It’s quite a lot about realising what you treasure right now.

If FIRE is important to you, it’s probable that the rat race isn’t. And happily the road to FIRE immediately distances you from that highway, as you set off down your own path.

If all had gone wrong – if all goes wrong tomorrow – there is nothing to regret. We had to work hard anyway, and by choosing not to spend money to fill the happiness void, we discovered the values we truly held. As my earlier comments indicate, we aren’t exactly spiritual people, but we have learned to love the little things. 

One thing I will say about TA, is his many, many, many faults (perhaps that’s one ‘many’ too many? – TA) are easier to overlook when weighed against his assiduous pursuit of FIRE-necessary insights.

While you don’t need his sub-atomical knowledge of investment vehicles (literally no-one needs that), the fact that TA did his due diligence has made life a lot less unnerving for me.

When the world lurches into crisis, I raise an eyebrow in TA’s direction, he gives me a nonchalant thumbs-up, and on we go.

(I would say ‘he smiles reassuringly’, but if you’d seen him smile… chance would be a fine thing).

Last words

To all on the FIRE journey, I wish you a fair wind. I hope you can treasure the days along the way, even the absolutely god-awful ones.

Just one last thing… If there is no mention of an incident involving sunglasses, a surprising drunken revelation, a glow-stick, and a trip to A&E, then you know that TI has left his heavy-handed editing fingerprints all over this piece of harmless whimsy.

And fear not if whimsy isn’t your thing, normal service will be resumed next week with the latest from The Accumulator.

In the meantime thank you for your patience. (Perhaps I’ll see you again in another 15 years?)

The O.G.