As mentioned in my sixth month review of semi-retirement, there were a few things about it that took me by surprise. If you’ve read the first post in this series, you’ll know that other people’s reaction (or lack of) to my early retirement surprised me. But it wasn’t just other people – I also surprised myself. As someone who has spent most of their career working in government, I understand that there are people out there in the working world who earn a lot more money than I do. Don’t get me wrong, I was paid very well, but there’s no denying that there is more money to be made (especially r ..read more

My first year of semi-retirement is over. This series has taken you through how it was, what we spent and what we earned. Now, let’s cover our plans for 2022. Work The biggest change for us is that Poopsie has started a new job. He’s a few weeks into it and so far, so good. The work is interesting but also challenging. He enjoys the people he is working with and it has been a good transition from government to private sector as a lot of the people he works with used to work for the government as well. We are still working out the logistics as we only have one car and his new workplace is furt ..read more

Money makes the world go round, or so we’re told. For many, what they earn dictates what they spend. As mentioned in Part 2 of this series, our spending didn’t really change even though we earned less than usual. Perhaps we’re not as good at this financial independence thing as we first thought! But how much exactly did we earn? Let’s take a look. For the purposes of review, I have split our income into two categories: work income and investment income. Both play a part in our overall picture and both provide good information going forward. Fair warning, there are quite a few charts in this p ..read more

Welcome to The Australian Blogger Interview Series. We noticed the Australian personal finance community growing, mostly through our interactions on Twitter and we wanted to continue to foster this great camaraderie. We’ve reached out to as many Australian personal finance bloggers as we could and asked them to participate in our interview series. If you have any favourite Australian personal finance bloggers, tell us about them in the comments below and we’ll invite them to participate. Next Up: Latestarterfire.   ** A short note from AWP: Latestarterfire submitted this interview to me ..read more

I recently summarised my first year of semi-retirement as one of happiness and gratitude. I was less stressed and more relaxed, especially about money. It’s no secret that Poopsie and I are not very frugal. Every year, we are a bit disappointed with how much we spent but as we aren’t willing to change our lifestyle (as it makes us happy), we just have to accept that fact. This will ultimately mean we work, either full time or part time, for a bit longer because we want to be able to continue our current spending in retirement. We are okay with this and we have planned accordingly. Our job rel ..read more

Perception is a funny thing. I had no intention of writing a Part 1a to my recap of my first year of semi-retirement. I planned to move onto Part 2 (spending), Part 3 (earnings) and Part 4 (what’s next). However, I was alerted by a couple of people (including Poopsie) about an unintended perception of Part 1, so I thought I’d address that before moving on. Last week, I hit publish on Part 1 and expected to receive some very positive feedback. We are by no means a high-traffic blog, but most posts usually get at least a couple of comments. I didn’t get any comments on Part 1. I was surprised ..read more

Around about the time you’re reading this, I will have clocked up one full year of semi-retirement. And what a year it was. For all intents and purposes, I was semi-retired for 2021. I had a couple of weeks of leave in the early weeks of the year (still employed but not at work), but for the most part, in 2021 I was not employed full-time. The year was not perfect. The year was not without challenges. COVID and lockdowns certainly don’t care that you’re hoping to enjoy your semi-retirement. All of my problems did not go away. But it was a fantastic year and semi-retirement is one of the best ..read more

Last week, it was the one year anniversary of my last physical day in full-time employment. My, my, how time flies. Early next year, I will of course post about my experiences of my first year of semi-retirement (spoiler alert: it has been amazing) but today, I thought I’d provide a bit of an end of year life update. Long time readers know that Poopsie and I met at work and that we have both mostly worked for the same government department since we left school/university. I of course left that role a year ago and, in an exciting but slightly unexpected twist, Poopsie has just done the same th ..read more

As I alluded to back in June, a few things about my six months of early retirement surprised me. I wanted to share what those were in a bit of a series of blog posts. I hope you enjoy but fair warning, I’m not sure how consistent I will be in the series. They will come though! I was around 25 or 26 when I first discovered early retirement. I was amazed that it was even a thing. I have always been interested in personal finance and I am also somewhat of a blunt person. I try not to be rude, but I am very curious and if someone shares something about themselves with me, I will almost always ask ..read more

Welcome to The Australian Blogger Interview Series. We noticed the Australian personal finance community growing, mostly through our interactions on Twitter and we wanted to continue to foster this great camaraderie. We’ve reached out to as many Australian personal finance bloggers as we could and asked them to participate in our interview series. If you have any favourite Australian personal finance bloggers, tell us about them in the comments below and we’ll invite them to participate. Next Up: Frogdancer Jones from Burning Desire for FIRE.   ** A short note from AWP: Frogdancer Jones ..read more