This article was posted in Aussie Firebug’s FIRE discussion group on Facebook and, as a child-free person myself, the headline caught my attention enough to have a read and then take a look at the research upon which the article is based (the article being, like many these days, fairly superficial). The research was UK-based, focused on how the Coronavirus pandemic has affected peoples’ retirement plans and pension savings, and only sampled 2000 people so was quite narrowly focused. (However, it would be interesting to see whether the same views hold true in other Western countries.) While nei ..read more

It almost feels a bit weird writing a blog post again. I’ve let it sit pretty much idle since July because I hadn’t come up with an annual challenge for the 2021-22 financial year so haven’t really had anything to post about. My net worth has increased by 11.81% over the past six months, and by 40.67% since tracking began on 1 July 2019. Here’s the breakdown: Superannuation I’m so glad I finally made the change to the investment mix, because it’s gone up nicely just in the seven months since I switched – an increase of almost 9 percent since June! I’ll be very interested to see how the fees h ..read more

The debate around whether or not you really need to budget waxes and wanes in the personal finance community. Some claim not to need a budget at all, some use a “bucket” system, others track their spending only, and some go all in. For the past two years I’ve been blogging, I’ve been “all in” with a full, proper budget. Regular readers will have noticed that I have not yet posted any results for July, though. Unfortunately I’ve been without my desktop computer for the past couple of weeks due to a dead graphics card, and the replacement I bought is not working either, so until I can get the co ..read more

Well, only one category is in the black this month; the car category continues to be underspent due to reduced commuting. However, although there’s a lot of red showing on my budget’s Variance table (the one that shows me how much I’m over or under budget for each primary category), the amounts are relatively small – one is less than $100 (Food & Groceries), two are less than $50 (Entertainment and General/Miscellaneous), and the others are only a little over $50. Only one category – Household & Utilities – is significantly over budget, and that’s because I decided to buy an upright fr ..read more

June 2021 I’m a little later than I would normally be with this update as I was waiting for my final electricity bill to come in. I changed providers right near the end of June, and it took a couple of weeks for my previous provider to send through the finalised account. While the overall spend on electricity is unlikely to be much different, the offer of an additional $20 off the bill each quarter (for both gas and electricity) was the clincher. June results came out quite well, although that is primarily due to having “leftover” budgeted spending that didn’t happen in some categories. The on ..read more

Well, May was not my best month for both discretionary and non-discretionary spending, unfortunately. On the non-discretionary side, my Personal, Health & Wellness category got completely blown out because I had some medical expenses thanks to a knee that just wouldn’t stop hurting. Two doctor’s visits (one initial plus the follow up, and mine doesn’t bulk bill) plus an MRI added up a bit. However, that’s what emergency money is for, after all, although I didn’t need to tap that fund because I had enough floating around in my Daily Expenses account to cover it anyway. Luckily it seems that ..read more

Hmm, I might’ve gone a little overboard in April. I ended up with my second-highest negative net cash flow so far this financial year. That said, nearly a quarter of the overspend is because I decided to make some additional charitable donations above my usual annual budget (so far I’ve donated almost double what I originally budgeted for), but I will get some of that back come tax time. If I’m honest with myself, part of that resulted from me reacting to a rather horrific story, but I also think that if you can afford to do something to help alleviate pain and suffering then that’s a good thi ..read more

Hi everyone, and thanks for subscribing! Having recently noticed a spike in subscribers, I thought I’d quickly say hello and welcome to my blog! If the blog name hasn’t given it away, I’m a single person seeking financial independence. I’m also a late starter – I only came across the concept after I hit the big five-oh. This blog is my way of keeping a diary of sorts of my progress as well as keeping myself accountable and on track. Presumably you’re all somewhere on the FIRE path, whether you’re just starting out, you’re on your way, or maybe you’re already there. Maybe, like me when I first ..read more

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been at this blogging thing for two years already. When I first decided to start a blog about my path to FIRE it was very much a bit of a suck-it-and-see exercise; a post on another blog, Australian Dividend Investor (sadly no longer being published), about why you should have a blog and how to get started inspired me to decide that it was worth a go, even if it really just turned out to be a bit of a personal diary for me to help me keep track of how I was progressing and seeing what kind of shift in mindset I developed along the way. One or sometimes two posts ..read more