Life on SavingNinja

How Expensive is Living in Sweden?

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 06:31:38 +0000

Before moving to Sweden everyone told me how expensive it would be to live here. Even fellow bloggers scoffed at the prospect of the _Saving_Ninja moving to Sweden!? The country with one of the highest income tax and VAT rates in the world! I wouldn’t be able to call myself the SavingNinja for much longer, they said.

When I first arrived here, I found it hard to swallow the insanely high food prices, it seemed everything that we usually bought back in the UK was at least 3 times as expensive, sometimes even more than that. Eating out was another big shock, paying over £25 for a main course per person is the norm in any type of restaurant here, even for a burger and chips.

Your average McDonalds meal will cost around £10, and a 440ml ‘Swedish pint’ of beer in most restaurants will also cost you around £10. Don’t even ask about the cost for a bottle of wine. I thought we would be spending SO MUCH MORE, my FIRE plans would be sullied for sure.

Now that I’ve lived here for over a year, and I’ve settled into a house that I’ve bought with my wife, it’s about time that I go back to the Budget Spreadsheet and calculate our expenses. So, now it’s time for the moment of truth, how much more expensive is it to live in Sweden over the UK?

Is Living in the UK Cheap?

One of my most popular SavingNinja posts was this one; How to Live Off 10k Per Year . It documented what my living expenses were living in the UK and what I did to reduce costs and live on under minimum wage whilst still living a high-quality life.

The TL;DR of that post is that my mandatory yearly spending was £7,856. Adding in £1,500 per year for holidays, and £150 per month on spending/miscellaneous money, that came to £9,356 per year. Which everyone found crazy!

I had people at London meet ups bring up this same blog post even years later saying how impressive that low level of spending was. I’d like to take credit for it, but really it wasn’t that hard, once I’d reduced my cost for the big expenses like my car and my home, everything else came naturally - I’m a cheapskate by nature!

This old post will be the perfect yard stick to compare against my Swedish spending now that I’ve filled in this years Swedish budget on the SavingNinja Budgeting Spreadsheet . Remember, the £10k per year post was released before I started commuting into London, after that my yearly spend went up to around £11,153.

England Vs Sweden The Big Budget Battle!

I’ll create this budget a little differently than the How to Live Off 10k Per Year post. Instead of naming my own expenses, I’ll state the total cost for both me and my wife, then split it at the end to compare. Some things are slightly different, between me and my wife’s expenses, for example she has to spend £7 per month for her SIM card, I get mine from work; she also has slightly increased costs for buying gifts for her family and commuting into Stockholm on the bus, I’ll omit these differences in the list below for comparisons sake as the prior post focused on my expenses alone.

Food: £50 per month
Now this is kind of cheating a little bit. My company pays around £200 per month after tax onto a food card which is meant to cover lunches when working from home, but this same card can be used to buy normal groceries so I’ve docked £200 off the food budget for both me and my wife.

BUT, at effectively £250 per month, I’ve got to say, this shocked me! I thought Sweden would be WAY more expensive in this category. But it seems that even though some things are 3 times more expensive, some food items are about the same price as they would be in the UK, and some food items are even slightly cheaper. We just stopped buying the really costly food items and found new cheap favourites.

Salmon is one of those things that works out cheaper, in Asda the cheapest fresh salmon would cost you around £11 per kilogram, or £19 for a half-decent looking salmon. In Sweden you can get a really nice full salmon for £8 per kilogram.

We still cook our favourite meals from scratch, buy a fair amount of alcohol (although we now buy box wine as it works out as £5 per bottle, just like in the UK,) and we buy lots of vegetables and fruit. Good cuts of steak are not actually priced too high here either, in-fact, we’ve definitely snagged a few deals by buying in bulk and freezing. All things considered, a 25% increase in food costs isn’t too bad (if we didn’t have the food card paying for most of it.)

UK food: £200 - 75% decrease
Winner: Sweden (kinda)

Housing costs: £890 per month (mortgage, ground rent, house insurance),
The mortgage we had in the UK (before we got an employee discount mortgage loan) was £638 per month. Our Swedish housing costs £253 more. A little higher, but not too bad considering we’re in a more expensive home here. We paid £195k for our UK house in the South East, in Sweden for our sea view property we paid about £300k, our loan is roughly 25% larger.

There are also some other things to consider. We don’t pay council tax here, and our water bill and bin collection is included with the ground rent. Combined, these two expenses came to £144 total each month in the UK, taking that off the £253 difference and a £109 increase seems like a steal considering the house price difference.

UK housing: £782 - 12% increase
Winner: draw

Bills: £95 per month
The only bills we pay in Sweden are electricity and internet, gas isn’t very common here. The electricity bill comes to around £74 per month and the internet, £21. My company pays for my phone and an unlimited service plan. We actually spend less on TV here as we now use my wife’s parents Netflix account for free. There’s no such thing as the TV license here either (not that we paid it in the UK anyway!)

UK bills: £100 - 5% decrease
Winner: Sweden

Transportation: Insurance £568, tax £96, fuel £120, service/repairs £1,400 (hopefully less!)
Total: £784 - £2,184 per year
This car is the first ever car that me and my wife have split equally, as we both don’t need one for work. We bought this compact van to make our life a little easier and so we can go on more trips around Sweden without worrying about renting a car. We also hope that leasing the car out on GoMore will cover at least half of this cost (we’ve leased it out twice already!) The low fuel cost of £10 per month is because we barely use it, it sits on the driveway waiting to be leased out most of the time, and the two times it’s been rented they’ve even left us with a bit more fuel in it.

We preliminarily budgeted for £1,400 per year in service and repair costs. This could be higher or lower, but we’re hoping it won’t cost us much as it’s only a few years old (famous last words.)

Miscellaneous: £35 per month
£25 for pet expenses, mainly food, and £10 for essentials like shampoo, bubble bath, and toilet roll. Over the years we’ve become more zero-waste so we don’t have many consumable purchases. We use hankies that my wife made out of old shirts, we have Swedish cloths for cleaning and reusable napkins instead of kitchen roll, and we compost and recycle everything so no bin bags! My wife has everything reusable; MoonCup , and a Magic Make-up Remover Cloth , saving over £100 per year. Our clothes wash better with an EcoEgg and it saves us SO MUCH compared to buying consumable detergent. Next level is a bidet.

Holiday pot: £3,000 per year
We decided to keep our holiday pot exactly the same, we definitely didn’t spend all of this the last few years but we hope to try to in the coming ones. To gauge this figure we calculated our total expenses for the snowboarding holiday we went on last Christmas. This was in a pretty expensive area of Sweden and adding up the costly 7h train tickets (which we booked first-class,) two 6-8 day ski-pass’s, 10 nights stay in self-catering hotel-style AirBnB apartment right next to the slope, and some fun money for restaurants, it came to £1,460 total.

We realise this was the cheapest we could go for a snowboarding holiday of that length here, and for the next one we may want to stay somewhere a little nicer with a sauna - at least for a few nights - but we also realised that if we went on a summer holiday, we’d spend way less. Our summer trips generally involve a bit of a pricier plane ticket and then slumming it in an AirBnB and exploring each day.

One of our favourite holidays was to the Czech Republic and the total for that trip was under £500 for the both of us, even with eating out most days! We managed a week in New York for under £1,000 for Christmas a few years ago. We explored all of the Swedish West Coast this summer and only paid the price of fuel as we wild-camped.

We think we’ll be able to go on a snowboarding holiday every year and continue exploring the world for £1,500 per person each year, but we don’t mind increasing this if we need to!

Luxury Pot: £1,500 per year
This has actually dropped considerably. Our previous budget had the luxury pot total amount at £2,400. In the past I was accounting for upgrading our house like renovating the kitchen and bathroom. Here in Sweden, I don’t feel like they’re is much else to do, at least not for the next year.

We tried to add up what big things we might buy per year, even if we were to buy one big-ish thing like a SteamDeck , or a new snowboard, or a shed, we’d still come under this amount; so £1,500 seemed like a nice figure in case we wanted to buy something extra. We’re lucky that we bought all of the things we needed/wanted when we first moved here before doing this budget!

Fun fact: I haven’t bought any new clothing for at least 2 years. I still want to decrease the amount that I do own so everything can fit into a backpack.

The Grand Reveal!

So, there you have it, our Swedish budget complete. Here are the figures:

Necessary Expenses
Between £13,204 and £15,388 per year combined.
£6,602 - £7,694 each.

This depends on if the compact van costs us anything in yearly repairs, how much those cost, and if we’ve not leased it out to cover some of the expenses. We’ll account for the maximum, but expect the minimum.

But, hang on a minute…. Even £7,694. That’s UNDER the necessary expenses total of the 10k Per Year post which was £7,856. Whaaaat!

Using the 25x rule, this essential spending makes me effectively 138% FI based on a net worth of £271k.

Mind blown.

What is actually going on here? Sweden should be more expensive. The answer seems to be the employee food card accounting for £2,400 of our food budget each year, this warps things a bit, because if I truly did retire, I wouldn’t have access to this. I also wouldn’t have access to the employee phone and plan for that matter. But even still, adding on £1,200 still brings the maximum per person to £8,894 - not too much more than the aforementioned post. And certainly way less than my London commute budget.

I think this points to the fact that Sweden isn’t more expensive than the UK. If you live a pretty minimalistic life anyway, and adapt your grocery list to new tastes, it’s kind of the same. And over here, you won’t be strapped with £50k student loan debt, you’ll get 12 months fully paid maternity and paternity leave, and you’ll never have to worry about health care, even old-age live in costs are paid for (you won’t have to squander your inheritance paying for nursing homes like in the UK!) Not to mention the free child care.

That’s pretty cool.

Adding Luxury to The Mix

We decided to budget for £4,500 in total for luxury, which is the £3,000 holiday pot and an ‘anything else’ luxury pot. This brings our total figures to:

Total Expenses
Between £17,704 and £19,888 per year combined.
£8,852 - £9,944 each.

This puts us way below the £24,316 London commute budget and around the same as the £9,356 each budget in the 10k Per Year post .

If we manage to stick to this budget, it should allow us to save 76.93% of our total take home pay. 83.85% for me and 63% for my wife. This is a number is similar to our post-London budget prediction, but in that one I was saving £40k per year into a pension, tax free. This one see’s most of that 83.85% going into my pre-pension pot, which is awesome!

I’ve got to say, I’m pleasantly surprised that we managed to stay under the £10k per year mark.

Maybe I should stop moaning about how expensive Sweden is?

Caveat

I know what a lot of you are thinking. You’re not truly FIRE, most of your investments are in a pension. Yes, yes, I know. I could argue to you all day about building a pension bridge , and about side-hustle income like my new writing gig . But the truth is: I’d probably struggle if I did quit today. It would also be foolish of me to do so, what happens if we have children or want to move to some place else? Our budget will surely change.

But this post is an exercise in statistics and budgeting. I never intended to actually retire when I reached my ’leanFI’ number. I plan on staying with my current employer for at least another 4 years, and working in some capacity after that, along with creating many more passive income streams . This should make the exercise of ‘would I actually be able to retire?’ purely theoretical. When I do break out of the cave I should be a lot more safe, or fatFI as some like to call it.

But that’s not to say I can’t call myself Theoretically FI right now! :]

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 05:48:13 +0000

We arrived…over a month ago!

I wrote a post within the first couple of weeks here but it just felt very forced and rambling, not great at all. I’ve then not had the motivation to write anything, it doesn’t help that I’ve become obsessed with ‘Jane The Virgin’ and have been job hunting.

So here’s a TL;DR of my other post - We had a lot of issues with shipping our boxes, right up to the day before they were collected. 3 days before we were due to set off we had to come up with a travelling plan B as my dad (who was driving us to Germany) was getting cold feet due to COVID. There were cat issues throughout the journey as well as issues with my parents motorhome. The exciting sauna and pool on the ferry were closed due to COVID (how did we not foresee this??) and an electric scooter accident on our 2nd day in Sweden resulted in me having a ginormous bruise and swelling on my chin and a very banged up knee that still hurts now!

So, I rambled about all of those things for a while as they were very fresh, but in retrospect, not very interesting to read about. We got here in one piece and everything pretty much went smoothly.

What I would like to talk about now are the pros and cons I’ve found to living in Stockholm and things that surprised me about it here.

Let’s start with the positives

The laundry rooms. Off to an exciting start, I know. Seriously, they’re very cool. In the UK I’m used to just having my washing machine and then an airer or our JML DriBuddi to dry my clothes. The only time I’ve used communal laundry rooms is during our first year at uni and when we lived in France for one summer, so they’re fairly novel for me.

There’s a room with multiple washing machines, there are multiple tumble dryers, and a drying cabinet, this is where the fun begins! I have never seen a drying cabinet before and they’re so awesome, Google it if you, like me, have never heard of them before. Even better, in our new apartment building, there is an ENTIRE room where you can hang your clothes to dry. There are ropes across the ceiling and an industrial heater and fan, it’s great for drying bedsheets, etc.

Queuing systems. Everywhere has a special queuing system that requires a little paper ticket, we used to have them in the UK at butchers. They use them for everything here; the bank, the tax office, even the customer service desk in the supermarket. My reason for loving this is twofold; you don’t have to stand in line, you can just sit anywhere and wait for your number to be called. This is great for Mr SavingNinja as he hates queuing! The second reason is that I find people here to be rude sometimes, I will talk about this more later but I think the queuing system prevents more rudeness.

Nature. I’m sure you’ve heard that there’s a lot of nature here and there is but maybe not in the way I thought. I was thinking there would be more vast woodland closer to the city but there isn’t (as far as I’ve seen) but there are parks everywhere. There are nice big parks on the outskirts of the city but also small ones in really unexpected places in the city; it’s lovely. I imagine that if you’re working in an office you could just pop outside for 20 minutes and sit in some greenery to have a coffee or some lunch, very refreshing.

Fika. This basically means a coffee/cake break. What’s not to like? I don’t drink coffee so I’m sure once I go back to work I might get some funny looks for not enjoying fika as I should, but then I had that issue back in the UK too; I was one of the only teachers I knew who didn’t consume coffee like it was my life-source throughout the day. But I am 100% onboard with consuming cinnamon rolls like they’re my life-source. Double thumbs up from me.

System Bolaget. I was led to believe that we were going to have to become a lot more sober moving here, we read and were told that all of the alcohol was extortionate. I am going to discuss this more below but for now, I love the government-run alcohol shop; it’s clean, organised, and strangely fun.

Recycling. This point is double-edged. You may know from my previous post that I try to be as eco-friendly as I can, which is great here as Sweden’s recycling situations is one of the best in the world, I suggest you research this if you’re interested. We pretty much recycle everything other than kitchen waste. However, there is a catch, read on for the negative side of this.

The not so positives

The beds. In every apartment we have looked at the beds have been two single box type beds pushed together with a mattress topper. Coming from a super king-sized Simba mattress means that I’m used to an extremely comfortable night’s sleep, I’m not getting that here. The topper slides down frequently and just isn’t comfortable, I know we could buy a new comfier topper but nothing beats a proper mattress…especially a Simba one!

The postal service. Back home I would often moan about deliveries being left on our doorstep on a fairly busy road, I miss that. Packages very rarely get delivered to your door here; you will get a text or sometimes a note through your door telling you to go to the nearest service point (ours is a 20-minute walk away) to collect your package. I realise this is because all postmen/women/people are on bikes but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. We had to carry a very long and awkward 15kg parcel between us for 20 minutes…in the rain! I know this isn’t the end of the world but it is a bit inconvenient.

Recycling situation, again. You’ve read the positives regarding this point but there is a negative although it does make me seem lazy and a little entitled. We have to take all of our recycling to recycling points, which can be 10 minutes walk away and are often overflowing. I know I know, it’s not that bad but it grates on us simply because we are paying so much tax that we feel we should be able to recycle in our building and have it collected with the rubbish like we did back in the UK.

Lack of Amazon and general ability to compare things online. So this may get better over time once we’re used to everything but we really miss having Amazon and knowing all the places online to look for cheaper products. Any time I would want to buy something back in the UK I would always check Amazon first then have a general Google to ensure I’m getting the best price.

We have the option to order from the German or UK Amazon and pay extra for delivery and customs charges, but that defeats the point of a good price. As I said, I’m sure we will get used to the Swedish online shops but right now I just really want Amazon back, especially as it’s Prime Day right now. And don’t even get me started on the fact that there’s no Costco here!

Surprises

So there’s my itemised pros and cons list, some things seem petty but a lot of it is just mildly inconvenient. There are also a fair few things that surprised me due to established expectations being wrong, some were a happy surprise, others, not so much.

Happy Surprises

Facemasks. The beauty kind, not the COVID kind. My favourite Garnier face mask can cost about £4 in certain shops in the UK, it’s only £2 here, sometimes less. Not a necessity but good for if I feel like treating myself.

Alcohol. As I said, we were thinking we would move here and become very sober as everyone told us it was so expensive to buy booze. It is not. You can get a box of wine that’s equivalent to 4 bottles and it works out as about £4 per bottle, and it’s a great wine, we regularly buy the Casillero Del Diablo. Happy days.

Everyone speaks English amazingly well. We have travelled to many different countries and most people can speak English at least a little, but here they are fantastic at it and actually love to speak English, whereas in some countries we have found people do it begrudgingly. I always try to learn at least some of the language for wherever I go as I hate feeling rude and just assuming everyone can speak English, but here it’s hard for me to speak Swedish because everyone wants to switch to English as soon as I talk.

This is neither a positive or negative - the fashion here is great; not necessarily in the way you might think though. I feel as though I’ve gone back to the late 90s or early 00s. There are flared everything, neon boob tubes, and platform trainers. It’s just a delight to look at.

Not so happy surprises

Broccoli. OMG the broccoli is so expensive and it’s my absolute favourite vegetable, we used to cook with it all of the time. Broccoli in the UK is about £1.39 per kilo, in Sweden it works out as £5.19 per kilo. There isn’t much else to say about this, I just really miss broccoli.

Rice. Again, really expensive. In the UK - £1 per kilo, in Sweden - £3 per kilo. I think this can be solved if I find a cheap Asian supermarket or keep trawling the web.

Flights. We were lucky that we were so close to Gatwick and Heathrow airports as flights from there were much cheaper than elsewhere. Flying from Stockholm is pretty expensive in comparison, even flying to northern Sweden…the same country!! I miss seeing the £50 flights from London to Amsterdam or Germany or wherever. I wish we had made the most of it when we lived there.

I’m not cold. I was expecting to be wearing thermals in October and looking forward to lots of snow in December - February. Apparently there had been barely any snow in Stockholm last year and none that settled. I’m not saying this was the only reason I came to Stockholm, but it was a huge positive for me. I love the cold and the snow but it’s currently colder in the UK. Fingers crossed for a big temperature drop and for some snow this season.

Rudeness. I find people here as a whole to be kind of rude, not in your face rude but ‘standing in the middle of the walkway on your phone’ rude. I’ve found myself getting so annoyed at this so many times, but Mr SavingNinja doesn’t get as annoyed as he’s an ‘abandon my trolley in the middle of the aisle’ person. It just bugs me when people don’t take their surroundings and other people into consideration, and I’m sure this happens all over the world, I’ve just experienced it a lot more here. People in the Swedish expat groups I’ve joined agree with me and regularly make jokes about it, so it’s not just me.

Difficult processes. All processes here seem to be so much more complicated. You need a special person number before you can get a bank account, this can take months (ours was quick thanks to Mr SavingNinja’s company,) you can’t get a bank account until you have this number but you can’t get a job until you have a bank account. Some banks won’t give you an account until you have a job, see, difficult! You also need something called Bank ID to access most things online, you can’t get this until you finally have a bank account (I’m just getting mine now, in October!) Swish is something that is widely used here, especially if buying something from Facebook etc. Can’t have that without Bank ID.

Mo’ Kids Mo’ Money

When I started writing this post I googled the best things about living in Sweden, just for inspiration. On paper it all sounds great; amazing maternity/paternity leave, heavily subsidised childcare, lots of holidays and free education. These are great benefits but don’t affect us at the moment. We don’t have kids, we both had a great holiday allowance in the UK and most of the masters/bachelor degrees are in Swedish…obviously! If we were to stay here long-term then I guess we would see the benefit of paying such high tax if we had kids but at the moment we are just paying high taxes for, seemingly, nothing.

There are other things such as clean water, equality, affordable health care and good internet that are always touted as great things in Sweden, but we experienced all of that in the UK too.

Displaced

This post seems very negative, which it kind of is, but we haven’t been here for that long and are feeling displaced without seeing much gain. It will take us a while to get used to everything here and to see the positives of moving to Stockholm; we had settled into our comfy life at home and now everything is different.

Always Look on The Bright Side of Life

Things are actually starting to look up already, I start my new job in 3 days! It was hard work job hunting here and really demotivating, I’ve never really been out of work since I was 16 so I felt useless and lost. Hopefully going back into teaching and getting stuck into life here will make me look on the bright side of things. The education system in the international schools here seems amazing, I can’t wait to not have to do feckless paperwork and teach for an exam. Here I just have to teach the skills, not to the constraints of an exam board, and it’s freeing and purposeful.

Hopefully, my next post will be filled with joy and I will have discovered great money saving tips to living a little more cheaply in Stockholm.

To anyone living in the UK, go and have a battered sausage and chips for me, I miss them enormously.

Something Happened

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 06:30:00 +0000

The Ninja household is going to be changed forever.

Something happened which was so unexpected, so alien, and yet so perfectly aligned to the current and future goals that I’ve mused about on this very blog. So, strap in and brace yourselves for…the news.

One blustery morning 3 months ago I was contacted out of the blue by an internal recruiter for a certain company. Said company was one of those companies, you know, one of the companies that I’ve been training for . No, no, no, it wasn’t the actual Google, but they get pretty close to Google in fame, world-wide offices, and difficult interview notoriety.

“We think you’d be a pretty good culture fit and we’d love for you to apply for our central team!”

Omg, I thought, I’m not ready!? Yeah sure, I’ve done a year of training; I’ve completed an algorithm module on Coursera from Stanford University; I’ve got a Kanban board in my spare room with about 100 algorithm sticky notes on it; I’ve read The Algorithm Design manual and Cracking the Coding Interview; I’ve had a session with programming all-star RetireInProgress ; BUT I’M NOT READY!

“Wow, you guys are like…my dream company, I would love to apply!!”

Two Months of Hell

What followed were probably the worst two months of my life. As I’ve learned from University, there’s only so much brain intensive work I can do in a single day; if I go over that boundary I end up getting pretty severe headaches which seem to never go away.

With my first set of 3 interviews arriving 4 weeks after the initial screening interview, I studied every morning and evening until bedtime, I worked all weekend - non stop! Soon I needed to start trying to relax as my head was exploding, but I was determined to give this my best shot.

It’s just training, I thought; I’m never going to ACTUALLY get the job, I know I’m not that good and I’ve met plenty of people way better than me.

My brain exploded again when I was told that I’d passed the first 3 interviews and they’d like to invite me to 5 more interviews all in one day in another 4 weeks time. OMG! I thought, but also; ooohh nooo!

I’m not going to lie, mostly what I felt was dread. After going through what would happen in the 5 different interviews with the recruiter I knew that I would be getting no sleep for the next 4 weeks. I had a ton of studying to do; I basically had to rewrite a whole project using a different language, and study like mad for subjects that I haven’t spent much time on like System Design.

My amazing teacher-wife set me up with a study schedule so I would not feel as overwhelmed, quizzed me every day on trivia, and watched me fumble my way through System Design explanations. TheFIREstarter even gave me an hour mock interview one Friday night!

28 sleepless nights later and the big day arrived. Normally they would bring me to their office for this interview day, but of course, it was all remote due to COVID. Magically I felt fine and ready to go on the actual day.

When it All Changed

A few days of suspense later they told me that not only did they want to offer me the job, but that I had also done so well on all of the interviews that they had no negative feedback and due to this they wanted to offer me the position of Senior Engineer (<– this is HUGE!)

This was the perfect role for me! It was on a central team where I’d be shepherding in new technologies and advocating developer standards whilst learning how the infrastructure works in one of the most well-known companies in the world for best-in-class infrastructure and tooling.

They also saw my passion for communication and leadership, along with my desire to build and lead teams so they agreed to train me specifically toward an Engineering Manager role that I could hope to achieve within 2 years.

The company and position held would also be a shining star on my CV; afterwards, if I moved on, I’d be super desirable.

But for both me and Mrs SavingNinja, the thing that added the most to the excitement (which begot more nervousness) wasn’t any of the above.

It was the fact that the position I was applying for wasn’t located in the UK.

A new life, in a new Place

I’ve written about my wanderlust before ; my ever-increasing desire to leave the UK and go on an adventure; to seek greener pastures in a faraway land. And now that opportunity is finally here…

My new job will be located in Stockholm, Sweden!

Yes, you heard it here first, I’m moving to Sweden in about 2 months time. It even feels strange to say that myself.

I’ve been talking about moving away for so long that it feels strange to think that I’ve not actually done it before. This will be the first time! And it’s kind of terrifying. Will the reality of moving live up to my dreams?

Both Mrs SavingNinja and I are so excited! We’re finally going to be in a place where we can go snowboarding every season; enjoy beautiful hikes every weekend; and celebrate Christmas like there’s no tomorrow!

Even the schooling system is much better over in Sweden, which is great for Mrs SavingNinja with her teaching degree. They have free education (we might get Masters degrees), free childcare, and 6 months of fully paid maternity and paternity leave (you never know.)

The one drawback to this move will be…our FIRE goals.

Happiness in Exchange for Money

Even though I will be getting paid more in my new position, the potential for matching my current savings rate will be severely reduced. This is because Sweden has some of the highest taxes in the world .

Stocks which I will receive as a big part of my compensation package will be taxed at 60%, and then a further 30% will be taken off any growth since they vested…ouch. This is a huge difference to countries like the US or UK where equity-related bonuses get taxed at a lower rate than income!

Sweden is also notorious for being expensive with a lot of things needing to be imported and an additional 25% VAT burden. All of these taxes along with a housing crisis which sees Stockholms flats match central London prices, along with no ISA equivalent and no capital gains allowance (and a 30% flat rate tax to boot) make Sweden absolutely terrible for a FIRE-pursuer.

As we’ve orchestrated our current life specifically for FIRE we have seen our essential household expenses drop to under £15k per year ; Our mortgage only costs us £100 per month in interest and we spend under £150 per month on food. This will go completely out of the window in Stockholm, we’ll be spending a minimum of £1,500 per month on rent alone.

But…I’m still happy to be doing this.

One of my goals for 2020 was to spend more money and be happier, and I feel that this is the perfect opportunity to achieve that goal: I will gain unequivocal experience and improve as an engineer and person beyond what I thought capable of; my wife and I will be able to go on an adventure and explore the Nordic regions whilst pursuing our favorite sport; The company has offices in New York and San Francisco which brings me one step closer to achieving my American dream with an inter-company transfer. These things are worth taking a savings cut for.

SavingNinja no Longer?

I actually have no idea how much I am going to be able to save. I don’t truly know how much everything is going to cost and I’ll have to rediscover all of the financial tricks that I have learned over the years. There isn’t even a way to invest in Vanguard! I’m really going to be starting from square one again.

From an initial perspective, I’d hope to be able to save at least 50% of my salary. This will likely depend on how quickly Mrs SN can get a job. We are also selling our home in the UK and plan to buy one in Sweden after 1 year which would see our savings rate increase further. So, hope is not completely lost.

Where does this Leave the Blog?

Well, I guess I’ll have to change the name of the post series ‘My Journey to Financial Independence in the UK .’ SavingNinja will instead have to become more international. I may even have to change my savings to be shown in dollars rather than pounds as I have no intention of ever moving back to England.

I’m sure I’ll have a lot to think about with adapting to a new lifestyle in Sweden and I’ll want to share what I’ve learned along the way. For this I’ll create a new tag called ‘Sweden’ so for those of you that aren’t interested can skip it.

I’ll continue of course to blog about my quest for happiness and saving. I’m hoping that the move will allow me to gain a little more insight by experiencing life in two very different cultures.

Moving to Sweden will also mark the revival of the long-dead SavingNinja Instagram account, as this time I might actually have some things to take pictures of! I will also be partnering with Mrs SN who has a lot more Instagram knowledge than me; so make sure you follow us if you want to see our adventures play out.

Follow SavingNinja on Instagram here .

A lot of Planning to Come

I’ve now got a new Kanban board in my living room with all of the things that I need to research before I move to Sweden in about 2 months time! These cover topics like where should I invest my money? Can I leave my UK bank accounts and investment accounts open? How do you live frugally in Sweden?

Sweden doesn’t even have services like Amazon or eBay, there is going to be a lot to learn! I’ll be making a blog post about everything along the way.

If you know anyone in Sweden or in another Nordic region who can offer me some advice, especially around how I can find a Vanguard-esk alternative, please comment and let me know below.

Have you ever been to a Scandinavian country? What should I expect? The first time I visit will be on a one-way flight!

I'm Allergic to Spending Money!

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 06:30:05 +0000

“Are you not having a drink?” John asked me as we huddled into the crowded upstairs room of a fancy pub.

We were there for the November installment of the ‘side-hustle’ meet up, hosted by the venerable Financial Independence London group. The room was filled with over 100 bustling FIRE advocates, sipping on expensive £12 white wines and £6 pints of beer.

“I’ll stick with tap water and ice, thank you,” I said with a pang of envy.

John, my co-attendee of this side-hustle extravaganza was already on his second £6 pint. John, by the way, is a frugality expert, he prides himself on being frugal and is the founder of the very popular Frugal and Freegan London group, he’s the only person that I know that probably has the resourcefulness to live for free if needed. And yet, he had no qualms about buying the ludicrously expensive beer, whilst I, on the other hand, felt resistance at simply the mention of it.

What is wrong with me? I thought. I’m saving over 80% of my salary and I can’t even stomach the notion of buying a single expensive drink?

I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t realise that this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened.

I’ve lost count of the times that we’ve decided to get take-out, but upon me trying to locate the best deals from the limited available options, decide that I’ll cook something up as I don’t want to spend £20 on some ‘crappy Chinese food.’

I can’t count the times that I’ve finally said ‘YES, we can get a chippy, I fancy one too!’ Only to walk the 10 minutes to the local chip shop and return home empty-handed after seeing that the price of 1 piece of cod was £6.50! (When did fish and chips get so bloody expensive?)

There are other scenarios like this too: Deciding to eat out at a restaurant when we’re out for the day, ending up instead with a large bag of crisps. Not getting food halfway through a long drive due to the increased cost at motorway service food courts (even when we’re really hungry!) The list goes on and on.

I’m that awkward person, to my wife’s sadness, who will look at every single menu or food shop seeking the best value, only to end up with nothing. I’d rather have a rumbling stomach than be ripped-off.

Is there something wrong with me?

When experiencing this allergy to spending, it’s not just a preference that I prefer to choose. It’s actually a feeling deep down in my gut, I feel physically sick. It’s like (I imagine) how an addict would feel when trying to resist the urge which is telling them to take that next hit:- I REALLY don’t want to spend.

Someone telling me ‘Come on, treat yourself’ or ‘You’ve earned it’ won’t help. The psychological feeling is almost physical, the magnetic-like resistance is too strong.

With careful analysis of this feeling, it seems to be more closely related to value and specifically the fear of not getting ‘good value.’ I feel tremendous anxiety around the notion of being ripped-off.

I landed on this hypothesis as I don’t feel the same wretchedness when buying pints of beer for £2.30 at a local Weatherspoons, or when buying a crate of beer for less than £1 per can in the supermarket.

Recently, I’ve had to book flights to a family gathering, I leapt into the task thinking that £50 was good value for a flight to Europe. Then when seeing via Google Flights that the flights were only £17 in the previous month, I immediately felt a tremendous hatred and anxiety.

‘That’s horrible value, why should I pay more than double the price just because I have to fly one month later!’

It’s negatively affecting my life

This is actually a problem. Yeah, sure, it’s doing wonders for my savings rate, but I shouldn’t have to feel physically sick and wrought with anxiety when having to purchase a bad-value product or service, especially since doing so would figuratively be a drop in the pond to my savings plan.

If I bought 3 expensive £6 pints at each London FIRE meet-up, which I attend roughly once per month, that would equal £18 per month. -I’m trying furiously to not immediately associate that price to double what it would cost me for Spotify premium, which I don’t pay due to the bad value, I instead suffer through the adverts.

That would only cost me £216 per year, that’s 0.36% out of my projected investment amount which I contributed out of my salary this tax year, should I really be feeling these levels of anxiety?

Breaking frugal habits

I ended up drinking tap water through-out the night. After discussing the subject of frugality with John, he hit me with this resolute quote: ‘It’s difficult to break a lifetime of frugal habits.’

I know that these habits (and intrinsic fears) are going to have to be broken at some point, especially as my nest egg becomes fully established. I can’t live with the paralysing fear of needing value in everything that I buy, some spending just can’t be avoided; I no longer want to suffer when I make one of these purchases.

I also want to be able to spend on the little things that will hardly make a dent in my savings but will bring me a little joy.

I need to start forcefully increasing my spending to inject more small, joyful things. I should do this now before my frugality becomes too ingrained to ever break out of, there will definitely be more work that needs to be done!

I don’t want to become this guy

Have you ever felt a repulsion towards spending money? How did you break out of these habits?

Guest Post: Selling my Dream Car didn’t End my Dream

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 06:15:51 +0000

Simon contacted me whilst I was on my honeymoon with an artfully drawn Ninja shuriken and asked if he could guest post on Saving Ninja. So, of course, I had to say yes!

This marks the first-ever Saving Ninja guest post, so I’ve created a new subcategory called ‘Guest Post’, and if anyone else would like to contribute, hit me up over on the Contact page.

Simon runs his own personal finance blog over at Financial Expert which he created back in 2010. He’s based out of Yorkshire and quit his accountancy career once he became Financially Independent last May at the young ol’ age of 30!

Now he concentrates fully on Financial Expert which he began to rebuild a month after he retired into a learning resource which teaches you things like how to invest in property and how to buy shares , all with an awesome gamified approach (which I like a lot).

Now, over to Simon!

Last week I shook hands on a life-changing deal. I expect that it will improve my future quality of life immensely. I sold my dream car.

Wait… sold?

Yes, that’s right, I waved goodbye to my Jaguar F-Type, which I’d bought two and a half years earlier.

So, why did I sell it?

The reasons for initially buying the car no longer existed, so it no longer made sense to stick with the status quo. The car had to go!

When I bought it, I was in a stable, respectable job. I had no financial commitments (I rent an apartment with my partner).

However, recently I left work to take a mini-retirement over the summer months and do some travelling.

Nothing focuses your attention on outgoings more than a loss of income! While I was in employment, I could rationalise away the juxtaposition of being a keen saver and owning an expensive car. Because I could still save ‘something’ in spite of its high cost, it was a tolerable expense.

Now that the salary has dried up, the wealth-munching nature of the car is clear to see.

For the record, I still loved the car, and right up until my last drive, it still made me smile. But as Heraclitus (Greek philosopher) wisely said; “Nothing endures but change.”

Calculating the cost of a dream car

Now that the car has found another home, let’s crunch the numbers and figure out how much I spent on it.

I owned the car outright, therefore I incurred depreciation rather than lease payments or finance charges. I bought the car second hand in December 2016 for £44,700. Larger wheels and tyres added £1,600, which brought the total cost to £46,300.

I sold it privately for £27,250. This equates to £19,050 depreciation over the 32 months I owned the vehicle or £595 per month.

A range of other costs also need to be taken into account. Annual servicing, consumables, taxes, fuel and insurance all add up. Unsurprisingly, each of these categories is driven higher because of the F-Type sitting in the ‘sports car category’.

The damning total cost

Cost

Cost per month

Depreciation

£595

Annual Servicing

£35

Tyres & Brakes

£61

Road Tax

£27

Insurance

£74

Premium Fuel

£80

Total cost per month

£872

I computed these figures for the first time to produce this article. I’m staggered at the magnitude of the final sum:

£872 per month. £10,464 per year. £27,904 in total.

That sum could have been spent on:

14 holidays for me and my partner (a £2k holiday every 8 weeks)
558 three-course restaurant meals (three per week)
Part-time cleaner, florist, gardener and handyman.
A deposit for a small home
Half of the contents of a Primark store (surely?)
Investments

Of all of the alternatives, investments are the most likely use of the extra cash.

The opportunity cost

This calculation began a train of thought along the lines of what if? What if I had invested the money rather than spending it on brake dust and tyre smoke?

The FTSE 100 has barely moved in the 2.5 years I’ve owned the car, therefore so far, I have only missed out on £2k of dividend income which I would have received in that time.

The phrase ‘so far’ is really important, because the real opportunity I have missed out on is having the £28,000 tucked away in an investment account for the next few decades. Here’s what could have happened to those funds:

Therefore the true cost of enjoying my dream car now is missing out on £80,000 in my ‘retirement years’. Yikes, that’s a pricey couple of years behind the wheel.

Looking into my future

Moving on from what ‘could have been’. The more important number for me is – what do I gain from escaping the luxury car rat race?

If I decide to invest the £872 monthly savings from selling my car – the following graph shows that this would grow to an incredible £571,000.

Therefore on reflection, while my consumption has certainly held back my retirement savings, the returns from staying away from luxury cars in the future massively outweighs this. I’ve made a difficult but positive decision which will transform my quality of life in retirement.

Everything becomes normal

I learned a broader lesson from this episode:

Everything becomes normal.

A super sports car was a thrill to drive, but after years of ownership, it simply felt… normal! It is difficult to even tell whether my day-to-day happiness continued to receive a lift once the novelty had worn off.

You could apply the same principle to jewellery, housing, fashion and other status symbols. As humans, we tend to always overestimate the positive effect they have on our lives.

As many celebrities and business people have observed – being rich doesn’t equate to more happiness.

Recent research supports the idea that we all revert to a stable, personal level of happiness, even after traumatic events.

If you have found contentment, in life, with family, friends or your situation, then you may be overestimating how much any individual purchase (or sale) can change this.

I hope this gives you the confidence to jettison any large material possessions that feel like a weight around your neck. It turns out that killing the dream car doesn’t kill the dream.

How to Clear Your Mind

Thu, 16 May 2019 10:00:24 +0000

This is entry #1 into the new ‘How to Find Happiness ’ post series. Do you have anything to contribute to this series? If so, please contact me .

Those of you who follow the blog will know that in a few short months, me and the (soon to be) Mrs SavingNinja will be attempting the 12 hour Half Dome hike in Yosemite Valley. There was a moment of realisation last week when we thought, ‘Shit, we’ve never been on a hike that long before, not even close! We’d better do some training.’

So, we researched online and found a long, circular hike in our area, packed up our water pouches, beef jerky, and snacks, and we set off with a spring in our step (it didn’t last long).

The hike we went on took us 6 hours, it traversed the beautiful Surrey Hills, and it covered 22 kilometers from start to finish. Even though it was difficult, we both thoroughly enjoyed the walk. It taught us that we definitely have to do more training before we’re ready for the hike up the monster which is Half Dome, but it also taught us something else, something perhaps profound: Long hikes completely clear your mind.

We both felt elated, happy, and content directly after the hike, but I started to really notice a change whilst on the train the next day. I sat on my morning commute and noticed that my mind was almost completely clear. I still had the recursive worries and ‘planning’ thoughts flying through my head, but they were much quieter, like a whisper, and easier to push away too. I felt like the normally buzzing part of my brain was occupying 10% of my head instead of 90%, this gave my mind space to be present and feel happy.

I sat there in bliss after realising that I was content and calm, I didn’t even want to turn on my Kindle and read as I was enjoying the serenity too much. Instead, I continued to listen to the Peaceful Piano playlist on Spotify and relax, for over half of my journey.

It’s now 3 days later and I’m still experiencing this bliss.

What the hell is happening? Is the secret to being content and living in the moment really just to go on a long walk?

What’s Going On?

Whilst being in this blissful state, I’ve tried to analyse how and why this is happening, this is what I came up with:

1) All of my thoughts had a chance to get out into the open. I was walking for 6 whole hours, with my closest friend. There were periods where we didn’t talk, and long stretches where we did. Everything that we wanted to talk about, got talked about.

The walk was like a repository for me to pour all of my mounting thoughts into, worries and dreams both. It left us feeling as if we’d discussed everything that we had to discuss, which was much needed with the wedding just around the corner.

2) Reconnecting with nature. There’s something about being in the beauty of nature that makes you feel grounded and thankful. Something along the lines of, “How lucky am I to live in a place where all of this beauty is right on my doorstep? And no matter how much I save, or work, I’ll always have access to this.”

It brings you back down to earth and makes you realise that to be happy, all you really need are your loved ones and nice walks.

3) Switching off from technology. Although we still had our phones out to take pictures, we were, for the most part, completely phone free. For 6 hours! I don’t remember the last time in the waking day that we haven’t gone on our phones for that long.

In this day and age, people are glued to their phones, it’s like an addiction. With all of the good that they bring, it’s nice to reconnect to real life and switch off from time to time.

4) Fatigue. Walking for 6 hours is pretty damn tiring. Maybe an empty head is just the result of being extremely tired? This would be a pretty crappy explanation to a nice feeling, so I hope not!

It is strange that this feeling of contentedness only seemed to occur when going on an extended walk. I wonder where the boundary is? Would we feel this way after hiking for only 3 hours? Or less?

There’s also the possibility that we were just having a plain old nice day, which left us feeling happy. We’ll soon find out when we go on our next extended walk.

Have you ever felt a feeling like this after completing a strenuous activity? Let me know in the comments below.

Don’t Borrow Worry From Tomorrow

Thu, 09 May 2019 09:36:51 +0000

“Why are you surprised that traveling does you no good, when you travel in your own company? The thing that weighs on your mind is the same as what drove you from home.”

I felt the sting of this quote when I read it. My constant craving for wanderlust has been a fixture in my mind for as long as I can remember; It’s been the answer to all of my problems, I think to myself; The way I will find real and everlasting happiness…

But this quote defiles that thought…

It shifts my perspective and points the blame at me. I can travel to anywhere that I want, but I’ll still feel the same; the problem lies within my own mind.

Don’t Borrow Worry From Tomorrow…

I used to know this.

Below are my favourite quotes from Robin Hobb’s famous fantasy
anthology:

Do not agonize about yesterday. Do not borrow tomorrow’s trouble. Let your heart hunt. Rest in the now.

Robin Hobb**, Fool’s Assassin **

When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy. The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgment.

Robin Hobb**, Ship of Magic **

After reading them, they became the motto for my life. As an expert worrier, I tended to spend more than 75% of my time worrying and being unhappy about future possibilities. When implementing the method of not borrowing worry from tomorrow, I effectively alleviated three-quarters of my life from the shackles of worry-anxiety.

Of course, sometimes I need to remind myself of these quotes, our minds seem to drift in and out of awareness as we monotonously progress through life, so, occasionally, worry sneaks up on you. But most of the time, I stick with it!

Getting Out of the Neutral Zone

It’s great to not worry as much, but I don’t just want that, I also want to be happy. That feeling that you get as a kid the day before you go on a family holiday which you’ve been looking forward to for months, the awe and excitement that you feel; I want to feel that most of the time. We live in a beautiful world; it should be our default states.

Eliminating worry (for the most part) is good for pushing the pendulum from the despairs of anxiety and making room for Mr. Happiness to come and grasp you, but you won’t fall into this happiness on your own, you need to make it for yourself.

You need to get out of the neutral zone.

There’s an excellent Ted Talk called The Surprising Science of Happiness which describes each person having different levels of base happiness. For example, if you scaled happiness from 1 to 10, your baseline might be 7, mine could be 3.

My maximum happiness could be your baseline. This is why some people are generally happier than others, or more depressed.

With this being the case, it must be a lot harder for lower happiness level individuals to feel content. I’ve discovered in recent years that I’m definitely in the lower bracket, it takes a lot more for me to feel a shred of emotion or excitement, much more than it does for my partner. The worst thing is, I don’t think that I was always like this.

I suffered a major stint of job-related stress at my last position, it also coincided with moving into my first home and starting to work in London (along with a 3 hour round trip commute). It mentally and physically drained me. I lost my happiness, even when I knew that nothing was wrong.

I believe this event is what drained my peak happiness barometer. But I’m also faithful that I can reset it, I just need to find out how, and I’m hoping that you guys can join me.

How to Find Happiness

With this blog post, I’m proposing a new post series titled ‘How to Find Happiness.’ Within this series, I hope that we can find internal happiness through exploration and experimentation. Below I’ve compiled a list of the books that I plan to read. They range from philosophy and communication to mindfulness and meditation.

The new series will explore each book in detail, try to implement their teachings and document the results, and I invite all of my readers and fellow bloggers to take part.

Pick a book, or add one to the list, analyse it, and try to practice what they preach within your own life. Report your findings via any medium and let me know your results. These findings will form the soon to be section of this website dedicated solely to happiness and self-fulfillment. It will document everyone’s analysis and results and become a positive repository for helping people on the FIRE path (and in general) to find internal wellbeing.

A lot of people chasing financial independence forget to live in the now, but I believe, if we all work together, we can find out how to change for the better. To live life in the now, whilst also saving for our future. We can become healthier, mentally and physically, and live happier, more fulfilled lives.

Think of it as a book club between bloggers for a positive goal. It doesn’t even have to stop there, if you know of a positive YouTube video, lecture or TV show to watch, we can add it to the list of exploratory topics. If you haven’t got your own blog, write a story anyway and I’ll feature it as a guest post, what we build will be able to help the masses.

The Happiness Book Club

So, without further ado; here’s the list of books that I’ve personally compiled which I’m going to focus on, to begin with. I invite you all to also pick a book, read it and provide feedback on your results.

Man’s Search for Meaning - Frankl (165 pages)

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful. Man’s Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.

Stumbling on Happiness - Gilbert (263 pages)

Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? • Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight? • Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want? • Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it? In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Csikszentmihalyi (303 pages)

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous investigations of “optimal experience” have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experienceteaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Gladwell (296 pages)

Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you’ll understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself - Singer (200 pages)

Whether this is your first exploration of inner space,_ or you’ve devoted your life to the inward journey, this book will transform your relationship with yourself and the world around you. You’ll discover what you can do to put an end to the habitual thoughts and emotions that limit your consciousness. By tapping into traditions of meditation and mindfulness, author and spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and let go of painful thoughts and memories that keep us from achieving happiness and self-realization._

Incerto 4 Book Bundle: Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes - Taleb (1520 pages)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series is an investigation of luck, uncertainty, probability, opacity, human error, risk, disorder, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand, in nonoverlapping and standalone books. All four volumes—Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and the special expanded edition of The Bed of Procrustes, updated with more than 50 percent new material—are now together in one ebook bundle.

All About Love: New Visions - Hooks (240 pages)

All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.

Making Space: Creating a Home Meditation Practice - Hanh (92 pages)

Find peace and calm amid the busyness of your life with this new book by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Designed to be both inspiration and guidebook for those new to mindfulness practice, Making Space offers easy-to-follow instructions for setting up a breathing room, listening to a bell, sitting, breathing, and walking meditations, and cooking and eating a meal in mindfulness. Whether you live alone or with a family, this beautifully illustrated book can help you create a sense of retreat and sanctuary at home.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost - Solnit (209 pages)

Whether she is contemplating the history of walking as a cultural and political experience over the past two hundred years (Wanderlust), or using the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge as a lens to discuss the transformations of space and time in late nineteenth-century America (River of Shadows), Rebecca Solnit has emerged as an inventive and original writer whose mind is daring in the connections it makes. A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit’s own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.

Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life - Dolan (256 pages)

As a Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, Dolan conducts original research into the measurement of happiness and its causes and consequences, including the effects of our behaviour. Here he creates a new outlook on the pursuit of happiness - it’s not just how you feel, it’s how you act. Happiness by Design shows that being happier requires us to actively re-design our immediate environment. Enough has been written on how to think happy. Happiness by Design is about how to behave happy and how to incorporate the most recent research findings into our everyday lives.

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life - Kobat-Zinn (304 pages)

In this book, the author maps out a simple path for cultivating mindfulness in one’s own life. It speaks both to those coming to meditation for the first time and to longtime practitioners, anyone who cares deeply about reclaiming the richness of his or her moments.

Happier - Ben-Shahar (192 pages)

Can You Learn to Be Happy? YES . . . according to the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar’s insightful and inspiring lectures on that ever-elusive state: HAPPINESS.

The Art of Fully Living - Gur (264 pages)

In this stirring book, author, blogger and lifestyle entrepreneur, Tal Gur offers his own transformational journey as an inspiring example and practical guide to implementing the art of fully living to its fullest potential. You’ll learn how to actualize your potential by forging all aspects of your life through the process built into your life goals.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Manson (224 pages)

For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. “F**k positivity,” Mark Manson says. “Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it.” In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.

A Big Decision to Make

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 06:30:15 +0000

Every once in awhile you find yourself at a crossroads. Each road leading to an entirely new destination, each with their own crossroads leading to places that you never could have imagined.

When you find yourself at one of these pinnacle moments in your life you know that the decisions that you make will be paramount and you know this with absolute clarity. This week I found myself at one of these crossroads. I’ve seen it coming over the horizon for quite a while now but I didn’t think that I’d end up here so soon. There’s a lot of pondering to be done.

I’ve said many times on this blog that my dream is to relocate to a far away land, preferably the USA. In fact, it’s been my dream to move there since my childhood, it’s been almost an infatuation. I know that I’ve got the “American dream fever”, but when analysed, a lot of my wants and needs also point to the USA:

If you want to earn the biggest software engineering salaries, you need to be in the USA (particularly Silicon Valley)

I enjoy working hard and progressing, I also have an entrepreneurial spirit. Silicon Valley is where I belong and being there brings endless possibilities (even more than London!)

It’s the best country to be a citizen of, with regards to variety

I plan to retire early, I have plenty of passions but these might change at a moments notice. If I were a US citizen, I’d have 50 states that I could move to. No matter if I wanted snowy mountains, desert planes, lush greenery, rocky shores or perfect beaches - there’s a state that I could move to which would accommodate these dreams.

I also love the idea of ranching, building, and farming. Doing that in the UK would be a lot harder and more expensive than it would be in the USA.

There’s more land and bigger houses

The general consensus is that there is much more land and bigger houses in the USA (not particularly in California or New York City). For comparison - I’d be able to buy a ranch in northern Massachusetts for $75,000. If I tried to buy the same in Devon I’d be looking at over £1 million.

Moving away is a mean feat until you have clocked up a lot of experience and become desirable. In order to get a green card, the hiring company has to pay thousands of dollars and prove that they can’t hire a US citizen to do the same job. Due to this fact, I’d put the notion out of my head whilst I progressed through my career. Now, with over 5 years under my belt and with my marriage just around the corner (I can bring her with me), the time has come to really ask myself; is this what I still want to do?

Option #1 - Apply for visa sponsoring jobs now

This option has become more readily available to me due to new work connections. I could be applying to as many jobs as possible right now to maximise the possibility of moving to the USA.

Moving sooner rather than later seems like it’s what my heart desires. I have the experience, I’ll be able to bring my wife with me, why wait? Like previously mentioned in this blog, I feel like my life is waiting to start, why shouldn’t I start it ASAP? Moving now would mean that I’d become a citizen sooner, so I could move to a higher paying job more quickly once I’ve obtained a green card.

But it would also put a severe dent into my FIRE plans…

My savings rate would suffer, at least initially. My soon to be wife would not be eligible to work without her own VISA, she’d effectively be house-bound until I get my green card, which could take over 3 years. We’d also be living in an extremely high cost of living area. I wouldn’t really have the option to do what I’m doing now and have a long commute because I’d have to be working really long hours to ensure that I successfully get citizenship. These facts may mean that my savings rate would dip to near zero, a long way from the 80% that I’m achieving today.

Option #2 - Start contracting in London and relocate in a few years

The reason I initially started working in London was because I knew that I wanted to start freelancing. I’ve now got the experience (and the London experience) to begin this journey, it would be frustrating to move away before I even got to try it out.

Contracting would increase my pay by a factor of 2 and with my savings rate already sitting at 80%, it would make my savings rate go stratestophic. Contracting for a few years may even allow me to become fully financially independent before moving to the USA. My stash would then be able to grow whilst I obtained my green card and earning less over there during this process then wouldn’t matter as much.

Doing this would also allow my partner to continue working and moving up her career ladder, which brings us to another question - what to do about kids?

We’ve teetered along the lines of whether we want children for quite a while now. Both of us feel like we don’t want kids right now. We’re not settled into a location where we know we want to stay, it’s certainly not a viable place for children. We also still have so much that we want to accomplish, so many places that we’re yet to visit. And I know that children won’t halt these aspirations, but it will definitely hinder them. We are definitely in agreement that we do eventually want children, we don’t want to grow old without them. We know that one day, we’ll want a family.

The only trouble is the time bomb which is a woman’s womb. We know that we can’t wait too long without increasing the likelihood of pregnancy difficulties. Especially if we want more than 1 child. Because of this, we’re aiming to wait until the age of 31 at the latest, which gives us just under 4 years to sort our shit out and prepare.

This timeframe leads us down two pathways:

Option #2.a - Have children in the UK and relocate when they are young (in around 10 years)

This seems to make the most sense financially, but it would put a huge spanner in our initial dream (which is to relocate). We’d be able to continue earning and saving as much as we can, we’d both get maternity pay and we’d have the support of relatives if needed.

The one issue that I see with this option (other than staying in England) is that we’d have to move house. We chose our current place with cheapness in mind, we live in a really shit area (I’m pretty sure we have drug dealers at either side of us) and the house is not suitable for children. The place allows us to save a very high amount of our salaries, but we’d definitely have to move if we had kids.

The problem is, there aren’t many other options for places to move that would allow me to work in London, we’d either have to increase our housing costs massively or relocate to outside of the London area reducing my pay by a fair bit and perhaps forcing me to take up another permanent position.

I could potentially look for a fully remote contract before moving away from London, this could segway beautifully into relocating to the USA if the remote contract is with an American company. It would decrease my salary of course, but maybe that won’t matter after I’ve got a significant amount invested?

Option #2.b - Relocate in a few years and have children in the USA

This seems like it should be a great option. My wife won’t be able to work for at least a few years when we move away, so why not have kids then? The main issue seems to again, come down to costs.

I’m told that even with company health care, your excess costs for childbirth in the US can still be around $20k. WIth these prices it would be ludicrous to move out of a country where we could have kids for free, then proceed to instantly have children.

The other problem is that when we first relocate I’m going to have to be working crazy hours in one of the most demanding work cultures in the world. I wanted to take more time off and be more relaxed when we had children, not work more! I would hardly get to see my wife and newborn and being in a foreign country with no friends or family, it wouldn’t be ideal.

Going Around in Circles

What a conundrum. I want to move away to start our ”real life” as soon as possible. Doing so straight away would be financial suicide. Moving away after a few years would be ideal but we’d need to start thinking about children around this time. And having kids would make for a horrible few years working in a foreign country with a newborn.

Staying in England to have kids seems like the most sensible option but that would mean we’d have to foot the costs (and stress) of moving homes when we know that we’re not going to be living there for very long.

It seems like there are no correct options. At least, for now, moving straight away definitely seems like a bad choice. Doing so would be thinking solely with my heart and not with my head. So I should hold off on those interviews.

The most logical choice seems to be to have children in England. But that means we’d have to wait such a long time. We’d be much older then, everything wouldn’t be as new and exciting. We may even run the risk of ending up not moving at all. Children in general are also very unpredictable. We could end up not being able to have them or have some other kind of problems. Should we hold off our dreams on the wisps of uncertainty? Or let the uncertainty happen once we have moved?

There are other options to consider. We could move to Canada for example, we’d both be able to work there. It would also be a lot easier to get jobs and sponsorship there. We could move to any number of countries, but I guess we’ll have to defer this thinking for now. I did promise to not think about all of this until after the wedding!

At least this post has taught me one thing - to not move straight away. To hold fire! I’ll focus on the wedding and then starting my first contract. Building up my cash will only make things easier down the line.

What do you think I should do?

How to be Successful

Thu, 21 Mar 2019 06:30:59 +0000

Being successful is subjective. What success is, varies from one group of people to another, but in each of these groups, common traits can be identified amongst the people they deem to have risen above mediocrity. These traits can be used in any scenario and can be applied to any person.

Below I’ve compiled a list of what I believe the best traits to inhabit are in order to achieve a higher level of success, and how I’ve used these traits to progress my own career and well-being.

Being Goal-oriented

If your vision is to achieve more than you’re currently achieving, you need to set goals in order to make any progress. Without them, your life will stagnate and you won’t be able move onwards and upwards. You’ll have no yardstick to measure your progress against and you’ll figuratively be ‘pissing in the wind,’ no one wants to do that.

Setting goals works for most things in life and you’ll be much more likely to achieve something the instant you make it into a goal. These can include:

Fitness - If you’ve ever been to the gym without a solid fitness goal for a prolonged period of time, you’ll know that most of the time you make barely any progress. That’s because you need to be constantly pushing your body outside of its comfort zone in order to grow stronger. If you don’t set goals, your bodies natural reaction will be to exercise within it’s comfort zone and you won’t see any progress.

As soon as you tell yourself to lift that extra 1 kilogram per session or run that extra mile each week, something magical will happen; within a couple of months you’ll be so much stronger and fitter. You will be amazed at what you can achieve with only small increments.

Finances - Without setting goals for your finances, you’ll find it very hard to stay motivated on the pathway to financial independence. Achieving any amount of wealth is an ambitious pursuit and you’ll be sure to give up if you don’t give yourself a little respite by acknowledging that you’ve met smaller goals along the way.

I’ve set a £100k goal for 2019 in my end of year review , I’m excited and eager to achieve it. Without it, my long term goal of achieving financial independence would feel so far away that I’d instead feel demotivated.

Financial goals can also be set to promote other positive actions in your life, for example: donating a certain amount to charity, growing your children’s education funds, and getting out of debt.

Side hustles - Creating a successful side hustle is a difficult task. The definition of side hustle is an income which is generated from a pursuit that takes place on the side of your main income earning job. This means that most people don’t have much time to dedicate to side hustles.

These hours normally take place during the early morning, late evening, or at the weekend. We need goals to motivate us to spend our free time working, goals that are achievable but also goals that are moonshots*. We need them to help us envision what we want to achieve and to positively reinforce our vigor, making us work harder and longer.

Learning - It’s always nice to have goals whilst learning something new. When you’re working towards achieving a goal, your learning speed can accelerate. A great example for this is when you’re learning how to program in a certain language, setting a goal of making an application is a sure fire way to keep you motivated. As you’ll have a clear goal in sight, your days won’t be full of monotonous videos or other learning resources, instead, you’ll be working toward an end goal.

Always challenging yourself

In order to improve at all things in life, you need to challenge yourself. You should always be testing your limits with whatever you do. If you stay in your comfort zone, you’ll never learn and grow but if you leave it, the sky is your limit.

Challenging yourself keeps your mind and body sharp, the more hardship we endure, the stronger we’ll become. Try going for that position that is double your current salary, ask that girl who you think is way out of your league on a date, write that novel, start that blog.

Even going outside in the winter without your coat on or getting in a freezing cold shower will be good for you. You need to push your limits to make them expand further, you’re capable of so much more!

Planning

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” is a quote that has rung true for centuries. Without a plan, you have no direction. You only have so much time on this world to achieve your dreams, your time should be treated like the precious resource that it is. You should be ensuring that you maximise your happiness in the time that you have and to do this you need to plan!

I plan my yearly budget in advanced so that I know that I can still meet my savings goals. Doing so informs me of how much I need to put aside each month, it also lets me know how much I can designate to holidays or luxury items.

Whenever I go on holiday, I make a plan to ensure that I get to do all of the things that I want to do. No one wants to spend their time and money booking the trip of a lifetime and end up missing out on a special event due to not making a reservation.

Analysing

Everyone, throughout their lives, make good decisions and bad ones. If you analyse these decisions, it’s a sure-fire way to bolster your good decisions and trim down the bad. People say that if you don’t fail, you’re not learning and you’ll only learn from your past mistakes if you analyse them.

I analyse my savings each month in my savings spreadsheet. This keeps me informed of my progress throughout my savings journey and means I can adjust accordingly by looking at the data.

You can also analyse many other things such as: Why you had an argument with your partner, why you failed a job interview, and why you didn’t get that promotion. Analysing unlocks the true potential of mistakes; learning.

Creating Positive Habits

Humans are lazy by nature, if you don’t force yourself to create positive habits, you’ll find it much harder to achieve your larger goals. Take this blog for example, blogging is hard work. You need to write on average 1 article per week for months, sometimes years, before you even earn a single penny. Some bloggers then go on to earn 6 figures.

These are some of my own positive habits:

Working on my blog each lunch time - Most people spend their lunch breaks going to buy food or talking with friends. I spend each lunch time working on my blog. Doing so allows me to spend 1 solid hour per day working on my own personal project which I enjoy. I can then either spend time with my partner when I get home, or work on other side-hustles.

Reading factual books whilst on the train - I commute into work each morning. I don’t spend this time playing on phone games or scrolling through my social media feeds. I spend this time reading books that I will learn from. I also spend this time drafting blog posts! Again, this gives me more free time at home.

Listening to podcasts whilst in the shower - When you don’t drive into work, it’s much harder to find the time to consume podcasts, but there are so many excellent sources of information in them, I needed to make time by creating a positive habit. I make sure that each time I have a shower or bath, I listen to a podcast. This is an excellent way to be doing something extra productive when you usually would just be cleaning yourself.

Applying to 1 new job each year - Even if I’m happy in my current position I still apply to at least 1 new job per year. This keeps my wits sharp and means that I won’t start becoming too comfortable. Most of the time, I apply for positions that are a much higher pay than my current package (as I’m just applying for interview practice anyway). Sometimes, like what’s happened to me for my last 3 positions, you’ll get the job!

Doing something new each month - Life is better lived when you’re trying new things, they create new synapse bridges in your brain and your experiences seem like they last longer. Have you ever had a feeling that your year has just flown by? That as you get older, time moves quicker? That’s because you’re not experiencing many new things.

These new things can be in the form of anything: Cook or bake something new, eat something you’ve never eaten before, visit a new place, or try a sport you’ve never done before. New experiences equate to a happier and longer (seeming) life which leads to a greater sense of joy and fulfillment.

Perseverance

This is the most important trait of all. In order to achieve anything that is truly great in your life, you need perseverance. The harder you have worked for something, the more sweet it will taste when you finally succeed.

Have you ever played a video game that seemed like it should be good but you were left feeling dissatisfied and unhappy at the games conclusion? Most of the time this feeling relates to games that were completed quickly with little to no challenges along the way.

Games that truly challenged you, games that had you cursing in anger at the amount of times you failed or holding back rage when all that you worked towards was crushed. These are the ones that fill you with a sense of pride and joy when you’ve completed them. Life is a direct correlation of this. Work hard, persevere through the boring parts, the difficult parts, and you’ll be able to achieve everything and anything.

A Close up Look at Death

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 07:30:21 +0000

I entered the mortuary with my heart in my throat and my father at my side. Nerves wracked through my gut, I had no idea how I would react when I first saw my uncle. Would I freeze? Would I not be able to go into the room?

I shakily opened the door and began to walk inside, as I rounded the corner I began to glimpse him. Like an animatronic in a horror show, I barely recognised him. Laying so still with his features so gaunt. I could see the glue on his lips that they used to keep his mouth from opening. Tears began to fill my eyes.

I sat next to the coffin with my Dad on the opposite side. I watched as he stroked his little brothers head and cried. I watched for a long time, this was much worse than any sad movie I’d seen on TV. ‘You can kiss him on his head if you like, it will make you feel better.’ My Dad said as he lent over the coffin to kiss his little brothers head. I stood up to do the same but an invisible wall stopped me from moving any closer to his face. ‘I don’t think I can,’ I said with a withering voice. I settled for patting his hands that were resting in his lap. They felt very cold, no one warned me of how cold they would feel. I withdrew quickly.

I stayed sat on my chair as the rest of my fathers very catholic family arrived. My Nona and my uncles three sisters all sat and proceeded to kiss his head, stroke his hands, speak to him and weep.

I sat staring at my uncles body, boxed in due to my Italian speaking being limited, barely being able to even offer my words of sympathy and regret.

This is horrible, I thought. But I also thought that this is necessary.

You Need to See This

My uncle died very suddenly at the age of 59. He was always fit and strong but a hidden virus attacked his heart whilst he was at the gym. He suddenly collapsed and without oxygen getting to his brain for over 40 minutes, he died shortly after being airlifted to hospital.

He left behind two young children and a grieving wife. He was a legend in the small Italian village where my family is from. This was duely shown by the hundreds of people that gathered to walk with his coffin through the streets, as is the tradition in Catholic Italy.

What proceeded throughout that day was very much, so far, the worst day of my life. Nothing quite beats standing around an open grave and watching a loved one being lowered into it whilst his 90 year old wailing mother cries out “No, my son, my son!” Begging them not to lower him any further, as you cling onto your Dad whilst he cries like you’ve never seen him cry before.

Yet throughout all of this ordeal all I could feel was ashamed. Ashamed that I’d not come to any of my relatives funerals before, this was my first one. Being in England, it’s very easy to say that you can’t make an event such as this, to have my Dad go back alone. “I have work!” You say, or “I can’t get a flight!” But I realised on this day that I was being weak. Weak and selfish. No one likes going to funerals, but you still have to go. You have to out of respect for the person that died and to support your family. There’s also one other reason why you need to go.

To become acute to the actualisation of mortality.

This event changed me, and I think for the better. After witnessing loved ones surrounding a dead body, this unmoving sack of organs that invokes repulsiveness and putridisity, this thing that you normally aquaint to nightmares and horror movies. After seeing them not only surrounding this thing but kissing it, stroking it, and mourning over it. You realise that this dead thing has the features of someone you love, and it’s not a recreation…It’s actually them. This is what we all turn into, every single one of us.

Everyone knows this, but we don’t really know it, we suppress it. People beleive that they’re immortal subcontiously, why else would we fight with the ones we love? Why else would we defer spending time with each other? We wouldn’t do a lot of these things if we knew. If we knew the truth that someday, sooner than you think, we’ll be that unmoving sack that everyone will be mourning over, unable to reach up and tell them that you love them and always have.

So, I implore you all to listen. Go to the ones you love, your children, your parents, your partner, and tell them that you love them. Cut arguments short, try to speak civilly with the love and respect that we all deserve. Make the effort to do nice things with each other and to make happy memories, as one day very soon, we’ll all be gone.

How Should You Distribute Your Wealth?

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 06:30:21 +0000

“The more dollars adult children receive, the fewer dollars they accumulate, while those who are given fewer dollars accumulate more.” - The Millionaire Next Door

Whilst reading through The Millionaire Next Door , this quote is what stood out the most.

People have been toting the phrase “the generational wealth gap” for decades. They say that wealth begets wealth and that the poor cannot compete. Why then does this book that was written over 30 years ago say that the opposite is true? And why does it resonate so much with me?

Throughout my adult life, I’ve always been quick to commit myself to thrift. It didn’t take me long to realise that this was due to being raised in a low income family. Because of this, I went into the world of work knowing that happiness can be obtained without a big price tag. When my income grew substantially, I quickly discovered that increased spending didn’t necessarily correlate to an increase in happiness. In fact, I discovered that spending less can sometimes make you happier.

But what would have happened if I grew up in a high consumption household? Would I be stuck in an endless hyper-consumer loop for the rest of my days? I would have never known happiness without consumption, how would I know that there is an alternate, much better way to bring myself joy? This difference in my life may well have slowed down my current Financial Independence trajectory, or even halted it completely.

The book goes into more details below.

“Consider for a moment that you are a typical affluent parent. You noted that your oldest son or daughter even at an early age was extremely independent, achievement-orientated, and well disciplined. Your instinct is to nurture these traits by not trying to control his or her decisions. Instead, you spend more time helping your less resourceful child make decisions, or you actually make decisions for him. With what result? You strengthen the strong child and weaken the weak.”

This book analyses hundreds of millionaires and the main mantra throughout is that the vast majority of these people were the first in their generation to accumulate this amount of wealth. They made their millions by being frugal, determined, and in a lot of cases, through necessity. These millionaires had a much better gift from their parents than money, they were taught thrift, discipline, and most importantly: how to fend for themselves. Everything that they wanted to achieve, they needed to obtain it on their own.

“Discipline and initiative can’t be purchased like automobiles or clothing off a rack.”

A lot of affluent parents tend to give large donations to their children to try and help them start a successful business or pay off their yearly expenses. What they don’t realise is that they are actually hindering them. Success and wealth is manifested within individuals that need to work hard in order to achieve something, generous donations cause these traits to dwindle and die.

A large contributor to the success of a business is the risk of failing. If you need something to succeed, you are bound to work a lot harder in order to ensure that it definitely does.

Risk is what has fueled some of the most successful companies of our time. Who do you think is more likely to fail? The entrepreneur who had £50k gifted to them by their parents, or the business owner that had to remortgaged their family home for this sum?

“Suppose you have a ten-year-old child who goes in for a physical checkup. The examining physician tells you that your son or daughter is underweight and underdeveloped. How would you respond to this evaluation? You would find ways to improve your child’s physical health. You would likely encourage your child to exercise, take vitamins, life weights, and perhaps play sports. Most parents would attack such a problem proactively. Wouldn’t you find it odd if the parent took the opposite course? How would you respond if the parent encouraged his child to eat less and exercise less?”

I have seen these mistakes manifested within my own life. My partner is the middle child of three children. Her parents, still happily together, were raised along the poverty line. This lifestyle prompted her father to work hard to create a better life for himself and his family. He never shied away from staying up late and, with determination, he came to own a multi-million pound business later in his life.

My partner has always been the more independent child of the three, working three jobs in her teenage years, she never accepted money from her parents. She left home at 18 to get a degree and never moved back. But what has happened to her brothers?

Her eldest brother, of three years, let’s call him Luke:

Luke was somewhat on the same trajectory as her sister. In his younger years, always working whilst he was a teen, showing traits of discipline and determination. He, however, struggled in high school. Not achieving good grades, his father, who had started prospering in the business world, wanted his son to be successful. So he thought he would make use of his status as CEO and hire his wayward son as an upper Manager of his business. “This will help give him a start with his career.” He thought.

What did happen? Now, 12 years on, the Dad, being his boss as well as his father, felt he owed it to his son to give him bonuses, continue to pay for his meals and holidays, and a lot of other expenses. This created a bubble of wealth around Luke, he had it good, why would he ever want to leave?

Luke stayed at home rent free until he was 28. He then moved out into rented accomodation with a friend. He still works for his father. He’s been ‘fired’ and bought back 2 times due to always being late to work or not coming in. He’s turned into a prodigious consumer, always moving on from hobby to hobby, spending all of his money on new things and holidays. He is the type of person who preaches that he’ll never own a mortgage. ‘Mort’ means death in French he says, you’ll never pay it off until you die.

His father is now worried about Luke, he’s starting the process of selling his company and retiring, but he’s having second thoughts because he doesn’t want his son to lose his job. If he did get fired for good, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to cope on his own.

What Luke doesn’t realise is that when his father ‘gifted’ him with that upper management position all of those years ago, he took away his independence, his motivation, and his own life. We’ll now never know what Luke could have become on his own. His father is already discussing giving more of an inheritance to Luke as he “helped him with his business”, but really it’s because he’s worried about him. What he doesn’t realise is that he’s continuing to strengthen the strong children and weaken the weak.

Things aren’t going so well for my partners younger brother either. Being the youngest by 7 years, he was born into a life of true wealth. Let’s call him Timmy…

Timmy is what you might call a spoilt child. Growing up, his parents doted on his every whim, instantly buying him whatever he asked for. Failing at school due to not wanting to spend his time at home studying, his parents decided to move him into a £5000 per term private school for his last 2 years. “Surely he will achieve better grades here?” They thought.

They were unfortunately wrong, money doesn’t buy good grades. He failed secondary school and had to spend an additional 2 years re-taking his core GCSEs. After passing with C’s he eventually decided that he would take an NVQ in ‘outdoor activities’, like his brother he enjoyed many different expensive hobbies, so why not take a course doing what he liked doing?

Throughout this time his father was trying to convince both him and his brother to start an outdoor activities business. He said he would fund it and buy the land, he desperately wanted them to be independent and happy. But Timmy and Luke didn’t have the motivation to commit to such a task, it would require so much effort!

In recent days Timmy decided that he wanted to go into videography after his father spent over £2000 on a drone and a ludicrously expensive camera. He’s not had any clients yet but his father has also recently spent over £5000 on an Intel Xeon computer for his son and his video editing, he asked for the most expensive PC in the shop, only the best for him!

What do you think is going to happen to Timmy? In all likeliness, his new venture will fail. As soon as he gets bored of this hobby, he’ll move onto the next one. His father has sucked out any bit of determination that ever manifested in Timmy by providing an environment that doesn’t require him to ever have any. He wrongly assumes that money is the answer, when in fact it is discipline and independence that Timmy needs. I fear, like his brother, it is now too late for Timmy to find his own path.

So, what has this book taught us?

For me, it affirmed what I have been thinking about for a long time; that you should be very careful when giving money to your children, as if it is done incorrectly, it will damage them.

I plan to send my kids to public school and I intend to never give them anything, they will have to earn what they get. Instead, I will use the saved wealth to spend more time with them, to give them quality experiences and to teach them how to become independent, disciplined, and strong human beings.

Why You Should Split Your Expenses 50/50

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 06:30:38 +0000

Consolidating your expenses has long been a tradition in British culture. It stems back to the days where a father had to barter with other families to trade off his daughter as a bride in place of cattle or arable land. The daughter would then become the property of her new husband. Their finances then become one, “What’s mine is yours.” It was the wife’s duty to raise children; it was unimaginable for them to earn money, so the joining of the household finances had to happen. Of course - in the modern world, things happen a little differently. Women are now in high paying careers all over the world, their wages have almost leveled out , or in some cases surpassed males in the workplace. Couples are on an equal playing field, so why should this age-old tradition of consolidating your finances continue when each person is as able as the other? Here are the 3 main reasons why you should be splitting your finances equally and why doing so should be the go-to de-facto for FIRE pursuers.

1) Encouraging You to Earn More

For every extra £10,000 the £100k earner makes they’ll lose £6,200 to tax. If they’re a ‘percentager’, they’ll also have to pay up an additional £1,200 per year on their mortgage (with the above illustration). That’s £7,400 out of the £10,000 that they’ll lose instantly - this is without even adding all of the other expenses! Almost all of their £10k gain is wiped out, it will also wipe out any motivation they ever had to earn more money. The same thing will happen for the lesser earner. They’ll be demotivated to earn more due to the fact that they’ll also see their expenses increase. “When the efforts and rewards are shared, it becomes apparent that the individual’s own efforts will have a less significant effect upon his eventual reward than if he were acting alone.” “Of course, he expects to get half the value added by the other person, too; but he doesn’t control the other person’s effort. He controls only his own effort. So what he controls will produce only a half reward.”

Harry Brown - How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

One of the traits that the FIRE community and myself preach is to always strive to generate side income. To do this you need a hard-working mentality, but you also need to be willing to try lots of new things. Higher-rate tax already puts a dampener on the UK hustlers spirit, you don’t want to make it worse by using a percentage based expense system.

2) Fighting Lifestyle Inflation

For everyone that’s thinking “But I don’t want to spend more than my partner.” Or “I earn more so I should pay for more.” You don’t have to do that; listen up! I earn three times what my partner earns in a year. We split everything equally and if she needs money, I’ll give her an interest-free loan - just like she’d do for me. We’ve been together for 7 years, own a home and we’re getting married next year (Yippee!!) - We’ll carry on splitting our expenses this way once we’re married. BUT!… I don’t plan on retiring without her. If I hit my FI number before her, I plan on continuing to invest until we both have enough to retire, I’ll also be filling her ISA when mine is full. As soon as we have children or get married our pots will be seen as one legally anyway. Most importantly; I don’t spend more than her - we spend equal amounts (we’re a team!) Splitting your expenses equally allows you to instantly beat lifestyle inflation. If we split them in a percentage based fashion, I would instantly be spending much more, and Mrs SavingNinja would have a lot more cash in her pocket. We’d need to battle lifestyle inflation just like all of the other high earners. Instead, I invest all of the difference (and then some) and we spend equal amounts, if we can’t afford something, we don’t buy it! I’m not going to go off and buy fancy clothes and a nice car and leave her behind, we’re in this together! But, by splitting our expenses equally; we’re on a much better path to FI.

3) Keeping Things Simple

Like FIREvLondon talked about in this excellent blog post; Complexity Costs . Keeping life simple is one of the greatest hacks to happiness and wealth presevation, and its much easier to split everything equally than to mess around figuring out percentages based off earnings.

Of course, all of these points are subjective to how you live your life. It’s easy for us as we live on less than minimum wage , so we can split our expenses equally and not miss the extra thats going into Vanguard. It may be a bit trickier if you need to increase your household expenses due to children or other unforeseen costs, and the lesser earner may be unable to earn more (although I believe anyone can earn the salary of a CEO ). But, I think for the majority of people, they’re doing themselves a disservice by splitting their expenses in a percentage based manner. Do you think you could lower your expenses enough to be on an even playing ground at 50/50? If so, try it out; just for a couple of months. Expense equally and save the difference - You’ll be surprised by how much your savings rate goes up.

Opinions?

Do you split or intend to split your expenses equally?
Do you think it’s unfair if the higher earner doesn’t pay more towards rent/mortgage costs?

Spending Less Makes You Happier

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:00:29 +0000

I grew up happy. I went on lots of holidays… ate at restaurants on special occasions. My parents spent much more money on me than they ever did on themselves. They bought me up happy… but they’ve never earnt much. They’re both very hard working and have worked all of their lives, but they’ve never earnt more than minimum wage. A lot of people would say that this put me at a disadvantage in life, but that’s not true. In fact, I believe that my parent’s earnings put me at a greater advantage than most. I know how to live with less, and I know that spending less leads to a happier, more fulfilled life. Let’s explore this notion together.

Thoughtfulness

The best gifts are always the thoughtful ones. It’s very easy to buy your loved one the latest gadgets or pay for them to go to a Spa. But nothing will beat the gifts which cost no money at all. Nothing will be more cherished than a gift which you’ve put time into.

Spending less invokes thoughtfulness. It forces you to think more not buy more. It cultivates the best experiences and makes you focus truly on what matters.

4 months prior to my 3-year anniversary, I started learning how to edit videos; solely for the purpose of making a montage of me and my partners last 3 years together to our favorite song. Each week I spent hours in front of my computer painstakingly learning everything I could to get the pictures, music and videos all playing perfectly together. I spent hours going through all of our old media to find our best photos and videos. All in secret!

Nothing beat the smile and tears of my partner on our 3-year anniversary morning when I revealed what I’d made for her.

Creativity

Spending less requires you to get creative. It requires you to analyze the best bits of what you enjoy and think about how you can improve this and make it better.

I realized that each time I bought a birthday or Christmas card I was using sites like Moonpig to send real-life pictures to relatives and friends. These were always the favorite cards which they received; they were personal and thoughtful. I realized however that I was spending hundreds of pounds per year on using these services. So, I sat down with my partner and thought; What do we really want?

The best part of any card is the personal note you write, even better if it has a personal photo too. The worst part of a card is not wanting to throw them away but them being bulky and non-uniform, making them hard to store.

We invested in some photo paper, we now only make post-cards for each other and relatives with a personal photo on one side and a personal note on the other. They stack, allowing us to store hundreds of our Valentines and anniversary cards in one storage place. They’re easy to put in a picture frame, they only include personal notes (nothing pre-made) and they save us hundreds of pounds each year.

Creativity invokes happiness; it’s actually proven to improve your mood. It increases and renews brain function and it also relieves stress. But most importantly; it allows you to make things better. It allows you as a human to analyze a problem and improve upon the normal constructs which society has told you to follow.

Adventure

The best adventures in life are free. Part of the beauty of an adventure is not knowing where you’ll end up. Spending less means that you won’t take the guided tour; you’ll find your own path, and there’s nothing more exciting!

On a Snowboarding trip a couple of years ago me and my partner were staying in accommodation with breakfast included. A lot of our friends kept stopping at the ludicrously expensive mountainside restaurants for lunch; they received bland food and poor service.

We instead made Croissant sandwiches from the provided breakfast and ate them on the top of the mountain. We got more time to board and had the best view in the world, better than any restaurant could have given us, all for no extra cost! These lunches were some of the most memorable times of our trip.

Spending less makes you take the road less traveled. You aren’t living out someone else’s experiences; you’re creating your own; ones which are tailored to you and your preferences. It forces you to be adventurous and fills the thirst which every person has to explore the unknown.

Learning

Learning new things equate directly to spending less, but it can also directly affect your happiness, and it pays dividends. Not only does the process of learning reduce stress and induce euphoria, it is proven to increase life expectancy.

Being a modern-day Polymath can also create stronger social ties to your community as you have more skills to lend a helping hand to your neighbors and interacting more with other human beings in your community is renown for increased happiness levels. It’s what we crave from our ancestral hunter-gatherer days.

When I was young and foolish I bought an expensive sports car. I was very proud to own such a stylish car, but I learned later on that this was instant gratification and wouldn’t add to my long-term happiness. In fact, it increased my stress levels. Being an expensive car which needed a ‘specialist’ to fix and service, I was too worried to touch anything myself. I ended up spending thousands every few months for seemingly small fixes.

After a year, I sold the sports car and instead spent £400 on a 1999 Skoda Fabia with over 150,000 miles on the clock. I also bought my self a good selection of multi-tools. In the year that I owned it, I learned how to fix a number of small issues, each bringing me a sense of fulfillment and happiness. I ended up doing my own MOT check and it passed with no issues before I sold it for £600.

I can honestly say that I was much happier with the Skoda Fabia than I ever was with my sports car, the forever lasting dread of thinking how much my next bill was going to cost was not worth the small bursts of excitement which I got from owning it. It saved me thousands, if not tens of thousands per year with repair costs, fuel consumption and depreciation. It also bought me joy from learning new skills.

I now just own a bike :)

There’s nothing that can increase your sense of self-worth as much as learning something new. It’s also proven that humans are more prone to enjoy things which they’ve built for themselves, over something which they’ve bought or paid for someone else to build. On top of that, if you build something yourself, you’re setting yourself up perfectly to be able to fix it if something goes wrong, increasing your self-worth, your saved money and in-turn, your happiness, all in one go!

On top of all of these things, there’s something which happens when you spend less… You save more! And we all know that Being Rich Has Nothing to Do with Your Salary . It’s about how much you have saved and having savings means you can have peace of mind in case the worst happens. It means you can have more time to spend on things which really do invoke happiness; like spending time with your kids or working on personal projects.

We all know that savings can help reduce stress, give you space to grow and in turn increase your happiness. But remember; you don’t have to suffer to save. Spending less can make you happier. Next time you take a trip or plan a date try not to spend any money. I can guarantee that you will enjoy it more. It will be different, exciting and adventurous and you’ll be looking back at those days with fondness.

For further reading into the Renaissance Man ideal, read Early Retirement Extreme. This book truly did change my life for the better.

Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence