Tag: Financial freedom

Financial independence fundamentals: Pay yourself first!

Photo by maitree rimthong on Pexels.com

Yes pay yourself first. Not McDonalds, not Costa, not Dunkin Donuts home delivery service (ok that might just be me..) but YOU.

Obviously you need to pay all your regular household bills too but if you then wait until the end of the month to save what ever is left, guess what, you will probably have aided the Dunkin Donuts CEO in his early retirement and not yours!

So how much should I pay myself?

Well it depends how quickly you want to semi-retire FIRE. But start off with something, anything, just make sure you start.

You will need to work out your budget which we will cover in another post, but getting into the habit of paying yourself first is half the battle. The other half is consistently keeping it up, month by month, year by year until hey presto eventually you will be able to quit that job, or at least work less.

Ideally set this up as an automatic payment each month. So you can set it up and not have to think about it again. It will just go from your pay cheque into your savings or investments every single month and your future you will be extremely grateful you did.

If you can get this FI fundamental up and running you are well on your path to financial freedom and Semi-retire FIRE so keep on reading and let me know how you get on.

What is Semi-Retire FIRE?

I like to think of semi-retire FIRE as a more chilled out version of the traditional FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement.

Before I came across the FIRE movement, I often used to think the idea of working 5 days a week and getting just 2 days off to do what I chose to do, for the next 30 to 40 years just didn’t seem like a well balanced life to me.

So when I came across the idea of FIRE in my mid thirties it immediately piqued my interest.

I read all the classic FIRE blogs like Mr Money Moustache and JL Collins The simple path to wealth. But after doing the calculations to work out when I would hit financial independence, on my average salary and potential savings rate, I wasn’t going to reach FIRE much before age 60, and not that many years before my official retirement age. The trade off wasn’t worth that. I didn’t want to put my life on hold until a magical date 25 years in the future when I could finally get my freedom and financial independence.

But rather than give up on the idea as nonsense or only for other people, I decided to embark on my own version of it.

Introducing Semi-Retire FIRE

I still use the same principles and techniques of FIRE but to reach a stage where I have enough passive income from investments to never have to work full time again. I could subsidise my lifestyle and current income to work just 2 or 3 days a week, or work part time on a lifestyle business or freelance basis. Still giving me flexibility and more time to do what I wanted to do. And crucially would hit that number far sooner than 25 years!

And that’s how it all started.

If you want to find out more about how I did this I will be posting regularly on this site so do keep reading and hopefully I will inspire you to start your own Sem-retire FIRE journey.